Well, we got it.

We got our house - how excited was I to pick the keys up!! And we've started dreaming again.

See the thing is we're probably going to run out of money before we run out of time, but there's no harm in dreaming.

Here's what we're dreaming.....



We are planning our house using drawings and cut-outs, using room-planner websites and talking into the small hours of the morning instead of sleeping.

All very exciting!

To house, or not to house....

.... That is the question.

Do we go for it? Or do we back out? We had our second offer accepted and if we don't pull out we are due to complete on the 9th April.

We had the survey done today and as expected the house is a complete and utter DIY bodge-job. And the two things that we thought we could wait and do later are things that we need to get done sooner, and a couple of other things need doing before we even think about decorating. The attic and roof need sorting out, which we could have waited to do but will need to at least get the basics done now; and we wanted to save up and get proper sash windows put in but as the existing windows need replacing as a priority we'll have to sacrifice other aspects of the work to get them done first too.

How long could I stand to live in a building site? How bad do I think a building site could be? I guess if people can build their own house while living in a caravan - and get pregnant and have baby while living in said caravan - I think I can manage living in a bedroom. That's what we'll have, in reality. A kitchen that functions but is only temporary, a bathroom that functions but is only temporary, and a bedroom for the three of us which will also be our living room and office until other rooms are finished.

I think it will be worth it. It will be hard work and a long hard slog but the prospect of having a family home at the end of it that Ben and hopefully his siblings can grow up in must be worth the effort.

Maybe I'll enter Ben into some "cute baby" competitions, and any prize money can go towards fixing up the house too....!

Our house, in the middle of...

...our street.

Yep, we've been house-hunting again.

We went to look at a couple of places to buy on Saturday, and I ended up falling in love with a house I didn't even want to look at initially, because the garden backed on to the railway line. It's a shell of a house, and a repossession, but what a house. It's a pretty big old Victorian mid-terrace, with a front yard and a back garden bigger than our garden in Wythenshawe was. Two accessible and usable loft spaces, three bedrooms, upststairs bathroom/toilet, downstairs toilet, two reception rooms and a huge kitchen.

Put an offer in last night, it felt like a bit of a cheeky offer considering the asking price but, speaking to the estate agent, it's roughly what they would value the place at in its current condition anyway. And, circumstances being what they are (and my parents having a load of equity in their house) we are in a really good position. If the sellers say yes, we could own the place in a couple of weeks - the thing with my parents means that we don't even need to go through the rigmarole of setting up a mortgage!

Then the process begins of fixing it up. It really is a shell, it needs rewiring and replumbing, the main loft space needs making accessible, the kitchen needs sorting out, plastering and flooring needs doing in all the rooms, and we've said that as long as the kitchen is usable and our bedroom is done, we can move in and do the rest while we live there.

Here's hoping the sellers are amenable to our offer... or if they're not, that they at least give us an idea of how much they would accept!

When the brain takes over.

We've just had a really lovely morning. The one thing that I'd already paid to do, we didn't actually do, but in the end as it turns out the morning was just perfect really!

I've been designing an invitation for work (they won an award at the Sussex Food and Drink Awards!) for a champagne celebration. Nick needed a draft of it for this morning, and only gave me the information last Thursday. I'd emailed him a few draft ideas, and last night at about 10.30pm he emailed back saying I like this one, can you do it like this and can I have a printed draft by 10am in the morning?

Aaargh. The one he'd chosen was the one I'd not actually finished designing! So I spent another hour on it last night and decided I needed to go to sleep as the computer screen was beginning to swim.

This morning, and I still can't get over this, Ben's been so good! He's only been a tiny bit sick, he's not cried, he's been so good and actually really lovely company while I've been frantically trying to get his breakfast, my breakfast, designs finished and drafts printed all before 9.45am so we had enough time to run down to the shop with them.

Nick, bless him, called me a miracle worker again :) It's nice to be appreciated!

We were supposed to go to our mummy and baby yoga group after that, but after chatting to the girls in the shop (and Ben having cuddles) and a nappy change later, we actually set off from Steyning at 10.30am - which is when yoga starts. Ah well. But. Halfway down the Long Furlong (towards Durrington), I suddenly started thinking: Where is it I'm going this morning? Yoga. Yoga's in the Burlington, the Burlington is on the seafront. In Worthing. I'm going towards Durrington, which is where the mums and tots group is...

Half an hour later we parked up in Worthing and I decided that as we were already really late, we'd not try and rush to get there for 15 minutes, we'd have a leisurely wander through Worthing instead and meet up with the girls for coffee after they'd finished yoga. It all worked out - Ben had a 45 minute sleep, I had a 45 minute walkabout, I met the girls for coffee, walked back to the car with Bianca, met Libby halfway back, and got back home before Steve got in for lunch!

