A Series of Beginnings

Hello, Dearest

2012-02-13T23:16:00.000Z

So being the foreign language-loving nerd that I am, I've attempted in my life to learn French (this did not last long. About one semester of middle school, if I remember correctly), Spanish (two years of high school), German (one year of high school and two of college), and even - prepare for a pocket-protector-wearing fest of nerd-dom - Welsh. For fun. Well, really, because I wanted to know how to pronounce Ioan Gruffudd's name and then was magically sucked in via the power of a "Teach Yourself [insert foreign language here]" CD. This random affiliation for languages that are not my own also means that, thanks to the 3 years of study I've successfully forgotten most of, I know that the German word for "dearest" is "Liebster". Interestingly enough, that's also the name of the lovely chain-letter-style award I just received from the wonderfully witty Rachel over at Make A Long Story Short.

Seriously: go check out her blog, she's hilarious and charming and has quite the way with words. Not to mention any post that talks about and features the adventures of her bouncing baby boy, Henry. Long before I properly knew this girl in real life, I had ~~stalked~~ enjoyed her blog for months, consistently thinking to myself, "I want to write like that."

So in the spirit of passing along a good thing, here are a few of my other favourite and lesser known blogs:

I come from what I feel is a pretty literary family, and my cousin, Jen, is most definitely not the exception to this rule. In fact, I think she's the case that best proves the rule. Her blog - Greybon - is a wonderful collection of well-worded anecdotes about her life, and other random and interesting tid-bits.

Looking for a delicious and easy veggie recipe? Look no further than my awesome friend Alicia over at Real Delicious Food. The dishes she posts about look good enough to make even a carnivore like myself consider adding a few more veggie dishes to my life. (I'm pretty sure even the Husband wouldn't protest.)

Small Girl, Big City is the blog home of Krystle, who has the awesome distinction of being the only person in college who was cool enough to make me want to live with her for two separate years. She's also in the midst of being awesome while living in DC and manages to blog about it with the sort of smiley wit and enthusiasm I have to appreciate, even in my most sarcastic and curmudgeonly moments.

And now for the hard part: five fascinating facts about myself. I can promise five facts, but I make no claims about their ability to capture anyone's interest...

I used to live down the street from Sir Derek Jacoby. For realsies. I saw him walking his dog twice and was about thisclose to walking up and asking him about his dog. All the while, of course, I'd be nonchalantly pretending that I didn't care a fig that he was a famous actor, while inside doing the most embarrassing fangirl dance imaginable...complete with flapping hands and squealing noises.
When my mom remarried a few years back, my new stepbrother was in England doing missionary work, and spent some of his time partnered with the guy who was later housemates with the guy who would end up - after my own semester in England - becoming my husband and the father of my gorgeous Ethan. They all know each other now and we still laugh about the coincidence.
(And this is where we start to lower the tone...) My toes are weirdly short. As a kid I never realised this - I just though other people had freakish monkey toes - but no. Mine are the anomaly, apparently.
My mother, once, as a kid was approached from behind by a random adult in her neighbourhood whilst talking to one of her sisters. The grown-up in question asked, "are you Viola's granddaughter?" When my mom said yes, she was told that she sounded just like her grandmother. I now use the transitive property of math to conclude that - allowing for variances in accent (my accent is the bastard child of four regions of two countries, now) - since I sound just like my mom, I also sound just like my great-grandmother. The historian in me finds that sort of heritage of sound pretty awesome.
I am - according to family lore - descended from the families of two US presidents: Zachary Taylor and James Madison. Oh, and like any child of a good Virginian family, a Confederate general, too: Ambrose P. Hill. (Sadly, there's a special kind of awkward-looking that runs in the family that leads me to believe from daguerreotypes I've seen that these old family stories are totally legit.)

Pinterest Challenge

2012-02-08T17:58:00.004Z

I may be on my own as far as the timing is concerned, but I'm doing the Pinterest Challenge. What is it? you ask. Well, the idea is to find something you've pinned on Pinterest, stop being lame, and just do the project.

You may remember that the last time I mentioned this idea, I had selected this as my project to complete:

...some sparkly, vintge-y Christmas ornaments to complete and hang on the tree next year. Well, my take on it went a bit astray of the lovely Bible verses in an Albrecht Dürer-style font. That said, I'm still not done with this endeavour, so we'll see where else it can end up once all the details are settled on.

I decided that a fun idea would be to have literary Christmas baubles. As a parting gift from Jane Austen's House Museum, I was given a book of Hugh Thompson's illustrations to Pride and Prejudice from the early 1900s. (The illustrations, that is, not the book itself!) At some point, I may go back and buy a copy of this to keep in tact, but I have to confess that I cannibalised it in the name of crafty Christmas cheer.

all supplies gathered together

In the name of having a bit of diversity - and because I wasn't sure I had enough illustrations in my Hugh Thompson book to cover all 6 baubles - I made a run to the charity shops back on the high street of the old neighbourhood and picked up two other books to cut apart all for the princely sum of £1.10. (Actually, for that price, I didn't just snag Roald Dahl's The Twits and Homer's Iliad - both of which I already have copies of - but also a dirt cheap copy of Eat, Pray, Love. I read the sequel ages ago and liked it well enough. I figure for 50p, even if it's relatively rubbish, I could throw the same amount away on a chocolate bar.)

So that's 60p for the books, £1 for the baubles (on post-season sale at B&Q), 40p for the gold ribbon to hang them, and about £4 for the glitter spray paint. (I had the glue and paint brush already, but those only added about another £2) All told, about £8 for 6 baubles...but realistically, I only spent about £3 on this project, since there's enough glitter spray for several other projects when I decide to work on those.

After ripping out some of the pages of The Twits with the best illustrations, as well as some snippets of text, I mixed a bit of water with the glue to get a nice Mod Podge-like solution. Then, I'd paint my paste on the baubles and on both sides of my strips of paper, shellacking the paper to the bauble until I had a good covering...

First half done and drying under the keyboard

my paste painting technique

Of course, I have to point out that your hands still get pretty sticky even with the paint brush. The brush is really just to smooth out the strips of paper nicely without it ripping and sticking to your tacky fingers. Eventually, I just put the ribbon on and let the baubles hang under the keyboard in our bay window and decoupaged them there. Of course, that decision was inspired in part by the need to keep E entertained. He's refused to nap until now today, really, having slept in an additional two hours this morning, so I stuck him in the Moby in order to get the first three of my six baubles completed.

Now, the P&P illustrations presented a challenge. You see, the camber of the baubles was drastic enough that I couldn't use any really big illustrations...for that matter, even the small ones were a challenge. So, I cut out individual characters from the half-page reproductions and then filled in the gaps with the captions.

A very Darcy Christmas ornament

Once all of the hideous silver plastic had been hidden away under a layer of paper, I shook up my can of glitter pray paint, cracked open the living room windows, and went to town with a thin layer of spray. I held up one of the book covers behind the ornaments to keep glitter from getting all over my curtains, and eventually - holding to the Sherry Petersik rule of Lots of Thin Coats when it comes to spray paint - I'll go back and get these things a bit more sparkly. Perhaps more Edward Cullen than Liberace. (That's the only time a Twilight reference is a positive thing.)

Another project I'll get the Husband's help with this weekend? Bread bowls. You see, I decided to go out on a limb and make soup for the first time this week. Not that it ended up being that difficult, but it's always a bit daunting when you haven't done something before.

Potatoes, garlic, part of an onion, and a couple of celery stalks gave us a really delicious soup for dinner throughout the week. Specifically,
4 stalks of celery
2 cloves of garlic
4 medium potatoes
2/3 of an onion
4 cups water
2 cubes of chicken bouillon
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste

Basically, you just boil the potatoes in the chicken stock until soft and cook the celery, onion, and garlic in a bit of butter. (Of course, you've chopped everything up before this.) You take maybe 2-3 ladles full of the chicken broth after 10 minutes and add it to the celery, onion, and garlic, and let those cook for another 10 minutes. Chuck everything into the blender and mix it up until it's smooth (or as smooth as it gets) and then combine everything together, adding the milk and adding as much salt and pepper as you see fit. I warn you: this makes a lot of soup. I had to break out my huge teal le Creuset pot to handle this batch of soup. But the thing is, it's simple, it's tasty, and it doesn't require a lot of time to put together. In fact, I did all the prep with a baby strapped to my front.

So those have been my creative outlets for the week. Hopefully, I can get up to something else fun next week, too. Baby willing, that is.

Rearranged

2012-02-07T17:36:00.000Z

Notice anything different? How about now...

Yeah - not only did a new coat rack get installed in E's room, but we also rearranged the whole thing on a whim over the weekend. It was the Husband's idea, actually, and I'm really glad he suggested it. The room feels so much more open now that the shelves are all along one wall. I don't have a picture of the shelves on that last wall yet for two reasons:

there was a whole drying rack of rather personal clean laundry in the way
the shelves are still unorganized and, thus, are a hot mess.

Le sigh. Once I can utilize a few naptimes to get everything in its place, perhaps more pictures will be forthcoming. In the meantime, I'll consider a post about my first foray into soup-making and start looking at paint chips for another project I have in mind...

practising chewing for when those pearly whites come in

Baby's First Snow!

2012-02-05T14:25:00.002Z

Last night saw the first snowfall over our part of Hampshire in E's entire life. I'll be honest with you; he was way less jazzed about this momentous occasion than either of his parents.

why are we doing this whole standing malarkey anyway?

We bundled him up as best we could - to the point of closely resembling the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man - and put him in shoes for the first time ever so that we could rush outside before church this morning to capture our little boy's first encounter with the most awesome variety of frozen water.

what's going on here?

Granted, this will be far more exciting when he's old enough to appreciate being allowed to frolic with reckless abandon through snow drifts higher than his head, but for the moment, it'll have to do.

Welcome, my son, to the wonderful world of snow!

we could get used to this...

LOLs

2012-02-04T19:49:00.002Z

Who knew that jostling E like he's on a PowerPlate was a good way to get some giggles out of him?

Baby's Ten Commandments

2012-02-03T10:22:00.001Z

My latest Facebook status update gave me an idea. Granted, probably an idea that's been done to death in other venues, but it's my blog and I'll do what I want.

E's been suffering with a bad cold for the past few days. Unfortunately he caught it from me. I can't feel too guilty because there's nothing to be done: if he chooses not to let me sleep, I'm ridiculously susceptible to becoming Typhoid Mary, and yet - unless I'm dying - I can't keep the Husband home from work to take care of E so that I can rest and keep from infecting him. Of course, when he's sick, most of the rules I'm learning about raising a tiny human are suddenly even more imperative. Witness the following lessons I've learned:

1. Thou shalt always check to see if thine infant suffers the pangs of hunger when he cries. Verily, this is an assured balm to ease his sorrows.
2. Behold, the fruit of thy womb doth know when the rocking and walking have ceased. If thou shalt cease moving, then shall there be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of gums.
3. Thou shalt have a schedule; yea, and this schedule is thy God. Thou shalt abide by its timetable with much exactness lest thou receive unto thyself a child who is wroth in his weariness. (And again there shall be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of gums)
4. Verily I say unto thee, thy baby must breathe. And yet, lo and behold, the bulb syringe is a scourge and a torment most grievous to be borne. Thou shalt employ it but sparingly and make much atonement for thine offence.
5. A baby's hands are a great joy; yea, they bring much rejoicing when wiggled about or clapped together.
6. Even in slumber, thy child is omniscient: yea, his knowledge is exact. If thou shalt put him down to clean, verily I say unto you that he shall awaken with much swiftness and loud lamentations.
7. Behold, the drum and pipe and tabor do make joyful noise. Yet the drumming thou hearest from thy child's nappy are the sounds of wo and call thee to thy duty. Be thou swift to change these soilings.
8. When sore wailings begin and lamntations wax strong, remember thou that sometimes these things must simply be borne with patience and long suffering and love unfeigned..
9. The sleep of a child is most precious; disturb it not, even to rest the weariness in thy limbs. Bolster thyself with cushions instead to receive strength unto thyself once more.
10. Carry on in thy way with patience and diligence and love thy child with all thy heart and behold his smiles and giggles and cuddles will reward thee with a joy greater than all the treasures of the earth.

And now, in strict adherence to commandment #3 we're going to peace out for a walk around the neighbourhood.

Hair There & Everywhere

2012-02-02T16:24:00.000Z

There's so much I could say about hair. My own curly black locks are something it took me years to appreciate. And if I'm being honest, I still fight against them a bit. I think I'm looking back to the golden age of my hair, when I was about 11 or 12 and it was perfectly curly in it's little pencil-width ringlets and it was long. It's that last bit that's the kicker: ever since I cut my hair back in middle school, I've never realised the sort of elbow-length tresses I've always envied on others.

Plus, I have to add this, I need to find a way to get a decent haircut. I mean, I've had some nice hairstyles, but never a life-altering cut. Mostly because there are two types of hairdressers I've seen in the places where I've lived: white-people hairdressers and black-people hairdressers. Now I'm not being racist here, but for a girl who sits squarely between both camps, I'm screwed. I'm not enough of a sistah to have hair that takes well to relaxers or hot combs or really heavy moisterising creams. Likewise, I can't get into this crucible of every-day hair washing or the low-maintenance "brush it and go" sort of philosophy. For the first, my hair is too dry in its own state to stand up to daily washings: it just gets brittle and fuzzy if I try. And as for brush-and-go? Unless I'm loving the electrocuted poodle look, my curls need to be wet and conditioned in order to re-set, and when straight, these ebony tresses still require a good spritz or two with a leave-in to avoid looking like Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

Of course, this leaves me wondering what sort of hair Ethan will inherit. The Husband and I are both anything but pin-straight in the texture department, so it seems that curls or waves of some sort are a given for our kids. But what about colour? See; here's where things get tricky. We, both of us, are dark-haired. But, Sebastian's dark brown started life as a sunny blond, believe it or not. I actually didn't at first: I was shocked to see baby pictures of a little blond boy who was most definitely my husband. In every other picture I'd seen he was the sole dark-haired child in a sea of blondes in his family. And even my black hair has its auburn traces - my sister would go blonde in the summers as a little girl, and apparently my dad's first moustache managed to grow in like freaky Neapolitan ice cream: horizontal bands of blond, ginger, and brown.

So after a wondering nose wrinkle at his passport photo, I took a closer look at the scant little hairs on E's head today only to discover that - aside from the last vestiges of the hair he was born with in his little infant mullet - some flavour of sandy brown seems like it'll be the order of the day. At least while he's still little. After the first few years, though, it's anybody's guess. Though I admit, I'd be amused if he stayed relatively fair-haired.

Mini-Daddy and Momma

Super Mum

2012-02-01T15:14:00.002Z

There are days when I shrug off my mild-mannered alter-ego to become a human beacon of awesomeness. Okay, so I know you read that last sentence and said to yourself, "Pfft! You? Mild mannered? Whatever." and - of course - you're right. But let's pretend, shall we? I slough off the bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived persona of other days and become an Olympian in the world of parenting. Ethan is dressed, changed, (these days medicated), and enjoys so much fun playtime both on his own and interacting with an insane Children's TV caricature of Yours Truly that he settles down to his daily naps, not only on time, but without much cajoling from his mother.

I run errands, I go for runs or walks, I clean my house like the Pope's going to show up with white Armani gloves on and inspect every surface. Sometimes I even bake. Oh yeah.

The last two days have felt like Super Mum days. I've made pumpkin pie and Swedish Heirloom cookies, taken E to the doctor's and to get his passport photos taken, we've gone on two 2+-mile walks around the neighbourhood, and I've done a fair share of cleaning around the apartment. Show me those white gloves, Benny.

Today in particular was a great day for a walk. I decided to do things properly and put on my trainers before heading out the door with a sleeping baby, so I could run a good 1/3 to 1/2 of the distance I wanted to cover. And I have to say, English neighbourhoods are brilliant for randomly picturesque walks...at least where we live. There's a canal with some willow trees planted beside it, a thatched roof pub just down the street, old narrow bridges for the train tracks, and - my latest discovery - a crenelated Catholic church, complete with atmospheric graveyard! That may make me weird, but I really enjoyed walking through that graveyard with E's stroller.

Anyway, to share some of the Super Mum love, I figured I'd talk a bit more about those Swedish Heirloom cookies. These are one of the Holy Trinity of Christmas cookies I grew up with. When I was little, it wasn't Christmas without my mom baking these, Speculaas, and shortbread jammies. Now, of course, I'm the mom, and so the cookie-baking duties fall to my lot. Good thing I actually managed to learn how to cook through osmosis. (I'm not joking, people: I hated cooking and baking as a kid. I ran and hid. And yet, I'm pretty darn good now, if I do say so myself. It's a miracle that astounds science.)

In the interests of having some cookies to take to lunch with some girlfriends of mine tomorrow, I hit up my buddy Google to look for the recipe. After spot-checking the ingredients of about 4 different recipes, I decided that this link right hurr was accurate enough for my purposes.

Nicely turned out cookie dough

After creaming the butter and adding the icing sugar, you stir in the flour and unceremoniously dump in the almonds, vanilla, and water. Unless, of course, you'd like to add some ceremony to the whole affair; then you can wear a crown and a cape and stir your dough with a royal sceptre.

I admit, I hadn't left my butter/shortening out for long enough, so I resorted to the awkward trick of putting on a small pot of boiling water and jerry-rigging a double boiler to soften everything up enough while I attacked it with our hand mixer. Incidentally, I don't recommend this: until the cookies went in the oven the faint undertones of warm rubber from the bottom of my mixing bowl lingered in the air.

little squished balls of goodness

Dough balls rolled and flattened with the business end of a spoon, I popped them onto the ungreased baking sheet and into the oven for about 16 minutes. I know the instructions I linked to say 12-15, but I think really, 15 is the magic number here...unless you own Satan's oven, that is, and it's powered by the red-hot fires of Hades. Then, maybe, 12 minutes will do just fine.

Of course, for the second half of this whole process, I did have the help of my capable sous chef...

the next batch is ready, chef!

Mostly I just keep him around for decoration. He's just so darn nice to look at!

In the end, the cookies turned out beautifully. I especially enjoyed the thoroughly nostalgic smell of sweet almond baking in the oven. It made me feel about eight years old again, asking to lick the spoon and help with only those steps that allowed me to sneak some cookie dough to tide me over until everything else was ready to eat. I like the idea that my little E and any subsequent rugrats will have similar memories where the smell of these cookies is - to them - one of the harbingers of the Christmas season. I mean, as a historian I'm all about tradition...it gives me something to study!

ready to knock their socks off with sugary almondy bites of joy.

In the meantime, I'll tighten my belt another notch (soon, precious...) and go on imagining that sparkly cape billowing behind me in the breeze. Because...say it with me: I'm Super Mum.

Hello, Bleach, My New Best Friend

2012-01-31T16:23:00.000Z

Hello, Bleach, my new best friend
You've gone and done it yet again
for on the mildew slowly creeping
I left you into the grout seeping
and the vision that was left to greet my eyes
to my surprise
was a pristine new shower
(all sung to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence)

cue the "ping!" sound effect to signify clean

Thank goodness, too. After the last set of bathtub pictures we took of Ethan, the Husband and I realised that our tub surround was in desperate need of TLC. And not just any old dose of extra attention. This tiling and grout needed attention like a hyperactive 4-year-old at their baby sister's birthday party. It needed attention like that friend you know you have who posts leading Facebook status updates like, "Ugh; worst morning eveeeeeeeer!!! SO don't wanna talk about it!" just so that you'll ask them what's wrong. This shower was the red-headed stepchild of dirty showers. Don't get me wrong: I cleaned that thing. I went to it with Ajax and Cilit Bang like my life depended on it. I was legitimately hands-and-knees scrubbing that thing with a bandana on at one point like I was Cinderella.

But as far as those skanky mildew stains were concerned, I might as well have been using the tub to contain an unholy hoard of Chia Pets: whatever wanted to grow there was going to do as it damn well pleased and give a trollish smile to my Ajax-covered knuckles.

I'm sorry; did you want those clean?

After a short Google search, it seemed that the best solution - as with E's crib mattress, was the old school solution. A spray of bleach and a short half-hour wait later, I gave the tiles and grout a short scrub and the shower was in brilliant shape yet again. In fact, the best shape it's seen since we moved in. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it troll midlew stains!

And speaking of new additions and changes around the house...

One of the two prints I ordered for the kitchen! They're both hanging up, but I only just realised that the other picture is shamefully unfocused, and since I'm about to start typing one-handed so as to better attend my wailing son, I can't be bothered to expend the effort to retake the photo. It was a great find from The Word Shop on Etsy. I'm on a bit of an art kick lately: nice framed prints are an easy way to spruce up the house.

And guess who's on his way to a snazzy new UK passport?

this face was made for travel

He was both amused and bemused by the photographer, who was quite charmed by my little boy. Not a bad camera performance for a little boy who's still fighting a cold.

Sick Day

2012-01-30T13:13:00.001Z

What do you do when you're sick and don't have anywhere to be? We go out for story time with friends at the library (thanks Sarah & Sienna!) and then come home to bounce ourselves in the doorway like a pinball. See?

Now if only I could get baby video Inception and have a video of Ethan watching himself in a video. He's transfixed by it...but then, he's pretty enamoured of everything on the computer screen. Even the blue screen of death.

