purple8

new website

2011-01-08T22:40:00.000+11:00

Just a quick note to let you know that I now have my own domain and while there's not much there yet, it's more than you'll find over here from now on.
So head to www.thepurple8.com and bug me if I don't update it regularly.

Quick Update

2010-08-26T16:27:00.002+10:00

Hi there.
I haven't forgotten about you.
I just don't have time to blog right now.
Besides, my laptop is often buried under a pile of more pressing tasks, like the invitations for our party in a few weeks, which I have only just finished.
And for awhile there, we didn't have internet access anyway.

When I'm not at the new house letting tradesmen in, I'm packing, sorting, or just trying to deal with a little girl who has decided that life is not chaotic enough at the moment and needs an injection of toddler tantrums and silliness.

But I have still been taking photos every day.
And we are moving into our house over the next couple of days.
And Graeme, being the computer nerd he is, has already gone and organised a dongle thing so we can use the internet at the new house, even though we won't have a phone line for weeks.
So, I should be able to share something new with you soon.

12 - A full-on day

2010-08-12T21:38:00.004+10:00

Today...

...we got the keys to our house. I took a cool photo of the actual keys then realised the background had more personal details than I'm willing to share on a public blog, so instead you get a shot of the hallway with the tiler's blue chalk line. By this afternoon, he'd done almost half the tiling (according to Graeme, not something I saw myself).

...we found out that Graeme's grandfather had passed away overnight. He had motor neurone disease and had lived longer than the doctor's anticipated, but yeah.

...I got my first birthday present from the lucky dip box at MOPS - a cute little pocket mirror. (My actual birthday is next Wednesday, so I have less than a week of my 20s left)

...I spent most of the afternoon on the couch, taking advantage of the fact that Graeme was also home, to try and kick the last of this cold. I think I also have a bit of hayfever (yay) especially since the antihistamine really seemed to help.

...Lily, not content with painting the 3 pictures we had painted, found the watercolours that I had left open to dry and decided to paint her piggy bank.

What did you do today?

09, 10, 11

2010-08-12T21:27:00.003+10:00

I had grand plans to catch up by doing 1 or 2 posts a day, but this week has been crazy and to top it off, I've been bogged down with a cold that makes me feel like rubbish. So, here's some photos:

09 - Hanging out at home with a walk to the shops to gather supplies for lunch.

10 - Music. I remembered to take my camera (thanks for the reminder, Sharon) but Lily decided to be silly and so I got very few photos and even fewer decent ones.

11 - Playing in the backyard in the afternoon.

08 - Sunday BBQ

2010-08-09T15:26:00.004+10:00

A couple of months ago, the weekend that I was down in Melbourne with my sister, back in Sydney my Dad decided he was going to cook a bbq for Sunday lunch. It was just after the family dog had been put down (he was a 14 year old cattle dog who I honestly did not expect to find alive when we moved back from the UK, so it wasn't a devastating experience, for me anyway) and meant that everyone, especially Lily, could finally hang out in the backyard worry-free (Sooty was pretty territorial). Dad decided it was such a success that every Sunday since then, when there hasn't been something else on, we've had a bbq lunch. Mum was saying yesterday that she'd really like to keep doing it even once we've moved out, which I think might be a nice way to make sure we catch up regularly.

This is Lily mid flight. Graeme throws her up in the air and she giggles uncontrollably and asks for more. Then, when he gives up, she wants me to do it too, but the kid is getting heavy...

(hey, sister, brother and sis-in-law that live too far away - see what you're missing out on? You should all move back closer, ok? ;D)

07 - An unwilling model

2010-08-09T14:50:00.005+10:00

So, I finished the jumper I was knitting for Lily.
First, I had to try and convince her to try it on. Once she had it on, I then had to convince her to take it back off so I could weave in the ends. She then wanted it back on, but didn't want to pose for photos. I believe the words she used were 'No Mummy, don't take photos of me' and then she made it as hard as possible for me to get a good shot of her:

It's a Weasley Sweater adjusted slightly to knit in the round. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic in Soft Plum. We originally used the colour in Lily's Circle of Friends blanket (check out how fat she was :D) and Graeme's Nana (so, Lily's Great-Nana) loved it so much she ordered enough to knit herself a jumper. She gave me the leftovers, just under 2 (200g) balls, and I also have leftovers.

04, 05, 06

2010-08-06T18:48:00.007+10:00

Writing the days like that made me think of years passed.
2004 was the year I did my teacher training.
2005 was the year I worked in my most rewarding job to date (teaching in a public high school in a notorious part of western Sydney).
2006 was the year we went to the UK and all the crazy changes that came with it.

It all seems so long ago. Especially considering the images I'm about to share with you of my life at 30 centre around my 2 year old daughter...

On Wednesday, we went to Playtime, as we have every Wednesday during school term since the start of the year. This week, Feature Creatures came along and spent an hour showing the kids snakes, lizards, frogs and bugs, plus a baby crocodile for good measure.

Some of the parents and kids were a bit anxious about some of them, but not Lily. She got a bit bored when they pulled out the insects, so went to play at the playdough table, but as soon as someone pointed out that they'd brought out the snakes, she was back over there in a flash, asking to hold the python.

After playtime, we had a lovely afternoon with my Mum, which included lunch, shopping (toyshop for Lily, op-shops for us) and a stop at the park on the way home.

Yesterday we went to Storytime at the library then spent the afternoon at home. I decided it was time to start packing, so I got Lily to help. She packed her toys into the box from within the box:

then tried to close herself in with them.

Mum had put candles on the dinner table that night and Lily insisted on blowing them out. When I opened the drawer to find a match to relight them, I found a box of sparklers. We all enjoyed watching Lily play with the sparkler so much that we gave her a second one to play with.

This morning was Lily's swimming lesson. She was so pleased with herself because she's just starting to actually swim without support. We came home and she watched some Playschool (she's obsessed, but I guess there are worse things she could want to watch several times a day) while I tried to finish a jumper I've been knitting for her. It'll probably be finished right as it's too warm to wear it. Actually, I should be able to finish it tonight. Then I might have something other than photos of Lily to show you tomorrow.
Anyway, we went out for lunch and the photo I'm about to show you is terrible, but I have to share it. Lily insisted on walking. And carrying her doll and backpack. Then we bought her a sandwich and she carried that too. While I was getting my lunch, she decided she was going to go and set herself up at a nearby table.

I guess if you have older kids, it's not unusual for them to do things like this. But she's only just turned 2. Surely she's too young to be so independent?

Late this afternoon we went out the front to play with the bubble blowers and were joined by the girl from next door. It is beautiful to see the mutual adoration between this 2 year old and 7 year old. Of course, I don't want to post photos of other people's kids on the web without their ok, so you just get a photo of Lily laughing at Jess.

Apologies for the Lily-spam and the three-days-in-one-makes-a-very-long-post. Now I better go finish that jumper.

August 03

2010-08-03T19:42:00.004+10:00

Since about September last year, I have been taking Lily to Forte School of Music for a weekly music lesson. I was worried that enrolling a 15 month old in music lessons would make me one of those pushy 'stage' parents but after talking to a family friend who teaches there, I took her along for a trial lesson and she loved it. I seriously think it's played a part in making her the way-too-clever 2 year old that she is.
Anyway, this morning I was planning on taking my DSLR (digital single lens reflex) with me to take some photos of music lesson, because I haven't actually done so yet. Of course, I forgot. And then only remembered my point-and-shoot during the last song. Add to that the fact that Lily was on the move and that I'm still not confident using the little camera to get the shots that I want and my photos came out horrible. I tried to fix one of them by adding a soft focus to it and it kind of worked, but still not something I want to put out there for the world to see. I'll try again next week (can someone remind me on Monday though? :D).

So instead, I'm going to give you a glimpse into the mess I live in. Annoyed by the photos I'd taken earlier, I spent the spare 5 minutes I had while Lily finished watching Playschool going through the little camera's settings and trying to get better results. This, my friends, is what sits directly next to the chair I am typing this post from:

Here we have a red tub that is meant to hold toys, but regularly gets emptied by Lily so she can climb in; a blue basket thing that actually does have the toys in it, but is meant to be kept in the other room; an overflowing dress-up box that never seems to have it's lid on it; the top left corner of Graeme's work/laptop bag. Now I feel like I need to spend my precious free evening cleaning up. Needless to say, we can't wait to have our own space again. Speaking of which, we get the keys to our house next Tuesday.

August 02

2010-08-02T23:08:00.004+10:00

Today was a bank holiday. Graeme currently works for a bank. Of course, he's a contractor, so he didn't get paid for the day, but it was nice for him to have a day off. Especially since there was nothing we needed to do. Well, there are always things we need to do at the moment, but somehow it felt like a good opportunity to forget about the to-do list and the house stuff and just go out for a day.

So that's what we did.

First stop was the aquarium, where Lily was fascinated by the fish and turtles, but a little scared by the sharks. I think it was the ominous music they play as you walk down into the tunnels.

After spending much less time than we expected at the aquarium, we had lunch at Harbourside. Then, with plenty of day left and a 4 attraction pass in our pockets, we walked up into the city and went up Sydney Tower.

Then across to Hyde Park, where Lily chased the birds until they all disappeared, then enjoyed the flowers so much that she accidentally picked one and couldn't work out how to make it stick back.

At the end of the day, as we loaded her into the car, we asked Lily what she'd liked the best. Her answer: the train rides there and back.

30 - Part 1

2010-08-01T18:53:00.006+10:00

It's August. My birth month. Which means it is now officially the month in which I will celebrate my 30th birthday. I'm not all that fussed about the number since I don't think life should be dictated by your age, but it is a significant milestone and one worth taking some time to record, I think.

I decided it'd be nice to document it, in photos of course as that is generally my medium of choice. But not just the day - the stuff that happens around it. A record of what my life was like when I turned 30 in 2010. So I'm going to make sure I get my camera out and take some photos every day, because I've been slack about that. And I'll try to post at least one of them here every day, because even when I do take photos, I don't sort them and post them anywhere in a timely manner. We'll see how I go. This is going to be a busy month - we will get the keys to our house, finish everything off and hopefully move in before the month is out, so it should be interesting.

So, August 1.
First, the pretty photo.

It's so nice to see bees and flowers in the yard. Sydney winter is nowhere near as intense as London winter, but other than the birthdays, there's not a lot of good things about winter. I also saw my first daffodil of the year today, but didn't have my camera on me - that'll teach me.

This one is nothing special photography-wise, but is much more a glimpse into my life. Plus, I just had to show you what my 2 year old's sense of style is like:

She had to wear that summer dress, so we forced her into a long sleeve onesie underneath and told her she had to wear something on her legs. She chose pink leggings. Then topped it off with a purple 'tinklebell' jacket and the red shoes - nice.

This time a year ago...

2010-06-03T17:51:00.002+10:00

...we were boarding a flight from Singapore to Sydney. The final leg of our big adventure. Lily was almost 1, only just walking and thankfully still willing to sit still for long periods of time. We were beyond happy that we'd upgraded to Business Class. Our family was eagerly anticipating our return, setting alarms for ridiculous hours of the morning that would prove unnecessary when we were delayed via Melbourne for 7 hours.

I can't believe it's been a year already. It certainly doesn't feel that long. But then you look at how far Lily has come. Or the fact that we're nearing the final stages of building a house. The new friends we've made. The fact that we now call Camden home. Has it only been a year?

Playing catch up

2010-06-01T18:28:00.004+10:00

Do you ever feel like you're constantly trying to catch up?

Graeme has been off work the last two days. He's sick, but not so sick that he had to stay in bed all day. So, I've taken advantage of the fact that he's around to help watch Lily and been quite productive. But my to-do list is still a mile long. It probably doesn't help that my computer had to be reformatted yesterday, so there are now tasks on the list that had already been partially completed, like sorting through my photos. Or that going through some of my massive list of unread blog posts just led me to more blogs and more things to make and do. Oh well, I'll just focus on the positives - the things I have achieved - and try not to let that list get me down.

Also positive - the roof went on our house before all this rain hit, so the build is still progressing. I feel bad for our neighbours, whose house looks like the roof was the next step - it might be awhile.

When I have my house...

2010-05-05T21:26:00.003+10:00

I won't keep starting every other sentence with 'When I/we have my/our house ...'
I'll be able to invite people over for meals, playdates, crafty get-togethers or just to show off my awesome new house.
there will be separate rooms for sleeping, playing, crafting, tv watching and computering, instead of them all being lumped together. This will make it easier to get things done, because I won't have to turn the sewing machine off because someone is watching tv, or have zero productive time on my computer because Lily immediately stops whatever was keeping her occupied and demands to play 'Night Garden'.
there will be a backyard that Lily can play in. We'll move in during Winter sometime, but she won't care and neither will I.
I might actually find the time and energy to blog regularly. Until then, I'm not going to feel any more guilt about not updating. For now, I'll just leave you with this (embarrassingly out of focus) photo of Lily in front of our house, wearing her clothkits dress that I made last week and remind you that I'm on twitter for regular mini-blogging.

I Made a Cardigan

2010-02-27T16:32:00.003+11:00

Totally from scratch. My own design, my own maths to make the design work, inspired by the vague memory of a beautiful thing I saw in Galway in Ireland and wished I could have afforded to buy. Made Lily-sized to test out some of my ideas about construction.

The plan is to make something similar in my size with the gorgeous red British wool I bought just before we left London. Mine will have sleeves though, although I haven't decided how long, maybe three-quarters.

Ravelry page here (although it's pretty identical to this one :D)

Crochet Placemats

2010-02-08T15:52:00.006+11:00

A couple of months ago, I bought a bunch of Anchor Magicline cotton yarn on clearance. The pack came with 10 balls and a crochet pattern sheet for $9.95. I really liked the look of the placemat on the cover and so bought enough to make a set of placemats. Unfortunately, I have very little experience with crochet and kinda suck at it, so my attempt at following the pattern came out like this:

I guess, in the grand scheme of things, it's not horrendous. But I had envisioned a beautiful set of colourful placemats that will really fit in with the look of our new house (still not going up yet - trust me, you'll know when it is) and this just doesn't cut it. The main thing I disliked, other than the dodginess of my skills, was the way the colours didn't so much stripe as clump.

That one placemat sat incomplete for about 6 weeks, while I finished Christmas gifts and then worked on some other projects. I finally decided I needed to look at it again when I wanted a portable/brainless project that wasn't knitting (too hot to knit and my attempt at socks, the one thing that may be bearable to knit in the heat, is also a big fail). I tried a circle. It didn't lay flat. I tried another one. I thought my idea of making circular placemats was genius, afterall, plates are round. I don't have enough experience of crochet to make a flat circle, apparently, especially given I am anal about things like increases and they have to be uniform or my brain can't handle it. I needed a different approach. Here are my failed circles:

Meanwhile, I've been finding more Aussie crafty blogs to read (any suggestions much appreciated, especially if they're Sydney-based) and Pip over at Meet me at Mikes has been running a granny square intro course. I didn't want to make standard looking granny squares, but I did figure I could do something similar, starting in the centre and working my way out, increasing at the corners. The only problem was, the point where I was jumping up to the next row created a funny line thing. See:

There's probably a way to do this better, but I couldn't work it out. Then, another brainwave* occurs - I could do a spiral but make it like a granny square, increasing at the corners by stitching into the corner, making 2 chains and then stitching into the corner again. I didn't quite end up with a perfect square - one side has one more stitch than the other three - and I'm not confident I'll be able to recreate however I got it started, but I like it enough that I am now happy to pull out all the mistakes and attempt to make a matching set. I just have to decide what size to stop it at...

