just another morning here

Comes round quickly, Sunday night, doesn’t it. Must go and cook tea then fold the washing so that they have school uniform ready for the morning.

It has been a beautiful day here; bit gutted that we haven’t managed to make the most of it, but there we go. I had the annual Memorial Service for babies lost through miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death to go to this afternoon, and Steve had to go in to work to let someone test drive a car, so it was always going to be a non-starter of a day, really.

The children have played out a fair bit though, with Mollie and Ruby in the close, Josiah is out there still in his pyjamas, and Abbie is in her sunsuit! Just couldn’t be bothered to insist on anything today.

Abbie spent the first part of *her* morning on a hamster hunt, she did admit responsibility in having accidentally left the cage open yesterday, so I think she breathed a huge sigh of relief when she found him in her dolls’ cot.

Anna has dossed around, but came with me to the service this afternoon. Her comments were that it was a short service, and that she was surprised at how much crying there was. Doh. My feelings on the whole thing are pretty much the same as last year and the year before that. I can’t quite decide if it’s good to give time to feel stuff all over again, or if it’s just a strange sadistic thing to put yourself through once a year. I am really considering stopping the support group, and if I do stop it I don’t think I’d go to the service, which leads me to think that it is just me getting emotionally carried away by the situation rather than any real grief of my own. Obviously I did and occasionally still do grieve, but the service itself doesn’t help in that for me personally, I don’t think. Still, having said that, someone read a very powerful poem today which I might post one day.

We had a lovely night out (at Harry’s) yesterday, too, which deserves a mention – we were celebrating a decent month of sales at the garage, so it was a works’ do – felt like a proper one for the first time ever though as it included our mechanic and his wife as well as Steve’s parents and us. We might even manage it this month as well, if we’re lucky

Another Nanci lyric, sorry!

Strange old day, the main part of which, for me, was taken up with the Remembrance Service for lost babies. I feel fairly emotionally battered this evening as a result. It gets me every time, I see people walking in to the chapel in the hospital and I end up feeling *so*full of grief on their behalf and on my own as well, I guess. And then I have to stand up and read stuff, which is quite horrid, why do I agree to these things?! Actually this time I was drafted in at the last minute … anyway, it was a good afternoon, there were loads of people there and plenty of conversations went on afterwards in the strange ‘have a cup of tea with people you’ve never met while you’re feeling really emotional’ time afterwards, which I always think is slightly bizarre.

Noticed the strangely ironic line in ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ which seems to be a regular feature in the order of service: “be there at our labours”, hmm. I know I believed God was there at mine, but only the times I made it that far! Anyway, time to pack away all my thoughtfulness for another year.

Steve was on childcare all afternoon and I confess to spending an extra half an hour out having a cuppa with a friend so that he would have to go and pick Anna up as well as having dropped her off, I just couldn’t face it after the service.

Anna had a ball at Stagecoach, so there goes another load of money. Ho hum. She complained that she wasn’t very good at the dance; I think it was modern dance whereas she’s only ever been taught ballet before, albeit with a contemporary edge to most of her performance dances, she’s not ever done what I’d call ‘pop’ dance so it was strange to her. But she loved the drama and the singing. She said ‘I made friends with someone who wouldn’t believe that I was allowed to not go to school, so then I made friends with someone else!’

We’ve had a friend round for dinner which has been pleasant, and we’re about to watch the Motorcycle Diaries together, goodo, I need some escapism this evening, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for a while now.

Oh, and we’ve seen some photos of Robyn today, very exciting

Lots of babies due at the moment, in fact Steve’s sister is in labour as I write, so I’m thinking of her today – more news later hopefully! Her due date was tomorrow so I know she’ll be over the moon not to have gone overdue. She’s having her first baby, at home, so pray that all goes well

And so because I’m procrastinating (do some things ever change?) and to give Nic something else in the sidebar to click on, I’ve added my birth stories to the ‘Pages’ section in the sidebar. They were on our family site but it’s broken at the moment.

Of course the other reason for all this baby thinking going on is that I’ve been working on Miscarriage stuff this week, a couple of people at swimming this morning had heard me on the radio yesterday and mentioned it all to me, and I guess it just brings all the remembering to the fore again – which is fine (no hugs please!), in fact I think one of the strengths of having something significant to do once a year is good as it brings you to a place where it is okay to remember things, and then the rest of the year you (well, I, now) don’t really think about it as much. Anyway, I need to carry on with the display stuff as I didn’t get much done yesterday due to printer problems, so I’m off …

UPDATE!
Emma had her baby, a girl called Robyn, at 13.37 7lbs 15.5oz, home birth went swimmingly Congratulations!

