Keeping abreast of the situation!

Kamaiura : Siesta of mother and child, originally uploaded by klausdgrio (unabled - all photo-gear stolen).

Breastfeeding. This is something I want to blog more about, if only to increase awareness about why it is the most magical, miraculous thing a mother can do for her child. Before Layla, I used to feel pretty neutral about it - but now...

In other cultures, like the Mongolians, breastfeeding is celebrated! Breastfeeding in public is not just a cultural norm, but expected.

Having lunch the other day in a garden centre's cafe with my friend, Lisa, and her year-old little girl, Freya Rose, we both hauled out our boobs so our children could have their milk. Knowing the taboos surrounding this wonderfully natural and beautiful act of mothering and nutrition, we took care to choose the most discreet seating in the cafe, and made sure not the barest glimpse of flesh was flashed! And yet, in our hearts, we feel like organising militant-style pro-breastfeeding ralleys! But we don't. Because............. I've just deleted an extremely passionate paragraph in case, oh dear, it might offend.
The day Layla was born, and in the weeks following, I had decided Layla would only be breastfed until she was six months old. That is, when the teeth arrive. But now, 8 months on, I almost wish it would never end. It gives us the most precious moments of quiet intimacy. A time that no-one else can muscle in on with a bottle of formula in hand. Through the night, she reaches for me in her sleep, and we lie in each others' arms - a twilight of love. One day, too soon, she will be off and running, busy, painting, playing, climbing trees, homework, boys... And these moments will be my perfect mother's treasure. An anchor, I hope, for us both.

Dark, grey, gloomy...

Today makes me think of studying Shakespeare at school. When the weather was believed to be a direct reflection of what was going on politically etc. Like the storm in Macbeth. I've just stepped outside in my pyjama socks to let my neighbours gentle giant of a German Sherpherd out for a quick wee in her cramped, little pebbled yard. Today hasn't been a 'good' day in the conventional sense of the word. i.e. no housework has been done because I'm just too damn tired. And it's that deep kind of tiredness you feel in your soul. The kind of exhaustion that you have to just try and ignore, because if you don't, it'll consume you. Until you feel like you're drowning.
The miraculous thing about being a mother, is that somehow, out of nowhere, you are suddenly blessed with a fresh abundance of energy. (I'm counting on this to happen for me tomorrow!) When I let go of this feeling guilty about being tired, and allow myself to chill out for the day (in pyjamas, with a sink full of dishes and a basket of laundry to be folded and packed away, and ... and... and...), then I am usually guaranteed to wake up feeling like the proverbial million bucks! So today, Layla and I have napped together, played together on the floor, shared a sarmie for lunch, cuddled and laughed and giggled at each other... I have learnt (though it's taken me 31 long years) that these darker days are there for a reason: to stop you in your tracks so you're forced to take stock of what really matters to you. Otherwise, with a constant supply of perfect energy, I would whizz through life and take everything (and everyone) for granted. I wouldn't pray. I would never be still.
Supper tonight? A quiche bought from a 'boutique-deli' : feta, spinach, sundried tomatoes and pine-nuts. I'll bang it in the oven and chop up a few tomatoes with some crisp slices of cucumber, and voila! Maybe I'll get really lucky and Craig will stop to pick up a bottle of vino on the way home from work. It's usually a bottle of Cape Red for 3.39 GBP from the Co-op in Brixworth. (I'm really struggling to concentrate... I find that when Layla is asleep, my ability to focus on writing, painting etc is quite good. But when she's awake - my brain turns into a primitive survivalist machine and all that matters is my child: is she cold? is she hungry? is she thirsty? is she happy? Eish...)
*Sorry, Mel - another short entry. Blame it on motherhood.

Mother & Child, and Father...

1. Was up with Layla all night long. (Saturday saw the beginning of a very sticky, snotty nose - and by Sunday, she was in full swing with the whole works, making for an utterly miserable little girl.)
2. She woke up at 5.30am - and guessed she'd need her usual sleep by 8.30am at the latest -- but not being able to breastfeed with such a blocked nose made her inconsably frantic, that I've only managed to get her to sleep a few minutes ago: i.e. she was awake for a total of FIVE hours... And that's a LOT for such a wee little soul.
3. Craig has gotten the cold as well - and, being of the male persuasion, has it 'a billion times worse' (to quote directly!) And to top it all off, Mama Lisa here has to help him type his school reports because otherwise he gets a sore back. Ag shampies...
So, sleep-deprived, irritable and more-than-your-average-knackered, here I am at the PC and not in bed where I should be, catching up on as many winks I could get.
4. My small 'Mother & Child' was selected for the 96th Annual Northampton Town & County Art Society Exhibition (what a mouthful!)over the large one because of the gallery's lack of space this year where they're apparently hanging works from floor to ceiling!

