Homeward Bound

The countdown has begun. On Saturday the three of us (plus bun in the oven) will be jetting off to a week in San Francisco with my parents. I can barely wait to see my parents, our last visit was in August. Trust me, when you are 27 weeks pregnant, sometimes the only person you want is your mother! I am also excited by the thought of how much Cupcake has changed since my folks last saw her. Chatterbox, aka Mrs Pleasant (when the tantrums appear) often engages in a dizzying stream of constant dialogue. She is definitely taller than last time, and has an absolute ton of hair that is curly, which I can guarantee you my mother will LOVE. I was tortured as a young child by the constant rolling of my hair in those stupid sponge curlers. Unfortunately for my curl loving mother, my hair was completely stick straight and absolutely refused to do anything other than lie flat. Once in sixth grade I even got a perm (and coincidentally or not a fat lip from my brother on the day of school pictures). At least she has one photo to document the hair she always wanted me to have.

We have a whole host of things planned as per usual. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to squeeze in everyone and everything. We will get the chance to see my family at a Dos de Mayo party (Cinco is a work night for some), we have scheduled a visit with my best friend from college so we can coo over her 6 week old daughter. We will also be attending a good high school friend's wedding (to an Irish guy no less) and hanging out with my very best friend and her daughter (who come hell or high water will be my daughter's very best friend.)

So all in all, many exciting things to look forward to!

Recent Photos

Just thought I would add some of our recent pictures of last weekend's outing down to Glendalough in Co. Wicklow. An amazing spot, we are hoping to bring my parents here for a picnic when they come over to visit us for two weeks in September.

Nesting - Our impending arrivals

I suppose this 'instinct' kicks in at some stage. I had the nesting thing on the last pregnancy but have yet to feel it strongly on this one. Although we are not the only ones that will be expecting new arrivals soon around here...

Imagine if you will waking up at 6.00am to hear this scratching sound in your roof. I instantly thought - ROOF RATS. Thankfully not. Instead a harem of starlings have built their nest in a small space in the roof where a tile is missing. We have become avid bird watchers and spend hours at the window watching Howard and his 'crew' fly down from the roof into the yard to collect bits of grass, leaves and branches. When I say crew I think I mean harem. There are not one, or two, but three starlings that are constantly preparing for some big event up there. We decided to take a look online and found a link that stated that starlings can often build communal nests. Communal we thought - how very 60s San Francisco, very cool. Or so we thought until we read that the largest settlement of starlings in the UK had approximately 50,000 birds sleeping in one place. Em... Howard? I think you need to start paying rent.

In any case May is the month when egg laying/gestation (?) begins so perhaps Howard and co will be producing offspring sooner than us. I am fairly certain starlings are protected so it appears that we will be continuing our 6.00 am wake up calls for the near future... Oh the joys.

In a bizarre turn of events...

My husband rang me this morning to tell me that I should check to see if my flight to Glasgow (I am due to speak at the Association of Art Historians Conference) had been cancelled. I am supposed to fly tomorrow morning and apparently UK and Irish airspace has been closed due to volcanic ash from an erupting volcano in Iceland. I have just emailed my panel organisers and used the words flight suspended erupting volcano in the same sentence. Bizarre.

Wait, don't go anywhere I am still here!

First off apologies for the lack of posting. These last two months have been so incredibly busy. I think the expression is, when it rains it pours?

In PhD news I have nominated to the editorial board of a peer reviewed journal! I know it sounds glamourous but I am sure it is mainly copy editing. Well it will be good for the ol academic cv and great experience for me. My first peer reviewed publication has also come out in print! So I suppose its official, I am now a writer (ha yeah right!) but it has been a year long process from start to finish so I am glad that it has come to an end and I can now enjoy the fruits of my labours (or just my name in print). I am also preparing for a big conference at the end of the week (this is my lunch break) and am frantically revising my paper and hoping, praying that it makes sense. But work has been keeping me busy and I am delighted to find out that a good chunk of the pregnancy is already gone!

In personal news I am now either 25/26 weeks pregnant depending on which date we are going by. I have been feeling fairly well although I have developed a mild (fingers crossed) case of SPD. It seems to come and go as it pleases and I am trying to take precautions to be extra careful with how I sit, walk, lift and bend. Husband had a birthday at the end of March and little darling was there to blow out many many candles. She now insists on pick out her own clothes and seems to have a perchant for wearing her nightclothes as dayclothes and dayclothes as nightclothes. So now I have had to circumvent that issue by taking clothes out of her drawer and saying, 'Oh wow Nono bought this for you' or 'Look, this is from Aileen'. So far so good and she has been wearing a fresh set of clean clothes all week! I was also mildly concerned as she kept telling me, 'My tummy sore'. I couldn't figure out what was causing it until this morning I realised the little sponge was mimicking me. She told me, 'My tummy sore, no no no baby, don't hurt mommy's tummy.' It was so adorable the concern on her face. I tried to illustrate that the pain wasn't from the baby per se rather from the stretching of my ever expanding belly. I stuffed a ball under my shirt (ha barely any room) and said 'Now see how the ball makes mommy's shirt stretch, that is like what the baby does to mommy, but the baby doesn't hurt mommy.' Funny because I was wondering why in the last week she hasn't been as interested in the baby. Usually she is mimicking how the baby will cry or patting my stomach and saying hello.