T Minus Two Months (give or take)

I am 32 weeks along with 8 weeks to go. If December goes half as quickly as November, tomorrow will be Christmas and I'll be on maternity leave with my feet up. I don't mind telling you that the putting up of feet couldn't happen to a nicer woman.

We've had three (of five) pre-natal (I can't distinguish between anti-natal and ante-natal so I'm sticking to pre-natal) classes covering a tour of the pre/post-labour and labour wards and an overview of what sorts of things commonly go "wrong" and how they're handled, and an introduction to the advantages of breast feeding. It is illegal in Scotland to interfere with a woman breastfeeding in public, which includes cafés and other such public-access places, so they're taking the incentive to breast feed quite (US sense) seriously. My first pre-natal physiotherapy class was last week with my second (of four) tomorrow morning, and so far we've covered an introduction to pelvic floor exercises which I finally figured out aren't floor exercises for the pelvis but rather a collective euphemism for the vagina and anus. It only took 7 months and finally hearing someone say "exercises for the pelvic floor" to figure that one out. I am rapidly losing patience with all euphemisms. This week I think we're supposed to start on labour positions. I also, this morning, had an introductory meeting with the health visitor who takes over after the midwife is done between the first and second weeks after delivery and will "look after" our little family in conjunction with the GP until Little Djinn starts school.

I've developed an exciting new pregnancy symptom: Charlie Horses. I've had, periodically, really mild cramps in the backs of my calves during the day, the kind that I'm aware are a cramp but don't hurt at all and aren't really worth even stretching out. Starting this past weekend I've been getting the real thing in the middle of the night, painful cramps usually in both legs that require stretching. One night it was just the right leg but so painful I almost cried out and it ached for another almost 24 hours. On the plus side my heartburn, while still present, has reduced a lot so at least I'm not dealing with both at the same time. Pregnancy, the condition that keeps on giving.

Thanksgiving was last week, which as an ex-pat can be a bit of a downer, but we had three friends (two Americans and an Englishman) fly up from London and spent the weekend with us. Our usual feast (turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, potatoes, green bean casserole, and we bought stuffing and rolls this year as we haven't found a recipe for either that we like, plus whisky glazed carrots) easily stretched to fill twice as many tummies though only a few shreds of turkey survived the weekend. We went out to dinner on Friday, feasted and played card games on Saturday and consumed leftovers and played more card games on Sunday before sending everyone back whence they came. I really enjoyed the company and getting to play games, though Chris, my little introvert, had burned out by Sunday and he and the cats stayed upstairs all day. I think we'll be instituting a "two guests per weekend(month?)" policy going forward.

I have knitting updates, but my my husband has finished work for the day and dinner is ready.

Things are Starting to Come Together

We got a lot done on Saturday. We wandered around looking for a dresser for Little Djinn, both in charity shops and furniture stores, but didn't find anything we agreed on. I liked a squat one we saw in a charity shop but Chris thought it was meh and he liked an almost £400 one in a furniture store, but I'm not willing to spend that kind of money on something that will get treated the way children treat their furniture. So we're still looking. We then went to the curtain place that did the curtains in our bedroom and my FiL's place and made an appointment to get fitted for blackout blinds, both in our room and the nursery. He came around on Monday to take measurements but wasn't able to bring the book of blinds with him as they were being viewed by another customer, so we still need to pick those and curtains for the nursery.

We went to the post office in Tesco's Inshes to pick up the package we missed Friday, which turned out to be from Miss Laura and full of gifts for Little Djinn, including a blanket knit by her mother. Laura also sent us a little stuffed lamb which was on our baby registry which was particularly impressive given that the posting date was before we created the registry. I've always know that Miss Laura has impeccable taste.

We also swung by the new mega craft store in Inshes, though "mega" is a relative term. Certainly larger than anything comparable in the area, though it would be a bit small for a Michael's. I got some sock yarn for Christmas-gift socks (not for anyone who reads this, but one never knows) and some cotton yarn to try and crochet some snowflakes. The secret to happiness here is going to have to be low expectations as the only thing I am less confident in than my crochet abilities is my ability to follow a pattern using UK, and thus different from US, crochet terminology. If only it wasn't the same terms for different "stitches"....

