Scratch Those Last

In the past couple of weeks both of the items in the posts below have come undone.

First, the people we tried to palm our old car off onto found out how much it was actually going to cost them to get it properly roadworthy again (answer - $3000. So not really a free car for them after all) and they've returned it to us. It's back now, clogging up our driveway and sucking away all that good karma we thought we'd earned.

Second, Timmy has fallen out of his sleep routine and that means way less sleep for us. He used to have such a great routine, especially for someone so young. Until we help him find a new rhythm, there's no brain-power left for tackling Moby-Dick.

But on the plus side, the weather round here has turned a rather sharp corner into autumn. It's one of my favourite times, when the look and feel of winter - bleak skies, rainy days - inspires me to get the old hot water bottle out, and the teapot, and even, as every year, my knitting (yes, it's the same knitting project; I work on it in a couple of bursts at the start of the cooler weather every year. I even have the same thought: Oh, I'll get some really nice wooden needles, and some lovely fluffy grey wool, and with these two lovely things knitting will be a dream! And then I go to my knitting bag, and pull out my knitting needles - oh! they are wooden! and I notice that the piece of knitting on them, which has been sitting there for a year, is made of lovely fluffy grey wool. I do a couple of rows, and then I get crampy hands and tense shoulders and I put it down, just for a moment, just until tomorrow because I'm going to do a couple of rows every day, and I'll have that scarf ready before it really gets cold.)

Car Bartering

We got one ("new to us") car for the handsome price of a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and we got rid of our old one in return for an authentic butter chicken curry (plus recipe!).

This, I think, is the way the whole world should work.

Unexpected

One of the best surprises of new motherhood is how much time there is for reading. Reading books! I'd heard that once you've got a little one, you get so busy that it's hard to find time to even go to the toilet, and that reading is constricted to the odd short magazine article at best. But I hadn't factored in the many, many hours spent just holding or lying with the baby while he feeds. This time is so good, I'm finding, for any kind of mental activity - not just watching tv - and I make the most of it with daydreaming, scheming, drafting letters in my head and reading. I've just poked my nose into Moby-Dick, and I'm relishing every page.

(Luckily we've already given Timmy a perfectly serviceable name, or else I'd be arguing strongly for 'Ishmael'.)

Here he is!

Me and Timothy, originally uploaded by &Naomi.

Our baby Timothy Sage arrived at 4:44pm on Tuesday 25 January.

And just so you know, he's perfect in every way.

Peek into baby's room

Peek into baby's room, originally uploaded by &Naomi.

OK, so this shot is not as tidy as I would have liked. And obviously the blanky in the cot is just there to look cosy - it's not a SIDS hazard!

But I wanted to show a little peek into the 'before' of the baby's room. I expect that when he arrives, it will become instantly lived-in (ie, a messy trainwreck).

Christmas present

Christmas pav-making, originally uploaded by &Naomi.

Yeah.... we got the Kitchenaid for Christmas. And about time too! Both Hayden and I had been wanting one of these for a while (and we'd come pretty close to purchasing one a couple of times, most notably when our tiny tinny electric beaters finally gave out on us about a year ago) but we were really just looking for the right moment to commit. Or the right excuse to cough up the dough. Let's call it the right moment.

So the moment finally came for us a couple of days before we were due to spend Christmas for once at home, when we devised a Christmas menu which included pavlova. Just look at the glossy sheen on that meringue. We were never going to achieve that with the old op-shop rotary beaters, were we?

Christmas brunch

Christmas brunch, originally uploaded by &Naomi.

Christmas at eight months pregnant is a little different to Christmas as I've come to know it in the last couple of years. No flying to see family and friends in Brisbane or New Zealand (no airport queues, no sad partings at the cattery, no wrapping up delicate presents and worrying about them in our luggage) ... just Hayden and me (and Lily and the Bump) at home for the day.

The food was always going to be a feature, though. That's one thing that didn't change, even without other family-members around to impress. But these days there is no way I can hold out all morning for a big feast in the afternoon, so Hayden fortified me with a beautiful Christmas brunch of corn fritters, bacon, guacamole and three different types of salsa. It was as delicious as it looks, and gave me strength for all that Christmas skyping. (I think skype is great, truly so much better than just talking on the phone. But those technical issues that seem to come up every single time can really wear me out. It's a worry for my health! At my last midwife appointment, my slightly elevated blood pressure had the midwife worried until I mentioned that I'd spent the morning attempting to set up a skype conference call. "Well, that explains it!" and she said no more about it).

Happy Christmas! Hope you had a wonderful one.