Busy-ness

It's been a long time since I managed a blog post.  Everything seems a bit hectic at the moment.

Auntie Beth and her best Top Gun impression.

Last Sunday my Dad took me and the sister-in-law flying for her birthday.  The weather had been looking terrible all week but thankfully we got almost completely ideal conditions, which was a bit of luck.  The plan was to drive her back to London afterwards in order to collect her old cot (hers as in her son's not hers as if in she's a bit nuts and sleeps in a cot).  This seemed like a stroke of genius as everyone benefited from it.  Unfortunately there were queues on the M25 (I'm going to blame Thatcher, for convenience), so we decided to chance driving through London, from East to West.  The first problem is the amount of time this takes even when there's only light traffic.  The second problem is that I've got a nauseous wife and a hyperactive sister-in-law on board.  Therefore there was lots of pointing and speculation about the living standards of various parts of East London (all shit, if you were wondering).

Anyway we arrived pretty late and spoke with Annie's mum for a bit before going to collect the cot, by which time it was approaching 10 o'clock.  I don't want to compromise my hardcore, rock n' roll partying image but I'm not confident of being able to drive an hour and 45 minutes on the motorway at 10 o'clock at night without feeling very tired.  With this in mind we decided that we would stay in a Premier Inn (ironic name, I think) for the night and drive home in the morning.  When we get to there the receptionist says it's going to be £81 for the night!  Apparently if you book via the website it's cheaper so she advises that if we have a smart phone it's probably worth popping online and reserving now (not having a smart phone is it's own punishment, so I don't need this).  Unfortunately there's not a whole lot that you can do so we paid up.  Now, the adverts from Premier Inn boast that you are: (1) guaranteed a good night's sleep and (2) everything is premier but the price.  While it wasn't a bad night's sleep it doesn't change the fact that nodding off in the first place is difficult with paper thin walls and a noisy family next door (spose there are worse things you could hear in a hotel).  The price however was pretty premier for what you get.

A sample of the work at WillowsCornerArt.

Fortunately I can't quibble about the price too much as my talented little missus has been earning a few bob by doing portraits and initials/nameplates (http://www.facebook.com/WillowsCornerArt/info).  I'm very proud of her enterprising ways and she's been doing amazingly with it.

We are still trying to get the baby room in shape and the most recent step is to get Vega her own wardrobe for diddy clothes.  I would highly recommend the canvas wardrobe for Dunelm Mill.  It was a steal at £12 although to be honest it takes a few days for the foul smell of the wipe-downable fabric to disappear.

Already got her own wardrobe.

We would also quite like to have a go at co-sleeping with Vega.  I think the plan is to "side-car" the cot to our bed and then she can also sleep in our bed if she falls asleep in feeding or if we bring her in, in the morning.  Now we have had to make some sacrifices for this.  We have got to sacrifice our double bed for a king size and therefore sacrifice our crappy old £100 mattress with horrible springs for a nice new fancy one (don't say we don't do anything for you Vega).  Anyway my ever generous grandparents are coming over to purchase the new mattress for us this weekend and my lovely mum bought us a new bed frame.  This arrived yesterday and we decided to put it together last night.  Needless to say this took a good 2 hours or more and involved a handful of petty flatpack squabbles (we've never had a flatpack that didn't).  It seemed a good idea to assemble the new bed frame before the mattress arrived, so we now have a double mattress on a king-size bed.  Luckily we don't get a lot of visitors so we won't look like morons to anyone but ourselves.

There's not a lot of activities involving Vega at the moment, until the ante-natal classes (I imagine there'll be some content there), I still can't get over how strong her kicking is.  There's nothing more relaxing in the morning when you're half asleep than reaching over and putting a hand on the missus' bump and feeling a massive kick.  However, I think it's probably less relaxing when you're carrying a baby and she's doing her best Vinnie Jones impersonation on your bladder when you're trying to get to sleep.  Annie attempted to stop her ante-emetic medication but it lead to her being sick and feeling nauseous more, so she's back on that.  Other than that, this is the what they call the enjoyable bit of the pregnancy.  I know I'm certainly enjoying it so far.

Nesting

Annie's talent at work.

Generally it has been a quiet week, but I am regularly able to feel some good boots from the little one.  She does, however, still have a tendancy to kick mummy's bladder around like a rugby ball and then act all good-as-gold when I put my hand on Annie's belly.

Annie and I seem to have developed our nesting instincts a little this week and had a big tidy up this weekend (which is regrettably a blue-moon event) and managed to get rid of 3 bin-bags of clothes.  A fantastic achievement.  As well as this Annie was inspired to paint a mural (or Murial if you're Nanna Swift) on Vega's bedroom wall, which I think looks amazing, and has prompted some commissions in exchange for reusable nappies for Annie.

We also plan to get a kiddie wardrobe for all her clothes quite soon - this one from Dunelm Mill.  Unfortunately it's a choice between blue, pink and black.  Blue seems to be least offensive and with a bit of tarting up should tie in nicely with the Murial.  Soon it'll be time to start thinking about moving all the breakable stuff from toddler grabbing height.  We've also settled on the sort of mattress we want for Vega's cot.  As we're spending little on the pram and getting our cot for nothing, we decided it was worth splashing some cash on a more expensive mattress.

