Moog's meanderings

..well, I suppose if we really put our mind to it we could get out and about. I have walked up the road to buy eggs. Munchkin, hubby and I walked round the block and threw snowballs. Getting the car in and out of the garage is not easy in the snow (as hubby experienced on Monday evening) so we’ve decided not to bother. The small roads where we live are bad (and not gritted) although the main roads seem to be ok.
It turned out that hubby wasn’t needed for the thing he was supposed to be doing workwise down south for Tues-Thurs so he never went. Given the situation on the roads according to the national travel news bulletins I am very relieved! It’s also been useful as I had a weird Tuesday and Wednesday and needed the help with Munchkin. I spent most of Tuesday in bed aching and feeling sick – all I managed all day was half a ginger biscuit and an apple. Of course, having not eaten anything I spent all of Wednesday feeling absolutely shattered. Today is very much better, but hubby feels shattered and has a nasty headache (and doesn’t look great). He’s gone for a nap.
I’ve been suffering quite badly from heartburn the last week or two. I did have it a bit when I was pregnant with Munchkin, but it started a lot later on and didn’t seem to bother me as much. It means that napping after lunch (well, lying down anyway!) isn’t a great idea because of the reflux so my plan is to watch TV or read instead. Not that I have been napping – more like rushing around the house getting things done, making bread or supper, tidying up or whatever. That’s probably not the best thing to be doing straight after lunch when one’s stomach is somewhat limited on space due to a hyperactive member of the next generation incubating down there.
Hey ho – TV it is! )

Hubby made it home again but spent 1/3 of his journey time within 5 miles of home. The snow situation (depending on your point of view) got progressively worse throughout the day and it’s now rather unwise to try to get anywhere. I am now no longer going to do the visit I talked about in my earlier post.
I was very proud of myself to have managed the walk to and from our regular group this morning. Munchkin slept very late and what with the snow making progress with the pushchair rather slower than usual we made it just in time for the sing-song and tidy up!! A nice person made me a cup of tea and gave Munchkin a biscuit though, and I managed to hang around and natter for nearly an hour so it was definitely a worthwhile expedition.
The second trip out wasn’t so much fun – longer and there was more snow to contend with. I made it the health centre (not my local one) where the notice at the reception desk advised ‘if you have an appointment wait to be called’ and listed the numbers for the various people/groups/clinics operating out of the centre. I sat and waited – having an appointment. 45 minutes later a nice lady asked me what I was waiting for and went to find out where the midwives were. None on site, and no clinic today. Frustrated? An understatement! This is just one in an ever increasing list of ‘miscommunications’ from my midwife (and these days I double check everything she tells me because there have been so many mistakes – dates, times, locations, …). As I was leaving I bumped into one of the midwives I know from my pregnancy with Munchkin, who had just returned from my regular health centre and had been wondering why I hadn’t turned up to my 1430 appointment. Grrr! When I left it was snowing fairly heavily and I can say that the trek back wasn’t all that much fun. Thankfully Munchkin slept from part way through the outward to just into the return journey, so at least he wasn’t too much disrupted by it all.
Looking forward to a nice hot bath (promised by hubby when he finally made it home) and homemade chicken stew with mash in front of the TV. Mmmm!

Munchkin is still asleep and I don’t intend to wake him just yet so time for a quick post!
Brum doesn’t seem to be that bad with the snow so I don’t think we’ll be in for a ’snow day’ today. Hubby has disappeared in the car (we have cut down to one) so I will be walking with Munchkin in the snow to our group this morning and then to a midwife appointment this afternoon. Unfortunately the midwife appointment is not at my usual clinic and involves me walking a lot further than usual so we’ll see whether munchkin can cope with being confined to a pushchair while I take a slowish pace. I am finding now that I am getting bigger and he is getting bigger that pushing the pushchair around can be hard work! At 18 months old he does like to walk but not particularly far before he wants to be picked up, and not particularly directly to where we want to go!!!
Tonight I am off out doing some ‘work’ type stuff. Not the paid kind! I have agreed to take over as a local volunteer for a charity. This means meeting potential and actual beneficiaries to assess their needs and write an initial and then yearly report. Tonight I am making a visit with the existing local volunteer from whom I will be taking over.
This week is going to be a long week I think. Partly because of today being a long day and having the visit which means being back home lateish (it’s not very near where I live). Also because tomorrow hubby is off (with car) and won’t be back until Thursday evening – hopefully in time for me to dash out to my pregnancy yoga class and relax a bit! Being without the car isn’t the end of the world. Lots of people get around without a car. I just haven’t much experience of getting buses around Brum. The groups that Munchkin and I go to on a Wednesday and Thursday are not walkable. Last week we trialled getting to the Thursday group on the bus – which worked well. This week I guess I’ll be looking up what route/timings I need to get to the Wednesday group on the internet again. The Traveline Midlands website is quite good and up to date. I am trying to think of it as an adventure!!!
Note to self: remember to spend evenings (and Munchkin’s nap times) relaxing rather than ‘working’ – whether around the house or volunteer type stuff – to keep the Lupus from flaring up out of the tiredness.