A lovely morning, all in all.

AND then Ben fell asleep in the car again on the way home and slept until 2pm. Fabulous.

High Time...

... for an update.

Ben had his final immunisations today, the final set until he's 13 months old. I'm glad they wait until they're 13 months, it would be a pretty rubbish birthday present otherwise. So: today. Three injections, two in one leg and one in the other. By the 3rd injection Ben was mightily displeased, as you might expect, so we had a cuddle and a feed back in the waiting room, and he's now forgiven me (or forgotten it ever happened) and is back on the boob - at home, so mummy can have her cup of tea and her biscuits.

He's 4 months old now, and has finally reached 12lbs - that's about 5.4kg in new money. Still in 0-3 month clothes, but that's good - he got nearly 3 months' wear out of his newborn clothes and although he's filling out his 0-3month clothes lenthways, he's still a skinny lad (sorry, slender) and 3-6month stuff would likely fall straight off. After the worrying fortnight where he only put on 3oz, he then went on to put on 11oz the following fortnight!

I looked at his legs while I held the bits of cotton wool over the punctures, and couldn't help remembering how spindly they were for his first set of jabs. His legs are a lovely shape, he's growing so well. I'm trying to find some decent pictures to put in...





He's really started to enjoy his ladybird spinner that his auntie Ruth bought him, he can rotate all the way round by himself and loves playing with the different colours and textures and things. Crinkle Caterpillar is still a firm favourite though, he keeps Ben company in his car seat and on his bouncer and I'm hoping it's washable as the amount of drool Ben produces is phenomenal.

I attempted to start playing with food with Ben last week, but the "what's this muck?!" face, together with tummy aches, has put me off for a bit. I think I'm going to wait now until he actually shows an interest, trying to grab hold of my food, really trying to put anything and everything into his mouth. We tried banana (too slimy, didn't like it much!), apple and banana puree (same reaction as just banana), carrot (a raw stick - was gummed a lot but wasn't interested really) and toast (the best reaction. Evidently doesn't taste of much and feels nice to gum to death and then spit out with a sneeze). He'll suck soup off my finger quite happily, but not off a spoon, at least, not with the intention of swallowing it! So that's weaning postponed for now. Not that I'm desperate to wean - I'm actually kind of glad that I'm still preferable to anything else!

Other developments are his ability to roll from his front onto his back (I have sort of got video evidence of this, although I didn't get the camera far enough away and apart from Ben knocking his head on my knee there's no proof apart from my word that I didn't roll him over myself!), and he has discovered giggling - what a GORGEOUS sound that is! Looking forward to it being a frequent sound in the coming days.

He's growing so fast, too fast and not fast enough all at the same time.

Life with Ben

I spent today sick in bed, looking after Ben. He was really good for the most part, I think he appreciated being able to feed whenever he wanted. I was really quite glad that I chose to breastfeed him! It was tough though: today he decided that every single nappy would be pooey, and he would also require a change of clothes from poo. Not easy changing nappies when you're getting stomach cramps and throwing up. Took me back to when we first got home with him, when I had The Headache, and how difficult things were then.

I managed 4 biscuits today, and a couple of half cups of tea. Thankfully when Steve came home he did a lot of entertaining Ben, gave me a break, and made tea - I used to HATE chicken kievs, they're still not high on my list of foods I will happily eat, but as Steve loves them we had some in. So, chicken kievs and a bit of pasta for tea, and it stayed down.

Ben has cluster-fed all day, being in bed with me that's not been difficult although it's given me backache from not being able to lie on my back very much! He only stopped at about 9pm when he finally fell asleep on me. Eventually we transferred him to Steve's shoulder where he stayed asleep until gone 11pm, and he's having his bottle as I type. By midnight we'll hopefully have turned in as well.

Today has been tough, not having someone around to help out with Ben, to entertain him, not being able to get up or even sit up much has been really annoying. When Steve was sick a couple of weeks back I looked after Ben but it doesn't really work the other way round - Steve can't just take the day off work to look after us.

I find I suddenly have a lot of respect for those who end up looking after babies and children completely on their own. I feel like I'm struggling a lot of the time, and yet I have a husband who does do a lot for us when he's home from work.

I guess, with this blog entry, I wanted to show that it's not all easy, it's not all wonderful: it's difficult and relentless and you can't just take a day off because you're sick. You can't hand them back when you don't know what you're doing any more. Babies are demanding, needy, helpless Things and even though they're SO annoying a lot of the time ....... I love Ben to bits and honestly sometimes I don't know why. But I do.