Mum, Dad & Vega.

The growing bump.

As we're progressing into the second half of the pregnancy Annie seems to be expanding a little more rapidly, around an inch or 2 in a week is pretty impressive.  The next step in the pregnancy to really look forward to is being "viable".  Because of all the movement from Vega and her love (or hatred, but I want to think love) of Mum and Dad singing Bohemia Rhapsody to her, it is easy to forget that if for some reason she was born now her chances of survival would be small.  24 weeks is the point where survivability improves dramatically, so hopefully that'll be a nice bit of comfort.  But for the moment my main objective is to calm Mrs. Swift's shopping spree desires.  We have decided on the pram we want and are waiting until a more appropriate time to get it ordered.  We settled on a cheaper model than intended, as we're planning to carry the wee lass as much as possible - and some of the prams you see around are a closer relative of Optimus Prime than of a pushchair.

Petit Star City Bug - The pram we've chosen.

Continuing with our hippyfying at the moment, I've decided to basically cut meat out of my diet (can't live without fish) after watching a hideous PETA video (I should have known better), featuring Sir Paul McCartney (thanks Macca).  Not too sure if we will follow this diet for Vega when she gets to the right time, I'll have to see how being a pescatarian  coeliac goes for a while.

Jubilee weekend

If there's one thing the royal family are good for it's getting an extra bank holiday.  And if there's one thing bank holiday are good for it's crap weather.  Not to let it dampen our weekend we decided to go shopping for some maternity clothes on Saturday, and we did a spot of relative visiting on Sunday.

Annie and the bump in the lovely dress
I picked.

As it's (meant to be) approaching summer and Annie's bump is only getting bigger it seemed a good idea to get some bump friendly clothes in.  So I think Annie can be happy with her haul of 4 dresses, 2 vests and a pair of shorts.  I don't think myself some kind of Gok Wan fashion guru but I think I did well in choosing this dress.  Of course there was a little room in the budget for some stuff for little Vega.

Vega has been very active recently but I've not really been able to feel a good kick due to the fact that: (a) I always get distracted by something and miss it and (b) a warm hand on the bump seems to make her stop.  Annie has been exclaiming for about a week that she can actually see the movements now.  She'd not been moving a great deal on Saturday until we sat down to watch the final of 'The Voice' - dumbfounded that Leanne won but nevermind.  Nothing seems to get my little girl moving like some music.  Unfortunately the tunes that seem to get her moving are a beautiful but sad and wholly in appropriate song by Ed Sheeran, the new Katy Perry song that I don't particularly care for and...Justin Bieber (that's right the "Baby, baby, baby, oooh!" one).  Anyway Ed Sheeran was performing and Vega was enjoying her own little in utero disco and I felt a couple of good kicks and saw one or two as well.

Some pictures of our animals and Vega's
initials Annie drew during the week for
the baby room.

Sunday was pretty grim as far as weather was concerned but we drove down to Bexhill to see the family.  Somehow my Grandad had managed to keep his trap shut and hadn't told my Nan that we'd even managed to find out the sex of the baby - the last thing she knew, we were all gutted because of the meany sonographer.  Before we told her she was convinced it would be Adrian, but was not disappointed to hear that it was Vega. She decided I should tell my aunt so she called her (and chatted about nothing and everything for 20 minutes) and I told her the sex and name.  It's nice that she's been quite interested in everything that's going on as we don't normally speak that much.

Next stop was Annie's step mum.  Lovely and easy to talk to though she is, she is a very difficult customer being the only person who doesn't want to know the sex.  When you are attached to your baby and you constantly refer to her as she/her/Vega it's not difficult to make a slip in conversation.  Couple this with the inevitable desire to blurt it out just because someone doesn't want to know and you've got a very tricky situation.  Somehow we both managed to revert back to calling the bump "it" for the few hours we were there.  I think we may have to limit the amount of time we see her before Vega arrives.

Other clothes accumulated over time.  My favourite being
the "Little Nipper" tee.  Annie is particularly happy about
the Christmas outfit.

After that was dinner with my parents.  Annie struggles a bit in restaurants at the moment, they seem to be a difficult place for a pregnant lady.  There's a bump at about table level so you can't get that close and they often have funny chairs and are quite warm.  Despite this we had a laugh as we usually do - mostly at the man sitting behind us who sounded a bit like a Bond villain and kept trying to make jokes with the waitress, and the fact that my Dad had Turkish coffee which couldn't look more like mud.

Having not kicked a great deal on Sunday, Vega has been going for it this morning.  Annie and I sat around in bed feeling kicks and looking at kicks, it's mad just how much impact she can make at this stage.  Whilst I never got stressed when I couldn't feel or see the kicks it's quite magical when you do get to feel them.  Not being the child bearer it is about the closest that you can get to your baby and I think it really does feel like having a connection to her.  Annie had £4 to spend out of her maternity budget but naturally this got spent on one of those little bears that's holding a blanket that babies have.  Inevitably I also saw some clothes I liked and ended up buying them for my little girl.  I suppose she'll be demanding money for clothes at some point in her life so I suppose I might as well get used to it now.

Clothes I couldn't resist buying.

Vega's bear blanket toy.