Poppy "talking"...

You know it's funny, when I sat down to write this little bit of text I had a deja vu moment...a google or two later and I found this post that I wrote when Thomas was about nine months old...and actually (apart from the messy nappy bit) I could have written those exact words about Poppy, her nappies are much more civilised as a rule (or perhaps I am just more used to nappies per se)...Poppy isn't often very quiet, perhaps a *little* quieter than Thomas was, but most situations are punctuated by enthusiastic expressions of 'EHH!' and 'AH!!' as she joins in with the conversation, yells very loudly (meaning) 'More please Daddy' when eating...although (one thing Thomas didn't do) is to amuse by very occasionally by answering 'YEAH' (perfectly pronounced) in response to questions...anyway, right back on track - just yesterday (and continued this morning) she has (satisfyingly) started saying 'DADADA' (just as Thomas did) although, if my dates are to be believed, about a month earlier than he... ;) If she continues to follow suit developmentally then the next thing we can look forward to is 'DUCK' followed by (of all things for a second word) 'GAAARDEN'...to be perfectly honest though, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it was 'SHOES!' - her favourite thing to chew on at the moment (bar nothing)... ;)

Poppy is 8 weeks old

Our beautiful little girl is already 8 weeks old..! Wow...! Where did that go? She has changed so much already and is gaining weight at an incredible rate...Last week, she weighed in at 13lb and has grown so much that I've had to pack away the 0-3 month clothes and move onto the 3-6 month outfits that don't look too big either!

It's hard to remember a time when Poppy wasn't in our life and she is such a good little girl slotting straight into family life. We are so lucky that she has been sleeping well, down at 8/9 - up again at 4 for a quick 5 minute feed then down till 6.30/7 so I feel fairly 'normal' ... Thomas has grown to love her and accepted that she is here to stay... OK, she gets cuddled a bit too tightly sometimes, but his heart is in the right place. I simply melted after a "nearly new" sale where he was bought a new toy, when asked what he chose for Poppy, his reply (after an awkward moment's thought) was 'Oh dear - nothing - can she share my new toy mummy?'

It's absolutely wonderful to watch Poppy grow and start to communicate with us...I had a 5 minute conversation with her earlier, just cooing/smiling and watching the birds in the garden...

I'm so happy and proud to be a mummy to my perfect, beautiful children, Thomas and Poppy :o)

Say Hello to Baby Poppy!

So, just to fill in some blanks, we'd been to see the consultant on Thursday 2nd Feb, been told that there were no free slots to be booked in for any sort of induction process for at least 2 weeks, made a (slightly exaggerated) impassioned plea for special treatment due to a slight case of reduced fetal movement, went to the Antenatal Day Unit for the resultant 40 minute scan (which was absolutely fine) -

- and been told to come back on Friday. So we sulkily headed home where within about 20 minutes of shutting the front door - the waters abruptly broke (conveniently close to the bathroom)!

So, wayback machines set to 3rd of February - the Friday - (last few days have been just a *bit* busy) as Flyingpops, Janet and I walk calmly back into the "Waiting Room" in the Antenatal Day Unit for some *further* monitoring...

...we were allocated a bed and Flyingpops was plugged back in - which showed a very happy baby, but a completely flat line for contractions...so, and yes, you guessed it, we had to walk and wait...So -

- we walked the hallways and stairways -

- we walked up to Royal Earlswood Estate (a fairly big hill) -

- we walked to the little shop and got tea and cakes and things, and then finally we got to see our consultant again, who said she wasn't sure if the waters had *really* broken (something about hind-water leakage) and then she announced that it was time for this baby to pop out and transferred us to the labor ward where we got allocated this nice little holiday apartment (room 5) -

- complete with a nice little bathroom -

- a slightly nastily-labelled up bin (which I, none-the-less, hoped had been obeyed by the previous resident) -

- and an antique stereo -

- we settled down (unpacking sweets and drinks), booted up the Shinco and watched Carry on Matron (the one where Kenneth Cope has to infiltrate a maternity unit dressed up as a female nurse - it just seemed appropriate somehow... ;)

Anyway, after about an hour, Flyingpops got annoyed at the further sitting around and went to the front reception desk, where it turned out we had (in fact) managed to walk in (through the locked security doors, past the infra-red security cameras) presented our maternity notes at the front desk and been allocated a room all without anyone actually managing to notice! So, all of a sudden there was a flurry of (familiar) activity...Yes - Flyingpops was put back on the monitor-

