99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...

We were just discussing alcohol consumption in the office (mine was really easy to figure out!) and it came up that one of the guys here drinks around 9 cases of beer a month. So you don't have to spend any time working that out, it's around 216 bottles. That's normally one six pack per night, plus a few extras on the weekend. PLUS, he polishes off one or two bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey in a month as well. He doesn't consider himself an alcoholic though. He spends, on average, over £120 a month on alcoholic beverages. That's around $235 a month. Yeah, he brags about it.

Oh, the shame...

Yesterday I said something truly shocking and horrifying.

Martin and I were driving home from Grimsby and we were talking about something random and insignificant--I think it was about whether he would need to have his passport with him to get onto an American air base or if his U.S. driver's license would do. Anyway, I referred to the Americans as "They" instead of "Us" or "We." And I was immediately sick!

I'm not losing my Yankee-ness, am I?

Anyway, in a desperate attempt to rekindle some good, old fashioned, healthy patriotism, Martin and I are going to be gong to a 4th of July celebration on Sunday. He has a baseball game up at an American Air Force base near Harrogate (close to York). Normally he only goes to one game a month, but I wanted to go and so relented. He played last weekend as well, but only missed a little bit of church for it. This time we will be missing it all. A small price to pay for an injection of American spirit! I can hardly wait!

Upcoming events--

Martin's baseball game & our 4th of July celebration is on the 1st of July. We also have a BBQ at his parents' house that evening.

Martin's 27th birthday is on the actual 4th of July.

My 34 week midwife apointment is coming up on the 9th of July.
Our "parenting day" at the Scunthorpe hospital is on the 14th. That's our tour of the delivery suites, meeting the hospital staff, familiarizing ourselves with the layout, etc. Martin's throwing a royal fit about having to come with me--what a bum!

And, of course, it's only 52 days until my due date now. Really, I could give birth any time after 31 days and it would be normal / safe.

52 days--wow, that's close! I'm still not prepared at all--no nursery, front room is still in shambles, house is a BIG mess! I am planning on doing baby laundry this weekend, but still--argh! And we just found out that we won't be getting a crib from the Mundays after all. It did go for a noble cause and it DOES give Christine something to buy for us, but still--ARGH!!!

And that whole nesting thing--I really think it's just a myth. I don't want to clean--I just want to sleep!

And, on a completely unrelated topic--yes, I know that I've posted about this before, but what on EARTH posses a man who is, in all other respects, completely normal, decent and sane to buy and look at pictures of mostly naked women in broad daylight in the middle of the company cafeteria? I am getting so tired of looking at bare breasts. Of course, at this point maybe I am just jealous of the nasty women with nearly perfect bodies?

Lincolnshire / Yorkshire drama...

It's been raining in England.

I know, I know, that doesn't sound like too much drama. This is ENGLAND, right? That's what it DOES here, right? Well, not as much as it has in the last 48 hours!

We've been having some flooding problems. Not so much on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber river, but Yorkshire had some major issues! Yesterday was mental--roads turned into rivers, raw sewage backing up into the streets, cars swept away, kids paddling canoes in their back gardens. Somebody even DIED!

Barton was a little more tame--we had a couple of road closures (one of them was just two streets down from us) and our roof started leaking like crazy. Martin has called to make a claim on the home owners' insurance, so hopefully things will get sorted out really soon. It was pretty much raining inside our stairwell (the steep one, for the people out there who've been to our house before). I actually left work early due to some impending road closures, and it was a fairly white knuckle drive home. I went a different way than I usually go to avoid some really low lying areas. Luckily, the Humber didn't spill her banks. Even if she had, we have some major tidal defences near our house and because we are in such a high risk area for flooding, flood insurance is automatic in our home owners insurance policy. That river was pretty high on my drive home though, I'll tell you that! I was really happy that the tide was on its way out and not in, or we could have been spending the night elsewhere!

But all's well that ends well. The storm finally blew over us (thanks to last night's gale force winds, which also downed a few trees and left some parts of the county without electricity) and today the skies are somewhat clear. Hopefully we'll have a chance to dry out a little bit before the next big storm hits. And all this while they're experiencing record temperatures in Greece--major heat wave on the Mediterranean!

Weather--there will always be something to talk about!

And in pregnancy news...

Last night I felt the baby actually pressing on my bladder for the first time. I have to say, it was quite possibly the strangest sensation I have ever had. I had only peed about 10 minutes earlier, and then all of a sudden (inconveniently enough, this happened in the car), I got the feeling that I had to go IMMEDIATELY. Then the baby moved, and I was fine. You really take bladder control for granted, until you kind of lose control of it! I also got some really healthy kicks and punches, and the little one has started to stretch a lot, so I get fists on one side and feet on the other. That's a weird sensation, too.

