Life

Firstly, thank you for all your emails asking if I was okay – we’re a long way from the bushfires and thus are lucky enough to not have any direct involvement in the property loss. Later, I’ll update with links to the Red Cross if you want to donate to those families affected.

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Everyone is well. I should start with that, shouldn’t I. Christmas felt like a long slog of tantrums and too much chocolate, but we got through and from the excitement my children oozed from their every pore, I’d say that they had fun. It took Nathan and I a little longer to recover – Nathan especially. He really should try harder to not throw himself at the ground repeatedly during games of backyard cricket, especially when the summer dry grass is like razors underfoot.

Evelyn enjoyed her new toys, despite her inability to actually hold onto them. We’re working on her developing a determined hold, as opposed to the grasp reflex she has going on still. The grasp reflex is great for say, pulling out my hair, or clawing at my eyes, but not so great for putting that exciting thing into her mouth. She’s still lacking lots of developmental building blocks, but she’s happy and getting progressively more adorable which I didn’t think was actually possible.

I may be biased of course, especially due to the fact that she is sleeping right now, therefore being rather low maintenance.

It’s Summer, which makes everything nicer too. I’m a big fan of summer foods, all those tomatoes and basil and berries and just, excuse me while I drool a little over here. My greenhouse is full of rapidly growing vines (cucumber, melon, pumpkin and watermelon) and I’m hopeful that we’ll get some fruit from these by autumn. Of course, I’m having to hand pollinate the pumpkin flowers because the bees haven’t discovered them yet, but we’ll ignore the fact that I am spending a lot of time poking paintbrushes into flowers. Maybe the bees will clue themselves in soon.

[Digression: HAHAHAHA. If you were a bee, would you rather collect nectar from tasty flowering gums, or from pumpkins? Yeah, I might be paint brushing everything, forever. It’s all my own fault for planting things that flower and attract the bees.]

So, that’s me. Safe from fires, not safe from giant holes in minecraft (yes, I bought Amy minecraft. Any good tips?).

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Firstly I’d like to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who reads here. Thank you to everyone who has commented this year. Thank you for the emails, the tweets, the facebook messages. Thank you for all the support during Evie’s birth and then for the support when we realised that something wasn’t quite “right” with her.

Thank you for hanging in there when posting got sporadic and for coping with all my freak outs. I am so appreciative of how you’ve all helped me retain my sanity and my sense of humour.

I hope if you celebrate Christmas that you have a truly merry day tomorrow. If you don’t, then I hope you have a lovely Tuesday and a great New Year.

One of the outtakes from my Christmas photos:

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It’s finally the school holidays.

We don’t have any more doctors appointments until early January. (Touch wood)

I have one very smooshy baby:

Recommend a book to me? I’ve just recently finished reading Ilona Andrews, the Kate Daniels series (thank you Mum for the recommendation) and loved them.

Have you read anything decent lately? Leave a link in the comments. Bonus points if it’s available on Kindle. Double bonus points if you wrote it.

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It was our anniversary yesterday.

A year ago yesterday we got married. A year ago today, I started to miscarry. A year ago tomorrow, I lost a baby. It’s a strange time of year. Introspective, but not sad. Maybe if I didn’t have Evelyn, I’d be sad, but I do and everything that happened a year ago was the lead up to falling pregnant with her. The pregnancy that failed paved the way for the pregnancy that succeeded and here we are, twelve months on.

We spent the day doing not very much at home. Nathan watered the new trees that we’ve put in, carrying buckets backwards and forwards all over our paddock. Isaac ran around, ending the day on an incredibly festive spirit by colouring his face in green and red. Amy cried, tired after a long Monday at school and Evelyn slept. I did a bit of everything, including more words on my current WIP.

If you look over into the sidebar you can see that I completed NaNoWriMo with days to spare. A week to spare in fact. I’m rather proud of myself, because November hasn’t exactly been a stress free month. If you’re interested, my novel synopsis can be found here. Feel free to tell me how much you like it, I’m currently running on a mix of chocolate and ego and my ego meter needs refilling.

I’m enjoying the writing. Fiction is a lot of fun, harder in some ways, but a lot easier in others. My characters have rather nicely taken over and are currently running the show – I’m just the one writing it down for them. I reckon it will finish up somewhere around 100k words, but we’ll see.

In any case, nothing new is happening. Evelyn continues to twitch. Two weeks ago she started holding her head up when she was on her tummy. That lasted a whole two days (long enough for the Paed to see it, at least) before she lost that skill. Her vision seems to be getting a bit better, unless she’s tired or upset, or there is too much background “noise”. (I think I’ve said this. Recently in fact. Am I repeating myself? I repeat, reality is a bit warpy when I’m writing fiction.)

So she’s back to trying to eat the floor when she’s on her tummy. No signs of rolling over yet, nor can she grasp toys yet, or hold onto things. We’ll get there, it’s just a slow process. We see the neurologist again in a bit over a fortnight, so hopefully he has some ideas for us by then.

In summary:

I love my husband still; having a small baby makes having a miscarriage a year ago not that sad; I win at NaNo and am entirely awesome; and the baby is still odd- adorable, but odd.

How are you? What’s going on in your November that I have missed? Fill me in. (And yes, I mean YOU. If you’re reading here, I’d like to know how your month has been. Stop second guessing yourself. I honestly want to know. Tell me your stories.)

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