Smiley Baby

Thank God for digital cameras. My attempts to capture a photograph of the Froonchen smiling (for the Huggies Smiley Baby competition) have ended in failure and 84 photos best epitomised by the one displayed above.

Unfortunately there is a bit of a delay on our camera and as smiling is a fairly new skill, the Froonchen can only sustain her smile for an extremely limited period of time, for example:
1) On production of the milk ducts
2) The switching on of the musical cot mobile
3) After long periods of parental absence

Things guaranteed to wipe the smile off her face and result in catastrophic tears:
1) The putting away of the milk ducts (unless the baby is so full of milk it is coming out of her nose and leaks incontrollably from her mouth)
2) The switching off of the musical cot mobile
3) Long periods of parental absence.

Unfortunately, this afternoon, I managed to lock myself out of the front gate while Froonchen was still inside the house. The door slammed in the wind while I was saying cheerio to Gitty. Luckily she had a mobile phone to call Hermann while I raced next door to see if I could scale the wall from Chippy's garden. Hermann's burglar prevention measures had us foiled. There was too much barbed wire to jump the wall so we had to wait for Hermann to get home. Luckily he was only 10 minutes away but when we finally got in we found the poor Froonchen lying in a puddle of tears. The poor baby has been a limpet for the rest of the day.

PS - those are not my knees

Baby Explosion

This morning was a bit hectic at Lize's house, when 13 of the 18 babies from our ante-natal class turned up for some tea and biscuits.

Cake now constitutes one of my major food groups (along with white wine)!
I'm the only person I know who is putting on weight while breastfeeding!!
Froonchen now has elbow dimples!!!

Froona is the second baby from the right....

Free Wheeling in Imfolozi

We're just back from 3 nights up at Hluhluwe and Imfolozi where the weather was great, we saw lots of game and had a fantastic time.

On our second morning we got up really early for a game drive through to Imfolozi where Hermann assured us that we could fill the car up with petrol which was running dangerously low. Needless to say, we arrived at Mpila Camp only to find that the petrol pump was out of commission with not a drop of petrol in sight.

Hermann managed to persuade some fellow tourists to let him siphon off some petrol from their Toyota, and after much running around to procure the essentials, Hermann was finally armed with a bit of hose, a funnel and an empty water bottle. Half an hour later, after much sucking and blowing, it became apparent that the petrol tank of the Toyota did not like being probed with a fooshty bit of pipe and was 'siphon' proof.

This left us with 3 options:
1) Wait for the petrol lorry - due the previous Monday but had not turned up. Supposed to arrive sometime today (Thursday).
2) Attempt to make it to Mtubatuba with an empty tank of petrol - 40kms away, mostly downhill.
3) Attempt to make it back to Hilltop Camp with an empty tank of petrol - 40kms away, mostly uphill

Hermann decided on option number 2 - hence the erratic departure from Imfolozi as we free wheeled down every hill at great speed. We eventually wafted into Mtubatuba on petrol fumes only and were able to fill up the tank. Turns out we only had 70 mls of petrol left in the tank!

Royal Natal National Park

Mum and Dad's whirlwind tour of Kwazulu-Natal continued with a few days up at 'the Berg'. We stayed in Thendele Camp with great views of the Amphitheatre. We went on a couple of smaller walks but left the big hikes to Dad and Hermann. Froonchen tried out the Kangol pouch for the first time but screamed blue murder whenever we tried to put her arms through the arm holes. As a result she did the whole hike with arms akimbo, and even managed to fall asleep. Please note that I refuse to accept that my boobs are that big - they were obviously being squashed into an unnatural underarm position!

Klara's Christening

It was the Christening of Udo and Agi's daughter Klara, up at Elandskraal, a couple of weeks ago. We went for the whole weekend and stayed in the chalets in the church grounds. It was a fantastic weekend, despite the torrential rain and thunderstorms. On the Saturday we visited Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana. We even squeezed in a little game drive on a neighbouring farm.

It brightened up on the Sunday, so we had perfect weather for the christening. Here are a couple of photos of us dressed in our Sunday best - Froonchen in Jasper Conran and me in 'New Look'!

Walkies

The bunnies have been in training. We're aiming to be able to take them for a turn round the Botanic Gardens. At the moment it's them taking us for a hop around the garden. I just about peed my pants laughing at the sight of Hermann running after Bongile - he's going to shoot me for publishing a photo of him wearing socks with sandals but I'm afraid it just has to be done!

The Mackays Have Arrived

Mum and Dad arrived 3 weeks ago for their maiden voyage to SA with a kitchen cupboard in their luggage and a suitcase full of pressies for the Froonchen. This means that they are travelling light and only have a couple of pairs of pants to their names.

They must have brought the weather with them as it's been pissing down. Hermann had to install the tumble dryer, especially as Froonchen has a habit of vomiting down Dad's limited supply of shirts.

Their first trip out of Durban was to Greytown where we managed to get a photo of all the oldies together.

Bathroom Bizarre

Yesterday I finally came face to face with my nemesis - Kevin from Bathroom Bazaar! I offered to take his photo for the blog 'Hall of Shame' but he told me not to be so nasty - guess we won't be shopping there again.....

The saga started back in May when we were told by our builder that the coverplates for the shower and bath taps were 'missing' when we bought the taps and were therefore on order. We thought that this was a bit odd (given the rest of the taps were intact) but had much bigger and leakier things to worry about. In the meantime you just had to guess which taps were hot and which were cold.

By July, I was getting fed up with the non arrival of the coverplates and phoned Bathroom Bazaar myself - first contact was made with Kevin! The story then took another twist: apparently the blank coverplates had been ordered because our bathrooms had been plumbed with with the hot and cold pipes in the wrong place. For those of you not aware, we had just had the bathrooms re-tiled, posing the very sensible question - "WHY NOT FIX THE PIPES AT THE SAME TIME".

Anyways, we were assured that the bank coverplates were on the way so for the next 2 months, poor Kevin was hounded by weekly phonecalls pertaining to the whereabouts of the elusive blank coverplates

Finally, on Froonchen's birthday we got the call from Kevin - they had finally arrived! Full of anticipation we went to collect them only to find they didn't fit. Instead, we have retrieved the original coverplates from Kevin and installed them upside down so that the hot and cold labels are on the right taps - a suitably African solution!