Oh Yeah...I Forgot About That

2012-01-30T12:36:00.001Z

I was playing around on Facebook and just realised that I have some lovely pictures from our April trip up to the Lake District that I never shared.

That was a fantastic weekend. We loaded up the car to the brim with camping gear we'd borrowed from the in-laws. Bagel sandwiches were assembled, clothes were packed, and iPods were readied with an assortment of fun listening. We were set. What we weren't set for were that weekend's gale-force winds. It was the weekend of the Royal Wedding, and while Wills and Kate were very publicly celebrating their I-Do's, I was off to see some mountains and Lake Windermere with my husband of nearly a year, and our almost-four-month-old fetus (who eventually became our unbearably adorable Ethan).

Those aforementioned gale-force winds were the reason that - on the last night of our trip - we slept on a half-ruined air mattress. I say half-ruined because the thing was thankfully constructed with two air pockets; allowing you to inflate it either as a double mattress or a single. I had gone off to use our campsite's rather dubious shower facilities (cleaning yourself in a sketchy shower was - I reasoned - better than not cleaning yourself at all) and the Husband was making ready our lovely tent for the evening.

The tent itself was brilliant. A family-sized affair; we used the back "bedroom" to store our luggage, threw down the giant carpet (seriously; our tent had wall-to-wall) and set up our bed, chairs, and dining table in the main compartment. We had a thick duvet, fluffy pillows, a lamp, a board game (hello travel-sized Settlers of Catan...), dishes...I almost felt like we were cheating. Almost. After all, I had hammered in guy-ropes and held down the waterproof tarpaulin while being buffeted by winds that nearly ripped the tent from my hands (and undid half of the guys in the night). These winds were what ripped the newly re-inflated mattress from Sebastian's grip as I was off getting my shower on. In such conditions, taking the mattress out of the tent to get it close enough to our car to use the plug-in fan inflater was a two-man job. Alas, by halving those numbers, the wind managed to wrench the mattress away and blow it into the path of our trusty gas lamp...which promptly punctured a huge hole in one side of the mattress, rendering it nothing more than useless fuzzy plastic. Bummer.

scoping out a fort on Hadrian's Wall

One of many stunning vistas

arm's-length photos prove that we were there...and had no friends.

heading back to our tent for the night

Otherwise, the hiking, and Lake Windermere, and Hadrian's Wall were all absolutely amazing and one of my favourite weekends away that we've had. In fact, the best lunch we had was parked in the car on the side of a road. The sun was shining spectacularly for our journey home (which would begin shortly) and we had an amazing view of one of the lakes. It was a bit too chilly outside to set up the camping chairs, so we rolled down the windows and played a game of Catan. We don't play this game often because I always lose. Always. And usually in a pretty spectacular fashion.

Really, now that the weather is on its way back to being decent again, we need to start taking advantage if all the awesome historical sites at our disposal, what with living in England and all. That weekend in the Lake District was definitely an experience that needs repeating.

Hello, Cousin...We Meet Again.

2012-01-27T21:33:00.003Z

Rachel and Henry made their way over to us today for some good old-fashioned hanging out. As always, it's great as a mom to have other adult company that doesn't have to wait until your husband gets home from work. As a baby, it's apparently pretty cool to spend some time in earnest contemplation of your cousin. And for me, personally, the following videos are a chance to think, "How did I not notice my baby was so tan?"

As we can see, Ethan is far less loquacious at this point than his cousin is. But they still had a whale of a time holding hands, bouncing up and down, and making determined grabs at one another's faces. I'm just waiting for the day when they can actually talk to each other, and not just talk at the room in general. It'll be like the "talking" twins on YouTube. And let's face it: what's not cute about babies thinking they can communicate with you? Bless them, they're so earnest about it.

Aw...best friends!

Bouncing Means Ups and Downs

2012-01-25T16:10:00.002Z

After the astounding success of letting E have a go in Henry's door bouncer the other week when we made a visit to see little Henners and Auntie Rachel, the Husband and I decided that the time was ripe for E to have a door bouncer of his own. After all, he can hold his head up with reasonable skill now, and he certainly likes to spend time in a standing position. Why not?

Well, on the surface, there was no reason why not. Ethan enjoyed time in the door bouncer, we could find one online for cheap, it was easy to set up (I did it all on my own while bogged down with some suspicious lurgy today), and there's no shortage of door frames in our house in which to position said bouncer.

good times abound

But, wait! What's that squelchy sound that fills my heart with dread? That wet percussive noise that can only be the harbinger of bad news...oh yeah: clad in an unhelpfully leak-prone disposable rather than his sturdy BumGenius nappies, Ethan decided to let rip with a torrential wave of the most disgusting yellow bum-mud. Normally, this only sounds disgusting. This time, it managed to leak all up his back and down his leg onto the muslin I'd placed on the floor as a precautionary measure.

Oh, and when I say all up his back, I mean it. I was wiping baby poop off this boy's shoulders before I ran a small bath in our kitchen sink. His onesie was covered in the sort of yellow sandy wetness that usually accompanies a run on the Grim Challenge course in Aldershot. It seems the pressure of a door bouncer harness and a pooped-in disposable just aren't the most trustworthy of combinations. Perhaps now that we're clean, we'll get a cloth nappy on and give this whole thing another go...

now the possessor of a freshly hand-cleaned baby butt

A Few of My Favourite Things

2012-01-23T16:28:00.000Z

Having gone on a Pinterest binge over the past couple of days, I thought the time was right to share a few of my favourite finds again. Not just those from the furthest reaches of Teh Interwebz, but a few from the real world, as well! How about that?

Some lovely English pottery: courtesy of my mother-in-law. We actually got this as a gift on the day that Ethan was born. It's just the right size to be a lovely salad bowl. I wish I could throw a neat potted bowl. Let's put that on the list of my long-term life goals, shall we?

Don't even ask me why the last picture is sideways. These two bowls (the top is serving size, the bottom is cereal size) came from the French Alps. I still revel in how cool that sounds to me! Anyway, we were there for our first family holiday after getting married, and - yet again thanks to my mother-in-law - we took a trip into this teeny tiny town called St. Sigismond. The whole excursion was specifically to suss out this amazing potter who had turned his garage into a studio and sold gorgeous pieces that he coloured with local natural pigments. He even had an adorable 6-year-old son who made a few coat hangers that my friend Kari bought, and who seemed amazed and transfixed at the number of Euros we brought out to pay his dad for our insane pottery hoard.

And now....teh Interwebz:

can you tell yet I'm a pottery fiend?

cutesy, but cute.

a nice touch of the sleek and retro

Riviera anyone?

Because, who doesn't want a good nail polish?

a good chair for reading is essential...and it rocks ;)

Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have pictures, not only of a nice outing, but of my belated Christmas present finally arrived and displayed in all its glory. Of course, the latter depends on making the time for a small project this evening once the Husband returns from work.

And speaking of small projects, Young House Love - one of my all-time faves - is staging, some time soon, another Pinterest Challenge...and I think I'll be taking part this time around. You see, I have this:

lovely idea just hanging around on my Thanksgiving/Christmas pinboard, politely twiddling its thumbs, waiting on me to find the motivation to round up some snazzy vintage-y paper and go to town exercising my crazy crafting skillz. Crafty projects are good: they give me something to do during nap times when I'm listening to whatever podcast seems most interesting that day. Anywho, when I actually complete this project, I'll be sure to share all of its sticky decoupaged details with you right here. Hey: I'm at home with a 3-month-old all day, I need to share this with someone who has a sound grasp of the English language. :)

The Best Sundays

2012-01-22T17:15:00.000Z

...are days like today. We've made it through church without too much fussing (and E behaved himself, too! Small joke...very small). I'm toasty and warm snuggled up on the couch. We watched a David Attenborough documentary over a yummy lunch of chicken jalfrezzi and naan. My baby is sleeping cuddled up in the crook of my arm. And from the kitchen is the insanely scrumptious smell of my husband...baking cinnamon buns. Though I have to say, he smells pretty scrummy on his own, too!

let the drooling begin...

I think now it's time to dig into a bit of Conan Doyle before I skype with die Familie. Le sigh: this is the good life.

time for hot chocolate and a good book!

The Lord of the Dance

2012-01-20T16:38:00.000Z

As I mentioned earlier in the day on Facebook, Ethan is using his nappy changes lately to perfect the art of céilí dancing. He seems to think that he's Michael Flatley...either that or having a freshly cleaned bum is just really exciting now.

Since I mentioned it earlier, I think I really ought to do it justice and show you just what I'm talking about right now...

Speaking Too Soon

2012-01-20T11:12:00.002Z

Earlier in the week I praised E for sleeping a solid 8 hours in a row. I was ecstatic: my 12-week old son was sleeping through the night like an adult. But every high must have a corresponding low, and so yesterday E refused to take more than a 10-minute cat nap all day and fought his way to a 10pm bedtime, constantly re-awakening and ferociously attempting to scratch his face as best he could from within his mittens.

One bright spot before all the screaming and scratching of the evening began? The world's cutest bubble bath after I got back from the gym. (On a side note: throw yo hands up for the first 5 lbs. of baby weight lost, y'all! Holla!)

livin' large...

working on the smoldering male model look.

he seems pleased with his crown of bubbles

rocking a beard like Brigham Young.

Let's see if today we can't get back to sleeping like a champ. I'll even bribe him by taking him out to get whatever toy most strikes his fancy at the store. Baby Boy still has some Christmas money he can spend.

Tongue Untied

2012-01-16T17:31:00.000Z

We fixed it! One quick snip and suddenly, my baby boy can feed like a champ: no clicking noises or excessive fussiness required.

They say babies often sleep through the procedure, and I can see why! Ethan woke up long enough to be indignant about having a stranger's fingers in his mouth, then fed a bit to nurse (haha, get it?) his offended pride, and was promptly asleep again before I even got out of the Maternity ward.

the Phantom of the Opera is there...

We tried to snap some pictures of the snip, but Mr. Paparazzi-Hands over here just wasn't having it today. So we took some video instead. He sticks his tongue out in all its glory early on...about 8 seconds in, but I had to keep filming just in case (and I caught some cute yawns for my trouble!).

It's funny: I texted the Husband and my mother-in-law after we were done, and the latter praised me - not only for the TLC I dish out on my boys - but for my "stoic nature". I suppose it is a virtue to be able to unflinchingly do, or watch, the difficult things for your kids when you know it's ultimately for their good. I never really thought of that as a mothering trait before...

Baby Steps

2012-01-12T15:18:00.001Z

I have accepted the fact that some time in the relatively near future, I'll have to let Ethan sleep in his crib. In his own room. Where I can't watch him every three minutes during the night. On the plus side, this means I'll get my bed back. I'll only have to share with one boy, rather than two. On the down side...I'm a clingy momma. I confess it freely. When he's not screaming and I don't have to be anywhere or get something ready, I'm perfectly happy to sit on the couch with a drink and cuddle my baby and watch TV. I think it's the cutest thing when E falls asleep holding my hand, or clutching my shirt with his head resting against my shoulder.

I've tried putting him in the bassinet in our room. When he was really little, he'd sleep in it for maybe 3 hours at a time. As he got older, that figure didn't improve at all, and Yours Truly taking a succession of 3-hour naps at night just wasn't cutting it. So, one night we put him to sleep in our bed and got a miraculous 5 1/2 uninterrupted hours of blissful sleep. We haven't looked back.

Now, though, in anticipation of getting back to some semblance of a normal sleeping arrangement, I've started putting him in his room for naps. Said naps don't tend to last for long, but hey: the point is to set up the habit of using his room as a place to sleep so it's familiar by the point that I want him sleeping through the night in there. Today, I don't think we got more than 10 minutes sleep at a time in the crib, but it's a start.

if only this would last

Atmosphere and Exercise

2012-01-11T15:22:00.000Z

Today we finally got back out for a walk. Between the rain (which is a legitimate excuse) and the laziness (which isn't), E and I haven't managed to drag ourselves out for a walk in quite a while. Since before Christmas, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, it doesn't help that he's been slightly fussier than normal lately, and quite a few days - including yesterday - were pretty much entirely taken up by me pacing the house with him in my arms. I couldn't have put him down long enough to get ready for a walk, much less actually take one with him in the Moby or the stroller for an hour. For now, I've just tricked him into a nap by nestling him into Seb's pillow in his crib. Top it off with a bit of milk, his binky, and a few rounds with the Brahms' lullaby dog, and I've got myself a peacefully sleeping baby: no jiggling or pacing required. (Let's just see how long it lasts. I'd really like to get my Sherlock Holmes on and finally get past the first page of A Scandal in Bohemia...)

Taking a break to cuddle.

It's been a cool and overcast day today, though lucky it hasn't threatened rain like yesterday. We had a lovely walk out on the MOD grounds nearby. There's plenty of scrub land just the next town over that the MOD uses for training and testing tanks, and the locals use for dog-walking, cross-country running, nature-walking, and - come December - the Grim Challenge. Now granted, it's not Regent's Park or the canal where I used to run when we both lived in London (le sigh), but it's lovely having so much practical wilderness so close by. It's relaxing, really.

gorse bushes and pine trees

Our other discovery this week? I think we have a Daddy's Boy on our hands. He's much more excited and talkative when Daddy comes home than at any other time in the day...even on fussy days.

Come home so we can play!

Shout Hosanna...Quietly.

2012-01-10T14:03:00.000Z

There is no sight more beautiful, no sound more lovely, and no event more welcome than to behold a sleeping baby. Especially when that sleeping baby was alchemically transformed from a screaming thrashing bundle of rage into a peaceful slumbering cherub after hours of bouncing, jiggling, rocking, walking, feeding, burping, changing, and a long ride to nowhere in the car. True story.

"some peace (and quiet) I give unto you..."

New Year, New Look

2012-01-06T22:50:00.001Z

So I can't get a new look for myself so quickly (oh how I wish), but I can change up the look of the blog once again.

if only my figure would revamp so easily...

I'm sure it'll go through another several incarnations before I find a layout and theme I'm willing to settle upon. My big problem? I can't choose between the really bold colourful things and the sleek, elegant, subtly-coloured things. It's a cruel dichotomy: bold or subtle, loud or muted. The bigger problem is that I read most of the blogs from whence I'd take inspiration in Google Reader. And while Google Reader is great for collecting all my beloved reading material from Teh Interwebz into one conveniently organized place, it does take away all of the fun background and formatting that I'd like to consider for my own blog.

Other things that are changing their look? My living room. E was kind enough to let me take down the Christmas tree today, so my bay window can now house my stationary chest/bench again. Oh! And I got myself a lovely Christmas present from Etsy store, TheWordShop...

Mine won't be diner-mustard-and-ketchup coloured, but a lovely textured charcoal. I decided the kitchen needed some wall art love just as well as the rest of the house. Of course, I still have a huge blank wall in our bedroom to fill. Insert the devious finger drumming here...complete with smirk and patented Dreamworks Hero Eyebrows. (Just Google it.)

A Day in the Life

2012-01-05T22:09:00.001Z

It's a busy job being 10 weeks old. People are constantly asking for your autograph...

Lemme get your John Hancock on that...

You've got to make time to hang out with your crew...

do you wanna roll wit' us?

And of course, sometimes you just need to take a break from it all...

scoping out the mysteries of the universe...

err...make that the iTunes visualizer...

Of course there's also breastfeeding clinics to get your tongue-tie diagnosed, some screaming to exercise the lungs (and remind people to feed you), a few soiled diapers, and nonchalantly facing the indignity of being stripped naked in public to be placed on a scale. (12 lbs. 15 oz. When you've got it, flaunt it!)

Also; aside from Sophie the creepy squeaky giraffe, I named everything in that picture of E and his toys. Now, Nom the Fish (a name and an imperative!) and Horsey are - I admit - a bit more mainstream, but Humbert? Marmaduke? Sherlock? I know I call them as I see them, so I have only myself to blame, but my son's playthings sound like the members list of a poncey Victorian gentlemen's club! (Back when the clubs actually housed something akin to gentlemen and not just big-bosomed floosies with nipple tassles and the perverts who kept them employed.) All he needs to seal the deal is a stuffed sheep named Algernon.

Say it with me: "Iwillnotbuymoretoys...Iwillnotbuymoretoys..."

Floating Along, Singing a Song

2012-01-03T16:04:00.000Z

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the first DIY project of 2012!

That's right: it was time to get back to work on the bare walls of our bedroom. Seeing as how one of the joint New Year's resolutions the Husband and I embarked upon was to keep the surfaces in our bedroom tidy and free of clutter, it seemed only appropriate that we get a bit more storage space for our bedroom. And what lovelier way to accomplish that than to install a floating shelf above the bed?

Well, straightforward as this project was, there were still a few logistical concerns. The first? The crap-tacular quality of all the walls in our flat. You can see the beams and studs bulging through the paint on at least two of our bedroom walls. Not to mention the patently lazy job the previous tenants did of patching the holes they made trying to beautify the place. The second of these problems, thankfully, can be covered by our own attempts to slap some snazzy artwork on the walls. Of course...that relies on the first problem not being so much of a problem. You see, we'd assumed that since our bedroom has 2 exterior walls, those walls would be sturdier when it came to drilling holes. Wrong. It was the same hollow-sounding Fraggle hotel as the other walls.

Anyway, after a trip to our beloved B&Q, it was time to get cracking.

Where do I start? I brought my own hammer!

Since there's a small aisle on my side of our bed, putting the shelf on the same wall as the door was out of the question...unless you wanted it so high you couldn't reach it without a step-ladder. That left us with the wall over the bed since the other two walls are occupied by ~~an unruly crowd of feculent protesters~~ a window and a large mirror.

The Husband broke out our/his tools and got to work. The shelf was centred over the headboard and I volunteered to sit up in bed to help gauge an appropriate height at which to hang our shelf. It was a floating shelf, BTWay, because we didn't want to run the risk of cheap and tacky-looking brackets. Plus: the stuff we wanted to put on the shelf wasn't that heavy anyway, so we weren't too worried about the mounting for a floating shelf being too flimsy.

Once smaller pilot holes were drilled (smaller holes are easier to centre), the Husband enlarged the holes with a bigger drill bit and hammered in - you guessed it - the Rawl plugs. Side Note: now that I have a baby to entertain during these projects, Rawl plugs must now be referred to in a gravelly voice akin to a lion's roar every time their name is pronounced.

With the Rawl plugs in place, it was time to hang the fitting for our shelf. A bonus was that this was the easiest mounting to fit since it could be screwed into the wall on its own and then the shelf would be positioned and secured once everything else was already in place.

The shelf was then slotted onto its fitting and loaded up with some of the items we wanted to clear off of other surfaces in the room. Alas, the pictures don't quite do it justice, but it looks fantastic now that it's done. Why didn't we get to this project sooner?

in all its de-cluttering glory

What else are you looking for? This post is over.

Hello, Goodbye

2012-01-01T14:11:00.000Z

Well, we're at the start of another year, which means it's time to resolve once again to make a few much-needed - or at least much-desired - improvements in my day-to-day life. In all honesty, I'm not the biggest of New Year's resolution-makers. I'm pretty rubbish about keeping up the momentum to stick to my goals for the whole year. So this year, I'm making resolutions that I'm already inclined to keep:

Get back in shape and down to my pre-pregnancy weight by Victoria's graduation.
Train for and run a half marathon.
Practise my flute again at least once a week.
Keep up with my blog as much as I did this year.
Keep the surfaces in the bedroom tidy.
Try to read 1 book a month around my schedule with Ethan.

I think that's a pretty satisfactory list of goals. Of course, the other thing that New Year's is good for is lists of superlatives from the previous year. And so, without further ado...

Best day of 2011: 26 October! The pushing was over and I had a gorgeous baby boy.
Biggest adjustment of 2011: Ethan is the biggest adjustment without a doubt.
Most hectic event of 2011: Angus and Emily's wedding. Though really, nearly anything after Ethan's birth would qualify. That said, the wedding was also really nice. Pictures to follow.
Best movie we saw: The King's Speech (though other favourites were Sherlock Holmes, X-Men: First Class, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.)
Worst movie we saw: I can't believe I'm about to admit that I watched this, but...Twilight. Oh yeah: on holiday over the summer we decided to finally bow to our morbid curiosity and watch the first Twilight movie. I can't get that time back.
Mistake that won't be made again: having a baby so near cold and flu season! It's hard enough taking care of a small baby, but doing it when you're feeling like death is even worse. At least if Ethan had been a bit older, it would have felt slightly easier.
Best decision ever: I think that one's pretty obvious...

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Farthest trip from home: Being in Utah in January to visit my family for Christmas/New Year's.
Most fun holiday: I loved the trip to Utah, but I had loads of fun when we went up to the Lake District back when the Royal Wedding took place.

Daddy and son

Trying to stay stylish

Yummy wedding lunch

The newest edition to the family

Gorgeous centrepieces for the wedding

My son the crumb-catcher...

another year over, and a new one just begun...

