7 Quick Takes (volume 1)

Check out more bloggers' Quick Takes over at Conversion Diary.

-1-

Due date today!  No signs of Baby being ready to join us yet, but it is really hard to not expect it to come in the next few days.  No matter how many times I tell myself that first-time mothers typically give birth 10 days after the due date, I can’t help but think baby will be here in the next few days.  Jon has asked baby to not start labour until Sunday afternoon, at the earliest, so he can get two more days of sleeping late this weekend!  No induction would be scheduled for at least two more weeks, so it’s not necessarily quite the end yet.

-2-

Jon, bump and I had a photo shoot last weekend.  It was really fun!  I felt that we didn’t have many good pictures from the pregnancy—we never seem to take any pictures—so this would be a good way to get a few photos.  We go back tomorrow to view all the photos.  The sitting fee was only £10, and we get a free 8x6 print with that; unfortunately, that means that they charge quite a lot for electronic copies of the photos (I think the prints are pretty average in price), so I won’t be sharing any here.  If (probably when—see above comment about never taking any good pictures) we get pictures done of the baby, we might find somewhere that at least has an online gallery so we can share them a bit more and family can pick out their own pictures, but this was a really good last minute decision, I think.

-3-

Tonight is Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes’ Night.  We celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, in which Fawkes and a group of Catholic rebels (freedom fighters, I am sure!) tried to blow up Parliament and kill the Protestant King.  Mostly it is celebrated with fireworks displays, and some towns still have big bonfires, apparently.  Traditionally, towns would burn effigies of Guy Fawkes and/or the Pope as well, but that doesn’t happen in too many places nowadays.  It always seems a bit weird to me, being Catholic, celebrating an event that has a definite anti-Catholic history, although I do think that it is good they were prevented from killing the entire Parliament and the King, regardless of their reasons.

-4-

Anyway, there were some fireworks going off in the park near our house last night, and I could see them from our back yard.  I wondered how the baby might react to all the banging, but s/he didn’t seem to mind at all, really, and they were pretty loud.  I thought I might get a lot of jumping around, but no.  I saw in the paper that a zoo is doing displays of “bang-less” fireworks, good for both the animals and children that are afraid of the noise.  I do not really understand how they can make fireworks that don’t make noise.

-5-

P.S. re fireworks: who wants to go stand outside to watch fireworks in November?  Don’t they know that it is cold out there?  Although, it does mean that you can set them off at about 6 and then go back home to your cozy house and a nice cup of tea or hot chocolate.

-6-

I bought a little storage unit to put in the bathroom the other week.  It arrived last week, I took all the pieces out of the box, with its 8 different types of screws and dowels and such and 12 different panels to put together, and realised that the assembly instructions were missing.  And there was no way I was going to be able to figure out how to put it together without the instructions.  So I contacted the seller (on ebay) to ask to if he could send me a copy of the instructions, and I am still waiting.  While all the pieces sit on my living room floor.  To be fair, I ordered a second, bigger unit as well, from a different seller, and it is only half-way put together, so maybe I can’t put the entire blame on the seller.  But it would be nice to be able to have this stuff in place before the baby arrives!  Oh well, baby won’t care if we have storage space in the bathroom.  If anything, baby will be more concerned about the completely unfinished nursery (hey Dad, I might have a job for you when you get here!)—luckily baby will be sleeping in our room to begin with, and the crib is put together. See, we do get around to finishing the important things!

-7-

Photo of me on my due date: