You say it's your birthday, November 2045

Round 37: November 2045 (Spring)

8 months in and Caroline Novak is finally growing some hair. Thick blonde hair, which hasn’t been seen in the family since Malcolm’s great-grandmother. 

Hope was starting to worry Caroline’s hair would never come in, so she’s not particularly fussed about the colour.

Shortly before Caroline was born, Malcolm, Hope and Mason bought a new house with Malcolm’s parents, Naomi and Owen and they’ve been living all together ever since.

Hope has never had any particular issue with her in-laws but she’d also never lived with them before, so she had her reservations. When you’re in close quarters with someone, things can get tense.

Owen was always going to be fine, being so laid back that he’s almost horizontal.

Naomi is considerably less so, a bit like Hope herself. Hope couldn’t say she wasn’t a little worried there.

But so far, so good. There haven’t been any big clashes between Hope and Naomi. For the most part, they’ve been getting along very well.

And having recently retired Owen around is very convenient. It’s nice to have an extra pair of hands available to babysit at a moment’s notice. Previously, if Hope’s dad Emil couldn’t watch the kids, they were left scrambling to find somebody. 

As a bonus, he’s great with the kids and Mason in particular adores him. 

Hope thinks it’s going so well that she’s floated the idea of a third child with Malcolm. There’s even an empty room in the house that would be perfect for another bedroom. 

Malcolm isn’t really sold on trying for number 3, at least yet. 

He’s been imagining the day when he no longer has to deal with dirty nappies and all the other not-so-nice parts of parenting little ones and isn’t especially keen to start all over.

Hope can be very persuasive when she wants to be though and Caroline is still young, so the matter is far from decided.

**********

Susannah Halmi and her family still have a huge mortgage to pay off but she tries not to let it worry her too much. Her main priority at the moment is the baby, due in March.

She and Daniel are doing everything they can to chip away at their debt, not spending much money at all on anything but essentials and taking on extra paid work wherever they can. It’s going to be very tight for a while but Susannah is confident they’ll come out of it okay. 

**********

Twins Oscar and Stella were born at home. It wasn’t Leslie’s first choice for a birthing venue, so she’s very happy to be in a hospital this time around.

Dominic is happy too. Having experienced a late term loss between the twins and this new baby, he doesn’t want to take any risks that they don’t need to.

Dr Moretti is a great reassurance through the labour, which goes about as smoothly as one could hope.

And at the end of it all, it’s another son for Leslie and Dominic!

Gavin Anders has his father’s complexion and eye colour and his mother’s brown hair. 

November marks Leslie and Dominic’s 10th wedding anniversary and Gavin is a lovely extra way to celebrate the occasion. 

November birthdays:

Eliza Benton turns 3

Patrick Ashton turns 9

Ryan Moretti turns 13

Jacinta Nihill turns 15

Gabriel Nott turns 19

Mitchell Carmody turns 26

Oliver and Sebastian Gentry turn 29

Camilla Benton and Lila Novak turn 32

Charlie Benton turns 33

Ethan Novak turns 39

Aaron Clarke turns 42

Nick Moretti turns 42

November wedding anniversaries:

Sam and Julia Whitney - 3 years

James and Madelyn Novak - 33 years

Notes:

• Super quick update on Susannah and Daniel but we'll be visiting them for a proper update right after Josh and Elspeth's wedding (which is up next).
• Hope has a baby want and has had one since not long after Caroline was born. I'm waiting to see if Malcolm rolls one too before I let them try. If I took them off InTeen BC, they'd likely be expecting already, 
• Oscar and Stella were born at home because they were born in that in between period, where I'd started Sullivan 1.0 but didn't have a hospital yet. I don't remember having to do too many home births but I must have done, because I didn't start on the hospital until at least a few months in. But anyway, glad I could do this one the way I prefer!
• Testing out some of the other birthing poses I have in this update. I'm not crazy about the default arm poses but there also aren't many in my parts posing boxes that work...so I'm not sure if I'll use the sitting poses again. I might have to experiment a bit.