*probably not a new idea at all, but in case you hadn't worked it out, I'm very much winging this whole crochet thing. I don't even know if I am doing single or double crochet, to be honest. Apologies to any serious crocheters out there for any offence.

Hi there

2010-01-26T23:36:00.001+11:00

It may be the remaining effects of the cold I've had. Or the fact that I got a touch too much sun at the beach on Friday and again while out celebrating Australia Day today. Or the lack of energy to do anything productive that means I've actually spent time at the computer (see the first sentence).
Whatever caused it, the fact is this: I have been commenting, following and favouriting all over the place recently. I've been commenting on blogs that I know I never have before. I went through people's twitter lists and added a whole bunch who are on a forum I used to hang out on, but haven't in ages (although, with this new-found confidence, I might head over there later, though it'll have to be tomorrow now - in between writing this post and doing other things, it got late).

The fact that I mentioned a lack of confidence is probably funny to those of you who know me in real life, because face-to-face, I am plenty confident. I just get all anxious when I can't see how someone is reacting to what I am saying. That's also why I hate the phone. I need to see your face, read your body, adjust what I'm saying if I'm not getting my point across properly.

Anyway, the point of this post was to introduce myself to all the new people who may (or may not - I think I'm talking to dead space most the time anyway) be heading over here to work out who I am. If I'm now following you on twitter, I probably know you from g* (if you need to know what that means, you will) although, as I said above, I haven't been there for ages. I might've been reading your blog for ages, or I might've just discovered it. Either way, I think it's great and totally worth slotting into my limited reading time.

So, this is me:
I'm Kate.
I turn 30 this year.
I've been married almost 7 years and have a 19 month old daughter with whom I stay at home every day (well, we often go out, but you should know what I mean).
I love to create and can't wait until Lily is old enough to get into more full-on arts and crafts projects.
I've been a very sporadic blogger, but am determined to be better.
I grew up in various places around NSW, Australia.
I recently returned from 3.3 years living in London, UK.
I now live in south-western Sydney with my parents, while we wait for our house to get built (a pain-inducing process that is taking way too long and makes me very disgruntled, so don't ask how it's going).
I like parentheses because they help me explain my full thought process.
I don't know why I feel the need to explain the full process, probably relates to that issue I mentioned about needing to make sure I get my point across the way I intended and the fact that I have both studied and taught design.
If those last couple sentences haven't convinced you I'm crazy, or if you just like crazy, stick around and/or follow me on twitter (there's a link on my [currently-under-construction-slash-redesign] sidebar) and let me know if you have a blog I should be reading too.
Anything else you wanna know? Ask away.

Christmas 2009: Part 1

2010-01-19T16:16:00.000+11:00

The following was written on New Years Day. And now that I look back on it, I can't work out why I didn't post it then... So, I'm posting it now and will add more parts as I get more photos:

There's a reason I didn't post for the rest of December - every spare minute was spent making Christmas presents, which even if I had the time, I couldn't really have talked about here. We went totally handmade this (well, technically, last) year, other than a few things we'd already picked up for Lily before we actually made the decision to do so. We bought handmade for my brother-in-laws' girlfriends and my Mum, but everyone else got something crafted by our little family.
Mum (and Dad, since it was above our budget for one person, but then we added something else for Dad) got this kit printed by Prints Charming. My original plan was to embroider some of them and make them up for Dad and then give Mum the rest to stitch/decorate herself, but since we're living with them, it was tricky to find time and/or space to work on it, so only one got stitched...

Of course, by the time I finally finished everything on the 23rd, I was so relieved and exhausted, that I stupidly wrapped it all up without taking photos and then forgot to take photos as things were opened on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So, I still need to get access to some of it again and take photos, but I can show you one thing, because I made it today. See, my sister actually just got some fabric in her gift, because I thought it was perfect for her, but couldn't decide what to make with it. So I waited until she'd seen it, talked to her about what she'd like made from it and today, I turned it into this skirt:

The Blogging Conundrum

2010-01-19T00:30:00.000+11:00

I really want to have a blog.
A good blog.
One that people want to read. And I'm not just talking about the people who read it because they are already my friend or are related to me.
A place where I can show off the things I've made.
Somewhere I could try out some of my designs to see if people would be interested in buying/making them.

I don't need a million followers or to make money by selling ads or anything like that.

But I feel like, in order to have the sort of blog I want, you need to participate in the 'blogosphere' and I just don't have the time.

Actually, this isn't just a blog issue, it's a whole internet issue.
I want to participate.
I want to get back involved in some of the communities that used to be a part of my daily life.
I want to discover like-minded people, and especially now that we're back in Sydney, some local ones.

But if I barely have time to check and reply to email; if the only reason I update my Facebook status is because it is taken direct from my Twitter feed; if I only manage to check either of those things because they're on my phone and I can do it in 5 spare minutes here or there; if my computer sits untouched for days at a time... How am I supposed to find the time to read, comment, participate?

And, of course, there's the fact that there's no point blogging if I haven't been doing anything to write about.

I need to make the effort in the evenings after Lily goes to bed and on the weekends when she can hang with Daddy. I need to make naptimes more efficient. I need to use moments like right now, when Lily is happily playing on the play equipment and I have access to free wifi. Or right now, when she is happily watching Monsters Inc (she loves Boo). I need to do things when I can, even if I have to come back and finish them some other time, or the time after that (this is my fourth attempt to get this post finished and up). I need to remember that my phone can do most anything I need to do. I need to stop blathering on about what I want to do and actually do it... right after I make some lunch for a hungry toddler.

Just a quick note...

2009-12-04T09:47:00.002+11:00

...because I am serious about blogging again and it's been more than a week.
The thing is, I'm currently in Melbourne. We booked on Tuesday and flew down on Wednesday. The main purpose of our visit is that my little sister was in the final of a singer/songwriter contest here on Wednesday night. Graeme came just for 24 hours or so, but Lily and I are here until Sunday.
So, if you're in Melbourne or know it well and have any recommendations for what we must see, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, I'll let you know what we've been up to when we're back in Sydney.

Six Months have passed...

2009-11-26T10:38:00.004+11:00

So much has happened, so much to talk about...

And yet, I don't want to spend so much time dwelling on what's been and trying to catch up that I don't get a chance to do and be in the now. Was that too profound for my first post back? Or too muddle-headed because I am feeling a bit daunted about attempting to launch back into blogging regularly?

Either way, I've been seriously thinking for the last few weeks that I need to get back into this whole blogging thing, both in writing for myself and interacting with other blogs. Then, this morning, I found myself leaving comments on some blogs (also the first time in ages) and felt a little embarrassed putting my website down when it was so outdated, so here I am.

So, what's been happening? I'm going to limit myself to 5 bulletpoints with no more than 2 sentences each...

We're living with my parents while we build a house in a new suburb in south-west Sydney. Luckily, 3 years in London means we are used to not having enough space for all the things we wish we could do...
I've recently realised why knitting was such a great hobby in London - it is the one (and possibly only) thing for which the British weather is perfect. Also, the knitting projects you should take on here are very different, especially if you want to get any actual use out of them.
Lily is great. She's 17 months old now and is able to throw tantrums and make ridiculous demands with the best of them, but 95% of the time she is funny and cute and friendly and helpful and smart and clearly turns me into one of those people who gush about how amazing their kid is.
My social life already seems to revolve around my kid's activities, which isn't such a terrible thing, except the fact that she was born overseas and therefore, I don't belong to a 'mothers group', since they seem to be formed around a group of newborns and consequently, I'm finding it hard to 'fit in'. It doesn't help that I'm not raising my kid according to mainstream society's 'rules'.
As if I need more crafty pursuits, I've taken up quilting. Of course, I haven't actually finished one yet, but this one will eventually be Lily's:

If you haven't heard from me again a week from now, feel free to leave a comment and tell me to get my butt in gear.

-Kate

big sigh

2009-05-28T01:17:00.002+10:00

Our house is almost empty.
This morning, two men came and packed most of our belongings into boxes and took them away.
In order for them to be able to do that, we have spent a good part of the last 3 weeks going through all our stuff and deciding whether we wanted to keep it and, if we did, whether we needed to take it with us or could live without it for 3 months.
I am quite happy to say that we took 5 big garbage bags full of clothes and linens to a charity shop and that we have a massive pile of stuff that friends are going to take and use.

I have a bunch of things I want to do before we leave the UK next week, but right now, all I want to do is sit on the couch, listen to some music and knit. And that's just what I'll do.

Uh, yeah

2009-05-07T00:01:00.002+10:00

Sorry about that. I didn't mean to only post once in the whole of April. But, unless this blog is your only point of contact with me, you will know that life is very busy here, what with planning our big move back to Australia and all (so not ready for the movers to turn up in 3 weeks - they'll pack for us, but we have to have the place sorted enough that we can point out what to pack and what to leave). Anyway, because I am supposed to be sorting, packing, getting rid of stuff that's not coming, etc, I have, of course, spent the day doing things like writing blog posts and updating ravelry... oh, and playing with, feeding, changing, encouraging naptime to, a little being that seems to have suddenly turned into a toddler.

OK, more ravelry updating to do and then I should be back to show you some of the stuff I've been working on...

Sunday Update

2009-04-06T05:50:00.002+10:00

Oops, didn't mean to go a full 4 weeks without updating... Although, we haven't actually been at home on a Sunday since I last posted - last week we were in Switzerland, the week before in Belgium and the week before that we spent the whole day with friends who are headed back to the USA very soon.

And, there's plenty going on here, but lots of it I can't/won't write about on a publicly viewable website. In fact, I'm struggling to decide what I should say right now. Probably shouldn't have left this so late in the day to write. Here are some highlights of the last few weeks:

- Lily and I went along to a craft show and helped out on the Learn to Knit stand. OK, I helped teach some people to knit, Lily just acted all cute and drew in the crowd :) It was a great day and definitely something I would volunteer to do again. The rest of the craft show wasn't too exciting, although I did manage to spend a bit of money on some bits and pieces, including 10 skeins of Mirasol Hacho wool that was too big a bargain to pass up, even if it did break my rule of only buying yarn if I know what I am going to knit from it.

- Spring has sprung and we've been spending more time outdoors. Lily loves the swings at the local park. She also chats back at nature when the birds are singing or the wind is blowing. I've taken lots of photos of her surrounded by spring plants, especially daffodils - I love daffodils.

- As I said, we spent literally a full day with friends a few weeks ago. We met up at Church in the morning, grabbed some lunch to go, made our way to Kew Gardens where we picnicked then had a wander around, caught an over-crowded bus (there was rail trackwork, so replacement buses, and traffic jams) to Chiswick and had dinner all together. They go back to the USA soon, victims of this 'credit crunch' thing whose placement in the UK has been deemed too expensive.

- Lily has discovered the wonders of animals. She patted a dog in the park last week and today we took her to Kew where they have a petting farm over the Easter holidays. Photos will (should) be on her website soon.

- There's a massive post over at our website about our trip to Switzerland last weekend. If you really need more to read, go there.

sunday update

2009-03-09T03:01:00.004+11:00

This week was all about the babies. OK, so most every day for me is all about the baby, but we spent a lot of time with other babies (and toddlers) as well.

Tuesday and Thursday both saw us checking out a local playgroup - well, I would call it a playgroup, but here they seem to use that term for what I would call pre-school... Anyway, this place is basically an open-house in a church basement for parents/carers and their under-5s, although there didn't seem to be many kids over 3 - probably because they send them off to school at that age here. They have a cafe, a bunch of play equipment, a separate area for the non-walkers to play in without getting trampled, plus a second-hand shop. Apparently there are also other activities in some of the separated rooms, but I wasn't able to get clear information on them. The best way to sum up my experience of it so far is that it's one of those things that's a really great idea, but doesn't quite live up to potential. But hey, Lily had heaps of fun playing with the other babies and some different toys and I got to chat to some other mums, so it's a perfectly worthwhile way to spend one morning a week (we went twice this week because I was told that there was different stuff on on the different days - either that was misinformation, or [more likely] there just wasn't any indication of what different stuff was happening).

Afterwards on Tuesday, we went to Westfield to have lunch and do some shopping. I don't think I've mentioned how excited I was when Westfield opened. It's not even about the shopping. It's all about the familiarity of not just the Westfield brand, but the big open layout, the decent toilet/babychange facilities, the presence of a food court - it's like the shopping centres I'm used to back home, which is not at all common here. On Tuesday, we probably spent about 3 hours there and all I bought was lunch, though I did make some notes about possible gifts for Lily's first birthday...

On Friday, after our usual library visit and snack with friends, we went to one of the posher local high streets, to seek out something in the art supply shops and also to scour the charity shops - if you're going to look in second-hand shops, I always recommend the most affluent bit of town, because that's where you find the quality stuff, although I didn't get anything this time. We did buy some cheap books from the discount bookstore though and I was thrilled when we got home and Lily just wanted to play with and look at her new books and not eat them.

Yesterday, Lily got her first pair of proper shoes, as in shoes that have soles suitable for walking on (but soft ones, since her little feet are still working out their place in the world). Unsurprisingly, they were fairly huge for her age and we had to go up half a size in length in order to get ones that were wide enough for her giant wide, pudgy feet - as in, the H width still wasn't quite wide enough in size 4, so we went up to a 4.5H. There are no cheap shoes in Lily's foreseeable future, since they just don't make them wide enough. Again, this doesn't really come as a surprise - my feet are still too long and wide to buy many brands of shoes. Or, more accurately, non-brands... it's the brand-name ones that tend to actually come in suitable sizes and therefore cost the money. Oh well, 'quality over quantity' seems to be becoming a stronger mantra for me every day.

Today, we had a small insight into why we are so tired - not only have we all had a cold, which makes breathing and therefore sleeping quite tricky for the smallest member of our family, in turn making sleeping a luxury for us, but we discovered this afternoon that she's broken another tooth.

On the crafty front, I am almost finished a knitted dress for Lily, am about a third of the way through a crocheted pram blanket (for which I bought the yarn before she was even born, but which I kept starting a pattern and then changing my mind) and am completely stalled on my February Lady sweater (a cardigan for me) because I have got to the end of the yoke and am somehow a stitch short and can't decide where or how I want to fix it (especially since I can't work out where or how it happened). The biggest problem is that no matter how many great toys Lily has, as soon as I pull something out to work on, that becomes the most interesting thing in the room (books, computers and tv remotes included) so I am finding it very difficult to accomplish much of anything.

