Shift change

The shift change happens this weekend. Gareth's last day of work is tomorrow, my first day back at work is Monday. Poor little Quinn is not going to have any idea come Monday morning why the One With The Boobs has left him, but we know he'll enjoy his time with the One With The Beard.

We are very lucky that my employer has encouraged me to work from home. In a conversation that may make my boss the greatest boss ever, she told me she knows how hard it is to go back to work with a new baby at home, and that I should work from home as much as I can. My job requires me to be in the office at least 1 day a week, and probably 2 days. But I should be able to work 2 or 3 days a week at home. We've bought a little desk for the spare room and I'm ready to set up my home office in there.

I know it's possible to work and breastfeed. All you need is some determination and a good breast pump. But how much easier will it be to continue breastfeeding if we can eliminate the middle man? Instead of pumping milk into bottles for Gareth to feed the baby, I can pump it directly into the baby. So much simpler. We really are lucky.

Gareth's super excited to take over the at-home parent gig. He's got big plans, including new veggie patches, runs with the buggy, and Monday man-dates with a daddy friend. My own plans for all I'd accomplish while at home did not really pan out. I thought I'd be climbing the Rapaki track every day, losing all the baby weight, and catching up with friends and family on Skype. Instead, I've climbed the Rapaki track 0 times (although there's a mean hill nearby that I go over once or twice on most of our walks, so that counts for something...), still have 20lbs to lose, and have been miserable at keeping up with friends and family in America (sorry guys). I spend most of the day feeding the boy, trying to get him to sleep, or thinking he is going to wake up at any minute. Hopefully Gareth will have more luck with his plans than I've had with mine.

I'm excited to get back to work and find out if my brain still works. Fingers crossed! But I'm also a little sad that my time as a stay-at-home mum is coming to an end. So long, Tuesday morning walks through the park with the boy and a cuppa.

Kaikoura

We took our first family trip this weekend: an overnight visit to Kaikoura. It's about 2 1/2 hours north of Christchurch, on the east coast. Perhaps this map will help illustrate:


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Kaikoura is known for whale watching, but we didn't do that. We just looked around a bit and visited a seal colony. Here's an overview of the town, as seen from a lookout point.

The seals are right there on the beach. You can walk right up to them and poke them in the face if you want to (not recommended). It's crazy. There were signs asking visitors to stay at least 10 metres away, but no one did. Not that people were touching the seals or anything, but they could have. The seals didn't seem too worried though.







Quinn wasn't terribly impressed.

We had heard there were gorgeous mountains nearby, but it was a cloudy afternoon and we couldn't see much. And then suddenly, the clouds broke and we saw them. Wow.

I mean, WOW.


Driving back south to Christchurch, we stopped a couple times to look out at the sea. It was particularly moody looking. Rain is so much more beautiful on a sea coast than inland.

Plus one

It's been reported today that New Zealand's population grew by 51,900 people in the year ending June 30th. That brings us up to 4.37 million. That's the whole country. For comparison, the Phoenix Metropolitan Area has an estimated 4.28 million people (wiki source). The story is in Stuff.

Quinn was one of those 51,900. :)

Mouse in the house

One of the joys of having a new baby in the house is getting up at all hours to feed him. I haven't seen 2 a.m. this often since I was in college. But if it hadn't been for these night time feeds, we would not have discovered our nonpaying tenant. We have a mouse in our house.

I first saw it about 4 weeks ago. I switched on the kitchen light in the middle of the night and saw a small shadow race across the floor. I thought it must have just been a shadow.

A few days later, the same thing happened again, only this time, the shadow had a tail and ran under the dishwasher. A mouse!

I told Gareth he would need to take care of this. Mouse removal is clearly a husband/father duty. But he did not immediately take care of it - I suppose because he's been busy doing everything for the household short of breastfeeding the baby. The mouse must have heard that we were going to come after it though, because he laid low for awhile there.

And then he reappeared this week. He's back, and he's bolder. I saw him race across the living room floor while we were watching tv the other night. And then when I was up at 2:30 last night, I saw him run from the living room, around the dining table, and into the kitchen. He ran around the dining chairs like he had done it a thousand times, like it was a well-travelled route back to home base. This mouse has gotten too comfortable. He must be dealt with.

I said to Gareth this morning that, while not happy to have pests of any kind living in our house, the mouse is heaps better than the cockroaches we had in Arizona. There are enormous, flying cockroaches in Arizona. We would be woken at night by the cat meowing at them (a good cat would have killed the roach; ours just alerted us to its presence and waited for us to smack it with a shoe.) There are few things more gruesome than a giant roach whizzing by your head, or the loud crunch of its body when you smash it dead. (Shudder.) I had no urge to retch when I saw the little mouse. I did not want to scream, or jump up on a chair, or wake up Gareth to save me. I just thought, "A mouse. huh."

Gareth pointed out, though, that the cuteness of mice will make it harder to kill them. True, I said, that will probably make it harder for you... When it's time to kill the mouse, I will probably be busy nursing the boy.

(Incidentally, World Breastfeeding Week just ended, and August is National Breastfeeding Month in the U.S. "Breastfeeding: it's what your bazongas are for." Thanks to Cara for the link.)

Maori language week

It's Maori language week again (just finished actually, I think). I tried to participate by tuning in for Te Karere on channel 1 a few times this week. This is the Maori news show. I suspect "Te Karere" means "our news" but that's just an educated guess...

