an update...

...on robins (and our) sleeping.
since Bea went down to Cheltenham and Herefordshire there was a certain sense of appprehension about how robin will transfer over to sleeping with Bea instead of me, but basically he's done it fine, so well done Robin!
i think this whole ordeal has been far more stressfull for us than it has him - i guess he was more ready for it than we realised.

Off to Greenbelt tomorrow - yay!

a mars a day helps you work, rest and play...

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!
>
> This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter
> that
> will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in
> recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is
> in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on
> Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be
> certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth
> in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as
> 60,000 years before it happens again.
>
> The encounter will culminate on August 27th when
> Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and
> will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in
> the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9
> and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest
> 75-power magnification


>
> Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.
>
> Mars will be easy to spot. At the
> beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m.
>
> and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.
>
> By the end of August when the two planets are
> closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its
> highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty
> convenient to see something that no human being has
> seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at
> the beginning of August to see Mars grow
> progressively brighter and brighter throughout the
> month.
>
>
> Share this with your children and grandchildren.
>
> NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN



i think times refer to england

taming the shrew (or weaning the doormouse)

after several nights unrest due to a underproducing milk supply and a voracious little doormouse, the time for nocturnal weaning seems to have approached slowly and steadily at first, and then a lot quicker as time went on.
breaking point came on saturday night and the breastfeeding counsellor was called in to offer helpful hints and sage guidance.
so last night we took the plunge - the plan was thus:
1. bea sleeps in the attic
2. robin sleeps in our bed
3. armed with only a bottle of water and a cuddly elephant i sleep in the same bed with him.
4. when he wakes up for a midnight snack, i'm there to comfort, console and cajole him back to sleep with the previously mentioned items.
5. bea refrains from coming down when he's still screaming at the top of his lungs at 4am looking for her through tear streaked eyes under the bed and in the drawers.
6. we make it out the other end and robin finally collapses from axhaustion.
7. we collapse from exhaustion.
8. repeat for a few more days.

what actually happened:
1. through 3. as before.
4. robin woke up, made a few noises, looked around for Mama who he was sure was there when he dropped off 4 hours ago.
5. Dada lept to action. No sooner had he said "no booby", Robin promtly dropped straight back off to sleep again.
6. with an anti-climactic sense of confusion and apprehension, I also fall asleep again.
7. repeat these revised steps 4. through 6. seven or so more times, which takes us to 7.15am, 15 minutes after our cut off point/ wake up time and Bea returns to a sleepy but generally rested and happy little doormouse.
8. we're all a bit sleepy, but very releived.
9. hopefully repeat for a few more days.

happy birthday andy!

today andy is 28 years old - hooray!!

happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you,
happy birthday dear andy,
happy birthday to you
xx

sorry this post is going up so late in the day but it will be perfect for our american friends who are just getting going after a late morning coffee.

also, today we were going to get our van back but paul (the guy who's doing it up)had to shut up shop because his partner went into labour. please pray that her delivery goes smoothly. it seems that more births have comlications and intervention than not which is really sad. interestingly, if i had been in hospital, it is likely that i would have had intervention. maybe even a c-section because they probably wouldn't have let me push for so long.

i am shattered at the moment. robin is doing much better but he is feeding non-stop at night and i am finding it really disruptive. i have decied, against all my hopes and dreams, to get him off night-time boob. andy and i are going to get a plan together once i'm out of 1st trimester exhaustion. having talked to debbie jones about weaning it sounds like you have a few really difficult nights to push through before you come out the other side.

i hope everyone else is well and sparkly.

my fingers smell of roast chicken even though i keep washing them.

today i took robin to the doctors as he has a rash all over his body and also a temperature at night. he's generally not himself. the doctor thought what was going on was fascinating and said that robin's lymph nodes were up and also the back of his throat was red - must be why he keeps shoving his fingers back there! so we just have to keep an eye on him. supposedly keep his temperature down but i boycott that advice becasue i trust that God caused our bodies to run temperatures to kill bugs so we would get better quicker and also have healthier immune systems. this also goes in line with various alternative medicines too.

andy's birthday is on friday - crazy that he will be 28. i was really surprised when i realised the other day that i was 23 when i got married. my birthday isn't until march and jen's birthday was on tuesday but also offcially on monday because she was going to france on tuesday.

i am meant to be having my afternoon nap but i am struggling to sleep so i thought i would blog. i don't have a lot to say but the roast chicken we had last night at dan's was lush. lush is now an official word of the english language - bring it on!

here is a picture that i thought was very lovely:

i'm sooo bored...

thought i'd see if i can get a blog up via email from work.
harry potter's just got a whole lot more.... errr... not sure what - wasn't
expecting what happened there. very sad.
not quite finished it yet - just a couple of chapters to go

not feeling great today

last night robin had a temperature and he is covered in a red rash. i was up a lot in the night with him because even though he was so tired he couldn't stay asleep for long. it was really hard and this morning i needed to go back to sleep. andy was amazing - i had told him that today i was giving him a whole day off to do what he wanted but in the end he took robin til lunch so that i could have lie-in (til 10.30 - Mmmm) and then get showered and stuff. i have continued to feel groggy and sick all day though.

but, good things is that shannon, debbie and abigail popped in as a surprise on their journey south. it was so good to see them all. got to go because it's time to bath robin but i'll talk more about their visit later i hope.

congratulations to andrew and debbie who have been married 18 years today!

hot diggidy dang! andy posts....

well... where to start?...
things are generally going really well.

