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2005-08-10 - 9.45pm previous entry next entry
A move away from London??....
Thank you for all the lovely messages saying Happy 9 months to Arthur!! :) And to Sam for the advice about baby shoes - I will have to check those links out, thank you!!
Well, after such a big newsy photoey entry yesterday, I suddenly have nothing to say! And ironically this is when I find myself a moment to update, heh. Oh well. I will waffle about not-a-lot then, since I have a moment.
I have a serious blinkie addiction. I think I need help! I replaced the 8 month breastfeeding milestone blinkie with a 9 month one today, and couldn't resist adding 3 new ones. *sigh* Plus I added a couple of others last week. You should see my computer file absolutely bursting with TTC and pregnancy ones all eager to be used in my pregnancy journal, hehe! I am just sniffing them out all over the internet and hoarding them up for when they are appropriate! I love blinkies.
I went to the osteopath today. It wasn't so bad - for once there seems to be a bit of improvement, yay! I think maybe my back is a tad stronger than it was, in the supporting muscles, and when I told her that, she agreed! She can see improvement when she watches me bend this way and that. We get on so well and have so much in common, as she has a little boy who is one month older than Arthur. These days we never stop talking from the moment I get on the table! Seriously, we hardly draw breath. The session is 40 minutes. I really enjoy them. They are usually pretty uncomfortable but I feel glad to be getting stuff done to my back that it needs, and I really look forward to our chats now too! I am still in trouble for not swimming! But she lent me her yoga for pregnancy video, and said that it would benefit my back to do the exercises in it, so I will do that when I can. I also got sent to the chemist afterwards to buy some Tiger Balm to put on my neck, shoulders and lower back 2-3 times a day, urgh! That stuff STINKS. I hope it won't put Arthur off breastfeeding, because seriously, it's overpowering. She said if it does, I should stop using it, or cut back the amount of times I apply it. But I have a lot of muscle pain in those areas that needs fixing.
Dum de dum.
Neil applied for a new job today. I am excited and nervous (as he is too, of course!) to see if he gets it. I proof-read his application the other evening and we fine-tuned it together, then he posted it this morning! So it's DONE. He could get a new job! A complete change of career. It would mean moving away from London, and who knows how soon, if he does get the job. I thought such a thing would make me nervous and depressed, because I have always had that feeling about moving away from where I grew up. But since we prayed about it a few nights ago, I feel so unexpectedly different. So at peace and happy about it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I reckon maybe God WILL have us move away and for Neil to get a new job. I don't know if it's THIS job, but there are others like it which come up from time to time, and he will keep applying for them because that is what he wants to do. He will be doing environmental work, using his geographical skills and putting his degree and diploma into practise at last.
I am soooo glad we prayed about it. The way I am feeling, I am SURE God in it this. I know I would not feel so calm and eager about it on my own. But I would say (sooo weird for me!) that I am almost excited about the move away. We will potentially be heading for Hertfordshire (a couple of hours (ish) north of London). We have a specific town picked out, where the jobs seem to be, and where we have already researched and found a fantastic thriving family church which happens to be one of the same "family" of churches that we currently attend. We also researched schools and found three at the top of the UK league table. The best one is a Beacon School and Neil actually PHONED them up, bless him, and got them to post us their map of their catchment area!!! I feel so wonderfully proud of him. He is such an excellent husband and father, such a great head of this family. He really looks out for all our interests. He didn't even tell me he had researched the church and schools, etc, until he was sure he wanted to go for a job in that area.
So we got the map, and then researched the property market in the catchment area. It's really important to us that Arthur goes to a good school. I know he is going to be bright and have a ton of potential, and I am a fantastic example of a bright person with tons of potential who totally flopped on the school-front, and ended up with all sorts of emotional issues as a result. I don't want that for Arthur. So schools are important to us. I want a place where I don't have to push push push for him to get what he needs, where it's all just there for the taking and where he will be encouraged at his own pace, so that there doesn't need to be any pressure on him, or obvious evidence for him to see of his parents ranting at the school that their child isn't being adequately stretched. I have a lot of messy experience in my own memory banks that I want to be careful to avoid, or at least be more sensitive about. I want him to enjoy school, every part of it. The learning, social life, everything. I want him to be happy with himself no matter what he turns out to be, and never to feel he has a mark of potential that he needs to hit or else it's a miss, all the time.
Anyway. It's a great school. We were amazed to find plenty of houses for sale in the surrounding residential area, and it seems to be a lovely area. Because we are selling a London property and moving out, we found out that we will be able to afford a very nice 3 or 4 bedroom detached house!!!! That is crazy!!! But I am breathless with excitement about it, after going online and seeing some of the houses up for sale there at the moment. It is beginning to feel more and more like that is THE place we were always meant to raise our family at. It feels so RIGHT, and that's a rare thing for me to feel, so I am pretty confident. I don't know if Neil will get this job, though he's super adequately qualified and it's a junior role. I think there are several going actually. He will take a significant pay cut, but we will be living cheaper out of London and buying a property a little cheaper too, so I think we will be fine.
I am so excited to get set up in the house that Arthur will always know as his childhood home!! And to have more children there. I moved to this part of SW London (from another part further north) when I was 10 months old. I have only ever seen this place as my home. It's weird right now to think that Arthur will have the same feelings for a place that we don't even know yet. It's like a story book that I know will be exciting and thrilling and joyful, despite any challenges, and you know when you're a little child and your parents are reading you a BIG story book at bedtime, only it's so big that it's like a few pages each night, so that it takes FOREVER to get through the book? And you just look forward to each storytime to hear what happens next? Our life is starting to feel like that. I love that. I feel so blessed! God is so good to us.
