Coddled!

Day 5 in my new life as a couch potato and I must admit that it's not all that bad! Jos has been taking care of me like a true mother hen. He's been cooking up a storm and cleaning like crazy and of course bringing me water, books, tea and the phone as I lay cuddled up on the couch. He says he's in daddy training and he actually seems to be loving it (except maybe the endless amount of dishes he keeps washing... time to get a dishwasher!).
Meanwhile we have a builder in working on our bathroom. Jonathan. He's an English guy who worked with my parents on their place. So there's lots of hammering and sawing and no shower upstairs. I thought it would drive me totally out of my mind to have him living and working here for a week but it's turning out just fine (he's good fun) and we're so looking forward to having a new bathroom! Also, it gives Jos a few more tasks in his "daddy training"... going to the hardware store, helping to rip up tiles, consulting on design choices. It wasn't exactly how we'd planned to spend our Christmas vacation, but it's actually turning out to be rather relaxing to just be home and concentrating on home stuff.
I've been doing endless loads of laundry myself. Getting all the baby stuff washed and ready. Hopefully the little guy will wait at least another two weeks... but we're ready for him now! I've even got my suitcase more or less packed up and ready for the hospital. We're moving into the home stretch.


This was once our bathroom...

A scare...

Happy holidays one and all! I am sitting at home on the couch next to our wee Parisian style Christmas tree. We were supposed to be at my parents' place celebrating, but there's been a bit of an uncontrollable change of plans ... Some of you already know, but for those who don't... I ended up spending a fascinating 60 hours in the hospital at the beginning of this week. I woke up Monday morning bleeding and so we immediately rushed off to the clinic where they hooked me up to all sorts of machines to see what was going on. It turned out that I was having contractions that I wasn't feeling. But everything was fine elsewhere... my cervix wasn't opening yet or anything so they just had to attach me to a drip and feed me medication and monitor me in order to stop the contractions and make sure that baby didn't arrive 6 weeks early. So they kept me in there for two nights and most of the third day. I was home on Christmas Eve at 7:30 p.m. By then my contractions had stopped and all was well. But they said that I have to stay more or less lying/sitting down at least for the next two weeks. And no traveling. So we couldn't go to my parents' place and we can't go to Belgium to visit Jos' family. James and my parents came to our place for Christmas. We had a very sweet time. They all rushed around with Jos and cooked and cleaned and finished preparing the baby room and I tried to stay put. Not such an easy task. So now they've gone and we're home alone. We were very sad not to be able to go to Belgium. We were so looking forward to being with Jos' family and showing off my big belly. This whole thing came as such a complete surprise after such an easy and uneventful pregnancy. You can't plan for everything though I suppose. So now that I shall be lying on the couch for the next two weeks I'll be able to blog all the time. I better take full advantage of all the rest and relaxation while I can get it!

Here I am on Monday on the monitor and the drip.

Home improvement... finally!

Well, I'm finally back! So sorry it's been so long. I thought that this last month would be relaxed and that I was done with all the traveling but in fact, since I last wrote, I've been back and forth to Spain twice and last week I was in Athens (I left just before all the craziness started there). I can't believe how much traveling I've done this year, but it was hard to turn down such good gigs and it has actually been quite fun being so active. And my giant belly definitely added a little spice to the cabaret. This little boy certainly has been on stage a lot! But now it is all officially over. Phew. No lying this time I promise! I am finally home and concentrating on home stuff. Things have been busy on the home front too. Our new parquet is in! It's been pretty intense getting that prepared and cleaning up after it. We had to clear everything out downstairs including the kitchen tiles (thank you Rick!!) before it went in of course. And now we've just spent the last two weeks putting everything back together... attaching all the shelves to the walls, cleaning each and every dust covered book... It's definitely worth it though. It sure does change things to have a nice floor. Before, it was a painted cement floor and we couldn't quite imagine the little bean crawling around on it. Especially since it wasn't the most even of surfaces. So it's a wonderful relief to have that done. We feel like we're living in a new house! Now the next job is his room. The crib arrived a couple weeks ago but we still haven't managed to put it together. By the end of the week the house should be more or less ready. Wow. Time sure does fly. It's hard to believe that in about a month and a half we'll be a family of three. Incredible!