Yes. What you see there is the aftermath of a finger trapped in door episode. Said finger also happened to be the one wearing my pretty wedding band.

Yes, that’s a chip of paint on my finger, and yes, that’s an almighty bend in the structure of my ring. You can also see it pinching hard into my finger. Ick.

And LOOK, ONE OF THE TEENY TINY DIAMONDS FELL OUT. Yikes. We had to use pliers to bend it back again so that I could get it off. Luckily I managed to find the diamond which was a pretty amazing feat seeing how small it is, and the fact that it fell onto the carpet…. but carpet doesn’t twinkle when you shine a light on it (thank goodness). All I was trying to do was find some cotton wool so that I could cleanse poor little Toby’s eye

HOWEVER our new couch arrived providing a nice distraction away from the little upset. It’s much bigger than the old one, SQUEE. Lots more room for me, him, and two little kitties (and whatever comes out of me in June). More pics to come soon when the room is more set up. By the way, it’s not as yellow in real life, more of a sandy colour.

And hopefully the nice friendly jeweler will be able to fix my ring and make it all better. Hopefully.

I did warn you You can even click on it to see it even bigger, and even more sweet!

Exactly five days ago it was just DrMr and me in the house, and what an empty, cold house it must have seemed (well, except for my 19-strong plastic family, of course!). Five days on, and our little two bedroom apartment is positively *BURSTING* with energy thanks to our two little white furry additions. Two little people who have brought so much joy! I can’t now imagine what it must have been like without them. But they do bring quite a lot of work with them too. Take this morning for instance, and a 6.45 am alarm call for a wellness check at the vet (not to mention a similar visit two days ago for worming treatments and microchips).

They were both EVER SO good, so much so that we let them sit with us in the vet’s room as they waited patiently for the old thermometer up the bottom routine. This little wellness check was all part of the excellent adoption service from the  Silicon Valley Humane Society. As hygienic as the shelter tries to be,  little colds and infections are unfortunately very commonplace as there are so many animals all in the same location, and germs spread all to quickly when people go around sticking their fingers into cages to offer tickles without sanitising their hands between animals. So to make sure every furry person stays as healthy as can be, they offer a complimentary five-day wellness check, with a complementary 14 day followup afterwards, just to make sure nothing new develops in this time. And anything that does get noticed within this 14 day period is treated without charge.

One of our kitties unfortunately had a bit of a cold and an eye infection when he came out, but his cold has got much better over the past couple of days and is now almost gone, and his eye is getting much better now thanks to some antibiotic ointment…. which was covered thanks to this wellness program. Unfortunately for our bank account the FLV vaccines and the flea/tick/heartworm prevention treatment weren’t, but it was money well spent as far as I’m concerned

As with every situation they’ve encountered so far, they took it all in their stride and spent the rest of the day taking it in turns to drape themselves over me, sometimes two at a time, as I tried to get some things done on my computer.

Besotted. I am. Completely. How can I resist such cuteness? They follow me around from room to room, and sit there and smile at me. It’s like having two little white furry shadows permanently behind me.

And here they are, my dear, beloved, sweet boys, Chester and Toby…

Yes this was me, 100% authentic bedhead.

Now I’m not going to pretend that I usually resemble a complete glamourpuss every morning, but I did look particualrly rough this morning.

Why?

My life has been taken over by these two…

Morning, noon, and night…

And by ‘night’ I really do mean it…… 3.30am rambunctious stampedes right across the bed, repeated all over again just a couple of hours later.

But I don’t mind.

They’re very, very sweet when they do it xo

Travelling always throws me off slightly with my blogging schedule, but there’s been another good reason for lack of spare time at the moment. Look who arrived last night …

Sixteen weeks old, brothers, and as pure white as the snow xo

More details to come soon, and photos (if they sit still for long enough!)

…And *hugely* relieved and impressed that I managed to keep within my luggage allowance. Well, umm, I mean the two check-in bag bit. The fact that one of them was a little bit over, and the other one was EXTREMELY overweight is something I shouldn’t really admit to. But past experience has taught me that usually when you travel through London Heathrow with an oversized item (e.g. a really rather nice pram/stroller gifted from my lovely parents in a big box that has had every spare square inch *stuffed* full with socks and tee-shirts and rather large, heavy books and other miscellaneous items that wanted to come back with me), they send you down to a different check-in desk and take your word that it’s within the 23 kg weight limit. Yay for creative packing.

I also had to get creative with my carry-on too. Again experience has taught me that the two bag thing is most strictly imposed when going through security, and so long as you can more-or-less tuck bags inside of one another to make *two bags* you can get away with it. So although I had three rather well proportioned bags on this trip (one of which was ALL BLYTHE STUFF, heee hee!), I was able to tuck my brown handbag into the top of the tan one and waltz through with no problem. PHEW! I still had to wear my hat, my heaviest woolly jumper, carry a jacket and wear my rather large Dubarry boots in addition to the three bags, but  the point its THEY LET ME ON THE PLANE because I still only officially had two bags!

And something rather special was waiting for Paige, Fleur and me when we got back…

What a beautiful tableau!

I think they missed us

PS I also arrived home to a phonecall to tell us that our new couch is coming next Friday, EEEEPS! Finally we will *all* have room to sit, squee (this couch is rather small).

Dear Baby,
Today, or some time in the next couple of days you turn 20 weeks old. In theory we’re about halfway there, wow time has gone quickly! Apparently you weigh about 10 1/2 ounces this week and are about 10 inches from head to heel which is about the same as a large banana. On the one hand that seems so big, but when I look down at my tummy it’s hard to believe that you’re actually in there. In fact up until last week I didn’t really think you were in there at all, but last Thursday morning I was lying in bed and happened to have my hands on my tummy. All of a sudden my tummy had bubbles and my fingers could feel things, like you were tapdancing a little showbiz number and giving it some jazz hands. I’d had my suspicions that those bubbly sensations I first started feeling at around 14-16 weeks might have been down to your wriggles, but your movements were so soft and infrequent that it was hard to know for certain. But now that I think about it, your daddy might have felt you just after Christmas- he was lying one night with his arm around me and noticed all of a sudden that my tummy went all gurgley. Looking back, it was probably you, wriggling around as I slept. And I’m pretty sure it was you the other week when we were walking down Oxford Street in London and a pigeon flew in my face making me *JUMP*. My tummy did a complete somersault which felt a bit unusual so I had my little suspicions but again couldn’t be sure. In retrospect, that had to be you!

As has been your routine since the beginning of the pregnancy, you start the day by sitting up fairly high toward the top of my tummy, but by the time evening falls you like to lie low, making it look as though I’ve doubled in size in a matter of hours. It does give people quite a shock. I only look pregnant in the evening really; in the morning I just look a bit portly. In the past week you have also discovered the comforts of sitting on my bladder. Comfortable for you maybe, but for me it is rather a different story for as soon as you take your pirch (usually in the early afternoon) I’m hopping to the loo every 15 minutes. At least you’re not doing this at night though, and for that I am extremely grateful, so thankyou.

This week we’ll be leaving your grandparents’ house in England and flying back to daddy in America. I’m interested to see if the eight hour time difference will affect your routine. I wonder if you will be jetlagged just like me or if I will wake up suddenly in the early hours, absolutely bursting to go to the loo. Only time will tell. And as far as the actual journey is concerned, I’ve booked a window seat so if you could please try to avoid my bladder on that particular afternoon it would be much better for me, not to mention the person sitting next to us.

So here we are at 20 weeks, halfway there, halfway to go.  If this next part goes as quickly as the first, it’s hardly going to be any time at all! Keep growing nicely, and I’ll do my best to keep you safe inside.

Lots of love,

Mama xox