COMPLETION OF SOME TASKS!

I finally subdued my pride and asked Mother-in-Law whether she would mind coming down to help decorate.  As it turned out, she did nearly all the work and I did very little, but Daughter now has a pink bedroom and the bathroom is pristine and white.  I've done enough extra painting in the hall that we can now hang the huge mirror I bought some time ago, once we get around to drilling the holes.  I think it will be a two-man job so I shall have to get Husband involved.

My contribution to Daughter's bedroom was some wall stickers from Djeco: a princess height chart and a 'poem tree'.  I bought and stuck up a 'knight and dragon' height chart on Son's wall as well.  I love the Djeco products: I first came across them when someone gave Daughter a Djeco jigsaw, which led to my searching for the company on the internet and finding a stockist in the UK.

I've come to the conclusion that paint and stickers is the way to go, so having done a further internet search for wall stickers in general, have ordered some 'Lollipops' for the bathroom wall.  They grow up the wall like flowers and are in lovely bright colours, which will be a tasteful but pleasant contrast to the white-with-a-little-bit-of-turquoise of the bathroom generally.  I don't want to clutter it up, but a little additional colour will just, I hope, be a finishing touch.

While Mother-in-Law was busy doing all our painting - and our ironing - Father-in-Law, who had originally arranged to come down to put up a new fence for us, busied himself taking up roots in the garden.  I'm very excited as I can now just clear the area of other unwanted growth on top of the wall where the 'bee garden' is going, and then add some extra soil, move some rocks, transplant some heather and - hey presto! - bee garden!

I had to sign on this week so spent most of Wednesday in Carlisle.  I went for a swim, which as usual was great (I love swimming, it just sometimes takes me a while to motivate myself to go), signed on (proud to tell them I had applied for 3 jobs last week), and then had lunch with Friend-who-recently-adopted.  It was great to see her: she really cheered me up and I realised I had been getting a bit negative recently.  Her Daughter is making fantastic progress from a neglected, abused, late developer to a perfectly normal child.  It's such a happy story.  She adopted because she and her husband couldn't have children, but she is also so excited, pleased and sympathetic about my pregnancy.  Life seems so unfair: there are so many people who want children and can't and then those who don't really mind one way or another and end up with (potentially) three.

I'm now between 13 and 14 weeks pregnant, so past the most likely time to miscarry.  We went for a nuchal scan and maternal serum screening yesterday.  No definitive results as yet, so still time to worry!  The nuchal translusancy looked normal, however, so it's just a case of waiting for the blood test results.  If they phone before the end of Tuesday I'm high risk: if I get no phone call I'm low risk.  We also saw the baby on a 3D scan.  That was really weird, and because it was moving the still photo looks rather funny (the baby looks as if it has a pig nose).  It's still mostly skin and bone with very little flesh, so not exactly attractive: and its liver looks enormous.  Looking at it now I can see its little ribs, and the fingers of one hand.   Amazing.  The good news is that everything the Dr. looked at looks normal for this stage: which I also find amazing.  This baby, according to statistics (fertility; miscarriage) isn't even meant to be here!

Husband and I then went to have dinner at the Howard Arms in Brampton before coming home.  He had Moroccan Chicken with Rice (which apparently had a little bit of lemon butter in it, so was delicate and moist) and I had the Cumbrian Beef and Wainwrights Ale pie.  Both were delicious and the selection of salad and vegetables was good.  The two guys who own it remembered us and came up to say 'hello', which was nice.  Definitely somewhere to go again: and a good place for visitors to this area to stay.

Today I've felt nauseous and incredibly tired again, but had some more good news.  I have an interview on Tuesday for one of the jobs for which I applied, and then Radio Cumbria phoned to ask whether the presenter who interviewed me a few weeks ago about mothers in their 40s could have a longer chat with me.  I guess it's coming up to the Silly Season when there's not much news around.....

Tomorrow we're off sailing on Windermere, and I think it may be a good opportunity to take some photos and to do some more descriptive writing about this beautiful county.  So there may be a new post on Sunday evening or on Monday. 

Meanwhile I'm off for a bath and bed: the children are quietly sitting in front of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I've asked Husband to deal with them this evening.  He's been feeling nauseous today as well but I'm afraid I'm not terribly sympathetic: I've been feeling like that on and off for almost two months!