Porl's had a bread making session again today. He made white breadcakes, some with sesame seeds some without, and a plaited loaf... he did the loaf, I did the plaiting.

I've told him he has to learn how to do plaits himself now he has a little girl. Especially as in a few years time he'll be having to get her ready for school while I'm still at work and she'll want plaits.
He said he'll shave her hair off instead :-/

Last week I ordered some printers type trays from ebay. I've wanted one for a while to use as a display cabinet but I'd never thought to look on ebay for one.

In the end I bought 2, and they arrived today. I opened them straight away before thinking to grab my camera. Then I parcelled them up again almost as quickly and put them out in the greenhouse. There are distinct signs of woodwork. Holes and wood coloured dust. I've emailed the seller asking if they've been treated but I suspect it's live woodworm. I'm hoping tomorrow is fine so I can give them a clean down (they're scruffy but I knew that before I bought them) then work out whether they're worth treating.

If anyone knows anything about treating woodworm I'd be grateful for some advice.

Just a quick catch up photo post because the girl is stirring which means it's time for me to go to bed.

We had a bad night last night and I've been shattered today. But inbetween bouts of napping and cuddling I've managed to do some baking. Chocolate shortbread biscuits and chocolate brownies. I had made a lot more biscuits, but Porl is a big fan of shortbread. I'm a big fan of brownies, but it's a bit too sickly sweet to eat more than a few.

I ended up doing most of the baking with Bryher in her pouch on my front. She's still not well and it's making her miserable. Being in the pouch while I dance around to music is about the only way to keep her quiet. She seems to like Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong.

Also here's the finished ipod sock I mentioned. It's a bit baggy, nothing to do with the pattern, just my knitting skills. I might try making another to my own pattern.

The problem with blogging everyday is it makes me realise how boring my life is. I'm enjoying my life. Being at home all day with Porl and Bryher is great fun. But it doesn't make for the most riveting posts. Especially when they're both ill. No pictures either, it's looked very Wuthering Heights outside today. Certainly not photo taking weather.

Today has been spent mostly cuddling a little girl who's very wheezy and pretty miserable. She's slept a lot, mostly in my arms.

During the few moments when I've had both hands free I've been working on making an advent calendar using Jenny's pattern. I've been hunting round for a decent advent calendar. We don't normally have one as I hate the idea of the standard chocolate ones. The chocolate tastes horrible for a start, plus the pictures are rubbish, and they're just generally tacky. But now that Bryher is here I think I should get one. She won't remember it but it might take me a few years to get Porl into the spirit of Christmas.

Not that he's a Scrooge. He just hates the commercialisation and tackiness of Christmas. So do I, I just haven't convinced him yet that decorations, Christmas Carols and all the rest of the razzmatazz can be tasteful and fun.

Anyway, back to the advent calendar. When I was younger we had a great one with a few lines of a poem behind each door. I loved it so much that Mum saved it and ironed all the doors shut so I got to use it for a few years in a row... or was she just being thrifty?

Jenny's advent calendar is great as it's far prettier than the square fabric advent calendars you get in the shops, and I can put whatever I like in the envelopes.
Maybe the prospect of Ferrero Roches each morning will get Porl in the Christmas spirit.

We decided to try Bryher in the cot tonight instead of her carrycot. We've been meaning to do it for a while, the carrycot is fine in length, but getting a bit too narrow.

She seems to appreciate the extra space.
Sorry for the terrible picture quality but I didn't want to wake her by turning on the lights.

Today has been a day of sitting around lazing. Bryher's cold has developed, we went to the doctors this morning and she has a slight chest infection. She was still smiley and chatting this morning but then spent most of the afternoon either sleeping on me or crying.

In other news, my Dad has been given a date today for his heart operation. Next Tuesday is his birthday, but he has to go into the hospital for pre-op tests. What a great birthday present! As long as everything is okay he will have the operation on the 19th.

My parents have been coming up to visit us every week but I've told them they shouldn't see us until we're 100% better. It's not worth the risk.

