No news on gender, weight, name, etc, etc - none of that. The baby is still dormant, by which I mean it's taken a vow of restlessness which V is obliged to go along with. Occasionally it kicks her hard enough in the middle of the night that she kicks out as well, like some kind of giant puppet. So I get kicked by proxy. Nobody wins in this arrangement.
Not much to write about over the last month, then, as the days are increasingly full of waiting for its arrival. Plenty of preparing instead. Some of it is mental prep, lying around doing nothing at any opportunity as if stocking up on rest and sleep might remotely work.
The rest of the preparation is shopping. Blankets so tiny I cannot believe F ever fitted inside one. An assortment of plastic teats, straps, rings and bottles. Hilariously overpriced toys. We spent some time today trying to pick out a doll for F to play with, the present with which we'll try to assuage her inevitable attention jealousy.
"Which one of these do you like?" we asked her.
"I buy the baby new clothes!" she told us proudly, ignoring both dolls and holding up a toy shopping basket before loading it up with doll outfits from the rack. Doesn't matter if it's a boy or a girl, then, as long as you can use it as an excuse to go shopping.
We got a new sofa, so mummy has a place to sprawl during feeding sessions or general exhaustion. F went from being very excited about the new sofa to being very excited about her new sofa to being very excited about her new trampoline over the course of an hour. Once she'd split chocolate on it, she had clearly taken it for granted and stopped talking about it altogether.
Still hard to gage F's understanding of the baby. We read her a book about a new baby arriving in a family today, which she listened to with close interest. "Did you like that book, Freja?"
"That mummy had no clothes on," she said, rather concerned. Still on the clothes, then. Priorities all sorted.
James' beard remains well. The vistigial remnants of James are still lodged amidst its proud roots, and it hopes to soon move on to pastures new.
