Monthly Archive for July, 2007
Started bleeding yesterday when I woke up - didn’t feel yucky or bad, except for feeling like my period’s coming. Today the bleeding has been worse- bright red on & off, mainly when I wipe, I’ve had crampy-type pains like a period, no real bad abdomen pains though. Alex made me an emergency Dr’s appt - she was a nice Dr - not seen her before - thought I was going to told I was being silly worrying about a little bit of bleeding - but with the problems we’ve had in the past with Baby No.2 - we’re both over-cautious. So Dr did a pregnancy test which is still very positive - on a good note she said it was a very strong positive - so she expected the HCG levels to still be high? She has told us to call our regular GP in the morning and get an emergency scan appt at the hospital ASAP to see where the bleeding is coming from - had this with Baby No. 2 - all did not turnout well and I took the early bleeding (although that was significantly worse) to be a sign - which we often do, but only in hindsight!
Just a waiting game I guess - spent some time looking around the internet - really shouldn’t do that - it’s too scary to worry about all the other things that ‘could’ go wrong.
Bleeding is still there and I still feel ‘on’ - trying to take is easy and stay positive.
Large cracks of thunder and pelting rain, followed by sunshine with lot’s of flying ants - guess it’s Summer then!
Natalie has been doing lots in her busy books, crosswords and number puzzles, also PS2-ing on Cars that she borrowed from J and we all watched Cars.
Hermionie called me a princess when she found a wedding photo of Alex & I (that GDad F had left out after looking through the filing cabinet for his papers - hmmmmm really must go check up on well he’ tidied’ up after himself!!), she said it so innocently and matter-of-factly ...’that Daddy, that Mummy, you pincess Mummy’ - thank you sweetie - you made my day. :razz:
Alex attempted poached eggs with toast for Lunch for him and the girls - went down a treat! (with help from Delia! - never got on with her recipes - is it just me or is the ‘Delia way’ of cooking a lot more complicated and expensive than it should be?)
Nan&GDad P visited in the afternoon to play with and pay attention to to the girls and took them to the shops for sweeties as Nans do :roll: and stopped at the park, even had a go on the trampoline in the garden with the girls.
Hermionie has been hanging on to the Dummy a bit more than usual - don’t know whether to go Cold Turkey?? - maybe just make sure she doesn’t have any to hand other than when she’s actually in bed.
Bet you can’t guess where we went today…
…that’s right - 5 points - S&G’s.
We were supposed to all go to the Play Festival at Southsea this year (all - that’s right - we’d even kinda pursuaded the ahem..’men’ to come parent the kids outside - even G!!!! - but only ‘cos Alex caved in so quick!!) but with S’s back which is still painful and the amount of painting that S&G have to before having the carpets are fitted on Monday, we opted for playing at home for the day. Alex & G managed most of the painting - with advice and helpful hints from Sarah & I (well you can’t just leave them to it can you????)
The rest of the day for S & I was a blur of kids playing, arguing, laughing, painting, eating, moaning, crying, pulling potatoes & carrotts and putting chrysalises into their new home to hatch. (ours are at the chunky-pillar stage - about a day or two off getting ready to hang and begin turning into chrysalises).
…so - the painting - S wants some ‘artwork’ in the new bathroom and spare room upstairs so she went along to the Grange and bought 5 canvases, I came armed with bottles of poster paint and brushes and we launched it all out in the garden with the kids for a really nice hands-on let-yourself-go painting session. The kids (and we talking ages 7, 6, 3 & 2) really got stuck in and painted some lovely (and slightly disturbing depending on your angle!) pictures. S & I had a go on one together as well, I think we all did quite well - will have to piccies and post them - I was especially proud of Natalie’s - she kinda made mistake (well, technically there shouldn’t be ‘mistakes’ in art - but at point there was some lovely colour with a huge swirl of black that just got blacker!!) until she dripped colours on top and totally saved it!).
All had BBQ as the weather kind of held out for us, kids went to sleep watching Chicken Little and adults watched some funny telly.