Well, Nanci was brilliant. Steve and I had a fab time – dinner in Pizza Hut as it was all we ended up with time for, but it was okay. The concert was fab – missed my friend and fellow teenage Nanci fan but Steve did an admirable effort of grinning inanely at me when one of my fave songs was played. Steve drove, but neither of us drank in the end, well, not until we got home, anyway

Today has been busy – might find and add some photos later. Got a huge parcel of toys yesterday (and nothing’s changed, the contents were not quite what I was expecting, please remind me of this when it comes to the pre-Christmas sign up invitation, although at least the website has finally been updated to have the new catalogue stuff on it, only two months after our ‘training day’ ) so we had lots of them out this morning as we wanted to find out how games were played etc. before taking them to HE group in the afternoon.

Faves were a bashing maths game, the tangram game, Anatomix (that’s really fab), Tipover (similar to Rush Hour) … and I love this book.

In the middle of all that Josiah went off to Start Right, and I had to go to the Drs for a smear test, hateful things. Girls thought it was gross but still strangely wanted to be in the same room. Educational, nonetheless.

Due to all the nice game-playing Anna was rather miffed at having to be dragged out of the house, even more miffed that I made her walk (it’s all of 300 yards), and we ended up with the whole ‘I’d rather be at school’ conversation going on. Only for the school dinners, seeing Caitlin, and generally not having to do what her mother tells her. Still, it knocks me sideways every time she does it, because I feel guilty that we’ve made this decision for our family and that if *she* could choose she’d go to school. Abbie doesn’t care either way, and neither does Josiah, really – and sometimes, tbh, it’s just so tempting from my point of view, to have that TIME! Sometimes I even wish I could hand the responsibility for Anna’s education to someone else; she and I have a major character clash, I reckon – it doesn’t happen in the same way with the other two … then on the other hand I *really* don’t want to hand them over to a system that I don’t like, partly I don’t want to lose control over what they’re doing, partly I don’t think the academic side of school education is any better than what the kids will get at home (in fact philosophically I think they could do better at home, whether they will or not is a different matter), partly I don’t want to lose the flexibility that we have as a family at the moment, and even a tiny (honest) part of me isn’t sure what I’d do if they did go back to school. Then there’s the quandary of which school they’d go back to – the local one (obvious choice really as it’s absolutely fine) or go with the Christian school because of it’s ethos/atmosphere which really is something different (as Heather will testify), or then again maybe if they want to go and I’ll be able to work, we could almost afford posh private (because I’m a snob at heart ). All of those are compromises in one way or another, whereas at the moment I at least feel that I’m being true to my ideals for their education.

It is a slight ‘button pushing’ exercise on Anna’s behalf, she knows that I’ll react when she does the ‘I’d rather be at school’ routine – and this afternoon I’ve ended up basically reminding her why we’ve chosen this route for our family at this time, and that it does hurt my feelings when she says it just because she’s cross with me. Having said that, I honestly think that this summer may well be crunch time, one way or another. Ho hum. And if so, then bang goes any vague plan Steve & I might have had about going abroad in the Autumn …

That was an aside, in the day – after my doctor’s appointment we came home and made a buzzwire together. Anna’s wanted to do one of these for ages so when I saw that I could get a kit I was pleased, and she & Abbie enjoyed putting it together.

Steve picked Joe up and they came back for lunch, during which someone from the local radio station popped in to interview me; the annual babyloss memorial service is happening at the hospital here on Sunday so I’ve been involved in lots of ‘get the word out’ type media stuff this week.

After that we went off to HE group which was mainly pleasant – Abbie has been pushing her luck with behaviour recently and I had to send her into another room for five minutes because she was being a pain – and she’s under severe warnings, but apart from that it was nice. Joe is now sporting some lovely new trousers from Jules which he thinks are great because of the zip off bits to make them into long shorts.

Came home with Anna moaning that they’d laid the table at lunchtime so it wasn’t their turn to do it for tea; I said okay, well, I cooked the lunch so you’ll have to cook the tea then, if I’m laying the table. They ended up getting their own tea *and* laying the table for themselves, so that was good – Steve and I have friends coming round for dinner later. So that’s us; might find time to add photos later if they’re any good.