Today seems to have flown by. I did spend a lot of it making stew & dumplings (1 vege, 1 meat version). I'm almost recovered from the flu thing but Porl has caught it now so he was let off cooking duty and I made us comfort food. I suspect Bryher has it too, she's snuffly, coughing a lot and isn't quite as cheery as normal. SH'es still cheery though. Being cheery isn't good though as she makes a strange croaking frog sound when she's excited. This can make her cough at the best of times so it's even worse with a sore throat.

When not tending to the sick... actually I'm not very good at tending to the sick, but I am good at giving out cuddles... and I finished my ipod sock. Unfortunately it's too dark to take photos. That could be an advantage though as the big gaps where the needle joins were might not be so noticeable. I'll take pictures tomorrow when it's light.

I felt a little less ill today so I've been rejigging the bookshelves. My Mum had told me to wait until she was up and she could help me but in hindsight it's better that I've done it alone.

When I was growing up I had the biggest bedroom in the house. With 5 built in cupboards. Every summer holiday Mum would make me spend a day tidying out the cupboards. I'm sure Mum dreaded it. I know I did. But it had to be done. I hate throwing things away. It's like throwing away memories. I think the thing Mum hated most was that I had to read everything. Even as I got older and should have been capable of tidying the cupboards myself Mum still had to supervise. If she didn't I'd get engrossed in something (a maths exercise book from when I was 7 for example) and the task would take me a week rather than a day.

Now I'm a grown up, with a house of my own I'm a little better. I still won't throw anything away (I have a file of notes left by my friends on my door at uni, as well as hundred of pages of song lyrics written my Porl and our drunken friends... certainly not by me.) Not throwing things away does mean I don't have to get distracted by reading them as I know they'll be there for me to look through another time.

However the bookshelves are still not organised. I tried not to read too much, my main distraction this time was a little girl who wanted to be played with. Once she was in bed I should have got finished quickly... but I found Please Mrs Butler and spent a happy hour reading it again. I used to know "The Headmaster's Hymn" (sung to the tune of When a Knight Won His Spurs) off by heart. I suspect it will be going around my head for the next few days until I've learnt it again.

I'd love to be able to post about all the exciting things I've done all day, but I can't as I've spent almost all day in bed trying to fight off this cold. I'd call it flu, except I had flu a few years ago. It floored me for weeks.
This is bad, I ache, my temperature is going haywire, and breathing is causing problems. But I'm still capable of rational thought, I'm able to get out of bed with less that 30 minutes notice and I'm not thinking of calling an ambulance. So it's not flu.

I'm also still posting. If I can post today they may be hope that I will see the month out. I haven't done any crafting yet, but when I've done here I'll do a row of knitting... maybe 2, then go to bed.
I'm knitting a sock for my ipod using this pattern. I've got about another inch to go before I can cast off. I've never knitted a sock of any type before so while the casting off sounds easy on paper it may all go horribly wrong when I get down to the knitty gritty.

I'm ill.
But I'm still posting.

I started with the beginnings of a cold yesterday and during the night it developed. It didn't help that when Bryher woke for a feed at 5am she decided she didn't want to sleep in her carrycot anymore and laid there jabbering to herself loudly. She does this occasionally and I usually just get her in bed with me where she falls asleep without any problem, but I didn't want her getting too close to my germs so I persevered with getting her in the carrycot. She wasn't having any of it though. At one point I got her to sleep in my bed, but she woke up again when I tried to put her back in the carrycot so eventually I gave up and she stayed in bed with me.
I'm hoping I recover from my cold before she starts with hers.
We woke up at 9am, at 10am Porl sent me back to bed for a few more hours sleep. Except for feeds (obviously) Porl has been on full time baby duty today. I've laid around convalescing and trying to keep my germs to myself.

I have still managed to do some crafts. I only made 2 cards, but it's something. Here are all the cards I'd made before today.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to have some energy, so I can rearrange the living room. We need more space for Bryhers playmat etc, and we'll certainly need more space when she becomes mobile, which at the rate she's going will be sooner rather than later, she's already an ace at wiggling off her playmat. I've pushed the settee up against the wall of books rather than it being in the centre of the room and I want to swap a couple of other things around too. The big job though will be to re-arrange the bookshelves so that one is level with the back of the settee. It'll look neater and can be used as a table, but I also want to put all the childrens' books one there too. There's about 800 books on those shelves so re-arranging them will be a bit of an epic task.

