BellyWatch: Week 39

Hey all.. well, we're down to the last two weeks before the due date, which means it could be any day from a few weeks ago to about a month from now. This means we don't tend to make plans, and I jump whenever my phone rings at work :)

Cheryl is still feeling good, although occasionally the baby finds a spot to poke that makes her uncomfortable... and of course at that point he decides it's a great game to just keep on poking that spot. Still, she's managing a walk every day of around a kilometre, as well as keeping up the various stretches and other exercises that are recommended.

In an effort to improve my fitness I've also managed the occasional walk to the train station in the morning.. it's around 4 - 4.5 kilometres, which means to catch the train at 7:30 I have a fairly early morning. It's a good walk though, mostly uphill :)

Apart from that we're pretty uninteresting I'm afraid. Just generally kicking around at home, staying cool in this stupid weather and not making plans for any long trips.

What has everybody else been up to since Christmas?

Guess the time and date (and eye colour) competition

As discussed, I'm going to run a competition to guess the time (to the nearest hour) and date of the baby's birth, and the eye colour. That means if someone has the same time that you want, you have to go a different eye colour :) The winner will be the closest time first, and if there's two times that are close then whoever gets the eyes right.
I'll put it up here for a day or so for you all to guess, and then I'm going to post it on my website and keep a running tally of guesses up there :)
The expected due date is Feb 1. Both Cheryl and I have brown eyes, but both our Dads have blue eyes. Oh, and there is a prize (it'll probably be one of my tees from redbubble.. it wont be naming the baby, sorry Jared)
Good luck! ;)

Happy Birthday, Lisa!!

I hope you have a wonderful day. Make sure you get some photos of you & your sibs while they're all there!

Lots of Love, Cheryl & baby

Happy Birthday, Carolynn!! :D

I hope you enjoy your party today! (if the weather is anything like it is here, it'll be a beautiful day for you :)

Lots of Love, Cheryl & your cousin-to-be

Happy birthday to Danielle!
Lots of love from all of us here in Eaglehawk.
Hope you have a fun day.
See you soon.

Our itinery, mostly.

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=glennji%40gmail.com&ctz=Australia/Sydney

The Piano-ator -- "I'll be Bach!"

(I wanted to call home this morning, but got up too late - don't think you'd appreciate a phone ringing at 10:30pm, just when you're settling in for bed. I'll try again tonight (Sunday morning).)

I have a piano! It is teh awesome.

Dee got it from an online place for my birthday. It's a Korg SP-250 (stage piano), digital, full size and with that fancy-pant hammer-action that makes it feel like a "real" (analogue?) piano. So. Very. Cool. It arrived yesterday, and it was all I could do not to fob off work and come home for it!

Last weekend we visited London's "Tin Pan Alley", the music-strip in the West End. We found the piano there, but for about an extra £100 -- no thanks! So for £50 cheaper we got the piano and a stool from DV247. Not bad at all, especially since we had to wait less than a week for it to arrive!

Funny: the evening after visiting Tin Pan Alley we went to a Jazz night at the 100 Club on Oxford Street ... and the pianist had the same piano! Very cool -- before Saturday I'd only seen it in pictures, then over the course of a day I got to play with one (in the store) and listen to someone hammering out frenetic melodies and slammin' chords, as we danced and jived (unlicensed, of course) in any free floor-space.

The weekend before that, you may know, we spent in the Cotswolds -- picturesque English countryside, tawny rough-hewn stone for walls, houses, people (okay, the people weren't made of stone, but wouldn't that be cool!). We stayed in Bourton On The Water; Dee tricked me because I thought we were going to drink bourbon on the water! Still, getting away for a relaxing weekend was probably better. Probably.

The town itself is billed as "the Venice of England", but the locals didn't take too kindly to me tying a bunch of ducks together in the shape of a gondala and paddling along the little waterway that twisted through the township. The ducks didn't mind, and gave me lots of little friendship-bites to show how much they respected and admired me.

The countdown is well and truly on now -- we both can't wait to get home and see everyone, and eat decent fish and chips, and feel sunlight, and drink cold beer.

Nursery update

Hey everybody.. today we bought a change table, finally. Cheryl is going to get a capsule for the car in January, after she finishes work, and then I think we have all the essentials. Somewhere for the baby to sleep, be changed, and a way to get him around :)

We also bought a really cool cot set, with monkeys and turtles and all that good stuff. We put it in the cot just to take some photos to put online.

You can see all the nursery photos here.

Oh, we also had a very kind woman in Toys R Us give us a voucher which saved us about $40 (after the change table had already been reduced by $100 i might add). She was just another shopper there, and being nice.. some people are awesome :)

Saturday we also had the first of our three classes at Flinders Hospital. The second is with a Physio, and covers relaxation techniques and pain relief, and the third is about taking the baby home and looking after it.. Which unfortunately meant that this one was about labour and delivery.

I wont go into specifics.. but rest assured, they did ;)

Still, it was really good, and it's left both Cheryl and I feeling better about the whole thing. There were a few things that I had heard, or read in older books, which were completely wrong. Which is good.

