Memories :)

Was trying to think of a "pie tune" for Stuart Maconie as he sat in for Chris Evans this week on the R2 drivetime show and I think Steve had reminded me of Joe Satriani the previous day so he was on my mind. Decided to see if I could find an MP3 of "friends" on the internet to see if it sounded like I remember. Can you believe I've not listened to it for over seven years!

I walked up the aisle to this tune. What memories listening to it again brought flooding back, to such an extent that I have had to buy the album it is on, and it has just arrived in the post. I am currently thoroughly enjoying listening to it playing lovely and loud in the cottage. The CD will be on full blast in the car tomorrow as we travel to South Wales for our holiday. What bliss!

Here's the tune. Enjoy.

Singin' and a playin'

I played piano / led worship at small group last night. I think it's the first time I have EVER led by actually playing an instrument rather than selecting some songs off a CD to sing along to. I spent all day (well, apart from sleeping for an hour and a half in the morning when I realised my eyes were actually closing of their own accord) practising and trying to decide which songs to play. I think I might actually be getting better at playing and singing at the same time. I never used to be any good at that, I'm not particularly good at multitasking. Too much information and too little RAM in my brain to hold it all at the same time.

But incredibly I didn't make many mistakes (well, too many) and we have even left the keyboard at our friends' house so she can have a play of it while we're on holiday next week. They are thinking of getting the same keyboard so having a play and getting an idea of how enormous it is will be a good thing.

As we took it round to theirs, we needed to buy a roof-rack for the boy-racer. Roof-racks on boy-racers look silly. But now it's all there - I have keyboard, custom full-flight case, and roof rack - have keyboard, will travel.

Now... off to do housework and get some photos off the cameras and have a bath and then it's off to work for my one afternoon per week of sociability.

When Jez and Janet and Joseph came to visit...

It took Joseph less than 10 minutes to discover we have a park at the bottom of the garden (literally climb over the wall and you're there).


And in that park there was a tree. Good climbing tree. Daddy, climb that tree!


Which daddy did. Daddy, pick one of the fruit! Which daddy did. And then proceeded to have thrown back at him with some force from Joseph!



At Bramber Castle the boys found a rope swing.


Deciding what to do next.


"What to do next" involved walking along the seafront at Worthing, Joseph and Steve fighting with foam swords all the way there and all the way back. And eating fish and chips. And finding a milkshake shop which sold about 50 flavours of milkshake including pina colada flavour, if you wanted. Steve settled for chocolate. Not maltesers, or mars, just regular chocolate. Easily pleased!


A good day.

Turning a corner

This weekend I feel like I've turned a corner - it's the most excited I've felt so far during the whole pregnancy, I spent time with a couple of good friends and their 5-year old son yesterday and now I'm actually really looking forward to having a son... and my friends at church who have a 7-month old boy, she was telling me today that she was really nervous about having a son because all the men in her life so far have had not great relationships with their mothers - but she's had encouragement too and knows that she'll have a great relationship with her son.

I am so looking forward to him arriving now, and I think Stephen and I even agreed on a name for him a few minutes ago :) but we'll probably keep that little snippet under wraps at least for the time being...!

It's good to be finally feeling so much more positive about this. I guess 9 years of expecting one thing and then getting another is just one of those things that shape our characters, and how we learn to respond to things.

Realisation....

Had a realisation once I'd written all that down, that the first step to any kind of healing is to admit what the problem is... although it does help to know what the problem is before you can admit anything!

Steve's just been through a similar kind of thing, he realised that he has spent the last year and a half hiding from a problem (with dyslexia) instead of dealing with it - and after breaking down on Wednesday morning he's now in such a better place because instead of the problem being this monster that he's avoided it's now being dealt with and there's all sorts of people helping and providing all the support that he needs.

And I've spent the last couple of months hiding from the fact that we're having a boy - I declared that I didn't want to tell anyone "because we'll be inundated with cutesy blue junk" but was just avoiding dealing with the problem.

Problem.

What a daft thing to call it...

Anyway.

I DO love bumpy, how could I not :) I won't love him any less because he's a he and not a she, I'm quite attached to him - more than I ever expected I would be. It's just that expecting a girl for 9 years and then finding out you're getting a boy is not something that can easily be dealt with in a couple of months! But at least the healing has started.

I actually went out and bought specifically boy things for him this afternoon, and Steve loves them. Yes they're blue, but they're not unbearably cute :) Stephen has been amazing, he completely understands how I feel and especially since he's just been through his own rough patch this week he knows the whole hiding from issues scenario.

In some ways, thinking about this more rationally, I'm kind of glad our first is a boy... I was looking forward to and expecting a girl, but I'm not such a girly girl and the thought of all things pink and fluffy frightens me to death!!! Maybe I'll have softened and changed by the time we ever have a girl :)

The healing begins.

And I've even started looking at names in a more positive fashion :)

Feeling Blue

I guess really I'm just tired and need a proper break away from everything but I have no idea why I'm feeling so down at the moment.

I have a happy husband with a great job, a great boss and great support from his uni where he's trying to finish off his degree; I have a beautiful healthy baby growing inside, my husband loves me and loves baby-bumpy, everything's perfect.