Come to think about it, pretty much everything about being pregnant is weird. Nice, but weird.

Hooray for the weekend...

Martin's grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this weekend. We drove down to Mablethorpe on Saturday night to have dinner with the family, and it was lovely. I was a little bit dubious since we were going to a Chinese restaurant in rural Lincolnshire, but it was actually quite good. So that's both sets of Martin's grandparents that have now been together for 50 years. And his parents will reach 32 years on Tuesday. Pretty committed bunch!

I did something horribly independent--took the bus to Hull and went birthday shopping for Martin. That was pretty fun, but I was so exhausted when I got home! I took a 2 hour nap when I got home.

Another delightful pregnancy symptom has hit--my hips and pelvis ache! It gets worse at night, of course! All I want to do is sleep, but it hurts when I do. 8 weeks to go, and boy do I hope they go quickly.

We had been having a few problems with the exhaust on the car--it was SO noisy!!! So today Martin took a look at it and actually fixed the problem. So instead of taking it to the garage and spending loads of money on it, he spent the equivalent of $5 and took care of it himself. I love it when he does stuff like that. He's promised me that he will post details of the car fixing adventure later--we'll see.

So yeah, that's the weekend gone. Wish it was longer!

I don't belong there...

Some of you may be aware of my most recent obsessions/addictions. For those of you who aren't, I simply can NOT stop watching birth programs on telly and visiting my online pregnancy message board. They are like drugs to me! But lately, I am feeling a little bit left out of the message board family.

I joined the board late since I was hyper-worried at first that the pregnancy wasn't viable and I would either have to terminate it or I would have a miscarriage. So I missed out on everyone commiserating about the general crappiness of the first trimester. Honestly, I could have joined in then as I was suffering pretty bad.

I joined the message board frenzy during my second trimester, when everyone was glowing and happy and experiencing the "joys" of pregnancy. I kind of got that, but I kept getting sick (remember the insomnia, the sinus infections, the tonsillitis, etc?) and so it wasn't that great for me.

Now, here we all are in our third trimesters (I post on an August birth club board, so everyone is due within four weeks of each other), and that board is rapidly turning into a giant whining board. It's all about "I'm so constipated," or "I am constantly getting kicked in the ribs," or, "You will never believe what my mother-in-law did," or "Somebody please tell me how to get rid of this horrible heartburn," and other such complaints. It's almost not fun to read the messages any more as everyone starts getting really tired of being pregnant.

Here's the funny thing--I am finally enjoying it!

I am really starting to get uncomfortable, but it's only when I start to move. Like when I have to stand up from my desk or get up out of bed. Well, that and when I am sleeping. But I don't seem to have any of the really horrible pregnancy symptoms that everyone complains about. Yes, my feet are swollen. But they mainly just look bad--they don't really hurt. And the baby is really active, but my torso is so long that I've still got a good two inches between the top of my uterus and the bottom of my ribs. I have sore days occasionally, but it's not nearly as bad as it is for what seems like a lot of women!

Don't get me wrong--I am still really anxious to have this baby. I have a feeling that the next 8.5 weeks are going to go really slowly. But I am content with my pregnancy right now. Maybe I should make up a complaint just so I can fit in?

Related, but not really...

Last night when Martin kissed me goodnight he rubbed my belly and said, "I love you two." It was really sweet, but it got me thinking about what we both feel for this baby. I don't know if I love him/her yet--I do know that I am fiercely protective of him and I would never do anything to hurt him. I feel a closeness that is unlike anything I've ever known, and when I feel him moving it makes me happy. But love? I don't know this baby yet. So when Martin says he loves the baby, I have to wonder if he really means it. After all, I have a connection with our unborn child that he doesn't have. Can he already love the baby when it's hardly real to him? For Martin all this baby is right now is my changing body. He feels the kicks and listens to me explaining where the baby's at developmentally, but does he really realize that the baby is there and real and very much alive? Can you love someone who doesn't quite seem real???

But I'm not worried about that. I know that we WILL love our baby, even if that love hasn't quite developed yet.

Parenthood--how, this is going to be huge! My due date is only 59 days away, and our lives are about to change forever. The only thing that I'm not scared about is--scratch that, I'm scared about everything!

How do you raise a child to be normal, happy, healthy, and well adjusted? How do you cope with the demands that child places on you? How do you love a child and give unselfishly to him and still maintain your own identity and life? How is it done?

How is it that these questions never crossed my mind BEFORE I got pregnant?

I'm so not prepared for this!

Midwife appointment...

