Home – Page 3 – Ramsay Family Classics

Ten fingers, ten toes, no worries

At 8:48 last night Charlotte Isabelle Ramsay made a rather undignified but otherwise uneventul entry into this world.

I was reading Carl Sagan’s book “Contact” recently and a short section towards the start describes things quite well I felt:

When they pulled her out, she was not crying at all. Her tiny brow was wrinkled, and then her eyes grew wide. She looked at the bright lights, the white and green clad figures, the woman lying on the table below her. On her face was an odd expression for a newborn – puzzlement perhaps.

She is rather cute, and both her and Simone are doing fine.

The all important vital statistics are: 2.34kg (5lb 2oz), 46cm length, 32cm head circumference.

Below, for your edification, are the first of what promises to be many many photos of her.

I was thinking before that she might need her own website, so I can to some extent separate my fatherly blubberings from my opinionated rantings, but that will be another task for another day. anyway, without further ado:

(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger versions of the photos)

Initially displeased at the reception:

But happier once we got her in some clothes:

Settling in well in grandad’s arms:

Happy with mum:

But showing contempt for her father (pull that tongue in missy)

That’s better:

Feeling contemplative (my favorite photo of her so far):

Feeling sleepy:

Waving hello:

And finally another shot with mum:

Unfolding events

As some of you may have already heard Simone has ended up with her blood pressure up over the weekend, and as a result she was admitted to hospital yesterday, and was induced last night.

She’s feeling fine and doing well, and we should have an outside kid in the next day or two.

More news (and photos) as they become available.

Gators or rice?

It’s been raining a lot around here.

Enough that there have been a few days were people in our department have been late or completely unable to get to work due to surface flooding. Kind of the tropics’ answer to the snow day.

Anyway our back yard is getting pretty badly in need of a mow, but I don’t have any intention of pushing the lawn mower around in the current situation where underneath the tall grass is a layer of water about an inch deep.

I’m beginning to wonder if I need to be concerned about ‘gators appearing in our back yard swamp, or perhaps whether I should be capitalising on this and putting in a crop of rice or cotton…

Bewtiful

Yesterday Simone and I went and pre-emptively spent some of our baby bonus on a new TV.

There is a running joke in the medical community that the baby bonus is actually the wide screen plasma TV bonus, seeing as that seems to be what a lot of the younger, lower socioeconomic new parents reportedly go out and spend the baby bonus on.

We’d been looking to upgrade for a while as the old TV was 10 years old and would be next to impossible to get working with either digital TV or a computer/hard disc based home media and recording system (which is also on my to do list).

Once we got it set up (it only just fit into the existing TV cabinet and took a bit of fiddling to get the cables all in the right places) the problems that I have found is that I feel uncomfortable sitting and watching the TV because it seems almost too pretty. The picture is so crisp, and all the new high definition digital channels are frankly breathtaking.

We didn’t really spend all that much money in the grand scheme of things (we only spent a small proportion of the potential baby bonus) but with the new technologies a little goes a long way, and I kind of feel uncomfortably extravagant sitting watching TV in 32 inch crystal clear digital, when our old analogue TV did an adequate job most of the time…

Career change

Well today marked a change in both Simone and my careers.

I started my first day as an orthopaedic registrar (no more ward call – Yay!!!) and Simone began a career diversion as a one year lady of leisure (well perhaps not an entire year, but until the baby arrives at least).

I got to operate all day, and Simone got to sleep in until 10:30am.

Still I also arrived home to a cooked dinner and a martini (both of which had been part of a recent running joke between the two of us), so I can’t really complain about her getting to have a sleep in.

House guest

The wet season has arrived in Cairns, and with it the amphibian life of the town has erupted. Frogs and cane toads are everywhere, and the roads around our place are paved with flattened toads who thought they might give it a go against an oncoming car or two.

So the other night when I went to close the door to keep Jack in for the night I got a little start when I walked into our darkened dining room and had something small and dark go “hop” near the doorway.

Turned out to be a decent sized green frog who had hopped in to get out of the rain, and while I thought he was cute, Jack wouldn’t let me keep him as a pet, so I had to shoo him out, back into the night.

Abusive relationship

This afternoon Simone and I both got kicked for the first time by our child. Everyone has been saying that it should be about now, although often the first one doesn’t start until a little later than average, so Simone’s been doing a bit of “Ooh, that might have been a kick (or I might just have indigestion)” for a few weeks, but today while she was lying down she got a definite kick, and when I put my hand in the appropriate spot I too got a good firm thump for my efforts.

It’ becoming harder and harder to deny that we’re going to be parents.

The Gecko Nation

Something odd that seems to have accompanied the arrival of summer temperatures has been a lot of geckos in the house.

Whereas they used to be something you would see occasionally scuttling out of the way earlier in the year, now they seem to be around all the time, and it’s creating some amusing moments because Jack feels compelled to chase them, but because they seem to always crawl around on the upper edges of the walls he is helpless to do anything other than watch them with his tail flicking excitedly back and forth. It’s actually like some kind of remote sensing system, because Jack will be tearing around and then suddenly stop and stare intently in a direction, and you can bet there’s a gecko there.

Luckily however he hasn’t managed to catch any yet.

Piccies

Today we had our 19 week morphology scan, and got to see our baby properly for the first time. Of course in good Ramsay fashion it spent about half of the scan time rolling backward and forwards, wriggling around, putting it’s hand in front of it’s face, and generally making like difficult for our Obstetrician who was doing the scan.

I’ve put some pics up both on facebook and in the photo section of our blog.

We’re getting another one in 4 weeks and I might try and get a few more then as well.

To see the Pics click on the thumbnail below.

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Family photos

Right. Since getting home I’ve had a chance to look through the CD of the ultrasound Simone had while I was in Dunedin, and for your edification here are a few photos of Simone’s handy work:

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I included the last photo to prove (as if there was ever any doubt, given it’s parentage) that our kid has spine (and thus by inference grit, determination and (god help us) that now famous Ramsay family stubborn streak).

You should be able to see bigger copies of the pictures by clicking on each of them.