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!

Approximately 5 weeks ago....

... we finally moved house! Having lived with my parents for nearly 10 weeks and with no sign of our house in Bradford selling we decided that our best option would be to rent a house. We managed to find ourselves a lovely house in Chryston near Glasgow at the beginning of August and moved in less that two weeks later. Unfortunately it has taken us nearly 5 weeks to get ourselves unpacked and sorted and reconnected to all the various means of communication that we've become accustomed to. Can you believe how long it takes BT to get broadband and TV sorted? Even now we're not fully connected as we're having to use himself's work laptop to connect to the internet wirelessly. This is due to our PC not being wireless enabled. My Little Bro tried to get it set up for wireless connection, but despite him being an IT whizzkid it has not proved to be the easiest of tasks. So, we've now got to figure out an alternative means of getting broadband connection from one side of the house to t'other. Hopefully it won't be much longer before I can actually sit at the PC and post updates on here that have photo's included!

Herself has started nursery during this time too and is thoroughly enjoying herself. It seems that she has made quite a few friends and is actually having a go at the 'Miss Popularity' contest too! I lose count of the number of knee-high people that rush up to her or shout "Hello" at her across the room when she arrives. Its lovely to see that she has settled in there so well already and that she is enthusiastic about going to school. I only hope it continues when she has to start 'big school'!

Anyway, I'm off now to go deal with her and get some more done on the unpacking and sorting out. It won't be too long before I post again! I promise!

Its my burfday!

No, not MINE.... herself! Everywhere we went she kept telling people that it was her burfday. And she was quite right! I cant believe that she is now 3. Where did that time go?

We had a fab time yesterday. She opened a few presents in the morning and then we headed off to play at "Space Planet" which is officially known as Adventure Planet and is the largest play centre in Scotland... and its only 5 minutes from my parents front door by car! Much fun was had there - even when a little boy kept knocking her over. After lunch we went shopping and then for a bit of a drive. At home again we played with the new magic painting set (Crayola) until himself came home... at which point the fun really began! All the presents that had been hiding all day came out to be opened. Much excitement, ripping of paper and  giggling later herself was the happiest 3 year old on the planet! Included in the presents were several sets of Playmobil room settings, an easel and a sandpit. Of course all the presents had to be unpacked and put together right there and then!

Many thanks to everybody for the lovely presents! Especially to Grandma & Grandad, Ouma & Oupa, Aunty Liz et al, Great Granny and various family friends and neighbours! It now falls to myself to send out Thank You cards! It might take a while under current circumstances!

At least I'm going to have plenty of pictures to scrap. Including these ones which were taken by Ouma... and a whole load on my own camera too!

Mojo Convention

I recently asked a question on UKScrappers: "Is there a mojo convention somewhere? Cause mine seems to have disappeared to sunnier climes to meet up with other mojo's!" My scrapping mojo has gone. Well, actually, its not just applicable to scrapping... unfortunately my mojo also influenced my ability to type stuff on my blog too! So, my most sincere apologies to all those people who have been looking at this page eagerly for an update, only to find the longest silence in the history of blogs.

There is, happily, a very good reason for this sudden lack of mojo.... I'm pregnant! Yup, #2 is on the way and is expected on or around the 3rd September. Which when I first intended to tell you seemed ages away; but now is far too close for my liking! Unfortunately for me, lack of mojo goes hand-in-hand with being pregnant... as I found out with #1. I was doing a Fine Arts course when I fell pregnant with herself, but found it impossible to complete as I kept just staring dumbly at the paints and canvas. Now this time, my scrapping has completely stopped, my writing has stopped and all creative thought has completely failed to materialise. Its only in the last week or so that I've picked up my knitting again and made a very feeble attempt at scrapping - which has yet to be completed. Someone on UKScrappers mentioned that they had checked on here and found it quiet, so I figured I needed to somehow get typing again. Well, at least for long enough to update here!