I listened carefully to the news presenter, but pretty much all I understood was "kia ora" (hello) and then the place names. So it was, "Kia ora. Blah blah blah Hokitika blah blah Rotorua." English subtitles would really be helpful here guys, but I guess I'm not really the target audience. Apparently, you can get subtitles if you watch it online. Even though I can't understand, it's interesting to just hear the sounds of the language and watch the images. You can get an idea of what is important to Maori by what they're reporting.

I was able to gather that there was some sort of haka competition going on this week. There was a lot of footage of kids performing hakas on stage. I did a google search and discovered that indeed there was a competition - the National Secondary Schools Kapa Haka Championships 2010, in Rotorua. The performances are amazing to watch, especially the facial expressions. Start with bad-ass facial tattoos (or, in a pinch, apply black make-up to look like tattoos). Then open the eyes real wide and bug them out a bit, for a sort of "I'm insane!" look. Then stick the tongue out - waaaay out, Gene Simmons style, for a "I'm dangerously insane!!" look. The result: pure intimidation.



The men have tattoos on their faces and thighs. The women paint their lips black and have tattoos on their chins.

Te Karere showed lots of videos from the competition, and you can watch them on its website but you have to watch adverts first. I couldn't find much of it on You Tube, but did find this one:



The video is not very easy to see, but if you go to this website you can see some great photos from an earlier competition.

Peace and trustworthiness

I read today that New Zealand ranked #1 on the Global Peace Index. That's first out of 149 countries. First is good. We got points for respecting human rights, political stability, and the low potential of a terrorist attack, among many other factors. Hooray New Zealand.

For comparison, the United States ranked #85 and the United Kingdom ranked #31. Iraq came in last place. Go here to read more about it.

We also learned this week that people with full beards are very trustworthy. This chart says so:

Gareth was pleased.

One year in

We've been in New Zealand a year (and some)! Thought we'd share our thoughts about this important anniversary. A bit late, yes, but, well, we've been sorta busy...

Me: I'm blogging about our one-year anniversary in New Zealand. Your thoughts on living here after a year?

Gareth: [two thumbs up]

Gareth is a man of few words. I'll fill in the details.

One year in and we are still very happy with our decision to immigrate. It feels both like we've always been here and like this year has flown by. Where has the time gone?

The fact that I was pregnant for most of our first year really limited our ability to explore our new home. We took a couple small trips during the early months, but have barely been outside Christchurch for ages now (it seems). I for one am getting really antsy to get out and see more of the South Island. Strictly from an exploration perspective, it does feel sometimes that this year has kind of been wasted, but of course, growing a little man and giving birth to him is not wasted time...

One year in, I'm annoyed that books are so expensive. We recently spent $40 for a paperback book. This is insanity. No paperback book should cost $40. Clearly, we need to find a good second hand book store. At this point though, we are still just re-reading our old books rather than buy new ones (the $40 one was a gift), but eventually, one day, we will want to buy a new book. With the arrival of the baby, that day will probably be a long ways off though. Who has time to read? I barely have time to shower.

Although we have adopted some Kiwi sayings and pronunciations, people ask us all the time where we are from. I get asked if I'm American or if I'm Canadian, or like today, simply "You have an accent there...?" Gareth has probably jumped countries one too many times, as people can't tell if he's Welsh, English, Canadian, or American. This is a constant reminder that we don't totally fit in because we talk funny. We don't mind though.

We've now had a chance to experience the healthcare system, and we give it good marks. Although we had a couple complaints with our hospital experience during Quinn's birth (see last post), we are really impressed by the easy access to all the post-natal care we need. For instance, I've had some trouble with breastfeeding. Our midwife continued to visit us at home after Quinn's birth and helped with the breastfeeding by watching and giving tips. When things were still not going great, she referred us to a community lactation consultant, who came to the house to help us with our technique. Both the midwife and the lactation consultant followed up with phone calls. All this was free. I am so grateful for all this support - I never had to struggle alone.

The breastfeeding problems led to problems with Quinn gaining weight so we were referred to a paediatrician. We had an appointment just a couple days after the midwife made the referral, and we saw him for free. We love free stuff. (ok, it's not free; our taxes pay for it. But we're not paying any more in taxes than we did in the States, so it seems free...)

Now that Quinn is 6 weeks old, the midwife care is over, but we'll continue to have visits from a Plunket nurse. She will come to the house to check on us every few months or more often as needed. Healthcare workers coming to us: brilliant.

So anyway, the point is that we're happy with the healthcare system. Hooray for national health care!

We have met some great people who we now call friends. Some are kiwis, some are fellow immigrants. Strangely, we seem to know more people after a year in Christchurch than we knew after 6 years in Phoenix. Maybe because we arrived in town knowing no one we've made more of an effort to make friends than we ever did in Phoenix.

We said this at 6 months and say it again: our work-life balance is way better here. This is still true. And Gareth will be a stay-at-home dad soon. So you could say his life is about to be all work, but the good kind. :-)

One thing we really do not miss from America is the political divide between the Red Staters and Blue Staters. It's crazy to think back now at how things were over there - and still are as far as we know. I'm a little too sleep deprived at the moment to adequately explain why this is a big deal. All I can say is that life is better when politics don't rile people up so much. As time goes on, we're reading news from America less and less. For one, it's just too depressing (the BP oil spill? Don't get us started.) But also, we just don't care anymore. It's so far away. If anything important happens over there, they'll report on it here. And they'll report on it without any left or right bias.

In short, our thoughts one year in: we're staying.