Started off the day with brekkie in Tescos, followed by shopping at Tesco and ASDA because we’re going through the ‘I’m bored with Tesco’ phase again. Got a new pair of shoes at ASDA
I’m not a traditional girlie where shoes are concerned - I’ve about 3 pairs that I’ll wear, one’s a muddy pair of mountain climbing boots, the other are several times repaired brown calf-high boots and now these - they’re soooo comfortable I”m never taking them off!
We all went to a local school fayre in the afternoon and picked up a couple of bargains:
Pink ‘n stripey hats & gloves for Hermionie -
gorgeous aren’t they?
And black kinky barbie boots and a tartan belt for Natalie.
And lastly lots of lovely books…..
& 
…which will end up here…..
…our living room bookshelf - we also have one in the hall, dining room and both kid’s rooms - I need more book shelves- you can never have too many books!!!
It’s also about time to officially hand over my fav cardigan of Natalie’s to Hermionie. (Sorry rest of family, I know I’m supposed to pass it all to you and wait for Hermionie to get it but there are a few items I’m hanging onto for dear life - this being one of them!) It’s soooooo soft and cuddly. Natalie’s been wearing it for about 4 years now!!! We’ve finally decided that cuffs up to her elbows aren’t fashionable, so Hermionie can wear it with folded cuffs round the wrists.
Took the kids to the park (Inside Out Park was Closed again???) for a bit then headed home for dinner. Natalie & Hermionie read through the books I bought and played in the living room. NanL popped down to see and play with the kids and gain a bit of technical support for WinXP - Grrrr!!, GDadL popped in for a bit (on the way to the pub!!)
Alex’s MacBook is running a bit screwy so I’ll spend the best part of the evening sorting that out - will probably re-format it and make it all new - whilst he falls asleep on the sofa watching Click. 
….just chucking out old www links and came across this
http://www.nhen.org/nhen/pov/editors/default.asp?id=157
I expect most of the ’seasoned’ HEdders have seen it but still….
…..Natalie actually fed the Rabbits this morning without being asked. 
She then delved straight into a pile of books and worked on SME, Crosswords, Monkey Maths (our home-made maths book - where I write out stuff for her to fill in - stuff that she needs to ‘recap’) and read some of the library books - again. Hermionie was busy using all the stickers we have on one sheet of paper to make a very lovely picture which I have been ordered to put on the wall! (She can be a bossy little madam sometimes).
St*pid Virgin Media have screwed the bill up again, charged us £15 over the top in charges and cut the phone off! - It’s set-up on DD, it’s not our fault if they can’t manage to take the service charge plus the call charges - Alex phoned them (’cos you can still use their operator number to moan at them even when they cut you off teehee!) - managed to sort it out but they can’t turn the phone back on till tomorrow, GREAT. 
….anyway, Alex and Hermionie popped round S&G’s to use their phone and pick up some bits, Natalie stayed with me and ate coconut cake!
Natalie carried on with books I left her and then we had an early dinner then we all went round S&G’s (I think we should be contributing to their mortgage by now!) to look after K while G had a funeral 
and S took J to Karate. Bless her, she stayed asleep most of the time - Hermionie was not very pleased to see her bestest friend in the whole wide world asleep in her presence! Natalie Gameboy’d for a bit then I took her to Brownies. K woke up and played colouring with Hermionie - alot of whinging again. S&J came back and all the kids played nicely for bit. Came home and tidied up a bit and kids went to bed, Alex in usual position at table and me here - on my G5,peeing around with the ‘Now reading’ plugin, tagging photos and listening to lots of my favourite music on iTunes. Night
Didn’t achieve much this morning or early afternoon really. Kids were playing in the living room, fed rabbits, looked at sticky’s, mooched generally. Alex & Natalie popped round S&G’s for some bits while Hermionie & I cleaned up a bit - she loves helping me out especially when she’s on her own with me - she takes great delight in helping me clean, dusting, plumping cushions, and attempting to sweep - it’s v. cute, not to say that Natalie doesn’t dislike taking charge of the hoover!!!!
Had another Estate Agent round today who said the same as the other one so negative equity it is then - guess we’ll be staying in this house for the next ten years!
Packed a lunch, filled the car with some much needed - we’ve-been-running-on-fumes-for-days petrol and headed for Southsea. We late-lunched on the green behind the Portsmouth Natural History Museum which was where we headed after eating.
