Water Baby

Tom has a new bath toy which i bought for him yesterday, a great big blue slide thing that attaches to the sides of the bath. he has been having great fun putting anything and everything down it, but as of yet has not got the hang of putting water in it yet. therefore they tend to get stuck halfway down the slide, resulting in grunts of annoyance!

Also took him swimming on Friday, that was quite funny as he clamped his arms round my neck and would not let me put him down the whole time. strangely enough i took him when he 4 months old and he loved it. there was a really nice woman who let us use her inflatable baby seat thing, (you know the ones the rubber rings with a seat in the middle that u put small babies in) and he seemed relatively calm in that. me and the girls have all decided to go once a fortnight as tom wasn't the only baby seemingly terrified of the water, to get them used to it and as a form of exercise for us. luckily one of us has a little girl who is 2 so she had her hands free most of the time to help everyone else, this will of course be invaluable when Ellen arrives! i hope to break toms phobia of water soon because the thought of holding 2 babies and trying to stay afloat is not terribly appealing!

Tom had his dietitian appointment yesterday, the woman said it was obvious i new what i was doing, and that as long as i was happy with his weight gain and diet she was happy to discharge him. which of course i was brimming with pride about lol! he weighs just 19lb 6oz, but that puts him on the 25th percentile almost which is good enough for me as he has followed that line fairly consistently so i know he is gaining the right amounts.

went bra shopping yesterday too, hurrah! Marks and Spencer finally have maternity bras that don't look like something your nan would wear! its amazing that a good bra makes all the difference, my boobs didn't ache like they had been and they were up on my chest instead of resting on Ellen's head! they were pricey for what i would usually pay for a bra, but i didn't have alot of choice.
well that's it for now speak again soon!

My Super Sister

Laura got the call back for the Brit school workshops today. basically she is one step closer to getting into the secondary school she wishes to attend. I'm very impressed, not being very musical or particularly talented at drama i have always admired how easy it seems to come to Laura. not that I'm saying it is easy, just that she sings and acts like she was born to do it.
i am very proud of her, and am thinking of her in my prayers that she gets through the next lot just as easily. And why wouldn't she? they'd be stupid not to take her, when shes rich and famous they'll be kicking themselves. right well now I've finished blowing her trumpet I'm off again.. just wanted to share the news!

night xx

Tom

Testing phone blogging

...and Bingo was his name-o!

Michael mum gave us a toy of Jacques that is kind of a cot toy/baby walker thing. Its a dog that clips onto the cot for the first 10 months, and then you can fold it out so that its a walk-along type toy. It sings "Bingo" and lights up when you press its collar, hence the title! well anyway Thomas uses it to zip up and down the living room, which I've had to move the furniture around so that he can get the full length of!
the first time he really got the hang of it was at my parents house, i think because they have carpet, and we spent most of the evening standing at either end of the room catching him as he went flying into various pieces of furniture in his excitement! its amazing how fast he is growing up, it seemed like just yesterday that i was amazed he could smile and roll over! I'm really looking forward to doing it all over again with Ellen, and seeing how much difference there really is between the way boys and girls learn things.
sometimes i do wish Thomas wasn't quite as smart as he is, finding new places to hide things that are dangerous or unsuitable for him to play with is proving difficult. this week he discovered that if he stands on small things he can reach taller things, and with the inch hes grown in height over the last few weeks I'm finding that certain tables, windows sills and shelves are no longer out of his grasp. I've taken to hiding things upstairs or onto of the kitchen cupboards.. which of course is making my life harder the bigger i get as the stairs are killing me, and reaching up hurts my back.
on a brighter note my hips have stopped hurting so much, which has coincided with the spell of warmer weather we are having. so I'm hoping that the closer we get to the summer the less pain and discomfort I will be in. now that we have passed the major milestones (12 weeks, nucal scan, 23 week scan, first kick etc) the time is starting to drag. having Christmas, the wedding and several family birthdays probably helped keep me busy and stopped me thinking about how much time is left. there is only 14 weeks left to go i know, I'm just really looking forward to meeting my little girl!
Due to this dry spell of things to do i have started getting the house organised, and making my infamous lists of things to do and get for the upcoming birth. there is still a fair amount of things to do, but we have enough time so I'm trying not to worry!

New Pictures (Gallery Post)

here is a small collection of photos taken in the last few months to show how much tom has changed...

Two Teeth and Two Steps in one day

We have discovered the cause of the nappy rash and grumpyness.

Tom has another 2 teeth cutting. that makes a total of four teeth all cutting at once, two at the top and two at the bottom. they are taking their sweet time too, only part of the way through and hurting him so much its waking him in the night bless him. as soon as they are visible enough i will post a picture, he looks so cute at the moment.
today we also had 2 whole steps! i was sitting in the middle of the room and tom casually stepped out towards me. shocked the hell out of me i can tell you!
Micheal is obviously miffed he missed it, but as i pointed out tom wont do it again for me, so was prob just a fluke. (that doesnt stop me from trying to get him to do it over and over again hee hee)
going to my mums tomorrow, dad has offered to give me a lift as my hips just arnt up to the public transport (just one more wonderful pregnancy side effect) its lauras birthday so will be singing to her if shes not careful! glad to get out of the house to be honest, frustrating being stuck in due to lack of money and sore hips!

well im off to bed, night night x

The ball is round, watch it roll!!

hello to all.

