struggling once again to sleep, hey ho. Have resorted to watching High School Musical and blogging to pass the time without spending money in the internet!

We've returned from a lovely couple of days in wales, the sun was shining away on Monday, and we checked out the beach and a few shops. Then yesterday the weather was horrendous, although in true Brit form we carried on regardless. We were really lucky that the rain had stopped when we reached the beach so we had a quick wander, but then had to resort to tea shops in the afternoon, but lets face it my size doesn't really enable much active tourism anyway.

I'm trying to enjoy this time as an unemployed layabout. Only problem is I seem to have gone a bit backwards in this pregnancy to the early days where I felt sick and tired a lot. This is mainly only during the night, when I can't sleep properly but feel really queasy. I can't complain too much though as everything else seems ok. i have a fair bit of heartburn, and seem to have developed a craving for ice cubes. But other than that all is ok.

Well after a long period of no blogging i feel we're entering a (short) phase of excessive blogging which will then grind to a halt mid-November and only restart with short snippets of child-boasting ("so advanced......!").
Today I had expected to be housebound as the plasterers were due back to finish what they started yesterday, except they have cancelled and are coming tomorrow. dammit, that's my structure to the week completely thrown! Hey ho. I have a visitor this morning so am baking some cakes now and may then pop into town this afternoon to fill my time. I am enjoying this time off but it is very weird too, feels like school holidays but no-one else is allowed out to play.

I did pop to the hospital yesterday and all was well, I guess I'm allowed at least one moment of paranoia this pregnancy, hopefully all will continue to be fine. Have finished my second piece of knitting paraphernalia, with the successful completion of the first hat. It doesn't go with the scarf I knitted but thats because I don't want to get too cocky just yet. am now working on a pink hat so I have options for baby gender. To be fair the hat, whilst allegedly for a 0-3 month old, looks huge so not sure how useful it will be but I am damn proud of myself, although Paul is wondering what happened to the cool wife he married 12 months ago.....

the midwife told me to rest on the sofa for at least an hour in the morning and afternoon so Jess is delighted at the company for that time. Most of the rest of the time her and Millie and not impressed at my being at home all day as it throws their "lets sleep on the bed all day until one of them comes home to feed us" routine. They wander around the house a little like stroppy teenagers whose mum has woken them up trying to hoover their room. Bless em... their peace will be even more shattered soon.

parenting seems to be simply another word for worry. I'm a pretty laid back person, so have taken this pregnancy with my usual approach to life and have not really worried unnecessarily with the long list of things that I'm seemingly supposed to freak out. Reading the websites and magazines as I have a tendency to do, it seems that it would be possible to completely wind yourself up over this whole process, freaking out about what you should/shouldn't do, what could/couldn't happen etc etc. the lady doing my 20 week scan started the discussion with "please tell me you haven't been researching on the internet have you..." which I thought was quite telling. In these days of information, sometimes knowing too much can be a bad thing.

The problem is that no matter how chilled I am, there is always something to niggle me, and despite my natural optimism that things will turn out ok, and if they won't there's not much I can do about it, I have spent the last 24 hours worrying about the fact that my baby is not moving about as much as I'd like. I blame my mate Emma who was worrying about her baby the other day, and got me thinking too much. I'm sure there probably hasn't been too much change, and that the fact that I have more time to think about it it more the issue that an actual change in movement pattern, but its hard to know, and it what is keeping me awake at 5.30am this morning hence the timing of this post. I guess this is what midwives are for, so perhaps will give mine a bell tomorrow just to put my mind at rest.

Blimey I have another 18 years of this....

It's been a tough couple of weeks really. We'd pretty much told ourselves that come sept we'd get sorted on the baby front, so we we all prepared to go out and buy prams etc when I get a call from my dear boss putting me at risk of redundancy. I apprceciate that I'm not alone in having to face this, and that I have, in fact, put plenty of people through this myself in the past, but to be fair, there are good ways and bad ways to handle this kind of situation..... that's as much as I can say to be honest given the need to be tactful and discreet.

But hey ho, things are now pretty much resolved, I am a lady of leisure slightly earlier than planned and have spent the last day or two getting my head around this fact. My main aim now is to keep well, and start to accept the reality that I'm about to become a mum.... yikes!

Ey up. well we've been on our jollies, and we're home again :-( boo hiss.
It was a lovely week and we had a nice time firstly relaxing in the yurt and then exploring Granada. We were wondering if we had made a cock up with the weather planning as it was 43 degrees at times but apparently this is not the norm, which was highlighted by the forest fires raging not too far away in Almeria.

The Alhambra was a pretty spectacular place and we took the obligatory hundreds of photos, although I have to admit just hanging round the yurt was probably the most fun part for me - slacker that I am these days.

so it's back to work for this week, although I have next Thurs pm and Friday off as we are off to the Hague/Amsterdam/Utrecht for a couple of days - trying to get the travel in before life as we know it ends.... Utrecht has a famous inhabitant which I am keen to check out, and luckily Paul has agreed to indulge me.

The little one has started to make his/her presence felt with the odd flutter/kick - along with a constant nagging back pain. Off to see an osteopath tomorrow to try and nip it in the bud as I'm only 24 weeks tomorrow. Lets hope they know their onions.

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hello, long time no write properly. sorry about that.

Life is ok, apart from sniffling regularly due to hayfever (or swine flu). Work has been madly busy, and social stuff wasn't too relaxing, although a lot of fun, with 2 weddigns in a row, then a trip to London to see Take That This weekend has been positively chilled out with no real plans. Went for a walk earlir whihc probably didn't help the old hayfever but it was about time I got off my lardy arse and did some exercise. Sally ran the London 10K today (in 66 minutes no less!) and I should have joined her had it not been for the 5 months pregnant factor, so not only am I very proud of her, but I am feeling a little slack.

I also went and spent LOTS of money on maternity clothes having got to the realiseation that I am off on holiday next week and "didn't have a thing to wear" - honest!

So, this time next week I will be happily sat round a pool sipping on a Pimms - well theres no alcohol in that is there......??? (I know, I know, it'll be a Lilt I promise), staying here for 4 nights and then on to Granada to check out the Alhambra and other such delights. Can't bloody wait.

Pregnancy watch time - baby ellis is doing fine, starting to make his/her presence known by the odd "popping" feeling in my tum. The 20 week scan showed the head is attached to the body which is always a bonus. as Paul so tactfully put it the other day "bloody hell you have got fat" - although to be fair he says a lot of nice things too. It's very odd and I have moments of feeling a bit unattractive but overall its all good.