It’s a nice little museum - free (which is a bonus!) but I don’t think it’s changed that much since I went when I was a girl? Nevermind - kids still enjoy running round - we’ve been 5 or 6 times now and they still learn something new, they’ve got some butterflies there as well. (Although they don’t always seem the healthiest/strongest butterflies I’ve ever seen??)
So we spent a good 1 1/2 hours walking round. By closing time - we still hadn’t made it to the microscopes, so Natalie was a little disappointed - will have to make a repeat visit soon.
It was the first time Alex had been - he was quite impressed considering it didn’t cost him any money and it kept the kids busy without arguments or whinging. 
Sun was shining, a little windy but pretty much gorgeous on the seafront, headed down to the beach for some pebble-throwing and shell/stone hunting.
Popped past the Southsea Model Village which we’ve never been to - so we’ll add that to the list for another day also. Grabbed an ice-cream from the van and had a lark about practising cartwheels, swinging the kids round. (which Hermionie reaaaaallly doesn’t like - bless her!) The kids then proceeded to bashing Alex about (I remember this as being a favourite pastime with my Dad - play fighting and charging about like loons )
We then headed for the park to let of some more steam!
Had to return home to eat. All watched Anthea Turner:Perfect Housewife (why? oh why ? - I hear you cry?), I managed to resist the urge to clean the house some more for about 1/2 hour, but the Anthea-Effect got the better of me!!!!
Tucked the kids up on the sofa watching Charlotte’s Web, (I’m still upset by the Spider dying 
) and I have been trying to publish my now-updated iCal calenders without a .Mac account? - Trying the setting up a webdav server on the G5 but it looks a little to scary for me right now, so I’ll settle for sharing via this.
Oh….and just this pic ‘cos I think I’ll miss this face as she grows up!
More piccies up on Flickr now as well - managed to transfer all our photos to iPhoto (can you tell I’m big with the Apple love?) and tag them and found I can drag them straight out of iPhoto to Flickr……little things
OK, maybe I whinged a bit excessively about Stonehenge - it seems they do do out-of-normal-hours walk-amongst-the-stones visits and there are big changes planned including a new Visitor Centre with lots more educational facilities on-hand, the removal of the path and the major upheaval of re-directing the two roads around Stonehenge - Go For It!
So, today started early with a visit from K. Hermionie & K were very argumentative today - Hermionie didn’t really want to ’share’ and was asserting herself a little more today (K is 9 months older than Hermionie!) much to K’s disgust! Every time one of them found a new toy, the other wanted it instantly and whinged incessantly at either me or Alex until one of us withdrew the toy and left them to it!
Natalie was busy drawing Horses (all the girl wants is a rich Daddy and a Horse) ‘How to Draw Horses’ Book - she really is quite good with the aid of the book - shall see if she can remember how to draw a horse without it - she’s used this book alot!
Popped down the shops for some over-priced sugery goodness and took the girls to the park, left as the skies turned grey and it started raining! Kids sat down to watch ‘Over The Hedge‘ but the littlies got bored. S came round with a very poorly back, Natalie drew & decorated her hands for http://www.handsup4homeed.blogspot.com/ now I just have to scan them in..hmmmmm
G finished work and joined us, Alex was dismantling a Boombox and a DVD Player I believe? G & Alex ‘worked’ while S, me and the kids mooched. Had to put the Hedrin on Natalie (well S did ‘cos I’m over-cautious being pregnant! - thanks S!), the little bu**ers have been breeding, I thought they might not like pink hair but no - I thought that there’s no way she’d get nits if she weren’t at school - guess I was wrong, I think they just looooove her hair - arrgggghhhh!!!
Popped over Cosham (Yay! - sarcastically) with G, K and Hermionie to sort K’s eye out at the pharmacy and grab more sugery goodness in the form of half-price priced ring doughnuts - Yum!
All decided we’d be better of round S&G’s so departed to there, kids were happy playing - Natalie set-up a drawing school in the living room and PS-2d with J. (very nicely I might add - they really get on alot better now!)
Hermionie & K continued to squabble over babies and I quite frankly got sick of it - thank goodness pizza goodness arrived to stop the arguments.