And Now, For A Word From Our Sponsors

2011-12-21T19:05:00.002Z

Today was pretty darn good as days go. Thanks to an unfortunately sick baby, I got up earlier than I normally do. Usually, this would be a cause for tears and a good long wallow through the trenches of self-pity, but not so today. With my early start, I managed to:

call the NHS direct line to make sure of what medicines I can give Ethan for his cold. There's not much on the list at a mere 2 months old.
Call the GP to get him an appointment to have his first round of immunizations taken care of.
Go to Boots and pick up a bulb syringe, saline spray, and a little something extra.
Go to M&S to try and hunt down ties for my brother-in-law's wedding in 6 days.
Call my mother-in-law to coordinate the details for picking up said ties before we head to their house on Christmas Eve Eve. (Yeah; it's juvenile and redundant-sounding, but I had to.)
Go to Sainsbury's to do some last-minute grocery shopping for odds and ends.
Pick up lunch at McDonald's and get back home to put away said groceries and take a break watching an episode of Downton Abbey.
Head back out to the GP to keep the aforementioned appointment for E's shots.
Swing by Boots again to pick up some Calpol to keep Ethan happy if he's feverish or coldy or fussy and angry after his doctor's appointment.
Get back home, watch some more Downton Abbey, then tidy up, get dressed to hit the gym, and get dinner started.

All this motivation is brought to you by...nail polish.

I fully admit my shallower side. Nice new nail polish got me through the day. Now if only the Husband would get home so I could actually go to the gym and drop my book back at the library...

A lovely curry dinner

Open Letter to My Son

2011-12-15T15:20:00.000Z

Dear Ethan,

yup. What my bedroom curtains were missing was the lovely aroma of baby urine. Thanks for adding that missing ingredient by thoughtfully soaking said curtains during your diaper change today. I mean, hey: anybody can pee on their own clothes. An amateur can even pee on their mom's clothes; but only a pro can take aim and soil the curtains. I salute you, little dude. Peeing that far behind your own head takes stamina. Never let it be said that any kid of mine did things by halves. Way to be a champ...and a little human super soaker.

Sincerely,

Momma

Oh me?

A Smile?

2011-12-13T15:20:00.002Z

After yesterday's first official legitimate smile, today was time to attempt to recreate the phenomenon. Because, let's face it: if it's not on film I can't talk about it obsessively! :) The thing is, E's smiled so infrequently thus far that every time I can coax even the tiniest of smirks out of him, I freak out like it's the best thing since Nutella on sliced bread. Yesterday morning's smile, therefore, produced nothing less than a fit of excited giggles that could put a 13-year-old Justin Bieber fan to shame. Hey: you've got to embrace the patheticness that comes with being a parent. Suddenly, your child's every sniffle and fart is a cause for celebration. And by celebration, I mean putting on the embarrassing baby voice and congratulating your baby:

"Look at that! That was such a good burp. Yes it was! Yesitwaaaaas!"
"You peed, baby! You peeeeeeed! And it's everywhere! Yes it is! You peed everywhere!"
"[gasp] It's a naked baby! It's a naked baby in the bath! You're having a bath, baby boy: you're having a bath!"

(Admitting it is the first step. But admitting it doesn't mean I'll stop. Unlike other addicts, I can't just quit any time I want. I know that now.)

As with anything with a baby, trying to capture a smile on camera takes several attempts. Here now are the very best of our outtakes:

Power to the people! Holla!

Wassup!?

How you doin'?

So...you feelin' lucky...punk?

Flash those cute little gums!

Unfortunately, the best smile I've seen yet still hasn't been immortalised on memory stick, but we'll get there. The best attempts seem to come in the morning, so tomorrow - as Miss Scarlet said - is another day!

Getting in the Spirit

2011-12-12T17:49:00.002Z

We went on a walk today. A nice long one, too. What does that have to do with getting into the Christmas spirit? My iPod and the attendant podcasts and songs. I've been struggling to feel like it's finally the Advent season and that Christmas is right around the corner. As it turns out, what I needed wasn't so much my Advent Santa counter, or my Grandma's Nativity, or even my tree. I needed Christmas music! So, I got out into the seasonal chill with Ethan in his jogging stroller and popped in my headphones to enjoy some decent Yuletide tunes and really start getting into the swing of things.

Hey you: keep walking.

Mommy and son catching some mid-winter rays.

With that in mind, here are my current top 12 Christmas listens. Why 12? Because there are12 days of Christmas, fool! And why "listens"? Because one isn't a song, but rather a testament to my super nerd status (a.k.a. a Christmas podcast). PS- this is where I insist that you follow the links...for your own good and all.

Gabriel's Message - Sting
Gaudete - Medaeval Baebes
O Come, O Come Emmanuel - The Fray
Happy X-Mas (War Is Over) - Maroon 5
Do They Know It's Christmas? - Band Aid
This Christmas - Chi Rho
In Dolce Jubilo - Medaeval Baebes
Mistletoe and Holly - Frank Sinatra
Christmas is All Around - "Billy Mack" aka Bill Nighy
Ave Maria - Jewel
I Saw Three Ships - The Lower Lights
A Christmas Primer - Mormon Matters Podcast

The podcast I highly recommend to those with a strong mental constitution. I make that caveat because there is lots of academic banter and discussion about the intricacies of the Christmas story in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and a decent amount of concentration is required to get something out of it. The nice thing is that at the end, the conclusion of the discussion reaffirms everyone's faith and their wholehearted enjoyment of the Christmas season and its message no matter the historical vagaries of the scriptural account.

Gotta love having a baby as an excuse to catch up on all sorts of interesting listening and watching during the day. Here's to jingling bells, dashes through the snow, one-horse open sleighs, and continuing to get into the mood as Christmas approaches!

6 Week Photo Shoot

2011-12-08T18:43:00.001Z

Has it really been 6 whole weeks since I first got to hold my amazing baby boy? It's still weird every now and then to stop and remember, "Oh yeah: I'm a mom now! That's my son." Calling Ethan my son still hasn't lost its novelty. I know I spend every day with him pretty much non-stop, but that doesn't mean it's sunken in yet; the reality of having a child.

That said, I have gotten pretty used to basking in his above-average cuteness. I've got the whole indecently-proud-momma routine down pat. I can be nauseatingly infatuated with my child like the best of 'em. Just witness, for instance, the lovely photo shoot we staged after watching about 6 episodes of Up All Night. Which, I have to add, is most definitely my new TV jam. Line most true to life? When Christina Applegate tells her BFF that the only way she fit into her work clothes was because, "I'm wearing a girdle and two pairs of Spanx!" Preach, sistah girl; preach.

I see you...

Having a whale of a time (har har)

stretching

And now...Blue Steel!

Frank Sinatra's got nothing on these blue eyes

This is my serious face.

Trim the Tree...Like A Boss

2011-12-07T20:09:00.001Z

That's right: the other way we ring in Baby Jesus Month in this house? By trimming the hell out of our fake Christmas tree. My wreath had already been hung on the living room door, so now it was time to break out the big guns. It says something about me that the largest collection of stuff that I personally have stored in our hall closet is a giant box of the Christmas decorations. My grandmother's Nativity set from the Holy Land, the tree, the lights, and every last Royal Historic Palaces and Gisela Graham Christmas ornament I could get my hands on for the past 4 years. As the Husband so aptly put it when I cackled with glee, I am the anti-Grinch: nefariously drumming my fingers and twirling the proverbial goatee as I contemplate new and exciting cinnamon-scented depths of holiday cheer and festivity.

I got out the Nativity set. I unwrapped the fake candied fruits. I untangled the gold pine cones so lovingly crafted by my own two hands. I cranked up the Christmas music like I was DJing a frat party and - appropriately - did my best loud drunken co-ed impression as I belted out the chorus to Band-Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Why? Because it's Christmas, fools. And I do Christmas like a boss. Next stop: Christmas cookies!

6 feet of Yuletide glory...

a new addition this year: tiny feathered birds

another new addition: red and white jingle belled shapes

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2011-12-03T18:01:00.001Z

I guess it's December now, which in our house means it's time for the Grim Challenge. After all, what better way is there to ring in the month where we celebrate the Baby Jesus than by running through mud, water, and muddy water for 9 miles? Of course, having had a baby 5 weeks ago, I haven't actually been capable of running for more than 30 yards for the past 5 months or so. So I rung in ~~Baby Jesus Month~~ December by standing in the cold with a stroller, drinking hot chocolate, and sneakily feeding my baby in the back seat of the car while the Husband ran the course.

Next year, I will return - in all my glory - to run the insane cross-country that is the Grim. But for now, I was content to be the photographer. Well...one of many photographers. You see; Seb decided to run in costume this year, on a dare, and so he ended up being quite the centre of attention through the whole thing. In fact, as I was waiting with Little E at the last giant crater full of water, everyone cheered the loudest when he came charging through in what was left of his cardboard and duct tape masterpiece. Take a look:

Like the tag says, let's get dirty!

Slogging through the last crater!

40 hours, 300 metres of duct tape, and a shed-load of patience got us this impressive robot costume. Now if only we could have gotten a miniature model put together for Little E...

Enjoying It

2011-11-30T16:38:00.001Z

After getting to stare at E during our second run through the old neighbourhood today, I decided I wanted to share some of my favourite moments of him. Sadly, I haven't managed to get video yet of when he chuckles in his sleep. That is a moment that needs documenting for posterity. So does the way he cuddles up against me when I pick him up after a diaper change. He seems to suddenly forget that I was the person airing out his naked butt, much to his discomfort, and I'm instantly transformed back into the warm cuddly person who makes the food.

So, for everyone's mutual enjoyment: some of the best footage of Mr. EJJD:

Yarrrrgh! Avast ye scurvy sea dogs!

Little E on the day he was born. It's absolutely crazy to me how much he's changed in just the past month!

1 week old and enjoying Daddy's tasty finger.

Hey, where'd that finger go?

A blissful moment of sleep.

When you're sick in bed and don't want to get up, you need lots of gear in and around the bed with you in order to take care of yourself and your baby. Here's E lounging with some of his swag.

Getting close to a smile as we do a bath-time photo shoot.

Flash those baby blues.

Hey there little sunspot.

Rocking the freshly-bathed cloth diaper look. The jury's still out on those cloth diapers, by the way. We've been switching them in and out with the rest of our stash of disposables and the Husband and I haven't quite made up our minds about which are better. Obviously, the cost of cloth is a huge mark in its favour, but we're still working out the kinks with leaks where the cloth diapers are concerned. They seem to saturate much more quickly, and especially the BumGenius brand I bought are better suited to a chunkier little chunk. Ethan doesn't quite have the thunder thighs necessary to pull those off yet: he's still very long and thin as babies go. That said, the cloth diapers seem to be much gentler on his little butt as far as rash is concerned...but that could just be confirmation bias or correlation of the increased use of cloth diapers with the disappearance of a rash that was clearing up anyway.

Somehow, working in a comment on the possible logical fallacies I might be employing makes it feel so much more acceptable to have spent an entire paragraph discussing the optimum covering of my son's bits and pieces. Know what else makes it feel more acceptable, too? A hilarious and hilariously accurate set of topically relevant infographics from the obscenely entertaining blog, How To Be A Dad:

And with that ~~giggle~~ vomit-inducing visual; I leave you.

Small Mercies

2011-11-29T16:18:00.001Z

Thank goodness I've spent the weekend at home sick with a baby and not at home with a sick baby. If nothing else, it's letting me catch up on my movie watching...

Plenty To Be Thankful For

2011-11-26T15:54:00.001Z

This year, obviously, was our first Thanksgiving with children. It's also the first Thanksgiving in two years that I've actually celebrated on the Thursday. (Which makes it the first Thanksgiving I've done myself that's happened on Thanksgiving.) Truth be told, I'm impressed with myself. Seven adults is the largest gathering I've ever done Thanksgiving dinner for, and to have managed the feat doing all the cooking myself with a month-old baby in the background is pretty good. That said, there are many tricks of the trade required to pull off such holiday splendour with tiny humans in the mix, and so I submit to you my own tried and tested rules for The Holidays...With Children.

Turkey Day Happy Dance

Rule number one about trying to conquer the holidays with children: do things in shifts. 2 Days Before: made pumpkin pie. 1 Day Before: Prepped ingredients for turkey and chopped potatoes for mashed potatoes. 3 Hours Before: put turkey in oven. 1 Hour Before: made biscuit dough. 30 Minutes Before: boiled & seasoned mashed potatoes, boiled mixed vegetables, baked biscuits. 10 Minutes Before: made gravy, microwaved stuffing.

Rule number two: Get help. The Husband came home early to watch Little E and to clean up the living room and set the table while I got the cooking done. Whenever it's possible, definitely make the most of the whole division of labour idea. It's a life saver. Yummmmmm... (Anybody who remembers the '90s totally saw that coming.)

Rule number three: simplify everything. Instead of making my own pie crust, I bought pre-made crust that I just had to roll out. Instead of buttermilk biscuits, I used a slightly simpler recipe for baking powder biscuits. Instead of making my own stuffing, I bought a nice instant stuffing at the grocery store. Oh, and I had all the brothers and sisters bring drinks instead of trying to find room in my fridge for them all week. Know your limits: and with a baby to look after, your biggest limit will be time. Babies need feeding and changing and holding, so any shortcuts you can take to make Thanksgiving dinner easier on you are a good idea.

In the end, everything worked out really well and we had - as usual - a great time. The evening was peppered with lots of sharing of the latest humorous finds from Teh Interwebz; which seems to have become a tradition with our family Thanksgiving celebrations now. I guess this is what you get when the gathered family consists of people aged 17-28...well, now aged 1 month to 28 years.

Let's feed the baby things he can't eat!

Of course, now that Thanksgiving has passed, while I spend the next month eating turkey sandwiches and turkey soup (you owe it to yourself to use all parts of the proverbial buffalo) I'll be gearing up for Christmas. I get to start playing my 200-song strong Christmas playlist in iTunes, and set up my Christmas tree, and wrap presents, and find a tiny Santa hat in which to take exploitative pictures of my son, and watch Love Actually and The Bishop's Wife, and bake speculaas, and sing carols, and basically become the most obnoxious fountain of holiday cheer this side of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Back on Track

2011-11-23T19:34:00.001Z

Today was a good day. After a nap that lasted deliciously and sinfully into the afternoon hours (oh yeah, having a new baby boy means I now have an excuse to stay in bed until 12:30) I did something I haven't done in months. Quite seriously. I went for a run. Wait, let me say that with all the appropriate gravitas and feeling that it requires... (ahem)

I WENT ON A RUN!!!

(I think that I now owe five Hail Marys and six Mea Culpas to Lynn Truss, patron saint of punctuation and pedantic adherence to the rules of grammar.)

I laced up my trainers, popped on a sports bra (on top of my nursing bra, 'cause I'm ~~cool~~ lazy like that), got Ethan all bundled up, and broke out the jogging stroller to help it fulfil the first half of its purpose: to let me jog. Oh, what a glorious feeling to be back in my exercise gear!

We drove back to the old neighbourhood and took a run through the streets and around the playing fields. In the true spirit of maternal multi-tasking, my run through the streets was really a run to the grocery store so I could get celery and carrots to have aromatics for my Thanksgiving turkey tomorrow.

If I can do this Thanksgiving, I can do any Thanksgiving. I will be the multi-armed god of Thanksgiving...complete with nose ring and unnecessary animal appendages. The pie has been baked, the herbs are on the counter, the potatoes are cut and waiting to be boiled and mashed, the aromatics and turkey are cosy in the fridge, and I finally have a turkey baster. It only took me two Thanksgiving dinners without one to get my act together, but I am now officially kitted out and prepared for Thanksgiving culinary mastery.

Wish me luck, people. I'm back on my way to being basically amazing. Stay tuned.

That Fabric Saved My Life

2011-11-21T22:53:00.001Z

Praise the sweet Lord for my Moby Wrap...that's all I've got to say. Thursday and Friday I was stuck inside all day sitting on my butt watching movies. Lots to complain about, right? Well, when you're tethered to the bed with a baby and movies are the only form of entertainment as you come to a new, deep, and abiding sympathy for milk cows, sitting on your butt watching anything quickly becomes an activity you'd like to take a break from. Enter the Moby.

solidarity, Sistah!

Today, thanks to the Moby (and some judicious use of the magic calming powers of the car seat beforehand), I was able to get out of the house and take a nice walk round the neighbourhood. Because E is such a fan of being held against my chest, the Moby was perfect: I settled him in - long legs dangling out this time (he's not a fan of the newborn hug hold that requires legs tucked up frog-like inside the wrap) - and within the first 10 minutes of our walk, he was KO. So I tucked his little head into one of the pockets on the wrap and kept up my nice walk while E had a nice nap.Success!

Life saver!

Tomorrow, I think we'll test the soporific qualities of the car and drive back to the old neighbourhood to jog around the playing fields with the stroller. Who knows - perhaps I can even get the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner done tomorrow if the car can work its magic to coax my baby into a deep enough slumber.

Let's make a date, gorgeous...

The Unfairness of Life (lesson #56)

2011-11-20T21:57:00.001Z

Explain to me how my son can remain perfectly and blissfully asleep whilst letting loose a squeal that would make little piglets proud and subsequently wakes up every other member of this family.

Violently jerked awake by tiny baby screams in the middle of a REM cycle, the Husband and I both snapped open bloodshot eyes and rolled around in bed like thrashing eels trying to figure out why our son was so horribly displeased with the world only to discover that he screams in his sleep.

Talk about a phrase you never thought you'd utter with any degree of seriousness..."he screams in his sleep."

What has my world come to?

the deceptively peaceful look of a sleeping infant

First Steps

2011-11-18T19:16:00.001Z

Sometimes, first steps involve no steps at all. Or in this case, only the number of steps from the bed to the kitchen back to the changing table and then - you guessed it - back to the bed.

Yesterday was the first day I was at home with Ethan by myself all day. The first true test of being a mom all on my own. Okay, yes: if we're being technical, I'm not doing this all on my own. I have the Husband, and his family, and my own mom to call on for advice and commiseration. I have friends here who have kids of their own...I'm decently well sorted when it comes to lines of support. But, let's face it: at the end of the day I'm Ethan's mother. I'm the one who has to keep him fed and changed and happy and well-rested when Sebastian's at work. I have to sing him songs and recite nursery rhymes and teach him how to say his ABC's.

As first days go, it wasn't bad. He took several naps (so did I), I got some cleaning done, I caught up on a few of my TV shows (oh Grey's Anatomy...how I've missed you.), and I even got some milk set aside for those nighttime feeds when I just can't drag myself out of bed and leave the whole affair in the Husband's capable hands. Despite not making it out on the mid-afternoon walk I had in mind, yesterday went swimmingly.

Today, on the other hand, was a bit harder. Yes, I still watched a movie and a few episodes of Glee, but E refused to sleep unless I was holding him. And even then he didn't sleep very much at all. Every time I tried to get some food set aside for Seb to feed him with in the middle of the night, E got so hungry that I had to feed him whatever I'd stored up, with the result that now, at 7:30, I have yet to get a bottle in the fridge for him so that my tired bedraggled ass can sleep at 3 in the morning when E's been asleep for a sum total of 2 hours and is up again to demand MOAR FOODZ.

To be honest, I was impressed that he sat in his car seat long enough for me to make some strategic bathroom trips, let alone to quickly vacuum the hallway like I'd been wanting to for ages now. You know the priorities of your life have shifted when "free time" is the time you use to do basic things like shower, do your hair, and clean your house. Forget about catching up on TV shows, reading that book that you checked out from the library two months ago, or browsing through Google feed reader to catch up on all the good blog posts; Nope! Time when you're not attached to the baby is reserved for face-washing, leg-shaving, and floor-sweeping.

At some point in the very near future, I'm going to get this boy on enough of a schedule to get him out for a daily walk/run so that Yours Truly can start shrinking back to a normal size. Hell, forget my old Banana Republic corduroys, I'll settle for being able to wear my rings again! That finger has felt nekkid for a very long time without my engagement and wedding rings on it. And nekkid fat fingers are not conducive to rebuilding self-esteem in the face of enforced post-partum inactivity and angry stretch marks.

Good thing I've got a cute baby out of all of this. Three weeks may not seem long in the grand scheme of things, but so far it's stretching on more than long enough. I can't wait to get back to a normal level of fitness and find a good routine with Ethan during the day. Those two things are my Christmas wishes...oh, and some cute pumps wouldn't go amiss, either...

Missing:

2011-11-11T13:19:00.001Z

Missing: one slightly-above-average, but well-loved figure.
Distinctive features: well-proportioned bust, shapely hips, dress size 6...oh, and a waist.
Missing since: month 5 of pregnancy. Since delivery, said figure hasn't yet returned. Responds to long workouts at the gym and the promise of cute Banana Republic clothing.

If seen, please return to me...it'll make the sleep-deprived haze of having a 2-week old baby so much nicer.

In case the above didn't make it painfully obvious, I went clothes shopping for the first time in ages yesterday. Buying clothes for a rapidly expanding baby bump was something I could do. Buying clothes for this awkward in-between stage is weird. I'm no longer technically in maternity clothes, but every top needs to be - ahem - "easy access" so that I can feed Ethan while looking like I'm still old enough to dress myself.

It's a slightly depressing feeling to realise that while you're no longer pregnant, you still couldn't fit into most of your pre-pregnancy wardrobe for love or money. Sorry, buff-coloured pencil skirt: you accentuate my post-pregnancy pooch. Not a flattering look. My sincere apologies, Little Black Dress: not only are you wildly inconvenient when I need to "whip one out" to feed the baby, but there's no way I can suck it all in enough to take you out on the town at the moment. A shame, since there's a wedding coming up soon; which is why I bought you in the first place.

Luckily, I had the support of my mom in helping me to weed through the morass of now-unsuitable clothing to find a few things that mask my mommy figure until I can literally get my ass back in shape! Le sigh. Until pregnancy brought back the dreaded love handles, I looked good from the back. For now, I'm embracing any variation on the Flashdance sweatshirt look until I can get the situation back under control...

And as a bonus: I rejoice in the fact that I got an entire 45 minutes with a sleeping baby this morning. What is the positive side to 45 minutes of sleep? What isn't the positive side to that!? Though specifically, I got to shower and straighten my hair so that I'm not rocking the unwashed and unshaven...in sweats vibe. One of these days, my mind will finally get up on shaky legs and wander past the realms of clothes and babies. One of these days...

Keeping Afloat

2011-11-07T16:38:00.002Z

Even when your baby only eats, sleeps, and poops, there are a multitude of things to get done during the day. And let's face it: when you're waking up with your baby every few hours in the night (because even the best of newborn babies wake up several times a night...even with help from the best of husbands) there's only so much energy at your disposal to do all of these things. To clean all the clothes your baby pees on during a diaper change, or all the clothes you soak with milk because baby was asleep and didn't need to eat, but your body hasn't quite figured that out yet. To keep up with the normal housework so that you're not preparing your candidacy for an episode of Clean House or Hoarders: Buried Alive. To change and feed your baby and generally keep him from crying and feeling unloved. To get food to feed yourself once the baby has been fed. To spend what quality time you have with your husband and your mom (who, incidentally, has flown trans-Atlantic to see her first grandchild and you) rather than neglecting them unless they're offering to do things for you.

This, my dears, explains why I've been so remiss in keeping up with my blog lately. Even if I were medically allowed to yet, I can't even find the time and energy to get out to the gym, or take more than the shortest of strolls round the block, let alone catch up on all the blogs I read, write in my own blog, or make it through reading Lord of the Rings after having renewed the book....oh, three times, now. It's pathetic. Not entirely unexpected, but pathetic. Motherhood really takes it out of you, people: be warned.

I confess myself stunned. I mean, I feel really blessed that I have Ethan and that he's such a good baby. He doesn't cry much, and generally, when he does, I can figure out what's wrong with him and fix it relatively quickly. He sleeps for about 3 or 4 hours at a time, he's never had a problem with breastfeeding, he even takes a bottle from Sebastian when I'm too tired to get up and feed him in the night. But let me just say, even with a good baby, you do not know the meaning of the word TIRED until you have a newborn. You know the days when you stayed up for ages finishing a thesis or a term paper in college? Child's play. Not being able to sleep on an 8-hour flight? Kids' stuff. Driving for 7 hours after being awake for 48? Piece of cake. When your sleep is so frequently interrupted, I swear it's even worse than just being awake for days on end with no reprieve. Even waking up becomes difficult work. Getting to sleep without waking yourself up five times by thinking, "Oh Lord, the baby! He needs me!" is a feat worthy of praise in a Homeric Hymn. Dragging yourself from bed to shower and eat something more labour-intensive to prepare than a cold Pop Tart is a goal of Herculean proportions.

This is why new mothers get the bad rep of being uninteresting, uninformed zombies; only able to converse on subjects relating to their offspring: we have no energy left to power our brains beyond keeping our babies alive! It's only because I've had the 24-hour help of my mom and husband that I was able to function well enough to put on make-up yesterday.

People: appreciate now any guilt trip your mother ever booked you on. From where I now sit, the odds are that she deserved and well-earned the right to shame you into whatever it was that she wanted after putting up with the crucible of new-motherhood in order to make you the functional adult that you are today.

And with that, I've officially spent more than the day's quota of calories powering my brain to think long enough to write up a blog post. It's time to lie down, put E on a pillow, and watch a few episodes of Modern Family...oh, and grab myself another Pop Tart. The breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions.

Sauron and Spacemen

2011-10-31T17:19:00.000Z

Well, the time has finally come to do something with the lovely pumpkin we picked a few weeks ago. After a bit of debate, we decided on possibly the most nerd-chic thing we could think of...

Oh yeah: the inscription from the ring. Having settled on a pattern, it was time to get to work. The Husband is currently in the midst of enjoying his two weeks of paternity leave (fist pump for the UK government), so we have days and days all to ourselves. We figured it was a worthwhile effort to channel our energies into some cheerful celebrating in addition to all the baby cuddling and baby watching and baby feeding that's been the main focus of our days.

Seb started to work on gutting and carving our pumpkin while I kept E occupied. As evidenced by the newspaper all over the table, this was messy work.

After bringing in a bowl to collect some of the edible pumpkin parts (pumpkin muffins, anyone?), I took my own turn carving out the elvish inscription on our jack-o-lantern. Ethan even got into the spirit of things and donned a costume of his own...

Okay, so my homemade astronaut only lasted until we needed the bowl to store pumpkin flesh, but to be honest, he was fogging up his visor, so it wouldn't have been the most practical space helmet for much longer, anyway.

In the end, our family effort managed to produce these satisfyingly sinister results:

And so on that note: happy Halloween!

Things Wot I Have Learned

2011-10-29T11:50:00.002+01:00

Anyone have any niggling questions about the whole experience of giving birth? Well guess what: I'm now officially qualified to give you some answers. So, without further ado, based upon my own experience, here are some things I didn't know about labour and birth before this week:

What are contractions like? Imagine the worst abdominal cramping you've ever had. Now multiply that by five. Now picture it wrapping around your back and sides and front like an invisible Girdle of Pain. Oh, and imagine that girdle tightening and twinging and aching every three to seven minutes like clockwork...for 20 hours without ceasing. (And then imagine finally getting to rest because of an epidural!)

What is it like to push a baby out? I was slightly surprised by this one, but go check any pregnancy website, and it's just like it says on the tin: think of it like pushing out a 7-pound poop. Yes: this is the point where noses are wrinkled in disgust and we all think, "did you really need to go there?" Well, no, I didn't need to, but consider yourself accurately forewarned should you decide to push a baby out some time in your future. No one's exaggerating or finding a close-but-not-really-accurate simile...it really is like that.

What is your body like afterwards? Weird. I think that pretty much sums it up. Because your abs have been so distended by the tiny person expanding your uterus for the past nine months, they don't just snap back into place like a rubber band. Even right now, I'm still quite loose and saggy-feeling in the front. My muscles are still strong enough that I can pull them in like a corset (or like before I was pregnant when I wanted to hide my fat when trying on cute clothes!), but they do hang quite a bit, so I still look about 4 months pregnant. It's not too bad, though: at least my boobs finally overshadow my waist again! Hell: I have a waist again!

Do you really go through it like they show on TV? Let me say for the record: TV is lies. I know we've all seen a birth in a movie or on TV. Either it's a fictional drama where the water breaks spontaneously before any other sign of labour and the mother must be rushed to the hospital in a flurry of squealing tyres and vociferous swearing, the like of which would put most sailors to shame - or it's a reality TV program that involves lots of dramatic pauses and carefully selected edits of the hours-long process that only show the mom when she's at her worst: sweating and crying and screaming from exhaustion and pain, berating her baby-daddy for getting her into this position in the first place, and calling out for an epidural like a schizophrenic junkie jonsing for meth.

Let me say, I had an epidural - and I needed it - but I wasn't screaming. I confess, I cried, but I was tired and in pain, and essentially just told my lovely midwives, "It's just been so long that I can't do this any more without some more help." Plus, you don't have to lie down, legs spread, in the mother of all undignified positions in order to give birth after an epidural. I sat up on the end of the bed and was propped up in some foot-rests. Nothing terribly undignified in all of that. And really: before the epi I did sob during some of the more painful contractions, but I didn't do any of the characteristic groaning or crying out until I was pushing Ethan out. And that wasn't even because of any pain: it's just a bit like the 'roid-monsters at the gym lifting weights in an effort to overcompensate for...something. You just have to make a noise when you're going through such a serious physical exertion: you honestly can't help it.

What about the general idea of the indignity of giving birth? Not nearly as bad as I thought it'd be. Because everyone who has anything to do with getting you through the birth of your baby is not only very sweet and attentive, but extremely professional, it's very easy to get over any awkwardness about dropping trou for a perfect stranger. Plus, you don't actually have to be uncomfortably exposed for very much of the whole process anyway. I mean, I know I'm no prude, but by the end of it all when one of the midwives mentioned the possibility of my being uncomfortable about having everyone on the labour ward so - well - up close and personal with my business, I was able to laugh it off and tell her honestly that you get over it pretty quickly. They're all good enough to treat it like it's no big deal, which helps you stay relaxed. And really; it's in everyone's best interest to keep the agonised pregnant lady as relaxed as is humanly possible.

As I say: in the end, it's all been worth it. Goodness knows how long it'll take before we manage to master the whole sleeping-for-more-than-5-minutes-without-being-held conundrum, or sufficiently decode which cries are for food and which are for gas pains and which are for a desperate need for more love and attention, but we will get there. And while we try, I take satisfaction in knowing that little E is all mine (though yeah, I share him with Seb). He's my son, with my nose, and my habit of sleeping with one hand curled under my cheek. I enjoy how strange that sounds, and yet, how I'm actually allowed to say it. I have a son! And as I have maintained from the moment they plopped him onto my chest in the delivery room, all slimy and covered in a less-than-metaphorical version of our combined blood, sweat, and tears...he's perfect. Absolutely, unequivocally, and sublimely perfect. I have to keep reminding myself that as well as I feel like I already know him in some ways: we've only really known each other for three days! We're still new to each other and there's certainly a learning curve, but it's a curve that will be full of fun moments and hilarious discoveries.

So yeah: I'm still quite a lot of interesting and awesome things as a person, but I'm also a person who changes diapers, gets excited about pee or poop (because it means he's eating well!), knows how to wrap a baby better than a Chipotle burrito, can have a pacifier in her mouth without being on drugs at a rave (and have it be vaguely socially acceptable), and who - for the first time - cares for someone who is completely dependent upon her...and to all appearances, if as fond of her as it's possible for a tiny human to be. I'm a momma now.

Not a Bad Way to Spend the Week

2011-10-28T16:51:00.000+01:00

I'll save the longer version of events for a time when I'm not executing the old mommy-on-teh-Interwebz standby of typing one-handed while I hold my sleeping/nursing/crying child.

Just two days after he was due to make an appearance, Ethan James Jeffcoat Dick came along at about 12:24 on a Wednesday morning. He has his daddy's ears and feet, and - so far as I can tell - my nose. Oh, and a decent head of dark brown hair. As the hospital counts it, I laboured for a good 14.5 hours to get to meet my brand new son. And that was with the successive aid of entenox, the birthing pool, and - God's gift to women - an epidural. As I count it, I'd had contractions you could time since Monday evening.

Needless to say, this amazing little guy was worth every minute of it. I still can't quite believe that he's mine...even having been in the midst of the action for the whole process. I'm entranced to watch him watching me when I feed him...and giggle about how he keeps his hands up by his face when he eats or sleeps. He's such an awesome baby so far and it's only been two days.

Eviction Notice

2011-10-23T19:48:00.002+01:00

My dear child, darling offspring, fruit of my loins, progeny, tiny person taking up too much space in my insides:

This notice is official. You're due to come out tomorrow, and darn it, I expect you to do just that. This body ain't big enough for the both of us, ombre. Someone's got to go, and considering I've only been housing you the past nine months so you could grow a body of your very own, I suggest that the person who needs to go is you.

Seeing as how you now make it nigh on physically impossible to put on and tie my own shoes, I submit to you the idea that we've reached an impasse, you and I. We simply can't go on this way. Since you're my baby, some day you'll know enough to say to me, "Mom: in the immortal words of Lennon and McCartney, 'we can work it out'!", but right now you haven't quite learned that valuable musical lesson yet. And anyway, the only working out I intend for us to do is for me to work to get you into the bright world outside of your watery uterine home. Sorry if that seems harsh, but hey: we've got to cut the cord some time...let's make it this week, shall we?

Besides, think of how much more fun we'll be to one another when we can interact face-to-face. When your daddy can play more interesting games than "What's This Limb I'm Poking?" or "Count the Vicious Jabs to Mommy's Abdomen". And considering how much you seem to enjoy stretching your legs (at the expense of my already-over-stretched skin and muscles, I might add), just think of all the room you can have in a world that extends more than 3" on any given side beyond your cramped and curled body. If you oblige my request and decide to be born...now-ish - I can give you all the space in the world to stretch out those bowed little legs and those pigeon-toed little feet! You can extend them to their fullest reach! And I won't have to push them back into a folded position because they're threatening to burst my insides like that creepy scene in Alien. Just imagine the possibilities, Baby.

All Projects Great and Small

2011-10-20T12:19:00.000+01:00

With four official days left on the Countdown to Parenthood, I'm still trying to find ways to keep myself occupied. Of course, as you will have guessed, that means finding things to make and bake and do around the house. Yes, I still get out to the gym most weekdays, and I do some errands and some window shopping and some blogging and some reading of other blogs, but let's be honest: most of those tasks don't exactly require MENSA-level effort in the thinking department. Okay, so neither do baking pies and completing crafts, but at least those things do require some planning and general effort of concentration. Yes, the gym requires physical effort, but it's still mostly an excuse to move around and have fun listening to all the frat-party-worthy music I have in my iTunes library.

My first project? On the small side of the scales. I decided to go out and grab some ribbon to hang the awesome Gisela Graham wreath I bought on the living room door. When did I buy a wreath? The other weekend when we hit up Garson's out in Esher to snag our lurvely pumpkin for carving. (There will be a list of the contending carving patterns to come...) Amongst the other Christmas decorations I got, I figured I'd get a wreath, too. But it's not just any sort of wreath. If you followed the link to my Pinterest page, you'll see that it's a heart-shaped "Shaker" wreath. Now, I have my doubts about whether it was actually hand-crafted by sexless furniture-makers awaiting Christ's return, but it's still pretty darn cute. Of course, with the rustic faux-Shaker vibe the wreath had going on, I needed a similarly rustic ribbon to hang it with. Much as my first instinct was to go for the widest red ribbon I could source, all the wide red ribbon had a satin finish...and that just didn't sit well with the whole wicker branches aesthetic. So in the end, I went with this:

The whole red-and-white with the stitching reminds me of all the Scandinavian Christmas decorations at IKEA, but without being so Christmas-fabulous that I'll have to take it down once January arrives. Here is the overall effect:

So now, with my wreath hung nicely, it's time to move the slider to the other end of the spectrum and consider tackling a big project. Something that could potentially call for a sewing machine (which I haven't used in years...it's a bit weird) or perhaps just some quality time spent with the iron and no-sew hemming tape. That's right: yesterday's trip to North Camp involved popping into the Fabric Box to scope the latest Prestigious Textiles offerings for a crib skirt.

As for how I can go toe-to-toe with the idea of a behemoth project of these proportions...well, John and Sherry Petersik can come to the rescue again (like they did with my first upholstering attempt!) with this video tutorial on how to make a no-sew crib skirt. Which is handy, seeing as I don't have a sewing machine of my own.

But the first step is to pick out a fabric. Something fun, but not too infantile. Cute, but not overwhelming. Colourful, but that won't compete with this masterpiece of Disney-esque saturation:

...So the following patterns (all, incidentally, in a colour palate dubbed "cinnamon") are the top three contenders. Any thoughts? I really need to decide which one deserves the Awesome Opossum Seal of Approval.

Contender #1: Alderley

Contender #2: Cedar

Contender #3: Maple

My current feeling, after having consulted The Husband last night (his judgement in matters of design is not to be sniffed at!) is that while Cedar would look great in a pillow or some other smallish accent, its thick, mid-century leaf outlines in that mocha colour will be too distracting as a crib skirt. Like a hyperactive four-year-old in the corner throwing toys in a desperate plea for attention. So, much as I love it, I think we're really between Maple and Alderley. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Glaring silences imploring me to make my own decision and leave you out of it? I'll take any of the above, though the first two are certainly more helpful.

Once I pick something out, I'll place an order and start gathering supplies in earnest. In the meantime, I need to go on a Google Image Search binge to find some good ideas on how to carve our pumpkin. Since we were lame last year and didn't get a pumpkin, and were really lame the year before and let our pumpkins rot uncarved, this is the first year we'll have a jack o'lantern of our very own. It requires charm. It requires finesse. It requires a sufficiently Halloween-like blend of nerdy appeal and horror. Pun intended, I have my work cut out for me. (Giggle-snort.)

Everyone Needs an Enabler

2011-10-17T17:42:00.004+01:00

There is officially (at least, according to the medical professionals I've seen) one week left on the countdown to Baby D's arrival. My only problem with the near-constant Braxton-Hicks contractions of the last day or two is...well, that they're Braxton-Hicks and not demonstrably The Real Thing. The Husband, apparently, came about 11 days late, and I know from asking my own mom that I was a week late, myself.

So as I wait for either labour to start itself (please, dear Lord!) or for the midwives and doctors to issue my baby an eviction notice, I've been getting increasingly impatient. My hospital bag is packed. The stroller handle has been fixed. The car got cleaned inside and out. The car seat is officially and irrevocably installed. Thank You cards for baby shower presents have all been written. I've attended my antenatal class and learned all about birthing positions, breathing through contractions, and the rest of the general indignity that surrounds the miracle of life. I've even come to something of a stopping point with all of my DIY projects.

I painted the nursery, hung pictures, hung curtains, tidied shelves, assembled a chair, assembled the crib, washed all the tiny baby clothes I found it useful to wash...I'm currently on hiatus from baby-prep. But then...as I vent my impatience to the world...a wonderful suggestion to pass the time comes along...

Another DIY project!? I could sew a crib skirt to hide any under-crib storage. I could make a fun mobile to hang over the baby's crib (Alexander Calder, anyone?). I could install crown moulding that would let me paint the ceiling a fun colour so that the moulding pops, creating fun architectural interest in the room! I could put doors on the shelving! I could paint the inside of the shelf framing so it makes a fun contrast to the white outside and shelves! The possibilities are endless.

Ladies and gentlemen: my own mother is now my DIY enabler...and I get to have her stay with me for two whole weeks next month! Just think of the wreaths and quilts and wall art I could make (or convince her to make with me, since my sewing skills are pretty crap).

Also, another great Lorelei Gilmore-enabler moment? My mom just spelled it labour...with the extraneous British ou, like in colour or candour. I've been doing this for years - since high school, in fact, when I used it to great effect in typing up some notes for the lovely Ryan Jackson. Said Anglicized spelling not only started a very fun mock argument in the hallway after class, but prompted Jackson to give me a copy of the brilliant Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I have an unhealthy, nerdish love for that book.

First, she enables my DIY obsession. Then, she enables my Anglophile tendency to spell everything the way the Husband always learned to. How awesome is my mom? (Correct answer: very.)

...Here's a Shovel.

2011-10-14T16:10:00.001+01:00

I know I still have just over a week left to go until my due date, but I'm getting desperate. I'm getting up about 4 times a night now and I feel like I should be on a first-name basis with my bathroom as much quality time as we spend together alone in the dark at 3 in the morning. I now know when the BP garage next to our apartment building shuts off the light in its sign (usually around 12am, in case you were wondering).

I resorted to the entirely unrealistic practice of trying to bribe my unborn child to come out by buying him/her a cute fuzzy blanket. So far, the kid hasn't gone for it. I even washed the blanket as soon as I got it home, so it would be all prepared to go in my hospital bag for whenever this baby decides to put in an appearance. I'm all about being rational - I'm a rational person - but the old wives' tales and superstitions are about to come out with a vengeance. Spicy foods? Check. Though they make my acid reflux worse, so I'll try to avoid them too soon before I hit the hay in the evening. Bouncing up and down? Check. Actually, I'm surprised I can still bounce! I even ran for a while on the treadmill at the gym the other day. Clearly, though, if exercise and running are going to bring this baby around to my way of thinking, I have to take truly drastic measures. Witness, if you will...

I confess, not the best video I've seen, but it gets the story out. This post on The Daily What has a much better narration of the whole event.

So I guess I've discovered what I need to do. Anyone up for a quick 26.2-mile jaunt around the Blackwater Valley trails? ...I didn't think so. (Good thing, too, because with a physiotherapy appointment on Monday, I don't think I'm up for anything like that, either.)

Of course, I actually put no stock in the idea that spicy foods, or castor oil, or sex (though, according to the midwife, it apparently has to be good sex!), or bouncing up and down, or trendy herbs will bring about labour. If the baby is ready to come and my body is ready to push it out, then it'll happen. There's no real use trying to speed things along until that point...especially since no one's really sure what exactly causes labour to start spontaneously in the first place. So short of pretending to be Denzel Washington in my own version of John Q and holding the L&D midwives hostage until they agree to take the baby out of me, I'm out of feasible ideas. Sweet-talking, whining, poking, and bribing the baby haven't helped...neither, apparently, have all the contractions that like to make frequent and annoying visits like that acquaintance who's not really your friend that you always run into at parties, but you're too embarrassed and polite to say that you find them off-putting, socially awkward, and lacking in the finer points of personal hygiene.

My last-ditch plan is to wait it all out with the world's most patently false veneer of patience, and then - once baby truly tries my nerves and is 4 days late - I'll go to the movies again and see Anonymous and stubbornly sit through the whole movie, defying my offspring to display enough urgency in his/her arrival to oust me from the cinema before the end of the film. Go on, Baby...I dare you.

