Write it down

Our Features Editor is very intersted in Patrick's progress. He has a son, although his boy is ... eight? nine?

Anyway, I was telling him (the features editor that is) about the words Patrick is saying and what he's doing, and he said write it down, because otherwise I'd forget.

Good advice, I think.

Patrick can say mumumumumum - all run on like that; byedaddy, or da, or byeee, but for some reason never just daddy. If you ask him a question: "do you want your drink? do you want a bikkie?" he gets a big grin on his face and says "geh geh".

He's pretty much walking now, holding one hand up in the air, which reminds me of an orangutan.

He likes throwing things, that seems to be his main interest, when he's not trying to play with my mouse and keyboard. He eats pretty well, if messily at times (but don't we all?) and likes to throw his toast on the floor (sigh). He's figured out (nearly) how to bodysurf the coffee tables, which I'm not delighted about, and seems to have got over his fear of grass.

My bestie from high school, who lives in Australia (near Brisbane) was over last week for a wedding. A flying visit, she said, and I bumped into her in Starbucks, of all places. So we, along with another friend of ours, all went out for dinner on Sunday night and had sooo much fun. The food was good, the company even better. She's gone back to Aussie now, with no ETA on a return visit.

I'm still (apparently) working on Circe; not that you would know it. I also had a (small) spend up on Amazon recently _ something I haven't done for ... a couple of years? Twas fun :)
I bought the Twilight saga _ mostly because it's been too hard to get hold of copies here - either at the library, or the bookstore. So I got tired of waiting. I also bought A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce, which I haven't read yet, but am very much looking forward to. I know her. Well. We post on the same message board. Ipso facto - I know her :)

I got Hogging all the Covers by Band From TV, which is a lot of fun, and I splashed out on a couple of cross stitch books, which I don't usually do _ usually I stick with UK magazines and Jill Oxton's Cross Stitch and Beading for charts, but I couldn't pass up Joan Elliott's Bewitching Cross Stitch, or Ancient Egyptian Cross Stitch, by Barbara Hammet.

Fun and games all round!

Another week

Went for a walk this morning and I'm on lates tonight, so I'll be starting at 5. In a cruel twist, I'm doing a day shift tomorrow (bleh) but I won't be starting until 11.30 at the earliest.

In happier news, I finished Mum's Christmas present. Now I just need to take it to the framers and hope it'll be done before Christmas. This is it here (it's a little fuzzy):

It's a wee chart out of one of those little books you get free with Cross Stitch magazines sometimes. It shows a book and a cup of tea on a table with a vase of flowers. It's very Mum and I hope she likes it.

More later.
Probably.

How galling!

I had a gallstone attack yesterday. Bad enough to keep me home from work. I won't go into the gory details, but ... ugh. Ugh.

I finished the other star sign picture on ... Friday? I think. Then promptly forgot to give them to my mother when we went to see her on Sunday, even though I had remembered to put them in my bag. Oops. Anyway. Ta da ... sorry, the bull's a bit fuzzy. But you get the idea:

Ta da! A finish.

First finish for 2008. :)

This is Leo the Lion, from The World of Cross Stitching Issue 93.



It was sort of commissioned by my mother for my nephew who is turning 13 this year. I stitch, she frames and gives it to him for his birthday. :)
I still have a Taurus one to finish for my niece who is also turning 13 this year.

Sleep, perchance ...

... ah, sleep! Patrick was waking up really early, and then crying and fussing until I hauled butt to go get him. Then Jeremy hung an old bedspread behind his curtains to block some of the morning sun (Patrick's room faces east) and we have very different mornings around here! Patrick sleeps a bit longer, and even when he does wake up, he doesn't cry anymore. He just sort of hangs out in his cot until I get up. It's made such a big difference, I can't believe it.

I've been picking away at my January 08 project, although I haven't really had a lot of time lately. I'm reluctant to stitch after work because the bit I'm working on has a lot of colour changes, and that takes a bit of concentration. My plan is to work on this for all of January, spend February working on (small) gifts; then in March do another letter of Patrick's dinosaur alphabet before returning to Circe and the January 08 start. It's a plan. I haven't got any further than March yet.