Seems Lily has woken up for a feed and it won't be Sunday much longer... so, how was your week?

Sunday (came and went) Update

2009-03-05T00:31:00.004+11:00

Gee, what did I even do last week???

Actually, not a lot.

Friday we went to the library as usual. Lily was determined to be centre stage and steal everyone's attention by bouncing, chatting and giggling - the fact that she's already adorable anyway and had her hair in pigtails probably explains the number of compliments she got. I had a very strange conversation with a woman who seemed convinced that I would never be able to wean Lily because I didn't stop breastfeeding her as soon as she was 6 months old... politely disagreed with her, but couldn't convince her that it would be ok... had a good laugh about it later, once I got over the initial 'what the?'.
We then went and hung out at one of our friend's houses and ended up staying there all day, joined later by Graeme for dinner. It was a really great day but definitely highlighted for me one of the problems with this whole 'move overseas for a few years' thing - when we left Australia, it was hard to say goodbye to our family and friends, even though we knew we'd be back - how hard then will it be to say goodbye when we leave here, without plans to ever return? I guess I've always had that fear at the back of my mind and it might be why we haven't been as social as we usually are... I don't really know where I'm going with this train of thought, but I'm going to leave it out there.

Saturday we went to Kew and had a picnic lunch. The spring flowers are starting to bloom and it's really nice - we'll definitely be making the most of our membership over the next couple months.

Really, that's about all we got up to. I've actually done more already this week but I'll save that for my next update, since I have other things I need to do right now, in that precious time between Lily's bedtime and my own.

Question (prompted by the weird conversation I mentioned): If you breastfed (especially past 6 months) how did you respond to people who thought you were weird? Is it too rude to tell them I think they're the weird ones?

Baby Surprise Jacket

2009-02-25T02:57:00.007+11:00

This is one of those famous knitting projects that has been made and blogged about thousands of times. It's a little jacket that is knit all in one piece. When you first finish, it looks like this:

Then you fold it once...

...and fold it again...

... sew two seams (and weave in the ends - my least favourite part) and you have an adorable little jacket, which is even more adorable when modelled by Lily.

This was a pretty easy knit once you get into it and I love that the pattern has you knit in some butt ease, so it fits nicely over Lily's cloth nappies.
Ravelry details here

(yesterday was) Sunday Update

2009-02-24T05:04:00.004+11:00

I didn't get around to writing this yesterday and almost missed writing it today as well. I've had one of those weeks where you feel like you never stop, but then you look back and can't quite work out what you achieved...

We all caught a minor bug early last week - nothing major, but it was enough to keep Graeme home for a day and Lily and I housebound for a couple more. Kind of felt like the flu, but like a really wussy strain of it that was pretty easily defeated.

We went for a trip to Kingston-on-Thames on Saturday (there's good shopping and nice restaurants there) and had planned to stop off at Kew on the way home, but there was something crazy and infuriating going on with the buses and it took a ridiculous amount of time to get between Kingston and Kew, so we decided to keep going home.

We missed church on Sunday because we suddenly realised at 10.05 that it was, in fact, 10.05am and there was no way we were ready enough to get sorted, out the door and to the church anywhere near to on time (10.30). It was nice to spend the whole day at home and we were actually quite productive - got some cleaning and other unexciting but necessary house things done.

I finally finished one of my many projects that had been sitting, almost finished, for a while. But that's another post (hopefully tomorrow - I need to head to bed soon, to be sure I get enough sleep before Lily decides to wake up, since that's been very unpredictable lately).

Lily's a Superstar

2009-02-21T04:15:00.004+11:00

I've written up my first couple of reviews for Frugi. The kimono bodies are something that we finally bought when we realised that even the 12 months size bodysuits we had were getting tight on Lily - she's in the 6-12 months of these and still has plenty of growing room.

The romper (that's the link you want to see Lily) was something that I thought was adorable, but may not have bought myself. It was sent to us to review and has me wondering if we should get more rompers.

Yeah, if you follow Lily's blog and/or are friends with me on facebook (add me if we're not - search for my kateandgraeme email address) you've probably already seen these photos, but I don't care :)

I know, I owe you some better updates than that - it's almost the weekend so I should get a chance to have more than 5 minutes sans-baby.

Sunday Update

2009-02-16T01:56:00.005+11:00

I have meant to update more over the last week. In fact, I have several things in various stages of completion that are destined for the blog, I've just had a hard time finishing and editing to the point where I'm happy to post. Hopefully I'll get them up over the next week. In the meantime, here's the interesting things we did this week...

On Monday, we walked (well, I walked, Lily rode in the stroller) to the Royal Mail depot to collect a package that they'd tried to deliver while we were away. I ended up getting drenched (Lily was nice and dry under the stroller's raincover) but it was worth it because the package was my first taste of Frugi's new range - 2 adorable new items for us to try out and review. They're both currently drying on the airer after their second wash, the first wash being Monday afternoon - I compulsively wash things before they're worn. The reviews are two of the many part-written bits sitting on my computer, but I want to road-test them at least once more before submitting the reviews. So that I don't have to mention Frugi again this post (I don't want you to get so sick of hearing about them that it turns you off because that would be a loss for you) I'll also say that I got their new catalogue on Saturday and it is beautiful, like a little magazine with articles about the cotton and stuff, plus, of course a whole bunch of adorable clothes that you end up wanting one of everything. I also got some extra catalogues and some little flyers with a discount on them and am looking forward to passing them out when people say how adorable Lily is (because they always do :D).

Friday is Lily and my going out day. Even if we're confined to the house every other day of the week, I make an effort on Fridays. We start off the morning at 'Baby Bounce n Rhyme' at the local library and usually spend at least an extra half hour there, playing with other babies and chatting to their mums, reading books, taking advantage of the carpet to perfect our crawling since we have slippy wooden floors at home... OK, that last one is just Lily. Then we usually move on from the library (or, on the odd occasion, just across the library to their cafe) with at least one other Mum and her kid/s. We also often do some shopping, mostly of the window kind - I do the shopping while Lily has a nap in her stroller. This Friday, we had such a good day out, including eating at a proper restaurant for lunch, just the two of us, we didn't get home until about 4pm... and then completely crashed out.

We (that's a Graeme and I 'we', this time) never really celebrate Valentine's Day, but we did end up going out for a nice lunch and some shopping yesterday - we bought Lily a present, if that counts (not actually because it was Valentine's Day, though, just because we saw a toy we knew she'd love for less than half price). That was, of course, after our first lie-in in weeks that included a skype call with Lily's Nana.

So, what did you do this week?

Pay It Forward

2009-02-11T00:34:00.005+11:00

Almost exactly a year ago, Leonie made this post on her blog (go read it, it's a great story, I'll wait, plus, it'll basically explain this post for me)

All done?
OK

So, around Christmas time, I received an amazing package containing some of Leonie's artwork, which I have always loved and plan to buy some of to decorate our future home when we get back to Australia. I've been slack about getting this post up because I wanted to have some photos to show and only just got around to taking them today when Lily drew my attention to the package which had been accidentally pushed under the coffee table, but which she, in her grab-at-everything phase, pulled back out.

Two beautiful prints:

Even the notecard was cool:

(my photos don't do her work justice - the light here is poo at the moment)

So, now its your turn. Leave a comment on this post by next Monday and sometime that day (remember, GMT) I'll pick 3 people at random (yeah, I know some people do the first three to comment, but I'm trying to get those people who read but never comment to come out of hiding - a simple 'hi' is enough to get you in the draw). Those three people will receive a handmade gift from me within the year. The only catch is that you then have to Pay It Forward and make the same offer on your blog. I'll leave that last bit open to interpretation for you - I think it's most in keeping with the idea to make the offer once you have received your gift, but I have noticed some people make the offer on their blog straight away, so either way, you can decide when you know if it's you :)

Oh yeah, just in case you're wondering (because I know I always do), I'll post to anywhere in the world, so get to commenting.

ETA: As my Mum pointed out in the comments, you can get your hands on some of Leonie's amazing work and help out the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal. Check out the details here.

Sunday Update

2009-02-09T08:18:00.001+11:00

We've spent the last 9 days travelling around Germany with a one-day detour into Czech (as the locals call it) to see Prague. We had a great time and are constantly amazed and thankful at how great a baby Lily is - she travels like a champion. We kept notes as we went around, so hopefully we won't take too long to put it up on our travel blog. My personal highlights included the east side gallery of the Berlin wall and the design classics in the Applied Art Museum in Cologne.

As you probably know, London has been hit by a massive cold snap while we were away. At first I was annoyed that we were missing our first decent snow in London, but then I remembered that once the novelty wore off, the reality would quickly settle in and the reality is that London is just not set up to cope with any weather other than overcast and in the teens (in degrees Celsius). No snow in sight when we got home though, just lots of rain, though Graeme said he saw some snow from the tube on the way back from the airport.

In other news, Lily broke her second bottom tooth. We noticed it yesterday morning and think it might explain the huge inconsolable crying episode on Friday evening. Her first top tooth is also visible, but hasn't actually broken through yet. As graeme said, she looks like she's going to be one of those babies that shows signs of teething for months before one breaks and then they all appear in quick succession.

My plans for this week include a lot of laundry, catching up with friends and trying to convince Lily to sleep in her own bed - she much prefers to sleep in our bed, even though hers is joined directly to the side, and has been enjoying doing just that while we were away.

Bound to Happen

2009-01-30T01:49:00.002+11:00

So, Tuesday was a very productive day for me (you know, in case you couldn't tell from the 4 blog posts). I updated websites, did some emailing and facebooking, got laundry sorted, thought I was finally making progress on my massive to-do list.
Then, Tuesday night, Lily decided she wasn't going to sleep, wanted to feed every hour, etc, in preparation for yesterday, when I could hardly put her down without her bursting into tears. Mid-afternoon, I realised she was feeling very warm, took her temperature (as best I could - she really does not like me sticking the thermometer under her arm) and decided it was time for the paracetamol, which thankfully kicked in and she was actually pretty happy for the rest of the evening, if a little sleepier than usual. I put it down to the lingering effects of a little cold she's had and the fact that her tooth is coming through.
Fast-forward to just before 3am this morning. Lily wakes up for a feed and is burning up. I couldn't get the thermometer to finish it's reading (wiggly Lily), but it was already over 39 when it had slowed right down. Graeme got on the phone to NHS Direct and over the next hour or so spoke to a nurse and then the on-call doctor about what we needed to do. Thankfully, another dose of paracetamol, opening up the window a slit and taking off all her clothes but her nappy combined to help cool her little body down and we were able to get a bit more sleep. We took her to the doctor just after midday just to get her checked out, since we are supposed to be going away on Saturday morning and we don't want to leave the country if she's really ill, but the doc said she is a bit red in the ears and throat, but from what we'd told her is probably at the end of a viral infection and she didn't need antibiotics or anything.
Obviously, since I'm getting the chance to write this, she's doing much better this afternoon. Still a bit warm and not much of an appetite, but playing and smiling. Well, except right at this minute, because she's just decided she's hungry and tired...

Onesies for Kaitlyn

2009-01-28T03:46:00.006+11:00

Alison has been one of my best friends since we were about 15. In November, she also had herself a little girl. So, of course, I had to make a little gift.
Kaitlyn was much smaller than Lily at birth, which was good, because it meant that I could use a couple of the unworn plain white bodysuits I had put aside and never decorated for Lily - they were the size Lily wore straight away, but didn't fit Kaitlyn until I'd gotten around to making, packaging and sending them :)

The two tops, ready to wrap. A lily from Lily and a 'K' because it's the best initial of them all. I was going to make a third 'from Graeme' but couldn't think of anything appropriate and besides, I was already past my self-inflicted deadline. I'll make it up to her on her first birthday :)

A detail of the K to show my mad stitching skills (click to see bigger). I also took a close-up of the lily, but while my stitching skills were spot-on that day, my photo skills weren't and it's blurry...

I can't wait to meet Kaitlyn and for Lily to have a playmate with whose Mum I can also spend hours hanging out (so far I've only met one person who fits that category, but that's another post). Hopefully, our little girls will have as great a friendship as we do.

Visiting London

2009-01-28T03:09:00.004+11:00

I've just finished typing up a (pretty long) message to my cousin who is planning a trip to London and the following is a variation on what I end up typing out every time someone asks for advice about coming to London. It's the general stuff that I think you should know/do no matter who you are or what interests you. Just figured I'd put it out there for more people to access (plus, next time someone asks, I can just point them here).

- Don't pay £20 for the hop-on, hop-off bus. Instead, buy an all day bus pass or zone 1-2 travel card (which includes the tube as well) and go where you want. You won't get a commentary, but you don't really need it if you have some sort of travel book, or know your English landmarks really well :) See the Transport for London website for all the info you could possibly want about public transport (www.tfl.gov.uk)

- Take advantage of the fact that almost all the museums and galleries are free to get into. Pick the ones that appeal to your interests and visit, if only for a couple of hours. This is also good for when the weather decides to be uncooperative.

- If you have more than 3 days, use one of them to get out of London - England is a beautiful country, but sometimes London just feels like any other big city. Go to somewhere like Oxford for the day, but make sure you pre-book a train or catch the 'Oxford Tube' (which is actually a bus) otherwise it is an expensive day trip. Or do one of the more touristy bus trips to Stonehenge, the Cotswolds, somewhere else that seems interesting to you.

- Go to a show on the West End. I love the theatre and would (and did, before Lily was born) go every chance I get, but even people who think they're 'not into that sort of thing' will find something that appeals. Avenue Q is crude and hilarious, but American. If you want something British, I've heard that Billy Elliot is amazing, but haven't actually seen it. I personally loved Les Miserables. (Why, yes, they are all musicals, but not only is that mainly what I've seen, it's also what tends to run the longest and appeal to the most people)

- Walk through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Make sure you have some peanuts for the squirrels, because they will come up and take them from your hand. (The second part of this one is probably not so exciting for anyone who encounters squirrels on a semi-regular basis, but we don't have squirrels in Australia and I think they're adorable)

- For the more touristy things, pick the ones that coincide with your interests. I absolutely loved the Tower of London - the history, the crown jewels, all that, but I know other people think it's a waste of a day. Flipside, some people think Madame Tussauds is the best thing ever, whereas we only went because we could get in free and while the waxworks are impressive from a skill perspective, it's not something I'd ever pay to see.

Yep, that's me

2009-01-28T01:54:00.002+11:00

Check it out.
I am so ridiculously excited about this, I can't even begin to tell you - is that really lame of me?

