No more interesting items of post to report, but still no sign of the pox…

… six days ’til all clear and counting…

Anyway, talk amongst yourselves, I’m feeling uninspired. Of course, looking at my blogroll, the fashionable thing to do when you haven’t got any inspiration seems to be to go on hiatus. I just inflict you all with random witterings… it’s probably something else I can blame on pregnancy hormones.

I think my luck may be turning, call off the plague of locusts.

I like puzzles and have been known to buy the occasional puzzle magazine. This I did last month via Sainsbury’s To You and was a bit miffed when they substituted my usual with a different mag. However, the new one didn’t look too bad, and there were lots of prize puzzles in there (which I don’t usually enter, but I thought what the heck) so I puzzled away, filled out the entry form, forgot all about it.

Well, I got a letter this morning. A nice letter. A “you have won” sort of letter of the genuine kind rather than the “we’re trying to flog you a timeshare” kind.

I’ve won one of these. The voucher is worth £500, I will receive it in 4-5 weeks and I have up to 6 months to use it. All I have to do now is decide what experience I want/can do with a young baby around! Current thoughts are either a Personal Shopper experience at the House of Frazer, Akra using it for a Steam Train Driving day or us both having dinner for two on the Orient Express…

Wow.

TV *isn’t* considered the root of all evil… for this week anyway:

Watching TV ‘aids child speech’.

Now, I just want a study on how feeding your child MacDonalds as they’re growing up helps them to get better grades at A-level, and I’ll be laughing…

… you know the one in pregnancy you’re supposed to get where you’ve got loads of energy and able to organise everything efficiently? Well, I seem to be in the exhausted, fat, waddling last stages and I’m SO disorganised it’s unbelievable.

I tried packing my hospital bags over the weekend, and decided there was so much I couldn’t put in until the last minute that there wasn’t any point so gave up. I’ve done a draft birth plan, but quite frankly, my mood at the moment is “just get it out any way you want to: induction, caesarian, dragged out by the ankles…. whatever, I just WANT IT OUT NOW!” so I’m pretty much prepared to scratch out everything I’ve written. Plus, I’ve collected so many medical conditions along the way, that I’m really not able to insist on anything – just got to go with their guidance on the day depending on how well the baby is responding.

I’m sure there’s other “stuff” I need for baby’s room, but I can’t engage brain properly to work out what’s been missed – I’m sure whatever it is can wait until after the baby is here. I know I need a rain cover for the pram – sods law means it’ll be the wettest summer on record if I don’t get one. If we get a heatwave, I got one in time, okay?

I was so efficient the first time around. What happened this time?!

For my UK readers: Tesco have got a really good deal on plastic picnicware at the moment. I popped in this afternoon randomly, as you do, on the hope for a few remaining cut price easter eggs (no joy) and found these:

I got:

one large oval platter – 67p
one salad server bowl – 67p
a set of 4 tumblers – 67p
a set of 4 plates – 67p
a set of 4 bowls – 67p
a set of cutlery (4 forks, 4 knives, 4 spoons) – 67p

Very, very good value. Great for barbecue season or just generally when toddlers are about (or clutzy mummies like me!) and you don’t want anything breakable within reach. Available in pink, purple or blue. Dishwasher proof (top rack only).

I don’t know what sort of stocks they’ve got available, but they were going pretty fast when I was there (and I got the last full set of purple that had been put out today as they seemed to have sparse supplies of the cutlery), so I’d advise not leaving it too long…

… and no, I don’t have shares in Tesco!

Well, I was unhappy with my earlier cheat, so have redone Question 10. That means I have officially finished the The Photographic Interview! My completed entry can be found here.

It’s been eleven days since Akra Jr came out with the first chickenpox spots, and I’m finding it harder and harder to stay positive about my chances of avoidance. Probably not helped by the fact that at the moment I have a splitting headache and feel slightly under the weather – precursor to illness?

It’s hard not to let the paranoia have full reign. I have given up googling, simply because the stats of what might happen to me/baby if I do get it are, quite frankly, bloody scary. The medical profession don’t seem to be much more reassuring, with lots of clinical talk of “balance of risks” between the chickenpox and the OC (with the chickenpox, it’s best that the baby is born as late as possible, with OC it’s best that the baby is born as early as possible). What they forget is the emotional implications that it’s MY BABY’S LIFE they are talking about risking.

Moral of the tale: if you have kids, particularly daughters, do EVERYTHING in your power to make sure that they catch chickenpox before they are 12 years old.

Can I just get this baby out please?! Fed up of being pregnant…

With back to nursery date still seemingly a long way off, Akra Jr still confined while he and I might be contagious and flushed with success on choosing Ice Age as our main distraction tool, we popped out this morning and got Finding Nemo (well it was getting to the point that I could recite all the lines of the first film).

Not such a big success. Finding Nemo is actually pretty scary for a nervy almost 3 year old. Near death seems to be a permanent state for most of the characters most of the time, half way through he was begging for “the mammoth film” to be put back on. We perservered though (I wanted him to see that it had a happy ending to reassure him) and he did ask to see it again later in the day.

Also, what is it about children’s cartoons and the mother dying early on?! Do animators have mother issues?! Sheesh, not that I’m getting a complex or anything…

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
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Via Abraca-Pocus!