Then next week when I'm feeling up to it I'll take a trip to Ikea and buy a huge rug. We went yesterday with my parents but silly me didn't have the measurements. I should just measure everything in the house so I don't have to do these things twice.

During most of my pregnancy I seemed to lose my crafting mojo. My brain was on other things and creativity took a back seat. As my pregnancy went on I started doing cross-stitch again, it required little thought so I could manage that, then when we finished re-jigging bedroomed round and I got a dedicated craft area I spent a few happy evenings doing some sewing and making Thankyou cards (I was anticipating needing some, it turned out I needed a lot more than I made.)
But then Bryher arrived so now my days revolve around her, and as she's sleeping in our room my crafting area has a carrycot in front of it.

Last week I went to my parents and my Mum asked me to help her design some Christmas cards. She'd saved the cards she received last year and rather than give them to charity she was trying to recycle them herself. Bryher was asleep so I spent an hour cutting and sticking, we got a bit of a production line going and made 10 cards. Mum laughed and commented that I'd come for a visit and she'd got me working, but I realised how much I missed crafting... even though I'm not the biggest fan of card making.

Mum decided my cards were far better than her attempts so she gave me all the old Christmas cards to bring home and carry on with. Yesterday I managed to get organised and grabbed a few essential supplies from my crafty stash before I put Bryher to bed so the past couple of nights I've managed to make some more cards. A couple more nights like this and I'll have made all the cards I need to send out. I only send about 30, Mum sends over 100! I'll make some for her, but she'll still have to buy some.

Making these cards has really got my brain rattling with crafty ideas again now. So instead of spending my evenings playing on the PC I'm determined to do more crafting.

NaNoWriMo started a trend and November now seems to be the month to take up new daily challenges. Porl is doing NaSoAlMo (National Solo Album Month). So I've decided to do Art Every Day (which I've heard mentioned but can't find a link for), and also because I want to get back into the swing of blogging again I'm going to try to do NaBloPoMo. I've probably jinxed posting everyday already simply by mentioning it, and to be honest if I fail I won't be too bothered, but I am determined to do some art... or craft everyday.

Wish me luck :-/

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are going by. Bryher is 15 weeks old tomorrow. She's settled herself into quite a nice routine. We rarely have problems getting her to sleep for 7pm, we wake her at 11pm for a feed then she'll sleep till at least 4:30 am, but more often than not she'll sleep till 6am or even later. She usually wakes again at about 7:30 and chatters away to herself, if I'm awake we'll get up, if I'm still tired I get her in bed with me and can sometimes persuade her to go back to sleep for another hour until I feel vaguely human.

Vaguely human Mummy gets to take little girls on adventures. Sleepy Mummy tends to stay home.

In the past 4 weeks Bryher has got very chatty (especially at 7am) she's learnt to blow raspberries and tells us fantastic stories. She can gurgle whole sentences. She does a fantastic croaking frog impression which we try to copy but it makes us cough. Worryingly in the last couple of days she has also developed a cry that makes her sound like the Crazy Frog :-/

A few weeks ago we got very very lucky. A very generous friend of my parents gave us the use of her time share in Scotland. It was a very plush 5 star lodge on the banks of Loch Lomond. We had a sauna and spa bath in the actual lodge, and access to a gym and pool within the grounds, there was also a golf course, several restaurants and marina but we didn't take advantage of them. Previous guests included Sean Connery, Cher and Michael Jackson!
We had a very relaxing couple of days getting lots of fresh air and exercise, and evenings playing scrabble
We also learnt a valuable lesson. Next time someone offers us a week in luxury 5 star accommodation for nothing, take the week... not just a few days!

This was the view off our balcony. Getting woken at 6:30 by a hungry girl while on holiday does sometimes have advantages. You get to see the sunrise.

Bryher also had her first paddle in a Loch.
Shortly after this we were chased off the beach by a swan who wasn't happy that I'd fed the ducks and not him.

Now it's bedtime, but I couldn't do a post without any Bryher pics, so here's a photo Shelley took when we went down to her studio a couple of weeks ago. She took loads, but this is my favourite.