Teething pains...

With the weather turning a glum, cold grey, my usually bare feet about the house are decidedly icy: time to either turn on the heating or haul out last winter's slippers! Whenever I speak to my dad (he's in Cape Town), he is guaranteed to ask me about the weather. Even slap-bang in the middle of the Cape Winter, the weather is usually irritatingly better than here in Northampton. Perhaps this is why my dad always asks me? A little thorn to remind me that east, west, HOME is best!
Layla's top front two teeth are pushing their way down through her sore, tender little gums - and the Calpol I gave her earlier doesn't seem to have made so much as a dent in her loud, sporadic agony. Poor baby :( All I've managed to do today is look after her, run a load of washing (which is still in the machine) and do the dishes (but they're still not packed away.) Since the last time I wrote, I've had a dramatic shift in perspective after an older and wiser friend's kind warning to 'treasure these moments' with Layla. She made mention that she herself has to remind herself of this sentiment when contemplating, not her navel, but finding a gun to forever silence her husband's decibel-crunching snores! (I've had to promise keeping her safely anonymous in case her contemplation turns to action one sleep-deprived midnight!) But it is so, so true. These precious children of ours grow up in leaps and bounds we can never hope to keep up with! I can hardly even remember how tiny and fragile Layla was as a newborn - when teething and crawling and starting solids all seemed impossibly far away into the future. When we were in South Africa, I found the very first photograph ever taken of Layla on her late granny Sally's cell phone. Craig's hand is on the photo, giving Layla the look and size of a tiny doll - and not the chubby, robust newborn I expected! She was so thin and almost scraggly, that her skin hung off her like an old, too big jersey. And that shock of raven hair! So much like her daddy that I kept on dreaming in my post-labour snatches of sleep that they'd made a mistake: that she was a boy! For weeks after she was born, I wanted to snip off a lock of her soft black hair to keep forever, but suddenly the weeks were months, and all that hair disappeared... Thank goodness for photographs!
And here she is, all 14lb and 7.5months of her: delicious, incredible, amazing! Holding her in my arms in the middle of the night, exhaustion suspended by the miracle of her. Could I love her too much? Her soft apple cheeks, long and strangely straight eyelashes, and a mouth that can be all soft and pouty - and then stretch into the widest, biggest smile I've ever seen... It's hard to believe she is my daughter. My flesh and blood. Made only from love and desire and chromosomes...

(As an aside, a friend told me on the weekend that my blog entries are too short and leave the reader wishing I had given them more... Two reasons I probably cut myself short: I don't want to bore you, and Layla usually needs me JUST as the writing starts to get juicy... Any ideas or tips?)

Domestic Distress!!

1. Bad, bad night for Layla with her teeth. (Almost zero sleep for me.)
2. But I'm still enjoying my glossy lacquered nails - AND toenails. At least I can be glamourouslyshattered!
3. Instead of actually painting, I nearly started a new blog about my painting. Realised I was really just procrastinating in an incredibly self-deceptive way: I believed for a few minutes I was actually working! Have decided to blog about my art on this blog if I really have to!
4. And now for the absolute crux of why I am here today: I need help! But constructive help only, please. Why?

... My house is a mess. There are some areas which are pristine and fantastically organised - but they are frustratingly few and far between. When I was pregnant, I was so badly bloated and exhausted, that not having enough energy to keep it tidy didn't bother me too much. Now that Layla's older and easier, I find that I get stuck into setting the house to rights - only to have it all fall down like a sandcastle smashed by the inevitable wave. (Funny little metaphor - but that's what it really feels like to me. Like I've spent hours playing and creating and perfecting, only to watch in horror as the waves creep closer and closer... and then to watch as it crumbles down upon itself and disappears into only a memory of itself.) I think it New York Mayor Giuliani's notion of 'The Broken Window' that's at fault for 99% of the messes in my house. i.e. when there's a broken window in an otherwise nice neighbourhood, it attracts naughty, loitering boys - who then scribble a little graffiti on the wall, and maybe break the next window along. Then a gang moves in to claim it as its turf, and the drug dealer's the next step. Etcetera etcetera. The solution: prevention is better than cure: so when there's a broken window, fix it immediately so it doesn't attract more brokenness.
I've tried to explain that to my other half who really does seem to try his best but honestly doesn't have a tidy bone in his body - so while he agrees with needing to clean/tidy straightaway, he can't seem to put it into practise. Hence, my chronically messy house that, when someone unexpectedly knocks at the door for a visit, has my heart going into miniature cardiac arrest, or telling a white lie like, "I was just about to leave for the dentist" (even though I'm blatabtly un-ready in my pink polka-dot gown and steaming mug of coffee!)
So: any advice or CONSTRUCTIVE ideas? One idea I've had is to get in a cleaning service once every two weeks to vacuum, dust etc, so I don't have to spend so much time doing that sort of housework, and can then focus on keeping things tidy/organised. (If I tell Craig about this idea, he'll enthusiastically launch into telling me HE will do those things for me on weekends. But... does it EVER happen? You know the answer to that.)
Wondering if I should sign off the rest of the week to getting the house PERFECT, then begin painting again on the weekend? Even though I'm not anally-retentive about tidyness, I struggle to be creative if there are too many messes lurking around, making me feel distracted with guilt!

Vixen

Almost dry, my always efficiently short nails are painted the colour of dark, ripened cherries - the first time I've found the time and the energy to paint them. Toenails too! A minor miracle.

Upstairs, I can hear Craig brushing his teeth, and I suppose I ought to head to bed myself. But it's just been one of thosedays... when, as a mom and wife, you lose sight of your heart's little daily desires in folding clean washing, still warm and smelling of the late summer sun... in the soapy suds in the kitchen sink... It was a long day where the groceries got done ETCETERA, but my little studio space remained empty. Where can I find more time to paint? How can I magic more time into my day to write? Hmmm... even a solitary bath by candlelight (or moonlight) would be heavenly (and I'm trying not to feel guilty thinking about it...) Baths now are: Craig and I in the bath with Layla at 5pm, her plonked in her bright yellow bath seat, while plastic wind-up turtles and rubber fish find their way into all sorts of places I've not had visited in awhile. (Sigh)

Layla's probably going to wake in about 30min from now. I am awake every hour at night still with her. Teething pain, and its tummy pains (and resultant giant nappies at 4am we both have to wait for before she'll head back to sleep again for only another hour...) Some have counselled me to let my darling child 'cry it out' - but my heart is too soft: DAMN - she's awake. Better go.

Muddy Metaphors -- and Weddings on the Wild Side

How long has it been since I last found time to write? Well, so long that my unpractised, clumsy fingers dodge the letters I mean to type! Spare time evades me like the plague, but tonight I have found myself in luck: the drought is over (and I’m mixing my metaphors!)
Port Elizabeth, and the hot, dry ‘winter’ has been broken by a sudden storm; the wet, black sky torn apart by ragged lightning, rending thunder. Apparently, this is the worst winter drought experienced by the Eastern Cape in 70 years. (And we’re not missing much with regards the English summer: ‘grey’ and ‘miserable’ are two words that crop up again and again in emails from my English friends in the last weeks. And as one South African expat succinctly said: ‘Two weeks of sunshine and then it goes and #@&%s off for the rest of the year!!’) Hoping this blissfully summery weather will last another two weeks, we’ve arranged our wedding to take place along the banks of the lazy Sunday River in Addo next Saturday!





Originally, our wedding was set (and booked!) for December 2008 – at the citrus and rose farm, Avoca (where we’re still going to have our wedding.) Craig had taken me there for an exciting, sexy, fun, exotic and dangerous (‘angry bull elephant vs Citi Golf’ story – to be told at a later stage) weekend away. After a day of swimming in the dark, cold river inbetween roasting dry in the sun with only ice-cold beers to keep us company, we sat around the doringboom fire in the darkening pink of night and dreamed of how perfect it would be for a wedding. Unspoken thoughts of marriage stained our every word, as though they were blushing – we daren’t mention the word for fear of jinxing this perfect new love we’d accidentally bumped into again almost two whole decades after that first kiss.
Eleven years old, Standard Four. In the music room nogal! I remember scratching my name, coupled with Craig’s surname, on my wooden desktop. And they talk about self-fulfilling prophecies?! After a whirlwind romance of silly little love-letters and stolen kisses, high school separated us and we never saw each other again. Until that fateful ‘friend request’ on Facebook when we were both a year shy of 30.
“Are you the same Lisa Roberts I went to school with?”

