June 14th, 2010

So Im considering a revival of sorts for Loudah.com. Over the last few years I’ve felt that my blog has been somewhat replaced by social media and microblogging but I’ve been a bit inspired recently (by stickfly.com & gerrod.com) and I am reconsidering.

Whilst I am kinda busy and now might not be the best time to introduce a new “hobby” into my life, I also feel that this is a rather special, unique time in my life and that one day I might want to look back on it and understand how it felt and why I did what I did.

Anyway, I haven’t fully decided yet. I might give it a go and see if I can manage some frequent updates. For those of you who are around for the ride, you can expect to hear more about my delicate life “balance” and my sharing of joys and frustrations of being a mother, a wife, a small business owner and me.

February 28th, 2010

Wow so I stumbled across this site today called Loudah. Do you know it hasn’t been updated for almost a whole year! Is this what micro-blogging does to a traditional blog hey!

I guess for me to keep a blog used to be a bit of a luxury, these days time is at a bit of a premium so getting all my idle thoughts down on ‘paper’ is a bit lower down the priority list. Or I just condense them and put them on Facebook and Twitter! Sorry poor blog!

Anyway, for those of you who maintain hope that this blog will ever be updated again - here I am!

So I suppose I should tell you what I am up to…

• My life is somewhat dominated by my gorgeous 16 month old boy who we think is just wonderful. He is growing so quickly and keeps us constantly entertained and laughing. This year he started home day care for 2 days a week and he is loving it! I’m also enjoying having a few days a week to work :)  We think he must be super advanced for his age (of course). His favourite colour (to say) is purple, his favourite animal (to say) is gecko and he also likes other tricky words like “paper”, “yellow”, “bubble” and all kinds of animal noises. He is growing up so fast and my favourite bits are the snuggles and kisses :)
• Work has been very busy (isn’t work always busy!) I’m still running monthly events for Interactive Minds which are going really well. I also have just launched a new business called Skimp which helps people to get great discounts when they are purchasing home electrical and white good products. Early days yet but I’m really excited about the savings I can help people get! Check it out at www.skimp.com.au.
• Everything else is going pretty well too and somehow managing to fit in. Steve is good as always (my rock!) and in these busy times it’s nice to stop and appreciate the good things! We recently got a new puppy called Bella who is total trouble (what was I thinking!) but adorable! Jazzie is still here and a little put-out at her new buddy but a good girl none the less. I love our great friends who we can call and just hang out with. Kinda makes it all worth while.

If you want to hear more ramblings, best to check out Facebook. Now that my life is broken up into hourly lots I find I have much more time to ramble on there! Will come back when I can!

March 4th, 2009

Oliver’s first giggles from Louisa Dahl on Vimeo.

This video has a password so that its protected from strangers! To view it, simply enter my first name as the password.

February 16th, 2009

Today Oliver and I had an appointment at the Well Baby Clinic. This is a clinic attached to the hospital and I purchased a pack of 4 visits shortly after Oliver was born. This was our third visit and Ollie is about 16 weeks old now. Unfortunately today’s visit included a 30 minute wait in the aptly called “waiting room” which is never so fun with a baby. Ollie was good though and stayed happy for the wait which was something (it was later he started crying and decided to throw up on me, yay!)

Anyway so my visit today was ok. The nurse answered a few questions “Yes his head shape is fine (don’t worry about the slightly flat bit)”, “No those dots on his legs are nothing to worry about” and “No they aren’t ulcers in his mouth, they are actually calcium spots”. All good. His weight, height and head circumference were all good too, hovering around “average” (is this the only time when average is good?)

Unfortunately though I did come away with a few unanswered questions. Now that Oliver is nearly 4 months old Im keen to look at options around weaning him and thus introducing formula. But the nurse wouldn’t recommend a formula brand for us (although she did suggest one to avoid) and she also tried to talk me out of weaning him until he is 6 months old. She also couldn’t really suggest how to wean him…I was expecting something like “switch one feed a day to start off with and then every few days, switch an additional feed until he is having entirely formula”.  But no. Silly me for looking for advice anywhere apart from online! Looks like Im back to researching in my “native hood”.

Hmm so I cant say I got as many answers today as I was hoping for. I really cant see myself feeding for another two and a half months either. Time will tell!

February 3rd, 2009

Ahh Im so terrible at updating my blogs at the moment! I blame a few main factors. Firstly Im always sitting at my computer but whenever Im feeding or holding Ollie I only have one hand free and it’s way too frustrating to type large amounts like that. Secondly I have lots of photos and videos that I want to upload and share with you all, but I havent got them downloaded or formatted appropriately so they aren’t ready. Doh.

Anyway, things have been going really well and time is just flying. Oliver is doing great and is a happy little boy most of the time who has been pretty good at sleeping at night too. He is already 3 months old, I can’t believe how fast time is going. It’s great to see him smiling and goo-ing though and the other day he let out his first giggle so we are waiting to hear more of them!

I’ve started doing a tiny bit of work too and am organising some more events for Interactive Minds. I’m planning to hold one event a month starting later this month so that will keep me pretty busy and we have some great events and topics coming up.

We’ve been spending some great time with friends lately too - here are our photos (and Ian’s too) from Australia Day. I so need to take more photos of everything, but I wish I could find my little Canon camera, it’s so much easier to be carrying that around rather than our SLR.

Anyway must go, Martin is here playing with Oliver as I type this and Steve has just arrived home and is starting dinner so I’d better go and contribute! Plus they are both talking to me as I try to type so sorry if this doens’t make sense! More soon I hope!