On Sunday we cleaned the house a bit before going to my FiL's for tea (the beverage). He tried to call to tell us not to come as he had a cold, but we'd already left when he rang as I needed to be at work after the shop closed to help prep the shop for a corporate visit which should have happened this morning. My manager was freaking out about getting ready and the only real comfort I could offer was that, given the number of shops they planned to visit in one day, they couldn't possibly stay long. Their plan was to come up Wednesday, visit our shop from 8-10, and be in Aberdeen by lunchtime. Everyone who lives in, and probably most people who have visited, the highlands hears this and blinks. They clearly have no idea the actual distances and travel times involved. Hopefully they'll consider shipping product based on distance it has to travel weighed as a slightly higher factor against volume of the destination store. Promotional material that arrives the day before or day of an event is slightly less useful than one might imagine. Hopefully it went well and my manager can enjoy a highly-deserved virgin cocktail or five (like me, though for different reasons, the poor woman isn't allowed a drink) when she gets home.

On Monday, Chris and I had our first ante-natal class which was mildly irritating in a "why are we using all these silly euphemisms for a straightforward biological event?" kind of way. I'm going to take it on faith that the midwife leading the class (she's not a "community midwife", eg one who might actually be assisting in my labour) did pass courses on anatomy and physiology and is merely operating under the impression that we all failed basic biology. But we got a tour of the post-natal ward where we'll be after Little Djinn arrives, until we're ready to go home. The midwife assured as that being discharged 6 hours after delivery is not SOP here, and that three days is much more common at which I blanched. Three days stuck in a hospital, twiddling my thumbs? Fortunately the recovery ward's own material suggests one day before discharge which seems perfect for learning to nurse and a few supervised diaper changes before returning to the solace of one's own bed and partner.

One of the ladies in my Tuesday night knitting group is also pregnant, a few weeks further along than I am, and her ante-natal class started on Wednesday. The classes normally start around 32 weeks, but they're trying to squeeze us all in before Christmas, so I'm getting an early start.

Speaking of early, they called to cancel my ultra-sound appointment for next week, the one I was so excited about (and impressed to have gotten an appointment notification a month in advance). Apparently it was scheduled in error and they'll send me another letter to reschedule for the week before Christmas. Sadness. Chris suggested we could make private appointment to have an ultrasound anyway, but as much as I love getting to see Little Djinn, I'm not convinced it would be worth it. I'm a lot more used to being poor than he is.

That's the life of a pregnant woman. I'll be 31 weeks tomorrow, with 9 weeks left to go. I didn't take a picture this week, so you'll just have to take my word for it that I continue to look rotund. I'm starting to be exhausted all the time: yesterday I was ready to crawl back in bed half an hour after I got up and I'd actually slept through the night for once. I finished the center panel for the baby blanket I'm knitting for Little Djinn, picked up one of the side panels, and am working my way through the first lace chart (though it's so tiny, I'm using the written directions instead. My kingdom for a photocopier). I also took a picture of the purple blanket I knit way back whenever, blocked and displayed on the bassinet (Moses basket) in the nursery.

30 Weeks Down, 10 to Go

Picture taken sometime in the last week so not quite 30 weeks there. I have tiny tiny stretch marks, but they're extensions of the existing, faded, ones so I'm not worried. I don't want a batch of stretch marks in new places, but adding to the ones I have isn't what one could call a problem. I am thinking of removing my belly ring, though. I bought one of the flexible, plastic ones which I've been wearing since my 12 week scan (the plastic doesn't interfere with the ultra-sound) but the skin above it is looking red and stretched. It doesn't hurt at all, it's not tender to the touch, but it looks unhappy so I'm debating taking it out, letting the hole close, and possibly getting it re-pierced at some point in the future. I'm not sure how likely it is that I'd ever get around to it, though.

My hair has stopped falling out. I used to get handfuls of hair when I wash it and now I get maybe two strands. It's a pregnancy symptom I've been expecting so mostly I'm just surprised it took so long. It'll all fall out with a vengeance once Little Djinn is here and then I'll have to protect little fingers from being strangled by almost invisible hairs. Yippy?

Little Djinn is starting to run out of room and is kicking like a mad fiend. I don't mind the little movements, and I'm getting used to them as a running background to my life, but I really don't enjoy getting kicked. It's starting to hurt, and Little Djinn is quite territorial, protesting any time something pushes against my belly. I know it's cramped in there, but it was my body first and we have to share. I had my 28 week checkup last week (yes, at 29 weeks - I was working all of my midwife's regular office hours weeks 27 and 28) which included having bloods drawn and getting a flu shot. One of the tests getting run on my blood was for diabetes and, if my midwife had mentioned that rather than just a general "blood will be drawn" I would've gotten up earlier and eaten breakfast. My blood pressure continues to be excellent and protein levels in my urine are unremarkable.