Steve's just looked over my shoulder and noted that he - we - would do anything for Ben. And pointed out that I'd probably do more for Ben than I would for him...... I hope he knows how much I love him!

Bedtime. Praise God.

Do we stay or do we go?

Bit of a conundrum, really.

We need to move house, I'm desperate to move really, we're running out of space. I mean, we've been running out of space since we moved in to this cottage but with Benjamin's arrival and all the associated paraphernalia, we're SERIOUSLY short of space. To move around in the front room, we need to put the playmat away. The buggy base now lives permanently in the boot of the car. I've been putting the playmat/babygym out on the bed upstairs with the squeaker-com on, just so I can get some work done.

Anyway.

We've seen a couple of houses to rent in Worthing, in the area we want to move to, but we each don't like some aspects of one of the houses.

Steve doesn't like the fact that the hot water tank is in the main bedroom in the property that I like, and I see his point - he can't stand a hot bedroom, it stops him sleeping well (and me by default as it makes his snoring a lot worse!).

The other property is really close to a level crossing, and has very limited parking - one side of the street is off-limits during the day Monday to Friday. The level crossing beeps VERY frequently and would drive me nuts.

So, do we go for a short-term let? Bearing in mind there are very few of them in the right area as well.

The other things I have to put into consideration are that I'm still trying to get my milk supply back up as I want to continue breastfeeding Ben for as long as possible - I've been doing a little bit of research and realised that to make a good go of it I really need a few weeks straight where we can just let all routine go to pot and just concentrate on demand and supply. So would moving house interfere with this? Probably...

Then there's ..... well, that's it really. I suppose sleep training is another thing that we need to take into consideration, and as our newly discovered free evenings (which have come about by giving Ben another bottle of formula which basically knocks him out) are going to go by the wayside anyway we might as well go all the way and attempt this sleep training thing.

So we are going to be knackered anyway. And trying to move house as well..... well, maybe it is a bit stupid to try and do that right now.

But I so desperately want to move.... I need space, I want to be able to move about freely in my house, I want everything to have its place AND BE IN IT, and for everything to be easily accessible. I want warm rooms that aren't draughty, that I don't have to wrap Ben up like a penguin before leaving him under his babygym. I want to be able to invite friends round and for there to be space for them AND us to sit down - and space for babies and toddlers to not get into too much mischief.

Basically,

I want it all....

And I want it NOW.

So:

Do we stay or do we go? Do we stay and wait, and hope that a better offer turns up? Or do we move and put up with the little things that annoy us, so we are closer to our friends and have a little space to stretch out in?

Answers and thoughts on a postcard, please. Or in a comment if you prefer.

I must be mad...

That's the second time that thought has invaded.

I want to be pregnant again, I want another little one...

The first time was at Jamie and Debs' wedding, just before Christmas. We'd left Ben with his grandparents while we took the photographs and, during the day, being somewhat distracted, I was absolutely fine. There was no chance to miss him! But at the reception, at the Wedding Breakfast, we were able to relax. And there were so many bumps, and so many babies, and I started missing my baby. And then, out of the blue, I starting thinking - I want another one!

This first time the thought was VERY quickly followed by another stream of thoughts yelling STOP THINKING THAT are you inSANE? STOP STOP STOP STOP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP.....

And so the thought slunk away into a corner, biding its time.

Last night it reappeared. I don't know why - perhaps it was because my world was asleep, Stephen and Ben upstairs all tucked up, me on clean up and tidy up and express duties, looking at photographs of the beautiful and pregnant Hazel H, and my hormones decided to start getting all broody again.

Now let's face it, I didn't have the greatest of pregnancies, I didn't have the nicest of birth experiences, but Ben, when he smiles at me, when he smiles at that other baby in the mirror, when he gets all shy and buries his face in my shoulder, it makes it all worth it. And I'd do it all again without reservation.



Just not yet.

My Prayer

I am so grateful for those moments when my whole world seems to be at peace - or holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. I stood, looking out of my kitchen window, at a frost-bitten world, holding a sleepy Ben in my arms, waiting for him to start the process of crying himself to sleep, enjoying the peacefulness of the moment and the beauty of what I was holding and what I was looking at. I thank God for moments like this.

I started thinking about my wishlist for what I'd like our next house to have, and realised there are more important things to wish for in a house!

I pray for a house that we can grow into, somewhere we can put down roots at last, somewhere Ben can grow up in. I pray that our house is close by to our friends, that we can easily be in and out of each others' houses - without the need for a car journey. I pray that our home becomes part of the community, that people - friends and strangers alike - are comfortable in our home, that they find a welcome rest from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

And now my little boy is asleep in my arms, my husband is asleep in bed, there's coffee in the pot - peace reigns again. If I could reach I'd take this opportunity to cut Ben's nails!