Following

2009-01-28T01:45:00.002+11:00

As we all know, I had neglected this blog for awhile. While I was gone, blogger has continued to make changes and updates. The only one I've explored so far is Following and I like it. You may (or may not) notice that I no longer have a blogroll on my sidebar - if you want to see what blogs I read (or should I say subscribe to, since some of them have been even more slack about updating than I have in the last year or so) you can just go to my blogger profile and see the blogs I am following. So far, I have only added people I know in real life, but I will add other stuff as I get to it.

I guess another way I could do this is to share my Google Reader list (I'm pretty certain I can do that...) but I don't know if people like my Mum even know what Google Reader is... do you?

About Me

2009-01-27T02:01:00.004+11:00

My 'About Me' in my profile used to say:
A 20-something Australian girl who is still struggling with what I want to be when I grow up, even though I have two degrees in areas which I enjoy. I have moved to London with my husband to experience new things and see the world.

In ways, it's still appropriate, but in other ways, it's now so far from accurate, that I felt the need to change it, especially with my renewed effort to keep on top of this blog. But what to? How do you summarise yourself into a short little statement and yet make yourself stand out from every other blog's 'about me'? Why do I feel the need to stand out? I think it's because I don't just want to be identified as 'Stay at home Mum, expat, crafty' - maybe because pretty much every blog I read myself comes under one or more of those categories. But then, is that such a bad thing?

By the way, for now, I am not struggling with what I want to be when I 'grow up', because I am doing it - like any job, being a Mum has it's ups and downs, but right now, I wouldn't have it any other way and thankfully, the long-term job prospects are good :)

Sunday Update

2009-01-26T03:33:00.005+11:00

I'm calling this the Sunday update, because Sunday is usually when I'll get a good chance to write, since Graeme can be in charge of Lily for a bit. That said though, I already know I probably won't get to write it every week, since we are finally getting back into the whole travelling thing - you know, the primary reason for moving ourselves to London - and will be away about one Sunday a month (like, next Sunday). Anyway, the feedback from the 2 whole people who actually bother to read and comment on my blog is that you want to read this sort of thing, so I'll try my best...

In the past 48 hours or so, Lily has well and truly squashed any remaining part of her little-baby-hood. On Friday evening, she suddenly decided that she'd worked out how to move herself and commenced what we call 'commando crawling'. She looks just like when you see people (usually at some sort of military academy) in movies crawling under barb-wire fences - hardly lifts herself off her belly, but uses her arms to pull herself along and wiggles her hips to move her feet. I took some video, but since it's Graeme's domain to upload videos (I do the photos) and he hasn't gotten to it yet, you'll have to wait to see that.
And then, yesterday, she grabbed my finger and shoved it in her mouth (I'm quite used to this now) and when she bit down, I felt not the familiar gummyness, but the beginnings of a tooth. Then I tried to get her to show it to me...

I did get a photo of the tooth later, well, really it's just a slit in her gum at the moment, but that'll go on her photoblog.

Other than that, our week has really been quite uneventful. I just realised I said 'our', not 'my', but the fact is that anything I do, Lily does too, so most everything is going to involve her too. Anyway, I need to go do some sewing - I'm making a new baby carrier that's kind of a hybrid of the two I already have. I hope it works out as well as it looks in my head :)

Question: We haven't given her anything for the pain she may or may not be feeling with this whole tooth coming through thing - how am I supposed to know if she's in enough pain to need baby paracetamol? So far, we've only given it to her when she was running a fever, because that is a physical thing that we can tell externally. I don't wanna give her drugs if she doesn't need them, but I also don't want her to suffer needlessly...

All About Baby Clothes

2009-01-26T03:20:00.005+11:00

(this came out longer than I thought, so I am warning you now, if you are uninterested in the dilemma of clothing a baby with a big butt, just go through and click on all the links to see cute photos)

As most of you know, Lily is a cloth nappy baby. We used disposables for her first couple weeks (when her poop was gross, she needed her belly button to have air to breathe and I couldn't face washing nappies every day) and still use them when we go away, but the rest of the time, she's in cloth. I am so glad we made this decision - it is cheaper in the long term, especially since future sibling(s) will also wear them; we have never really had an issue with nappy rash; no stinky nappies to have around the house until garbage day; no nasty chemicals right next to her butt. The ONLY downside so far is that we like to air-dry our washing and that can be tricky when it's an English winter and the nappies therefore take a full 24 hours or so to dry.

Oh, and it makes her butt ginormous. Personally, I think this is adorable. I also think it's part of the reason she sat so well, so early - she had some extra weight and support (I'm sure this is just silly, but I choose to believe it anyway). Problem is, most people use disposables and therefore, baby clothes aren't made to fit over big butts like Lily's. For the first 6 months or so, we managed to get away with just having her in slightly bigger sizes than her age. It helps that she's always been rather barrelly in the chest too, so there wasn't too much issue with onesies/bodysuits fitting both top and bottom. However, as she's become more mobile over the last couple of months, she's really starting to stretch out - continuing to add to her already 'tall' length, but losing some of the chubbiness. So, at 6 months old, she had clothes designed for 9-12 month olds that didn't fit her at all anymore - too small in the butt, but too long in the leg.

The first week of December, I went on the hunt for clothing that would fit over a cloth-nappied butt. Plenty of people are using cloth nappies these days, so there must be stuff out there, right? Well, not really. I found lots of other people complaining about the same thing in forums and a single, solitary company called Cut 4 Cloth that was recommended over and over. They're not called Cut 4 Cloth anymore, they're now Frugi and I am writing all this to tell you that I am in love with their clothes. They are totally adorable, organic, fairtrade, great quality, everything good that you could hope for in clothing for any member of the family. All their stuff for under 2s is cut so as to fit over a cloth nappy. They do baby, girls and boys ranges, but we have already bought from all three, since the boys clothes are just as cute and we have no problem dressing Lily in any colour (besides, we'd like to have some clothes we can re-use if our next kid is a boy - see Lily in the 'boy' and 'girl' version of the same style top). They also have beautiful nursing tops (I only own one so far, but there are 2 more on their way and I am really hankering after that dress) which is great, since my wardrobe has become all about being able to discreetly feed a very inquisitive baby. As can be expected from such ethically produced, quality clothes, they're not cheap, but from what I've seen so far, are totally worth the price. Plus, they have great sales if you can wait until stuff is not 'in season' (although, I can't really see anything we've bought so far being out of season, other than maybe the summer dresses, but even they can be wintered up, as Lily shows here). I've just placed my fourth order with them today and have so far spent... well, more than I want to say, really, but worth every penny.

My favourite thing we've gotten so far is the Explorer Bootcuts (modelled by Lily here and here). I love them so much that I have just ordered a pair in the next size up so we will have them when she grows out of her current pair (which, thankfully, shouldn't be for a few months - it's so good to have clothes that fit for longer than 2 months). I also wrote about them to send as a trial review to Frugi themselves, in the hopes of becoming one of their Crusaders (reviewing new clothes, discounted beautifulness - sweet), which is what prompted me to finally write this blog post that I have been composing in my head for the last few weeks. So, here's the review I sent them (oh, and for all my Australian friends - we usually refer to them as pants, but that word means underwear here, so I call them trousers in public, even though it feels weird to do so :D):

My favourite piece of baby clothing is the first ever pair of trousers we bought from Frugi - the Explorer Bootcuts. Finally, a pair of trousers that fit over a cloth nappy without being too big in every other place. The soft, covered elastic waistband pulls on easily over the bulk that is Lily's chubby thighs combined with her cloth nappy and together with the drawstring keeps them nicely in place without looking uncomfortably tight. I love that the drawstring is sewn in the centre back to stop her pulling it out - Lily will grab and chew on anything within reach at the moment, so I like knowing that even when this ends up in her mouth, she won't have access to the whole cord - such a simple little detail that I, and seemingly most other clothing manufacturers, had never even thought of.
Aside from the practical stuff, once they're on, they're the cutest little trousers I've ever seen. The embroidered flowers on the front pockets are cute and colourful, without being overwhelming and the little bird on the back is like a sweet surprise when you see your little girl from behind (or above, as she struggles to try and crawl). The hard-wearing woven cotton has a pretty green tinge, but like the embroidery, it's subtle enough that the trousers will go with pretty much anything else in a little girl's wardrobe. And they have to, because you'll quickly find them in high rotation - ours rarely make it back into her drawers before the next wearing and are often grabbed from the (clean) laundry basket or drying rack to put back on.
Since it's winter, the trousers have only really been worn long so far, but once Spring hits, we'll be rolling them up. Then the adorable little trousers become equally cute shorts with a matching green knit fabric cuff. Plus, to stop adventurous little ones from turning them back into trousers, there is a strap and a pretty little natural button on each leg to hold the cuff in place. This is also a plus when your baby is on the shorter end of the scale and/or needs room to grow - most every pair of trousers can be rolled up, obviously, but hardly any will stay that way and very few will look as good.
Probably the best testament to how much we love these trousers is the fact that we have also purchased them in the next size up...

Question: If you use/d cloth nappies, how do/did you compensate for the giant butt problem?

Starting Over

2009-01-24T02:12:00.002+11:00

I am determined to post on this blog more regularly. In fact, feel free to give me a kick in the butt (real, or virtual) if you haven't heard from me in more than a week, ok? So, this is what I'm planning...
- a weekly update (at the least) of what I've been up to, even if it consists of 'spent the whole week trapped inside the house because Lily was sick/overly clingy/just plain weird and the weather was terrible' (*not that those things have happened much over the last 2 months or anything* said in my most sarcastic voice - at least they haven't been simultaneous occurrences really)
- to take and upload photos of what I've been making/cooking/doing that seems interesting and actually share them (I have a reasonable list to catch up on, but am not going to do them all at once, small steps)
- to let you know about some of the things that make our lives great - kinda reviews of the products, places, maybe even people that we enjoy on a regular basis
- to end my postings with a question, to try and encourage discussion in the comments ;)
So, does that sound like something you'll actually read? Or am I wasting my time with this whole blogging thing?

Welcome 2009

2009-01-14T22:25:00.002+11:00

I had grand plans for the start of 2009.
- I was hoping to have all my email correspondence up-to-date within the first week (actually, I was planning to have that done before the new year even ticked over, but since I only made that plan 3 days beforehand and I had a clingy 6 month old to look after, well, you know).
- I wanted to sit down and look at what I want/need to achieve this year - I'm not really the resolution-making type, but along those sort of lines, I guess.
- I really wanted to decide what I want this blog to be and get going on updating it regularly again.
I actually think I've made progress on the first part of that last statement, since I've had time to think. I just haven't had any time to 'do'. And I don't have a lot of time to do now, either, as Lily seems to be waking up and will no doubt demand my attention, as she has been doing every waking hour for the last few weeks...

Long time, no see

2008-08-29T23:37:00.003+10:00

I have no idea how to catch up on the last two and a half months in the unpredictable time I have before Lily wakes up, so I'm not even really going to attempt it. I have been way too busy getting used to my role as Mummy to spend a lot of time on the computer. And when I do have free time, I generally have more important things to do than blog. But I have been thinking about it and I reckon that with Lily's photoblog and our determination to keep things that are relevant to both of us on our website, I need to refocus this blog.

I feel like my everyday life type stuff is either too boring, or too personal to publish publicly.
I'd love to have a cool, crafty blog (as if there aren't already millions of those out in internet-land) but am only just getting back into stuff like that and don't feel like I'm doing anything new or original.
Or, I could just abandon the blog, since it often just feels like one more thing I have to catch up on...
So, to the (two or three?) people who actually read this - what should I be talking about here? What do you actually want to read? Why do you check this page or have it in your blog reader anyway?

Just in case...

2008-06-13T00:31:00.002+10:00

...you read this blog, but not our website, you should probably know that I had a baby on Monday. Photos, vital stats and an explanation as to why this is such a brief announcement are over at kateandgraeme.com

My 6hr trip to the doctor's

2008-05-31T08:15:00.002+10:00

So usually when I go to the GP for my check-up, I leave the house about 40 minutes before my appointment (to account for the inevitable wait for a bus) and am home within another 40 minutes. Today, I arrived home 6 hours after I left...
My appointment was actually with the surgery nurse, just to do a check on my blood pressure and protein levels, since both have been sitting right on the borderline of acceptable. My protein was fine. My first blood pressure reading? 153/110. Seriously. That's insanely high. She made me sit for a while and take some deep breaths, took it again and it was still 141/100. Still too high. High enough that I had to call the hospital, talked to a midwife and was told to come in for monitoring. So I gave Elizabeth a call, she came and met me and we went to the hospital where they hooked me up to a fetal monitor, made me sit back in a reclining chair and took my blood pressure 3 times over about an hour to assess the situation. My blood pressure dropped steadily over that time and Squishy's heartbeat and movements were fine, so they sent me home with instructions to rest and to call the delivery suite if anything feels off over the weekend.
OK, I admit, we could've been home about 4 and a half hours after I'd left the house, but by then, we were both hungry and I really wanted to get some yarn to knit a little pram blanket for Squishy, so we went and got some lunch and visited the local yarn store (where the lady was heaps more friendly and helpful than anyone I'd previously encountered in the shop) before heading home.
So basically, I left the house planning on seeing the nurse, getting some yarn and coming home to relax, probably including an afternoon nap. Instead, I had a massive detour to the freakin' hospital because my body is being a pain. I've been giving the baby pep talks, trying to convince it that coming out soon would be a good idea. Not too sure it will work though...

stuff i made

2008-05-27T22:42:00.007+10:00

Just putting up little photos, most of which are pretty dodgy and quickly edited but better than no picture at all. You can click on them to see them bigger.

OK, first up my new address book. 4x6" index cards that I designed and printed. Easy to update/replace when people's details change and plenty of space to make extra notes or whatever. I'm keeping them in a perfectly-sized mini file folder thing that I found.

This quilt block was made as my contribution to a project organised by an online community I belong to. One of the members lost a lot when her home was broken into shortly after they'd experienced a fire. So we made her a quilt. Well, a bunch of us made squares and one of the really talented quilters collected it all and assembled it into a quilt.
I painted the land masses onto some blue cotton, stitched the planet onto the black (by hand - I was impressed at my own skills) then embellished with embroidery floss.

A needle holder. After over 2 years of living in this country, I am still getting used to the space restrictions and the importance of well-organised storage. My biggest problem is with the 'well-organised' bit at the moment and I found myself knowing I had things I needed for projects, but unable to find them. Like various sized needles. So I got some felt (didn't even choose the colours - they're the ones that were in the little pack I found), stitched a few pieces together with some embroidery floss, attached a button and voila - no more lost needles.

Calorimetry is one of those projects that everyone in internet-land seems to have knitted. And here's mine. I'm not sure how happy I am with it - I think it's too fat, as in it covers too much of the top of my head - but since I managed to finish it right as the weather got too warm to wear anything like it, I'm going to call it finished and re-visit when it gets cool again after Summer.
This is the point where I should tell you what yarn and needles I used and any adjustments I made, but I can't actually remember much and don't know where I'd have put that information. When I get around to updating ravelry (one step at a time) I'll put the details there.

And, saving the best for last, some clothes for the baby.

That there is a 0-3 months sized onesie (because I refuse to buy anything smaller, anticipating a big baby) that I embroidered. I googled jellyfish to find an image as a basis, added the text then printed, transferred and stitched. I had grand plans to make a bunch of cute little personalised onesies, but so far, this is it. So baby will be wearing lots of plain white to start with.

Tank top/Vest (it seems to have been published under both names) by Debbie Bliss from Essential Baby, one of the many knitting books I have borrowed from the library in the last few months. Knitted in the recommended yarn, which is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino - one advantage to living in the UK is when stuff like this is easily available (and much cheaper than you'd pay back home). The actual top only used just over one ball, so I made a matching basic hat with the rest - I kinda winged it, based on something I found about baby head sizes, so I have no idea when exactly it will be the right size for Squishy's head, but that's cool. Especially since even though I knit the 0-3 months size in the top, my tension/gauge was off (I knit loosely) and I ran with it, so I don't know exactly when that will fit either. Besides, who really knows how big a baby will be before it's born...?
Anyway, I'm really happy with the top. It's my first ever actual garment - I had to sew seams and attach a button and everything. I successfully matched my decreases front and back, picked up stitches for the neck and arm bands and I even did a neat job of weaving in all the ends. And, I really like the stitch pattern, simple but effective, and think it will look totally cute on little Squishy.

I have a couple other projects I want to work on, but the energy is not there at the moment. And I'm a bit worried about pulling out my sewing machine, which most of the projects I have in mind require, because I don't do well on the sewing machine when my brain is not fully functioning - I get frustrated easily enough at the moment, without adding in a piece of heavy machinery. Oh well, I'll just let my body keep working on the biggest project of all and get back into it when I feel up to it.

8 days to go...

2008-05-26T00:03:00.003+10:00

OK, I'm well aware that due dates are really a rough guess, rather than a deadline and that my chances of giving birth on June 2 are slim to none, but you should all know how the number 8 has a strange appeal to me and hey, at least it prompted me to write a blog post, right?

So what's been happening? Not much. That's why I haven't updated - don't really feel like there's much to say. Ummmm...

In case you didn't follow the link in my last post, I have been still taking photos and making silhouettes of my growing belly, but they're now over in Squishy's very own photo blog. This is also where the very first photos are likely to appear once s/he's born.

We're now planning on putting most of our photos on our website - ones of the baby on the photo blog and the travel ones as galleries attached to our posts about our travels. This is partly because it seems so silly for us to have underutilised web-space, but also due to the fact that my flickr pro account came up for renewal recently and I just wasn't feeling it, so I am back to being on a limited account. Of course, this may change later, if and when my interest in the online world returns.

OK, it's not completely true that I spend no time on the computer. In fact the last week or so I have probably had my laptop out more than I'd like. But I'm just not feeling up to interacting, so most of the time is spent playing silly little games (I'm a sudoku champion). I am still reading blogs and occasionally checking places like ravelry, facebook and flickr, but I'm not saying much. I'm not really sure why this is. I guess it's partly because it feels like more effort (mentally/emotionally) than I have at the moment. I think I also worry that I'll just come across as a whining pregnant lady or something.

Speaking of whining pregnant ladies, I'm pretty much over the whole thing. So yes, Sharon, you were right - you definitely hit a point where even the pain associated with labour seems like it will be a relief. I want to be able to roll over in bed without fully waking up and having to readjust my many pillows to make myself comfortable again. It would be awesome to be able to climb the stairs or walk for more than 15 minutes without running out of puff. And I cannot wait for the day when I can stand up (from the couch/bed/wherever) and not need to go to the loo right that instant. I'm also done with the health stuff - I don't feel like going into too much detail, but let's just say the woman I saw at my 36 week check at the hospital was hopeless and I left the place almost in tears, because, as often seems to be the case in this country, I had gone into something with (I was going to say high, but really the problem is having any) expectations.

That feels like a really bad note to leave the post on, but I can't think of anything else to ~~talk~~ babble on about. I have some stuff to show that I have made, but I'd rather do that in a separate post, besides, I need to sort through the photos first.

site update

2008-05-11T03:21:00.002+10:00

We've spent some time working on our website. It's not quite finished, but there are a couple cool new features and some actual blog posts, so go and poke around.

33-34 weeks

2008-04-23T22:03:00.004+10:00

Really starting to feel big now. Depending how Squishy is positioned, my belly button is often non-existent. Sleeping a lot and get tired easily. Not too interested in the computer lately, thus the lack of updates, here and elsewhere around the web. Would much rather play Mario Kart on the Wii, especially because I can comfortably do so while sitting on the couch with my feet up. Apologies to anyone who I owe an email to (there are quite a few of you).

32 weeks

2008-04-08T05:37:00.003+10:00

Another silhouette - still trying to perfect the whole process from taking the photo to outlining the thing, so they're not quite as comparable as I'd like, but oh well. Another trip to the GP tomorrow - it's the first time Graeme can come (being unemployed as he is at the moment - we've been playing a lot of Wii)and he's quite excited to hear the heartbeat again, although he's well aware that Squishy is here and seemingly doing OK, from the amount s/he makes my belly move around.

More Snow

2008-04-07T01:32:00.002+10:00

Yes, it is April. Yes, I am in London, England. Yes, it is supposed to be Spring. But, this morning I woke up (at 10am, no less) to find that it had not only snowed overnight, but was still falling and actually sticking. Judging by the cars, we got about 5cm of snow. There's nothing like snow to encourage me into alertness - we were quickly fed, washed and dressed and out the door headed to the park. This is not the usual English reaction to snow. In fact, we were surprised at how few families we found in the park, but there were a few having snowball fights and building snowmen. I wanted to build a snowman too, but Graeme wasn't interested and helpfully reminded me that bending over to roll a big ball of snow would not be the easiest thing for me to do right now, so instead I made a mini one:

(photo by Graeme)

We walked around the park, trying to work out which ducks were the ones we'd seen as little fluffy ducklings a couple of weeks ago, had some morning tea in the cafe and took a bunch of photos (see both mine and Graeme's flickr). By the time we headed home, it had stopped snowing and the trees were all dumping their loads. The sun has since come out and melted the rest away, well, at least what we can see from our window.

31 weeks

2008-04-01T07:14:00.003+11:00

More accurate than last week's because it is based on a photo taken just in my underwear (I know you all wanted that image in your heads :D). Although I did have to guesstimate part of the curve of my back (because my arm was in the way) and the top of my head (since I was still wearing a towel after washing my hair - also why I appear to be bald).

Not much new to report, other than an annoying toothache that has just popped up and brings varying degrees of pain/annoyance. I hate the dentist at the best of times, so the idea of going to see one while I still have a fairly active gag-reflex and can't accept drugs or x-rays is beyond unappealing, so I'm putting it off as long as it's bearable (I know that's probably not the best approach, but what are you going to do about it?). At least if I do have to go, I have my magic NHS maternity card that entitles me to free care.

Suggestive Cravings

2008-03-31T23:50:00.006+11:00

So far, I haven't craved anything really crazy or unusual to eat as a result of being pregnant, but I have been experiencing a lot of what Graeme and I have labelled 'suggestive cravings'. I see an ad or a photo of some food, or Graeme suggests something we could eat and I become fixated on the idea of getting my hands on whatever it is and devouring it. Take, for example this photo from one of my flickr contacts of 'Toblerone Dip' (which sounds pretty awesome - click through to the photo for the recipe). However, it's not the dip that is stuck in my mind, but those little candy sticks over on the right side of the photo... I wonder if I can get them over here.

photo credit: Toblerone Dip by Steve Kay

30 weeks (and 2 days)

2008-03-27T01:47:00.003+11:00

I know I promised photos, but even though I don't feel too hideous in person, I'm feeling very non-photogenic - as in no matter how many photos Graeme takes of my profile, I think they all look horrible and am therefore going to keep them to myself. This is the style I want to go with for my pregnancy photos anyway - I'm thinking a series of silhouettes along the bottom of a photo album page will look quite cool. Yes, I am already planning baby photo albums/scrapbooks. No, I have not got anywhere near finishing the albums of our adventures so far, but I am hoping to start the baby one before the baby even arrives and try to keep it somewhat up-to-date.

So, as I mentioned on Sunday, I am now 30 weeks pregnant. It's strange to know that even if I go past the due date, it is still only just over 11 weeks until Squishy will be here. The hospital policy is that they induce at due date +10 days, which is 11 weeks tomorrow (and also the day AFTER my sister flies back to Australia, so we're all hoping baby comes on his/her own). We now know this piece of information because we have (today and last week) attended the ante-natal classes offered at the hospital. The classes were pretty good in getting us familiar with the hospital and what we can expect to happen and all that, but we kind of wished we could have ticked a box somewhere that said "yes, we are both quite intelligent and even with the pregnancy brain will understand things the first time you tell us, so please put us in the class for smarty-pants" because it did feel as though stuff was being 'dumbed down' (hate that term, but can't think of a better one) and repeated too much.

Anyway, that pregnancy brain I mentioned? Yeah, it's stopping me from being coherent and forming phrases, sentences and paragraphs that I am happy with. So I'll go back to the good old standby of bullet points...

- Squishy is still very much a wriggler, but is clearly starting to run out of space. I am constantly reminded that there is a baby in my belly, especially when I lay down to go to sleep or have just woken up myself. Graeme enjoys the sensation of pushing on my belly and getting kicked. I think it's funny when s/he shifts sides and my whole abdomen visibly moves.

- I've seen the GP a couple more times. My blood pressure insists on hovering at a level that is technically ok, but still high enough to be a potential problem if it changes. Yesterday there were minute traces of protein in my urine (sorry if that's too much info) so that's something else they 'have to keep an eye on'. As much as s/he moves around, Squishy is always lying head down (the way s/he should be) when I'm checked, which is good, and s/he has a good, healthy heartbeat. I feel like that is way more info than anyone would want to know about the physical stuff, but I'm sure some of you will appreciate it. At least I didn't tell you how many times a day I have to pee (just so you know, it's a lot - lol).

- I'm very much looking forward to having Squishy out here in the world. I'm even kind of looking forward to the actual giving-birth bit (which I'm currently planning on doing without an epidural, which shouldn't come as much surprise to anyone who knows how I feel about taking any sort of drugs - I'll even avoid paracetamol if I can). At exactly the same time though, I'm freaking out about all the things I feel I should have already done and wondering how exactly I will handle having a baby to look after 24 hours a day. I know logically that all a newborn needs is food, warmth, love and a clean nappy, but it's hard to quieten the part of me that wants everything to be 'perfect'... whatever that is.

- I've suddenly become really interested in hearing people's birth stories, so if you want to tell me any, please do. Did you choose to have drugs? What did you do to make labour more bearable? Did you have to be induced/have an emergency caesarean? How did you find breastfeeding in the beginning? Please don't worry about scaring me or anything - I've already read some shockers, but I'd like to know more from people I actually know, if that makes sense. Just email me if you don't want to share it with the world. Oh, and mum - I've seen forceps up close and in person now. Sorry I was such a stubborn baby and wouldn't come out :)

I dunno what else to say, so feel free to ask me if there's something obvious I should be telling you about and haven't even mentioned. Squishy says 'hi'.

Happy...uh...Easter?

2008-03-24T04:57:00.004+11:00

So, we woke up this morning and it was snowing. Snowing like we've never seen before in London. It didn't stick at all, so if we'd woken up only an hour later, we wouldn't have seen any snow, but it was still cool because it was falling so thick and fast. This photo's not the best, but it's hard to capture falling snow, so I went with the one plant that had collected a bit.

When we came over, and particularly when we stayed in the UK for Christmas last year, lots of people mentioned a 'White Christmas', but we always knew if we really wanted one of those, we probably needed to go to continental Europe. So imagine our surprise when they started predicting snow for Easter weekend. According to Graeme (who is nerdy enough to research these things) it is actually more likely to snow at Easter than Christmas here, especially when Easter is really early, like this year. Something to do with the lunar phases or some such.

Anyway, we also kind of got snowed on yesterday, but it was more like sleet/teensy hail. I was hoping to be able to share some dinosaur photos, because we went to the Natural History Museum, but it was crazy busy (at least this time we got in - last time we tried to go, the queue to get into the place was ridiculous and we skipped it) and the queue to get into the dinosaur room was over 45 minutes long, so we gave up. We're thinking we'll try and go next week on a weekday while Graeme is between jobs (his final day is Monday - I don't know if I've written about what's going on with his work, but you can go read his blog if you want more info). Best thing about free museums - if they get too crowded you can just leave and come back another day.

I've got some new belly photos and some pregnancy type stuff to update on as well, but I think I'll do that tomorrow (when I will be 30 weeks along - crazy!). Hope everyone has/had a great long weekend.

Following Jamie Oliver's lead

2008-03-18T07:00:00.005+11:00

I know I need to do a proper post, but this is kinda a 'this week only' thing and deadlines make me do stuff...

So, there's been a Sainsbury's (that's a supermarket chain) ad running here where Jamie Oliver (he's like their spokesman) makes this awesome looking dessert using hot cross buns. Of course, we had to try it. We probably could have winged it based on the easy instructions included in the ad, but we looked it up and found this on the Sainsbury's website (copied to here because it didn't have it's own static page to link to):

Hot cross pudding

Try spreading marmalade on halved hot cross buns and place in an ovenproof dish. Pour over enough of our Taste the difference vanilla custard to almost cover the buns and allow the custard to soak into the buns for about 15 minutes. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 180˚C, fan 170˚C, gas 4. Finish by placing under a hot grill for 5 minutes until golden brown.

More details and our adjustments:
We used 3 buns - make sure you get nice ones that have lots of fruit and stuff in them - and they fit perfectly in the dish we were using. That was basically how we decided how many to use.
We used apricot jam instead of marmalade because Graeme's not really a fan of marmalade.
'Taste the difference' is the fancier (read: more expensive) store brand. We just used long life custard out of a carton because we already had some in the pantry.
We didn't let it sit and soak, mainly because we were following the instructions as remembered by Graeme - I can see the benefit, but there was nothing wrong with ours.
We sprinkled some ground cinnamon on top because we like cinnamon and it seemed like a good idea - I think it was.
It was so good that we agreed I should share it with all of you. Well, technically, Graeme suggested I email the recipe to my mum, but this seemed a better way to share the love.

No photos, because we pretty much devoured it as soon as it came out of the oven (well, 2/3 of it and then Graeme promptly finished the rest), but I still have half the buns left, so I'll probably make it again in the next couple days and might take a photo then.

an expensive day out

2008-03-02T05:49:00.003+11:00

This morning we trekked across to the other side of London to go to a Baby Show. Not something I ever really saw myself attending, but we wanted to be able to see and touch all the cloth nappy options (there are a lot) and also be able to look at all the pram/stroller/pushchairs in one go and this seemed like a good way to do it. We weren't planning on buying anything, just looking, assessing options, forming opinions. Uh, yeah. We spent about £600... Yeah, that is a lot of money. But over the next week, we should take delivery of an infant car seat, a convertible pram-stroller, a 3-wheeler frame that will take both of the former (they call the three components a 'travel system', apparently) plus a cot that works as a bedside co-sleeper or a stand-alone and can be folded up and transported like a travel cot/playpen that comes complete with matress and linen. I also brought home with me a fantastic C-shaped pillow that I can start using immediately and will be very useful for feeding. I could just link to the exact products, rather than my shoddy descriptions, I guess, but for some reason I feel weird about doing that. Might change my mind though when you all start bugging me for more details. Anyway, basically the only other big purchase we will be making for Squishy is a supply of nappies (those things ain't cheap, especially since drying takes forever here, so we need a decent supply), so I guess it isn't too bad.

Apologies to those of you uninterested in baby stuff - I realise that was a very boring post, but the grandparents seem to like to know this stuff...

My so-called February

2008-03-01T05:56:00.003+11:00

I know I've been a bit MIA, but I've just been feeling blah and not up to posting, or even talking much. I kind of know what the issues are - a combination of a long depressing winter, a reminder of the time we've been away from home and a body that really isn't loving this whole pregnancy thing. It sucks that right when my body is craving more sleep, sleeping is uncomfortable and only happens in short stints. Basically, I am experiencing a complete lack of energy and feeling as though my creatvity is zapped. That said, not everything has been bad. Here are my February highlights:

- We saw Cirque du Soleil perform Varekai at the Royal Albert Hall. We paid a ridiculous amount of money for the tickets, but it was totally worth it.

- We went to an ice skating show at Wembley Arena with a few of Graeme's workmates (those £5 tickets again). It was so lame that it was great and the biggest cheer of the night was for the winner of last years Dancing on Ice, an ex-Rugby Union player. Speaking of Dancing on Ice, I had to basically push one of the professional skaters from the show out of the way so that I could escape the bathroom at interval.

- I had my first antenatal visit with the GP. Even though officially my GP is a middle-aged guy, everytime I go, I get to see the younger female doctor and she's great. While she was checking Squishy's heartbeat, baby decided to try and kick the doctor.

- We went to Anfield and saw Liverpool play Middlesbrough. They actually won AND 3 of the goals were scored the end we were sitting (last game we went to they had a one-all draw and both teams scored at the opposite end). It was a really long day though, as we decided to take the train rather than drive and didn't bother to stay overnight, so it took me most of this week to recover.

- We hit the 2 year anniversary of our arrival in London. It's cool that we've been here so long and we really have done a lot of things that just wouldn't have happened if we'd never moved here. It's also great to know that we are definitely well into the second half of our stay. I just kinda wish we weren't on the opposite side of the world to all the people we care about...

Feb 4

2008-02-05T05:09:00.000+11:00

An insight into my wardrobe:

On days like today, when I don't have any plans, comfort wins out when I get dressed. That, and what will actually fit. I have 2 pairs of maternity jeans, but they're not the most comfortable things for lounging around the house. I have one other pair of maternity pants that are super comfy, brown cordurouy with one of those giant knit fabric waistbands that sit up over your belly. But I like to keep them for when I am going out of the house. So when I am at home, I live in assorted track/exercise type pants. These pink ones were bought in Australia about a week or two before we came to London as the type of pants that are perfect for wearing on 24 hour flights - knit fabric, pretty loose/wide legs, nice wide waistband that doesn't dig in. They don't go out in public much though, because, well, they're pretty bright pink. I actually wore the same style in navy blue on the flight.

The red top is the same one I wore yesterday - yeah, I'm gross, but really, you can wear clothes for a couple days before they start to look or smell worn when the weather sucks so bad. I am a bit in love with maternity tops, not just because they work with a growing belly, but because they are nice and long. Plus, I've bought every single one of them on sale so far...

So yeah, pink and red was already super awesome and I didn't feel the need to match anything, so I just grabbed the first cardigan I saw. I can't actually do this cardigan up anymore, but it's enough extra warmth for around the house (we're not like most English people who keep their houses at some ridiculous temperature, we like to conserve energy)

I kinda like this colour combination.

Squishy's first hat

2008-02-05T04:35:00.000+11:00

Last Wednesday, I made my first ever ebay purchase. Well, kind of. I did all the bidding and paying and all that, but I was using Graeme's username and paypal, because I don't have either of those things, and he was sitting next to me the whole time. I'm not really sure why, but I've always had a bit of an aversion to the whole thing (ebay and paypal), maybe it's all the horror stories I've read. Anyway, I ordered a bunch of bamboo circular knitting needles, for an absolute steal compared to going out and buying needles at the shop. I know bamboo isn't as slick as metal and therefore the needles are supposed to be slower to knit with, but I'm not a very fast knitter anyway, so I don't mind. I bought long ones, because I really want to knit my first pair of socks two-at-a-time using magic loop and this wool:

Well, when the package turned up on Friday, they'd sent me straight needles instead. I literally cried and told Graeme "this is why I've never used ebay", but a few emails between Graeme and the shop owner later and not only were they sending the ones I had actually ordered, but they said to keep the ones they'd sent by mistake - awesome! So, since the circulars arrived on Saturday, I now have 30 new sets of knitting needles for less than it'd cost to buy 5 from the craft store.

Having not knitted anything more complicated than a scarf for a while, I decided to do a little project before I dove into the socks, so I went through my knitting books, looking for something I could knit with the yarn I already have on hand (which isn't a lot at the moment). I settled on a hat for Squishy, knit using the leftovers from my Gryffindor scarf, using the Umbilical Cord Hat pattern from Stitch 'n Bitch.

I started on Saturday and finished on Sunday. I originally wanted to put stripes on the actual hat, but the gold I have is more a thread than a yarn and it's way too scratchy for a baby's head, so I put a couple stripes on the cord. Of course, Squishy is due right when the weather ~~will~~ should be warming up and I have no idea when this will actually fit him/her, but it's tiny and cute and makes me want to knit a whole heap of little things - I might stick to the 6 months sizes from now on though, so I know they might actually get some use.

oh, and in case you didn't notice, this post includes photos from the first 3 days of February

Squishy's first photo

2008-02-01T01:01:00.000+11:00

So, I had my second and third fetal ultrasound today... Squishy was being a pain in the butt (not literally) and wouldn't move into a position where the technician could check the spine, so I had to go for a walk and 'do some starjumps' to encourage some movement then come back in for another attempt. Thankfully it worked and Squishy appears to have all the right bits in all the right places. Once that was sorted, we had to go sit in the waiting room for another hour before we got to see a midwife - sigh. At least from now on, most of my check-ups will be at the GPs, which is easier to get to and never seems to have a very long wait.

Things that might interest you about the day:

Squishy is a wriggly baby - besides laying in a tricky position to scan, s/he didn't stop moving around the whole time and the technician said she'd hardly ever seen such a wriggler.

Squishy is a fatty already :D All the measurements fell within normal growth rates, but the abdominal circumference is at about the 97th percentile, while all the others are right in the middle.

We didn't find out the sex, though we could have if we wanted as the technician was pretty confident that she knew it. Graeme especially is still convinced it's a boy.

I think Graeme appreciated the scan more than I did - I was happy to just hear the technician say that everything looked right, but for Graeme it was more of a 'dude, there's a real baby in there'. I have been feeling movements for weeks now, but they're not strong enough yet to feel from the outside, at least when Graeme is around, so this was like his reassurance that it really is growing and moving.

Since all my results are now normal and all that, the 'shared' part of the shared care that I am supposed to be getting kicks in. Over the next 18 weeks, I am expected to visit the GP's 7 times for check-ups, get another blood test at the hospital (but I don't have to see anyone, just go in, give the blood and leave, basically, it's just to check my iron) and see the midwife again once in early May. If I'm still pregnant at 41 weeks, I go to the midwife again. That's lots of peeing in cups, since they want a sample every time you see someone to check the protein levels for signs of diabetes. This also means that I am now responsible for my own Maternity Record, an expandable booklet that has all my test results and notes in it. It has to come with me everywhere I go, including when I turn up at the hospital in labour. It's quite interesting to flick through, mainly for bits like the breastfeeding page, where there are a million questions and points for discussion that the midwife is obviously supposed to go though, but mine just kind of has this squiggle next to the first couple of questions because as soon as she asked if I was planning to breastfeed and I said yes, she seemed satisfied - the rest of it is clearly the stuff they're supposed to say and do to convince you that breastfeeding is a good choice.

So yeah, you probably don't care about all that information anyway - you can just go back to looking at the photo :)

A random thought...

2008-01-29T23:05:00.000+11:00

In book 7, where were Crookshanks and Pig?

I will expand in the comments - don't read the comments unless you have read all 7 Harry Potter books, because there will be at least one fairly significant spoiler in my own comment. If you have read the books, please discuss...

Jan 25

2008-01-26T04:24:00.000+11:00

Graeme went to fifteen for lunch today with work. I got to make my own sandwiches, which I didn't even finish eating because one and a bit sandwiches filled me up. Of course, I was hungry again like an hour later...

Jan 1-15

2008-01-26T04:11:00.000+11:00

Finally catching up on those photos I owe you. As I just wrote in my description of this set on flickr, the real purpose of this exercise is to document my year, more than try and take a masterpiece every day. Though hopefully there'll be a few great photos along the way...

Click through to the photos for more description.

1. Jan 1, 2. Jan 2, 3. Jan 3, 4. Jan 4, 5. Jan 5, 6. Jan 6, 7. Jan 7, 8. Jan 8, 9. Jan 9, 10. Jan 10, 11. Jan 11, 12. Jan 12, 13. Jan 13, 14. Jan 14, 15. Jan 15

January 16

2008-01-23T04:52:00.000+11:00

I do have a photo for every day this year, but for today, you just get to see the 16th, because I got my butt in gear and uploaded those ones. This is another 'Day in the Life' series. Click through to see the full set.

21 weeks

2008-01-23T04:14:00.000+11:00

I always thought I'd get really into the whole pregnancy thing - taking way too many photos of my growing belly, keeping a journal as soon as I found out, bugging everyone around me with constant talk of the baby, that sort of thing. But so far that hasn't been the case. I was feeling bad about it but I'd still keep putting it off because it felt really dumb to start doing something like that at some random point. Then I decided to start at 20 weeks, you know, kinda the halfway point and on the day it ticked over to 20 weeks I felt like rubbish and didn't want to say anything to anyone, let alone the world at large or this little thing growing inside me. And finally, sometime last week, I realised it really doesn't matter and it's not worth stressing over. Maybe this is part of my attempt to get more prepared for motherhood - I am trying to be a little less of a perfectionist and not let the small things bug me so much. It's a fairly new goal for me, so no real idea how well it'll work out. Anyway, on Sunday, when the little counter thing I have told me I was 21 weeks pregnant, I made Graeme take a photo, and here it is:

We have attempted to take photos before this, but none of them came out that great - at least now we've found a spot in the house to take them...

Uh, yeah, so some random things I am discovering:

Morning sickness can last much longer than you think, especially if you let yourself get hungry or tired, and then, when you finally think it's gone, it can randomly hit you again one day for no apparent reason and you will just chuck your guts up. Thankfully, by this point, you will have become an expert at knowing when your body plans to projectile vomit and can make sure you are in a suitable room.

Your brain simply does not function the way it should. I usually have an awesome memory and some days I forget things 5 minutes after I've heard/read them. Words and sentences do not come out the way you think they should. Everytime I have cut up tomatoes in the last couple months, I have referred to them as strawberries :)

One day, your top (t-shirt, jacket, whatever) will fit. The next day, it won't. The problem won't just be your tummy, but also your boobs, which have suddenly become massive.

Maternity clothes are hard to find, often ugly and usually way too expensive for the fact that they definitely have a limited use. H&M is my new best friend, especially after the sales.

You get really sick of trying to work out how to refer to the baby. 'It' seems way too impersonal, but you don't want to label it with a gender, because then people will assume you know what it is. For the record, we don't plan on finding out the sex, but we still usually refer to it as 'he', since the odds are high that that is what we'll get. Either that, or Squishy :)
"I shall call him squishy, and he shall be mine, and he shall be my squishy!" -Dory in Finding Nemo

The fact that you have passed the first trimester doesn't really do much to alleviate your fears that something will go wrong. Much better are the little kicks that tell you the baby is having a party in your uterus (or, as Graeme said, building extensions), even if it prompts a sudden urge to pee. I am also hanging out for my ultrasound and midwife's appointment next week to get some extra reassurance that everything's fine. I'll also have a picture of Squishy to show you then.

OK, so...

2008-01-16T02:17:00.000+11:00

I have my new computer. Yay.
Unfortunately, I am still going through the process of getting things the way I like them - installing all the programs, trying to decide what needs to get copied across and what can just stay on backups, starting to do stuff and realising I don't have the files or programs I need in order to do it, getting annoyed with it all and having to just put the computer down and not look at it for a couple of hours. I really want to start all my file sorting and whatnot off right on this computer, because my last one was a bit of a mess, which means even copying my data back across seems to take ages. My to do list keeps growing rather than shrinking.

I have been taking photos every day, but I haven't viewed any of them other than on the camera's LCD, so some of them are likely pretty awful, since the weather has been miserable, there's hardly any natural light and I haven't been doing all that much so most of them have been taken in and around the house.

Anyway, while you're all waiting for me to do a proper update, you can do something to help me out. Send me an email to kate [at] kateandgraeme [dot] com and include as much of the following as you're happy for me to have:

Your name (AND your screenname, if that's how I know you)
Your postal address
Your contact numbers
Your birthday and the birthdays of the rest of your family (year too, if you're willing)
Anything else you really think I should know?

Through moving and not staying on top of things and all that, I have lost (or never had) some of these details for a large number of people and I feel the need to rectify that. So I want to start pretty much from scratch. If you are reading this, I want to know this stuff, ok? I don't want to make promises I can't keep, but I would like to become one of those people who actually sends out proper mail and birthday cards and stuff again - I rely too much on email and it's just not as personal. If you like mail, send me your details. Oh, and if you are related to me and want to send details of other people I should know about, that'd be cool too.

OK, back to getting this computer doing what it should.

Almost 2008...

2008-01-01T09:18:00.000+11:00

My computer sucks too much right now to spend much time on it. We re-installed Windows and Graeme did some thing where he told it to avoid the dodgy bit of the hard-drive so it isn't crashing anymore. But it isn't doing much else either, since I don't want to go to the effort of setting it back up properly when my new computer has been ordered, plus it'll probably explode if I ask it to do too much.

What this means:

I never sent out Christmas cards - the outside bits are made, but I never got around to finishing and printing the thing for inside.
I still haven't typed up a report on our trip to Italy.
I can't edit/sort/upload any photos, because they're all being stored elsewhere (thus the pretty Paint picture above).
I've been spending way too much time playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii.

The only thing of interest I really have to tell you is that I plan on attempting to take and share at least one photo every day in 2008. I tell you this to make myself more accountable. Of course, you won't know if I'm actually doing it until I can show you evidence, which according to Dell should be in about a week and a half. Hopefully, that'll also make me take some ~~fat~~ pregnant belly shots.

Oh, and if you're paying attention to the date and time of this post, you'll notice it's not far off 2008. We're totally boring and staying home, which is where we've spent most of Graeme's week and a half of holidays. It's been great.

Merry Christmas from my dying computer

2007-12-24T05:58:00.000+11:00

Yeah, my computer is on its last legs. Well, the hard-drive is, anyway. I'm actually a little amazed that it's even on at the moment, because at one point this afternoon, that looked doubtful. Since we were already talking about upgrading, it looks as though some new laptops are on the cards as Graeme, being a boy, can't possibly get me a new computer without getting one himself (though, to be fair, his is older than mine). All that said, this computer may go to sleep tonight and never wake up, which won't bother me too much now that I've made sure I have a backup of everything. But it will mean that I'll have to steal time on Graeme's computer if I want to be online and since he's on holidays, that may not happen too often.

So, I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and I'll see ya when I see ya, with a report of our first ever Christmas without family...

The Results Are In...

2007-12-15T01:20:00.000+11:00

OK, so I had my little visit to Medical Obstetrics today and got the results from all my tests.
My blood pressure is fine. The 24 hour annoyance was worth it.
The ultrasound was clear, except the tiny kidney stone and an even tinier cyst, that she said will only be an issue if my body decides to pass the stone.
I don't have any of the crazy diseases they tested me for. My liver function has improved, but is still not in the clear, so I did have to have another blood test to check it again. If all is well with this one, I get to go back to just being on the normal antenatal routine - yay!

In other news, I am officially not working at the moment. With morning sickness and my lack of energy and all, I haven't actually done any work since we got back from Australia (yeah, 2 months ago) but it was still causing me unnecessary stress worrying about my lack of income, as well as having to deal with making myself unavailable and handle/dodge phone calls from recruitment consultants trying to get me to do work. So with Graeme's support I made the decision to officially take a break, with no pressure on when I have to go back (if at all). I have already been more productive - I might even get my Christmas cards sent out today, although since most of them are headed to Australia, I'm probably already too late... oh well.

A week of hospital visits

2007-12-04T00:58:00.000+11:00

OK, as a girl who grew up in Australia, that title is even a little scary to me, so just a reminder that basically all my care is being provided through the hospital, well, technically hospitals, since the women's/maternity one is a separate entity to the main hospital. Anyway, as I said in my last post, last week I made 2 visits to the ECG department to collect and then return the blood pressure monitor. Then on Thursday I returned to the Ante Natal Clinic to find out what was up. Turns out some of my initial blood tests had come back with less than desirable results, especially in regards to my liver - nothing major was discovered, but it was enough that I needed to get a heap more blood tests. The doctor assured me that it was probably all related to the pregnancy, but that didn't stop me having to fill another 10 or so vials of blood. Today I got to go to the Imaging department of the main hospital to get an Ultrasound on my upper abdomen. The technician said that my liver and everything else looked fine, the only thing she found was a tiny kidney stone in my right kidney which she said wasn't a cause for any concern.

Friday next week, I get to go to the Medical Obstetric Unit and meet with my hospital doctor and go through the results of all of those tests. I am hopeful (I want to say confident, but that wouldn't be entirely true) that everything will be fine and I can go back to being a regular patient that doesn't need to go in again until 20ish weeks.

Other than that, my week was spent recovering from the trip - turns out it took a lot out of me energy-wise. I have started putting some photos up on my flickr, but there aren't many there yet and they are from the last few days, since I ended up doing it in reverse chronological order. I know I still owe a write-up on the trip, it is still coming, just bear with me.

If you want something interesting to read, go over and check out my sister's blog - she has just arrived in Canada to work in a ski resort and is actually updating pretty regularly (and now you'll have to keep it up, ok Beth? :D) She even went to the first Spice Girls concert...

Stupid Blood Pressure

2007-11-27T08:58:00.000+11:00

As I write this, I am anticipating the moment when I have to stop typing and move my left arm so that my blood pressure can be read as accurately as possible. Today I had the pleasure of going to the hospital and getting a blood pressure monitoring device (for which I can't remember the proper name and can't be bothered looking up) attached to my upper arm. It's like a regular blood pressure arm band, but attached to a little box that hangs in a case around my neck and records my blood pressure regularly. Meaning every 20 minutes (30 minutes in the evening and hourly over night) the thing makes a loud beep before blowing itself up and slowly releasing the pressure. It squeezes very tight and takes a lot longer than the doctor does to release the pressure. I just hope they get enough accurate readings that they don't have to do the whole thing over again, as the nurse today said could be the case...
I have to take it back tomorrow. Also tomorrow I have to ring a different part of the hospital and ask why exactly they want me to get more blood tests and whether I can move the appointment (I came home to a letter and a phone message saying I needed to come and get them, but without any specific information about why, which is quite annoying/stressful/worrying news for someone who is quite good at imagining the worst).

Anyway, I know you're probably all more looking forward to photos and info from our trip than boring rants about the state of my health, but I have to write this stuff down as it's happening - I've already written (most of) our travel journal, I just have to go through and type some of it up. Hopefully tomorrow, ok?

Back, but exhausted

2007-11-26T08:55:00.000+11:00

We're back from our trip to Italy and Austria. We had a great time but are both really tired - 12 days with contiki means early mornings, late nights and lots of stuff going on every day, but it was worth it.

I wish I could say more, but nothing is coming out of my brain the way it should. There should be plenty of updating over the next week or so, on our website and flickr as well as here. I think it might be time for bed.....

Sorry... but I bring news

2007-11-09T05:11:00.000+11:00

I'm sorry - I promised an update and I haven't done one. Really though, there hasn't been much to tell until today. I have pretty much spent every weekday at home, we've done a couple of weekends away (see our website) which have been good but made me even more buggered for the days that followed. I haven't worked because when you are throwing up at least once pretty much every day and feeling tired and nauseous the rest of the time, supply teaching seems like the most unappealing thing in the entire world.

Today though, we went for our first visit to the Ante-Natal Clinic and got to see our baby for the first time (no pictures though, because it really wasn't that exciting to look at, especially as a still photo - I promise I'll get one when we go for a later scan). If you want to read the play-by-play of that (and I know some of you do, which is why I'm going to write it) then read on. Otherwise, know that we have some serious travelling to do over the next couple of weeks, so there won't be any updates happening, and feel free to ignore the rest.

This is probably way more detailed than I would usually bother with, but I know a couple of you are keen to know about differences between having a baby in Australia and having one in England. Having not experienced the former, I'll tell you all about the latter and you can make your own comparisons, ok?

So as soon as we got home from Australia, I rang and made an appointment with my GP. A few days later I went in and saw her (weird thing about the whole GP thing - under the NHS you have to be registered with a specific GP, but the one we're registered with is actually 2 doctors, you just see whichever of them is working that day, basically) and told her I was pregnant. She just took my word for it and started filling out paperwork, one of the most important elements of which was the hospital I wanted to receive my care through.

A week or so later I got a letter from the hospital with a date and time for my first appointment. Graeme ummed and aahhed about coming with me, mainly because they warned it could take over 3 hours for the appointment and he wasn't sure he wanted to take time off work, also because we weren't really sure if it would be worth his time. In the end he decided he'd come and disappear if it all seemed like he shouldn't be there and it turned out most of the other women who were there for the same first appointment dealy had their partners there too. So we got there quite early, due mainly to the fact that we had left more time than necessary to get there via the two buses (parking at the hospital is pretty much not an option) since we had to do so in peak hour. We sat in the waiting room, something that became quite a theme for the day :)

First up we had a consultation with a midwife. It started with a weigh-in (not as high as I thought, in fact I think the morning sickness has made me lose some weight [I know that's not good - I really am trying to eat well]) and then she went through like a 20 page booklet, which was contained in my already massive patient file, asking questions, filling in answers - my medical history, family medical history, my pregnancy so far. She also tested a urine sample for proteins and took my blood pressure. Two things arose that had to be further followed up. My blood pressure was slightly high and had also been so when I'd seen the doctor 5 weeks ago - not like worryingly high, but just sitting slightly above normal, apparently (not that I really "get" the whole blood pressure measuring thing, I guess I should do some reading and sort that). Also, the fact that I told her about mum's blood clots last year and that I couldn't remember what cause, if any, they'd found for them, made her decide to add a visit with the doctor into my schedule for the day.

Next up (well, after sitting in a waiting room again) came the worst and best bit of the day - the ultrasound. First thing that was weird was that I expected it to be really cold and it was actually warm - like bordering on too warm. The next couple of minutes totally sucked - she couldn't see anything. She started asking questions like "Did you confirm this pregnancy with a blood test or urine test?", "How long ago was that?", "You definitely haven't had any bleeding?". I was right on the edge of a freak-out when she found it - apparently my bladder wasn't very full and my uterus was tipped back quite far, or something. In fact it was so bad that she couldn't get a decent look at it, even though she was pushing into my belly HARD. At that point she suggested an internal ultrasound, which at first sounded kind of scary, but was really no big deal. We saw and heard the heartbeat, confirmed there is indeed one baby with one head and two arms and two legs. It definitely made it all very real and was quite a relief after that moment of thinking something was really wrong. At this point, an adjustment was made to my due date based on the size of the baby, so it's now June 2, which puts me at like 10 weeks, 4 days instead of 11 weeks, 2 days (sorry Sharon - I think the thing I sent you was WAY off because I stupidly relied on a calculator rather than my own brain). I really feel like they'll adjust it back a bit when I go for my next scan, since I know my dates are right, but that won't be for awhile and anyway, I'd rather have a later due date than an early one because it'll be longer before they start pressuring for induction and stuff if the baby's overdue. We made an appointment for the next scan and then continued on with the step-by-step that the midwife laid out for us.

So next we went back to reception and handed over the big patient folder we were lugging around, because we had to see the doctor. [The next step for everyone else at this point was to join the queue for the blood testing, but we got the extra step thrown in] The doctor was great and the awesome thing is that she's my assigned hospital doctor, so anytime I need to see one when I'm there, it'll be the same woman. Also, I had an appointment in a couple of weeks at the Obstetric Medical Unit set up by my GP because of the whole blood pressure thing and this doctor also works there, so she was able to do what that appointment would've been anyway. We chatted about the fact that I've never had anyone say something bad about my blood pressure before and she explained a bunch of options and possible scenarios. Crazy thing is when she took my blood pressure herself, it was perfectly normal, so she decided the best course of action would be to get this 24 hour blood pressure monitoring thing that you wear over a normal day and it regularly records your blood pressure, to help work out why/how/when it's changing. She also ordered a couple extra blood tests to be done because of the clotting thing - thanks Mum.

While we went and joined the queue for the blood testing (this one was a take a number one, like at the deli counter in a supermarket) the doctor sorted out a form for the monitoring request. By this time we were pretty sick of sitting in waiting rooms/areas so Graeme went and got a drink while I waited. When my number was called, I got the privilege of filling up 5 vials of blood for various tests (could've been more if I'd chosen to have the one that tests for risk of Downs Syndrome). Of course, as I left, there was basically no wait…

Back to reception (not that far, everything was close together) to drop off my folder and make my next midwife appointment (which they make for the same day as the scan) and I was done. Well, I would've been, if I didn't have to find my way around the main hospital to find the ECG department and sort out a date to get this 24hour monitoring thing. That's not happening until we get back from Italy in a couple of weeks, though.

So yeah, a nice long description of my day for those of you who were interested. Apologies to anyone who got suckered into reading this because it appeared on your blog reader or something - I did warn you. Questions, comments, comparisons, USEFUL suggestions welcome :)

quick note

2007-10-25T05:31:00.000+10:00

(cut and paste direct from the comment I left on Sharon's blog because I lack the energy or imagination to do anything more)

Sorry I'm not providing any interesting reading - we're still on the slowest dial-up I've used since the mid-90s, which is only worth paying for in the evenings and I quickly tire of it. Plus, I've been hit by morning sickness pretty bad - good in that it supposedly means my body is doing all the things it's supposed to, bad in that I've spent the majority of time since we moved either asleep or curled up on the couch in a daze.

Broadband's supposed to be connected by the weekend and I'll make an effort to update when it does.

Have Been, Am and Will Be

2007-10-06T23:36:00.000+10:00

Have Been:

To and from Australia. Went to a birthday party, a couple of beautiful weddings, a wildlife park (with some of the international wedding guests) and some favourite shopping centres. Had dinners and lunches with lots of different friends, some of whom we hadn't seen in ages. Got to meet my sister's boyfriend. Had an awesome going back (as opposed to away) party on the Saturday before we left. Took a LOT of photos.

Getting cool mail, even when I was 10,000 miles from my usual postal address. See here for pictures (too lazy to take my own). Thanks Leonie.

Feeling nauseous. Morning sickness without the vomiting (yet), but lasting a big chunk of the day. Could also be tied in to jet lag and the flu that Graeme bought home on his first day of commuting on the Underground again. Oh yeah, I guess I should tell those of you who only interact with me on the internet that I am pregnant, especially because this is where all my friends and family from back home are expecting updates. Sorry it wasn't a more exciting/dramatic post :D

Going to the doctor. My official due date is May 27. All we did was fill out paperwork (typical England). I had to pick which hospital I wanted to have the baby already. The same place will provide all my antenatal care and stuff. My first choice is local, the care is provided by a team of midwives, and it was recommended by the girl upstairs who had her little boy while we were away. I'll find out if I actually got my first choice soon and then I'll do a more detailed post for those who are interested.

Am:

Right in the middle of moving house (literally - we're having a break to eat lunch and watch the Australia V England Rugby World Cup game). The place is a mess, but it is much easier to move when you don't have to take the furniture.

Excited about the new house. It's even better than I remember - light, spacious, much better suited to our living style - and our landlords are great.

Will Be:

Without proper internet for who knows how long. We currently have cable, but the new place isn't in the cabled region, so we're going to have to get DSL or something and that will take a couple of weeks, apparently. We will probably have some basic dial-up, but I won't be online much because I'm cheap.

Finally sorting through my photos from Australia. Hopefully the lack of internet will make my time more productive. I will post here if I manage to upload some of them.

Planning a trip to Italy, we think. It's one of the places we really want to go sans-kid, especially because we're pretty sure we're going to do a contiki tour, so we gotta go soon.

Sorting myself out to get some days teaching - it'll probably be horrible, but I need to make some money.

Enjoying the autumn colours.

OK, here's one...