The second reason for my lack of updating is that my PC has been packed away. We have converted the study/scraproom back into a usable bedroom and all the study stuff; including PC, books, scrapping stuff etc has all been put into storage. This is because we have put our house on the market. There is a long, involved explanation/background to this decision - but the upshot is that himself has transferred with his company to Glasgow and we are moving back up to Scotland. Himself has already started work and we are currently living with my parents while our house sells. We are hoping for an offer any day now as we have had a fair amount of interest and viewings. I'm trying to resist looking at houses here in Kilsyth until our house has been sold. I just know that if I start viewing houses I'm going to fall in love with one and not be able to do anything about it until our own house has sold. However, patience is not one of my virtues so I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to resist! I shall have to tell you the whole story of our move up here at a later date, but as its incredibly long it will have to wait.

Other than that, I'm afraid all the rest I have to report would be mundane, boring, everyday stuff. Our focus so far this year has pretty much been to get ourselves out of Bradford and up to Glasgow, so everything else seems to have paled into insignificance.

I hope your life is a little less hectic than mine is at the moment!

It's only a little thing....

Just wanted to say "Hey" to everyone. Haven't had much time to blog lately, it seems like January has been just as busy as December was. I had been hoping for a nice quiet and leisurely month after the manic rushing around of last month. However, things never really pan out the way you had imagined do they? Anyway, I figured I'd just catch up a little and let you know that I'm still on the planet. I have some news to share, it's rather exciting really but I'm going to keep really quiet about it today. I'll let you in on the secret tomorrow as I'm hoping I'll have a picture to accompany the post by tomorrow afternoon. I just need to get it taken. So, pop back tomorrow for some super news!!

Christmas Tidings!

Well, the day has been and gone. We've unwrapped all the presents, eaten the turkey, drunk far too much alchohol and we're *still* eating the Christmas cake - and probably will be for another 3 weeks! The presents were fab. I got a lovely hooded jumper, some toe socks , rapidough (the game), a lovely kenwood chef and a fair bit of money - some of which I used to buy myself a yummy PINK Garmin SatNav. It's been invaluable already! Gone are the days of getting lost in the middle of Leeds and having to stop somewhere to haul the A-Z out. Herself also rather likes it it seems as she sits in her seat in the back of the car and imitates it.

I got Himself a Garmin Satnav too. It's not pink, and definitely not basic (like mine is)... however, it seems that it only wants to talk to us in an American accent; which might end up winding him up something cronic! However all the other features its got will more than make up for it I hope! So we're all gadgeted up to the eyeballs now and we have enough of the Christmas money left over to buy the camping fridge that we wanted too. So in the spring we shall be ableto go camping and have nicely refrigerated food.

I shall have to post pictures of Christmas day later when we've gone home and had time to upload them to our PC. Until then I hope you're all having a good Festive season and that you're all happily playing with your gadgets too! Drop me a line and tell me what you got! ... and if I don't see you again before the New Year.... HAPPY NEW YEAR! May all God's blessings be given to you in the New Year. 

It's a losing battle...

But I'm rather happy about it! I've lost my first half stone and am dead chuffed! I have been anticipating this moment for a while and so went and bought my next dolly bead in preparation. Unfortunately I've been banned from wearing it until I reached the milestone properly... which I did this morning. So I have now added 'Tanith' to my bracelet! Isn't 'she' beautiful??

My next goal now is going to be to try not to put any weight on over the Christmas break! It's going to be tough, but I'm hoping that if I control my portion sizes, severely limit the puddings and chocolate and stay away from cheese completely that I should be able to do it. I might just treat myself on Christmas Day tho'... afterall, I can't be a stick in the mud all the time can I?

The other battle I've been fighting has not been so pleasant. Herself has now recovered from the 'water' infection but has then come down with croup, which has now turned into a nasty cold. And then to top it all off perfectly she started complaining about her ear being sore... one visit to the doctor's later she now officially has a double ear infection!! Just what I needed. Anyway, hopefully this next set of antibiotics will kick in quickly and she'll be fit in time for Christmas.  Speaking of Christmas, it's her nursery's nativity play this afternoon. Her first one! I'm sooo looking forward to it and will definitely be taking photos and possibly a video too.

I suppose I'd better dash off and go check that the various camera's are fully charged up and have enough film/memory!