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Originally uploaded by emmabean.

Jeni tagged me and I am meant to share six weird things about myself. What qualifies as weird? Anyway, I’ll have a go and probably embarrass myself thoroughly (which everyone knows I hate, so I can’t expose myself too much here).

1. Apparently I make very weird noises in my sleep, or at least I used to, since Mark says they stopped post-Oliver arrival (probably ’cause I don’t sleep as deeply anymore). I think many friends reading this blog will attest to these strange grunts and groans heard during sleepovers and such.

2. When I arrived in England, I had a mad mad crush on Colin Firth. Now I’ve seen him so many times in person (at movie premieres, events, etc.) I’m completely blase about the whole thing, and plus, like I have time or possibility to go to any event like that now. But yes, I was a Colin Firth stalker (practically) although most of you already know that!

3. I am a chronic saver of money. There is nothing more satisfying to me than transferring over what is left at the end of the month to my savings account. Right now, I have so much money saved away it’s crazy! (will be used to part purchase a house/car/furniture later this year, so it’s for a purpose). However, I also get a huge high from shopping, particularly for clothing. God, I love spending money on myself.

4. When I was quite little, I had a silly little thing printed in Owl magazine, which was/is a Canadian kids’ magazine that a lot of my friends and I used to read (mildy entertaining – mostly educational). I don’t even remember what they were looking for, but the thing I submitted that was meant to be clever was ‘Uptown Girl by the Downtown Boys’. Instead of Billy Joel. Funny, eh? Umm, no. But I was little.

5. I used to be really scared, even as a teenager, that someone was going to touch my feet or grab them while I was sleeping. I think it was because our house in Whitby used to give me the heebie jeebies (that’s a technical term). Our dog used to bark and follow things around the room and such when nothing was there. However, I can now do this no problem (no ghosties in anywhere I’ve lived since perhaps).

6. Whenever I dye my hair from a box (Nice & Easy or some such product), it goes red/copper/ginger coloured. Despite the fact that the box advertises the colour as some lovely shade of blonde or brown. Of course, this lovely fact about myself was forgotten until this week.

This last point leads nicely on to my newly shorn hair! Hence the photo. I had to flickr-blog it as Blogger dashboard was acting up.

Thank god it’s gone! No more long handle for Oliver to pull on, no more super long hairs falling out in giant clumps (post-pregnancy shed). It feels mighty good. Of course next week I will hate it and wish I could tie it up.

In other news, with Oliver sleeping better, I have started reading a book! A book! It’s such a luxury, I thought I was never going to be able to pick one up again! And it’s a good one: The Time Traveller’s Wife. I am really enjoying it.

Off to Mark’s dad’s villa in Spain tomorrow, south of Alicante. Hurray, hurray, it’s a happy holiday.

Current Oliver status – not entirely himself due to month 4 immunizations on Tuesday. Slept a lot yesterday in between grumpy bouts, and then didn’t sleep so well last night. However, last night was the first time he hadn’t gone through the night in a week and a half so I am not complaining that much. And he’s okay, it’s like non-specific grumpiness and tiredness again. At least the shots are over until the MMR.

But we are off to Spain tomorrow for his first airplane trip and first adventure abroad so we’ll see you on the other side.

Ages ago, I mentioned that I wanted to switch to reusable/cotton/’real’ nappies for Oliver and I had decided on Kushies. Well, here we are at almost 4 months on and he’s still in disposables. Except not today…

After I had discussed switching with Mark and the financial savings in doing so, he calculated that actually using Tesco nappies (our favourite) was really cheaper. Mind you, Oliver was in size 1 newborn diapers at the time, which are really cheap. If you actually calculate the cost of doing laundry here, the price of utilities (ever increasing) makes it not that wonderful.

But, in the interest of saving some space in the landfill, local councils here will give you 30 pounds towards the cost of any real nappies that you buy, and so I sent away for the relevant paperwork ages ago. I was sent back a kit that had details of the Bucks Area Reusable Nappy Support Group, local parents who will lend you sets of nappies to try out for free. I tried to contact them without any success, and sort of left it for a while.

We were recently in Waitrose in Brent Cross, and they had a special 4 for 3 offer on Motherease One Sizes (another Canadian nappy company like Kushies) and their covers – of course, when I got excited about this and tried to pile them in my shopping basket, I realised they had no nappies and only covers in stock. But we did eventually get to a more local Waitrose and I bought 4 nappies and one Airflow cover. And they are free as they cost exactly the amount of the grant. However, it’s only enough for like one days’ use.

I tried it on him the next day at a time when I thought he’d only be liable to pee (my first mistake). It seemed a bit big, but when he did fill it (as you do when your mother expects you won’t), it didn’t leak. Of course, I had no nappy bucket or anything at the time so we had to make do with the bucket normally used with the mop, and a prayer that soaking it in some Napisan would help. It did – both cover and nappy came out wonderfully in the wash the next day.