Perfect Pumpkin Picking Practise

2011-10-11T10:30:00.001+01:00

On Saturday, we decided to continue making use of The Lull and embark on an expedition to fully embrace the return of decent autumnal weather. We went pumpkin picking!

We hadn't been out to pick pumpkins since my first autumn back in the country. We were both still living in London at the time and two recently-married friends convinced us to come along with them to a Pick Your Own (fill in name of fruit/veg here) farm out in northern Surrey. We went, we picked two pumpkins...and then shamefully never carved them. They sat in the kitchen of the boys' house in Wimbledon for a week or two. With all of the best intentions, we even scoped out various carving patterns and methods online, intent to have a fun, messy, crafty evening together gutting and massacring some produce. Somehow or other, those plans never came to fruition, and so - fun though the trip was - our pumpkins were something of a waste in the end. Not this time!

After running a few errands in the morning, we packed up a lunch and set off for Garsons in Esher. (It was only the result of some tenacious Google searching that I even found the name of the place again.) The sky was a bit overcast, but there was a gentle breeze, and the air was crisp and cool: it was perfect weather to go out and find a pumpkin! It was the first time in the season that I've had to break out my gloves and scarf. I feel the need to strike up a cheesy swing orchestra and start singing..."It's the most wonderful time of the year..."

We pulled the car over by a nice village green just in front of the farm and took the time to have a nice lunch with the windows cracked and a fresh breeze blowing through. The scene was really quaint and adorable in a way that actually didn't make you want to induce vomiting or kick a puppy to restore balance to the universe. Plus, all the leaves on the trees were falling ("...to the sound of the breezes that blow." Sorry. Moondance moment over.) and changing colours, which is always something that I'm happy to stare at. Raking dead leaves and shovelling snow are two activities I don't think I'll ever get tired of. ...Unless I have an aneurysm and move somewhere like Quebec or Toronto or Glasgow.

Thankfully, this year we went a bit earlier in the season than on our last visit, so there were still fields full of perfectly proportioned pumpkins just waiting for us to come and take them home.

We wandered around and began our search. Nothing too big, since we don't want the carving to take ages to complete, but nothing too small that restricts our creative outlet. I need an ideally-scaled vegetable to act as the canvas for my quirky and insane genius. Needless to say, we ended up with a group of similarly-sized pumpkins, all lined up like finalists in a Miss America pageant. Their respective merits were considered and weighed against our personal preference and prospective carving needs...then we took some fun pictures.

In the end, of seven highly respectable contenders, this little beauty was the winner:

We wrapped it up in a plastic bag, paid a tiny fee to remove it from the premises, and then left the Pick Your Own fields. We did not, however, leave the Garsons farm at this point. Oh no. Now, it was on to the shop, because within the four walls of this shop is a colour-coordinated wonderland of Christmas ornaments and decorations that simply could not be missed. Indeed, this was half of my reasoning for taking the trip out to Esher in the first place. But, for now, I'll refrain from waxing eloquent on the wonders of shopping for Christmas ornaments...we're not quite at that point in the season yet. Presently, it is still time to savour the smell of wood-burning fires, kick the dead leaves across parking lots, and revel in the glory of a season that encourages you to decorate your home with tiny mutant gourds. It's autumn, people!

Stupidly Annoying Thing of the Day

2011-10-10T14:28:00.000+01:00

I've discovered another well-meaning thing that annoys me. People assuming that I'm afraid of labour or scared of the prospect of giving birth. What good would being afraid of it do? I still have to do it anyway!

I've read about it - no, that's no substitute for experience, I'm the first person to concur with that statement, but forewarned is forearmed and all that. It's easier to fear the unknown, and in general terms and expectations, labour and birth aren't terribly big unknowns for me. I have a pretty good idea of what's supposed to go down. Is it going to be painful? Yes. Is it going to take a lot of work? They don't call it "labour" for nothing! Is it going to be worth it in the end? Well, obviously. Is it going to be possibly the most physically challenging thing I do in my life? It'll certainly contend with (and probably beat out) a marathon if I ever run one of those; so yeah, it'll be difficult. But I know these things. I accept these things.

Perhaps, the thing that annoys me the most about people making the assumption that I'm frightened by the prospect of giving birth is the fact that it implies that they don't know me. I don't claim to be the world's most rational and level-headed person, but a pretty obvious facet of my personality is my disdain for wasting energy worrying about crap you can't change. That and a near-allergic reaction to flagrant stupidity are probably two of my most salient character traits. I'm very much a "roll with the punches" sort of person. Yes: I occasionally need time to freak out in the course of making a major life adjustment, but I know that about myself. I freak out for a little bit (at least, a little bit that's proportional to the severity of the change I'm making) and then I move on. It's like a part of the acceptance process. But that doesn't mean that I'm scared. That doesn't mean that I need to be told to think about how love makes you forget fear when I'm contemplating having my baby. The idea of pushing out a baby isn't scary to me. I'm not jumping for joy at the prospect of a painful recovery and enforced lethargy, but trust me: if I could work some Jedi mind tricks and mind-over-matter my way into starting up labour right now, you can bet your sweet butt I'd do it. And I'd do it without a moment's hesitation or trepidation because I know I'm about as prepared for the whole experience as I can ever be going into it for the first time.

I think I consider it a bit like running my first cross-country race, or doing my first performance competition, or starting my graduate program. These are all things I may not have done before, but I know I can do them. I have sufficient faith in myself and my ability to cope with the difficulties of preparation, mental and physical stamina, and my own personal blend of self-deprecating anxiety and cocksure arrogance. I know I can do this. I mean, I've got decent genetics on my side for a start. My own mother did this twice. My dad's mother did it five times. My mom's mother did it 13 times, and they were all fine in the end. There's no physical impediment standing in my way, so there's no need for worry on that score. The Husband will be there the whole time to act as my massage therapist/cheerleading section/butler/hand-holding moral support, so I won't be lacking for encouragement to keep going when it gets rough. I think, as with most apparently difficult things in life, you just size up the situation as best you can, consider that the worst that could happen is a possibility rather than a probability, and then just get on with it. Suck it up. Take it like a (wo)man. Grit your teeth and think of England. All that jazz.

The idea of being frightened by something like this is not stupid. It's a strenuous physical exertion. Though it's a natural process, it's not without pain, and even with the benefits of modern medicine, not entirely without its dangers. For those who have never had a baby before, it's a step into the unknown that no amount of research can ever fully prepare you for - as with any life experience of great import. I can understand where people would worry; but I never thought I came across as the personality type who would worry about it. The idea that someone would know me and yet assume that is vaguely insulting.

I still, I admit, look forward to the idea of actually heading to the hospital, Husband and bag of goodies in tow, and it feels surreal. Surely this isn't the sort of thing I can really picture myself doing. This is an event other people go through; and now I'm supposed to do it too? Yeah: I entertain my fair share of incredulity, but that's not the same as fear. It's still a weird and bizarre (though entirely expected) prospect, but I am going to do it, so here goes nothing.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Master of Understatement

2011-10-08T10:48:00.001+01:00

Having gone to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy last night, I have to give it a full five stars, and two thumbs up, and all the usual movie-rating jargon to emphasize how good something was. I'd love to have my own system for something like that. I'm sure, though, that it would just end up sounding like I'd botched the 12 Days of Christmas song and forgot that it was "10 lords a'leaping" or "8 maids a'milking". Anyway, if I did have a fun system, I would give it 10/10 lords a'leaping...or whatever sounds cooler than that.

In the book, le Carre's plot starts at a boys' school where a chubby little loner watches out of the window as a new teacher pulls up in his car and towing trailer. (I confess, I know this only because I've listened to the first chapter of the audiobook...I really need to finish it now I've seen the movie.) The movie, by contrast, starts with a clandestine, off-the-books mission to Budapest to suss out a Hungarian general who wants to defect. I have to say, I like that they save the school scene for later since it creates quite a bit more suspense with one of the characters.

The cast for this movie is ah-mazing! Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch make up the main action and the impressive backbone of talent in the picture. Though they're all brilliant actors generally (and John Hurt will always be Mr. Ollivander to me), here are the bits that stood out most to my mind:

The last time I saw Tom Hardy was as the devilishly sarcastic forger in Inception. He gets to play a character with so much more depth here in Tinker, Tailor and he does it all the justice it deserves. I won't give anything away, but Hardy plays a thuggish intelligence agent with a brilliantly-executed soft side. His one really emotional scene comes at the end of a flashback (with which the movie is replete) and doesn't feel in the least like a gratuitous attempt to humanize his character: it just fits brilliantly.
Mark Strong finally plays a character with more than two dimensions! Don't get me wrong, Guy Ritchie's mockney Victorian escapade with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law was a fun time, but I loved seeing that Mark Strong can be more than your stereotypical snaggle-toothed baddie. There's an impressive degree of fortitude and complexity in his character that really sees its understated apex at the film's end. Plus, it's just nice to see him in a roll where he's not the villain for a change.
Benedict Cumberbatch's character, Peter Guillam, is great. He, too, gets one particular scene of significance for character development and background and in the true fashion of this particular spy thriller, the whole thing is executed with an understated elegance that you can't help but appreciate. Well, unless you're incredibly thick and don't understand what just happened. If you've seen the movie, you know exactly what scene I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, all I have to say is that it involves the need for Guillam to protect himself by making a difficult choice to "tidy things up".

So, in case you haven't noticed, the magic word for Tinker, Tailor is understatement. There's never a point in the movie where you're hit over the head with anything. I can see where that might get annoying: it's definitely a film that asks you to do a lot of thinking and close following of the nuances of the plot, but I think it rewards you sufficiently for the effort it asks. My only complaint? They could have made some of the flashbacks a bit more apparent sooner in the scene. Otherwise, I really have nothing bad to say about it. The 70s aesthetic was brilliantly done. Though the whole picture was so saturated with it that you could never mistake the time period for anything other than what it was, it wasn't as if they were blaring an ear-grating disco soundtrack or showing billboards or making unnecessary references to current pop-culture or politics.

So; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy...a must-see for anyone willing to have a good think through a spy thriller that - for once - doesn't rely on insanely improbable technology, unrealistic explosions, or oversexed femmes fetale to drive the plot along.

Next movies on my Need to See list? The Help and Anonymous. The latter is a Shakespearean thriller about the true identity of the Bard - again with a stellar cast. And, I have to say, I have a soft spot in my heart for anything with Derek Jacobi in it. After all, we did used to be neighbours! (True story!)

Radio Silence

2011-10-07T15:02:00.001+01:00

I'm apathetic. After a whole week with no blog posts, I wonder just where my motivation has gone. I haven't done much this week. On the bright side, though, that's actually a good thing to some extent. Because the Husband's business course is finally done and dusted, we can have - gasp! - evenings together! Evenings that don't involve me reading or trolling Pinterest in the bedroom while he sits on the computer in the living room writing paper after paper. Last night, we sat in bed and watched TV. Tonight, we're off to the cinema for a viewing of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Retro spy drama, here we come!

Basically, we're enjoying the lull. The blessed, beautiful lull. The time between the end of Henley Business School work and the start of our lives as parents to an outside baby. That precious and indeterminate amount of time where our obligations are at their lowest. Where we can go to the cinema, or spend a day out at this cute farm in Surrey (our plan for Saturday) without worrying about feedings or diaper bags or studying financial projections and process systems diagrams. My friends: welcome to The Lull. Embrace The Lull. (Wondering how many more times I can say that before it stops sounding like a word? Me too...)

The other highlight this week was a lovely surprise baby shower thrown by my girls in Young Women's. Apparently, the last baby shower thrown for a girl at church was given the final judgement of being boring by all the teenage girls. They decided, therefore, to take matters into their own hands so that my baby shower wouldn't be boring. And they had a pretty impressive turn out! Though I have to say, it was an interesting task trying to drive without wrecking the three-tiered cake made of disposable diapers and other assorted baby things.

Another fun baby-related experience? Our antenatal class. It was an all-day affair at the children's centre across the street. Whoever thought that sticking 10 heavily pregnant women and their husbands (and in one case, the soon-to-be-grandmother) in a poorly ventilated room on a hot day was a good idea should give serious consideration to the idea of getting a job as a medieval torture artist. Seriously.

It was nice to hear some of the information on labour and the facilities in our hospital directly from the source, but generally, all the medical stuff was an overview for us. Not to mention the poorly delivered list of Old Wives' Tales about how to jump start labour. Eating spicy food? Raspberry Leaf Tea? Good sex? (As if I'd condone any other kind!) And nowhere in that whole discussion was the sensible advice that if your body and your baby aren't ready to go into labour, there's pretty much nothing you can do short of an actual medical induction in a hospital! Thank you, NHS, for lazily promoting pseudo-science. Of the three examples I listed, only the sex would come close to being effective anyway because of the release of chemicals like oxytocin and prostaglandins. And even then, those occur naturally in far too low of a dose to really kick start anything that wasn't starting itself anyway! Though I do have to thank the antenatal class for my new-found possession of an exercise ball (both to exercise with and to lean on when I'm wildly uncomfortable during contractions) and some pretty awesome massage techniques. I think even when I'm not pushing out a baby those back massages will feel pretty darn good.

So, as we round the corner into 38 weeks of pregnancy, I will do my utmost to enjoy The Lull. That said, I'm getting pretty impatient to actually have a baby I can hold and talk to and put into all the cute clothes we've been given. (Especially the super cute ducky pyjamas from my mom!)

Truffle Shuffle

2011-09-30T11:44:00.003+01:00

Okay...not that Truffle Shuffle...

But really; how many other truffle-related phrases are hanging out there begging for use as blog post titles? None that I could think of. But perhaps you're more inventive than I'm feeling at the moment.

Yesterday I decided to make some Oreo truffles. It wasn't just a spur-of-the-moment whim: I was planning on bringing a few along as a hostess gift when the Husband and I head over to a friend's place for dinner tonight. What can I say? My momma raised me right: I try to be punctilious in matters of etiquette.

Anyway; since we only snagged this recipe because of someone else, I figured I'd share the love and pay it forward (and any other clichéd song/movie titles you can think of) and pass the recipe along. Here is your list of required equipment:

a blender (trust me...this makes things easier)
a big mixing spoon
a mixing bowl (obvi)
a cookie sheet with baking paper
your chosen method of chocolate melting (incidentally, mine is to make my husband do it since I tend to burn the chocolate when left to my own devices. He lets it go a few rounds in the microwave, stirring in between.)
Some skewers
Oh, and the food: a roll of Oreos (or half a pack of Bourbons if you're feeling cheap), 1 tub of cream cheese, 3 bars of plain milk chocolate, 1 bar of white chocolate.

To start: grab your chosen chocolate cookies and - breaking them up a bit to speed things along - place them in the blender and pulverize into a nice gritty powder. Sort of like this:

Next step: add in the whole tub of cream cheese. Make sure to mix it in really well. Think of it like cutting in Crisco to biscuit dough or pie crust mix. Thanks to the consistency of the cream cheese, it tends to require this sort of technique. Or at least, I require this sort of technique since I don't have wrists of steel that can whip meringues for hours or silently strangle a man in less than 30 seconds.

Oh, and once you've mixed everything together, it should look a bit like this:

Helpful Photo is helpful.

Now comes the slightly messy part. Get out your baking tray covered in baking paper. Time to shape the truffles! Just grab enough to make a sphere with the circumference of a quarter or a 10p piece (depending on which one you actually know the size of!), roll it out in your hands, and place it on the baking tray. Once you have enough of them, pop them in the fridge for an hour or two to chill. Trust me: you don't want to skip the chillin' in da fridge step: it helps the truffles stay in one spherical piece when you dip them into hot, melted chocolate.

Waited a few hours to chill your truffle innards? Good. Now to dip them. This is where the skewers come in handy. Yes, they tend to leave unfortunate skewer marks in the truffles when you pull them out, but unlike dipping by hand or by spoon (or by land or by sea like Paul Revere...), the skewers don't mess up the smooth finish of the chocolate. And, you can always cover the hole with more chocolate.

Try to get the chocolate as lump-free as possible. You can heat it in a bowl sitting in a pot of boiling water on medium heat on the stove, but be careful to watch for burning. Or, you can put the chocolate in a bowl and pop it in the microwave for a minute or two, but again - watch for the burning. You really only want to pop it in for about 10 seconds at a time, then take it out, stir it around, and sling it back in the microwave. Otherwise, the already-melted bits hold all the heat and burn, while the not-yet-melted bits just take longer to liquefy.

Now that that's done, you can - for the sake of prettiness - melt that bar of white chocolate and then drizzle it over the top of your truffles for a fun two-tone effect. It makes them look much more posh than just leaving them as slightly mangled balls of chocolate coated cream-cheesy cookie.

See what I mean? Much nicer-looking than before. You can pop them back in the fridge again to keep cool until you're ready to ~~ravenously devour~~ serve them. It's a brilliant fix for any time that you need cute finger foods, a hostess gift, party favours (just stick 4 each into little bags), or any other occasion that calls for fancy chocolatey treats. Which is basically any occasion at all, as far as I'm concerned. And despite being really easy to make, people will be ludicrously impressed with your culinary skillz once they try them. You know, in case you're actually the sort of person worried about building up domestic goddess street cred...like Snoop D-O-double G:

For rizzle, yo.

4 Weeks and Counting

2011-09-26T16:34:00.003+01:00

Well, hope springs eternal. Four weeks. That's how long I have until the NHS's medical geniuses have predicted that my baby will make his or her grand appearance into the world. My body will finally be back to a comfortable single tenancy again. I'll have an outside baby I can actually be entertained by, instead of spending Sunday mornings up at an unholy hour thanks to the need to deflate baby's bladder-pillow and then count some contractions. Think of it like counting cows on a road trip, but far less comfortable.

I have to admit, whenever the urge has struck, I've been able to conjure up a mental image of what having a baby will be like for years now. It's always involved lots of bossing people around and swearing. Oh, and magically looking fabulous at the end because what was a sweaty, flushed look managed to transform into a healthy glowing shimmer, helped along by accessorizing with a stylish headband. But now that the reality of my imaginings is so close, it's weird. It's bizarre to think I'll actually be doing this: I'll be having a baby! Some day, in the next month or so of my life, will be the birth day of my very first child. A child of my very own. A tiny person who's been stretching out my fabulous figure and head-butting me in some very uncomfortable places for the past 8 months. What is the world coming to?

I'll be a for-real mom. With a for-real baby. I'll feed the baby, and change the baby, and clean the baby, and dress the baby, and generally keep him or her alive and comfortable for the foreseeable future. What I won't do is the following:

1) Adopt the traditional Mom Hair-Cut. No Siree Bob. Naturally curly and super short just don't go together. I'm not looking to fry my hair or sport the afro a la Beyonce in Dream Girls, so this option is out. Plus, I just have my own stubborn stance against the Mom Hair. I will continue to cultivate long hair, darn it, and it'll look sexy and amazing. (Because I'll keep it tied back during the day to studiously avoid baby vomit.)

2) Buy Mom-Jeans. You know: the kind that sit at or around your belly button and accentuate the pear-shaped birthing hips you now know you have. The ones that, no matter how small you really are, inexplicably make your ass look like you need a wide-load sticker on the back. And they're always a pale-wash denim. I hate light denim - this isn't the 80s. I'm not John Bon Jovi.

3) Fill my Facebook page with nothing but inane updates about my baby's every move. Don't get me wrong: I fully intend to have the most awesome and interesting baby ever to grace the earth with its presence, but that doesn't mean that everyone I've ever met needs to hear about baby's first spit bubble and baby's first incoherent babble and baby's first attempt to leak from every orifice at once. I will enjoy the wondrous miracle that will be my kid without losing perspective about the other things that will still happen in the world and in my life.

4) Forget that first and foremost, I am my own individual person; not just my baby's momma. Motherhood is an incredible thing; but it won't be all the defines me. That's just as bad as being defined by having a boyfriend or husband, only no one thinks to tell you that it's wrong because babies are cute and important and need love and affection and constant attention. Yes: I will love my baby and generally put its needs before my own because, well, that's my job. But I won't forget that I've done some pretty spectacular things in my life besides growing an unbearably cute infant. I'm a musician, and a historian, and I can draw, and write, and I'm a gym-rat, and I can cook, and I'm crafty (in all senses of the word), and I'm a wife, and a sister, and a friend, and I have a damn good sense of humour, if I do say so myself. Essentially, there is nothing to be gained by sacrificing my identity on the altar of motherhood. I don't want my baby to grow up being surprised at all the awesome stuff I've done in my life because his/her arrival meant that I became an uninteresting pod-person whose sole purpose was to cook and clean and issue groundings and unfair rules. Piggly Wiggly will be served much better in life by having an interesting mother who has her own interests and hobbies and passions outside of mothering. I know I have an interesting mother and I think it did me a world of good...it made me want to be an interesting person, too. And for the record, it is my goal to be like my mom and unknowingly inspire my kids to think, "If I'd known my mom when she was my age, I think we would have been friends."

In the meantime, my more immediate concern is to wonder when I finally get to make that call to the Husband at work and say, "You didn't want to stay at work all day, right? You'd much rather come home and take your labouring wife to the hospital to deliver your baby. Good; because, guess what you get to do right now?" That, my friends, will be a very fun phone call to make. Now if only I can get the baby on board with this plan...