In other news – it was amusing watching the cat tiptoeing carefully down the garden in the fresh snow!! Even though there’s only a covering.

We are all very pleased that everything is now back to normal. Munchkin was very much his usual bouncy, active and mischievous self this morning. He’s been getting better and better since the end of last week but today is a more ‘normal’ kind of day in lots of ways. It’s very reassuring. Of course, he still has a runny nose – but hasn’t everyone at the moment??
Hubby is off somewhere at work and with Munchkin being well and happy we went off together this morning to our usual Monday morning ‘parent and toddler’ group. It was good to catch up with everyone after the Christmas break. I think the group has already been running for two or three weeks but what with the PhD week and the croup we’ve been out of circulation. It was also good to get fresh air and exercise (we have got rid of the older of our two cars to save money so now have to compromise when hubby needs to get to different places for work) as I had no choice but to walk. It was good for Munchkin to get out and socialise and to play with other toys in a different place than our same old things inside the four walls we call home.
Another good thing is that he’s now been napping for coming up to 2 hours – much needed rest for both of us!! I am starting to get a bit of that backache one gets when ‘blossoming’ to the extent of being 6 months or more into pregnancy. I do hope that he keeps on napping well until the next one is born.
In other news – the conservatory is still not quite finished off yet. I am starting to get a bit annoyed that the fitter hasn’t managed to arrange to come back and finish off the last few little bits. We are using the conservatory, but we want to get it decorated so we can ‘move in’ properly and we can’t arrange that until the actual building, etc. is properly finished off. Fingers crossed for it all being sorted by the end of the week so we can book in the decorator.

So much has happened since I last blogged properly.  I am unlikely to manage to touch on a lot of it!!!

I am currently sitting in our new and about 90% completed conservatory.  It was a surprise to us towards the end of the year that a conservatory and therefore more space for Munchkin and his future sibling were even a possibility, but it is now an actual physical thing on the back of our house (taking up a portion of our small garden).  It’s all been a bit of a marathon as the big bits (walls, glass & roof, concrete floor) were done before Christmas, but the rest (plastering, sills, floor, electrics & heating) have taken lots of co-ordinating and there are still little bits to be finished off.  However, it now feels like an actual room and is very pleasant.  I like the sheer amount of light!!  I can’t wait for it to be properly finished off and finally decorated so that we can decide how we’re going to use it.

Munchkin has spent the last week with his grandparents in North Wales.  Hubby and I took him up there last Saturday and left on Sunday.  They are bringing him home today.  It was funny in a wierd way leaving him behind last week – not least because he hadn’t actually gone to sleep for his nap and was screaming behind the bedroom door!!!!!  But even though he has stayed away for a few nights before it somehow seemed that he would be more separated from us this time – probably because the distance is so much greater between us and Hubby’s parents than mine but also because he had never been there before so it was new territory!  By all accounts it has worked out very well.  The grandparents appear to have loved every minute of it and Hubby and I had a week by ourselves (for a specified purpose).  I am looking forward to having him back later!!!

So, the specified purpose of the last week was for Hubby to break the back of his PhD.  I am not sure whether he has really broken it but he has had a good go.  He has been doing this PhD part time since 2000.  During that time he has worked full time and spent time abroad working (apart from 2 months a few years ago between jobs – during which he was mostly job-hunting!!).  It’s been quite difficult for him to keep it going and it’s been very much in fits and starts.  The other difficulty is that although his day to day work is connected to his PhD, a lot of his work is for companies on a confidential basis so he cannot easily use the work as case studies in his thesis which will be accessible by anybody.  But the work is there – according to his supervisor and mentor.  So the big thing is to get it sensibly written up.  He now seems to have it mostly complete in an early draft form.  My job has been to read and try to help with the making sense of it (in a big picture kind of way for now).  Later on it will be more proof-reading.  It’s been hard work getting my brain into it so intensively!  Hubby and I both have a Masters Degree in very similar subjects and I am very much in a position to help and criticise his work but I am just not really used to it so constantly anymore and have ended up with a few headaches!!!  But he has made progress and the hope is that it is realistic that it can be successfully completed by April (his absolute final deadline).

