Weta are taking over our house ...

No, not the highly acclaimed animation company, but actual living breathing creepy crawlie weta. Earlier this week, I was feeding Harper at some hour in the morning when I happened to spy a pair of antennae waving around in one of the cubby hole things running alongside the change table. Closer inspection revealed a ginormous weta having a sip of gripewater from around the lid of the bottle. I duly woke the Postie to get rid of it.

Next night, after a rather terrible day of Harper getting zero sleep but still having the energy to scream the house down, the cat woke me up scratching at something amongst the piles of stuff in the spare room. What it was scratching at? A weta. I duly woke the Postie who chased it under the spare bed.

And then last night, as I lay dozing at some hour of the morning, wondering if the noises Harper was making were going to rev up to full blown hunger, I heard a scratching noise that I thought was Charlie coming in for the night. Then the unmistakable feel of legs skittering over my bare arm, then the revelation of a weta sitting quite calmly on the pillow next to me. I duly woke the Postie, who though he didn't have his glasses on and was in the middle of a rare deep sleep, managed to scoop it up in a towel and fling it outside.

There are only two other occasions I have been in the presence of weta. One clung to my leg as I showered in my Kilbirnie flat in 1998, last seen surfing towards the plughole. The other time was just last year when I interviewed weta expert George Gibbs at his Eastbourne house where he had weta 'hotels' nailed to various trees. They creeped me out big time. I just hope our house isn't becoming a weta hotel too.

Cheeky, charming, chatty ... and soooo advanced

A Wellington mother has become convinced in recent days that her child is the most advanced, funny, interesting, intelligent child ever born.

Kimberley Rothwell, 35, has been quoted as saying "he's so cute" and "he'll be teaching university physics next week" as she stares at her three-week-old son Harper while he sleeps in their Brooklyn home.

The comments were prompted by a visit from Harper's midwife who said in passing that Harper was very chatty for a three-week-old and so strong that he'd probably be walking by eight months.

Glowing with pride, Rothwell watched as her son was weighed by the midwife. He clocked in at a massive 4.26kg - a weight gain of 660g since birth.

Harper, whose interests include staring, putting on weight and sucking his fingers, said "ma ooo aaa eurgh".

A Walk With Harper

Yesterday I fired up the stroller and Harper and I went for a wee walk about the burbs. I tucked him up in his cave with a blanket and hat and within seconds he was asleep, there must be something about being jostled about in a dark space that he likes, something womb-like perhaps. We walked. I haven't quite recovered fully from Harper's entrance into the world, so really we ambled. We moseyed. We strolled. In the weeks leading up to his birth, the Postie would drag me out for a walk around our neighbourhood, discovering little spaces and gardens and views over the gullies and hills. He would walk in tiny little steps to give the impression that we weren't going at a snail's pace. Sometimes on the way back we'd swing by the dairy and get marshmallows for hot chocolate. We'd inspect people's gardens and paintwork and peek in the windows of houses for sale. Clouds would tear over the hills, chopped up by the wind turbine, while it stayed clear over our heads. Sometimes tui sang in trees.
Yesterday walking with Harper, I saw my future. I saw kids having tennis lessons at the local club, saw parents parked outside the community hall waiting for classes to end, saw parents picking up their kids from the local school. I saw kids playing softball in t-shirts and shorts, barefeet on brown grass, just like when I grew up. I saw my mumsy haircut reflected in the windows of a landcruiser parked on the footpath that I had to go off-road to get around.
Later the Postie put Harper under his play gym and we sat just staring at him for a little while.
I used to look after my nephew, the most excellent Sweeney, and walk around town with him in his stroller before pushing him up the hill to our old flat. I used to feel like some sort of wannabe mother feeding him in cafes and doing those things that mothers do. I caught a glimpse of myself yesterday and saw that person again, only this time, I'm not an imposter at all. Still, I can't shake the feeling that Harper has been lent to me by someone, that I'm not his mum but just a full-time babysitter who happens to think he's extremely awesome.

Ta-dah!

Look at what we made - one baby Harper, born Tuesday 5 February (his aunty Ange's birthday) in the early hours after a straitforward, quick and surprise labour at Wellington Hospital.

His Mum and Dad, we can safely say, are besotted.

Thanks to everyone, and there have been loads of you, sending your best wishes, flowers, baking, clothes, offers of help, texts, comments and everything else. I hope in the next few days to answer everyone, but at the moment I am too caught up with gazing into my child's eyes.

No, I have not had the baby

I'm now a week overdue and going to have some monitoring done at the hospital today to make sure Tiny's still happy in his apartment. If he hasn't made an entrance before Monday, we'll start prodding him with things and hoping he responds. Already the Postie and I have been trying out all the advice people have given us, and I have to say I am adviced out.
We've been:

• taking walks sideways up steps and slopes which must look ridiculous to passersby
• drinking raspberry leaf tea
• eating prunes, kiwi crush and spicy foods
• pressing various pressure points (which did nothing for my morning sickness either, so I'm sceptical about it all)
• various activities that usually lead to getting pregnant rather than unpregnant (I'm blushing as I type this)
• and I went and had acupuncture done three days ago to no effect.

I just did a google search to read up on medical techniques for induction to see what I may be in for, and found a whole bunch of people who think it's wrong to induce labour just because you are sick of being pregnant. It seems there's no aspect of pregnancy or parenting that people have strong opinions about, and think is appropriate to guilt others out about. I'm not even a parent yet and I'm so over it. My philosophy has always been everyone's different - some of us needed anti-nausea pills to keep their jobs in the early months, some didn't. Some want caesars and epidurals, some don't. Their bodies, their choices. I'm going out of my freakin' mind with the anticipation of Tiny's birth, and if inducing him at 10 days overdue is what I want to do as various 'side effects' of being pregnant catch up with me and make me miserable, and the risk of Tiny getting distressed increases, then I'm gonna. I haven't had a good sleep in weeks, am getting increasingly grumpy at poor Postie who is equally anxious about it all, and that's not a healthy way to start our lives as parents is it?