Pine Cone Ornaments...The Never-Ending Saga

2011-09-23T17:04:00.002+01:00

Well, I've finally gotten around to attaching ribbon to 23 of my lovely gold pine cones so I can hang them off the tree. It wasn't a spectacularly interesting process, to be honest, but I'll share anyway.

I drove over to Jo's house this morning to grab her hot glue gun. Let's face it - I can do crafty things, but I'm not one of those flower-arranging, cake-decorating, card-making, craft-room-having sort of gals who lives for the dye-cut section of a craft store, or spends free time on the bus knitting a scarf. For starters, I think if you need a full room devoted to housing and using your craft supplies, it's time to step back for a moment and prioritize. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Any hobby besides dance or sports that needs its own room might just be a bit more trouble than it's worth. Or it's taking over your life like a giant carnivorous plant waiting to strike. Take the children, Honey: save yourselves. I was ambushed by the scrapbook paper on the way in and the patterned craft scissors have a maniacal glint in their eyes...

Anyway, Jo said I might need to grab some glue sticks for her gun (I did), so I hopped over to the craft store in North Camp to see if they had glue sticks. They did. And for the particular gun I was using, too. They're sneaky, though: in the whole claustrophobic press of the store, there were 5 packs of glue sticks hiding on the awkward side of a display case with a few guns to match. Good thing I knew to look by the double-sided tape or else I might have failed in my quest.

I already had some ribbon from the same craft store that I'd purchased a few days ago. I got about 5 metres' worth for less than £1. Score. And - as you can see - the glue sticks were pretty inexpensive, too. So far, the whole of this project's cost me about £13...and I haven't even used all of my supplies yet! (I think next I'll make a door wreath once I clean a few more pine cones.)

So back home I went and cut my ribbon into approximately 5" lengths and then tied each one in a loop. Loops tied, I glued them to the bottom of my pine cones and set the finished product on some scrap paper to cool (and to avoid sticking to my table, ruining the finish, and causing unsightly splinters).

Ta-da! Nicely finished (aside from the slight hot-glue-gloop at the top) golden pine cone Christmas ornaments. I'm pretty pleased with my efforts. I definitely think at least one more project with these babies is in order. And a wreath does seem like a fun idea...

A Cry for Pity...and Morphine

2011-09-22T13:59:00.001+01:00

Someone kill me. Quickly and with something sharp. Do that whole SAS thing where you shove my nose into my brain with the heel of your hand. Or better yet, since I'm not actually suicidal, just give me drugs. Oxycodone, morphine, Vicodin, an epidural, anything. We're past the kiddie phase here, people: no wimpy aspirin or paracetamol or Tylenol...even my beloved Excedrin wouldn't cut it (if I was even allowed to take it when I'm pregnant, which I'm not), because this, people is serious pain. Aside from being in labour, which I can't imagine being too much fun either, this is probably some of the most annoying pain I've ever experienced. I've never broken my arm or leg or finger or anything and only ever sustained mild to moderate bruises, burns, scrapes, and cuts. Unless you count that time that I nearly took a chunk out of my thumb when cutting potatoes, but that didn't hurt so much as make me light-headed from rapid blood loss.

My hips are being torn apart. Wrenched from their sockets as part of a medieval torture. Someone has taken a sledgehammer and rammed it repeatedly against my pelvic bones. I'll never walk again. Hobbling, I can do. Maybe be a genius in a wheelchair like Steven Hawking or Christopher Reeves, but slightly less impaired and slightly less impressively talented. But only slightly. Or, I can follow the shining example of Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House and let my pain make me a bitter, sarcastic, Vicodin-inhaling ray of sunshine, whose wit is matched only by my youthful good looks.

I submit the following universal truth to you: the only thing that makes pregnancy worth it is the cute baby you get at the end. There is nothing else to recommend this ages old practice. I tell you, God wasn't kidding in the Old Testament when He said, "I shall greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children...". Just when you think it's not actually that bad, pregnancy comes back to bite you in the ass. It makes you eat your words when you say, "Actually, I feel pretty good!" It will not endure such blasphemy. It's like Machiavelli: it would rather be feared than loved.

Oh, if only the next month would fly by...

For the Sake of Balance

2011-09-21T18:55:00.000+01:00

So since I've forfeited my shiny shiny halo for the day (now how will I accessorize my harp and wings?), I'm basically a horrible person. But even horrible people can be nice, and in the interests of good karma, I'll make up for mercilessly mocking an old lady's creepy soul-sucking mermaid doll by sharing some culinary love.

A few nights ago, Seb begged for home-made fries and pan-grilled chicken for dinner. I happily obliged - deep-frying the fries the way he likes them. Considering that it takes longer and is more effort-intensive than just slinging some freezer fries in the oven, properly deep-fried chips are a bit of a rarity in our house. So this time I decided to make them even more special: I was going to season them!

As I've said before, my mad-scientist tendency gives me only a passing respect for real recipes. I mean, if Nigella or Jamie or Emeril came up with it, I've got more respect than Kanye has for Jay-Z. Represent, professional chefs! But when it comes to my own inventions, I'm not known for my habit of writing things down to ensure replicate-able accuracy. In fact, I'm sure most things I've faked my way through in the kitchen turn out to be distinctly different each time I do them. With that in mind, take the following with a fair dose of flexibility.

So: my home-made seasoned chips:

1 tsp Steakhouse Pepper

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp hot chili powder

1 tsp paprika

1 tbls salt

It's possible there's a tiny bit of cumin in there, but no more than about 1/2 tsp at most. Oh, and this concoction should last you through at least 3-4 large potatoes' worth of fries. I only just used the rest of the stuff tonight on some baked potatoes with barbecue baked beans on top.

Checkers: eat your heart out. (Am I the only one who's hungry again?)

There Goes My Halo for the Day...

2011-09-21T17:24:00.000+01:00

I tried; I really tried, but it was impossible!

I was filling some time by mindlessly trolling Teh Interwebz for some pretty picture to pin to my Pinterest page. The baked potatoes are baking away in the oven. The vacuum has done its vacuuming for the day, leaving my floors nice and tidy and crumb-free. My gold pine cones are sitting on a shelf awaiting my return tonight with my friend Jo's glue gun. So, in lieu of anything productive to do, I decided I wanted to look at pretty things for a while until the Husband showed up again at home.

Stop numero uno: Google image search. I found some pretty brightly-coloured front doors (a project I've been weirdly longing to tackle for the past few days...even though there's no way I could realistically paint our front door a sunny yellow or a spunky turquoise), and one particular door led me to an interesting blog called...

It's quite picture-heavy, much like

which I've been keeping up with for a while, just to have nice things to look at when I'm too lazy to read through tons of text on most of the blogs I follow.

Anyway, after finding Indigo Meets Violet, I had a wild moment of curiosity and decided to hit the "next blog" button at the top of Blogger's ubiquitous header bar. Everything was an absolute miss. There was something about cats and adages (don't begin to ask me why these things go together), a few blandly-formatted ones on quilting, and then, this gem. Prepare to be surprised. To be horrified. To wonder why anyone would proudly admit to making something so pants-wettingly frighteningly ugly in a public forum.

Keep going...I'm not giving this one up easily....

are you still going?

are you sure?

can I milk the suspense any more to leave you with an underwhelming sense of anticlimax, perfectly encapsulated by the "wah-wah!" sound effect?

I feel like Marilyn Manson the Mermaid here is going to crawl out of the screen at night to eat my soul like a Dementor...but scarier. If only there was a way to show you the Chuckie-lookalike Mad Hatter or the Alice in Wonderland who looks like Hey Arnold's sister, separated at birth...and raised in a crack house.

...work it football-head.

Hey. I warned you that this cost me my halo for the day. How could I pass up Coke Whore Ariel, complete with Vegas show girl headpiece?

Because I Actually DID Get Bored...

2011-09-20T18:10:00.002+01:00

I really did make scones as a way to fill the time and give myself a tasty snack. Alas, if you want play-by-play photos of the whole messy process with a list of how many dirty dishes this endeavour will cost you, you're at the wrong blog. For that kind of detailed and fun approach, I humbly direct you along to Cakery Bakery: the sugary brain-child of my sister-in-law, Rachel.

But for my own baking expedition, I'm a much more "off the beaten track" sort of gal. No: not cliché-happy, but ~~desperate~~ willing to take a look at a set of instructions in a recipe and think of them like Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Carribbean...

"They're more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules..."

That said, my guidelines came from my trusty rusty Fannie Farmer Cookbook. The cookbook of my childhood...except mine still has the cover attached. I never did know what the cover to that book looked like: I have no memory of it with intact binding.

I'm practically certain you could successfully Google this if you were so inclined, but I'm feeling magnanimous enough to make things easy. So here, for your reading and baking-experimenting pleasure, is Fannie Farmer's cream scones recipe:

2 cups flour 4 tablespoons butter/white flora/crisco
2 tsp baking powder 2 eggs, well beaten
1 tbsp sugar 1/2 cup cream
1/2 tsp salt

You mix all the dry ingredients together and then add the fatty lard-like product of your choice. Then, your butter/shortening added, it needs to be cut it in.

This is best done with a pastry cutter (one of my requisite kitchen indulgences as a young housewife), but if you're pastry cutter-less you can always go for the old two-knives trick. Just one knife in each hand dragged back and forth in opposite directions through your floury mix.

Once the whole mix resembles either coarse meal or a mound of tiny peas in flour, you add your eggs and cream, stirring until the mixture is blended (aka: there's no dry flour anywhere). Flour up your counter and hands and then knead the dough for a minute or so. Roll it out so it's just less than 1" thick and then cut it into wedges. At 425° F, you pop these babies into the oven on a slightly greased cookie sheet and 15 minutes later: voilà! You have scones.

Now, I have nothing against the late great Fannie Farmer. I respect her formidable New England prowess in the culinary arts. But these scones just sounded a little too boring to eat on their own as a snack. And let's face it - my own hunger is usually the first thing that motivates me to cook anything, so anything I cook has to be something I want to eat. Enter my own additions to the recipe:

1/4 tsp nutmeg 1-2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp vanilla extract.

Obviously, all the dry ingredients get added at the beginning with the flour, baking powder, et. al. and then vanilla is added along with the cream and eggs. This adds just a hint of spice to the scones, which makes them something special. What would I do differently next time?
1) either add more sugar to make them slightly sweeter, or just sprinkle white sugar on top before baking them. I opted for the second approach with half of the scones this time. (The Husband informed me that this makes them taste somewhere in the no-man's land between scones and hot cross buns, which is - apparently - a good place to be for Dr. Frankenstein's Scone.)
2) there is the possibility of adding a full teaspoon of vanilla, but since this was a first-time experiment, I wanted to be careful not to overdo it. I didn't: you can definitely double the vanilla if you so choose.

So here, in all their glory, are my Cinnamon Vanilla Cream Scones:

I had mine with some butter, but I think they'd be brilliant with some clotted cream or apple butter or maple syrup or something. I'm salivating just thinking about the possibilities.

So there you go! If you get bored and hungry and are in the mood for a good cold-weather, breakfasty-type snack, I'd suggest giving these a go. Or (even better), take Ms. Farmer's base recipe and come up with your own fun variation! I'd be interested to see what else could be done to these scones.

The Little Things

2011-09-20T15:31:00.000+01:00

Cue the high school flash-back moment where the above title reminds me of this song by Good Charlotte.

Now is one of those random moments where I wish I still had my pink leather studded bracelet. Sigh...it scares the crap out of me to think that the days of ball-bearing necklaces, studded bracelets, and pink Chuck Taylors were Ten Years Ago! I was a freshman in high school then. The 9-11 attacks had just happened. I was in the marching band. My eyebrows were severely over-plucked. Well, at least that's one thing I don't miss about being 14. Well...that and actually being 14.

Anyway: nostalgic moment over (as I fight the urge to cue up a Blink-182 playlist in iTunes...) The whole point of this post was to make a note of one tiny home improvement I've been able to easily make today. I love easy projects - they balance out the things like my painting/upholstering project that take multiple days (or sometimes weeks) or hanging all the curtains, which involved lots of drywall dust and playing with the electric drill. Nope: this project was simple, easy, and done so quickly, I had to undo part of it because I forgot to take pictures!

This shameful specimen is the weird corner cabinet in our bathroom.

I miss our old bathrooms. To start: there were two of them. And the bathtub in the main bathroom was wide enough to sit in without feeling like you might need to employ axle grease and a shoe-horn to get yourself out. Personally, I think that's the bare minimum as tubs go: in reality, one day I will settle for nothing less than a tub that comfortably seats two people. That, my friends, is living in style.

So, much as I love having some built-in storage, this cabinet would not have been my first choice when it came to said storage options. As bathroom storage goes, this cabinet is the cabinet that gets picked last in team dodgeball. It's the cabinet at the watering hole with the gimpy leg that's the first to get eaten when savage predators come. It's the cabinet all other cabinets studiously avoid during cabinet mating season. I think you get the picture I'm painting, here. And in case you don't, lucky you: I have another visual aid to demonstrate just what's wrong with it!

Yup. The handle is too small, and there's this odd peachy patch on the bottom of the door. Now, don't get me wrong: I don't mind the off-white hardware to match the off-white cabinet (even though the shiny-off-white paint could really use some TLC right about now...), but the cabinet door is magnetized so that it stays shut and doesn't swing open lying in wait to conk you on the head when you stand up from the toilet. A great feature, to be sure, but with the aforementioned tiny handle, you can't really get enough purchase to pull the door free of its magnetic bonds on the first try...and as it turned out, the Little Handle That Could eventually couldn't. After one too many attempts to get razors and wet-wipes out, the knob just popped off. I would have screwed it back on to the fitting and let that be that, but the cheap wooden handle had sheared off on the inside, leaving no thread to screw it back into place.

Oh darn. What a shame. Guess that means I have to go get a big enough knob for the cabinet door. Let's all take a moment to mourn. (Want me to lay on the sarcasm any thicker?)

After reading a few posts on Young House Love about updating things just by changing out the hardware (like I did here on my kitchen dresser!) I decided that at least as an intermediate step, the bathroom cabinet needed a little design-love. So it was off to B&Q again (soon they'll know me by name!) and a few minutes later I walked out with a lovely door knob that wasn't too big, but wasn't too small, and...came in a snazzy oil-rubbed bronze finish. (Yup, you guessed it...YHL moment.)

A beautiful contrast against the cabinet door! Oh, and to attack the creepy miscellaneous stain, I just got a cotton round with some nail polish remover on it and scrubbed at the door for a few minutes until it was clean enough for my satisfaction. I'd contemplated grabbing the leftover glossy white paint from when I refinished the chest, but
1) I'm sure the inventory says it's off-white, and I don't feel like painting it back later on unless I'm going to find a way to make it look super-swank in the meantime.
2) I can't remember what I did with the sandpaper anyway, so painting was off the table since I wouldn't be able to rough up the current crappy paint enough to give my new shiny paint something to stick to. Maybe eventually I'll do some navy blue stripes in a nautical theme. It depends on how much I feel like changing up this bathroom before we move.

And so, one door knob and some nail polish remover later, my creepy bathroom corner-cabinet was looking much better. (And feeling much easier to pry open!) And I love how the ORB knob looks against the off-white paint. The contrast brightens things up considerably.

Now to go make scones...because I'm bored and don't feel like begging around for a hot glue gun to borrow just yet.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

2011-09-18T21:00:00.001+01:00

(Ah, the NATO phonetic alphabet...gotta love it.) So, I can get on the cross trainer for half an hour most days of the week and be fine, but a walk outside in the woods leaves me crippled for the rest of the evening? What's up with that!?

Seriously: I stood up a few hours ago with the intent to go wash my face. I managed to get to the point where I was standing up and my hips and groin and pelvis and everything hurt so much, I had to sit back down and ask the Husband to fetch me a bowl of hot water, wash-cloth, and face wash. I only just hobble-shuffled my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth (you know, since being temporarily crippled is no excuse to skim on personal hygiene) and the whole journey went step by slow and painful step. It was like I'd been kicked in the crotch and then had my legs violently wrenched from their sockets.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not about the intensity of the workout I'm getting. The walk in the woods today was pretty leisurely. It wasn't uncomfortable at the time. There was only one steep hill and the pace was gentle. Fair enough: there's more of an impact with walking than with spinning the wheel on the cross trainer where my feet never leave the peddles, but still. It's not like I was marching through the Russian winter with the French Imperial army or anything! I wasn't doing bone-rattling jumps over rough terrain in my best mama-kangaroo impression. And yet, my whole pelvic bone and joints just don't agree with any form of walking that lasts more than 30 minutes at a time. They ache and stiffen and twinge for hours afterwards. I look like I should be shuffling around leaning against a walker with tennis balls fitted to the bottom! I should be playing canasta with all the arthritic octogenarians who can now ambulate with greater facility and speed than me. It's pathetic.

When did the cruel gods of pregnancy decide that gut-busting sessions at the gym lifting weights would be okay for me to handle, but Sunday afternoon strolls in nature would leave me couch-bound for the rest of the day? This can't continue, people! I'm too heavy to pick up right now, so there can be none of this damsel-in-distress, bride-over-the-threshold sort of crap going on.

Dear Baby: please appreciate that while I'm glad my pregnancy hasn't been nearly as bad as it could be, I really don't need this. Mommy's pelvis is an important thing, and it needs to stay intact for many years to come. If you could work on not breaking it, that would be great. 'Kay, thanks.

Going (Orna)mental

2011-09-15T14:00:00.002+01:00

What can I say? You have to pick the low-hanging fruit when it comes to cheesy titles.

So after cleaning and drying my scavenged pine cones, I've finally moved on to the second part of this process: spray painting! In any event, the directions I used said that it would be good to grab a clear acrylic spray to act as a protective coat that would help preserve the pine cones for longer. Definitely a good idea, but I didn't just want nice natural-looking pine cones. Sure: some of them will be their natural colour (and I'll probably top them with bows in a cute red ribbon), but I have to admit, I loved the look of sparkly gold pine cones, too.

Granted, mine aren't sparkly yet, but they are gold. I made a trip to B&Q (big surprise, right?) yesterday and took a look through their spray paint section.

I have to admit, I wasn't impressed by any of the gold colours. They were all kind of orange-looking. Or bronzey. I mean, I know that anything called "antique gold" is going to be a bit darker than a straight-off "gold"; but even the "gold leaf" colour looked way too red for my taste. I wanted a very yellow, very bright, slightly cooler gold. Accordingly, I shook a few cans and illicitly test-sprayed them on the plastic shelves to see how close to the cap colour the paints actually appeared. Turns out I was right: all the "real" gold paints were way too red. Well, aside from the gold glitter spray: that actually was the right shade. But, I didn't want just gold glitter on a natural woody-pine cone background; I wanted the whole thing to be a solid gold colour...possibly with gold glitter to be added later. So, according to the label on the lid of the can I finally settled on, the £4 spray paint I got is "brass"...but it looks pretty gold to me.

So, £10 later, I walked out of B&Q with a clear top-coat and some metallic gold paint. Not bad considering how many pine cones I'll be able to spray with these two cans. I'll definitely have more ornaments than any sane person has a right to keep in one collection. With that in mind, I might give a few away if they turn out right once I've moved on to the ribbons-and-string phase of this operation. That should be an interesting challenge...and I can foresee quite a few hot glue gun burns as part of the process.

Anyway, I grabbed some scrap paper from the pile to protect my lovely furniture, propped open the windows and got to work. Granted, this meant that the house was pretty chilly for the rest of the day, but it beat having a headache from huffing VOC-loaded spray-paint fumes for hours. Anyone who's spray-painted anything recently will know that I'm not joking when I say that the fumes off that stuff are strong: like, I'd warn even Keith Richards to watch out before spraying this stuff in an enclosed space.

You're supposed to wait 10 minutes in between coats so it has time enough to dry. And you definitely want more than one coat anyway. Another common sense/Young House Love tip: lots of thin, even coats are better than one thick gloopy one. (Just see that tip in action here.)

Accordingly, I sprayed about 3-4 coats of gold paint and 2-3 coats of acrylic top-coat on my pine cones. Just a hint for anyone thinking to attempt this madness at home: you will have to rotate the pine cones around a lot in order to get anything resembling full and even spray paint coverage. My 3-4 coats of gold paint are probably the bare minimum of what you can get away with and not have too many bare patches sticking out. (I confess, after a while I got all Rhett Butler on it and frankly didn't give a damn whether all the interior bits of the spines were perfectly gold-coated.)

The instructions insist that after 3 hours whatever you've spray painted is officially dry. I didn't have any mishaps with smudging paint (Though there was a lovely effect when I got some on my newly-grey-painted nails...), but hey: better safe than sorry. I'm pretty paranoid anyway when it comes to painting things, whether it's my nails or an abused storage chest or even some pine cones I picked up on an army tank test track, so I say you can never be too careful about letting things dry between coats.

In the end, this is what the result of my painting experiment was:

They look pretty good, I think. I'm still debating whether or not to add the gold sparkles as well, but we'll see how it goes first with getting some string attached so they can hang off the branches of my Christmas tree. It's been a fun process so far making my own Christmas ornaments. The next step is to consider making a few wreaths to hang on all the doors that face in to our hallway. There are 6 doors, not counting the front door which is around a corner, so I don't want to go overboard making stuff I can't store for the rest of the year, but maybe a few of these pine cones can be saved for wreath-decorating and not just tree-hanging. We'll see how it goes!