Anyone in Tameside or Stockport looking for a photographer then get in touch with Shelley at http://www.northernskyphotography.co.uk/

As it was Hallowe'en yesterday we dressed her up in the Cheeky Little Pumpkin outfit which my Dad bought her. I drew the line at the actual pumpkin outfit he wanted to buy her. She'll still be able to wear this in a few weeks time without looking totally daft... I love the trousers so suspect she might get a lot of wear out of them...

This photo is a rare one... maybe even a first... as she's smiling. Cameras seems to be a cause for great concern. She spends most of her day jabbering and grinning, but the minute anyone gets a camera out she goes quiet and serious. Hopefully this marks a breakthrough and there may be more smiley pictures to follow.

Well it's been 6 weeks since my last post (bad me). Bryher was 10 weeks old yesterday and quite a lot has happened.

At 6 weeks old we started going to postnatal classes. We've made some friends and we've been learning about baby massage. It's taken 3 weeks to get her through the full massage session without crying, but after each session she fell asleep so it must have been good.
She also joined the library, I'm getting her started early.

At 7 weeks we had a day with my niece who is a year older than Bryher. We went swimming for the first time. Bryher loved it! We stayed in for ages, splish splash sploshing and she only cried when she had to get out. It has made bath times more interesting as she now splashes much more in the bath and gets me drenched. My neice didn't love it! She hasn't been swimming for a while and she screamed! I'm planning on taking Bryher regularly so she doesn't forget how much fun it is and stays confident.

The rest of the day was fun. My niece gave Bryher a thorough once over. She was totally fascinated, but seemed quite frustrated that she couldn't pick Bryher up. She gave her plenty of hugs though.
Later at night when I was winding Bryher my niece decided her monkey needed winding too and started copying me. It was totally unprompted and unbelievably sweet!

8 weeks marked Bryher's first cold. Thankfully it was no more than snuffles and she got over it quickly. She did manage to pass it onto me though and then get grumpy when my coughs disturbed her during the night.

At 9 weeks I turned into Evil Mommy as it was time for vaccinations. She hasn't screamed so much in all her short life. A few minutes of sucking on my finger calmed her down, but I think they gave her an upset tummy and she was still grizzly the next day. Grizzly though she was she did sleep though the night from 10:30pm (having finally done a huge poo) until 6:30am! Then last night she slept from 11:30pm till 6:30am. I'm hoping we can say goodbye soon to the the 3am feeds.

Her 10 week birthday was marked by finally managing to suck her thumb. It's taken weeks of knuckle sucking, punching herself in the face and poking herself in the eye but she's finally found her thumb.

The "Starfish" sleeping pose may have been replaced by the "thumbsucker" pose. I'm not sure why she needs to grip the back of her head with her other hand, but it's something she's always done.
Her thumb is definitely her new favourite thing. It's kept her entertained for hours today, which means it's also my new favourite thing.

In the odd moments that our life isn't being dominated by this little person Porl and I have been baking.
Porl makes bread. So far he's done plain white and wholemeal loaves, the white makes fantastic toast Also plain breadcakes (white & brown) herb and cheese breadcakes and garlic & rosemary breadcakes. All delicious.
I make biscuits. Cornish Fairings, which are like mild ginger biscuits and Catherine Wheels.
Yum yum yum.

I've also become completely addicted to Facebook... or more particularly Scrabble on Facebook. I'm always looking for more people to play against so feel free to challenge me. If you don't know my real name drop me an email first, my name is too unusual to publish here.

I'm also on Ravelry now and would be very grateful for friends on there. I've only got 2 so far and I feel very lonely.

Bryher is 4 weeks old today and it's co-incided with 3 big events.
First, I don't know what I did differently last night but she slept for 7 hours straight!
I put her in her carrycot at 8:30, we have it downstairs during the day, I went to bed at 10:30 and took her up too. She normally wakes between 12 and 2, but she didn't wake till 3:45. I felt like Dolly Parton so tried to get her eat loads, I put her back down about 4:30, she settled almost straight away then woke at 7:30 this morning.
Oh if only every night could be like that.
Most of the time she feeds around 11, 3 and 7, but we have the occasional night where she has wanted feeding at 11, 2, then every hour from 4am till 3pm. Those nights/days have not been fun.
For the past couple of weeks she's also been quite colicky, it's settled down now thanks to the wonders of Infacol, but we still have some fun times where she's hungry, but windy, and can't decide whether to bawl, fidget, headbutt me, or feed. When she tries them all simultaneously it's quite painful!

The second event was going to get her her birth registered. She's all official now. I'm just a little bit sad that she doesn't have my surname anymore, but we've given it her as a middle name so it's not gone completely... she just has a strange middle name to go with her strange first name :)
As Porl pointed out, this does mean that when she's being naughty I'm likely to call her by her first 2 names, and she'll revert to being my child again... hmmm.

Lastly, she's definitely been smiling at us today. Not wind induced smiles. They were real, "I'm happy to see you and you're smiling at me" smiles.
Our baby girl is growing up.

And because we can't have a pictureless post, here's our little glow worm a couple of days ago with her Daddy who's teaching her all about loops and wavs and sound recording. Much better than when he teaches her about the "shooting people with guns" games he plays.
Porl was dead against giving her a dummy, but he's come round to the idea that with some babies it's a necessity... especially if I ever want to leave the sofa again.

Speaking of which, she's gurning so it's time for me to return to the sofa.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today I'm 30. For Porl's 30th we had a big party. My 30th has been significantly quieter.

I need longer arms to take pictures of the 3 of us.

Unfortunately Bryher didn't allow me to have a lie-in, but I did spend most of the morning dozing in bed between feeds while she gurgled in her carrycot. When I did eventually surface Porl brought me my birthday present, The Crafter's Companion, I haven't had chance to read any of it yet, but the pictures look great, lots of inspiration. My other big birthday present (other than Bryher) is from my parents and brother. They've treated me to a 60GB Creative Zen Vision M. It was due to arrive tomorrow, but Amazon are now saying it'll be next week. *Grrr!* I can't wait to be able to play with it, at the moment all my music is on my PC, and since I've moved all my craft things upstairs I've not been able to listen to any music while I'm crafting, although Radio 4 is a good alternative. It's also going to be great to be able to catch up on Podcasts, while feeding Bryher, I might even try out some audio books.

After Bryher and I had had a soak in the bath, separately, but Bryher takes almost as long as I do as she loves them and I haven't the heart to get her out, we set out for our first proper day out. It was also our first chance to play with the pram, we are very impressed. we've been itching to try the pram out sooner, but we realised last week that the brakes weren't working properly. We managed to get it back to the shop yesterday, and thankfully they did us a straight swap.
So with Bryher clean and fed, a working pram, and a picnic blanket, we stopped at the shop for some nice butties then headed off to Stamford Park to find the peacocks. We've never been before and we were pleasantly surprised, there's a lot more there than we expected so I think we'll be going back quite often.

This was the less mangy looking peacock

Do peacocks have a penchant for scary dolls heads?

Bryher slept the whole time she was out, we took plenty of pictures though, so when she's older she can see what she did on her first adventure into the real world. We were out for 2.5 hours and spent most of that time slowly walking around the park. By the time we got back I was exhausted, so we're going to have daily walks now to help me build up my stamina.

Within minutes of getting back Bryher woke and started gurning for food. Her evening feeding sessions can be marathons, so I've spent 4 hours sat on the sofa while she intermittently fed and dozed, any attempt to put her in the carrycot immediately woke her up. Thankfully Bugsy Malone was on TV, and it appears my singing voice calms Bryher down. Strange girl!

I've been a bit busy the last few days.

It seems when I wrote my last post I was already in labour, but didn't realise. I woke up at 4:30am on Friday 20th with a sharp pain, I was half asleep so thought I was just desperate for the loo. When I crawled back into bed 7 minutes again and got another sharp pain I realised what was happening.

I woke Porl and told him to get the last few things for the hospital bag pack while I phoned the labour ward. Even though my contractions were only 7 minutes apart I was concerned because for the past couple of days I'd been leaking, I suspected it was my waters, but because I had no contractions I thought it might also have been that the fall had ruined my pelvic floor muscle and the babies head pushing on my bladder was making me wee all the time. (So embarrassing I felt like an old women!) Thankfully (sort of) it was my waters.

