BW Expansion

Well 2014 has been quite a year. New job (twice), new house, and a new addition to the family. As most of you will know by now, Calvin Retallack was born at 9:27am on Wednesday 22^nd October. After months of preparing herself mentally and attending ante-natal classes which at times scared the heck out of us, the big day finally arrived. Actually, Calvin was due about 10 days earlier and although Helen had felt a few pains, when we visited the hospital on the Monday nothing had progressed to the point where natural birth would be possible, even with induction. So we arrived again at the hospital on the Wednesday with the doctor warning us that one way or another our little boy would arrive. And so it was, that he was delivered that morning by caesarean section.

Calvin in hospital

A caesar is a very sudden arrival. One minute Helen has a bump, then they put a spinal anaesthetic in place and a few minutes later she can’t feel her legs. Only a very short while later out comes this tiny little person, indignant at being removed from his comfy swimming pool. And suddenly your life changes because there is someone who you are completely responsible for. And that someone is very willing to let you know any time he’s not happy. Calvin is now just over 6 weeks old, so far he seems to have his mother’s sweet nature and ability to sleep well (so far, anyway…), and his father’s grumpiness if he doesn’t get what he wants - especially if he doesn’t get food.

 

Little babies are cute physically, and I suspect that’s mostly so the family don’t eat them or leave them outside when they become completely unreasonable. And there are moments in the beginning when you just have no idea what this little dude wants, and you’d happily stand on your head singing if it would make him stop howling. But after a while the different noises start to make more sense. And once we figured out that although Calvin was breast-feeding well, he still wasn’t getting enough food - and we started supplementing with formula, well that made a world of difference to his happiness and sleeping at night, and to our peace of mind. Now that he’s more than 6 weeks old he is starting to be much more interactive. He is beginning to smile, he definitely recognises Helen (still a bit dubious about the other person living in his house) and he has started reaching out for objects. He is at times very engaging and is ridiculously cute when asleep or just woken up!

Sleeping Buddha

Helen has coped wonderfully well with having to wake up several times a night to feed Calvin, and being cooped up at home most days. She’s starting to be able to get out and see friends and sometimes she can leave Calvin with me for a few hours while she gets out to do something for herself. But it is tough to get much of a break for her at the moment as the little man tends to need to be fed about every three hours, and he wakes her up very early in the morning so that by 9:15 even if we’re watching a riveting tv series, Helen is heavy-eyed and often already asleep on our couch. But I am full of admiration for how nurturing and caring she is with him. Even impressed by how inventive she is with pop tunes that are turned into songs for bathtime and nappy change time (Madonna’s “like a virgin” turned into a feeding song was a big hit with the audience responding with little hoots and coo’s of approval). Actually a friend of ours gave us a Metallica album turned into baby lullabyes. So I guess it’s coming back to us that I originally suggested a number of Metallica songs as middle names. I eventually agreed to Retallack (a family name on Helen’s side of Cornish origin) because it’s close enough to “Ride the Lightning” which was my personal favourite. Actually there are plenty of other good Metallica tunes that I thought would have made for good middle names between Calvin…  and Butler-Wheelhouse. “Unforgiven”, “Nothing else matters”, “Of Wolf and Man”, “Kill Em All”. All super middle names really, not sure why Helen talked me out of them actually.

My new school is going well: I joined St David’s on 22 September, after finishing at my old school on Friday 19^th of that month (so much for teachers having long holidays). The staff and the school as a whole have been incredibly friendly and supportive. It has been great to find how much easier the job is made by how well-organised things generally are, and how the school has the right infrastructure in place to make that possible. But next year looks like I will be incredibly busy - from what I can see I will have 6 classes across 4 grades, and that will include a Grade 12 class to take to their final school examinations. I have also been made Master-in-Charge of Basketball - I’m hoping to be able to juggle some basketball coaching of the Under 16 age group with also co-ordinating the other coaches and all of the admin that goes with hosting and visiting fixtures with other schools. I have gotten back into playing some basketball on Sunday afternoons as well and am glad to be enjoying being around the game again. It’s a nice way to keep fit between rugby seasons too.

Our most urgent and noisy house renovations thankfully were finished just a few weeks before Calvin arrived. Just in time for us to have a number of friends over to celebrate our housewarming. It has been great to have our own place to live in with our new family. And I know my parents were pleased to finally get back their flat which they had kindly let me and also Helen stay in for quite a long time (now it looks more museum-ish again with all of my late grandmother’s furniture and pictures back in there). But a house is certainly an animal all of its own when it comes to things to fix and get sorted out - if it isn’t drainage, or pool chlorinators, or disagreeing with the gardener about when it’s ok to just not turn up for work (hmmm…. on the bright side I learned how to use the lawnmower), then it’s me on the roof finding out that some of our wood cross-pieces snap easily and having to get the tiles re-set urgently before our next urgent thunderstorm, or crawling on my belly along cross-beams into a very tight space of the roof when it felt like about 50C up there to run security camera wires. But we’re enjoying being here, a mere 2km from my school, and with many years ahead of us to find more furniture at auctions and continue to upgrade and improve on our home. But we now have a spare bedroom so anyone of you who's had a mind to visit South Africa should definitely let us know as we'd love to see you in Johannesburg.

 

For now though, we’re about to head to the coast for holidays. It will be lovely to spend some time at the beach and we’re looking forward to introducing Calvin to many of our friends in the Eastern Cape, and also to having my parents there with us and maybe if we’re lucky they’ll sometimes look after Calvin for a little while too.

Wishing you all a wonderful festive season and a happy and stimulating year in 2015.

PS Calvin BW has his own facebook page if you’d like to see more of him. We decided that inundating our friends with pictures of him was a little bit unfair!