Geoff's parents are due to come down for the weekend, from tomorrow afternoon. In order to fit everyone, we'll have to shuffle beds around, with my mother taking the bottom bunk in the girls' room - it's a full sized bed, though, not one of those little kiddie ones, and it has a proper, sprung mattress, not a foam one, so it's actually not that uncomfortable to sleep on, so it's not a problem, as long as you remember not to sit up suddenly... (I know, I've slept on it once or twice when the kids were unwell or couldn't sleep & needed company.) We'll give up our room to Geoff's parents, in part so they don't have to manage the second set of (somewhat steep) steps up to the guest room, and Geoff and I will take the guest room. Which means that I'll have to change sheets on all the beds tomorrow. Which will go really well with the fact that my washing machine broke this morning. Just what I need! Supposed to get a repairman out tomorrow, which is a good thing, as it's hard to go for very long without doing laundry when you have three small children and a houseguest. At least it wasn't halfway through a cycle and therefore leaking water all over my kitchen floor...

Oh, and tomorrow is our 10th anniversary. The joys of being a "housewife" (yes, I really hate that term, but frankly, having to stay in all day to wait for the washing machine repairperson to show up certainly makes you feel like you are married to the house, so I reckon it's justified in this case!)

Today should be a fun day - we've got our friends Roland and Teresa coming around for Sunday lunch, with their kids. They have 4. So, as Sarah pointed out to me earlier (maths showoff) that makes 7 kids. The eldest of whom isn't quite 7 yet. (Sebastian is almost 7, Sarah is 5.5, Darius is almost 5, Freya & Oliva are both about 3.5 - their birthdays are both in October - Solomon was 1 in December, and Alex doesn't really quite count as he isn't mobile yet...) I'm sure it will be chaos. But in a pleasant way. We may make my mother insane though - not sure she's quite up for the noise & whatnot they'll create!

Keep meaning to write something, but keep getting distracted, and then last night, couldn't get on to Blogger, so that didn't help. Not that there's much to say at the moment, just the usual, except the exciting news that Sarah lost a tooth today (as a result of normal growth, not due to an accident or anything). She's very excited, particularly so because her friend Thalia, who is 6 months older, hasn't lost any yet, so this gives Sarah a bit of an advantage in their constant series of one upmanships (Thalia is in Year 1 at school, whereas Sarah is only in Reception, so there are frequently issues about things to do with age & ability...). I'm not quite sure what the going rate for the tooth fairy is these days - I'm sure it's a far cry from the quarter I used to get or whatever Geoff got - I'm guessing about sixpence, given his age! I think perhaps the tooth fairy will give £1 for the first tooth (because it's special, being the first), but only 50p for subsequent teeth. We'll see...

Darling baby only woke up once last night - I don't suppose it will last, of course, but it wasn't bad - he fed around 10.30, then didn't wake until 3.30ish. Then again at around 6.30, which is only a little while before I'd normally get up anyway, so not such a problem. Partly this may be because he didn't sleep very much during the day yesterday, so perhaps he was just really tired out from spending most of the day whinging...

Not much happening today. Olivia is home from school again - stomach bothering her again (middle of the night of course - predictably). She went to school yesterday, so we can only hope that she hasn't passed this ailment to everyone in the nursery as that will make us really popular :)

As though we needed more excitement in our lives, Olivia decided that this was a good time to come down with a stomach bug. Luckily, unlike Keir (my friend Lana, who lives down the road's 2 yr old), she didn't spend much time throwing up, so at least we were spared that. She spent most of today lying on the sofa watching videos, which actually was pretty peaceful. And as she wasn't throwing up, she wasn't really in much pain or misery, just feeling generally blah... At least we didn't have much we needed to do today! If we are really lucky, she won't pass it on to the others. Seems possible we might miss out, as she and Keir basically acquired it the same day, so if the others were going to get ill with it, they probably would have done so at the same time as well.

A lovely grey rainy day today - just what everyone wants on the weekend, with small kids in the house. Luckily, Sarah has a birthday party to go to this afternoon, so she'll have something to keep her occupied. Baby Alex had a touch of jaundice, but it's going away now that he's actually getting milk - the midwives say "keep him in the sunshine if you can" and laugh, because of course there is no sunshine at the moment - good thing we aren't entirely dependent on it! He's having a nap in Daddy's arms at the moment - only fair that Daddy gets his share, though the girls don't understand why Daddy is allowed to hold the baby while he sleeps and they aren't (the fact that when Daddy holds him, Alex STAYS asleep seems to have escaped their attention...). They adore him, of course - the only worry is that they adore him too much and don't ever want to leave him alone. It's getting better, though, and I think by the end of next week they'll be much more calm about the whole thing.

We'll try this again, as he's asleep at the moment. Though given the amount of noise Sarah is making, it may not last long.

We thought he might be coming on Monday, as I thought my waters might be breaking and I was getting some fairly regular (though not very strong or frequent) contractions. So we went in to hospital to have it checked, but it wasn't anything, just Braxton Hicks and all that, so they sent us home again. We were then hopeful that something would happen either later Monday or Tuesday, but nothing did, until around 10.30pm on Tuesday. Luckily, our friends & neighbours who were going to take care of Olivia & Sarah while we were in hospital (if the baby came before my mother arrived for her visit on the 6th) suggested that we go ahead and put the girls to bed at their house, just in case. Makes sense - they'd rather have them unncessarily overnight than be woken up at 3am for some strange reason! So anyway, I went to bed around 10.30 and began having contractions around every 5 minutes - as this lasted for several hours, we felt it safe to go ahead and go to hopsital, and sure enough, when we got there, they determined that this time, it was the real thing and he'd be born at some point. Not that they can tell how long it would be, but at least they didn't send us home!

Anyway, after the various long involved stages of labour (which I won't elaborate on here as I know people of the male persuasion and others who can't handle pain or graphic descriptions of icky things might be reading this) Alex finally arrived at 1130am on Wednesday morning. He weighed 3.61 kilos (that's 7lbs 15oz to those who don't speak metric) and was 58cm long (almost 23 inches). This is longer than Sarah (57) and Olivia (52), and heavier than Olivia (3.3kg) but lighter than Sarah (3.7kg) for those who keep track of these things . Of course, he was earlier than Sarah (41wks) and later than Olivia (38wks) so I guess that's just about right. He's very cute, in my personal unbiased opinion and as soon as there are photos, I'll be sure to share them.

More soon - I'll try to write something small every day or so, but you know how these things go...

Just in case you aren't up to date, he is finally here, born 11.34 Wednesday 5/2/03. I'll write more later, as he's just woken up from a nap demanding to be fed, but those are the basics. We're naming him Alexander David North, though will probably just call him Alex. The girls both refer to him as "my baby", of course...

Ok, it's true that morning sickness, indigestion, swelling, tiredness, and all those other lovely aspects of pregnancy aren't much fun, but frankly, the really annoying thing about being pregnant is waiting. Especially at the end. I thought this morning we might be on the way as I was getting some contractions and having some water leaking (more detail than you wanted to know?), so we went off to hospital for them to check it out (if you've had a caesarean in the past, they like to see you if anything at all seems to be happening, just to be on the safe side). But no, they sent us home again - drat. Now it's the middle of the night (more or less) and I'm still getting some small contractions, basically just enough to keep me awake. I did go to bed quite early (before 10, which for me, at any rate, is early) and slept for a few hours before waking up with these ones, so I have high hopes, but at the moment, it's just enough to keep me from sleeping, which isn't very useful. I know he's not due until the 9th, but one can always hope!