Early Arrival

It's not what you think!

Our stroller arrived a few weeks early! We were a bit surprised, but happy none the less. We love it, it's great! For now, it's been added to the room which is already bursting with baby stuff.

It's a Mutsy 4Rider Light. Not so light when we found out we got the beefed-up super tires vs. the light ones, adding a whopping 2.2kgs to the weight. Ummmm, but it's probably great in the Canadian or Russian snow combined with an active passenger in the seat.

Here's us figuring it out.

http://www.mutsy.com/products/4rider_light

Bump

Baby is approximately 30cm's from head to bum and weighs approx. 1.5 kilos.

32 weeks + 0 days:

My Pregnancy Observations

I am humble:

• How many times did pregnancy happen immediately around me, yet I missed out on so many things! I am not so special!
• The body is an amazing machine and works miracles with considerably minor side effects (which are plentiful, greatly ranging in scope and amplitude none the less).
• When I feel entitled, I am quickly put in my place. Weather it be a random “stink-eye” from a stranger, a snotty teenaged girl being impolite or my husband reminding me nicely in some subtle way to scale back.
• Often, it is quite difficult to believe we are going to have a baby. Sometimes it simply feels like we’ve been on some crazy shopping-spree and that we’re just crazy for doing it. I can’t imagine how it feels to be my husband at these times. At least I have all the proof happening to me. He just has my whining attitude and the changing everything to deal with. But I suppose that’s evidence enough...

I am proud:

• I forget that I am not the first nor the last to be pregnant. But move over, I’m coming through: oblivious, self-confident, over-entitled and totally entitled... me.
• I was recently too proud ~ mentally deciding if the old man in the wheel chair pulls rank over a very pregnant me although I was already discussing something with a sales person. He pulled rank, rightly so. Bad me.
• I always want to tell someone when the baby is moving. He moves a lot! Come and feel for yourself!
• Strangers can be so sweet and totally make my day. I get random belly stares with smiles, I got a free piece of cake from a really sweet woman yesterday, I got an approving (“yes, you’re doing good”) nod from a man on the metro, I was allowed in front of someone in a very long, slow line and I’ve been offered metro seats, even when I already had one (more space).

I am grateful:

• I have an interested and involved network of family and friends. Everyone is very positive, encouraging and supportive of our life changes. Thank you!
• I have good health support. Boy oh boy, I love first world countries!
• Everything has been quite smooth to date. Lucky me!
• People are extremely generous. Advice, support, help and gifts. Again, thank you!

It’s been a whirlwind so far! And I’m guessing this is only the beginning!

Books, books, books... I'm behind on some of the classics!

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ( )

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ( )

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( )

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee ( )

6 The Bible - (parts) (x)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ( )

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ( )

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ( )

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( )

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ( )

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ( )

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (x)

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ( )

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ( )

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald ( )

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ( )

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ( )

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( )

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( )

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ( )

34 Emma - Jane Austen ( )

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ( )

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis ( )

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - (x)

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x)

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (x)

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ( )

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( )

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (x)

52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ( )

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ( )

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (x)

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (x)

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ( )

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x)

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( )

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( )

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ( )

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ( )

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )

75 Ulysses - James Joyce (x)

76 The Inferno - Dante ( )

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )

78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )

80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ( )

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (x)

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare ( )

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ( )

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( )

Wee-One ~ The Early Viewing

I thought it was about time I posted some of our baby ultrasound images. Some are better quality than others and I tried to choose the best ones (naturally)!

I will update as we get more scans.

The teeny blob inside the black blob. I must admit, I was all "??? okay..."

6 weeks + 4 days:

Now we're talking! Baby is on a diagonal facing front within the black space (heat towards 2 o'clock). Fists along side of body.

10 weeks + 6 days:

Baby in profile. Head on the right, spine along the bottom.

21 weeks + 2 days:

This is a 4D image. I must admit, a bit scary and he was moving during the photos - so I believe this composite is ~ not exactly precise...

24 weeks + 6 days:

Same day as above. His head in profile (spine along bottom). Cuter n'est pas??

24 weeks + 6 days:

Getting to big for the screen! Profile image of his face.

27 weeks + 2 days: