On This Day In History

At almost this precise moment, I was on my way to hospital ready to be induced. If I knew then, what I know now... I'd do it all again in a heartbeat! But, honestly, if you'd told me this time last year that I'd have to wait another three days for DC to arrive, I'd have been more than a little surprised.

But, as long as I could still have a coffee, I'd have coped....

Don't Want to Speak Too Soon...

and jinx it, but we accepted an offer on our house on Friday! Yeeeeeehaaaw! Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly, quickly and to plan.

On the same day we also made an offer on another house in Henley; the offer was turned down but neither of us is too upset, we are willing to bide our time and play the long game as we don't really love the house. It's a 'head' house, rather than a 'heart' house, meaning that (internally) the house has lots of potential to be made into something quite special (as long as we have the funds) and at the end of all the work it would hopefully make us a (fair) profit when we sell it on; it's also in a good location, has a fair size garden and is in a good school catchment area (should we be thinking of it as a medium to long-term home.) However, it's not an attractive house and from the outside never will be; it doesn't make our hearts skip a beat when we think it could be ours; it's semi-detached when we really would prefer detached and although the plot isn't a bad size, it's an odd shape and not as large as we would really like - not much room for DC's goalposts...

So the head says: buy the house because once the work is done it will be a really good size house with a fair size garden in a good location in Henley and when we come to sell it it may help us move up the property ladder a little further.

And the heart says: for the same money you could buy a detached cottage in an acre somewhere in the South West.


HELP!

Eggscellent Work, Girls

Gail and Sarah-luv (the chooks) have earned themselves a reprieve. Hubby, aka the chicken-whisperer, had a 'word' with them back in November/December time; they were warned that if we didn't see some results by May of this year (by which time they would have been enjoying free board and lodgings for 11 months) then necks would be wrung. Harsh, but true. We didn't get them as pets, we got them to supply us with eggs.

Back in December, you may remember, the Family W took a little jaunt to NYC. While we were away we had a friend pop in to check on the chooks; the first day she looked in on them, there in the nesting box was an egg. Knowing the history of our non-producing chooks, she thought we'd planted it there so we could be sure she really was going round to feed and water them. As if we would do such a thing!

Anyhoo, that was the only egg laid in the entire week we were away and we all thought it was a fluke. But then, slowly but surely, that one egg increased to two, three, four and we are now at the point of full capacity in the fridge's egg compartment. Between them the chooks are laying around ten eggs a week and DC has discovered that fresh scrambled or poached eggs are one of his absolute favourite meals (luckily.)
If anyone else is having trouble with non-laying chooks, Hubby the Chicken Whisperer is available to hire at very reasonable rates.

Party Central

It's non-stop partying in the land of the NCT babies. Obviously, since we all took a childbirth course together, we all had our babies fairly close together this time last year. There's just over four weeks between the first (Samuel) and the last (DC - bringing up the rear...), with Sophie, Darcey, Daisy, Eleanor, Molly, Wilbur and Louis in between.

DC and I went to Samuel's birthday party on the 19th of Feb; our first ever 1st birthday party and a good time was had by all. The party bag we brought home was a big hit with a) hubby, who ate the slice of birthday cake that was inside b) me, as I've bagsied the chocolate lollipop and c) DC who will, no doubt, have hours of fun watching mummy and daddy blowing bubbles for him and winding up the swimming bath toy.

Yesterday was supposed to be Daisy's party but, as is the way with little tots, she was poorly and the party has been postponed til next Friday. Today we are off en famille to Darcey's party, and tomorrow it's Eleanor's. Like I said, it's party central round these parts.

Due Date

Would you believe it's a whole year ago today that DC was due? But, because he was so overdue, it's still another 17 days until his 1st birthday! So, this time last year, hubby and I were on tenterhooks thinking that at any moment we could become parents. Little did we know just how much longer we'd be such close companions with those tenterhooks. Bless his little heart, he clearly takes after me when it comes to timekeeping.