We - and by we, I mean Chris - finished painting the nursery. We plan to go look for a dresser (chest of drawers) and curtains this weekend. And travel to the next town over where the delivery company left a parcel they couldn't deliver because neither of us was home yesterday. They couldn't leave it at the little post office up the road or the sorting center from which we could have it re-delivered (or just pick it up, it's right in town). No, they had to take it to the post office in Inches which is very awkward to get to what with us not having a car and all. It's close to the hospital where I will be spending a lot of time later this month, when my pre-natal (ante-natal) classes start (next week for the couples classes but those are late at night, end of November for the "mother" only classes during the day). Not that you can leave a parcel waiting until it's convenient for you to get there in a fortnight. On the plus side, a large craft (hobby) store opened near the post office so I can go take a gander and see how bad it will be for my wallet (pocket book).

Once I have a dresser, I'll have a place to sort out Little Djinn's clothes and see where the gaps are. My mother has been relaying requests for a gift registry and it'll be a lot easier to put one together when I know what I actually have. I suspect the parcel in question has more baby stuff. Part of the problem with building a registry is that I really don't know what all we need and at what point in Little Djinn's development we'll need it. We've only just started looking into it, now that we're in the third trimester. My mother has already made comments about some of the things I have on the registry like a tops and tails bucket ("just use the sink!") and the only onsie I added, "Keep Calm and Cuddle Me" in a summer size ("Is that going to be warm enough?" Yes and if it's not we'll put a sweater (jumper) over it. Same as I do with my t-shirts.). Oi.

I've been knitting and finishing up things that were almost finished. I have two baby cardigans (the burgundy one and the teal one) and one pullover with ends woven in and buttons attached. I have another cardigan that still needs buttons (the yellow one) and another one that I think is premie size and thus hopefully will go straight to the doll wardrobe. Note to self: acquire a doll. I also wove in the ends on some baby legwarmers and a blanket that I knit for other people's pregnancies and never got around to finishing up. The blanket has been sitting in a cupboard for a good 5 years, knit in the days before I was comfortable weaving in ends. I also knit a newborn hat with the leftover yarn from Chris' Greece socks, being modelled by my very patient husband. Mind you, he wouldn't let me use Ginger Kitty as a model which I figure is the same thing as volunteering.

Autumn watch continues. We're down to 8 hours of daylight (7:45-4:15) and after two months of unusually cold weather, we've had an unusually warm week with temperatures around 10C (50F). I wore a scarf chosen for its aesthetic appeal, not it's warmth and had to put the aircon on at work because the shop was too hot for me in my shirt sleeves, let alone the customers in their coats. The picture bellow was taken on Halloween, the orange leaves have turned russet and the yellow ones are starting to drop. Because it was a question, that is the view from our bedroom. Our garden (yard), which is shared with the housing association, ends at the hedge and then it's the river and the island with the trees. I love our garden and our view.

The Size of a Small Bedsit

I am now a little over a week into my second trimester (though the picture is from last weekend) and still going strong. I have an appointment with the midwife on Friday and I got a letter for my next ultrasound appointment, the last week in November. I know, right? I'm shocked, too. Normally the appointment letter shows up on Tuesday informing me that my appointment will be on Monday. I actually have time to reschedule before having to switch shifts so I can make it. Though, in fairness, the short notice appointments have all coincidentally been on days off. And yes, I have my work rota through the end of November already. Technically it's written out through mid-January but A) I won't be working that long and B) I highly doubt it will survive the first skirmish with the enemy. I keep telling Little Djinn to stay inside until January, any time in January is fine but not a moment sooner, but I'm comforted to know that if it has other ideas it's viable. Still, my preference is a 2013 baby who shows up in January and I'm not shy about saying so.

Of amusement to me and Chris, every time I tweet my weekly progress update ("28 weeks down, 12 to go #gestating" usually accompanied by a picture of either my pregnant self or an ultrasound of Little Djinn) at least one more person twigs that I'm expecting. I've been tweeting about it for 4 months now, and not just the weekly update. I complain about kick boxing lessons when I'm trying to sleep and near constant heartburn and say how weird it feels when Little Djinn has the hiccups (very weird). I talked about the swollen sausage flippers that replaced my feet when we were on holiday and there has been a lot about the joys (or rather lack there-of) of trying to find maternity clothes. I don't really expect people to notice every little thing in my life, but it is a source of amusement and wonder in our household when people who actively use twitter miss it completely.

