An Update

I hardly know where to start, or how to fill you in on the last couple of months. My world is all a bit jumbled at the moment, so I'll just type and see what happens.

Firstly, the pregnancy seems to be progressing well. I am well over 28 weeks and still feeling well most of the time. I'm so over the heartburn though. We have told Anthea that there's a baby in my tummy, and she regularly knocks on my tummy and "talks" to the baby in the same way she's seen Daddy do it. :)

On the topic of Annie, she's now 19.5 months old, and has just turned into such a little girl recently. She walks around everywhere, and loves to help - whether it's transferring pegs from the peg-bag to the swing, playing with some plastic cups in the sink pretending that she's doing dishes, or "helping" me clean the shower (and accidentally moving from cleaning the walls with the scrubber, to cleaning my back, as I'm doing the other wall). She pushes her step-stool around the place to help her access the benches, or get up onto the couch, and she loves to sing and dance. Especially if an upbeat song starts, then she really gets her groove on. :) She's just started to say a few words, and knows lots of animal noises. (The elephant one sounds like its an elephant on helium though). We've managed to get the one-nap-a-day drama sorted, and are in a good routine with that. My plan for next week is to start toilet-training with her... she already sits on the potty a few times a day, and mostly saves her poos for the potty which is cool. I've been reading "On Becoming Potty Wise" and we're going to give their method a go. The thought of having two babies in cloth nappies is good incentive... even if it is a bit early and it doesn't work, what's the harm in trying? :) More teeth have been giving her difficulties, in one week she cut a tooth and three molars! And the last few days she's been all snuffly and coldy, poor poppet.

My beautiful, generous sister took me to Melbourne for a sisters' weekend last weekend! We had a huge amount of fun traipsing around shopping, catching trams, shopping, eating amazing macarons, shopping... you get the picture. :) I bought a really nice pair of leather winter boots which were $159, then reduced to $99, then 40% off, so I got them for $59! And we found a very yummy schnitzel place called "Schnitz", where we got an [awesome] veal schnitzel, [amazing] chips, and a [fairly average] salad for $12.50! We were so tired by the end of the weekend though, and pretty annoyed when QANTAS delayed our Sunday night flight by 3 hours! Alastair had fun flying solo with Anthea too, though on the phone one time he said "oh, she's just knocked over the clothes horse.... Annie!!!... oh great, and now she's getting the books back out that I packed up not even half an hour ago!"... I felt like saying to him "welcome to my life!" :)

Last Sunday, (while Meaghan and I were away), Mum had to take Dad to hospital, as he was suffering from chest pain and breathlessness. The whole story is too long for here, so I'll just say: my Dad has had open-heart surgery this week!!! It's so surreal. Annie and I spent the day at the hospital on Wednesday with Mum and Meaghan while we waited for the surgery to be over. He had to have a valve replaced and a by-pass done. I had to leave before we were allowed to see him though, which was probably a good thing. He's come through it okay, and the nurses think he's looking good, but today was the first day that I'd seen him since Monday (before the op), and he looked really bad to me. He's still in ICU - will be for another 24-48 hours. He couldn't talk properly... he's lost weight and is a funny colour... he hadn't had a very good night last night, so he was slumped in the chair they wanted him to sit in for a few hours... he had tubes and cords and monitors and machines hooked up to him... a giant hose coming out the side of his neck... and a big pad on his chest covering the dressing. When I felt tears welling up I managed to hold them back twice, but the third time I had to leave the room. It really knocked me for six... this big strong man I've looked up to all my life, the Dad of whom I have two, maybe three memories of him being sick... suddenly helpless in a chair, looking like a lonely old man in a hospital gown. It was distressing, to say the least. Luckily Alastair had come with me, I don't think I'd have been able to drive home if I'd gone by myself.

Tonight I baked a cake... it's Alastair's birthday tomorrow. He loves the Women's Weekly birthday cake books and has cakes picked for his birthdays for the next five or so years. This year's cake is to be a stegosaurus. Wish me luck tomorrow as I cut the shape, ice, and decorate it. :P

There's heaps of other stuff that's been going on that I could write about, but now it's time for bed. It's been a rough week and emotions are running high.