Fast forward to today and he’s on Motherease number 2 of the day. And the BARNS group contacted me this morning and they are going to lend me a kit that already has Motherease nappies (cause they like them) and other brands in them when we get back from Spain in mid May. And the woman on the phone was extremely helpful and told me to fold down the top in a certain way which makes it fit better on him as he’s kind of still pretty skinny.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever switch entirely, but at least I won’t be throwing out quite as many diapers as normal. Oliver and I seem to go halfway on everything – still both breast and formula feeding, now both disposable and reusable nappies on his butt.

Only problem with these nappies? They give him a giant bum!

Hurray! We are back online – until the hard drive plays up again. Should buy another computer but don’t want to spend the money.

What we’ve been up to lately:

Hanging out (literally) with Piper, who causes big smiles:

Strolling around the local reservoir:

Strolling around Tring Farmer’s Market:

And lots of playtime:

Congratulations to Jean and Michelle who welcomed baby number 2, Samuel Jean, on 8th April; a little brother for Isabelle. Aren’t they cute:

And what is up with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes naming their baby Suri?

I still don’t have a working computer at home, which is crap, as I am even more cut off from the rest of the world. However, it does enable other activities such as cooking more complex meals, and organising photos into albums and such. Also I had time to dye my hair today, for the first time with a home kit in like years (feeling too cheap to go to the hairdressers) – result? Oh pumpkin orange highlights. I am now wearing a headscarf. And will have to do something to fix it now!

But guess what? Since Monday, Oliver is SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT (10-12 hours). IN HIS OWN BED. IN HIS OWN ROOM.

This is wonderful. Only problem is my back is killing me at night, I’ve never had back pain before and it’s awful. I wake up in pain in one position, roll over in agony, fall asleep again – then repeat. So he gets a full nights’ sleep but not me. I can’t complain too much though. It’s still shocking that he’s doing it.

Our home computer went evil last week. Mark decided to re-install Windows as no one appeared to be home inside the thing, and since then, it’s all wonky. Can’t re-install our broadband and modem drivers, don’t know what to do with the thing. Other than blow it up. Don’t really want to buy a new hard drive as we are not buying electricals as we are planning to move to Canada. So will be away until it’s sorted somehow…

Oliver and I are well, having adventures with jolly jumpers (doorway bouncing is lots of fun) and even baby rice (early, so kill me), but alas our computer has imploded and I don’t know when it will be fixed. So I will do a big update one day when I don’t have to use dial up from my in-law’s.

The poor boy is not well. Noticed he had a really hot neck when I was giving him his bedtime feed last night. Also noticed when I changed him, he didn’t enjoy the changing table like normal and kept doing the newborn startle reflex – where they throw their arms straight out to their sides. So I took his temp and it was a fever of about 101. I stripped him off, gave him some Calpol (which caused a mega screaming fit) and fed him and let him sleep. The fever was gone when I checked him at about 1am, and it’s not been back but he’s still a bit funny. He’s had some happy time this afternoon though so I am not too worried. My surgery is closed this afternoon, but another GP told me when I called to monitor him in case he gets any worse, and it’s probably some kind of infection. It’s awful when they can’t tell you what’s wrong. So I haven’t done anything today but just stick close to him – he’s sleeping right now and has done more of that than usual today.

I just got this email forward from Tami’s mom:

Think about this one…

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.That won’t ever happen again.
Thankyou…
You may now return to your (normal?) life.

Except, of course, I now write the date the UK way, which is day/month/year. So it will happen actually on the 4th of May 2006 as well.

I need to get a life and find some things to blog about, I think.

It’s the week of birthday parties. Saturday night started it off, with my co-worker Ann’s joint birthday party with a couple of her friends. Unfortunately most of my other friends weren’t there as it’s the school break, but I did get to hang out with my old boss for a bit while Oliver played then slept. The party was full of adults and 6-10 year olds running around and screaming so it wasn’t necessarily our scene.

Today was Katie’s first birthday (Oliver’s second cousin, I just figured that out by going here), and I headed down to St Albans with Mark’s family for that. It was more kiddies running amok, but a little closer to his age. Katie had a gorgeous dress on that she soon covered in chocolate. She tried to wake Oliver up when we got there:

And then the family fussed over him:

And there’s more family fussing to come as it’s Mark’s mum’s birthday on Friday so we have lunch out with them for that, and then Mark and his sister will join us all for dinner in the evening.

It’s tiring all these parties. Luckily he’s starting to watch tv chronically like his parents, so he can chill and do that at home.

PS – Oliver and I are flying into Toronto 2nd July and returning 2 weeks later. We’re staying with my parents in Oshawa for the most part (but for the middle Friday to Monday when we’ll be in Ottawa) so I hope that many of you canucks reading this will come and see us! I can’t really afford to rent a car so we aren’t going to be too mobile.