Out and about

It's the weekend at last and yesterday after I'd finished working we went on a small outing as a family for the first time since Neil's birth. It was only to our Spar and for a walk, followed by a drink at The Purple Cow. We are gradually starting to do a few normal things again.

A "selfie" during our walk

We were stormed by ducks who clearly hoped we'd brought some crumbs or something

Having a drink after a serious bout of hopping about on the jumping castle

Miekie and Pieter are quite into collecting and swapping stickers, so they enjoy browsing the sticker sections in shops

The five of us in the car together for the first time (Neil is tucked into his car seat, to Pieter's right)

This morning we all had our usual coffee and tea in bed. (Neil opted for some milk.)

Excitement at the foot of the bed

Yawn!

It didn't take long until Neil started yawning while I was explaining to him how one solves the cube. Actually, the only person he seems really impressed with at the moment is Marisa (particularly when he's hungry). He turns his head in her direction as soon as he hears her voice!

Pieter and the alphabet

Pieter has started becoming aware of the alphabet and confidently stated this evening that he already knows it well. Here's his recital of his version of the alphabet.

(If you're wondering why there's a picture of Professor Calculus, which you may or may not see depending on your browser, it's because I chose that as my profile picture on SoundCloud...)

Boo!

Pieter has realised that his room has a nice "feature", which is that his windows open onto the street side of the property and that he can open them and climb through with very little effort! He has taken to parking his new bicycle outside his room and relishes in the freedom of being able to go for a quick ride and then to come back to relax in his room before going out again.

I decided to sneakily capture this on film (or, more specifically, its digital equivalent) this afternoon. Just imagine how hard it'll be to constrain his movements once he's a teenager!

Tanning and bathing

We've let Neil suntan a bit, only for a few minutes at a time, to augment his phototherapy. He seems to enjoy lying in the warm sun!

Maja is quite motherly and likes to keep a watchful eye

He's still got a piece of umbilical cord stuck to his bellybutton

So far Neil seems to enjoy bathing, if you get the water temperature right (the first time it was too cool and he made his dissatisfaction known). My multimeter has a thermometer attachment which I now dip into the water to make sure it's precisely right. Neil seems happy with a range of about 37-39 degrees Celsius.

Here's a short bathing video.

Miekie's birthday

Miekie turned eight yesterday. It was a more subdued birthday than usual because Marisa is not quite up to her normal levels of mobility yet. That didn't stop Marisa from baking cupcakes and hosting an influx of family and friends, as well as others including a nurse who was there to check up on Neil's bilirubin levels.

Pieter and Neil gave her a pair of pink binoculars

She got Lego from Marisa and me

Alexander had an opportunity to pop in that morning to see Neil while Miekie was at school

One of the presents from her Oupa and Ouma

The cupcakes Marisa baked

Miekie's quite a fan of Frozen, a recent Disney movie, so Pieter and I bought her a big helium-filled balloon with pictures of the two heroines on either side

Ouma Daleen with Neil

Neil has been sleeping on a phototherapy bed to help clear bilirubin from his system. Phototherapy does this by changing the bilirubin in the blood from the trans to the cis isomer, which is more soluable in water. This makes it easier for the body to excrete it.

It has quite a glow to it...

... particularly in the dark!

Days 2 and 3

Neil and Marisa are both very well. Their respective doctors were both satisfied with the two of them yesterday.

Miekie, Pieter and their Oupa and Ouma came to visit in the mid-afternoon. Kobie and Anelle came in the evening.

Oupa Koos (I missed the photo opportunity with Neil and his Ouma Daleen... but there'll be many more...)

The doctors were satisfied again this morning so Marisa and Neil were discharged.

All set and ready to go!

Neil has developed a touch of neonatal jaundice but it's not pathological at the moment. His doctor has recommended that we hire a phototherapy device for a few days, so that's what we'll do (or maybe we should just let him sun tan outside a bit...).

Neil

Neil was born this afternoon. Things happened so quickly that there was no time for Marisa to be given an epidural, so she went through the process of giving birth without any pain killers. It's quite an experience and I'm extremely proud of her being so brave!

Before things got serious

Neil very shortly after being born

The contrast from immediately before to immediately after is amazing!

Pieter and Miekie were excited to meet Neil

Snoozing... 