Christmas Chaos

Have I really not blogged for that long??! Shame on me.

Well, where to begin...

We spent Christmas in Manchester. We stayed in 4 different places, slept in 5 different beds, battled flu and coughs and colds, spent a day without Ben, took our 1st set of official wedding photographs, unpacked maybe 7 or 8 boxes of the billions that remain in my old bedroom (Rachel Evans be warned, get those boxes unpacked now or you'll regret it 6 months down the line when you've forgotten what's in them), threw away 3 binbags full of junk, 1 tub full of paper to be recycled, repacked 6 boxes half the size with things we actually want to keep and actually took a boxful back down to Sussex with us.

Before heading off to Manchester a few things of note happened. Ben's weight gain wasn't what it should be and I got given orders to start packing away more calories than I had been getting to improve my milk supply; Ben had his first set of immunisations (that was a traumatic day, for both of us) which later caused a bit of feverishness which then developed into a proper cough and cold, just as the Lurgy hit me and Stephen. And, I took my prescription for my insulin in to the chemist, so it would be ready to collect the day we headed off to Manchester. Only I forgot to collect it. So I had to get the lovely Christine Phillips to write me a private prescription for the insulin that I ran out of (stupid me) and discovered JUST how good it is that I get free prescriptions. Even having to pay for prescriptions is better than paying the full price. My word but medication is expensive when you have to pay full price for it - which is what I had to when I discovered my medical exemption certificate was not valid for private prescriptions.....

Ben and I went off to the baby clinic again this morning for the New Year Weigh-In, to find he's gained a full pound in weight (just under half a kilo) and 3cm in length in the past 3 weeks - despite being poorly!! We've been on a demand-feeding diet yesterday and today to get my milk supply back up after my poorliness, and it seems to be working. He also seems to be teething already, so we've got a gummy teether and some gel to try. It's great seeing the smiles become more frequent, the colic getting less, the sleeping getting easier. I guess because he's been poorly the past couple of weeks, everything has seemed much worse - and now he's getting better, it feels like a massive improvement.

We really need a new house. The rent runs out in August and we won't be renewing it - those of you who've seen our cottage will understand! I can't imagine a crawler crawling around in here, it would be madness. There's nowhere to put anything, and trying to make this place baby-proof would be like trying to push treacle up a hill. I love that analogy... But seriously, we need to move house. Neither of us think it will be too hard finding a house we like and could afford, but it might be a bit harder trying to find someone who will give us a mortgage.

What would I like in my next house?
- a decent sized garden at the back
- off-road parking would be a bonus, but I really don't want another house that opens straight onto the road/pavement.
- 3 bedrooms (one for us, one for Ben, one for guests / the photo studio / music room / office)
- kitchen/diner because we enjoy entertaining
- a living room big enough for my keyboard
- ceilings that you can't touch just by standing on tiptoes and reaching up
- doubleglazing, central heating that works, none of these daft spotlights that heat up the room without the need for a radiator
- room for a tumbledrier as well as the usual washing machine and dishwasher
- lots of space for storage, and an easily accessible loft
- now this might sound daft, but a blue front door.
- and finally, it has to be close to our friends' houses, within easy walking distance! And not just to where they live now, but to where they will move to...

Only a small list. But I think it's important to know what you want, and to be specific in your prayer requests. I could be even more specific than that, but that would be getting silly.

I went into the greengrocers today, asked about the Christmas Veg Boxes they did, and Nick told me they hadn't had as many orders as they'd have liked but they broke even. Almost to the pound! That's a relief, at the very least. I might be starting back working there again in a couple of weeks, wrap me and Ben up in the Moby, and go and get the invoices sorted out on a weekly basis. There's also talk of various bits and pieces I can do at home which is great. Hurrah, I'll be back at work soon!

Right I am going to make the most of Ben being asleep, and do the washing up and get everything ready to make dinner - tonight we will be eating chicken curry pie, with buttered carrots, and a bottle of red wine.

Chicken Curry Pie
ingredients
short pastry, made with 8oz flour
2 diced chicken breasts
jar of sainsburys basics curry sauce (7p, can't beat it!!)

method
make pastry, line pie dish, bake blind
cook chicken, add sauce, heat through, tip into half-cooked pastry case, cover with remaining pastry, bake.

Buttered Carrots
peel and slice carrots
melt 1oz butter in a lidded saucepan
add carrots, cook with lid on for 10 minutes on low heat until softening
take lid off, turn up heat and cook, stirring continuously, for about 5 minutes.

That's it really. Mmmmmmmmmm