And that was that. (Not really, but I could literally write a book were I to try bring you up to speed on what happened between then and now! Another time, maybe…)
So now, back to the wedding. Both of us are fairly relaxed when it comes to organising things, euphemistically speaking - and so, our wedding is a true reflection of our style of doing things: unpretentious, whimsical, laid-back, flexible, casual. We really only decided last night (!!) that we’d actually have a proper wedding in lieu of the court thing. For a whole host of reasons, we’re having an incredibly tiny little do – only 20 people or so. Finances are one of them, but that’s probably not the main reason. I think we’re really using our minimalist-style savings as an excuse to have this wedding as preciously intimate and meaningful as possible! If we didn’t have this fiscal reason to back us up, I have a funny feeling we’d have felt obligated to invite The World. Instead, only 20 guests are invited, and even then, there are one or two we are forced to invite only through sheer familial duty – but on the whole, each person means The World to us! (Craig and I are big on meaningfulness --- sentimental ol’ suckers!)
Oops! I’ve just realised what I’ve so unsubtly intimated: that you yourself do not mean The World to me and are hence not invited. Eish… How do I untangle myself from this faux pas?! I guess what I mean to say is that with Layla in our lives, we just can’t afford the time or money to have a huge bash. And that running around during the reception dinner, trying frantically to spend a few micro-milliseconds with each guest, is just not something we are capable of with a constantly hungry baby (i.e. still being breastfed meaning no-one can really look after her except me… Hence, why I suppose one gets married BEFORE one has a baby!!!) Anyway, the fact of the matter is that the only people invited are family members. Because if we didn’t invite them, then there’d be hell to pay!! (Now if you are a family member and you have been invited, then you’ll have noticed I’ve shot myself in the other foot now!! OK – so I can’t win. So let me just blame it on our blatant shortage of funds. Is that better? It’s too late now, because here I sit with both my feet in my mouth, having shot myself in both of them – not a pretty picture, huh?)

Treasure Hunt!

At last! A moment to indulge my almost forgotten passion!! Layla's asleep next to me in her pram - who knows for how long?! So while the sun shines, I shall make hay!

Windy and only very slightly chilly, the carboot sale in Holcot (the next little village along from us) was jampacked with carbooters and treasure-hunters on the forage for all that glitters. (Perhaps not all of them are magpies like me?!) Craig tends to whip along ahead of me, weaving inbetween the doddering, dithering masses, his eyes fanatically fine-tuned to pick out Stephen King novels from among all the rest of the books stuffed into crates on the muddy grass, or lined up higgledy-piggledy on wonky trestle tables. (He already owns 95% of Stephen King's novels - so his pickings on Saturday rendered nothing at all...)
I, on the other hand, discovered a bounty of deliciousness! But with only a few coins jangling hopefully in my pocket, CHOICE had to overrule my usually spontaneous shopping methodology. Also, haggling with an Englishman is not so different to bartering with other sorts of tribes - and I managed to get all sorts of little goodies thrown in for free or half-price. (It helps to plead poverty while holding out your 'only' pound coin, of course.)
Lounging in their rusty, forlon cars, haggard, semi-toothless women stare into the lonely space between milling customers, a drooping fag trailing smoke, caught on the moist part of the lower lip as though glued. Old men, busy busy busy, their crates of fish hooks, lures and reels of gut proudly displayed -- my eye drawn to the wooden boxes shimmering with the rainbows of finely twined feathers of fishing flies, protected behind glass, like rare butterflies caught in the depths of a jungle. Down-and-out couples selling off their old, dusty TV, their children's greying, stained baby clothes - and arbitrary knick-knacks I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy! And then, there are the prim, middle-aged ladies, their wares arranged artfully along tables carefully lain with starched white cotton tablecloths. Here you can find little Murano glass bowls, 1920s paste jewellery, marquesite brooches and jewellery boxes that make you wonder who their owner was, what was she like?
My discoveries included: a 1950s Bakelite 'black' doll, and an empty sweet tin - also circa 1950s. Four blood-red perspex hearts the size of dinner plates. Two boxes of chocolate incense. A collection of the most divine plates, tea cups and a bowl - possibly 1920s: the sweetest candy pink, handpainted embellishments in white, gold and turquoise. GORGEOUS!!! Another 1950s find: a silver-plated and red glass sugar bowl and spoon. PERFECT for my tea parties!

