Parents evenings

It's that time of year again - parents evenings!

Ryan's was during one of the days that I work so I couldn't go, but Pete said it went well. He's falling behind with his PE theory, which although he loves the actual sport side of the lessons it does make sense. It's science based and that isn't his strong point. He's gone to London for a business skills thing today, only certain students were picked for it a few weeks ago, so that's quite good.

Taylor's last night was excellent, he's been picked by an artist working with the school to go on the gifted and talented register. We are really pleased for him. His other stuff is all on target too, but she wants him to read more fiction. He's usually got his nose stuck in a biography, so we need to steer him away from that slightly.

Isobel starts school in exactly 8 weeks time, and I've been worried about her joining an established class of older children, so I've been concentrating on getting her to write and we've got somewhere with that. She can write her name now with no help at all, and I got her to do the whole family with me calling out the letters, even Baby Kit. She needs help with Y and K though, so I helped!


I'm supposed to be doing my assessment for my course, it's due today, so I'd best get on with that and stop procrastinating.

*bangs head*

I just can't take the mess in this house anymore. I want to firebomb it. I have been at this point many, many times before. I usually get over it and carry on with the relentless cleaning, but I'm starting to feel like I can't physically carry on.

We've just had the week from hell where our kitchen drains had blocked so I had no sink to wash up in and no washing machine. Pete was my knight in shining armour, bless him, and managed to fix it yesterday. I now have 20 loads of laundry to do to catch up, and it's raining outside so I can't get it dry. We have no clean uniforms for school tomorrow.

The boys do nothing. I can barely get them to put their dirty dinner plates in the kitchen, let alone actually help. People spill things on the floor and either leave them, or think putting a bit of a squirt of a spray on it will do. So it builds up to the point where I need to spend 5 hours on my hands and knees with the carpet cleaning machine scrubbing, which is what I'll be doing tomorrow when I should be writing a 1200 word assignment due on Thursday. Socks get left all over the floor, and I can no longer bend over to pick them up. I can't get the hoover upstairs on my own any more, so haven't bothered in about 10 weeks. No-one has noticed.

I am very tempted to call in sick at work as I just feel overwhelmed with it all, and just want to stay in bed, but two other people are off sick, so as usual I'll just have to carry on regardless.

Scan

I thought it was about time I scanned this and put it up here. I know a lot of people can't make head nor tail of these things, but they are like those magic eye pictures - once you 'get it', it's obvious. The picture is a profile shot, so you can see the outline of the nose, lips and forehead, lit up with a white line. So, there he is. We have a name picked out, have for a while, and there are no other contenders so this is the one...Christian. We'll be shortening it to Kit as my Dad is a Chris and I can't deal with two in the close family.

I'm not used to feeling so settled with a name. Taylor was nameless for almost a week, and with Isobel we were armed with a list of names just in case Isobel didn't fit her, but this is the only name that seems right this time. It's his name, and that's that. It haunted my every waking thought for about two weeks before I mentioned it to Pete, and he loved it too, and that was it settled. It feels bizarre being so certain.

I've been very busy this week, starting to move bedrooms around. I started by clearing out the wardrobes and moving them around earlier this week, and today the kids have swapped rooms. The bedroom situation here has been terrible for ages, really bad. When Ryan moved in 3 years ago he started off sharing a room with Taylor, but as time has gone on he has basically pushed Taylor out of the room. He plays Xbox live really late, and moans at Taylor for snoring. The poor little guy has been sleeping on the sofa for the last 6 months.

After Christmas we are building an extra room downstairs for Ryan by cutting our lounge in half as it's huge, but until then I've moved Ryan into Isobel's small box room, and Isobel is now sharing with Taylor. She's such a good girl, it didn't faze her at all and she's gone straight to sleep. On Sunday we will be swapping our large bedroom with their medium sized one, and splitting it in two with a room divider to give them some private space each. Once the new downstairs room is built in 2009 Ryan will go down there and the baby will be going into Ryan's box room. Eventually, once our new little boy is sleeping through the night, he can share the big divided room with Isobel, and Taylor can move into the box room on his own as he'll be getting older. Whew! Confusing, and a lot of work still to be done.

Just as we thought.

Yes, it's official, I am now permanently outnumbered in this house. :)

Isobel was at the scan with us and has been pretty desperate for a sister, even though I've tried to prepare her for a brother, so her little face dropped when the sonagrapher told us. She was still adamant that it was a girl for a few minutes, but once she realised that she'd be getting a gift from the baby, and giving one to him one in return, she changed her tune. Typical girl! She ran into school yesterday afternoon telling everyone about her brother, and is now saying "he" instead of "baby", so I guess it's sunk in.

Isobel said she wanted to announce it to the boys when they get home from school, and they were excited when they found out. Ryan jumped up in the air and shouted "Yes!" when we told him. He has three half sisters, so to him it was about time for a brother.

I can't wait to have a little boy again, they are so cuddly and loving.

I've been sorting some baby clothes tonight(yes, I am a hoarder), and I was planning on giving the bags and bags of girl clothes to a friend of a friend, but I just heard she's having a boy too. Somebody needs to get pregnant with a girl, quick. There are bundles of baby clothes on offer! I hate selling on Ebay, and really want to give them to someone I know so don't want to Freecycle them. I thought I'd gifted out all my nice boy clothes, but it looks like my friend Angela gave them all back to me because they all seem to be here. Baby clothes are a vice of mine, I go a bit mad in the sales each year and refuse to throw them away, so I have oodles of boy clothes too.

Here's to another 18 years of muddy football boots, washing kits, and standing in the pouring rain!

Anticipation

Last Christmas, I bought Pete one of those experience day type things, but seeing as he works every hour that god sends he hadn't had a chance to use it yet. We booked it about a month ago, and a hotel to make a night of it, then set off early on Friday morning. Pete got to drive the love of his life, a Porsche, around a race track. He was like a little child, hopping from foot to foot with excitement. Unfortunately, even though Pete had booked the whole weekend off, he ended up having to go in to work on Saturday, so we were up at the crack of dawn and on our way home from Market Harborough by 8.30am. We did get to have a nice Italian meal the night before though.







I have my scan tomorrow, I'm almost 22 weeks so it's a little later than normal, but it still marks the halfway point. I'm incredibly excited to find out what flavour we have in there, but I'm worried that something will be wrong with the baby too. I try to not think too much about it.

I've been really missing my Nan tonight too. I would've been straight on the phone to her tomorrow, telling her our news. She was always the first to know about anything. If it's another girl, it'll have Joyce as a middle name to honour my Mum and Nan, as it is/was their middle name too. I want to be able to tell her that.
Looking at this photo of her, it's like she's still here. She hasn't gone at all. I can still call her tomorrow and hear how excited she is to have another new baby in the family. She really loved her great grandchildren.
There have been times in the past two years when I have called her number, before I've realised what I'm doing, and quickly hung up. I can't decide if I hang up through embarrassment, in case someone else now has her number, or whether it is fear. Am I going to hear her voice at the other end?