Tried to settle the kids down, Hermionie eventually fell asleep after 2 hours of being so over-tired and wriggling/singing/talking to herself/pillow-plumping and jumping all the sofa while tried to watch Holby with S but I was so tired I lost my rag with both kids and put them to bed in the conservatory (on the sofas with sleeping bags!!) and didn’t end up saying a proper goodnight to them which just eats away at me - ahhh - went in later when they were both asleep to say sorry and kiss them goodnight.
Alex & G got alot done, S’s back got the better off and she toddled of to bed, leaving me with the tv remote!!!
We went to Stonehenge today. Managed to get up late as usual, took ages to get stuff ready, people organised etc and finally got on the road at about 11:30am. A Lorry had overturned on the road we needed so a detour into unknown territory was needed and more time was lost. Finally arrived later than we said we would (we went on an Home-Educators Free Educational Trip Visit) but it didn’t matter with this site - thank goodness!
Really was not expecting a huge amount of people to be there but it was quite crowded in the car park, lots of languages being spoken, lots of groups of people being hustled about. Weather had been on and off on the drive there so Raincoats were at the ready! We all came out of the tunnel entrance to the stones and I was……….
….severely pi**ed off and disappointed. I had wanted to go up for the Summer Solstice (and WILL next year!) - I had heard that you were allowed to walk among the stones, touch them, get a sense of the sheer size of them and ‘feel’ something being there (I think the site of Stonehenge is more important than the actual stones - correct me if I am wrong - I often am!), well the only thing I felt was ‘Grrrrrrrrrr!’ couldn’t get anywhere near them for the bl**dy barrier - what do they think people are going to do??? - I know the crazies are out there and the stones are things of beauty to be preserved but come on….oh yeah and desecrate the site by putting a concrete path across it yeah!!!!
Humpf - rant not over - they expect us to pay nearly £16 to gawk at the stones from afar????? Thank goodness it was a freebie.
Hadn’t prepared the kids much for Stonehenge - though we’d see what they make of them - Natalie was not at all impressed with the no-touchy rule and proceed to rebel against it by crossing the line.
(Shhhhh!), She listened to the audio tour for a bit, but I guess it wasn’t to her taste - Alex listened to the rest while Natalie and I took photos, and discussed how long the stones had been there, where they came from, how they were erected etc, also saw lots of sheep and rabbits. The weather held out though, although we were a bit early for the sunset (shame ), we still got some nice shots of the stones, which I’ll photoshop together later.
We bought a Guidebook which re-iterated what was in the audio tour and has some nice stuff in it, we’ll study that later. We looked round the gift-shop but as usual money was an object so we just looked. Saw a nice little model of the stones as they are now which I though we make out of clay one day and maybe shine torches through like the sunrise/set. Had meant to do some’art’ whilst at Stonehenge, but neither Natalie nor I felt like it after the dissapointment of the barriers (Natalie had wanted to crayon and chalk ‘rub’ the stones).
Starving hungry and lunch packed ‘cos we had no bread - we left in search of food…..
…and came across a Harvester in Salisbury (Our favourite) - so we all shared a Plantation Platter for two and several bowls of salad - £20 not bad for the four us and it goes on the Credit Card so it doesn’t count. Whilst in Harvester we all studied the Stonehenge Guidebook and talked about Stonehenge and the area in general.
Tummy’s full, we set off home, via the New Forest - well we couldn’t miss the opportunity - sun was shining and it is kind of on the way home. Had a lovely drive through, saw some pony’s, lots of lovely English green open land without a pylon in sight in some cases! Popped to our usual New Forest Haunt - Boltons Bench - no ponies (well only 2 and a donkey!) - they’re usually gathering in masses here - so we drove on to find some more to satisfy the horse-freaks in the car. Hermionie found a keepsake stone to add to her collection.
Found some lovely pony’s and foals as we drove through to Beaulieu and a small group of donkey’s with a Foal Ahhhhhh!, they even let us stroke them - they were lovely. Off home the more scenic way than just joining up with motorway as soon as we could - saw lots of VW campers - aren’t they cool? - I think we’re going to need to change the car soon - can’t justify driving round in the ‘05 Picasso really - love the campers but would probably go for something a little more reliable - going to need more seats and the space would be great for car-boots.
Got home - completely shattered all round, kids milkshaked and off to bed.
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