Our little Petal/Daffodil/Pepperpot (Craig's nicknames for Layla) will be 11 weeks on Thursday! And she weighs a healthy 10lb 2oz (4.6kg, I think.) She is constantly ravenous - and prefers to snack all day long, instead of gorging on a few large meals. This means a bit more work for me - but at least her reflux is under control this way! Anyone got any advice??

Exhausted, exhausted...

HRM (Her Royal Majesty A.K.A my baby girl) is still blessedly asleep, though as she swims to the surface of her sleep, she's grunting and sighing - causing my mothering hormones to flood my body, and I know it'll be a matter of mere minutes before I have to sign off, log out etc etc. But at least I am here on the page!
My second day all alone at home with this new little person who is 150% dependent on me has been fraught with anxious tears and sobbings of failure. (Oh, the drama, the drama!) But, after an emergency visit from the housewife, a few phonecalls to other mom-friends, I discover all of this is... NORMAL. Bugger. Yes, it does sort of help to know I am not an utterly useless mother -- but at the same time, I wish I could somehow leapfrog over this physicaland emotional exhaustion to a place where brushing my teeth is par for the course and not a massive accomplishment managed somewhere after lunch! (Out the window, I spy the Sainsbury's home delivery van: EUREKA! How much easier and simpler this will make my life!!)

I'm going to say ciao before my bambino awakes -- setting aside my beloved, but now quite extraneaous, writing for the greater good of a functioning household! (For any ideas or good old-fashioned encouragement, please use the COMMENTS section at the bottom of this posting!)

Love,
Lisa

My New Life! (said with definite irony and ... JOY!!)

My fingers have forgotten the feel of these clicking letters and punctuation marks beneath my fingers after seven weeks of My New Life. Layla Rose arrived two and a half weeks ahead of schedule - though blessedly so, for many reasons I won't bore you with right now - but which will probably pop up some time in the future... Right now, my daughter lies in her navy blue Graco pram, being pushed to and fro by my leg/foot made tireless by my need to have her fall asleep! Mind you, it's not so I can have time to myself - it's ... I'm lying. It IS to have some time to myself!! I need to change from these clothes that smell like her curdled reflux after she projectile burped all over me in a hot, frantic splurge earlier this morning... I wish I could sit down with a cup of hot, sweet tea in the armchair where the sun is now that soft gold of late afternoon and merely contemplate my navel...

That's all I have time for - I have a grunting, moaning, squeaking bundle of joy who is soon going to let forth a great howl of hunger (or unashamed irritation at her poo nappy!)

She arrived!

Wow. How my life has changed.

Email, my blogs, my life in general actually, fell completely by the wayside for the last 4 and half weeks............ but here I am, sort-of back in action! My last blog entry is dated 12 days before Layla Rose arrived, somewhat prematurely, on the scene - and forever to turn my life magically and beautifully upside down! (I marvel with worshipful-like awe at my two fellow bloggers, Andrea and Caroline, who miraculously manage to find time and grey matter to write like they do: WOW, WOW, WOW!)

Until I find some time again,
signing off...
New Mommy Lisa

The Sheer Glamour of Birth

With the weather warming up, the snow is now nothing more than melted squelchiness - though still, I am sure, there will be children who'll head to the farm slopes just beyond with their homemade sleds! As my due date gets nearer and nearer, the danger of icy roads recedes into the past as a thankfully distant memory and exists no longer as an possibility!
All that needs to be done in Layla Rose's nursery is for Craig and Gary to put up the blind - a lilac, thermal, black-out blind.(After months of confused pottering, I've at last discovered how to add a hyperlink - so if you see text that is blue and underlined, it means you can click on it and it'll take you to photos or something else to juice up the story!) Otherwise, my TO DO LIST has only my hospital bag to shop for and then pack. (Sleep eludes me as I chase down all these niggling things I still need to do... Even my dreams are saturated with obsessions relating to birth, bodily fluids, crying babies...) Unfortunately, going shopping for the contents of The Hospital Bag, is not a glamorous affair -- and you will know this only if you are a)a midwife, b)a mommy or c)someone with rather sick, sad interests! From ultrathick maternity pads to those see-through gauze disposable knicker-things. Blech. Perhaps it's a shopping expedition best accomplished in solitude? I don't think Craig will ever look at me the same way EVER again...