And still the tears are coming. I feel like my brain is jumping all over the place just so that I don't cry for a bit, bouncing from subject to subject but as soon as it runs out of things to think about I just start crying again.

I think one of the things that has set me off just recently is reading a blog post from a woman who really wanted a girl this time around, she already has two boys and is now expecting a third boy.

Ever since before Steve and I were married I've dreamed of having a baby girl. Steve had a dream one night, that we'd got married and had a baby girl - and it prompted him to propose to me. I've still got that letter he sent me, with the dream in it and the proposal.

So for over 9 years I've dreamt of having a girl...

When we went for the 20wk scan, I asked if they could tell what sex it was - and there was his little willy. I cried the rest of the day, I couldn't believe baby wasn't a girl. It took me a few weeks to re-align my thinking to cope with this development, and I thought I'd laid it to rest - but that b post has made me realise I've not really dealt with it as well as I thought I had, I'd just not thought about it instead of dealing with it.

And then to see his enormous balls on the scan today.

Ain't no doubt the kid's a He.

Yes I'm glad that he's fine and growing perfectly and everything, glad he's healthy, amazingly glad and blessed that we're able to have children at all, but I so wanted a girl... and I feel so selfish thinking that.

I also feel kind of relieved having been able to say it out loud. Steve kind of understands... at least he's being sympathetic and not just telling me to stop being silly.

I think the other thing that contributed this morning was that it felt so much like an anticlimax, all the waiting and waiting for maybe 20 minutes total of actually seeing anybody, to be told everything's fine, please test your blood sugar more often, go home. By that point I'd almost forgotten we'd even seen our baby this morning.

So. Heart poured out. I'm going to do some more distraction therapy this afternoon and put off thinking about it some more. Maybe go buy some plants to replace the ones damaged in the wind this week... maybe go shopping... maybe go for a walk... maybe not go for a walk, far too much thinking time...

Designs on a New Dress.

I bought some fabric today, I am quite excited about this as it means I am one step closer to creating a new dress for myself. I have bought white linen and bright red cotton, and have sketched out how I want the dress to look once finished. I can't take pictures of the fabric or the sketch however because the battery in my camera has just died. Tomorrow I will add pictures.

12th August - edited to add this picture!

Cravings!

I made Steve take me to Ikea on Saturday night.

I decided, as you do, earlier in the day, that a trip there might be a good idea because we could get the bits on the list that had been slowly getting longer and longer. And then I decided that as we were going, and as it takes an hour and a half to get there, that we may as well get all the furniture for the baby... Which would mean me breaking a promise - that I'd not get any baby stuff until after Steve's birthday which is in another 2 weeks' time.

Steve thought we could therefore wait to go to said furniture store.

So I started crying... I didn't mean to, honestly! I was really annoyed with myself because my eyes were leaking, and I couldn't stop them.

And then it got later and later and later...

And my eyes wouldn't stop leaking...

To cut a very long story short, involving more crying, getting in a state because I didn't think I could win either way, etc etc etc, hormonal woman alert... poor Steve... we went to Croyden.

And had meatballs and chips and gravy and lingonberry sauce :)

And bought everything on our list apart from anything to do with babies, so no promises broken! AND didn't spend a fortune, and yesterday I helped Steve build a chest of drawers :) It was supposed to be him helping me but I think he did most of the work in the end... I get to make the second chest today, all by myself :)

I think I can honestly say I have had only two occasions of severe cravings so far in this pregnancy. The first, we had to drive to Littlehampton to satisfy a craving for Burger King. It was just what I wanted although I felt so dirty afterwards for binging on junk food.

The second... was not for food particularly (although I think meatballs may have figured in the dark recesses of my mind) but for a trip to Ikea.

Why can't I have normal cravings, like for sardine smoothies or something like that????

Wonder of wonders.

I think I've started getting that nesting feeling.

I've been thinking about this whole "nesting" malarky quite a bit over the past few weeks, Ste and I had a chuckle the other week when someone at work asked him if I'd started nesting - Steve's response was that he didn't think nesting was really in my vocabulary! We joked that I was more likely to misplace the baby in a pile of washing or leave it at the post office by accident or something.

But actually, over the last week or so, I've been getting itchy to prepare things. I'm not the most organised or tidy of people - I have to be given a bump-start normally. We have "tidy" days where we both attack the house, and over the next few weeks it starts off with me keeping on top of things and then the levels of tidyness start slipping gradually again... but recently I've found myself getting really annoyed with the general level of clutter and binning things, taking old clothes (finally) to the charity shop, buying new sheets for the bedroom, measuring what space we have and where we might fit anything to do with baby in, looking at baby furniture, considering, thinking....

It might be to do with the fact that baby is really making its presence known at the moment so I'm not really given a chance to not think about it. And I have fits and starts of extreme activity (extreme by comparison to the rest of this pregnancy so far) in between the extreme shatteredness (own fault, should learn to pace myself!).

Slowly but surely, the house is being reorganised in order to accommodate a new tiny person. Half the time it's not even a conscious thing: we just decide something would be better placed somewhere else, and realise that the space recently vacated is now useful.

So perhaps, just perhaps, nesting is finding its way into my vocabulary.