77) Candace

As I mentioned at the beginning of my last posting we have a new granddaughter. Her name is Candace Lisa and she was born on 24^th October of this year. She was 49cm long and her weight was 3.44kg / 7.584lb

She was a little slow to arrive; she came 12 days after the date that the doctor had expected her to come. The biggest problem though was, because her big brother had arrived three weeks early Lisa was sure that baby number two would follow the same pattern and be early too. So three weeks before her due date Lisa was mentally prepared for her arrival and ready to rush off to the hospital. So all in all she had almost 5 weeks of being ready to rush off to the hospital.

Candace was born in Gosford hospital. As Lisa and Dom had been living in Berowra when Nathan was born he was born in Hornsby hospital. But as they now live on the Central Coast they had to go to Gosford. During her pregnancy Lisa confided in me that she was disappointed not to be going to Hornsby once again as Gosford seemed rather old fashioned and dark compared to the bright modern Hornsby Hospital. But I am very pleased to say that after the birth she told me that she had been very impressed with Gosford as she had received excellent treatment from the medical staff. They had been very efficient and caring. Just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover or a hospital by it appearance.

This long awaited baby was born at 3.50 am on a Wednesday morning. Of course Dominic rang to tell us that she had arrived and that everything was fine. The next time we heard from him was at about 4.15 pm that afternoon to tell  us that he had collected Lisa from the hospital and they were all now at home. Apparently every new mother has to stay in hospital for 12 hours after giving birth so she had not been allowed to leave until 4.00 pm. But as soon as the clock struck 4 they were on their way.

As you can see from the photograph she is a beautiful baby, with a lovely mop of dark hair and a very pretty smile. She is a good and contented baby and does not give her parent too hard a time. Well not any harder than any new born does.

Nathan was very pleased with her arrival as she brought him a Buzz Lightyear toy. If you don’t know what that is I expect you are in the same age category as I am. (Some super hero from a Toy Story movie I think) He seems to be continuing to like his little sister even if she doesn’t present him with gifts every day. The other day he told his Mom that Candace was crying and Lisa replied that she must be hungry and went off to make a bottle. She came back to find Nathan trying to feed Candace a hot chip. That must surely be love, to share his chips with her. He is getting so big now; he will be three in February and is going to preschool for a couple of days a week in January. He has enough energy for a whole barrel load of monkeys and I wonder how he will cope with the discipline of school. He seems to be interested in everything; his favourites are things that have buttons to press and lights that light up, as they have both buttons and lights mobile phones and remote controls are definitely his favourites.He wants to know what things are, what they do and how they work. I took him for a little walk along our street the other day and he had to examine each letter box that we passed. He needed to pat all the hub caps of the cars parked along the kerb. The manhole covers were also inspected and he would have called in on each house if I had allowed it.

As they have both buttons and lights mobile phones and remote controls are his favourites. For his second birthday I was at a loss to know what to buy for him so I asked Lisa if she had any ideas. She told me that she had seen a toy lawn mower in a local shop and she thought that he would enjoy that. I was a bit sceptical, why would a child want a lawn mower but as I could not come up with any other ideas I went with that. It was a rather nice toy as it looked like a miniature Victa mower even to the logo on it and it had a string attachment at the top that made a lovely lawn mower noise when it was pulled. He was enchanted with it and spent the rest of the afternoon “mowing” the lawn. But the thing that amused us all most was that when he pulled the string to “start” his mower he would put his foot onto the body of the machine just as he had seen his dad do with his machine. I thought it was very observant of him and warned Dominic that he had better be very careful of everything he does and says as Nathan is obviously a little sponge soaking up everything he sees and hears.