We haven’t spent the whole week day and night just doing that.  We made an ad-hoc decision on Wednesday to go to Symphony Hall – not something you can do with a toddler around! – which was really lovely.  We also went out with my brother and sister-in-law last night for a curry to celebrate my birthday (tomorrow).  It’s lovely to be able to go, not worry about getting back for a particular time or about being got up early in the morning!

On the pregnancy side of things everything is looking good.  I am now a bit over 24 weeks and have had scans almost weekly over the last month.  Various reasons (some Lupus related) but everythings fine.  I feel a bit ungainly and am constantly tired but generally well.

Our cat – Shelley – has been rather perturbed by all the work going on outside the back door and the various different workmen coming and going making a good deal of noise.  We bought a new catflap to go in the conservatory door which uses her microchip for unlocking the mechanism meaning she no longer needs to wear a collar with a (fairly heavy) infra-red key fob hanging from it.  We have played some frustrating games learning how to use the new catflap!!!  She’s still a bit suspicious of it but did manage to come in through it this morning without special encouragement.  She’s also suddenly got suspicious of the old one (we’ve turned off the locking mechanism as it’s now an internal door – so it no longer clicks when she gets close enough to go through and I think she doesn’t think it will open for her without the click) so we might have to go through the charade of convincing her that one’s ok to use as well.  Hubby reckons that as soon as Munchkin is home and chasing her around she’ll just go through them both without a second thought, but we’ll see!

The allotment has been utterly neglected.  We have made regular visits to dump our compostable waste on the heap but nothing more than that.  I was delighted between Christmas and New Year to discover that the broad beans are up though!  The purple sprouting is also looking very healthy and one of the plants is even looking as though there are some heads appearing already.  Hubby has been given a day’s hire of an industrial rotovator for Christmas (to use when he wants) so that will be fantastic in the Spring when the weeds start to come back with a vengeance.  Not sure how that fits in with the PhD and arrival of Pumpkin?!  Time is never on our side!

All in all things are good.  Life goes back to ‘normal’ now – in a good way!

Somehow it feels as though it has been a long week.  Munchkin was very well for most of the week then started waking up and screaming for a few hours in the middle of the night.  He has also been dribbling for England so I suspect it may be one of those pesky molars trying to come through.  He now has a runny nose too although not sure whether this is yet another cold or another symptom of teething (though it seems a bit much for the usual little bit that comes with teething).  Personally I still can’t seem to shake off this dratted cold.  Again I wonder whether it’s actually something different and I am just suffering from different colds back to back.  The bonus for today is that although I do still have the cold and feel run down, I didn’t actually wake up with a headache this morning.

Hubby also seems to have got himself another cold having had a healthy week.  He still took Munckin off to the monthly Dad’s group this morning and they seemed to come back in good spirits.  Munckin apparently quite enjoyed the playstation!!  He has gone for a nap now and Hubby has gone off in the cold to dump our compostable bits on the heap at the allotment.  There’s not much going on down there at the moment – mainly because we haven’t had the chance or inclination to go and do anything what with having collectively been ill for what seems like ages.  There’s a lot of digging over that really needs doing, but apart from that it’s relatively quiet.

This weekend is a ‘quiet’ weekend at home.  Definitely what we need!  I suspect that it will turn into a ‘not so quiet’ weekend of swapping around furniture.  I spent some of my time by myself this morning drawing and cutting out bits of furniture using squared paper to stick on more squared paper to see what will work best and what fits where.  It seems crazy in this day and age that hubby and I are doing that (we also did it for our future conservatory/dining room/playroom) rather than using a computer programme which ought to be quicker and simpler once the blocks are put in.  Hubby’s response to my musings on this were ‘xyz software doesn’t do scaling very well, and all the other free drawing packages don’t do dimensions and scaling’.  Ho hum.  There’s something quite therapeutic about the detailed measuring out, drawing in pencil and using a rubber to make corrections, and the careful cutting out of the pieces.  Maybe I’ll take digital photo’s of the different layouts and save them so that we have them electronically for reference when in a few years we find that we have lost the bits of paper?!

Yesterday I spent the day in London.  I must be crazy!  I probably should have spent the day in bed.  However, my Aunt arrived at 7am to spend the day looking after Munchkin (just as I was leaving).  Hubby made sure she was happy and that everything was sorted then went off to work himself.  Apparently it all worked out very well with both Aunt and Munchkin having a good day.  Munchkin was also supposedly very well behaved!!  I had worried a little because he was still asleep after both of us had gone and I didn’t know how he’d react to someone he didn’t know appearing when he woke up, but apparently he just did a bit of a double take and then was a happy camper all day.

