Photo gallery cannot open this picture...

A picture is worth a thousand words... or so the old addage goes. So I wonder when I get a message that says "Photo gallery cannot open this picture or video. The file appears damaged or corrupted" how many words, impressions, descriptions of my little one I have lost? I wonder what this picture would have said to me. I cannot tell. I have lost the words, but the memory is still there. I remember taking lots of photo's of her first few hours, her first days. All in hospital. A photo of her under the photo-therapy lamps - looking like a little sun worshipper complete with sun-goggles. A photo of her in a Number 2 bodysuit to match the one of her older sister in the Number 1 bodysuit at the same age. I have that one, but not the other. 

So imagine my delight when I find, hidden in the vast megabytes that is my mother's picture folder.... these! These few pictures of her that are now so precious, so treasured. A few thousand words returned to me out of the many thousands lost to the crimes of technological corruption.

Thanks Mum, for being such a shutterbug.  A thousand words could not express the gratitude I feel for just one of these pictures!

Nearly 3 weeks ago.....

...we added another member to our family! Let sleepless nights commence!

I went into the hospital with contractions 4 minutes apart only to be told that I wasn't in labour. However, they decided not to send me home immediately as they wanted to monitor the baby. The monitoring revealed that the baby's heartrate wasn't doing what they wanted and that the foetal movements were down too. After several hours of them saying that they were going to send me home once the monitoring was done, they suddenly decided that they wanted to induce as they weren't happy with the monitoring results. Four hours after the drip was started a beautiful 8lb baby girl called Cecily Rowan was delivered. She had the cord wrapped around her neck twice, but other than that there were no other complications at birth. Our only concern was that she seemed a little sleepy and struggled to feed. This concern continued for another 2 days until they discovered that she was jaundiced. An extra two days in hospital gave them time to give her some photo therapy for the jaundice and got feeding a bit better established. Nearly 3 weeks later feeding seems well established and she is gaining weight well. I just wish we could say that she was still sleepy tho' as she has now decided to wake up and make her presence felt. 

Unfortunately most of her waking seems to be done at 5am and her sleeping is done during the day. Somehow we have to figure out how to turn that around so that her waking hours coincide with ours... but I rather think that's going to take some time!

Anyway, here's a few pictures of our newest bundle!

Honey, I'm home!

Oh My Giddy Aunt! How long has it been??  Well, the two weeks suddenly turned into 5 weeks... mostly due to horrible plasterwork that was lurking under all that 80's wallpaper.  Yup, you guessed it... 1930's horsehair plaster!! Ugh!! What a nightmare that was to work with!  Everytime we filled and sanded one patch, another patch crumbled... we did eventually catch up with it tho'... until we put a coat of white paint on, to find sooooo many more crevases suddenly showed themselves.  We also had to have the ceiling replastered due to finding artexing hiding behind the wallpaper - (I wish now that I'd had the money to replaster the walls too).  However, all the hardwork is now finished and is soooooo worth it.  The room looks FAB!  I'll have to take few pictures later on this week to show you, but want himself to get a few finishing touches installed before I take them.  Also, it needs a serious tidy up as I've just dumped my scrapping and art stuff on the shelves... Need to make another trip to IKEA for storage boxes. Not sure himself is going to be too pleased with that idea - considering how much I've spent at IKEA just recently!

The other reason that it's taken so long is that we've had loads of weekends being taken up with other stuff... like seeing friends, going camping, visiting family, going shopping... oh and the UKS Mad Hatters Cybercrop!!

Camping
The camping was seriously good fun!  Thanks to Tim, Tammy, Sarah and Jonathan for wanting to take us newbies along.   Six adults and 4 kids in 3 tents near Birmingham made for a really great weekend.  I realised that the last time I'd been camping was 14 years ago!!  Himself, on the other hand, had NEVER been camping. We borrowed my parents camping gear, just to try it out and see if we enjoyed the experience. Needless to say, we came back from that weekend away, completely hooked! Which meant we simply HAD to go shopping for a tent the following weekend.  Managed to get a great deal, but now need to get all the other stuff... before July when we go camping with the 'crowd' again.

Oh, ought to mention that we had our 7th Wedding Anniversary during the camping weekend too.  What a day that was... we spent all day in Cadbury World eating chocolate!!  It was a great experience... not particularly romantic, but definitely very delicious!

Visiting Friends and Family
What can I say about this?? You go, you stay, you chat and eat and drink and sleep. You do a few interesting things (such as Crich Tramway Museum and a lovely old windmill) and you get to meet a new little 5 month old friend, who was just gorgeous!!  Bronwyn was born 13th December to our friends Nick and Wendy... what a beautiful baby she is!! I even got to have a cuddle without her crying too much, which only made me broody again! LOL. I think I can wait for another one, but then I see a new little baby and it sets me off all over again!

Some friends from Inverness came to visit us too, in the past week.  What a joy it was to see them.  It was lovely just to have a good chat, do some shopping and see the kids playing together.

UKS Mad Hatters Cybercrop
Oh what a fabby job was done by the leadership team on UKScrappers again for this cybercrop.  Yet again the classes were fabulous and the LO's produced were gorgeous.  I temporarily moved all my scrapping stuff down to Tammy's house where the two of us spent the whole weekend producing yummy new Layouts. The menfolk entertained themselves and our little monster for the whole weekend. What bliss! No kids, lots of scrapping, lots of chatting and lots and lots of hot chocolate to drink.  Sooo looking forward to the next one!!

Well, that's about it I think.  I shall be updating regularly again, now that I have my PC back and the room all nicely decorated around it.  Hopefully I'll see you all around!!

PS. Pictures to follow as soon as I've downloaded them all from various cameras and mobile phones!