The sun greeted Wellington for a change yesterday morning and pre-made plans to meet some girl-friends at the pool were laid to one side as the sun was just too good to miss. Just as well we grabbed the chance to enjoy it, since today is like a throw back to winter. As I write the curtains are drawn against howling southerlies threatening to lift the roof off the house.
Yesterday we were hot, hot, hot and ready to jump in the cold pool in the garden. We spent lunch on the waterfront, along with hundreds of other folk celebrating the return of the glowing ball in the sky. The ice-cream van and pedalo operators were made up and hoping for more of the same weather to make up for lost profits. Charli had a go at ‘zorbing’ on the lagoon, whilst Sophie enjoyed the thrill of the vertical bungy.
Dan met us for a brief break from the office and then left us to it – with me bravely taking the girls on a pedalo (it was heavily tipped to one side and I wasn’t the most graceful of pedalo punters with my big belly!). The operator kindly said, ‘Just clip the life jacket up…’ well there was no way the zipper was going to work!
Today, I swapped my jandals for winter boots and threw on a poncho and jeans. This ‘summer’ in Welly is a tough one. Every day is completely different and it’s hard not to go crazy. I just got a text from a friend who described the weather as ‘bi-polar’ and I’m right there with her. Since I can’t drink I am just going to hope for an early night. A nice Merlot would go down a treat right now.
I am seriously chilling out this evening. Sophie has started waking in the night – perhaps a little apprehensive about the pending arrival of bubs? She’s been out of night nappies since she was two and a half and always managed to last the night, but recently she’s started waking around 3am to ask to go to the toilet. I then lie with her to help her get back to sleep, but after half an hour to an hour she says, ‘My tummy hurts’ and Dan takes over. They head downstairs, where he tries to sleep on the sofa, whilst Sophie sits up and watches some TV for about an hour…. then she’s tired again and comes back up to sleep… it’s all haywire! With only five week’s to go till bubs arrives she is certainly getting us in training for the sleep deprivation to come.
Despite the disrupted sleep I am totally manic with nesting madness and spent yesterday morning in a frenzy of scrubbing. My plans to head out immediately into the sunshine where delayed when the girls got absorbed in building electronic snap circuits together. They made a light activated alarm system…
Meanwhile, I found myself instinctively drawn to the art/laundry room where gravity pulled me to the floor, the dust and the paint marks. I felt like a robot with the fast forward button jammed on, unable to stop scrubbing – walls, floors, windows… crazed eyes looking for every bit of dust & dead fly…. this is what happens after 8 month’s of no alcohol!
Today the button was forced to pause a little as a friend came round to visit with her two lovely boys, one of them only four month’s old. I kept glancing over at her baby on the play-gym and despite my swollen belly couldn’t quite believe that our home will soon be filled with a little one. The girls were both fascinated in the baby, but a little pushing and shoving to get into the best position made me think, ‘The hardest part is going to be making sure this baby isn’t overwhelmed by his or her big sisters’. In the bath tonight the girls were keen to bathe a toy baby. I could only find one and they shared for a few moments before tugging the baby by the head and legs in opposite directions as though playing tug of war! Eh em, the new family dynamics will take a little getting used to.
Well, the howling southerly is showing no signs of letting up. Both girls are asleep. Hubbie is out enjoying a few Friday drinks. I have finished playing a few melodies on the piano (and howling along like the wind). A sip of Merlot really would be the perfect end to the day.
UPDATE
And after I hit ‘publish’ hubbie texts me to say he’s in a cab home with a small nip of Merlot for me! I have been so good throughout my pregnancy and I’m so close now… just a teeny drop 🙂
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Don’t go mad with all the cleaning, ‘cos guess what? It all gets messy again! But I know it does give a sense of satisfaction especially when people are coming to stay. Once your parents are with you hopefully you will be able to relax a bit more. It must be a very exciting time for you all. I’m not surprised by Sophie waking in the night, it is a time of change which can be unsettling to little ones. Hopefully having your parents staying will help stop a waking pattern developing. My only suggestion is to maybe try and find some way of encouraging her to be more independent about going back to sleep once she has been to the toilet. I’m sure your Mum may have some ideas about this.On a lighter note, I provided my boys with a life size ‘baby’ doll so they could practice parenting or work out any feelings towards their new siblings but being macho boys the doll stayed in a corner until eventually given away to a family with girls. Can’t say I didn’t try.
The baby will love its big sisters and will soon find a way of telling them to back off – Our baby no.3 is by far the bossiest (in the nicest possible way) and has had his own way since birth.
take care xoxox
PS Still willing to swap on the weather – the wrist breaking ice has now gone to be replaced with never ending rain (forecast for the whole weekend), looks like floods!
Zorbing on the lake, how fun! Electronic snap thingy’s… I want. Did you buy them in a toystore? I have been trying to come up with activities the girlies can do other than watching TV for what seems to be ALL DAY LONG!
Hey Sarah,
I love reading your adventures. It’s great when I get to find out something new to do with the kids in Wellington. “Zorbing” sounds interesting!
About the header for the blog. On the Picasa post that I did, there is a link to Clover Lane’s tutorial on how to make a banner. Because you are familiar with Picasa, this should be a sinch! (If you want to add words, you will want to CREATE THE COLLAGE first. Then you can select the finished COLLAGE and add TEXT to it. Then you EXPORT it. And it will be saved ready to be used as a banner)
Keep in mind that the banner for our template is smallish. So you may have to experiment with the size of the photos to get it just right.
It is very simple to get the photo you finished in Picasa on to your blog. All you have to do is go to your Chez Lee dashboard. Go down the righthand side of the dashboard…Look for APPEARANCE, then choose CUSTOM HEADER. It will tell you to UPLOAD NEW HEADER IMAGE. All you have to do is BROWSE your computer to find the COLLAGE that you did in Picasa. I found mine under PICASA, COLLAGES, EXPORT.
Then it will bring you to a screen to CROP the collage. This basically means that the template only can handle a certain size header. This is where I had to go back and re-do the collage in order to fit it into the size of the wordpress template header space.
Gosh! I hope that makes sense!!! Best of luck!
PS hasn’t the weather been RUBBISH the last couple of days! Crazy to think we were out enjoying the sun, only a few days ago! Wellington summers! Yes, totally bi-polar!
That baby is rally cute 🙂