Outnumbered

Forgive me, readers, it's been 14 days since my last post.

But now that the nausea of the past couple of months has past, and I can finally stay awake later than 8:30 pm, and I'm a little less worried about something going awry, I can happily tell you all that the adults in our household will be outnumbered by children by May 5th, 2008.

Yep, we're blasting our way through early childhood: Siofra will be 4 and Paddy will be 27 months when this new addition arrives. But I'm happy about that. Seeing Siofra and Paddy's friendship develop has convinced me that having kids close in age is the way for us to go! I was reassured by Sarah's post last week...and I would also encourage anyone thinking about having a second baby relatively close in age to the first to do it. Sharing a childhood with your brothers and sisters is a great gift.

So, there's the news...it's still weird to be saying it out loud, especially since it's still kind of abstract: there's no belly to show yet (except for the one that two babies have left me with) and no flutters to feel. It's that weird time when you stop being really sick but still don't feel pregnant. I guess the next few weeks will change that, though!

So, at least this will give me something to blog about! Expect a lot of writing about midwives, sciatica, heartburn, doula support, and the mix of excitement and freaking out.

6 months to go!

World Vegetarian Day

Celebrate World Vegetarian Day!! If you're a vegetarian already, enjoy this day as a marking of your commitment to a vegetarian lifestyle. Certainly making the choice to not eat meat is the beginning of becoming more and more aware of how our personal decisions affect our bodies and the world. So fair play to ya!
If you're a meat eater, I would challenge you to go without meat for today, or for this weekend, or even for the coming week. You may be surprised how easy it is to enjoy your food and eat healthily and creatively by basing your diet on vegetables, fruits and grains. If you're curious about the benefits of vegetarianism, or the many different reasons that people become vegetarian, check this out.

So, let's talk about kale. It's kale season here in Ireland and as Halloween approaches it's time to get cookin' with the kale. Tonight the kids are having colcannon! Try it!

The Paddy Post

Poor Paddy is sick today--I got a call from the creche at 9:30 this morning saying that he had a temperature of 102, so I left work and collected him. Now we're home and after an 1 1/2 hour sleep he's feeling much better and the temperature is down. Siofra stayed at school to "do her work" (they were making scones). So it's been Paddy and me this morning...got me thinking about all the great things about him:

1. Some of the words he says: Mama, Dada, shoes, "other one" (this is used when putting on socks or shoes), car, 'copter (as in helicopter), digger, truck, bum, thumb, eye, Buh-ba (which means I wanna bit of breastfeeding, please, Mother), ball, baby, banana, gone, done, more, Ruff-ruff (dog), Quack Quack (duck), Meow (you guessed it, cat), thank you (kind of, I know by his tone more than the sound of the words), sorry, and my favourite, "Love".

2. He loves to go swimming in the bathtub.

3. He copies everything Siofra does. Everything.

4. He relaxes by putting his hand on my stomach, skin to skin. A very tactile boy...

5. He loves to make Siofra laugh, and achieves this by throwing food on the floor, shouting at the dinner table and falling down dramatically.

6. His new thing is reading books.

7. He can sing Twinkle Twinkle and Baa Baa Blacksheep. You may notice that these are basically the same song, but I'm counting it as two. He can also do the barks from "Who let the dogs out?"

8. The hair just keeps getting better.

9. That gap in the teeth...