- where we witnessed another completely flat line scrolling slowly along, and so, we went for *another* walk -

- to the staff restaurant and back (with chips and things) - wondering if surgeons really did turn up in blood soaked surgical scrubs requesting cottage pie and chips from horrified canteen staff on occasion-

- then Flyingpops had a canula inserted (on the second try - the first try made her swear quite loudly and the midwife responsible leave the room blushing) and the waters were finally broken (by midwife number two), we went for yet another little walk (this time for tea and biscuits) as the sun set below the horizon -


- then back to the room for a bit of ball bouncing -

- luckily they had a few in the store room to borrow, before it was decided to try just a little bit of the hormone drip that is supposed to help hurry things along.

From there on in, things were a bit of a blur...contractions started pretty much immediately, we tried using the TENS machine (but it made Flyingpops jump out of her skin, so that got unplugged pretty much straight away), she had a go at the gas and air, but that made her so dizzy she decided she didn't want that either, and by the time she admitted "Okay, I think I need some pain relief now" the midwife turned around (biting her lower lip) and said "Sorry, I think it's too late, the baby is coming now"...!

From start to finish, Poppy took exactly 2 hours 30 minutes to go from Mummy's tummy to Daddy holding a pair of scissors snipping the cord (I hid behind a towel with the midwife this time after getting sprayed by Thomas's cord-blood last time)...and the most amazing thing about it - Flyingpops did the entire thing without *any* pain relief...

...and you know what? All those things they said in the NCT classes about the baby hunting around for food (literally almost crawling around the body snuffling) are true when there aren't any drugs involved - baby Poppy came out of Mummy's tummy and cuddled and snuffled and fed *right* away...

Anyway, once the adrenaline had started to subside, a colossal fatigue overcame Janet and myself - Flyingpops was full of beans (somehow!), but, after seeing her to the postnatal ward and a comfy bed, we retired to ours (exhausted)!

Lots and lots more pictures from the day are over here on Flickr...or as a slideshow here...

Ready for the new baby?

Well, here we are at 37 weeks (or "full term" as it is generally known), for comparisons sake, Thomas was already born 2 weeks ago(!) when it was his turn - we have the names chosen (no idea if the little one is a boy or a girl so we need both to hand), we have the bags all packed (ipod - full of relaxation music, portable CD player, Shinco portable DVD player, battery powered speakers (with spare batteries), high energy food and drinks, wash bag, lots of Mummy clothes, lots of teeny tiny baby clothes, lots of teeny tiny nappies, 99% water baby wipes, a big bath towel, a V-shaped cushion and even a little present for Thomas (from the baby))...the big new camera has a nice clean memory card in it and two fully charged batteries standing by...Mummy is huffing and puffing and walking around slowly holding her tummy (or bouncing around on her birthing ball)...Daddy and Thomas are creeping around quietly trying to avoid being told off, the changing station is down in the living room and the nursery has been patiently waiting for weeks (now it is free of Christmas goods)...just one teeny tiny thing we need to arrive now! ;)

25 weeks pregnant!

Life is so busy that I very rarely get time to think about being pregnant, so am always thankful on a Tuesday when the app on my galaxy pops up and tells me that I'm now into the next week and gives me a short update as to what's going on with the baby!

Today, it tells me...

There are 104 days until your due date on January 30, 2012.
You are 176 days pregnant.
You are 5.8 months pregnant.
You are in your 6th month of pregnancy.
Your 1st trimester: April 25, 2011 to July 24, 2011. (0 - 12 weeks)
Your 2nd trimester: July 25, 2011 to November 06, 2011. (13 - 27 weeks)
Your 3rd trimester: November 07, 2011 to January 30, 2012. (28 - 40 weeks)

As Thomas arrived at 35 weeks, I'm wanting to be super organised and have so far

• painted the nursery, put in the nursing chair and built the changing station
• got everything down from the loft, started going through it and have already put 2 loads through the washing machine and a car seat sitting waiting to go into the car
• ordered the crib mattress (which arrived today!)
• have a new Phil & Teds pushchair sitting in mums caravan that I'm itching to use but am being patient
• bought all the bits for my hospital bag - just need to pack it! (Hopefully not when i'm in labour this time!)
• bought 3 brand new babygrows and 3 little hats, for when the baby is first born

There is very little we need to buy this time which is a little frustrating as I simply love shopping for baby bits, but we literally have so much stuff and with so many happy memories of Thomas being so small, it'll be nice for the new baby to play with the toys and wear the clothes.

We've still got to finish the nursery; put a blind up, pictures on walls...however I love taking a little time out from my busy day to think about holding our little baby and imaging their little smile and wonderful cuddles. Our next biggest task is to decide on names.. so far, we don't have any!

Our beautiful baby scans...

Here we go then, just a few pics from the recent scans, first up our baby at 6 weeks and 4 days measuring 6.6mm in length and we see a tiny heart beating (and that's about it)-

At 9 weeks and 1 day, our baby has grown to 21.6mm...still very tiny, but having almost tripled it's length in just 3 weeks.

Then at 12 weeks...we finally see the familiar shape of a baby on the brand new flat screen TVs in the scan room ...With a wonderful sonographer taking lots of time to describe everything and confirm the baby is all OK. At this stage, the baby is 58mm (Crown to rump) and my dates are moved a little forward (meaning we are due a January baby)!

Then here we are today...officially half way through the pregnancy and Fink can again have a insight into the pregnancy and witness some of the kicking that is happening all the time. This little one is very, very active making it hard for the sonographer to get all the measurements. She has to wobble my tummy lots, poke, prod and get the little one to roll over to get everything she needed. Technology has improved so much so Thomas was scanned, we got to see the eye sockets, lenses, face, lips, chambers of the heart, arteries, liver, kidneys...just amazing!

A hand and a leg (responsible for all the kicking)...


An arm....

...and the big question...did we find out the gender? No...we've been through so much and really don't mind as long as it's a healthy baby (and a nice surprise)...However, I couldn't help asking the sonographer if we did want to know would she be able to tell us...her response..."Oh yes, I know what you are having" but even then we didn't cave in and ask. Now, I'm analysing every part of our conversation and trying to see if she gave us any clues...but we'll have to wait till January to find out for sure!

At the end of the scan, we came out so very happy at how amazing this whole experience is... we are going to be a mummy and a daddy again and it's so incredible to be responsible for this little life. We celebrated by going to "Next" and buying our first piece of baby clothing...just so they have something new to wear when they are born! A very, very exciting, happy day!

What a lovely bank holiday weekend!

I think we got a bit carried away with Thomas starting preschool in a weeks time and went to Crawley to buy him a new bag, drinks bottle, joggers that will be comfy and easy to wash and then discovered his feet have grown so new shoes were also added to the list...he was so excited to be shopping...especially as he has a Lightening McQueen rucksack that is almost as big as he is from his all time favourite movie - "Cars"!

Fink and I pondered whether to buy the T-Shirt or Sweatshirt that goes with the Preschool and I've started to explain to him that Mummy will be leaving him with his teacher (Nicole) and then going home and he replies 'Thomas play with trains and cars, then mummy come collect me'. Having only left him with close friends or family thus far, it's going to be really hard walking out and leaving him there (especially as he will probably cry), but its all good for his independence and I consider myself very lucky changing career and being able to watch every step of his development since birth.

Late Saturday afternoon, a very tired, overexcited little boy fell over a toy train and hit his head on a dining room chair. Catching the bit just above the eyebrow, it bleed quite heavily so a trip to A&E was called for (thankfully we live so close and can walk there!). Here our wounded soldier, given some butterfly plasters and a Lion shaped sticker for bravery and was then discharged.

Sunday and Monday have been a lot more relaxed...we've almost cleared the spare room and the next phase will be stripping wallpaper ready for the new little one...exciting times!

CONGRATULATIONS!

To G & S on the birth of their new daughter (and my niece) after *quite* a while spent at East Surrey Hospital, can't wait to meet her...! ;)

Rather telling...

...look what I got when I bought my tea and milk this morning at Tesco Canary Wharf...guess that confirms I'm using the right clubcard then...! ;)

Cable Testing Complete...!

Okay, just a quick "work in progress" update (if you click the picture I've put some little notes of explaination on it on Flickr - just hover the picture with your mouse to see them) but basically - everything works - yay!

The power supply on the top is a temporary measure (obviously), so all those messy looking cables are going to vanish, the laptop will live in the cupboard below, but that proves the VGA and network cables are all laid in okay, the router and cable modem will also disappear below into the cupboard, but that's all good (which means I wired the coax okay - as we have cable TV and internets) and the xbox tested okay and works through the surround sound - a 100% success rate - thank goodness...!

Tonight the cupboard doors should be going on - meaning we can throw away the old TV stand and move the Jungle Jumparoo back to it's normal place of residence, and as soon as we can sort out the parts for Kenny we should have neat and tidy power cables (all pretty much hidden from view) too!

So it might look a bit of a mess currently (mostly through having to temporarily Thomas-proof sensitive items at grab-level), but hopefully I'll be showing you the finished product very soon! ;)

Water Filled Weekend...

Thanks, in no small part, to the extremely hot weather recently (*pant*), we had rather a water filled weekend (just gone), starting on Saturday with our weekly splish-splash at Water Babies -

- who oddly waited until the week after the deadline (to choose if one is to renew) to suddenly introduce a load of fun new activities (meaning only two of us are continuing, which also probably means the end of our class - as that's probably not enough to make hiring the pool worthwhile)...

...humph...Anyway, Saturday night saw Thomas having a bath (Al Fresco) -

- and on Sunday Flyingpops spent 2 hours (and went through three pumps - including the neighbour's - which she broke) inflating Thomas a Volkswagen Beetle-themed paddling pool-


- which as you can see he enjoyed immensely (although he did cry a little bit when I started putting water in it, until he realised that splashing was now possible)... ;)

Thomas at Ten Months

Wow, not long now and we'll be celebrating Thomas' first birthday (for which we are contemplating a big family BBQ - assuming the weather improves)! The time has just absolutely *flown*...considering how tiny and helpless he was when he first appeared, the change in this extremely short period of time is (to say the least) pronounced...He is now fully mobile, crawling at the speed of light and able to pull himself to standing on any available object, including my legs-

- when he makes it to a bit of furniture then he does what is known among the baby community as "cruising" along (obviously not in any sort of gay/swinging way), carefully navigating corners between objects (his success rate is about 98%, falls are extremely rare, only really happening if something unexpectedly moves) relatives have confidently announced he'll be walking unaided before his birthday (and when that happens it won't be Baby Thomas any more, but Toddler Thomas)...

This, unfortunately, means that everything that had to be moved up out of harms way for crawling has now had to be moved up yet *again* (or hidden behind big cushions) as his reach is pretty impressive...he can help himself to any food and drink put before him (lifting the cup up himself to drink) and he now has six incredibly sharp teeth (when he isn't teething he is happy to brush himself with his little toothbrush) -

- which he uses with lethal efficiency to chew everything up...he understands "No" if you put enough vocal force behind it (he will look at you, judge your level of seriousness, and then stop and turn around if he is after something he knows he shouldn't be), he understands "Want to come up?" (and gets excited about it), Dances to music (an adorable little jiggle), has learned that if he puts his finger (or food) into his mouth when he is talking and wiggles it about that it sounds funny...oh and the last new thing (that occurs to me as I write this) is that he has had his first little bruise (actually, it's quite impressive that he made it all the way to ten months old before managing to hurt himself in any meaningful way!), caused by collision with a table leg as he tried to pull himself up on it - we had lots of miserable tears followed by a great big bump on his head (which went down as quickly as it came up) followed by a straight line mark in the shape of the offending object...he didn't go near the table again after that, so at least he learned his lesson... ;)

Let's see what happens next! :)

Donyngs Redhill Soft Play

Just realised I forgot to post about this...last Saturday, no, not the one just gone, the one before that, in a welcome break from Saturday Morning Baby Swimming, Flyingpops and I took Thomas to Donyngs sports centre in Redhill for "soft" play (as opposed to what, I'm not quite sure I want to consider)...admittedly he's not quite old enough to *really* do much of it himself, but (like his mum) he's a great one for people-watching and spends a lot of the time ignoring the fact that you've put him on a slide and just stares with fascination at the toddler 20 yards away crashing a scoot along car into one of their friends shins...

Oddly Thomas actually gets in free, even though the entire experience is sort of angled for his benefit, it's Mummy and Daddy who need to pay entrance (although it's only a couple of quid, so I shouldn't moan)...

Anyway, he had a go on everything, after some initial reservations -

- he got into the spirit of the "Ball pool" -

- had a little go in one of the (many) little cars -

- did some mountaineering -

- had a sit on the "no adults" (boo!) bouncy castle -

- and did some exploring (quite happy to wander off from us by about ten meters before realising how far away he had got and crawling quickly back chattering loudly)-

- and then we stopped for a drink and a snackie (we all needed some cold water as it's incredibly hot in there), even though it was raining, the doors were wide open and four *huge* fans were blowing...

...I can see this becoming a regular thing, especially as Thomas gets steadier on his little feet... ;)