Daily life these days

So...Nicolas is now 4 whole months old. He is a giant baby. I never really liked older babies cos they get so big and un-miniature but now that Nic is there, of course I love him like this.
I am already looking at little newborns and pining for when Nic was there. Its crazy. I can see how once you have one, you just want a whole bunch of babies. The plan for us is to have number 2 (a girl) early 2012. So I would like to be preggers again by the middle of next year. Lets see.
Nicolas is eating/feeding/drinking, whatever you wanna call it like a machine. 150mls every 2.5 hours! Thank goodness I have milk in abundance so there is no problem with supply. Although he refuses to breast feed at all now which is a total pain. He just prefers the bottle - I think its way easier for him. So I express every 3 or 4 hours which is great fun of course. Especially at night!

I have started taking Nicolas swimming every Monday now to a lovely heated outdoor pool at a golf hotel nearby. There is a group of mums that meet there and take their excited kiddies into the pool for 45mins or so of singing and playing together. Nic is the youngest so far and I've only kept him in the pool for about 20mins at a time. He seems to enjoy it and kicks about a bit, but mostly he just looks around with a dazed look on his face. There is SO much to take in I guess. Lots of kids and toys and singing and the sensation of the water as I chuck him about, doing the actions to the songs. I think its a good thing to get him used to from an early age. And i dont know if its related but he has really started to go crazy at bath times now. He kicks and shrieks and spashes about like a grinning mad man the entire time in the bath! He LOVES it.

Also, a couple of girls I met at our lamaze class and I have started a baby group. There's only 4 or 5 of us, but our babies are roughly the same age so its great. We meet once a week for a couple of hours and share horror stories.
I've also been going on a few girls nights... just relaxed dinners with girlfriends. Always with my good friend Hem whose baby is 9 days older than Nic. Benedikt isnt too impressed but its always when Nic is sleeping so he hardly has to do anything!

I am hitting the gym about 4 times a week and am killing myself there. Its such a good gym, its new and clean and never full. And there are always personal trainers on hand to give you new exercises and to correct you etc. I am now following a program and have a dedicated personal trainer and I swear I burn like 10 000 calories with every work out. So pole pole I am getting strong again. I am actually at my pre pregnancy weight already. But I still have a wobbly belly dammit. Seems it will take a while to have a flat tummy again. Not that mine was ever really flat :-)

Benedikt and I went out on our road bikes this last weekend. It had been a year exactly! We were in SA this time last year fot the 94.7 and the DC and we hadnt touched our road bikes since. I had missed it SO much. Although I did die on our very hilly 70km loop we did. I need to work on my cycling big time, getting out once a week is just not enough. My running is going well though, I run about 12kms every second day. And yoga is just the bomb. I am getting SO good at it! I can go down into backbend and come up again... and I do handstands and headstands and one arm balances etc etc! Am determined to master the primary series within the next year to two. (I do Ashtanga yoga with an AMAZING teacher who does the 3rd series, which only a select bunch of people in the world can do)

We went to a fund raising party this last Saturday night. It was big, almost 300 people there. I got dressed up in a new dress etc... it felt like my debut, going out for the first time since getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Everyone told me how amazing I looked considering I'd just had a baby so I was very happy! So happy that I proceeded to get quite drunk :-) Omi was looking after Nic for the whole night, she even gave us a lie in which was awesome. Benedikt also went a bit crazy & shocked everyone with his weird and wonderful dance moves :-)

So ja, life is very good for this new family. Omi and Opa have just left after a really enjoyable 3 weeks for them with their first grandson. Nic will miss the attention I'm sure. And we will miss the babysitting. But we are off to COLD Germany in December so not long till we see them again.

Amboseli again!

Our third trip to this beautiful game park was just as cool- its in such an amazing location at the bottom of mt kilimanjaro, just on this side of Tanzania. We had a beautiful evening the first evening, sitting outside in the middle of the bush, drinking dowas and champagne, watching the sun set in front of us and the moon rise above us. And the impressive sight of the clear, snow topped Kili on our left.
Nicolas was very well behaved the whole trip. He did get fed up with all the time in the car but handled it very well. His routine was very much out of kilter, he had to have his bath at like 5pm and only went to sleep at 8pm...due to our evening activities, but he just adapted - he is brilliant! He only really erupted once, on the way home when he screamed the house down for 20 minutes for no clear reason. Its SO hard to calm a baby down when they go ballistic like that. And its impossible to know why they are screaming too.
The second day we got up early and did a few hours game driving, all with a clear mountain as the back drop - which is rare. We saw loads of elephants, giraffes, buffalo, hippos, buck, warthogs and hyenas. No lions, leopards or cheetahs, but hey we just saw all of them at the mara last month.
The lodge we stayed in was lovely, the walls everywhere were made via a combination of twisting logs and cement, a great affect, and our tented rooms were divine. Really big and luxurious. We were even given a cot for Nicolas. On the saturday night we left Nic in our room with a masai guide outside - a manual baby monitor!
We left on the Sunday after plenty of g & t's and great food and some spectacular views.

Nairobi Half Marathon

So Benedikt and I ran the 21km this last weekend. It was quite a big race with some amazing kenyan runners showing us how its done. The route consisted of loops so we were able to see the marathon and half marathon winners running circles around us. Wow they SPRINT the whole way.
Benedikt and I ran together and we finished in 1 hour 54 mins. Yay - so chuffed to have broken the 2 hour mark. Although admittedly the course was mostly flat with some gentle hills.
Benedikt claims he could have run faster than we did in the last few kms... and that I held him back! Whatever :-) It was his first 21km ever - he's gotten quite into the running thing lately. Finally he sees its benefits!
I was quite proud of myself for not walking one single step. And it was only 3 months after I gave birth. Not bad eh?
Now its time to get my cycling legs back. Will back off on the running a bit.

Omi and Opi arrived in the early hours of the morning today, and were very happy to wake up and meet their grandson. They bought us loadsa cool goodies from Germany too and some really cute clothes - Yay!