Well, I guess the work paid off, though, as Sarah won 2nd place with her costume (they divided the kids into 3 age ranges - she won among the littles), which is great. She has to take it back into school today for a Show and Tell Assembly this afternoon, which I'm going to attend, with camera & (hopefully) sleeping baby. The joys of parenthood! Actually, Green Lane (the school) is very good about their assemblies, keeping them quite informal and friendly and not too boring, or at least, that's been our experience so far. The school she used to attend was a little less casual about these things, which was a bit of a pain.

We spent the best part of the afternoon today getting costumes ready for the fancy dress parade tomorrow. Sarah is successfully outfitted as a fisherman, with two lovely handmade fishies, and a hat and jacket adorned with "fishing flies" I made of coloured feathers and mini Xmas bulbs (for floats). I'll try to take a photo or two, as the description doesn't really do them justice. I think it works quite well.

Olivia is going to be an Indian (as in Native American), as in 10 Little Indians. Luckily, she already had a Pocahontas (sp?) dress, so we just had to make a headdress. Add a few "war paint" stripes and, voila, sorted.

Well. All the guests are gone, and the house is relatively empty. Not quite back to normal yet, but soon will be, I guess. Only it will be a different normal, of course, as we only had 2 kids before. :)

The next challenge in my exciting daily life will be the Fancy Dress Parade for Maths Week next week. The kids are allowed to go to school in costume - any character from a song, nursery rhyme, story, etc, providing there's a number connection. Not sure what Olivia is going to do, but we think Sarah will be a fisherman, from the song "1-2-3-4-5" (for those without children it goes like this:

1, 2, 3-4-5
Once I caught a fish alive
6, 7, 8-9-10
Then I let it go again
Why did you let it go?
Because it bit my finger so.
Which finger did it bite?
This little finger on my right.)

Truly exciting.

Geoff's just taken the girls out to see a play at our local children's theatre (we are fortunate in living near one of the few proper children's theatres in the country - this is one entirely devoted to children's productions, and has stuff for both the little ones and the older ones. Everything we've seen there has been excellent) - and anyway, it's very quiet in the house all of a sudden. Alex is even sort of asleep, which also contributes to the quietness. I doubt that will last for long, though, so I'm having a quick computer session while he's still happy to be rocked by Grandma.

Monday school starts back again - we've been in half term here - hooray! It's astonishing just how obnoxious two lovely small girls can get if they feel they aren't being adequately entertained. And their standards of how much attention should be paid to them are somewhat different to other, more adult standards, sometimes. Like when said adult has a feeding baby attached to her and therefore can't actually come look at whatever it is they've built using the empty wine delivery case and all the quilts in the house...

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!

Not much to say, as I'm spending most of my time hanging around waiting for this baby to show up. And trying to avoid doing other stuff as much as possible, though of course my life always involves a large amount of ferrying children around from point A to point B, sometimes via points C, D & E. And not always just my own children (the advantage of that being that sometimes other people will ferry mine around). Sometimes we walk, of course, but the weather isn't that great this time of year, so a lot of it is in the car. People who joke that one of a mother's primary duties is being a chauffeur aren't really kidding.

Still here, nothing happening on the baby front, just in case you are wondering. :)

An uneventful week here, though I had bad news from my friend Kristen in the US, whose sister's husband died unexpectedly yesterday. She says "he had some kind of breathing difficulty and seizure and died, despite my sister doing CPR on him and the paramedics trying to revive him for a long time. We don't know what caused his death, but the coroner has ordered a full autopsy, so we should know in a few days. He did have a heart condition, but was on medication to control it." Even though I'd never met Jim, I of course knew Kristen's sister (I've known Kris since we were about 13, which is a long, long time ago. Some of you know precisely how long.) and so am pretty weirded out myself. And of course, Jessy (the sister) also has about a 6-month old baby, which really doesn't even bear thinking on. As a reminder of how unexpectedly things can happen in life, even when you are very young, I could have done without, frankly. But I'll be sending positive thoughts in their direction, and hope that Jessy finds the strength to cope with this in what's going to be a really hard time for her... Life. Sometimes it can really suck.

Not much to report here. Still hanging in there, still waiting for Mr Boy to make an appearance (not that he's overdue, or even due, yet, but you do begin to lose patience with it eventually). 9 Feb is the supposed date, so I guess we could have a running countdown, but if he's late, it would be much too depressing to dwell on just how late. When there's any news on that front, well, you'll be able to read about it here.

Both kids enjoying school, though Olivia is still really tired when she gets home, and therefore slightly emotional sometimes. Today was good, as Lana took Sarah & Thalia to trampoline, so Olivia could be at home with just me and we could do something quiet, like just watch a video and hang out. I think if she could do that every day, it would work well, but of course when Sarah is around, they want to play, and they wind each other up and get hyper. Predictable, but a little hard for her at the moment. Still, I think it will get better as she gets more used to nursery.

School started this week for Olivia, or, as she insists, "not school, nursery" - and she seems to be enjoying it so far. It does make her a little more tired & grumpy than before, but I think that will change as she gets used to it. It's the one disadvantage to afternoon nursery - that most kids have better energy levels in the morning, and if they do something which tires them out in the morning, they can nap in the afternoon, but most of them adjust pretty rapidly. And as she gets a little older, it won't be nearly such a problem.

One thing that she has in common with Sarah is that she doesn't seem to be able to remember what she actually did at nursery - must be an age thing, as Sarah is well over that now. But it used to be very frustrating when Sarah came out of school and you'd ask what she did, and she couldn't tell you anything. Some days, there are visual clues, of course, like the days they come home covered in paint, but (luckily) that doesn't always happen.

Today was Olivia's first day at her new ballet class - she enjoyed it fine, no problem with switching teachers or meeting new kids or anything like that. She's very different from Sarah in that respect. At 3, Sarah would have spent the entire half hour hiding behind a chair in the corner of the room. In fact, as Lana pointed out, she might still. At least for the first few minutes - she's a lot more tentative in new situations.

More snow yesterday - while the girls were walking to school, which they thought was great. It's still on the ground today, though we haven't had any new snowfall today. Most of the roads are fine, though our street isn't great - it's a cul de sac, so it doesn't get that much traffic, and it's very shaded, so the sun doesn't melt the snow as it might elsewhere. So, slightly slippy, but manageable. Lana and I have been walking the girls to and from school, as that's much easier in this kind of weather, but I do need to get out this evening to take Sarah to her swimming lesson, so I hope the ice won't be a problem. It's really nice for the kids to get a bit of snow, as it's not something we usually get in London at all. And it makes for a very pretty walk to & from school, with the fields all snow covered and so on.

Only a little over a month to go now until the scheduled appearance of Mr Boy. I wouldn't mind if he came a bit early, but frankly, I do hope he waits a week or two longer, so I can have a week or two of Olivia going to nursery in the afternoon - 2 and a half free hours every afternoon - what on earth will I do with myself? Well, I'm sure I can think of something!