We're finally getting around to "nesting": we've cleared out the nursery (but not the cupboard/closet!), washed the walls, plastered the holes and, today, added the first coat of paint to the walls. We're using the leftover barely-there peach from when we repainted the lounge after having the fireplace installed. We got our local handyman to do it while we were on our honeymoon and it looks lovely, adding just the slightest hint of warmth to the walls. The paint is also supposed to be "light reflective" which is not to be scoffed at when you get as little sunshine as we do. The nursery...doesn't quite look the same. We're not entirely sure if it's because of slight paint transfer from using the same brushes Chris used to paint one wall of his office red, or if it's because the room is smaller and the colour is bouncing off itself, or just because the paint was wet, but the nursery is looking a bit pinker than the lounge. I'm not overly bothered, if Little Djinn has a problem with the colour of the walls we can paint it again in 5-8 years, and I'm confident that yellow curtains and/or bedding will pull the room back towards peach. I'm also hoping that a second coat of paint will even out the colour. It turns out that love and enthusiasm are not a substitute for skill and professional tools.

In autumnal news, I made pumpkin cake using a third of a tin of Libby's pumpkin purée sent to me by the lovely Miss Krissy. With another third I made pumpkin butter (cup of pumpkin purée, cup of yogurt except I only had 3/4ths a cup left, and a cup of powdered sugar, spice to taste). In the picture above the cake is served with brandy whipped cream, which my husband implied through grunts and eyebrow waggles made him love me twice as much as before, on Aged Parent's seasonal china. It's his every day tea service that he uses year round, but currently it's seasonal and I thought it particularly suitable for pumpkin cake.

Here's another picture from last week, the view from our bedroom windows. The yellowish trees are now mostly gold and rust. I'll take another picture for Autumn-Watch 2012 when the sun actually comes out. It snowed on Friday but not enough to stick or, really, for me to see it as I was at work in a windowless room all day. But I got the satisfaction of correctly predicting it would snow in October, so that's something, right?

Husband Knits

These are things knit for my husband, not things knit by him. I did try and teach him to knit but he got a few rows in and decided he didn't care it wasn't for him.

First up are Husband Socks, specifically the Firestarter Socks by Yarnissima knit in Opal's van Gogh sock yarn colourway "Red Vineyard" from Sock Yarn Shop. I love this pattern and plan to knit them again sans modifications (I added 4 stitches after the toe and another two for the cuff to size them up and switched the cable to a braid which I'm not sure added anything) for myself. The Red Vineyard colourway turned out a bit less red than I anticipated, more of a burgundy than the rusty red I was expecting. Fortunately my husband has no problem with "pink" socks and is delighted with them. According to Ravelry, I started them on 22 September and finished them on 15 October. I almost entirely faithful knitting the first sock, but my attention wandered on the second (Oh siren of casting on new projects, I am susceptible to your wiles!).

Having finished the Husband Socks, I polled the internet if I should cast on something new or work on another project in progress. My single respondent, Yochannah, voted for something new and I gave myself permission to cast on a project that had been dancing in the back of my head for a while, The Perpetually Persistent Cowl by Liz Abinante. I knit one back in March as part of the Great Cowl KAL using the only super bulky yarn I had in stash, Rowan's Big Wool in brown (it was a gift). I modified the cables on that one slightly (adding another cross to tie it all together like a chain-link fence) and then gave it to my Aunt Kathleen, a redhead who shows to advantage in autumnal colours and lives in Alaska where things like chunky merino cowls are useful. I ear-marked the pattern for future use and bought some yummy bulky alpaca from a farm when wine tasting with my mother with the intention of knitting one up for myself, but at 11pm when I was looking to cast on I decided that winding the skein into a cake was somewhat excessive and instead grabbed another ball of the same Rowan Big Wool I'd used before and cast one on for my husband who had also expressed interest.* Half an hour last night and less than 4 hours today and I have a finished cowl. I did the cables as written this time but added a third repeat to make sure he can wear it up over his ears as his fedora doesn't shield them from the wind.

This pattern is my recommendation for holiday gift knitting - they're simple, they're fast, they're cozy as all get out, and they use less than a skein each. Churn them out!

Finally, I give you Husband Convertible Mitts from the Borough pattern in Knitty's Winter 2011 issue, knit with Noro Kochoran in peach-purple which, again, turned out more pink than expected. These took a week last December but have languished since for want of buttons. I still don't have the "right" buttons for them, but on the grounds that any buttons at all is the difference between them ever getting worn or not, I am adding buttons now. I don't remember much about knitting them and I didn't add notes in Ravelry so we'll assume they were easy and straight-forward and that I didn't make any modifications.

~ * ~

* This is the man who asked me to knit him a nose-cosy (and has since found any number of excuses to keep from having to wear it). He is generally in favour of me knitting anything and everything for him.

Greece 2012

Back in July, when the Scottish weather was being particularly "meh" my husband snapped and booked us a 7-night holiday on the Greek island of Zakinthos for the end of the season. Oliver and Libby left for Summer Camp on Tuesday, we took the train down to Glasgow on Wednesday and flew out bright and early Thursday morning, landing around 2 in the afternoon local time. Highlights from the trip down included a visit to what I've come to think of as my LYS (local yarn shop), The Yarn Cake and chatting with the proprietress over tea and cake (and yarn!). I was afraid my holiday knitting project, Firestarter Socks in Opal's van Gogh "Red Vineyard" colourway for Chris, wouldn't last out the week as I'd kinda cast on in the days leading up to the holiday and had already turned the heel on the first sock. I didn't have any comparable yarn that I could count on being able to knit up with the same needles (and possibly even pattern, it's a lovely one) should I finish the second sock, so I bought another skein of Opal in a tealy-blue varigation that I figured would remind me of the Mediterranean ocean. I was, of course, overly optimistic about my knitting prowess though I was correct that the colourway is perfect. I'm not sure what it says about me that I bought my Greek souvenir in a Glaswegian yarn shop...

Also, for reasons unknown to us, our hotel bumped us to an "executive suite" which, near as we can tell merely meant the presence of a (singular) bathrobe and a bottle of wine (two glasses) that may or may not have been complimentary. Though we'd paid for the room in advance so I'm not sure how they would have billed us for it had we drunk it. After dinner we discovered that the aircon/heating unit was borked and they bumped us to a queen size room, again with a bathrobe and bottle of wine. We had to get up at 4:30 the next morning so we didn't have a chance to find out if they have rooms with king-sized beds.

Zakinthos has the best border control I have ever experienced. There were two guard stations with the agents standing rather aimlessly in front of them, waving through anyone with an EU passport. They weren't even looking at the pictures, just matching the quantity of passports with the quantity of people. Which brings me to a side issue - when travelling as a group, even if you don't trust your kids or wife to keep their own passport without losing it, pass them out as you approach the agent. Tell everyone to hold it open to this page and don't use it to hit your brother and collect them again as soon as you reach the other side, but really, the number of blustery men I saw jealously guarding all of the travel documents and then trying to juggle them all, find the photo page (which, again, the agents weren't even looking at), and match a passport to a person was ridiculous. I got to watch this farce a couple times, waiting for everyone to get waived through so that the senior agent could go back to his booth, find the entry stamp, make sure it was set to the correct day, and stamp my passport. A similar holdup with the added drama of "no, I don't have a vignette for my passport, my visa is this entirely separate biometrics card" played out a week later when we tried to leave.

As for the holiday itself, it was a bit of a mixed experience. Between my heartburn away from my fortress of pillows, Chris being the world's lightest sleeper in a place that was hardly quiet (the hotel bar closed around 3:30am, which is when the cockerels started), and rock hard beds we didn't sleep well. Every tourist and her brother smoked (I only saw one Greek person smoking), it was supposed to have cooled off to the upper 20s by this time of year but they were having a heatwave and it was still in the mid 30s for most of our trip. The whole experience was oddly English - English pop music being played everywhere, English football games on the telly, menus full of English food... It wasn't quiet what I'd envisioned, not that we'd given it much thought beyond "sunshine and warmth, please!"

The last couple of days were the best: most of the tourists left on Monday so it was a lot quieter, and we'd worked out a routine where we'd wander down to a fairly secluded beach after breakfast and wade about 30 feet out into the sea where the water was 2-3' deep and we'd sit on the bottom and bob gently in the water for an hour or two before heading back in, drying off a bit and wandering back up the shore to a small restaurant with an overly-friendly ginger kitten who picked us as big softies from the second he lay his little yellow eyes on us. Chris would drink beer, we'd have lunch, and with varying degrees of success defend our food from the plaintive ball of fluff.

In the afternoon, Chris did a little work on his laptop (things Chris needs on a holiday - a learning project he can work on) and I knit while drinking milkshakes (they ran out of smoothies the second day) and allowing myself a tiny little bit of direct sunshine, and then in the evening we'd go out for dinner and then retire for another almost sleepless night.

Productive Morning

I should go on holiday more often: we woke up before 7 and after a leisurely lie in I managed to dispense advice to and from Captain Awkward's blog, eat breakfast, unload and reload the dishwasher, unpack our suitcases (in the dump-everything-on-the-bed sense, not the actually-deal-with-everything sense - that's crazy talk, though I did sort the laundry), put the suitcases (both those we used and those we didn't) back in the attic, start a laundry rotation, hoover upstairs, wash the hand-knit socks, and have everything ready for Oliver and Libby when they got home at half 10. I am currently sat on the sofa, elevating my sausage-flipper feet. So much better than putting everything off until "later".