So I had my week 31 appointment yesterday and all is mostly well.

The baby's heartbeat is REALLY strong--and fast. It always amazes me how fast it is whenever I listen to it, and it is one of the best sounds in the world to me. It's such a comfort to listen to that strongly beating heart, and I would happily go to the midwife every day just to hear it and know that my baby is healthy.

I'm measuring just right for how far along I am, which is good to know. I am still getting comments about how big I am, and it's so discouraging. After a while it starts to make you feel like you're an abnormal freak and that you are going to give birth to the world's largest baby. But I'm right on target for 31 weeks, I'm just carrying this baby all up front. So that was good news.

I got the results of my blood work from the last appointment, and everything looks good there. Apparently, my iron levels look GREAT! I'm not even slightly anemic. Hooray for those pre-natal vitamins that I have taken religiously since I did my first pregnancy test.

The only thing that was cause for concern was the old pee test. I had protein and leukocytes in my urine, so they are sending a sample in to the lab to see if I have some sort of infection that needs to be treated. They weren't overly concerned about it--just sending for the tests to be on the safe side. If I don't hear anything within a week I can assume that everything is fine.

I saw Kate at the midwife's office again. She is lovely--so much better than the other two I've seen. She even asked me how I was doing. She's friendly and helpful, and I wouldn't mind having her there to deliver my baby. That makes a nice change from the other two midwives I've seen, who I really wouldn't want anywhere near me or my unborn child.

Martin and I were discussing the appointment later in the evening (he couldn't get the time off work to come with me), and he said he was glad to hear that the baby was healthy. Of course, I had to point out that the baby is healthy as far as we know. There's really no way to be sure until after it's born. And then we started talking about how scary it is to have a baby. There are so many things that could go wrong at any stage. The fact that most babies are born completely normal is a miracle. And yet, with all of the things that might go wrong, you don't really tend to think about them. You assume that everything is fine and normal. Even I assume this, even though I am a chronic worrier.

I'll admit that I was really worried at first. I was worried that the pregnancy wasn't in the right place at first, and then I was worried that I would miscarry. And every time I had a twinge or saw a little bit of blood I would freak out and have to fight the urge to get into bed, put my feet up, and call the hospital immediately. But once I had my anomalies scan at 20 weeks and everything was normal, that worry seemed to melt away. Now I'm just worried about being a mother--actually caring for this tiny baby that's about to come into our lives.

We went over to the Mundays' last night. I cooked dinner ( I love cooking dinner over there, because they do the dishes after!) and we just sat around talking for ages. They bought Martin a gift--a book all about being a dad. We had a skim through it together, and had quite a few giggles over the quick quizzes in it. Martin is so chilled out about becoming a parent, but I think I am freaking out enough for both of us. And I wonder, is he really just not afraid, or does he not realize how drastically our lives are about to change?

1 day shy of 31 weeks pregnant. This baby is getting HUGE!!!

In Bakewell, and that baby is baking well!

Chatsworth house from the top of the Cascade on the grounds. Beautiful Derbyshire hills in the distance--definitely one of the most beautiful counties in England, and almost completely unspoilt!

Not much to tell...

Life goes on much the same as always. I really just wanted to take this opportunity to post a few pictures. Some scenery from Krystle's visit, plus baby belly pics...

Krystle sees the sights in Whitby.

The Best Day Ever...

Well, it might not have been the best day ever, but it was certainly on my top ten list.

Yesterday was such a fantastic day! Krystle and I slept a tiny bit later than usual, and I took the day off work so we could go to Whitby (check out some of my old pics to see some of the sights, plus I plan on posting a few new ones later). It was cold and overcast, but still beautiful. The North East coast of England is truly stunning, and a good portion of our drive was right along the coast.

I'll just add at this point that I am so proud of myself for driving us up there. I always navigate and Martin always drives, but I did just fine (and Krystle made a pretty decent navigator).

We arrived in good time at Whitby, and parked at the abbey, which is on top of a cliff overlooking the town. The main part of Whitby is perched rather precariously on the sides of a deep dale containing the port and the mouth of the river. We walked down the 199 steps to the town below, enjoying the sights along the way.

Krystle tried her first ever proper fish and chips. She even had the mushy peas, and was pretty impressed with all of them. We wandered, window shopped, and watched the tide coming in. One of the highlights was watching this group of school children playing on the beach. It was COLD outside, and the North Sea is freezing anyway, but they were laughing and squealing and splashing in the water all the same. So much fun to watch them! A few brave souls even stripped down to swimming suits.