January 2013 In Hindsight

2013 does not seem to have got off to a brilliant start for me, as I've already had two trips to Casualty; thankfully for the second one I did not have to arrive by ambulance.

So this second trip was last Wednesday night. Wed arvo at 4.30pm I was putting Annie in the car when she suddenly saw a bird and flipped her arm around to point at it, but she stuck her finger in my eye. It hurt possibly more than anything I've ever felt; after I'd managed to get myself together I had to get up to the house and try to bathe my eye... but after 15 mins of that, it wasn't feeling any better, and I could hear Annie in the car crying. Thankfully Jim, (the guy whose granny flat we live in) was home, and I asked him to go and get Annie out of the car for me, and we somehow made it through until Alastair got home from work. But by 10pm I was writhing on the floor in agony and Alastair insisted (for the third time!) that we go up to casualty. A friend came and sat here in case Annie woke, and waited for Meaghan to arrive, who already knew about the injury and had offered to come down and stay over. After an agonising four-hour wait, I was finally seen by a Dr, who I'm pretty sure had very little idea what he was doing (and it REALLY HURT as he tried to grab my eyelashes with his rubber-gloved hand to flip my eye-lid over a cotton bud in order to see underneath it) and sent me home with antibiotic drops. That was at 3am.

Next morning it was still excruciatingly agonising pain, so I got Meaghan to take me up to a lovely optometrist I've been to before about something in my eye, and he saw me in between patients, gave me anaesthetic drops and two prescription drops and told me it should be a lot better in 24 hours. And he didn't charge me anything. He asked me if I needed a medical certificate for work, and I said I didn't think my 17-month-old daughter - who was the culprit - would accept it. :P The anaesthetic drops only numb the eye for about 20 mins at a time, and I was told to use them sparingly, but still, 20 mins of less pain was absolute heaven. However at 5am Friday morning I woke up feeling like someone was shredding my eye with a shard of glass. Mum came down to help with Annie while Alastair was at work, and mid-morning we went back to the optometrist, who said it was looking better than yesterday, but still looking horrendous, so he put a band-aid contact lens (!) on, which he said would slow down the healing a bit, but at least would get me out of probably 70% of the pain. He didn't charge me anything on Friday either, he's the loveliest man. I told him I loved him and I think that made his day. So tomorrow I have to go back to him and he'll take the lens off, and see how things are going. I can open my eye now, but the vision in that eye is still blurred, and it feels gritty. And it's still painful, but nothing like it was. I have honestly never felt anything like it - I managed childbirth with no pain relief and no tears, yet this was even worse. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy!

February has arrived though, and I'm hoping this month is going to be a little less traumatic than last.  :)

Anthea has finally started to walk so January wasn't a complete write-off. It's amazing how quickly they go from their first tottering steps to practically full-blown running. She's a lot happier now, and seems to enjoy her new-found freedom very much. I think a little too much at times.

The other cool thing that happened in January, which I nearly forgot to mention, was that in the last little while I've begun to feel our new baby's first movements! They're still in that "oooh, I think I just felt something" stage, not the grand internal-organ-shifting movements they turn into eventually. :)

We've had some lovely cool weather over the last few days - very welcome relief after the extremely hot weather last week and the week before. Problem was though, Annie had grown out of all the clothes she wore last winter without me realising. I guess that happens, I just hadn't thought we'd be needing size 2 wondersuits in February! I loooove babies in wondersuits though, they're just so cute and cuddly! And since she's been walking for such a short time, she doesn't remember wearing socks or anything slippery on her feet, so it's been fun to watch her puzzling over that, and she gets a very cute look of concentration on her face. She doesn't say much (only 'Mama', 'Dada' and 'woof') but I'm certain she understands everything. Am even toying with the idea of starting some basic toilet training with her in the next few weeks to see how we go, as most times I put her on the potty she does something... and I've been reading a few different peoples' ideas on toilet training.... still need to do a bit more thinking though.

That's all for now I think. I have my 19 week scan tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to that so I should head for bed in order to get enough sleep so that I can hold my 500ml of water without going crazy. :)