Wishes DO come true.

Alone all day long with just my belly
to talk to, the days can be treacherously long - and I find myself counting down the hours and then minutes until Craig arrives home. Fact: men need to speak less than women do - and by the time Craig gets home from work, he's all talked out and ready to just chill out. But then like a tourist at a zoo, I poke him verbally as though he were a sleepy wombat to perform. Ya. Poor guy. I know. But hey - I get lonely!

THANKFULLY, I made a couple of very special friends when I taught at that little school in Kettering. The one is Tamara - another South African- who came over to the UK with her husband in August last year. She has been a Godsend - and has visited me twice on her way home from work even though she has an hour long schlep home to Peterborough from here... And then there's Wendy.
From the very moment I met Wendy, I hoped we would be friends - beyong the confines of colleagues' politeness and school hours. She just has this incredible warmth - like a glowing hearth-fire I craved to warm myself before. She was an absolute Godsend at work, literally being able to help with any situation or answer any, however random, question. (Personally, I think she should move her talented behind outta there and start her own company! She is DYNAMIC!)
Last Wednesday, in the pitch blackness of 4pm, Wendy arrived at the front door to what must surely have been an avalanche of far too many words - but bravely, she took it all in her stride (lol!) Hanging up her coat, she managed to get a sentence out inbetween all of mine: "Oh, and here's a little something for you."

She handed me a camera.

What?

A camera. I didn't know what to say. I didn't understand. Was she loaning it to me till I could get one of my own? Eventually, I understood the depth of it all: Wendy was actually giving us this camera - and it was gleamingly brand new, stocked up with the very best rechargeable batteries and a 4GB memory card!!! Gobsmacked. Flabbergasted. Completely and utterly blown away. I felt like a bit of a fool - inadequacy of verbiage for once paralysing me into silence. I could hope I appeared as grateful as I felt...
We had a couple of cups of tea, a few nasty little sugary biscuits I discovered in Craig's corner of the tea/coffee cupboard -- and altogether the most wonderful conversation I've been treated to in simply ages! (Craig looked grateful seeing someone else have to absorb my daily quota of words.)

I guess what I'm really trying to say is THANK YOU, darling Wendy, for the most incredible gift - a gift with long-reaching meaning: Layla will have her childhood lovingly archived because of YOU.

(To showcase all my latest photographs, I got us set up with Google's Picasa! Here is the link to my 'Nursery in Progress' album. As usual, I would LOVE comments!)

Candid Camera

Right now there about a thousand images I wish I could capture for you -- the sight of my pale, ballooning belly, laced with pale blue deltas of veins, the delicate wood carving on the antique wardrobe I've spent hours painstakingly stripping of years of paint, the giant pile of softness in whites, pinks and pale yellows: all of Layla's newborn babygrows, jumpers and blankets sent all the way from her granny Sally in South Africa...

{this pic of me was taken at Christmas time: I am now uncomfortably rotund at 33 weeks, though the midwife says my uterus is full-term/40weeks in size: GULP!!! And how will the next 7 weeks pan out?! Can my skin really stretch anymore?}

But alas, the awful little camera we bought from a colleague of Craig's needs 2 brand new batteries to take just 3 or 4 grainy photos before agitatingly konking out. My 5 weeks of working at Avondale Juniors (blood, sweat and many, many heartbroken tears later)and the money I earned was used to pay my dad back - though I was promised, as part of my employment contract, reimbursement for mileage driven and 7.50GBP a day for lunches. HOWEVER (insert 'thunderous glare' here) the company who processes the payments, MyKeyPay, insists they have absolutely no record of me - and because I am on maternity leave, there is nothing they can do about it. To put it kindly, I'm bloody pissed off as all hell!!!! I followed the correct protocol in terms of registration, filling in forms and posting them back etc. I EVEN received a telephone call from one Gaelic-sounding Sean CONFIRMING my registration two days after the fact. SO. WHAT. IN. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?? A South African colleague of mine who teaches at the same school, hired by the same company, blah blah blah: SHE gets all her expenses paid. So why not me? The most frustrating part is that I was hoping to use that 200quid to buy a camera and various other things for Layla Rose's arrival. And now I can't. You can't have a baby without having a camera. (I know it sounds somewhat insane - but after my own mom has documented our lives so exquisitely in album after gorgeous album, I can hardly imagine not having captured Layla's growth from wriggly little newborn all the way through to first steps and messy icecreams...)
I have someone from my employment agency looking into it for me - so perhaps I may be paid after all: I told him I was writing about MyKeyPay on my blog - and that he better warn them that a feisty little journalist was gonna take 'em down if they didn't sort me out with some cashola!!! (Said in jest. Sort of.)