Anyway, we stopped at a little cafe called "Teas and Tarts" and Krystle tried another first--a fruit and fresh cream scone. I think she may be addicted, but hey, at least it's not heroin! Cream scones ARE delicious, so family back in Utah need to be prepared for her to attempt to make them for you. And Mom, Dad, and Jace, we will have some when you come over!

We walked back UP the 199 steps (not quite as enjoyable for me as my lungs are really starting to feel the squeeze of baby now) and drove home. We told Martin we'd be home at around 6pm, and we made it back at 6:20--rush hour traffic in Hull! Then we went over to the Munday's for what I thought was going to be a chilled out dinner and games.

To my surprise, there were a lot of cars at the Mundays' house. Emma threw me a surprise baby shower! And let me tell you, it was a complete shock! One of the things that has made me really sad during this pregnancy is knowing that I wouldn't get a baby shower like all the other Lofley girls do--all the sisters, aunts, female cousins, etc. In fact, the English don't really DO baby showers. It was so wonderful to have one--seriously. I cried like a baby and kept getting emotional during the whole thing. It was a really fun shower, I got some really nice things, and the food was fantastic! Best of all was knowing that people here care about me. I felt really loved and very blessed.

After that it was home and pretty much straight to bed. I am so tired today, and it's another busy day, but yesterday was so wonderful that it's totally worth the exhaustion. I would happily fall asleep inthe toilets at work every day for a few more days like yesterday!

Playing Tourist / Tour Guide...

It is beyond wonderful to have Krystle here visiting, if not a little bit surreal. And can I just say, it feels strange going places with another American? For the first time in a LONG time I feel like a tourist when I go places!

We've been having a good time, anyway. Krystle's arrival was delayed by a freak hail storm in Denver, so she actually arrived on Thursday instead of Wednesday. She got to spend a day in Philadelphia, though, which was apparently very groovy. And when she got in to Manchester, we whisked her away for a drive in the Yorkshire dales (the scenic way home) and took her to choir practice that evening. We were mean and only let her take a few short naps during the day so she could adjust to the time difference faster, so she slept really well that first night!

On Friday Martin worked, and Krystle and I just sort of bummed around Barton. We took a walk down to Water's Edge park and fed the ducks, we walked around town and went to the two churches there. I took her to the market to do a little bit of grocery shopping. Basically, it was just a day for us to relax and rest from the journeys.

Saturday was lovely! We took Krystle to York, where she was very impressed by the Shambles area, the outdoor market, and the Cathedral (of course). We walked on the Roman wall, had fabulous cakes at Betty's Tea Shop, and Krystle experienced her very first pub (a really good one, too, called The Punch Bowl, that has been a pub for around 400 years). That's where we had lunch, and it was v. nice.

Sunday was also relaxed. It was Stake conference, so we drove to Hull for that. Martin had a baseball game afterwards, so we sat in the glorious sunshine and I introduced Krystle to the wonders of Silky Mitz (we sanded our legs!!!). Also discovered that exfoliation seems to be the key to getting a suntan onyour legs, as mine turned VERY pink. After the game we drove out to Spurn Point, which is fun. I'd never been there before, so it was new for me AND Krystle. It's this strange bit of land that hooks out over the edge of the Humber estuary. The peninsula (I guess) is less than 1/4 mile wide, and when you are walking down the street you can see the river on one side and the North Sea on the other. It was foggy and mysterious looking, and we walked along the beach picking up pebbles. Krystle even waded in the sea, just to say she had done it. It's too cold to do much more than get your feet wet!

Yesterday Martin and I were both at work, so Krystle just wandered by herself in Barton and did some laundry (very impressed that she figured out how to operate my washing machine). She tried a fresh cream strawberry tart (loved it). Then, after work, we all went grocery shopping and to the cinema together.

Today the lucky lady is in Lincoln. Martin and I are both at work again. I dropped her off at the train station early this morning, and she just called to let me know that she would be getting the later of the two available trains home as she is LOVING Lincoln. I knew she would--it's a very beautiful city. So I'll be picking her up from the station later tonight, and then we are taking her out for Indian food at our favorite restaurant in Barton--The Surma. Mmmmm, I can hardly wait.

Is it weird that Indian food gives me less pregnancy heartburn than yoghurt does???

So yeah, it has been a little bit tiring to do all these tourist-y things whilst heavily pregnant. I think I am going to sleep for a week once Krystle is back home. But I'm having so much fun with her here and I refuse to let Maggot spoil that fun. I am conscious of the pregnancy though, and we are resting frequently and making sure I don't get dehydrated. I was not feeling very much movement over the weekend (I think the poor baby was as tired as me) but now that I am back at work I am feeling big kicks again.

Can't wait to have this baby and have my body (though not my life) to myself again!