January 18th, 2009

I know it’s been ages since I updated - apologies! Lots has been happening lately so here is a bit of summary for ya!

We had a lovely Christmas with family and spent 2 weeks after Christmas up at Caloundra. It was lovely up there, looking at the water every day and doing a few walks, paddles and swims where possible. Oliver had his first trip to the beach, however unfortunately by the time we put on his togs and walked across the road he was asleep! Ahh well, Im sure there will be plenty of time to paddle in future trips!

Steve went back to work last week and I have settled into a rather active social life (at least “active” for me these days!) This week Benji and her son Jackson came to visit one day which was great. Oliver is still a little young to play with Jackson but I know they will be great friends as they get older! I also took Oliver into one of my old work places this week and it was good to catch up with a few of my old colleagues. Another day we went and visited Mirja who is now back in Brissie and Mum and John visited me one day too.  So that pretty much filled in my week, it’s amazing how quickly the week fills up!

This weekend has been pretty busy too - we had dinner at my Dads one night and Steve’s folks another. We did a bit of shopping for home and visited Ikea, a plant shop, and got a new rug for our bar. Plus Ben and Michelle came by for dinner too. All in all a pretty busy week and it was great to catch up with everyone!

Everyone asks what Im doing about work and the answer is “not much”. Im not planning on doing any consulting work for at least another month however I am starting to plan our upcoming Interactive Minds events which will be monthly from February. Im looking forward to them as we are covering some interesting topics (things like “How Businesses Can Leverage Social Media” and “Leveraging Your Email Marketing”). There is a fair amount of work that goes into to organising these events so I think they will keep me busy for the immediate future.

Well that is about it from me tonight. It’s been a big weekend and I’m a bit tired!

December 23rd, 2008

Wishing you all a very happy and safe Christmas for 2008!

It’s been a huge year for us with moving into our new house and of course the recent addition of beautiful Oliver, so this Christmas is extra special for us.

Hope to catch up with you all soon for a meal or drink if we haven’t already :)

November 22nd, 2008

You may be wondering “why so few updates to Loudah? Doesnt Louisa have loads of time now she’s at home?”

Well yes I am at home lots. In fact I am no where near ready to breast feed in public which means that Oliver and I cant really leave the house for more than about 1.5 hours at a time, although we are getting brave enough to start trying visiting a few friends houses!

Anyway, looking after a newborn baby is soooo busy. A little ground-hog day like too. Every 3 hours we feed (for an hour), “play” for a bit, change nappies etc and then Oliver sleeps for about an hour, while I run around trying to do anything I need to do, including showering, eating, phone calls, work..computer stuff etc. We basically repeat this cycle about 8 times over each 24 hours and if we are lucky Oliver may sleep for 2-3 hours in a chunk at night. Yes, you can do the maths. This means that yours truly only gets about 4-5 hours sleep a night and albeit in small chunks. I am trying to get a quick rest or two during the day if possible too but even then its a quick 30 mins or so and always at the cost of some time to myself! Yep, Im tired. Anyway, Steve very kindly did a bottle feed for me at 3am last night so I actually got about 5 hours sleep all at once (well apart from still waking up briefly at 3am…at least I didnt have to get up too!) Im also getting a bit stricter with our routine from now too so hopefully Oliver will start to sleep a bit longer at nights…maybe a whole 4 or 5 hours in each chunk..woohoo! (fingers crossed).

Anyway today Steve, Oliver and I ventured on our first grocery shopping trip since Oliver was born (we had been ordering online until now). This may sound so mundane, but even this takes a little bit of timing (to go inbetween feeds). Anyway so we rocked up at Coles and Steve put Oliver in our Baby Bjorn carrier and it was a pretty good way to go. Steve absolutely loved it too. He was as proud as punch walking around Coles carrying our little boy…he even said “we need to go out more like this”. He couldnt wipe the grin off his face :) Here is a picture of my two boys:

November 9th, 2008

Last week Steve and I welcomed our little boy Oliver into the world! It’s been an amazing ride and we are loving getting to know him! He is 10 days old now and we have been back home from hospital for just under a week.

We are coping reasonably well with the feeding/sleeping side of things - some days better than others! Steve and I both love gazing at him, taking it all in and being amazed that we made this. I also love watching Steve with Oliver, almost hard to explain in words.

Of course in the last 10 days we have taken hundreds of photos and lots of video too! I have finally got around to uploading some of our favourite photos to date. There are a few below and also a few albums you can view on Picasa:

1. Oliver’s birth and in hospital http://picasaweb.google.com/loudah/OliverSBirth#
2. Hospital Visitors - http://picasaweb.google.com/loudah/HospitalVisitorsOliverSBirth#
3. First week home -  http://picasaweb.google.com/loudah/OliverSFirstWeekHome#

Here are a few sneak peaks too:

October 27th, 2008

We recently invested in a video camera and I thought I’d do a test run of videoing the baby for you. Of course, given the baby hasn’t been born yet, this video captures the baby’s movements in my tummy!

This whole experience has taught me how convoluted video editing is. I needed one program to convert the video files to a format I could use (which I had to get Ben’s help with, thank you!), another program to edit them and then I’ve found out I can’t upload to Loudah without a plug in (which I dont have time to figure out how to install!) so we are going with a YouTube link instead (doh!) Someone has to make this whole video process easier!

Anyway, let me know what you think of my first attempt…

View video on YouTube

You may want to make sure you are viewing this in high quality or it looks pretty average. There will be a link directly under the video window in YouTube allowing you to change this…