Anyway, if any of you have an old camera lying around you're not using, could you please send it my way? THANK YOU!!

PS. I thought I was a really cute 'n cuddly baby - but since I put my baby photo up on Facebook as my profile picture, absolutely NO-ONE has commented on it. Think I better take it down - and replace it with one of my arty pics which always elicit enormously good responses. lol

Anyone with tents to rent? Preferably in floral or stripe prints.

Propped up in bed by every single pillow in the entire household, minus my glasses, the morning view out over the fields was grey and misty (and that's not just because I was spectacleless!)and it made me feel as though the sun may never reappear again after so many days now without it. It is now common practice for people living in the UK to take a good quality Vitamin D supplement!! But thankfully for me, I have a special fondness for grey, wet weather -- I can handle the lack of sunshine for longer than most South Africans can!

One of the things I never expected from pregnancy was the sheer abundance of discomfort, pain and strangely embarrassing ailments! Were I to list them all, I'd probably never be allowed to write publicly again! One example is the sudden swollen sausageness that has taken over my hands in the last two weeks -- my once-sparkling engagement ring sits forlorn and dejected in my jewellery box... Even my face and my feet are 'fat' - causing my mom, via webcam, to comment that every time she says me it looks like I've just woken up; and another friend to giggle, "Oh look, even your little feet are fat!" (Whoop-dee-doo.) But back to the hands - they wake me up at night (OFTEN) with an arthritic ache - and let's not forget the pins and needles!! (And, mind you, this continues all through the day time too - so that typing is a chore, opening a tap a miniature agony etc etc etc etc.) And let's not forget that wonderful feeling of heartburn. Never before in my life had I experienced it - though felt so sorry for my dad and sister suffer from it as part of daily life. And man oh man, I wish I had given them even more sympathy!! Thankfully, it's evasive during the day, hiding away and building up its acidic power for the minute I start to drowse off...

Now if you can imagine the remedies for all of these little atrocities put together, you can imagine what I must look like at night in bed: both arms hanging down off the side of the bed to discourage the carpal tunnel syndrome/swelling in the hands, torso propped up at 45 degrees to enlist the help of gravity against the heartburn monsters,as well as minimising the ridiculously loud and snotty snoring from those overactive mucous membranes and the relaxin hormone quite literally relaxing my pharynx etc; lying on my left to a) allow my hands to hang off the edge of the bed and b) so Layla doesn't lie on my vena cava which cuts off blood supply to my head and herself, a pillow between my knees to keep my lower back aligned as a result of my old broken-coccyx injury which has flared up what with Layla using it as a jungle-gym. Last but not least, the every-hour-on-the-hour need to wee -- and the elephantine grunting that goes with extricating my estranged lump of a body from the pillows, duvet and my old friend, gravity.
Poor Craig. That's all I can say. He endures it all with the patience of a saint - even though I've offered to sleep in the spare room. (I'm still not sure what the pay-off is for him - because, as the light sleeper he is, I cannot imagine he gets any more sleep than I do. It can only be suggested that it is his love for me. Surely?! I certainly wouldn't put up with myself!!!!)

Besides my ring not fitting, I have only got about 4 pieces of clothing left now that can accommodate me. If only I were either rich and could buy myself everything I needed or b) lived in a nudist community!!

And though I have these gripes and moans, I still feel quite special that I have been granted this blessing of becoming a mother. Knowing that I have been given this life-long task of custodianship over a brand new human being's life has me both in a state of magnificent awe --- and sometimes in a blind, frightened panic. I have so many questions that swamp me every day, reminding me of those waves that would blindside me as little girl on seaside holidays, knocking me flat into the salty, sanded, swirling power of the sea. But then paradoxically, there is that peaceful, inner knowing that tells me the answers will come. And that letting go (especially of my craving for perfection) is the day-by-day path I must take.

PS. That's me in the bath - obviously was eating like a bit of a piggie so was relegated to the bath where I could make as much of a mess as I wanted!