2007-09-17T16:29:00.000+10:00

Flying Ruff
(Ruff is the dog's name, but I'm not sure if that is how I should spell it)

I can't believe I caught this - the boys were throwing the dog in the air and telling me to take a photo of it. I laughed out loud when I saw this image on my preview screen, so of course, all the kids wanted to see it too. I have heaps of great shots of the kids from yesterday (all of whom I have known since they were born, the eldest now 10!, and 2 of whom were part of our wedding party) but I'm not sure how their parents feel about me plastering them on the internet, so I better check that first...

Live from Sydney for 2 weeks only

2007-09-17T08:43:00.000+10:00

We're here. In Sydney! I had kind of hesitated about giving too much info about what we were doing and when, mainly because I had this paranoia about some random person finding this and stalking me to work out where I live, knowing that our place in London is now empty, but then I realised that we brought all the important stuff with us anyway, we have insurance if they flog our tv and it would hardly go unnoticed anyway if someone did try to break in because we have plenty of neighbours around at all times of the day - yeah, ok, I'm weird.

Anyway, we flew out of Heathrow on Thursday night and after 23 LOOOOOONG hours, we were in Sydney airport. We'll be here for 2 more weeks and have a couple of weddings to attend and a heap of people to catch up with. We've already been to a 40th birthday party, even :) Our calendar is quickly filling up, so if there's anyone reading this who is around Sydney and wants to catch up, let me know asap. Expect lots of photos - I took about 170 at the party yesterday... (but I haven't done anything with them yet, so this post is photo free)

photos

2007-09-11T01:46:00.000+10:00

I am going through my many thousands of digital photos, deleting the bad and embarrassing ones so that I can burn a back-up that can be left with my parents in Australia and which I will be happy for people to look at.

Inspired by the photos I am looking through, which date back to July 2004, here is a random list of things I miss about home:

Teaching kids who are a joy to teach, even when they're being a pain in the butt, alongside other teachers that love their students and their jobs. Getting the chance to celebrate with them when they reach milestones, like finishing year 10.

Hanging out with a group of awesome girls and women once a week.

Panthers home games - hey, we haven't even been to the new ground yet...

Going to loud concerts, both as a member of the audience and working front of house.

Camps (not the tent kind).

Being around for the big (and little) events in the lives of friends and family.

Sooty and Misty (they're mine and Graeme's family dogs, respectively)

Other things I'm noticing:

The camera upgrade in 2005 greatly increased the number of photos I was taking.

My photography skills have definitely improved - good in that every new folder has more and more good photos in it; bad in that I am struggling to decide where to draw the line in terms of what to keep.

I have to keep telling myself not to be such a perfectionist, I don't have time to edit these photos (colour balance, cropping, etc) and I really don't want to, because I want a back-up of the originals.

I do actually trust other people with my camera more than I thought I did. And sometimes they take great photos. But its funny how Josh gets the camera and suddenly there's a bunch of photos of Jac, or Elizabeth takes photos of herself... Speaking of Josh, he likes to take photos of people stuffing their faces, apparently.

I love taking portraits - don't think I've taken many recently though, since there aren't as many people around whose faces I want to capture.

This picture of Chris is awesome - look at all that hair :)

(I'm too lazy to upload a bunch more just now)

Anyway, I've just about hit the point where we came here (I'm doing it chronologically). Maybe I'll make a separate post as I go through the rest about the good things about being in London, since I often need a reminder myself...

Uh, yeah

2007-09-10T02:29:00.000+10:00

Is it really sad that I think this looks awesome? I can totally see me and Elizabeth playing that for hours on end...

To answer some of the questions I've been getting, such as in the comments to my last post, the place we are moving to is about 2km further west of the centre of London than we currently live. We will still be in the borough of Ealing and easily accessible to Heathrow (hint, hint, anyone wanna visit?). It will actually be faster to get into the city because we won't have to use the crappy District Line on the tube anymore, but it's a zone further out, which adds about 50p to the single fare. It has 2 bedrooms, one of which will be Elizabeth's when she moves here in about 6 months. It will be squishy but do-able if we have guests once she's here, as long as you don't mind sleeping in the living room, or sharing a room with my sister.

OK, gonna challenge Graeme to some brain training on the ds now...

dreaming of our new home

2007-09-08T07:42:00.000+10:00

So we've found a place and agreed to rent it and all that. We'll be signing an 18 month lease, so through to April 2009, meaning our stay in London will be at least 3 years and 2 months. Haven't actually signed a lease yet, but we're renting directly from the owners and things are a bit slower to sort out than when an estate agent is doing all the paperwork - not that it matters, since we're not moving for another month anyway, and we've got enough documentation to constitute a contract in emails and stuff. In the meantime, I've been daydreaming about how much nicer it will be to live in the new place. It has a dishwasher and a combo washer/dryer and a decent sized fridge/freezer and a functional kitchen sink. The living space is set up so much better than what we have now. The bathroom is smaller and yet more spacious because it uses the space better. There's a separate toilet. We will have proper wardrobes again. It has two levels, meaning that even though the square footage is probably not a whole lot bigger than our current place, it feels much more like a home. We have access to the loft to store things like luggage and the giant tv box that Graeme refuses to throw away, as well as any stuff the owners leave behind that we don't want to have to live with. We even still have a little private patio area, which is cool because having realised that outside space is not as necessary here as it is back home (being that it's unusable for over half the year) we weren't actively seeking a garden of any sort. Aaaaahhhhh. Reading back over that it kinda makes it sound like the place we're currently in is totally dodgy, which it isn't - it's in a great location, it's a much sought after style of home for the area, etc - it's just that we've been here 18 months now and some of the things that seemed fine or even great when we moved in have proved less liveable/homely than we'd like. Plus, I think that living anywhere too long exposes flaws and as renters you don't even really have the power to change them - we are so ready to own our own place, I hope my parents are happy for us to live with them until we buy one when we get back :D

a random thought...

2007-09-07T06:49:00.000+10:00

...that I wrote in my notebook today:

Sometimes I wish I could blog from the bus - it seems to be where I do some of my best thinking. That's assuming you actually get a seat and are not crammed on like a sardine. Maybe I need a Blackberry or something.

note to Graeme: that's not a hint. No, we don't actually need anything like a blackberry. We have plenty of electronic gadgets as it is, ok?

Elephants in Hyde Park

2007-09-07T06:06:00.000+10:00

The best thing about my google homepage, other than being able to read all your blogs from it, is that it shows me news headlines from the BBC. I think I've mentioned before that I don't watch or read much news these days, but the occasional headline is good, especially the ones that tell me about things that are happening in and around London. Like the one I saw yesterday about the elephants in Hyde Park that have been made from willow and set up in the park to raise awareness of the plight of the asian elephants. I don't need to explain the whole thing, I just wanna show you the photos, but you can read more info about the project here.

From what I can tell, they get moved around the park, meaning I didn't know exactly where to find them, other than 'Hyde Park', which isn't very helpful. I caught the bus, well actually a couple of buses, towards the park, but decided to get off at Kensington Gardens instead. Not too big a deal as the two are separated by nothing more than a road. As I walked in, I realised the palace looked different. Wondering what was going on, I headed towards it, my brain working overtime to try and figure out what was going on. And then it clicked - Princess Diana. Sure enough, there were flowers and posters all over the fence and front gate of the palace. There were plenty of people looking at them and even more kids sitting on the ground having what looked like an art lesson.

I then headed towards Hyde Park. Along the way I saw a shoe in a tree.

And then I saw the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, something I instantly remembered reading about and thinking it would be cool to visit, but which I had not had in mind when I set out for the day.

So of course I had to go and check it out. Every year, they commission someone to design a summer pavilion to be constructed next to the gallery. This one has a spiral walkway around the outside and inside is a mini arena area where they do talks and things some evenings.

As I walked past the Diana Memorial Fountain thing, I was quite disappointed to see this tree, with it's leaves already turning colour and starting to fall. It can't possibly be autumn when we never had summer - how depressing.

I finally found the elephants grazing near the end of the Serpentine. I've already showed you their photos. Then I went and found myself a place in the shade, where I had a snack and finished composing a blog post about renting (that I think belongs on our website, not here).

more photos on flickr, of course...

nothing else to report

2007-09-06T07:59:00.000+10:00

Realised the post I made earlier today will probably go over the head of some of my readers and be of very little interest to others. But I have been promising various people that I will post more often and try to give you more of an insight into my life, so I'm not going to put off posting anymore when I think of something I want to say. Really though, there's not much TO say. School has gone back, but being a supply teacher it could be awhile before I start working again, especially since we are headed home (as in, Sydney) next week for a couple of weeks and 2 family weddings. Once I get back I will be looking to get something more temporary than casual if possible. We've been trying to find somewhere to live for the next 18 months, meaning a move just after we get back from Oz. Other than that, I've been trying to finish up a few projects I want done before the trip (you know, like the wedding presents) but there's nothing worth showing off yet. Maybe I SHOULD be making myself take pictures every day - at least I'd have something to post. Although, having written that title before I started writing, I've probably proven myself wrong. Oh well, it's staying.

facebook

2007-09-05T19:35:00.000+10:00

You'd think, if you were going to be on facebook, you'd do something to make sure that people could find you - like, I dunno, putting a picture on your profile. Graeme and I were talking about primary school for some reason and I decided to search for people I knew when I was 12. But so many people have nothing, no picture, no networks to give you a hint...
Maybe I'm a hypocrite though, because if those same people I knew when I was 12 searched for me, they wouldn't find me, you know, having changed my name and all.

101 things updated

2007-09-04T00:23:00.000+10:00

OK, I think I'm caught up on my 101 things blog. Do people want to know what things are on my 'in progress' list too? Most of them are pretty obvious, I think, and if I haven't mentioned them, they're probably not happening... Uh yeah, that's all for now. I ordered some moo minicards today - they are going to have our website address on them and at the moment our website is pretty, well, not pretty, so I need to get working on that.

August 31

2007-09-01T07:10:00.001+10:00

Today is the last day of my task to take a photo every day for a month. One more thing to cross off my 101 things list (I really should update that, shouldn't I? Someone remind me if it gets to Monday and I haven't, OK?)

My current work in progress
you'll see what it is when I finish (which was supposed to be today, but that's clearly not the case)

A reminder of all my previous photos, just because I can...

HP Friday 5

2007-08-31T19:33:00.000+10:00

1. What's the nerdiest thing you've ever done in the name of Harry Potter?
Probably my spew badges, which I made in a heap of different colours, not because I needed that many but because I wanted to have a big range of colours like Hermione does in book 4.
2. How many people have you peer-pressured into reading the series?
I know I've had an influence in some people's decisions to finally start reading it, but the only person I am actively peer-pressuring is Alison because she still hasn't started reading them and I KNOW she'll love them.
3. What's the biggest misconception non-HP have about the series and/or fandom?
That they're kids books. Sure, they're not highly intellectual in content or writing style, but there are themes and ideas, especially in later books, that are beyond the grasp of the ordinary 13 year old.
4. What is your favourite piece of HP merchandise?
My books. Not only do I have my full set of well-read ones (6 from Australia, 1 from UK), I also collect them from foreign countries when I travel in place of usual souvenirs - I have French, Dutch, Romanian, Portugese, Swedish, Greek and American.
I don't own much of the movie merchandise stuff, because I think most of it is cheap and tacky.
5. Do you think the HP fandom will still be strong 10 years from now?
I think there will still be plenty of fans, but I think the 'trendiness' will have worn off and those people who are more a fan of the movies and online communities will have drifted away.

August 30

2007-08-31T05:37:00.000+10:00

my sewing machine

August 29

2007-08-30T06:10:00.000+10:00

A little embroidery detail on a thrifted sheet that I bought - I started cutting it up for projects today.

In other news, I sent out an email about our upcoming trip to Australia today. If you are reading this from Sydney (or somewhere nearby) and/or feel like you should've got the email, but didn't, let me know.

August 28

2007-08-29T00:13:00.000+10:00

The sun is out! I tried to take a picture of the steam rising off my drying jeans, but it didn't work out, so instead you get this one of some of the plants in our back garden. I just hope it stays out long enough for the washing to dry...

August 25-27

2007-08-28T21:10:00.000+10:00

My daily photos from the weekend - a sneak peek at what we got up to. Dunno when I'll get around to uploading more, but they'll be on my flickr eventually, I'm sure.

the angel of the north

alnwick castle
aka hogwarts

goathland station
aka hogsmeade station

Unread: 62 emails and 83 rss items

2007-08-28T19:35:00.000+10:00

We've only been away for 3 days! There are travel diary posts to type up as well as lots of photos to copy, go through and upload. I think I'm going to be on my computer most of the day...

HP Friday 5

2007-08-25T06:56:00.000+10:00

It's been awhile since I've been avoiding the ones directly relating to the 7th book, as well as being lazy or forgetful...

Pick one character per question
(I'm going with the assumption that everyone is alive and the kids are still kids...)

1. Who would you become for a day using Polyjuice Potion? I'm stuck on the fact that you would take on their appearance but not any of their knowledge so you'd have to try and play the part all day. Probably just a random inconsequential Hogwarts student so I could go to class and stuff (obviously not during book 7). Although they'd have to be a Gryffindor so I could go in the common room and a member of Dumbledore's Army would be good. Let's say Lavender.
2. Who would you like to have around if attacked by Death Eaters? Dumbledore
3. Who would you spend a day at Hogsmeade with? Fred (and George, obviously, but it said to pick one and Fred has a cooler name)
4. Who would be the person you'd like to give you a tour of Hogwarts? Luna, because she knows all the secrets by now and she would be just as entertaining as the castle.
5. At whose house would you like to spend the night? Ginny's

on a related note...
So, you all know Harry's birthday falls almost exactly between mine and Graeme's, right?
I've decided we're going to have a combined 30th birthday party on Harry's 30th birthday - July 31, 2010. I'll expect you all to be in costume so I'm giving you plenty of notice :)

August 24

2007-08-25T06:52:00.000+10:00

This is what happens when it gets to almost 10pm and I haven't taken my daily photo...
I ask Graeme what I should photograph and he starts listing various silly things, including his nose, so I oblige.

Then, not believing the flash is as bright as he seems to think, I blind myself taking a self-portrait.

August 23 - I made a book

2007-08-24T03:23:00.001+10:00

August 22

2007-08-23T03:31:00.000+10:00

Another reason (on top of still being sick - ugh) why going outside is much less appealing than curling up on the couch and watching movies...

oh yeah

2007-08-22T06:12:00.001+10:00

a quick update on the card race - Mum's arrived today (Tuesday), so 3 posts later than Elizabeth's...

August 21

2007-08-22T05:58:00.000+10:00

I'm still not 100%, so you get another "oh crap, it's getting late and I haven't taken a photo because I've barely left the couch, let alone the room or the house" shot.

Apologies to all those people to whom I owe return emails and whatnot - I will get around to it...

August 20

2007-08-21T05:02:00.000+10:00

I've got emails and blogs to catch up on and a website to redesign, but I've spent most of the day curled up on the couch reading because I don't feel well...

August 19

2007-08-20T04:51:00.000+10:00

the flag in our hallway
taken from the floor