Less than a week to go...

...until we find out if we are team Blue or team Pink.

14w+ still a tiny cute bump...

HOW DID THIS APPEAR
IN UNDER A FORTNIGHT?!

From my weekly pregnancy email: "You may be gaining weight rapidly at this point..." NO SHIT! Have you seen the size of me?! And I'm constantly hungry, but craving acidic foods... orange juice and pickled onions. The hell?!

Breakfast is going to be cheese and pickled onions on crackers. It's what I had as a late night snack last night, too. And lunch yesterday. I drank just under 2L of (mulled) orange juice yesterday, got another 2L on the go today. It's a litre of pure orange juice cut with a litre of no added sugar squash and whacked in the slow cooker on low/warm with the mulled spice bags. Lovely, warm, and perfect in this weather.

The cycling challenge I started earlier in the year is drawing to a close, the complication being I can't do much at a time as it causes some considerable discomfort, and then when I do have the time, there is a small boy to pick up after, laundry and dishes to do, dinner to make and hey I need to eat and sleep, too! I underestimated the time needed by about 7 months! In future I will learn to do my fundraising in a more realistic way.

I will start making more Unloveables in the new year until I have a decent amount of stock, and if there's little interest online I will see if there is a local store who will foster them prior to them finding new homes.

I've also been tasked with making a Norwegian style jumper for a friend... this is gonna be mega. I've only made baby-sized jumpers before and never made in the round... so this will be quite the accomplishment once I'm done.

In addition to that, I've blankets to make for Project Linus (limiting myself to finishing the two I've already started), and also the Minion - so my resolution for 2014 is to take on no more than I already have on my plate!

That's all for now, folks... take care.

I could kill for a chicken doner bursa RIGHT NOW.

Like the Napoli in Lossiemouth used to do. I miss those.

Anyway, Xmas is coming up fast, money is tight, I'm cooking my very first family Xmas meal (for the three of us) which will be interesting as we have but a single small oven and not that many trays/dishes/receptacles to cook with that will all fit in at once. So in the back of my mind (it's why I look spaced these days) I'm trying to figure out what I'm cooking, when, how, in what order and on what day so that everything is cooked and heated through by Xmas Eve dinnertime.

This is also the first year that "Xmas is for the kids" has really started to stick, too. Friends of ours who would rather we get something small for the kids and nothing for them - it's not just austerity, it's practicality. And I'm sat here thinking... there was nothing on my Xmas list that was selfishly for me apart from a couple of DVDs (which I'll need to have when I can't sleep in 3rd tri or am breastfeeding late at night/early in the morning and need to somehow remain conscious throughout the process). I had bedding, a frying pan, some other inconsequential shit... and it brings to sharp relief the utter CRAP I felt I had to possess when I was a child/teenager, and to a certain extent a young adult. You don't NEED crap, you need family and friends and a sense of self-worth and purpose. Assuming you have a roof over your head and food in the fridge, the rest of that should be enough to make you happy. You don't need gadgets and gizmo's and excessive quantities of clothing or whatever. 

So just take a step back from the materialistic side of things and concentrate on who makes you happy.

Toddler news: he's sleeping in a big bed now, a single mattress on the floor. He likes being able to get on and off it himself and enjoys the room to move around.

Baby news: Down's risk has been assessed as 1 in 20601 (which is awesome) and I've started to feel slight movements already <3 15 weeks and change.

BABY!

Minion is measuring bang on schedule, SO DAMN HAPPY I was so afraid we'd had a MMC (missed miscarriage) because I've been having such an easy time of it recently. This was a huge reassurance. Heart going well, leggies wriggling, squiggly baby.

ALL GOOD!