Like a Boss

2011-09-13T16:52:00.002+01:00

So there are serious marks and minor marks that you can accumulate on the British driving exam. Depending on how grievous your error is, you can be slapped with either one of these bad boys. You're allowed 15 minors before you fail, but no serious marks should dare show up on your evaluation sheet or it's back to the lists for you! And in this case, "back to the lists" meant, back to the scraggly end of a 12-week-long queue to re-take your practical exam. (Unless through clever espionage and internet stalking you managed to jump the queue when some lesser mortal lost heart and mysteriously cancelled.)

Anyway, despite the image that the driving test proctor is the stone-faced gargoyle guarding the entrance to Minas Morgul (though I think the land of legal driving should have a happier Middle-Earth equivalent), there is a decent bit of lee-way to be given in passing your test. However, your best bet - aside from being wickedly prepared - is to cultivate the perfect atmosphere and then hope for the trifecta.

I'm a nicely-mannered, 24-year-old, pregnant lady, so already my sympathy points are quite high. But then, my friends, I had the good grace and fortune to happen upon The Trifecta.
1) My instructor was a lady. A lady my mom's age...who likes babies. And likes to talk about babies.
2) All the roads I drove on were either in our old neighbourhood on the other side of town or, were fortuitously close to our new home on the north side of town. WIN.
3) The one reversing manoeuvre I was asked to complete was to back into a parking space at the end of the test. There was one other car in the parking lot.

Seriously; could they have made the test much easier in the end? Well, yeah: I could have done it on a closed test track like back in Maryland, but hey! I'm not complaining at this point. I passed! And not only did I pass: now I'm going to invoke the right to use my blog for shameless self-promotion and guilt-free bragging to say that I passed perfectly. I'm like the Mary Poppins of driving tests! Not a single minor mark against me: my cheery test proctor found my driving to be flawless.

Practically perfect in every way.

So now, I get to heave a huge sigh of relief and go choose the greasy, fried, salty, and delicious take-out dinner of my choice as a fitting reward for my efforts. I smile now at the end of an era - I'm legal again!

Pining Away

2011-09-10T14:47:00.003+01:00

On Saturday we had a lovely walk out on the proving grounds. Turns out, this was the perfect time of year to go hunting for pine cones. Why pine cones? You may be asking yourself. Well; wonder no longer.

Anyone who's been ~~wasting their life on~~ keeping up with my Pinterest page knows that I've started a pinboard full of decorating inspiration and ideas for the upcoming autumn and winter holidays. Especially, Christmas and Thanksgiving. And the predominant theme linking all of the photos I've chosen is the rustic, cottage, outdoorsy aesthetic. Anything with wicker, or holly, or cinnamon sticks, or orange and clove pomanders...basically, if I can find it outside, I bring it to decorate the inside.

I've always been a fan of things like this. My parents lived in Germany for a few years before I was born, so we've always had cute wooden Christmas ornaments, little people made of yarn, giant baubles made of decoupaged newspaper (I know you hate those things, Mom: I'll take them off your hands at any time...), and wicker pine cones and tiny wreaths of woven twigs. To this day, those sorts of decorations are just how a tree is supposed to look to me. My soul died a little last Christmas when, while working at Basildon Park, I had to decorate this dinky little white fake tree from Next with some hideous multi-coloured lights, tinsel garlands, and a bunch of ratty vintage baubles that looked in rougher condition than Lindsey Lohan's last mugshot.

But back to our walk in the outdoors. The Husband and I hadn't been out to the proving grounds for ages. Since before we moved, actually. This seemed like the perfect time to remedy that gap in our lives. How can you not take advantage of having sprawling tracts of relatively untouched (except for all the tank tracks, that is) woodland in such short driving distance from the house?

Since, by this point, I'd already been gathering momentum in my Cheap Holiday Decorations quest, I figured that the walk could serve the extra purpose of outfitting me with more pine cones than you could shake a stick at. So off we went, equipped with a plastic shopping bag, to enjoy nature and bring some of it home with us.

Now: anyone who's spent any time in nature will know that there's a slight hitch coming up in my plans. Nature is not a clean place. There's dirt and twigs and pine needles and...bugs. Creepy, crawly, slithery, slimey, nasty winged and many-legged bugs who have no respect for the pinecones you want to take into your clean and orderly home. Who will unabashedly tag along for the ride, coming out to make you scream like a little girl long after you've forgotten that they decided that your nicely opened and dried pine cone made a good home. I couldn't stand for this sort of fifth column sneak attack. Not in my house. Not with my Christmas decorations. No sir. So what did I do? I did what any sensible technology-dependent adult would do: I Googled how to de-bug and preserve scavenged pine cones for crafts.

The method I found on this website and then this one seemed to be the most fool-proof method. As the second website points out: you COULD dry them in the oven, but there's always the risk of melted sap dripping, things catching fire, smoking sap or cones...basically a whole mess of problems that would only end in tears (and a long day inhaling oven cleaner fumes looking like a Sylvia Plath re-enactment). Considering that pregnant and oven cleaner fumes don't go together, I figured that drying, opening, and de-bugging my pine cones in the oven was most emphatically NOT the way to go.

So, armed with a bottle of vinegar and what was at first a shamefully full sink (which I show to you in the interest of full disclosure...after all, the first step is admitting you have a problem...), I went to work on my bag 'o cones.

Some clean dishes, warm tap water, and 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar later, I was chucking tiny pine cones into my sink with merry abandon. I swished them around a bit and left them to soak away in a potential insect holocaust for about 20 minutes. Then, mass bug-waterboarding treatment done, I retrieved my now-closed-and-damp pine cone stash and set them up in neat rows to dry on the one cooling rack I have to my name.

~~The next morning~~ A few days and one round with the blow-dryer later, this is what they looked like:

Needless to say, there is still some work to be done on these bad boys. I need to hit up the craft store down in North Camp to snag some spray acrylic coating, some nice string, maybe a bit of ribbon, and some sparkly gold spray paint. They might not all end up gold, but I do like thinking about the visual "pop" of some gold pine cones on my Christmas tree. New crafty project, here I come...

It's Like Christmas!...but not.

2011-09-08T15:03:00.001+01:00

So I came back from a joint trip to the gym/library today to discover, waiting on the hallway floor, a mysterious postal notice slip with none other than my name on it. Snazzy, hmm? I always love getting mail. Well, unless it's a bill or payment notice for my student loans, or random junk mail (like all the pointless flyers to Dominos or the random Thai/Indian/Chinese places around the neighbourhood), or stuff that's actually meant for the previous occupants of the house we live in.

Anyway, my package pick-up slip was none of these annoying things, but the mystery still prevails. According to the slip, it was something I have to sign for, but it wasn't a huge box of things, it was just a packet (as opposed to the other options of a letter, catalogue, or perishable item). This is where I stroke my chin with a mock-thoughtful squint and wonder if it's the free cloth diaper I signed up to get.

Oh yeah, bask and revel in the sheer intensity of the lame mom-ness I've just described. I'm getting excited about whether or not the mailman missed a chance to give me something in which to catch baby feces, direct from the source. And not just something that acts as a repository for my child's bodily waste - oh no! It's something that can be washed and re-used in the most earth-friendly, Captain Planet, hug-a-tree sort of way to consistently aid in the disposal of my baby's excretions for months to come. And I'm excited about this. Dear Lord, what has happened?

Okay, I kid. ...er, slightly. I mean, I get excited about tiny baby socks and tiny newborn-sized onesies, and the fact that I have about 3 meters of grey stretchy cloth to tie around my middle and hold a baby in. If we're being honest here, free cloth diapers coming in the mail aren't too far a step from being excited over any of these other cute-and-diminutive-but-otherwise-nondescript necessities for the child that I'm about to spawn nearly any day now.

I wonder what colour it is. Having just purchased half of what will be our cloth diaper supply the other day (that's waiting to come in the mail, too), I'm curious to see just what sort of reality I've let myself in for with cloth diapering. I mean, my mom and my mother-in-law both cloth diapered us as babies. Obviously, things have changed quite a bit on that front in the past 28 years or so. At least, one would surely hope so. If portable phones could shrink down to about 1/6 their original size in that time frame, it'd be nice to think that some of the creative and innovative genius of the times could be harnessed to improve the technology of containing and removing baby poop.

from this...

...to this.

Somewhere in the midst of Gilmore Girls rants, laundering baby clothes, and packing a hospital bag, I'm sure that I haven't yet completely lost my mind. In fact, I hereby justify my weird excitement to get a diaper in the mail thus: since I'm about to be a mom to an outside baby with outside baby needs, it's rational to invest thought and energy into giving a crap about how I meet those needs...including the need to have one's waste properly taken care of. And the fact that the diapers come in super-cute colours doesn't hurt, either. Hey, if I can't go blow some money on fancy new leather boots (oh, how I wish) or trendy new autumn clothes pour moi (soon, my precious, very soon...), at least I can find pleasure in the things I need to buy. Like baby diapers!

Oh yeah...update: Turns out my mystery package was a surprisingly-prompt set of cloth diapers that I'd ordered just a day or two before. Considering that I placed my order late at night on the website, I'm doubly impressed that the things got shipped out as quickly as they did! The inserts are now spinning away in the dryer (the instructions say they do best when pre-washed before first use) and I'm now slightly closer to having my hospital bag finished! For more on the wonder of cloth diapering (and part of the reason I decided to go this route), check the lovely Petersiks over on Young House Love with this cloth diapering post.

A Mild Moment's Insanity

2011-09-07T18:17:00.000+01:00

Christopher! No: Luke! No: Max! No: Christopher! No: Luke! Chris, Luke, Chris, Luke...I can't choose! I'm only part-way through season 1 and I've already forgotten half of the numerous twists and turns taken in the romantic life of Loralei Gilmore. I've seen roller coasters and stretches of Alpine switch-backs that took fewer hairpin 180s than the dating life of the vivacious Ms. Gilmore. I never could quite decide, even watching it for the first time, which of the three I liked the best. No Team Edward/Team Jacob-style divisions here: I have love for all the Gilmore men. I keep vacillating between them like the spinning strawberry at Spring Fest! (Oh, the memories...the Spinning Strawberry of Death)

This is what happens when I feel too inexplicably tired to make it out to the gym in order to keep my pregnant ass in shape before my husband needs to take the car to drive to Reading to take a test for his BS 1/2-MBA programme that work forces him to do. And by "this" I mean spending the day eating far too much leftover chili, taking a walk outside in the crisp autumn breeze to drop bottles off at the bottle bank, and marathon-watching old Gilmore Girls episodes until suddenly my talent for faster-than-lightning speech has improved seven-fold and I can drop obscure pop-culture references with more skill than Jim Meskimen doing a Morgan Freeman impression. (Or maybe Jeffrey Dean Morgan looking suspiciously like Javier Bordem...) Now I'm debating the merits of Loralei's various beaux whilst simultaneously wondering why the hell I ever left my old brown corduroy jacket with the fleecy collar and cuffs at my mother's house. The whole reason I bought that jacket in high school was to achieve some semblance of the Rory Gilmore aesthetic.

There is a reason that no other show speaks so directly to my twisted soul.

Waiting for the Day

2011-09-05T11:13:00.001+01:00

33 weeks now, and the day I could be having this baby is getting creepily close. Just this morning before leaving for work, the Husband suggested to me, "Why don't you start getting your hospital bag together if you have time today?" Weeeeeeeird.

Now I have to start thinking about having my "Get ready and go" bag all set. To figure out what I want to wear home (a snazzy new WFU tee would be nice...I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for college right about now), what I'll need while I'm in there, what the baby will need to be taken home in...heck, I have to start thinking about having an actual outside baby!

In preparation for this momentous event, I've finally re-installed the car seat. This is one of the only times that our tiny car actually feels...well, tiny. I'm only just realising how spoilt I've been for leg room until now. Who knew that a car seat could take up so much stinking room? Well, I suppose I did know that, technically. We did have the seat base installed before, but took it out in order to make room for either passengers or an Ikea trip. Not any more! That car seat officially takes precedence over whatever else could be put in that space since D-Day rapidly approaches, at an approximate 49 days away. (Did I say, "weeeeeird" already?)

I'm also just noticing that I am doing that whole "nesting" thing. News flash: people aren't jerking your chain when they tell you about bursts of energy and a near-OCD need to...

...before the baby arrives. Just today I've:

taken out the trash
taken out the recycling
vacuumed the living room
dusted the windowsills (which I don't think I've done yet in this house...)
swept the kitchen and dining room area
made the bed
seriously contemplated cleaning the shelves in the fridge (but that might wait for one more day)

I mean, I'm not a dirty person. I enjoy and insist on having a clean house. But doing that much cleaning all before lunch time without the incentive of either A) going on a trip [so I can come home to a tidy house] or B) having company over [so I don't have to wallow in shame] is unusual. Another house-wide dusting rampage will probably take place once we're back from London later on. I knew I was in trouble when I caught myself eyeing up the door frames and wondering how much dust could have collected on top of them.

What the heck!? My house isn't a dusty cobweb bedecked kind of place! My baby's not going to notice if I haven't dusted the door frames, or vacuumed behind the radiators, or shampooed all the carpets...

I should stop this list now before I come up with more work for myself. I still have to make it to the gym most days and get ready to take (and pass!) my driving test. Then I can start worrying about whether the state of the [oven/carpets/door frames/bathroom sink/dining table] is acceptable to bring a baby home to.

In the meantime, I'm going to take several deep breaths, watch some Gilmore Girls, and remember that the baby won't die if I don't dust everything in sight to within an inch of its life.

More Baby Stuff

2011-09-01T15:36:00.000+01:00

While all the sheets and onesies and blankets we have are spinning away in the dryer, I have another new toy to play with. Though to be honest, it's not much fun without a baby to play with in tandem. After the research I did and looking at the heinously expensive prices of most baby carriers, Sebastian agreed to let me get a Moby wrap for our little munchkin.

It's basically a long piece of fabric that you wrap around and then sit the baby in the criss-cross'd folds. (Anyone else having a moment of singing "Jump" by Kriss-Kross? Just me?...)

Anyway, it's great. No fiddly buckles and straps to play with; you can have the baby in it from the get-go (provided he's not too tiny); baby can face you or the world depending on how controlling those pesky neck muscles is going, and because you just re-wrap the Moby each time, it's easy to share if you and the other resident baby-carrier aren't the same size. (Incidentally, I think we are the same size when I'm not pregnant...I've stolen Seb's jeans before and his t-shirts all the time...)

So, since I can't just get new things and let them sit somewhere unopened until I need them, I decided to play with my Moby...

Albert the Wake Forest teddy bear became my test dummy for our inaugural run. It seemed to go pretty well. And, if all else fails, there are handy-dandy instructions (in full colour!) that came in the bag. Oh, and this is what it looks like un-packed and un-worn:

In any event, I may feel a bit granola carrying my kid around in this, but at least it doesn't look like I have an alien popping out of my abdomen...

Update: we tested the Moby out on my nephew, Henry, over the weekend. Result? The Moby works just fine and I actually know what I'm doing well enough not to drop, tangle, or otherwise injure a baby. Henry, however, was far less than amused at the reality of being strapped to my chest with no means to thrash his head about in search of boobs.

The Nostalgia Factor

2011-08-31T15:54:00.000+01:00

So the Husband was reading an article - or listening to a podcast or something - the other day which mentioned a study that says that you actually feel younger, not older, when you hear a song or see something that reminds you of being a kid. I guess that explains why I was getting my groove on to some early 90s hip-hop in the living room the other day after stumbling onto the new cover of "Return of the Mack" by Mann, Iyaz, and Snoop Dogg. Seriously: I hadn't heard that song since elementary school...it's been ages!

Apparently, since then I've been racking up the nostalgic moment non-stop. On Sunday, Seb and I were looking for something to do together to pass the time. We haven't found many fun two-player card games and we only have two board games to our name, so we resorted to the computer for some entertainment that didn't necessarily involve watching a nature documentary. (Side note: we did watch this hilariously over-dramatic documentary on honey ants the other day. It was narrated by Andy Serkis and I just kept waiting for some reference to a "precious"...anyway...)

The online search for two-player computer games got me something I'd been looking for for quite a while. An old computer game called Lode Runner: The Legend Returns. It's a product of the mid '90s from Sierra that involves sneaking and blasting your way through various types of terrain to collect gold all while avoiding red-cloaked baddies who chomp you into tiny bits if they catch you. Does that sound lame? I'm not doing it much justice.

Anyway, Seb found a version to download and now - after years of extremely intermittent searches - I finally have it on my laptop for continued enjoyment. I used to spend hours as a kid playing this game on the old Compaq Presario we used to have. (Of course, this was after the Commodore 64, with Jet Boot Jack, died its ignominious death.) Really, it was my dad's game, and - given the incredible age difference - he was way better at it than I ever was. V and I used to make him tell us when he'd beat another 10-level set so we could come watch the fun (and pretty high-class for the time) animations that detailed what tool was added to your arsenal for the next 10 levels. It also showed which new background the next 10 levels would have, too.

My next, "holy crap it's been forever!" moment? It's autumn now. No; I don't care that the calendar on my desktop still reads: 31 August 2011. Do. Not. Care. The temps have dropped here, and the air smells like cold (yes, cold has a smell) in a way that distinctly reminds me of the hour or two just before school would start back in Maryland. I feel like I need a lunchbox and thermos again! Anyway, all that is to say: because it feels like autumn, there are certain clothes I like to get out, certain songs I like to listen to, certain foods I like to eat...and certain TV shows I think of more often. With that in mind, I decided that since I'll need something to watch compulsively in the hours that Baby D keeps me awake (coming soon to a sleep-deprived young family near you!), that I would watch something I haven't watched in far too long. Something that is creepily integral to understanding the way I talk and the freakishly symbiotic relationship I have with my mom and sister. Gilmore Girls.

There is no other TV show I equate so fully with this time of the year. Maybe it's because the whole thing is set in the lovely fictional New England town of Stars Hollow, CT. Maybe it's the abundance of layers and scarves and plaid flannel throughout a large chunk of the broadcasting season. Maybe it's the gorgeous shots of golden and red autumnal New England foliage during the title sequence of every episode. I don't know. But anyway, it's autumn and I have to watch Gilmore Girls. I mean, this show is why I remembered the term stichomythia for my AP English Lit exam senior year of high school. It honed my love of fast-paced dialogue and esoteric cultural references sprinkled freely in even the most mundane conversation. And now I can relive all 7 seasons all over again.

If there was any more evidence needed that this baby is going to come out a fast-talking, wise-cracking, well-read nerd, then this is it. Quotations from obscure books, classic movies, and indie folk music will abound. So now that it is autumn: let the Gilmore Girls re-screenings commence! As if I needed another reason to love this time of year above all others...

Another Open Letter...

2011-08-29T16:26:00.000+01:00

Dear Inappropriate Lady at Sainsbury's,

I must confess, I have no empathy. I've never been one of those people who, in the right outfit, could be considered "ambiguously gendered". No one's ever come up to me to start a conversation with a well-meaning and apprehensive, but ultimately mistaken, "Excuse me, sir..." To be perfectly honest, I doubt you fit this category of unfortunate individuals either. Sure, you happen to have more-masculine-than-average facial features, but you're not Pat from JoAnn's Fabrics with the awkward stubble, androgynously overweight body type, and that middle-of-the-range kind of voice that could be either a high-pitched man or a low-pitched woman. To this day, I still don't know whether I would have run into Pat at the sinks in the ladies' toilets. I don't think I want to know, to be honest.

Anyway, Inappropriate Lady, all this is to say: you don't need to overcompensate. I shouldn't know how wild and free you like to hang. I shouldn't have to wonder if you do weekend stints as a nudist in some compound out in the Hampshire wilderness. Most of all, I really shouldn't be able to see your enormous nipples through your indiscreet see-through white faux-linen top.

I mean: you've got to pick one thing or the other. Either, don't wear a bra, but make sure I can't see your areolae through your top, or wear a top that lets me pick out the intricate details of the leopard-print brassiere you like to flaunt. You can not - in this instance - have your cake and eat it too. I haven't seen that much public nudity since the last time I flipped through a National Geographic.

Did no one tell you that it's inappropriate to have your boobies hanging out in public? I get that strangers might be ashamed to admit they're being flashed despite the fact that you have a top on, but your husband was clearly standing in the queue next to you. Is he blind? A vicarious exhibitionist? Uncaring? Because I'm hoping he has some excuse for not telling you that your nipples were blatantly visible before you left the house. Otherwise, girlfriend, the blame for this shameful public display is all on you.

I don't care if it feels better to hang loose and free. I don't care if bras are a tool of oppression from piggish male chauvinists. I don't even care if you have a wicked rash from your underwire that your doctor has specifically instructed you to air out. Being clothed in public is something you should do more than pay lip service to. Seriously: it would have felt less indecent if you'd just not put a shirt on at all. I'm just saying...nobody needs to see all of that. Nobody. Especially not in the queue at the grocery store. So please: do the world a favour and get a sweater on before any more eye-bleach needs to be dished out to the general public.

Come on, now. Even nasty Ms. Jackson had the good grace to be embarrassed to show her bits in public.

What's Up @ 32 Weeks...

2011-08-29T11:52:00.000+01:00

So as of today, Piggly Wiggly and I have now reached a whopping 32 weeks of growing and incubating. I still can't quite believe how ridiculously long ago it seems when I first saw the word "pregnant" on that little digital test. Seriously: I've spent only 6 weeks of this whole year not being pregnant...and during those six weeks, I was trying pretty darn hard to be pregnant.

What milestones have we now reached at 32 weeks? Well, as of my last appointment with the midwife, I've been informed that my little munchkin is finally head-down instead of chilling out like my uterus is his/her own personal hammock. The bonus to this? Head-down baby means, in no uncertain terms: we are getting ready to be born! Just what I want to hear.

Oh, and according to the Fit Pregnancy website, Piggly Wiggly's bones are ossifying. It explains why those night-time TaiBo sessions have become much more pronounced. It's a no-brainer now as to whether I'm being poked with a foot or a hand or a knee most of the time.

My one fear is this:

From now until delivery, you'll be gaining about a pound a week. About half of that gain is the baby's, the rest is fluid retention.

Seriously? A pound a week for the next (possibly) eight weeks? No thanks. I've gained enough weight. I already have to keep my wedding and engagement rings in their box because they don't fit on my finger any more. That's because my finger now bears more resemblance to a sausage than a normal human digit. Any more fluid retention and I'll be holding more water than the Hoover Dam! Don't get me wrong, my 4 lb. baby can gain what weight it likes...and by that I mean it can gain another 3 lbs., give or take. But I don't personally need to put on another pound. Especially since it's not even something useful like fat stores for breastfeeding, it's just useless water retention. Do I look like a water cooler? Are people standing around me and gossiping with tiny paper cups in their hands? I didn't think so.

Sharing the (DIY) Love

2011-08-25T17:58:00.000+01:00

It seems that over the past weeks and months the lion's share of the DIY attention and effort I've expended on our new place has been devoted to the nursery. Just witness the laundry list of projects I've done for that room:
1) painted the walls
2) bought/framed art work
3) hung curtains (though, to be fair, I did that for our 3 rooms with big windows)
4) assembled my nursing chair
5) got a new lamp shade
6) re-built the crib we bought
7) built the shelving unit (being honest, I didn't do that one...Seb did.)

Still. My other rooms have had a bit of art hung in them, and I did get new handles and drawer pulls on the kitchen dresser, and I refinished the chest that looked like a victim of domestic abuse to show it some love (and make more seating). That said, through all of these projects there was one room that was sadly lacking in TLC: our bedroom.

Yeah, I'd hung some pretty awesome sage green curtains, but aside from a few token efforts to keep the space tidy (which were appallingly "meh" as efforts go), I really hadn't done anything to make our room nicer. Which is a shame, because especially once the baby comes, I want this room to feel nice. I want it to be a bit of a sanctuary: a good place to relax. I'm not talking about going all Nate Berkus or Thom Felicia on it and adding a stripey accent wall and a crazy canopy over the bed with dimmer-switch-controlled sconces in brushed nickel or oil-rubbed bronze finish (an obsession I'd love to steal from YHL...) and tons of snazzy (and expensive) throw pillows to dominate half of the length of the bed. Can I just say how much superfluous "decorative" pillows bother me? You just throw them on the floor at night and have to pick them all up again in the morning so it doesn't look like Hurricane Katrina hit your bedroom!

I digress...those sorts of grand schemes really aren't on my radar. Would I paint the walls? Sure, if I found a nice neutral shade that set off the curtains and the dark furniture nicely. Would I consider a tiny plush rug to cover what little floor space is exposed? Yeah - just for the pampering factor. Do I want to remedy the two depressingly blank (and badly repaired) walls by our bed? You betcha! But what the room really needed first was to be organized. Tiny spaces die a horrible death when they're taken over by clutter, and by that assessment, our bedroom was struggling on life support.

A while back I suggested one small step to get me going: a hook to hang the cluster of necklaces currently beating the hell out of our wardrobe door and to get my Forever 21 straw hat off the chest of drawers so I could dust things more conveniently. So last weekend, while we were out getting some electronics supplies for the Husband, I convinced him to nip round the corner and take me back to - you guessed it - B&Q to snag some more project supplies.

With my chosen hook in hand, I decided this afternoon to make good on my promise to start improving our room and drilled the holes for the rawl plugs that came as part of the hook's installation kit. As you can see: drilling through crappy drywall isn't a very clean and neat process. Oh, and when I say crappy drywall, I'm not kidding. I could see the wall bow against the pressure when Seb pressed on a fitting to make sure it was secure. I'm not sure I'm terribly reassured by that demonstration...

Anyway: holes drilled, the rawl plugs that came with the hook were hammered in.

Only problem? The holes I drilled were too big for them and upon our first attempt to screw the screws into place, both rawl plugs slid back into their holes and disappeared into the mystical chasm between the walls. FAIL.

So the Husband unpacked a bag of rawl plugs and screws we bought for a previous project and used those instead. Life savers. These didn't disappear into the wall, never to be seen again. They also actually held the screws that fit the hook mountings, so I wasn't left with an ugly finish. Yeah, my hat will obscure the hook most of the time, but that was no excuse.

There was one more problem, though. The screws we'd got in the hook installation kit were crap. Just a few turns with our power drill had threaded them both thoroughly. It was a miracle that we managed to drill/ply them out again to start over!

I hate to say it, but we sure did get what we paid for! Luckily, though, that previous £2 we spent on a huge bag of more rawl plugs than we can possibly use saved our butts on this and we were able to make it work. Witness: my tiny necklace hook - though not as swanky as the ones I hunted down on Etsy - is installed and ready for use...

It helped that there was already a hole in the wall that I was able to just drill wider to use as a guide for hanging this thing. Oh, and lurking in the corner of the mirror in that picture is the other improvement I made to our room: a lampshade I don't hate. And it matches our curtains! I have to admit, I had my heart set on something cream and sage toile, but for £5 at Sainsbury's, I'm really not complaining!

So I tidied up the dresser, broke out the Endust and gave the whole thing a good wipe-down. Then I consolidated some of the junk we'd been accumulating and put everything into its new-found place. We really do both try to fight our natural tendency to be untidy pack rats. Thankfully, college (and then grad school in a 2-bedroom flat with 4 other people!) mostly cured me of my cluttered ways. Though it'll be another long cycle before I bother organizing my drawers again...there's so much stuff I just don't bother folding.

So the above is a much better representation of what our room looks like now. I just need to hunt down some nifty art to hang over the bed and get some more frames for family pictures on the other wall and then I'll be set. Er...I'll be set to start deciding what else I want to do to this room. I feel a long Etsy/Pinterest session coming up...

Something like this would be awesome hanging over the bed...

Baby and Body

2011-08-24T18:33:00.000+01:00

Speaking of things I'm impatient for (the release of The Hobbit in cinemas, meeting my gorgeous baby, having my momma come visit...), I'm impatient to have my pre-baby body back. Yes, I know, this is where I roll my eyes and assert that I have - in fact - heard everyone say that you never get back to exactly the way you were before a baby. Things change. I get that. But that doesn't mean I'm not desperate to get back to longer and more intense sweat-sessions at the gym.

I dread the idea of being forced to stay home and not go running or do the elliptical. I hate thinking of the weeks I might be require to lay off the squat machine or the free weights. And, let me say, I miss the gruelling abs workouts I used to do. I miss my (mostly) flat tummy and my ability to do tons of crunches and then do 30-second planks minute after minute in rapid succession.

Why is that? It's not that I'm a body-hating Nazi. I'm impressed that my body can do what it's doing and grow a brand new human being! I'm even more impressed that it's done it with only the addition of a few tiny stretch marks to my hips (which will soon fade into obscurity). But I also derive a very real pleasure out of being able to squat 220 lbs. on the free-weight inclined squat machine, or ramping the weight on the back machine at the gym up to 110 lbs. When I lived in central London, I'd run up through Regent's Park most days, and even when I wasn't at my slimmest (which I haven't been since just after I graduated from Wake), there was definitely a strong neurological reward from checking myself out in the shop windows on my way back from a run in the park. It didn't matter in those few seconds past the bistro windows that I still had a bit of flab on my tummy, or that my arms weren't very toned, or that my calves have always been pretty tiny and not at all muscular-looking. What mattered was that seeing myself mid-stride, pounding the pavement to my favourite music...I looked good. No: I looked damn good. And it wasn't just because I happen to love the sizeable boobs and pert bum that come courtesy of my hourglass figure (though I do love to 'shake what my momma gave me'!)...it was because I knew I was taking care of myself. I was doing something constructive with my body: making it work more efficiently, feel more powerful and healthy, and yes - making it look better, too.

So while I appreciate the uncomfortable, unglamorous miracle of baby-growing, I do yearn for the time when I can once again run 5 miles a day in my Under Armor shorts and a form-fitting self-wicking top. I want to lift weights and climb stairs until my sweat evaporates and leaves those creepy salt deposits behind. I want those things because I know that I can do those things. I've done it before. And it's just part of who I am that I take pride in proving what my body can do. Just like I'm proud of the ways in which I've honed my intellect, or become an emotionally-functional adult, or developed my musical talents - I'm also someone who invests a lot in improving my physical prowess as well. Don't get me wrong: looking smoking hot in a brand new Little Black Dress is definitely part of the appeal of losing the baby weight to embrace life after pregnancy. But for me, looking good isn't that fun unless I feel good and feel fit, as well. And part of being able to feel as fit as I can be - for me - is being able to feel like I can give 100% in my workouts. To feel like I can kick my own ass and walk out of a gym feeling sore and sweaty and tired, and amazing. Yeah, physically, your muscles may be worn out for a little bit, but I always feel energized after a good workout, not enervated.

So yeah, I'm going to sit out the remaining weeks of pregnancy with a bit of impatience and ill-grace. I want a healthy baby, and the risks of premature birth are in no way an acceptable trade for getting my body back a bit earlier than anticipated, but don't think I won't be chomping at the proverbial bit waiting for the green light to get my sweat on.

oh my love...how I miss you...

Fuelling the Impatience

2011-08-22T16:38:00.000+01:00

So, who wants to see some pictures of my super-cute nephew, Henry? I sure do: that kid's scrumptious! The Husband and I headed up to see the in-laws yesterday for a quick visit and a second opinion on the song we're performing for his cousin Austin's wedding in 2 weeks (eek!). Turns out that our lovely sister-in-law, Rachel, went in to hospital earlier than we expected to deliver her beautiful baby boy. Of course, we couldn't let this chance to visit the brother and sister, and see the newest member of the family (and our first nephew!) pass unheeded.

It was a great visit. Henry's so cute and tiny! And can I just say how freaking adorable it is to watch my husband hold a tiny baby? Seriously. I'm a sucker for cute guys holding cute babies. Resistance is futile. My small, grinchy heart melts seeing that.

Of course, aside from the excitement of seeing our nephew for the first time, both Seb and I got all shook up over baby Henry for another reason, too. Now we're even more impatient to see our own baby! I mean: who is this kid going to look like!? What colour will his/her hair be? Eyes? (Well, probably blue-ish to start off, but after that - who knows?) Whose nose will the baby's most resemble? What kinds of crazy and hilarious newborn baby faces will our offspring decide to unleash upon us for our entertainment? These questions need answers! And seeing our little nephew has only made us more desperate for the time when those questions can be answered.

Plus: can I just say how bizarre it is - in the best possible sense of the term - to go from a giant bump that wiggles on its own, to a separate and distinct individual whose tiny hands and feet and face you can actually see, and with whom you can actually interact? It's really strange to try and make the cognitive leap looking at that baby and saying, "oh yeah, that was you doing all the kicking and rolling around when I was trying to sleep. You used to be inside of me!" My mind is blown considering that moment. So for now, I'll just look at Henry and try to quell my impatience for a little while longer.

Finally...sort of...

2011-08-20T18:46:00.000+01:00

So we've finally gotten around to a few more of the "finishing touches" on the nursery. Yes, I know. The baby may not be here just yet, but it's certainly taken far longer than I thought to keep working on the nursery. The two glaring inadequacies were:

1) A lack of a finished window treatment.
2) The framed pictures sitting useless on the floor.

It was time to fix both of those. A quick few seconds with the hammer and two nails dealt with those pictures easily enough:

Next task was to fit a shade to the window. I had my lovely neutral (and cheap!) curtains from John Lewis, but those still let in so much light at mid-day that afternoon naps could prove to be something of a problem. Plus, there were still gaping holes from the previous window fitting (remember the creepy 80s curtains?) that desperately needing covering up. Witness: the before shot...

Okay, so you can't see the holes above the window in this shot, but trust me when I say that they're pretty obvious in real life. Luckily, we made another trip to B&Q today for this and a few other project supplies (briefly milking the minimal suspense...), so I came home with this solution to my overlit nursery problem:

We wanted to have another colour in the room besides just the predominant yellow and green, and this seemed like the best chance to introduce a new hue to the crew. (Yeah, I went there...I'm a dork. Don't tell me you expected anything less.) We were trying to decide between the nice shade of teal above and a navy blue. I'm sure the navy would have worked, too, but in the end my gut instinct won out. It's the sort of thing you have to check, though. I would have felt worse if we'd bought it simply on my knee-jerk reaction (Hi, I love all things teal/cerulean/aquamarine), so I had to make sure my rash judgement was still the best option. It was. Eh, I'm just that good. ;-)

The instructions were simple enough: drill holes, hammer in Rawl plugs, screw the screws, slide on the fittings, fit in the blind, and voilà! Updated window fitting that adds another colour to the nursery colour scheme.

(Sexy husband to help with all the measuring and drilling not included in rolling blind installation kit.)

And in the end, the result was just what I was hoping for. I'm getting much better at this whole visualization thing, I think.

Eventually, I'll have to start updating the rest of the house, because this room is ridiculously colourful compared to the rest of our drab white walls.

Oh, and I had another addition to our baby things show up in the post the other day!

So you can't tell because the picture is tiny and I've blurred out my address to deter any Interwebz stalkers, but this is from my lovely friend Sarah, who decided that I needed a good way to laugh about pregnancy and baby-handling.

Hmm...I wonder what could be in Sarah's mysterious box of wonderous baby-themed presents...

Turns out that the best way to laugh is with some witty cartoons mockingly instructing you on the best way to take care of yourself and the baby through pregnancy and infancy:

Thanks, Sarah! We had a good laugh over these at the dinner table when Seb got home from work the day they arrived.

Oh, and for everyone who's been wondering, I have actually bought something for my baby (besides a place to sleep and stuff to travel safely): we got onesies today! I love that I don't have to feel guilty any more ogling the baby clothes aisle in stores; I can officially cave (at least in small measure) to the cuteness of onesies and tiny shoes and little dresses and leg warmers for chubby little baby legs! (Deep breaths...if I'm not careful this baby will have a bigger wardrobe than Paris Hilton...)

If you can resist this, you have no soul.

Open Letter to Pregnancy

2011-08-19T22:20:00.000+01:00

Dear Pregnancy,

let me start by saying that I'm glad you're giving me a baby at the end of all this. That's cool. But when you go, can you take my love handles with you? Thanks. 'Cause I'd like to be able to fit into my nice corduroy Banana Republic trousers from last year. I mean, I only had them for one season before they had to be retired, so it'd be nice to get some more wear out of them. Oh, and while we're on the subject of making requests, when breastfeeding comes along, can we arrange for a kick-ass metabolism? Considering hitting up the gym will get more difficult to schedule around my lovely new baby (thanks for that, again), I need each session and each run to really count...you know what I'm saying? So if my metabolism could do like Emeril Lagasse and "kick it up a notch" I'd be quite grateful.

Bam! Slim hips and thighs! That's what I'm talking about.

I'm just sayin', pregnancy...help a girl out. This has been all about the baby so far, and I get that - it's cool - but I am only 24...don't let this be the end of my normal body. Say it ain't so, Joe - just say it ain't so!

Here Comes the Rain

2011-08-18T20:01:00.000+01:00

What with the rain today and all the Back to School talk, it officially feels like autumn over here in the UK. Seriously: summer has long passed: I don't care if it's still August according to the calendar. We've had a pretty crap summer here anyway, as far as nice sunshine and summery weather goes. So I have no qualms about forsaking a lacklustre summer for the abundant joys of autumn. Especially when it means I can start stalking the hell out of every store's upcoming knitwear collections.

Let's face it, I'm not one to pass up an opportunity for new clothes, and the upcoming fall season affords me twice the usual incentive to fill out the gaps in my wardrobe.
1) The weather is changing, so I need to see what I have in the way of layerable clothes that are still in a fit state to be worn in public. (Alas, I think this discounts my holey boots.)
2) I'll be giving birth at the end of October, so the time for generously spacious maternity clothes is rapidly coming to an end. No use in investing in much more maternity wear until I'm pregnant again (which, since I'll get my way - because my way is the Husband's way - won't be for another 2 years or so).

The imminent return of something resembling my old body shape has me all kinds of excited to go buy some new clothes to show it off. Who cares if my uterus takes its sweet time shrinking back to size? With the lovely phenomenon of fall layering, I can hide my baby pooch under chunky cardis and sweaters of all shapes and sizes for months. Which means most people won't even know it's there at all, and by the time that spring bring about lighter fabrics and fewer layers, I'll have enough of my pre-pregnancy tummy to flaunt it without fear.

In the meantime, I'm going to get all a-twitter (I love that phrase) for cable knit and fair isle and corduroy, and scheme and plot my way through all kinds of seasonal DIY projects. I am a self-diagnosed Christmas fiend. From high school through college, whenever I came home, I was the Christmas Nazi. If the tree wasn't up, I made sure that furniture got re-arranged to accommodate it. If anyone even hinted that such a project as a cranberry-and-popcorn garland was on the radar, I was revving the car engine to go raid the store's supplies of Orvile Redenbacher and Ocean Spray.

And since I don't have to make Thanksgiving dinner on my own this year, I can channel what creative energies I have left after keeping my baby alive and fed (and clean) into making autumnal wreaths, candle holders, and table decorations.

Thankfully, Seb is just as much into the whole rustic aesthetic around the holidays as I am. I'm glad to have married a guy who will not only support, but instigate trips to farmer's markets and nature walks where we can scavenge pinecones, ivy vines, and holly boughs to toss around our house in true festive fashion. Just you wait for the pictures. It's my first set of end-of-year festivities as a mommy, so I'm setting the bar high for our family when it comes to how we roll from September to January.

Passing By

2011-08-16T16:30:00.000+01:00

It seems like time is starting to go by a quite the breakneck pace lately. Of the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy, I'm officially in week 30. That's 3/4 of the way finished (unless baby does me a favour and comes a week or two early!). I have 3 weeks until I sing at Austin's wedding and 4 weeks until my driving test. I've always used my sister's birthday as a benchmark for when the summer was pretty much over, and since she became fully legal yesterday, for me, summer is rapidly wrapping up.

Don't get me wrong, that's a lovely feeling. As much as I enjoy the summer, autumn is - hands down - my favourite season of the year. I love watching the leaves change and the cooler weather (time to break out all my cute scarves and sweaters!) and that distinct, yet indefinable "autumn smell" that permeates the air. Plus, since this is now the second year in my life where autumn doesn't mean Back to School, I can continue to enjoy it in much the same way as I enjoy the summer.

The other insane reason I know that time has been shuffling on? I've now officially been pregnant for half of my married life. Creepy. Thankfully, that average will significantly decrease pretty soon (by the end of the year or so), but with only 14 months of wifey-time under my belt so far, they split quite evenly between "growing a baby time" and "normal time". And yeah - this will probably be the only time that the percentages work out that way. We're both slightly creeped out by the idea of spending more time gestating than you do being free to sleep on your back, eat soft cheese, and not have random strangers molest your midsection.

That does not need to be my family. It's not my ambition to birth an entire orchestra, soccer team, or a large a cappella group.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging all large families: my own mom was one of 13 kids (try imagining family dinners!), I'm just saying that I don't enjoy being pregnant so much that I want to do it all the time as much as I can. Besides, how minted do you have to be able to afford raising that many kids!? I get that some people really enjoy children and having a huge family, I just question when it starts to become like people who have piercings or tattoos all over because they just enjoy it so much they can't stop.

Say it with me now: "Psychological disease!"

I mean, seriously. I know that some people (including, I believe, the Duggars, whose family I pictured above) take the line of reasoning: "God gave me the ability to have babies, so I'm going to have as many as I can until I can't have them any more." Fair enough: celebrate your reproductive capability. It's an awesome power to create new life. But saying: "I can, so I'll do it until I have to stop" is like saying, "My body can tolerate alcohol, so I'm always going to drink until I'm blackout and can't physically drink any more." It's the sort of reasoning that can rationalize all sorts of what I call PLDs: Poor Life Decisions.

Lesson for the day? Moderation in all things. Whether it's beers or babies or body art.

In the meantime, I'm going to wait impatiently for the email that tells me when our antenatal classes are supposed to start. I registered for those things ages ago when my midwife gave me the email address and I've had nothing but radio silence ever since. Get with it, NHS! I know you're free, but you don't have to get all "you get what you pay for..." with your services. I mean, I don't feel significantly unprepared, but if I have this baby before I hear back about the classes I signed up for, that's a pretty shabby job. You don't get much more lame train than that.