been a few days i know, been feeling rather under the weather. doc says its due to my anaemia which i should have been taking iron tablets for but haven't (naughty girl!)
been napping during the day, and crashing out on public transport, but only 3 tablets into the pack of iron i have really noticed a difference. So hopefully i will be right as rain in a few days, and am house bound till Tuesday to recover.

tom crashed out at 4.30 this evening and still hasn't woken up which means i am prob going to up with him all night now, but his teeth are giving him so much jip i just don't have the heart to wake him now he seems comfortable.

he woke at 6.30, played for an hour had a bath and some milk and has settled down again (with some encouragement)
seems to have developed a cough, i think he might be coming down with something, which would explain the sleepiness. poor mite, hes not had a cough before and seems quite shocked each time it starts. it would be funny if he didn't look so pitiful.

yesterday tom worked out how to get the plastic balls in his funfair toy (a slide and mini Ferris wheel that has balls with faces that go in the wheel cradles and down the slide) to go in the top and down the slide. it was so entertaining to watch as he would clap his hands each time it went down the slide and out the bottom. today however he worked out that if he put the ball halfway down the slide instead of the top it came out the bottom much quicker. the first time he did it he was so surprised to get the same end result from two (seemingly) different events that he just sat there and looked at the ball for ages. then he spent 2 hours, yes 2 HOURS, putting it first in the top then halfway down, then back to the top. its was fascinating to watch how impressed he was with the slide, when he hasn't shown alot of interest in it before now despite several attempts from me and Michael to show him what it does. He also had fun putting two balls down one after the other and catching the first one before the second one caught his fingers at the bottom. this frustrated him as he kept dropping one to catch the other and vice versa. so back to the game of top and bottom. LMAO!

On another topic we have had our referral letter for the dietitian, which is good as he keeps getting bouts of diareeah and we cant work out which foods it is setting him off. funnily enough Michael is also being referred due to suspected IBS. to be honest i don't mind what foods they cant eat, it would just be nice to know which ones to avoid, especially as poor tom has terrible nappy rash at the moment, which I'm please to say that a switch in nappy type is actually helping (when i didn't think it would) seems a better fitting nappy is helping keep the moisture away from his skin. that's one thing i love about knowing other mums, the suggestions that you never thought would work sometimes actually do!

right well this has been a dreadfully long entry, however i hope i haven't bored you rigid!

night night xx

The Big Switch..

"Whats in a name?"

well a lot it seems. its funny i never really thought about it but there is so much involved in changing your name. I've got to change my bank account, email, passport, drivers license. and on top of that there's the council housing list, housing benefit list, water, gas, electricity, council tax, telephone line. I'm not sure that that's all of them yet! however i am getting there, the tricky thing is getting them all done at the right time. for instance cheques issued by housing benefit need to be in the right name at the same time as the bank has been changed, and that's proving hard because the bank want the original marriage certificate sent to them before they will change it, and so do housing benefit... lol.

incidentally my email from the 24th of Feb will be natalie.odwyer@hotmail.co.uk.

starting to gear up for the impending birth of our little girl, saving to buy the pushchair, going through which clothes of toms are saveable and unisex enough, whilst selling the rest.
Am looking forward to Ellen's arrival, i know its going to be hard work, but if others can do it so can i. tom however is showing absolutely no interest in walking at the moment, or even standing alone, so we have decided we really are going to have to get a double pushchair, because even of he is walking a little, he wont be up to walking any sort of long distance.

time will tell i suppose.

id better get of here because Ellen is protesting to having a laptop rested on her head (bad mummy) and is kicking me mercilessly...

night night xx

I'm a married woman now!

Well its all over! the day went reasonably well, there were a few last minute emergencies but nothing went hugely wrong.

The day started off fairly well, sue did my hair and then headed off with mum to the reception to organise the food. i did my makeup, nails and got dressed, and we were running pretty much on time when we left the house. but the traffic was terrible! it took us half an hour to get to the registry office instead of the ten minutes it should have done. then it took ages for dad to get parked. they nearly cancelled the whole wedding! however dad rounded the corner just in time to give me away, and the ceremony was beautiful.

mum came down with a virus the day before the wedding, and couldn't help sue with the food, so sue was left to make a buffet for 50 people on her own! but she managed it and the spread was pretty amazing, i must say i was impressed! here's a picture to show you just how much there was there. prawn rings, sandwiches, sausages and sausage rolls, cheese and pineapple on sticks, boiled eggs, gosh you name it she made it! everyone commented on how good the food looked and tasted, and i ate quite a bit of it myself!

everyone got on well, and we all went home fairly early as we were knackered!

more pictures will follow, however i only have a few taken with my mobile phone at the minute, my relatives haves promised to email others that they took with their cameras and i believe there is a video floating around somewhere.

im off to bed just thought i would update you all on the goings on, im too tired to write a very long post.

night night xx

Night before the Night before...

well its the wedding the day after tomorrow, and things here are a little hectic... however good news is that my dress came up wonderfully and i will now look like a frilly blamonge... yay!
i cant wait to get married, its going to be nice to say "my husband" instead of my partner. cleaned the wedding bands up and they look good as new, still need to take in Thomas' waistcoat cos he's so darned skinny, but i am just looking forward to the day now.
will be posting some photos hopefully Sunday, but depends on how well the ones on Michael's phone will come out as my dad will have the proper pictures as its his digital camera, so we wont have them straight away.

thats it for now just a quickie my back is killing me so need to go lie down..

nightie night! x x