Baby Two's Photoshoot :)

Typical baby shot- it is definitely in there!

Stretching out the legs

Front on- you can see a couple of eyes

It has an arm!

Exciting, wonderful, happy, lovely news!

Ben is back, hooray!!! He got back yesterday afternoon and all is well :)

In other news, I can confirm that... I am housing an 88 mm small Twiglet in my tummy. Hooray!!!!

I got to see it on the ultrasound yesterday morning, and despite it doing "advanced gymnastics" with its ankles crossed we could see a heartbeat, and few limbs and a couple of eyes too, so hooray it is really in there! Baby Two is due mid-May, although I have to go back for another scan tomorrow morning (hooray, Ben will be there!) so they can measure stuff properly and give me a more accurate due date. I saw two different specialists yesterday because they couldn't get it to budge out of a very tight corner (VERY close to my bladder!)- but to no avail. I am 15 weeks along and after feeling pretty rubbish for the first few weeks I am now feeling wonderful... just starting to put on the podge and really look as though I might be pregnant! Happy, happy news.

Pictures to follow- hopefully he/she will be feeling more photogenic tomorrow!

Ben is off again!!

I am getting used to life without a husband- it is quite lonely!! He was away for training in Windsor all of last week, and a couple of days ago we found out that he could do his first bit of 'offshore' experience for a few days. He is basically on the boat to watch and learn and ask questions, while they do a site survey (I think they drop things off the boat and do tests about the strength of the seabed for prospective wells... perhaps??!) I think they are going quite far North (even further!!) and probably into Norwegian waters.

I dropped him off at the Harbour this morning, complete with Artic jacket, bright orange BP jumpsuit, balaclava and the whole lot! It was quite bizarre, since that isn't usually what he does for his work. When we got there, there was a line a crew members loading up the boat- the Ocean Seeker- with food. I spied UHT milk, orange and apple juice and SPAM!! For some reason spam always makes me laugh.

I'm not quite sure why, but in the end they didn't set sail until this afternoon, at about 4ish, but Ben had kept me updated so Oliver and I could wave him off and run along the Harbour wall as far as I could with the buggy until I got to lots of spikey fences. It was quite exciting and I felt a bit like we were in a film :) I tried to take a couple of photos but it was getting quite dark and they didn't turn out very well. But he is off! I stocked him up with travel sickness tablets, but he's a bit sicky at the best of times... urgh. Fingers crossed all will be well and he won't be away too long.

I found a photo of the boat online:

One of my favourite pieces of music

Just thought someone out there would appreciate what I have been listening to a lot recently. This is one of my favourite pieces of music of all time- Lux Aurumque, by one of my favourite composers of all time- Eric Whitacre, sung by one of my very favourite choirs- Brigham Young University Singers. I'm not usually one for much modern music, but I LOVE Eric Whitacre's music. And the BYU Singers blow me away every time, especially live when we did big choir/orchestra things at university.

By the way, the choir is coming to ENGLAND on tour next April and will be singing in Cambridge, mmmmm. You MUST go!

Highlights and Lowlights in the quest to become a Domestic Goddess...

Ben and I helped to organise a church Halloween party the other week. It went well and we ended up bringing home some of the surplus stuff, including four uncarved pumpkins. They were VERY LARGE so I set myself the goal to try out as many pumpkin recipes I could, until we couldn't eat anymore! We had pumpkin soup on Monday, pumpkin risotto on Tuesday, and I don't usually do a lot of baking, so I was pleased to find a pumpkin and chocolate chip muffin recipe to try out for Wednesday. They looked a bit 'Sainsburys Basics' (I imagined them with the tagline "all shapes and sizes, still yummy")

By the end of the week I was getting a bit more inventive and finally broke free of pumpkin, hooray! I had been wanting to make some kind of steamed pudding for a while, so Ben suggested an amazing plum, prune and orange zest Christmassy one. I was excited! I followed all the instructions and made a special aluminium foil covering with a pleat and a string handle ready for steaming. Here it is...

 Then I steamed it for two hours:

But it came out looking uncooked!!! 

So I thought I'd try to finish it off in the microwave. Sadly it sort of exploded around the plate that was on top if it, and looked like this:

I decided that it had to be cooked after all of that (despite its still gooey and slightly special appearance...) so we ate it.

It tasted pretty good, especially with custard, and none of us were ill so that proves to me it must have been done. As Ben often reminds me, "Presentation is not really your forte!" meaning that things taste good but look pretty bad, but all in all, my steamed pudding was a bit of a domestic failure.

But look at this! I put up this stairgate with my own fair hand. Hurrah, a domestic success!

Crazy boy

Oliver keeps showing us sneaky previews of his crazy character and what's to come in the future!

He opened this program, and got to the "Help" section...

My small receptionist!

Getting every last bit from his catch-all bib...!

Ben= My Own Personal Handy Man!

At the weekend our washing machine suddenly started spewing out a lot of water out of the drawer and the bottom and any other cranny it could find. We mopped it up with towels and tried to get the water to drain out by putting it on a rinse and spin again, but it only spewed out more. Cue Ben, the notoriously logical and manly problem solver, who immediately put on his thinking cap talking about a blockage somewhere in the machine, etc... Last night he got out his tool box (I have a husband with a tool box, cool!) and started pulling bits of the machine apart, until he found the thing that was blocking the machine. Or rather, things:

1. Two eaten up washable breast pads (I was wondering why I can only find two of the 12 that I own. Perhaps they have all died a similar death)
2. One earring (not mine, must belong to the landlord)
3. 1x £1 coin
4. 1x 5p
5. One fairly large ball... Ben then informed me that this was part of the machine, so he'd better put that one back
6. One bit of plastic that said 'Abercrombie and Fitch' on it (again, must belong to the landlord- we are not that cool!)
7. One hairband.

How, HOW, did all those things manage to get stuck in the machine?!! It's a miracle the poor machine was washing anything at all.

Hooray for a wonderful husband!! :)