Anyhow the hospital said to come in immediately as if my waters had broken 2 days earlier they'd have to induce me come the morning anyway.

Its a good job we hurried. We were at the hospital by 5am my contractions had gone down to 4-5 minutes apart, and I was 4 cm dilated.

I was using the gas & air, but I'd only had 1.5 hours sleep so they gave me some pethedine too. Unfortunatly I had to be hooked up to monitors the whole time as baby wasn't moving much. At 11:30 they decided that if I hadn't delivered by midday they'd try forceps or ventouse.

I work well with deadlines.

At the stroke of midday I gave birth to a 7lb 1oz baby girl who we have named Bryher, after this place
.

She was whipped away as she had been in a bit of distress due to a knot in her cord, but a bit of suction and she was fine. I had a quick cuddle, then passed her onto Porl while they sorted me out, I was bleeding quite heavily. I got to hold her again at 12:15 and by 12:20 she was breastfeeding.

It feels like she's been feeding ever since. When babies are weighed on their 3rd day they are expected to have lost 10% of their birth weight, she had put on 3ozs!

She's very contented, in the hospital I thought it was due to the pethidine, but she's been the same since she came home, she's feeding brilliantly, sleeping for relatively long periods, and if I manage to shut my brain off a little I might sleep too.

I'm quite sore, and very tired, but that's to be expected.

I've still not quite got over the shock of having a little girl. For 9 months I've been convinced she was a boy.

P.S. It's so good having a friend who's a professional photographer :)

I had an activity pencilled in my diary for today.
It doesn't seem to have come about though... yet.

So in lieu of other news, here's what a very pregnant lady might do in the last couple of weeks of pregnancy to stop herself twiddling her thumbs.

She may decide to knit a toy sheepie. (Which looks very cute from the front but slightly alien like from the side.)

She could spend a day sanding down an old blanket box.

Then spend another day staining and putting several layers of wax polish on it.

Or she could spend a few hours cutting out lots and lots of circles, then many more hours sewing them up with the eventual intention of making a mobile.

I highly recommend this last one as an ongoing project. It takes very little thought, can be picked up and put down easily, and will hopefully replace my need for "magazines" in my hospital bag. Most magazines drive me nuts, and when the time comes I don't think I'll have the ability to concentrate for long enough to read a book.

My top tip for late pregnancy... Don't fall off chairs.

Yesterday afternoon I leant back on my computer chair and the back snapped. I just managed to keep upright but by the end of the day I was in a lot of pain. A decent nights sleep hasn't made it any better. I feel like I've got whiplash. Add that to the pain and discomfort of being 39+6 days pregnant and it makes for one particularly uncomfortable Celeste.
Twitch was very active after my little incident, and I hoped it might prompt it to put in a slightly early appearance. No such luck, and I'm now hoping the back and neck pain disappear before I go into labour.

So that now makes 1 chair, and 1 bed I've broken whilst pregnant... the bed was not my fault though, it hadn't been put together properly so could have fallen apart when anyone sat/slept on it. It was just unfortunate it was me.

We saw the midwife yesterday, (before I fell off the chair) Twitch's head is 2/5ths engaged again and she doesn't expect me to need the hospital appointment on the 26th. I pointed out I hadn't been expected to make this midwife appointment when it was booked a fortnight ago. :/
I'm wondering whether this baby knows that tomorrow (its due date) is also the date its cousin was meant to have been born last year. She decided to hold on for another week until the 26th, which is the date I have to go to the hospital, so maybe this little one is holding out for a shared birthday.
Right now that seems like a good idea. My back should have recovered by then... and I'll have finished reading Harry Potter :)

Does batch cooking count as part of the nesting instinct?
We have 5 Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni's, (made with pancakes instead of pasta.)
6 Vegetable Lasagnes
3 Meat Lasagnes.

Porl and I have made these over the past couple of days. They would have been all made in one day were it not for the fact I had a disaster with the pasta sheets for the cannelloni, which resulted in running out of pasta for the lasagne.
Thankfully Mum reminded me that cannelloni is delicious with pancakes instead of pasta. Although I think she came up with that idea because on the few occasions she's had lasagne she thinks the pasta tastes like pancakes. (?!)