I went to the movies on Tuesday (day off) and saw I Am Legend. I thought it was pretty good; not fantastically great, but pretty good. Will Smith was as likable as always, but oh my gosh, that gorgeous dog nearly stole the whole movie from him! I really want to see American Gangster next, but I promised myself (and Jeremy) that I'd only go to the movies every second week, and not every week. Or I'll go for a bit of shameless begging. We'll see.

We bought a portacot this week, to use as a playpen. Patrick's not crawling yet, but he rolls everywhere. And sooner or later, he fetches up against things. Like the coffee table, or the TV cabinet. So we've not so much baby-proofed the living room, as we've living room-proofed the baby. And he quite likes it.

That's all I have for now.

Stitching photos

The two things I've finished this year:

Rollin rollin rollin ....

Patrick:

Patrick can now roll on to his front. Unfortunately, he can't roll back the other way So it's all fun and games for about a minute, sometimes two, then the parent-in-residence has to go and roll him back. Which is fun. The first hundred times. The second ... eh. He also appears to be cutting his first tooth, the poor wee boy. He seems to be coping with it all right at the moment; just a bit more grizzly than usual. But aw ............ his first tooth!

Stitching:

I was working on a butterfly for my sister for Christmas, stitched with DMC Light Effects. That stuff, however, is the Devil's Candy. So I abandoned it. I'm going to start it over with normal DMC and give it to her for her birthday. I have some little bitty projects dotted among the large projects and I want to clear those up. Partly because I still want to do my traditional new-start for the year (not sure what yet) and partly because my mother wants me to stitch a couple of birth sign charts for a niece and nephew who are both turning 13 next year. So I'm going to go through all of my projects (yet again!) and sort out what I really want to do, and what I really feel I need to do. I'm working on a very cute cat design for Jeremy for his birthday at the moment; we'll see how that goes.

Reading:

I'm picking away at Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough, the last in her Masters of Rome series. It's very good, but very detailed, so I've started The Mesmerist by Barbara Ewing as light relief; and have some Star Trek: Voyager novels as well, for when my brain is *really* tired. I seem to be getting past the chick-lit as escapism stage, and moving on to things like Voyager and CSI novels. Hrm ...

I'm also planning to start another blog next year; for reading. Well, specific reading. I have a list of 12 classic novels _ in a variety of genres _ and my plan/hope/goal is to read one a month. I haven't set the blog up yet, but I'm thinking of calling it book zoo, to tie in with this place. I'm starting the year with Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. It's an idea I've been kicking around for a while, and now I've finally decided to do it.

Life/weight/writing:

The what now?

That's all I have.

Winter wonderland ...

... or something. It snowed this morning. However, given the fact we're basically at sea level, and it had already rained, it didn't settle. It did look pretty for a while there, however. Now it's just gloomy and grey and wet and cold. Blergh.
Patrick has been little Mr Cranky-pants this morning; I'm not sure why. But he sure did start early! 3am (yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnn). He's finally dropped off to sleep now and he's due for a bottle in about an hour, but given how unsettled he was this morning, I think I'm just going to let him sleep on for a bit and wake up for the bottle on his own. He'll let me know when he's hungry.
I'm conetmplating domestic-goddessness soon _ well, washing the baby bottles and folding clean washing. And making lunch. That's about as domestic goddess as I get. Jeremy's gone to bed for a bit; he's got a sore throat and a cough and doesn't want to be around Patrick with it.
My midwife came for her last visit today; sad and happy at the same time, I guess. She was lovely and made the whole pregnancy/baby thing easier. And she was very supportive when I gave up breastfeeding; no judgements at all, so I'll miss her. :(
I've miscalculated, I think, the parental leave _ not the amount but the when. I thought the first payment kicked in this week, but it's next week. Oops. We're going to run short anyway, but now we're going to run shorter than I expected. I'm seriously considering selling my computer. I'll still have internet access and all that, because I have a Frankencomputer that Jeremy built for me for writing. Haven't used it very much at all, and it would just need the internet hooked up. Something to consider, anyway.
I had a wee sort of my cross stitch projects, and I have 16 active ones. I keep forgetting that I signed up for that challenge. What challenge? But, but, but I found the cutest dinosaur alphabet that I just HAD to start for Patrick's room. Heh ... I feel a rotation coming on ....

Five nights!

