Returning to myself

1: Post-sunny day evening treat, wildlings laughing and jostling, feeling very lucky.
2: Leicester visiting, my dad is recovering from surgery for cancer, we stopped by the pump house museum on our way over.
3: Tiny weavings, I'm building up to doing regular activity with the children who have been hanging around bored and worried a lot of the time I was really seriously ill. I have a lot of guilt about not being more present through this, but I'm trying to practice kindness to myself. Being so ill is hard and I'm lucky it's fairly temporary.
4: A long walk in heavy rain to the library.
5: Book festival wildlings.
6: And we met Mog, too. Rowan was terrified and squeezed my hand tight.
7: Flower bashing (hapa zome craft in the community gardens). I can't even express how lucky I feel to be vaguely back to doing things again.

In related news I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and starting to feel little goldfish wigglings. The middle kiddos came to my midwife appointment and heard the heartbeat last week, and now they are all competing over who can talk to (and kiss) the bump the most so it will be well socialised to being pounced on by siblings by the time it arrives!

May catch-up: the worst of it

I spent May throwing up, crying, falling asleep on the sofa, doing really simple crafts to occupy the children, and getting to grips with taking meds during pregnancy. The medication that worked well only continued to work well if I took it on time, getting my prescription re-filled wasn't as simple as I thought it would be, and just not throwing up every meal and every glass of water felt pretty damn wonderful actually. I'm getting there, honestly. But May was mostly hard work interspersed with sunshine.

Postcards from hyperemesis land

1: Being patient with a little who wants to play the big kid board games but doesn't want to follow the rules is harder when feeling nauseous
2: Rowan turned eight, somehow
3: Tali overcame her terror of the walls. I only threw up three times at the climbing centre.
4: Attention seeking cat
5: Pumpkin seedlings
6: Museum visit to catch up with cousins
7: Leaving the children behind for a walk along the river
8: And now they all have chicken pox, which is pretty good timing really before Jenna hits her teens and while I'm unable to venture anywhere without another adult thanks to hyperemesis...

Fourteen (?) days of this ordinary chaos, projects, and family

1: Living room bubble wrap stomping loveliness
2: Light table sorting and stacking
3: Glue plus little flower sprinkles
4: Lego marble maze
5: Rowan is always climbing things!
6: Mud pie kitchen and loose parts building in the garden (oh thank goodness for this sunshine!)
7: Anniversary Yo Sushi. Thirteen years.
8: Jenna reading everywhere, this week I've rarely seen her without her head in her book
9: Lemon cake (Talia told me very sweetly how much she LOVES baking with me so of course we had to immediately make a cake)
10: A hilltop climb with Ashleigh, a little adventure without the family again
11: Rowan conversing earnestly and politely with a bee! It made her week that it bumped her cheek as it flew away.

I've been horribly ill for most of the last couple of weeks, so we've been quite quiet. Fresh air and sunshine, sitting in the garden, and drinking lots of water, is all helping a bit.

Seven Days in which the sun comes out

1: Stickering
2: Cereal and improvised private cinema
3: Heather yarn
4: Playground break during a board games marathon
5: This little guy was showing off so loudly!
6: Walking with my mum, perfect sunny Mothering Sunday

Seven Days of calm and lovely

1: A Zebra Bear who is roaring really loudly and causing an avalanche. Apparently.
2: Nature walk to find frogspawn, with friends of course.
3: That IS a parrot in a tree. He has a Facebook page.
4: Alphabet ordering.
5: Everyone piles on grandma for cuddles and then jostles for space.
6: Calm cooperative playing (doesn't happen every day haha)!
7: When all your weekend plans get cancelled because a child is sick at 2am, there's extra time for knitting.

Yarn Along: finishing the blanket, and starting new books

I cast off, today. If I gave it a twenty stitch border I think it would be roughly single bed size, but I'm still thinking ten stitch will be fine. I just have to decide what colour. I'm deciding between a greeny-turquoise, or a grass green, I think. I want to bring those colours a bit more into balance against the slightly dominant oranges.

This blanket has been my colour play and my meditation for two weeks now, so I'm at a bit of a loss! I plan to get at least one smaller project cast on by the end of today though and I'm pretty sure I've picked which ones.

I've not been reading much. I'm a third of the way in to The Mime Order now but I think it was a mistake not to reread the first book before attempting it, because I have struggled so much to make sense of such a busy landscape of characters and setting.

I started two other books last week and quickly put them both down again, so I don't know. Maybe it's just the same busyness sapping my attention. I might go back to comic books again for a bit!