I've spent the last week trying to relax a lot, when I haven't been relaxing Porl has usually been telling me to sit down and relax.
Monday we had our last parent craft class one of the topics which came up was what happens when you get induced. I'm now even more certain I don't want inducing on my 30th.
When we got back on Monday night I started getting period like pains, and back ache. No contractions though.
Tuesday we had a Midwife appointment, I told her about the pains and she seemed quite excited and told me it all sounded good, and she suspected I might not make it to the 19th. She was even confident enough about it that she double booked my next appointment which will be on the 17th.

So we'll see. I'm still getting a lot of period type pains and back ache, but no contractions, I haven't even noticed any Braxton-Hicks contractions (practice ones for those not clued up on pregnancy lingo) but then not all first time Mums notice them.

Twitch is fidgeting a lot, but then it always fidgets a lot so I'm not sure if it's more than normal. For weeks it's been laid sort of sideways, with it's spine towards my right side, so the legs and arms are on my left hand side, bum and feet under my ribs. Every so often it does a big stretch, sticking it's bum out, and trying to straighten its legs and arms at the same time.
My bump isn't very big, (people think I look about 6 months pregnant, not 8.5) but these stretches make my bump go square, and it grows sideways by about a 3rd.

Also... It flipping hurts!

If Twitch does this when Porl is around it gets a telling off, and instructed that the way out is down, not up through my ribs. :)
I've tried poking it to make it stop, but it pokes back. :/

You do crafts dear, which are inherently messy things to do.

As Porl once said to me about my inability to keep my desk tidy.
This is my excuse for not having taken any pictures of my lovely new craft space. I moved all things up there, and got everything organised, then I started making cards, so the craft corner is a working mess.

I'm not generally a card making person, however I hate giving money to Hallmark etc, so I do try to make my own cards for Christmas, birthdays and other Hallmark holidays. The current lot of cards are just blank notelets as I'm sure they'll be useful at some point very soon.

For friends wanting baby related news, we went for our 36 week scan on Thursday. The news was very good. I'm all set for the natural birth with gas, air and a big bouncy ball that I want. Thankfully my placenta has shifted, and I won't be needing a caesarean. It's a huge relief, I really, really didn't want surgery. They are still being serious about the (very mild) latex allergy though, so in between screaming for pain relief I've also got to remember to scream at them to put on their blue gloves.
I wonder if I'll remember? Or be bothered?

It was nice to see bump again, we didn't get any pictures as it was laid awkwardly, and it's far too big to fit on one image now, but the sonographer was able to give us a pretty good look at the face by manoeuvring the scanner cleverly. Only about 3.5 weeks till we see the real thing.
All the measurements were done again, and even though everyone keeps telling me I'm looking very small (which I admit I'm relishing, I've never been thought of as small before, I'm short and plump,) but the baby is smack bang in the middle of all the growth charts. I'm hoping the fact I haven't put on much weight means I'll lose it again fairly easily, and maybe even lose some of the excess I had before too. If that turns out to be the case then I wish I'd got pregnant years ago, and I might have to consider having several more babies so I can end up waif like :)
Or maybe not...

Typical! Yesterday I finally got the urge to post, and I couldn't get onto blogger. Better luck today I hope.

It's just under 5 weeks to go until the big day, not that I'm expecting this baby to be punctual, its mother never is.
I did my last shift at work yesterday, and my maternity leave officially starts tomorrow. Just in time, I do actually feel pregnant now, I've been feeling great most of the time, but this past week I've been feeling achy and tired again, I also have a tendency to waddle when I walk. At 35 weeks pregnant it's to be expected though, I'm just pleased I've had it so easy so far. I've finally got my head around the fact that in the next few weeks I'll have a baby to look after, but it's not quite sunk in yet that I don't have to go to work for the next 9 months.
9 months! That's aaages!
I bet I'll not be thinking that next March.

