The Five Days of Christmas

OK, this is my first attempt at posting on here, so I apologise now in case it all goes horribly wrong or if I ramble on for ages, which, unfortunately, is likely.

We're back in Liverpool now after spending Monday to Friday in South Shields visiting family for the festive period. As usual, we got up at some ridiculous hour on Christmas day to prepare ourselves for the long drive to the North East. In previous years this hasn't really bothered me, but this is the first year I have been pregnant and I discovered to my dismay that getting up at 5:30am, after trying in vain to get into a comfortable sleeping position all night, is not a pleasant experience. Still, I was remarkably chipper for only having 2 hours sleep at most and was up and dressed before Graeme had even got out of bed. It was NOT because I was excited about Christmas - I am far too old for that ;o)

After my fantastic start to the day, things started to go a little downhill for me. I couldn't stomach the slice of toast Graeme lovingly prepared for my breakfast and decided to hold off and have a cereal bar en route. Decision made, I went to brush my teeth and promptly emptied my stomach contents, such as they were, into the sink. Twice. And they say morning sickness is only supposed to last for the first trimester. Liars.

After pulling myself together, forcing the cats into their travel box and loading the car, we were ready for the off. As usual, Xena became very stressed and cried for the first hour while Max took to travelling like a duck to water and just seemed hacked off that Xena was ruining the peace and quiet. The journey this year was slightly more stressful for me too, as being pregnant and travelling really don't mix and I spent much of the journey being sick. (Luckily, I'd planned ahead and brought a bucket!) It brought back great memories of being a kid I can tell you...

Once back in South Shields our first stop was Graeme's parents' house, where Graeme's brother Paul and his girlfriend Becky were also staying. Max and Xena were to stay here for the week, while Graeme and I stayed with my parents. The cats seemed quite happy with their temporary lodgings apart from having to share them with Oscar, the resident dog. Despite Oscar's numerous attempts at making friends, Xena was intent on removing one of Oscar's eyes if he got too close. Max, as usual, didn't seem to care.

After exchanging gifts (I have to say, I did quite well this year!) it was time to hotfoot it to my parents' house to say hello and do the gift thing all over again! Everyone seemed pleased with their presents (Baby T will pass comment on his gifts once he's actually arrived...) and it was lovely to see my family, especially with it being Christmas. We had Christmas lunch with Graeme's parents this year and, since it was Christmas, I had half a glass of wine with my meal (I am sure Baby T will understand). Graeme and I followed our usual routine and went to see my Granda, before heading to Graeme's Aunty Val's for tea (I love going there - we get very well-fed!).

As usual, the day went by far too quickly and before I knew it, I'd collapsed into bed - my lack of sleep had finally caught up with me. I knew no more until 9am Boxing Day, the first time in months that I'd slept through the night. We decided to have a wander around the shops to check out the sales, but were disappointed that not many places were open. We managed to pick up a few bits and pieces for Baby, but it fell far short of the spree I'd been hoping for. Ever since finding out that we were having a boy, I'd been itching to stock up on clothes for him after previously being limited to unisex babygros and sleepsuits!

We had the traditional "Thornton Boxing Day Curry" at Graeme's parents', which was followed by some drunken tomfoolery on Singstar courtesy of Graeme's Dad, who seemed most upset that not everyone shared his enthusiasm for impromtu singing. And while some chose to join in the fun and have a laugh at his expense, I hid in the kitchen to drown out the din ;o)

I finally managed to hit the sales on the 27th. Well, I hit the Next sale and made my way straight to the boys clothes! There seemed precious little point in getting anything for me as my belly won't fit in them in a couple of weeks anyway. I have to say I went a bit mad and everything that I liked I picked up and clung to for dear life, lest someone else would see what a bargain I had found. It was only when my arms began to struggle with the weight of my haul that I made my way to the till. I didn't think I'd picked up that much until the cashier gasped with shock when I dumped it all on the counter. Despite filling two large carrier bags and having enough clothing to get Baby through his first nine months of life, I only spent £67. Bargain!

I assaulted the shops several more times over the next couple of days and eventually had to promise everyone that I wouldn't buy any more baby clothes. Both sets of Baby's grandparents have bought a few bits and pieces too, including bedding and the baby bath, so with 5 months still to go we've got more or less everything we need, except somewhere to keep it all!

Before we knew it, the week was over and it was time to head back to Liverpool. We were then faced with the quite scary task of fitting everything in our rather compact Ford Fiesta. We'd received lots of Christmas gifts, done an awful lot of shopping, had to take the cats back and still find room in the car for me! It took a while, but everything did eventually fit even if I didn't have much breathing room. It occurred to us that, once Baby comes along, travelling home for Christmas is going to be nigh on impossible unless we have a bigger car to transport all of the additional baby paraphernalia we'll need. Maybe Santa will bring us an S-Max next year...

Lisa xxx

New Gallery Up And Running!

After messing around with server settings and other random guff which i don't claim to understand, i've finally managed to get the new gallery system working. Keeping with the "use lovely off-the-shelf packages" idea that made me use blogger for this website, i've used an open source package called "Gallery".

It's all set up and ready to go, so you can either click on the Gallery link in the sidebar to your right, or you can just use this handy link here: The Gallery.

The blogger setup is brilliant for creating very simple websites who's only real function is to display these posts. If you want to have "content-pages" where you can view or download different files, it's not that great. I can upload stuff onto the webserver, then create posts which provide links to those files, but it's hardly an easy way of indexing and accessing that data.

In the end, i decided that i'd just split the site into 2 sections, both using software written specifically for their own purposes. So the main site will be a blogger driven "diary" style website, and all pictures and files will be hosted in the gallery section of the site. The only real problem with this is that the graphical style of the two sections is different, but the alternative is generating the site by hand, and i've been down that road... it had a big dead cow lying in the middle of it!!!

Merry Christmas!

Ho Ho Ho.. etc.

The Great 20 Week Scan

Last tuesday morning, we went for our 20 week anomaly scan at the Liverpool Women's Hospital. Compared to some of the hospitals i've found myself in over the past few months, it's definately the cleanest and nicest looking one, if it exudes a air of anti-man about it. I guess it's normal for place dedicated to looking after woman, but i definately tend to feel like an intruder when i'm in there.

Anyway, we had an ultrasound done, and I got to spend 5 minutes watching the midwife prodding and probing Lisa, and watching the little baby on the screen. The midwife did all her normal 20 week anomaly checks and measurements, and we came out with a clean bill of health. Everything was there that was supposed to be, and it all looked the right size and shape. We also managed to get a sneaky peak at it's nether regions, and immediately, the creature formally known as 'it' became 'him'. We were never that bothered about what the gender actually was, but the most important thing was that it was healthy.

Then came a bit of sitting around, waiting to see the doctor, who told us that Lisa seemed fit and healthy, and nothing strange was found on any of the scans, so we would be classified as a 'low risk' pregnancy, and most of our care would be given by the community midwife at our GP surgery.

So all in all, a successful day, and another chance to feel all happy after watching our soon-to-be offspring wriggling round and making a nusiance of himself :)

Check out the gallery for all our ultrasound scan images

The blog has arrived!

Well, i've had my own website for several years now, and as far as generating meaninful content is concerned, it's been a bit of a damp squib. I would spend many a night piddling around with DreamWeaver, trying to get it to look right, and then be so fed up with it, that i would immediately lose any enthusiasm to populate it with content.

So tonight, it occured to me that i should just bite the bullet and use one of the off the shelf packages to generate the site, and just concentrate on actually putting things on it. So here you are, the first version of my blogger based website.

Now i have to come to terms with the fact that i probably don't have anything interesting to put on here... but that's a problem for another day!