I'm still enjoying going to work - this is almost entirely because of the people i sit with. having said that, one of them's going for other jobs, another is determined to do the band thing an the third is going to uni in september, so it won't last forever, and whilst us all splitting up and going our own separate ways may improve my productivity stats, it will return work to its usual mundane self.
still, i have a lot worse and not a lot better when it comes to employment.
on that note however i have been going for quite a few other jobs recently. obviously i've succeeded at none of them, but each time i get an interview which generally goes pretty well (having had so many, i can get a little complacent in them, having answered the same questions so many times), but each time, there seems to be something that prevents me getting the job. this would be the only thing that seems to be irritating my otherwise contented little world at the moment, the only reason that things are only "generally going well". its frustrating in that its always a different reason why i didn't get the job. its not as if its always my employment history or my interview technique or something else i can do something about. it seems to be nothing i can do to, just keep applying until i get one.

on the parenting, things are going well. last weekends birthday party and the naming day/ dedication was such a good event - they came off so much better than i could've hoped for - not even the weather ruined it. having come a year, and survived it has been an amazing thing in itself, something i never though i'd manage 11 months ago. you know how its hard to see how far you come in things - this would be one time where i really can see how far i've come. of course the homeopathy will have played a big part in that, but i'm now in a place, with the 2nd on the way where, whilst i'm a little daunted about the thought of two little robins running around, i'm so much more confident in us as parents, and don't feel the same scared apprehension i did just over a year ago.

what else is there? well, not a lot of time for much else... the painting is going well - it's really making me see the world in a different way - i've moved on from seeing rust on everything to seeing grey in most things - playing with transparency of colours, and the very subtle changes that can be made with paint as thin as milk.



and of course there's harry potter - i'm currently on chapter 23 of 30 in the latest book. bea's just finished and things are starting to hot up for me too.
very exciting times...

sometimes it's hard to be a woman, givin all your love to just one man...

i hate it when i get a song in my head that i don't like but i can't get rid of. with tammy wynette's song, it's even worse because i only know one line of it really - i thikn my brain will suffer from repetitive strain injury before the evening is out unless i can remedy it soon!

i am over half way through harry potter and loving it. can you believe that snape is actually a woman and that ron isn't really a child of the weasleys but is really hermione's brother?!! the only problem with reading potter is that i get very distracted from the fact that i should be sleeping, so my 2 hr afternoon naps are getting shorter because i feel a magnetic pull towards my book. not today though - today i slept for nearly 2 hrs and then read harry as atreat before robin woke up!

not long til greenbelt now - i'm really looking forward to it and i expect robin will spend some time at the children's festival which i think he'll love.

was so pleased that God helped me realise that my career is as a mum and being pregnant again means i just got a promotion. it is really hard sometimes when people around have different expectations and in particular i feel so crushed that sometimes people find it strange that i haven't persued a career before having kids. but the thing is, being a mum is an amazing career - possibly one of the hardest ones around but also one of the most rewarding. so good too to know that i have confirmation that i will have another promotion in 7 months time assuming all goes well and we stay healthy!

i am hoping to read a book called captivating by john and stasi eldridge after i complete potter. if anyone can be bothered to find links to this book or anything else worthy of a link in this post, then you can comment the,m. i am going to try and blog daily but i can't do links because they are a bit time consuming when i am against the time pressure of the bath running!

also - cathers is lush - i love her and today she made me feel very very very special.

clever, but not that clever...

the picture is supposed to be a frog potato i think - a very clever piece of computer worek. obviously not as clever as me though - they have got a potato frog growing off carrot leaves! still, in a world where most people probably never pull a carrot out of the ground, i suppose that is to be expected.

some more very exciting news...

andy and i are thrilleed to let you all know that we are expecting another baby! we haven't been able to put it on the blog yet 'cos we felt we should tell all the folks first and some were harder to get hold of than others.

anyway, i am due early march which means that knowing my luck the baby will probably turn up on my birthday in mid march! ooh, and also what's exciting is that i will undergo 'special' monitoring because i am likely to carry a large baby - they say the second is often heavier than the first. this feels kind of cool becasue it just means that they are supporting my choice for a home-birth and will do all in their power to try and make that possible.

we are very excited by this news because andy's dreams of breeding his own football team are happening quicker than anyone could have imagined!! (for those of you who don't know andy as well as you could, he hates football and the last comment was ironical).

please don't let this over-shadow the fact that robin took his first steps today - see below!

well well well...!

as if the weekend wasn't exciting enough, what with Robin's epic birthday party going on from 2pm until 1am, and then his naming & dedication on the sunday that was just amazing, Robin's now topped it all off by taking his first steps today.
it started with a shuffle, that might've been mistaken for a stumble, but then 3 steps just moments later made us think something was up. so we openned up the floor, gave him a target and cheered him on, and the next 7 definite steps carried him into history.