My hospital bag is all packed and other than buying nappies (we're going to get reuseables) and getting a baby monitor we have everything ready for this baby. I'd quite like it to arrive early as I'm getting impatient to meet it now, and I'd like to be feeling vaguely settled before my 30th birthday comes around 12 days later. I've also forgotten what it feels like to be able to sit for 5 minutes or eat something without my belly moving. I thought babies were supposed to move less towards the end of pregnancy as they ran out of space. This one is proving the exception to the rule.

If the baby is early though it'll rule out going to my old school reunion in a fortnight. I would really like to go, but I'm already getting to the stage where the idea of straying far from home, and more importantly, the hospital, is a bit daunting.

We've been busy sorting out the house. Well, our parents have. My Mum and Dad have created a gorgeous new bedroom with a crafty corner for me, and the nursery although still waiting for a few finishing touches (cushion covers and pictures) looks fantastic. Porls Dad has been working on solving the leaky shower problem, and in the next few weeks he's offered to repair the kitchen lights (we've been cooking in semi darkness for months) and also to put us in an outside tap, my pots and baskets have had to be severely limited this year because I'm not up to carrying watering cans. Here's pictures of half our new bedroom, but I'll have to tidy the crafty corner and the nursery up before taking pictures of them.

Wow another post in April!
I'm hoping the nesting instinct has started to kick in. Today I cleared my desk, and for the first time in months I can actually see the top of it. Other cleaning has also happened in the past week or so too, we've Freecycled the surplus furniture from our spare room, and we're ready to start decorating and building wardrobes next week.

It's turned out to be rubbish timing though as within days of getting rid of the spare double bed I started with what I thought was hayfever (it probably was a bit) but turned out to be a stinking cold. At night I've been sniffling, snoring, & coughing. I can't get comfy because of either my bump, achy ribs, achy hips, or heartburn, and poor Porl hasn't been able to escape to a spare bed. For the record, he snores too, and hopefully mine will stop when the cold goes... or maybe not :/

The nesting instinct might also have triggered my craftyness again too. All I've done craft wise for months is cross-stitch, but Net posted about some badges she'd made and they inspired me to get my badge machine out. I've only made 3, but it's a start, and it's not cross-stitch.
Now I just need someone to inspire me to take photos of things. Maybe next post.

We've also had cat antics this week.
Saturday night Gonzo hobbled in on 3 legs. He'd done something to his left back paw, we checked it thoroughly but couldn't see any wounds and it looked and felt normal, he was also putting it on the floor but was obviously painful. We didn't have much option but to wait and see how he was on Monday before deciding whether he needed to see the vet.
By Sunday morning his paw and lower leg were swollen to about twice their normal size, he wasn't putting it down, and he was very very quiet (but still eating of course.) By Monday he was much more like himself, he still wasn't putting his paw down, but the swelling was going down so we decided we'd get away without the expense of the vets, or trauma of a car journey.
The last time the cats went in the car was when we moved house, it was a traumatic, loud and smelly couple of hours for both them and us.
Wednesday morning the swelling was almost gone and Gonzo was walking pretty much normally. He was also able to escape from the garden on his supervised toilet trips. He got away from me briefly in the morning, then had a longer adventure in the afternoon when he escaped from Porl but a neighbour managed to lure him back to our house.
Then Wednesday night Porl phoned me at work to say we had to get Gonzo to the vets as he had a wound on the top of his paw about the size of a penny piece.
The soonest anyone could see us was Thursday afternoon. Thankfully although he was loud in the car there were no unpleasant accidents. The vet was lovely, and Gonzo was very good. (Terrified into submission by all the dogs he could smell and hear, even though we went to a different waiting room.)
We think Gonzo had probably had a small wound which got infected causing the swelling, but the swelling got so bad that it ruptured the skin causing wounds on both the top and bottom of his paw *eurgh* So the swelling went down very quickly, but left nasty wounds. He's got a couple of types of tablets and orders to stay inside for a few days.
Hopefully we've sussed out how to get the tablets down him without argument (the technique vets show you about prising the jaws open and rubbing the throat till they swallow doesn't work with Gonzo, he's big, strong, and has claws.) I bought some potted meat, I cover the tablet with it, and Gonzo eats them... so far anyway.
Now we just have to suss out how to keep Gonzo from miaowing constantly because he wants to go outside.
His foot better heal soon!