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.