Catch up!

Well, the weather here is getting better, slowly! Because of the Cesarean, my particular Lenten penance is to walk everywhere (in all kinds of weather!) until the Doctor gives me the 'all clear' to drive.
You can imagine how much I enjoy the walk to school at the moment!

On the bright side, lots of our friends have been visiting us. At home, and at Grandma's where we've also been spending quite a lot of time recently!

Phoebe is loving being a big sister again, and having a baby to cuddle.
Daddy's behavior sometimes gives us cause for concern, though.......

So, here she is:

Tabitha Kathryn at a few hours old!
It only took a few hours for her name to be abbreviated to Tabby-Kat!
The monobrow is a combination of her actual eyebrow and the forceps marks. Annoyingly, despite a long (22 hours) and mainly gentle labour, I got stuck at 6 cm (A-GAIN!), so we ended up with another Cesarean, and I got another infection, and we had to stay in hospital a-GAIN!
It seems my pelvic shape is triangular, which is called an 'android' pelvis, and can make it hard for a larger, posterior baby to turn during delivery to fit through. Which seems to be why we keep getting stuck in the same situation

Here's Michelle enthusing about spending time with someone less than 24 hours old!
At one day old in her hospital bassinet/fish tank thing.


Grandma and Auntie Sox admiring the newest addition.
By the third day in hospital we'd gone through all the girly baby-gros and she was into Guy's hand-me-down's. This nice blue one has cars on it!

Now, true to her name, the Tabby-Kat spends most of her time eating and dozing in front of the fire!
So, anyway, forgive me for my rather shoddy blogging record recently! I promise to do better!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it SNOW!

Snow day (FINALLY!) so no school today! Instead, playing in the garden. (Yes, I know this is a pitiful amount of snow, but it's exciting for us!)

Carol singing!

This week we did some carol singing in one of our local shopping centres


Here's Phoebe and Deacon Matthew rattling their collecting boxes to good effect!

Getting into the Spirit of Advent!

Phoebe's School Christmas Bazaar was on Friday night, so we made Banana Brownies and Pumpkin Bread with Butterscotch Chips (Thank you Octomom!)

And Guy's Pre-school bake sale was on Saturday morning. We made Chocolate Logs and Iced Christmas Trees
Our new Ikea sofa-bed, assembled by my own fair hand, is being adequately tested!
And Phoebe is a cow in the school Nativity play. As every Nativity scene she has ever seen has a cow (or an Ox) in it, she feels this is a very authentic part.
Interestingly, it turns out one of her friends who told me he was an 'alien', turns out to have been an 'angel'! Easy mistake to make when you're five! Perhaps one extra-terrestrial messenger, is much like another?
I remember someone telling me once that horses can regulate the temperature in their feet independently, because they're herd animals. They might end up in the middle of the herd with three feet on dry ground, but one foot in a cold puddle. They could then send extra heat to the coldest hoof.
While this is impressive; I remember thinking at the time that it surely made most sense to develop the bit of the horse's brain that enables them to move somewhere where they're not standing in puddles!

I love watching the horses next to the school, but I don't think they're very intelligent animals!

Getting in the logs!

There are some jobs that seem to work as team-building activities within families. For some it's cooking together, or tidying-up. For us it's bringing in and sorting, stacking, and storing firewood.

The story of my life this month!

Being ill, pregnant, and busy is a really bad combination!
Most of the month so far has passed like this: