News flash: belly dominates northern hemisphere

The last couple of months I've had an amazing number of people tell me how big I am and express surprise that I wasn't due to pop within minutes. I'm not really particularly offended, but it does surprise me that people seem to think that kind of comment is ok just because I'm pregnant. And they're not necessarily all that careful with their words, either - a certain redhead might have learnt recently that 'big' and 'fat' are not at all the same thing, are not to be used interchangeably, and are not both terms one can safely use when describing one's hormonal wife.
The midwives and obstretrician, meanwhile, tell me I'm exactly the right size and everything is on track for a healthy baby and 'smooth' birth, whatever that means.

We went to our first antenatal class last night. (I noticed that all bar one of the women there were my size or larger.) The class was great - the other couples seemed lovely, and it was all very friendly. I'm really looking forward to next week's class, not least because the guys will be taught how to massage us!

Radio silence

Bloody hell! That was almost four months. I have some reasonable excuses if any of you would like to hear them.

The last four months have held

...a bit of travel. I spent a few days in Rome, which was absolutely wonderful for all the usual reasons - beautiful city, lots of fun and fabulous food. The highlight for me was hiring golf buggies and driving around on a self-guided tour of Rome. It was so much fun! A close second was dinner at an old palace above the Spanish Steps where there were amazing views across Rome. Three days definitely wasn't enough and I'd love to go back there with Vaughn.

...a lot of throwing up, a couple of scans and more expansion than seems reasonable. Pregnancy is an interesting experience! I've started going to aquanatal classes and every couple of weeks the lovely man at the gym sets a new routine for me (and seems to have decided he's now my personal trainer, following me around every time I go the the gym). Our antenatal classes start in February, so brace yourself for some very boring posts as I inundate you with all kinds of uninteresting things about pregnancy and child birth! And to start the ball rolling, Vaughn and I have been watching with fascination as my belly button has gone from being an innie to a flatty and is now threatening to go over to the Other Side and become an outie. I'm worried every time I sneeze that it will be the final straw and I'll start walking around navel first.

...and of course a bit of planning for Christmas. We're heading to Interlaken on Christmas Eve for a week or so of fun and snow. I'm hoping to go sledding and hiking if not skiing. It'll be my first white Christmas. I'm so excited! Just think of all that gluehwein and chocolate and laeckerle and....

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

From little things

One of the tools I try to promote at work is narration. A good story, well told is a very powerful thing. It sticks with the audience long after it's told and is often passed on. Narration has a very strong history, long before people started writing.

The story that sticks most with me is the one told in Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody's song "From little things, big things grow", which was brought again into the public light earlier this year when a bunch of Australian musicians released a new version of it, to tie in with Mr Rudd's Apology to Aboriginal Australians. I watched it on youTube at the time, bawling my eyes out on the couch in our London flat, and in fact get teary everytime I think of it. For those of you who don't know it, it's a ballad telling the story of Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji strike in the 1960s, which started off as a dispute over wages and conditions and turned into the first of the great land rights battles in Australia. In 1975 part of the land was handed back to the Gurindji people in a deal brokered by the Whitlam government. In the ceremony Mr Whitlam poured a handful of sand into Vincent Lingiari's hands.

Fume-induced grumpiness

Our house stinks of paint. The smelll is everywhere in the house and we can't seem to get rid of it. You'd think that might help incentivise me to burn the midnight oil and get the job done as quickly as possible, but it hasn't. I'm rapidly losing patience with living in our bombshell of a living room and am on the hunt for a reasonably priced tradie to do the floors for us. I just want it finished! I want to be able to wake up in the own room with the windows open. I want to be able to walk from the kitchen to the dining room (really, two ends of the same room) without having to overcome an obstacle course. I want to be able to cook a nice meal and have somewhere to sit down and eat it.