Personally I spent the day in a meeting.  I did feel as though I made a contribution and it was nice to get out and re-establish some links.  However I got through a lot of tissues and obviously one cannot inhale or make cider vinegar and honey for relief in such a situation.  I managed ok but having had a bad night I now feel rather as though the left side of my head will explode at any moment.  It did occur to me beforehand that the better thing would have been to spend the day in bed.  However it seemed strange and not right somehow to not go to the meeting which I had asked my Aunt to babysit for.  And I would probably have ended up looking after Munchkin all day anyway.  In a lot of ways I suspect that sitting in a meeting may have been more relaxing (just not the racing down to London and back).

Hubby was a star and had dinner and a bath ready for soon after I got home.  Awww! )

I have just ‘inhaled’ – sat with my head over a bowl of just boiled water with a few drops of ‘olbas oil’ (branded eucalyptus mix) in it and a towel over my head to prevent the steam escaping.  I used to detest my mother forcing me to ‘inhale’ when I had a cold and was really bunged up as a child.  However, it is one of those things that does actually provide a bit of relief and I now feel a little less as though my head has been hit with a sledgehammer.  The other day I took a decongestant tablet before going to bed to give myself a bit of relief overnight and hopefully sleep better.  They’re pretty good!  However it was the following morning that I discovered that one shouldn’t really take them whilst pregnant.  So we’re over to other ways of trying to make myself feel just about human enough to look after boisterous Munchkin.  I have also been drinking Cider Vinegar and Honey (1 tablespoon of Cider Vinegar and 1 tablespoon of honey made up with hot water).  This is something my grandmother used to drink all the time and I find a good soother for sore throats and the like.  Also, Cider Vinegar is supposed to boost the immune system.  The other useful thing is to carry a tissue around with a few drops of ‘olbas oil’ on it and sniff it occasionally.

I believe that everyone who should know has been told so now I can broadcast to the wider community that hubby and I are expecting another baby!  If you saw me in person you’d definitely be asking yourself the question whether I was just overdoing the beer and getting a bit of a gut or whether there might be more to it..!  This one we shall refer to as Pumpkin.  Pumpkin is due at the end of April so I am almost 16 weeks now and (apart from this horrid cold) I am feeling well and generally happy.  The first trimester was pretty exhausing, especially with the sickness bug I had, but things are good at the moment.

Hubby and I are very excited and really looking forward to having two.  Although I must say that I do have occasional moments of ‘how on earth does one cope with a newborn and a boisterous toddler at the same time?!’.  However lots of people do and I am lucky to have hubby around working at home quite a lot so that makes things a bit easier.  Lets hope that the Lupus behaves itself again this time and doesn’t cause problems – so far, so good!

I have spent the better part of the last couple of days in bed suffering from what was probably the notorious (in the UK) norovirus. It was not fun and hubby has had to take time off to look after Munchkin. I feel a LOT better now!!! However I still ache all over and am rather drained. Hubby has take Munckin to Tiny Tots at our church, and then on to Tumble Tots. I managed a bit of breakfast this morning and while my stomach feels a bit bruised and possibly surprised at the intrusion, I don’t feel unwell as a result!
Next week Mum-in-law is coming to stay for most of the week (Dad-in-law will be joining us for the weekend). She’s going to be looking after Munchkin while I go away for a couple of days to the Wives Fellowship Autumn Conference. It will be the first time I have been away by myself since Munchkin was born! I am looking forward to it as it will be an opportunity to meet new people and hopefully have a bit of space. The first day (well, afternoon!) is a boat trip and a service in the local Cathedral. The evening consists of concurrent dinner parties hosted by local members (the one I’m allocated to is at the home of my host for the night). The following day there will be three speakers throughout the day, I think a couple of which are on faith subjects.
On a similar subject (of having time to oneself), at the end of the month I have a two-day (weds/thurs) meeting in London. Munchkin is going to stay with my Mum for that one. It turned out that for various reasons I wouldn’t be able to get back and pick him up until at least Friday afternoon. Mum happily agreed on top of that to keep him until Saturday to allow hubby and I to enjoy Friday evening/night and Saturday morning entirely by ourselves!!!!!! I am trying not to think about how much I am going to miss the little one not seeing him at all for 3 whole nights (I’ve only ever left him once overnight before), but the time with hubby will be very welcome.