Anyway I don't know when all this might happen, but I wanted to write about it as it's like a biiiig part of our lives starting up. It will be the biggest change we've known I think. Bigger even than becoming parents. Or maybe equal to it. And that was BIG!!! ;)
I am tired. Arthur has wanted to be held all day, poor Boo. He is feeling a bit delicate I think, with his big big toothie still pushing through. Almost the whole width of it is through the gum now, but he has a bit of nappy rash and some runny poo today, and drooling gallons of drool everywhere. Today when he woke from his nap and lifted his head to smile at me, I saw a patch of drool on the sheets the size of his whole head!!! Poor baby Boo. Those top middlies are pretty nasty I think, for most babies, from what I am reading. I keep telling him he will be very glad of them soon enough! I hope he feels better soon. He is just quite clingy and whiney and gets very upset very easily. Like if he's reeeeally tired and ready for a nap, where he would normally just get a bit cranky and maybe start crying kind of half-heartedly if I can't get him to bed right that second, today he is just sobbing and wailing like his whole world is falling apart, and he has tears running off his chin :( It's soooo sad to see him like that and to hear his little breaths catch in his chest. He does this little whimper-whilst-panting thing that is particularly pathetic, and it makes my heart try to wrench itself out of my body to reach him, if I am doing something like driving the car and can't stop to cuddle him better. I do love him so terribly much.
I try to give him extra giggle times when he is sad like that with tiredness or teething. I like to balance it out for him where I can! I think it's as much to soothe ME though, to hear his squeals of happy laughter after a pre-naptime 5-minutes of such sad sobbing.
The stair gates that I ordered from Kiddicare arrived today! Along with Arthur's first wooden puzzle. It has farm animals that lift out and you fit them back in the shapes they came from. Arthur finds them good to teethe on, but then he is a little young for puzzles yet! I want a shape sorter. Then I will try to lay off the baby toy obsession for a while, hehe! Anyway, the stair gates. They are BabyDan wooden ones, and I really like them. One is for our bedroom door so that it's eventually a safe room for him to be playing or napping in, if I have to take a shower or something important where I can't keep a safe enough eye on Arthur. I would need to be near enough for him to hear me though - I wouldn't want to put him in there to play and then disappear off downstairs for ages! I know lots of babies who wouldn't mind that for a while, but Arthur likes to see and reach me at all times! He plays well and independently if I'm in the room, and interacts quite well with other babies, but it's a different story if I'm not in the room. Which is fine by me.
The other stair gate would be useful on the bottom of the stairs, if only we had bannisters to attach it to! Oh dear. Another good reason to move asap! ;) I also can't wait to have a lovely garden for Arthur to go out and roam around and play in. Ours is horrible and has waist-high thistles in it, and cardboard boxes all over the very grimy patio. And car fumes over the fence. Bleurgh. We have never used it for anything except to hang washing out in the old days before it got too overgrown to get to the line! When we were at Jemma's house for Jaya's party, her garden was so nice and spacious, and the little ones were so busy and happy in it, and it contained such lovely activities for them (like the swing set and stuff), that suddenly I realised what Arthur was missing, and wanted a garden for him. So a move would serve that purpose too. Although we will have to do something to our garden in order to sell the house!
Okay it's time I thought about eating some dinner, so I think I will finish this for now. Ohhh but that reminds me! About a month ago people started saying more and more that I had lost weight and stuff, and I hadn't checked my weight in ages, so I jumped on the scales and found that I weighed 8.5 stone!! Yay! I have lost almost 3 stone (14lbs to a stone for the U.S. readers) since the end of my pregnancy. I was 7 stone 10lbs at the beginning of pregnancy (though I went down to 7 stone with morning sickness, yuck!) which is actually lighter than ideal for me, so I only wanted to go down to 8.5 stone after the birth. And here I am! I hadn't even noticed!! I think I had started to notice that my clothes are a little more baggy though. But I don't quite fit in my pre-pregnancy jeans yet. I don't think I ever will if I manage to maintain this weight - and that's what I want to do. I think this is a much healthier weight for me, for the energetic task of being a mummy! Especially since I am still breastfeeding Arthur such a lot, and hope to have more babies soon. I think the breastfeeding is the reason actually. Not the fact that I'm doing it, but the sheer AMOUNT of milk that I'm making and he's taking. It's just using up my own supplies! I am a tad nervous that I will lose too much weight as he continues to nurse a lot, as he is a big boy and gets all his nutrition from me still. My fat stores from pregnancy are all used up I think, so now my daily intake is the only fuel. I have never really eaten to lose weight since my pregnancy so I'm a bit worried that it's falling off too fast now. I am trying to make sure I eat big enough meals and trying to have two cooked meals a day instead of a sandwich lunch and a cooked meal for dinner. And desserts aplenty, haha! I love dessert :) If I have to go up to full fat milk, I will. I drink semi-skimmed and prefer it, but when I was too thin/light 8 or 9 years ago, my dietitian put me on a high calorie diet (which took MONTHS to make any difference), including gold cap Jersey milk! It took me a long time to adjust to the amount of cream in it and tolerate it okay, but it made semi-skimmed milk seem like water in comparison when I switched back! Sooo I'll do that if I have to. I like milk :)
Okay, need food and water and to peep in at my sleeping boy and feel my heart melt into a gooey thing as I gaze at him. I love watching him asleep. I could watch him allll the time if only I didn't have to sleep and eat and pee.
So I am going now. No photos today, wow! I will update again when I can! :)
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