Here's me thinking I'd have all this time on my hands once I started my maternity leave. Yeah, right. I'm only eight weeks away from Baby Ash's grand arrival (or it's anticipated one, anyway), and I've got so much more to do.
There's a reluctance to get the baby's room ready - some cultures and religions believe that it invites the evil eye on the fetus, others believe it's just bad luck. For the most part, we've done little to the baby's room, although there are some things you can't wait to buy until just after the baby is born.
Also, three decades ago my grandfather made me a cradle - my cousin has used it for her two girls already, and we're looking forward to using it for our baby (that's me in the cradle). Granted, we haven't put it back together again, but it's not something you can put off having if it already exists! Wardrobe also needs to be a consideration. We can't really show up at the hospital without an outfit for the baby to spend the night in, nor would it be the pinnacle of parenting to bring a child home from the hospital wearing only a diaper in the middle of January. Right?
There's also a niggling feeling at the back of my mind that says I won't have a lot of time to do much of anything when the baby comes, not least cooking. So, I've been cooking up a storm and freezing the heck out of everything in our garage chest freezer. I've got lasagnas, penne, Mediterranean chicken, chickpea stew, eggplant parmesan, turkey chili and Red Velvet cake that even Paula Deen herself would approve of. 55 meals in total, which are grabbable, cookable and yummy from frozen. Which means that when I'm covered in baby spit up and can't remember my own name, I'll know that I can have a healthy, cooked meal with no preservatives ready in less than an hour.
I'm trying to organize photos, videos and music before I can't anymore - we had a huge problem with our LaCie hard drive (wouldn't entirely recommend them based on shoddy customer support in the UK). It wouldn't mount to the disk, it wouldn't even start spinning. Thankfully, we were able to go to the Apple Store in Brent Cross to get the data (9,000+ songs, several gigs worth of photos and videos), and it was transferred to a new drive. We also bought a portable hard drive (500 GB) which will be our redundant drive. It's scary to think that we could've lost everything on that drive without a proper backup, so we've now been doubly careful to back everything up twice. We have several years worth of photos that haven't been printed out in an album, as well as videos from weddings and trips that we haven't compiled yet, so that's my next big project after cooking.
I'm having lunch with a childhood friend this week, then my mother and stepdad come the week after for a pre-baby holiday visit, and my dad and stepmom round off December with a visit on the 22nd. My husband has his company party on the 19th in Wales, and we're heading back across the River Severn for the 31st - our last trip "out of the country" before the baby comes.
I had hoped to blog a bit more, but for some reason things keep getting in the way. Maybe when I've sorted through my music, cleaned my house up and down and put together the baby's cradle I'll have time to blog about holiday PPC or lazy recruiters contacting me on LinkedIn without reading my profile. In the meantime, if you'd like to guest blog (anonymously or with your name in big lights), let me know!