Only five more nights of work to go. I can do this. I can. Now that I'm in the home straight, I can I can I can!
I might be a little bit excited. I'm just over the whole work thing for now. Especially since there were dramaramas last week. Nothing to do with me; happened on my night off, but you hear about them, you know? Didn't do a lot over Easter; I was working anyway. We had to take Fagin to the vet on Tuesday, he had an abcess on the side of his face that burst before we took him out. Of course, the vet surgery was packed and poor Fagin, the ick was going all over the cage. And my gosh, the smell! Luckily (apparently) I'm not sensitive to bad smells at the moment. I was just thinking ew _ along with everyone else in the surgery, I'm sure _ and not ew, I'm going to throw up. So that was something at least. A shunt, and $100 later; he's still feeling pretty sorry for himself, the poor boy.
We saw 300 this week, went to the movies on my day off; I'm trying to get as much use out of my media pass as I can while I still can.
It was a lot of fun. Gratuitous violence, and fit men running around in capes and undies _ see, now, that's a chick flick!
I got a little more stitching done on the Iris for my friend's wedding; I'm kind of superstitious to post it until it's finished for some reason. But I'm hopeful I'll get it done in a timely fashion. I didn't do any stitching yesterday at all, I wanted to work on something, but it wasn't the Iris and I wasn't sure what I felt like (I certainly have plenty of WIPs) so I ended up stitching on nothing. We caught up on some TV programmes and watched The Prestige, which was quite good but I found it a little ... try hard with all the twists and things.
J inventoried all the stuff we have so far for baby; nappies and wipes and things, and I had a Moment. I haven't had one for a while and I thought I'd come to terms with it all but nooooo ... apparently in order to trigger a meltdown, I just have to see the stuff strewn across the living room. Gah!
I'm okay today, though. Now that the stuff is tidily put away and I don't have to look at it.
Still.
Best Not To Think About It!

Three weeks today ... woo hoo!

I finish work until July on April 19. I'm soooooooooooo tired at the moment, and soooooooooooooo looking forward to it! I'm going to sit on the couch a lot and try not to throw things at J. He doesn't deserve to have things thrown at him, so I'll do my best to resist.
No guarantees, though. Day off yesterday, and I got breakfast in bed, which was nice but I'm not sure if I"ll do it again; our bed doesn't have a solid headboard so could have been more comfortable. It was a beautiful day, though and I actually got some stitching done. I have (reluctantly) abandoned my rotation so I can get this wedding present for my friend finished. Two pages down, two to go; so we'll see what happens after that. And after baby's here, etc ...
I have two days off next week because of Easter. Wednesday, which is my regular rostered day and Thursday, because we don't publish on Good Friday. Two days. In. A. Row.
I asked to be taken off what I'm doing at work for the next three weeks; I just feel like it requires a level of concentration I don't really have at the moment. Deputy: Why? That's easy.
Me: (not saying it out loud) Yeah, for you! For me right now it's the equivalent of developing a coherent space-time theory! I asked Deputy about it because Chief is next to useless with stuff like that. So, hopefully next week I'll be doing something less stressful for the next few weeks. We'll see.
I dreamed about Leo last night. I keep dreaming about us finding him in strange places. Last night it was in a cardboard box at like a school, or a polytech. He was in with a bunch of other cats. And, for some reason, he had a colostomy bag. Gotta love the pregnancy dreams. The midwife came on Tuesday and my blood pressure is still good (yay). Baby is measuring about 34.5cm and she quite cheerfully told me I was measuring basically full term. What? What? What? But I'm 5'1. Which means there's only one way for baby to go: Out. I keep compulsively making lists in my head of what we still need to get. Maybe I should actually write it down .... hmmmmm ....

Redecorating

Sort of, anyway. I was kind of over the pink; so switched the template. I'm liking it. I don't have a lot to say today .... One month and one day (woo hoo) until I go off work; can you tell I'm looking forward to it? I'd stop work now if I could, but that's not the way my cookie has crumbled. Just. Four. More. Weeks. I can do it.
I'm back on track with things a little better; getting back into my rotation, which is easier now that the weather has shifted to cold and crappy (hooray!) and I'm managing _ just! _ to stick to my week-about plan. I'm also slowly but surely working my way through some review books for work; I'm hoping to make off with a bunch when I go on leave. So the more I get done now, the more chance I have. Heh.
Cats are okay; still no Leo. :(
That's all I have.