While I’m busy writing a story [see the sidebar for my wordcount progress], you’re stuck with baby photos.
I KNOW. It’s TERRIBLE. I can feel you boycotting me right now.
She’s 15 weeks old chronologically, and 11-12 weeks old corrected.
That second photo is Evelyn’s best attempt at lifting her head while on her stomach, which still looks remarkably like it did a few weeks ago.
Eh, she’ll either manage it or she won’t.
Which is basically to say, the baby pokes her tongue out A LOT. Like, all the time, pretty much.
She continues to be adorable and slightly weird. No real changes in anything – her vision is in and out, her hearing is similar and her twitchy episodes continue to occur regularly. She’s almost 15 weeks old now and is rather like an oversized newborn – except for the fact that this baby doesn’t cry. Shouts a bit for attention, but doesn’t cry. I don’t know what that means. She’s so very placid.
In any case, we see the Paeds again next week.
[In other news, Amy doesn’t want to go to school, and is taking her temperature over and over again, in the hope that THIS TIME it will say that she’s too sick to go to school. She’s very grumpy that the thermometer is not cooperating.]
Nathan had surgery on Friday to fix a hydrocele. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mind me talking about his testicles on my blog, but in case you’re worried, I did ask first.
While he was in there, he had a vasectomy. It was a joint decision but…
I wasn’t prepared for how sad this would make me feel.
It’s a good thing; logically I know it’s a good thing. We have three beautiful children and this is our mental, physical and financial limit. Three children and we are so so lucky.
And yet, the emotional side of my brain is still sad. No more tiny babies for me.
Frankly, I would be happy to never be pregnant again. I found pregnancy utterly miserable, but never having a newborn again?
Sad.
In any case, it was the right decision, and I will get over it.
It’s just so FINAL, you know?
In other news, NaNoWriMo is going quite well, and once I press publish on this, I’m locking my children outside* and planning on writing lots more words. For those naysayers (yes, I’ve seen you out there) – yes, it’s 50k hurried words. No, each word that falls out of my fingers is not perfect. I know that there are holes in my plot and timeline that need clearing up later.
But – it takes the pressure off. I’m not expecting myself to write fifty thousand perfect words this month. I don’t expect my end result to be an instantly publishable work, filled with great prose.
What I do expect is that at the end of November, I will have a first draft. Messy and mistake filled, it will be the bare bones of SOMETHING. It will need editing and rewriting – but don’t we expect that in any case?
The pressure of writing 50k words in 30 days stops my inner perfectionist in her tracks. It stops her shouting at me that I may as well give up now, that this is crap. Because I know it’s crap and I’m writing it anyway.
The beginning of something does not need to be perfect. It just needs to BE.
*I kid. Mostly. Unless they start fighting again. That said Amy is sulking because I growled at her and Isaac just tried to bash his two front teeth out. Blood. Everywhere. (He’s eating an ice cream now however.)
The other day, I got excited because I finally thought I’d found where my Araucana hen was laying her eggs, and that she’d gone broody to boot. Unfortunately, a couple of hours later, I spotted her off the nest – only to discover she was actually pretending to sit on duck eggs and nary an egg of hers in sight. Which is a shame, as Araucanas lay blue eggs and a) I wanted to show the kidlets and b) I want Araucana x Pekin babies.
She’s not the brightest chicken in the shed and every day since I thought she’d gone broody, I’ve discovered her in the duck’s nest, pretending to lay eggs and pretending to be briefly broody. Hopefully she’s just practising for when she does finally come onto the lay. (More cracked corn!)
In other news, my favourite hen:
gave me very pretty Pekin babies.
The father is this guy, looking very alert and upright because I had the dog with me:
And while I’d hoped for either blue or lavender babies, and expected black chicks – I didn’t expect to get two white babies! Either way, I’m pretty pleased and hopefully I’ll get another clutch out of her this season.
And this guy that I found rolling around in the driveway. Sure, he’s not a chicken, but he’s lovely in any case.
Wow, that sounds like a heavy title, doesn’t it? But it’s true – I am here today, making myself accountable to you.
Yes, you.
In a moment of insanity, I signed up to do NaNoWriMo. This is despite my crazy older children and the medical mystery baby –
[Who continues to not-seize and has added a whole range of new uncontrollable movements to her repertoire, leaving me thinking that “movement disorder” like the Neuro possibly thought, might just be on the money. Her hearing also appears to be sporadic now, and just, I don’t even KNOW with this baby.]
– and the wrapping up of the school year, and the beginning of spring and really, I have a million excuses as to why writing a novel right now is a terrible idea.
But I’ll always be able to find a million excuses for why sitting down Right Now is a bad idea, and instead, I’m not doing that. I’m looking at the one big reason that writing a novel Right Now is a great idea, and that’s because I’ll be joining an awful lot of other people trying to write 50k words in 30 days and we’ll all be insane together.
One of the ways that someone suggested to not fail, is to tell everyone that you’re doing it. Apparently, nothing will keep you writing faster than a fear of failing and everyone knowing about it. So in case you haven’t noticed, over there in my sidebar is a link to my page on the NaNoWriMo site, along with a wordcount widget.
Nothing appeals more to my obsessive nature than a wordcount widget telling the Universe how much I’ve written.
That’s it, really. I have a plan written, and an outline and I had a minor panic attack making my synopsis public (because people could be judging meeeeeeee).
If you’re joining in, let me know in the comments? Otherwise, feel free to tell me how insane I am.