No baby yet...

We spent the weekend sitting around and metaphorically twiddling our thumbs. At the time of blogging Neil is still happy to keep Marisa pregnant.

Using his pocket money, Pieter bought an implement that can be fitted to the end of a suitable stick upon which sausages or, in this instance marshmallows, can be impaled. We tested it out over the coals on Saturday after braaing.

Post-marshmallow satisfaction

This morning Marisa did something fancy to Miekie's hair.

I dusted off my old Rubik's puzzles (the normal 3x3x3 cube, the larger 4x4x4 and the Star) and solved them a couple of times.

All rather uneventful!

Full term

Today is the official full term (40 weeks) date for Neil but he still seems happy to remain where he is at this stage.

Bumpy Land Rover drives are more popular with Marisa these days - anything to help convince Neil that it's time to appear

Miekie had a haircut on Tuesday so her hair is quite short (by her standards only), as shown in the photo I took of her and Pieter this morning in our bed. Mornings are usually begun with all of us having either tea (Pieter) and coffee (the rest of us) in our bed.

We'll have to find a way of squeezing Neil into the bed soon too!

Back to school

Miekie and Pieter are back to school today. This is Pieter's Grade R year, so it's a big day for him.

Yesterday afternoon Kobie, Anelle and Petronel came to visit.

Petronel

Mutual contemplation?

A Sunday afternoon walk

There's not much time left before Neil comes but Marisa is always keen to go for a late afternoon walk. Yesterday we went to the Irene Dairy Farm.

Pieter felt that the colour of the dam matched the colour of the grass very well

Panorama of part of the path we took (click to enlarge)

Pieter always enjoys trying out any tractors that we encounter

Swimming at home

Nel leant us their old portable swimming pool which we set up on the lawn on Monday. Since then the children and Marisa and I have been swimming in it daily.

Mowing the lawn

Our garden services have had a few weeks off over December so when we finally couldn't bare the length of the grass any more I decided to mow the lawn. (On average this happens once a year.)

Pieter joined in for some of the time and it was very nice spending time with him, each of us with our lawnmowers.

Just before we finished I managed to sever the cable while turning the mower. So the next activity was finding my soldering iron and repairing the cable, which Pieter found quite interesting too.

Silly me

Experiments in yoghurt making

I bought a yoghurt maker on takealot.com on Monday afternoon. It was delivered exceptionally speedily first thing on Tuesday morning.

As the yoghurt maker comes with several jars and these can be used in the machine simultaneously, I decided to test using different substances and starter cultures. Normally one uses milk but I thought cream might also work. However, the fermentation process requires lactose for the bacteria to feed on, which cream has less of, so some of my tests are a 50:50 mixture between milk and cream to give the bugs more food. The starter culture is normally a bit of other yoghurt, but I decided to test mass / amasi (sour milk) too.

So I made the following 7 yoghurts:

1. 100% cream with a maas starter culture
2. 100% cream with a normal yoghurt starter culture (taken from Spar's double cream plain yoghurt)
3. 50% cream, 50% milk with maas
4. 50% cream, 50% milk with yoghurt
5. 100% milk with maas
6. 100% milk with yoghurt (x 2)

The milk is UHT pasterised full cream milk from Spar. So not a bacterium in (microscopic) sight.

Here's a photo of the ingredients and materials, prior to the start. (I used bits of putty on the lids of the jars to be able to identify the recipes used in each one.)

Here are the jars with starter culture blobs inside.

They recommend that you heat the milk to 90 degrees and then cool it to 30 degrees before starting. 

The milk heated well. However, while heating the cream, as the temperature reached about 60 degrees I stopped heating it as it had started to de-emulsify. 

Then the milk and cream went into the fridge to cool to 30 degrees.

And here's the yoghurt maker in action. All it does is provide the amount of heat that keeps bacteria happy and hungry.

The end result looks and tastes pretty much like yoghut. The yoghurt starter culture with 100% milk yielded the thickest result, the 100% cream mixture took a few hours longer and didn't thicken nearly as much, as expected due to the far lower lactose content. So it's probably more accurate calling the result fermented cream instead of yoghurt. It tastes really good. The maas starter faired significantly worse. Next time I'll buy younger maas as I suspect the one I bought probably was too old and had too few live bugs left in it.