And that's about it from us for this week.

christmas is coming

Looking forward to seeing you all soon. Dad's next appointment is next Tuesday in Bendigo where we hope to find out what treatment is recommended and when. He has gained an extra kilo (73) but still has problems with some foods. Otherwise all is well and we're keeping on keeping on. Carolynn called today on her way to confirmation class. Tamara rang since she is organised enough to be buying a present for Carolynn. I'll consult with Dayna when she gets here. Maybe we can buy a joint gift. Lisa said there is a google diary with itinaries for our overseas visitors. I've asked her to send it to me. I'm just sorting what I have to buy for whom. Is it December already? I'm not ready!

Calisthenics

Guess what? I won the Perpetual Trophy at the concert last night. The perpetual is like a great team member award. At the concert Nana, Daria and Poppy won prizes in the raffle (Nana won 2 prizes :P ).

Pictured left 2 right: the club Perpetual trophy and my Perpetual trophy.

Confirmation, Calisthenics and School

I thought it was about tie for me to update the bandwagon. Today is my confirmation class. Well this Saturday is my end of year concert. On the 5th of December I have the Fashion Awards and then on the 7th I get confirmed. I also have the last of my exams next week between Monday and Wednesday.

Our weekend

This weekend I surprised Damien with a stay at a Bed &Breakfast in a little town called Macclesfield. I thought it would be nice to get away from baby preparations, house work and the temptation for Damien to do any work on the computer. I also wanted to have at least one more weekend away together before the baby arrives (10 weeks to go!). It was a bit difficult to keep it a total secret... especially on Saturday when I asked which pyjamas he'd like to take on our "mystery trip" :)

The B&B was a nice little studio attached to a larger house, all set on a huge country property complete with two dogs, two alpacas and a sheep. The owners had set the studio up beautifully and had left for us plenty of breakfast provisions as well as lots of yummy snacks (chocolate, biscuits... yum!). We went for a little walk in the afternoon, and then went out for dinner at traditional English-style pub, The Three Brother's Arms. Once again, yum!! The food was really nice, and the pub itself was really nicely decorated. It even had a well in it!
This morning we did a bit of lazing around before heading off. It was so nice to wake up and feel like we were on a holiday!
Damien has put some photos up here.(There's also the latest "belly watch" photo there)

Decorating and cleaning

Hey all,

We finally got the rest of the decorations for the baby's room this week. It's a collection of vinyl stickers of birds in flight.. we stuck them up this weekend on the main blue wall. I've put some pictures up on flickr so you can have a look.. although they were pretty tricky to photograph, so the wall is a different colour in each shot. It should give a fair idea of how it looks though.

Today we hired a carpet cleaner and picked up quite a collection of sludge from our carpets.. we mainly wanted to do the baby's room and the lounge, but we had a bit of time so got some other areas cleaned as well. It's very rewarding to look at the disturbing brown gunk in the bottom of the machine and know that at least now it's not in the carpets any more :)

That's about it from us for this weekend.. now we're off to a much deserved dinner at a Japanese restaurant on the beach. Huzzah! Cheryl has planned something secret for next weekend that doesn't involve cleaning or looking at baby furniture, so it should be a refreshing change.. I don't know what it is though. Should be fun :)

My brush with fame

Vicki and I just spent a fun evening being cultured - we decided to attend Literature Live with Neil Gaiman. He's in the UK to promote his new book, The Graveyard Book.

After being introduced, Neil highlighted a dilemma that many people may have had - Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm had a gig next door at the same time as Neil's talk. To ensure we didn't miss out (and become bitter and twisted in our old age), he invited them to perform the shortest gig ever! Neil Gaiman had his own 'warm up bands'!

The evening started with Paul and Storm singing Live - a song about building the perfect woman - Frankenstein-style: "Hard work and science are what I have to give, and all I'm asking in return is that you live.."

This was followed by Jonathan Coulton who sang a very catchy tune Skullcrusher Mountain: "I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet"

Finally Neil read some of the book to us (Chapter 3) - he even used the right voices! The father sounds like Berk from Trapdoor (you know, the plasticine dude on tv). After the reading, there was a question and answer session - Neil's answers were honest and amusing and not arrogant. It makes me even happier to read his books. He even answered the silly girl who obviously didn't know much about him and asked the question he's probably answered millions of times already.."I've been reading American Gods...(insert list of books), why do you choose to incorporate fantasy..?" (or something like this). My favourite Q&A was "What do you think of your Sandman being used by boys to get the girlfriends in to comics?".. "I'm happy to have one of the first sexually transmitted comics!"

Anyway, there were book signings afterwards, so I had to get my new copy of the Graveyard Book signed. :-) I even got a photo (in the typical dayna-selfportrait style). He was great about it too - just told me that the signature in the book will be slightly wobbly because he couldn't see (due to the flash - it IS bright).

And now I've updated the Bandwagon within 2 hrs of getting home - this is a new record for me! An event with photos up on the same day!! woohoo! (Can you tell I'm excited by my brush with fame?)

wow what a surprise!!!

well I won a scholarship in English...$1,000 to spend on anything to do with English so I've decided to buy a new laptop.