NotSheep

The rain went away again (yay!) so we’ve been mostly outside for the last few days. I spent yesterday morning doing my best impression of Professor Sprout (not Grubbly-Plank, as I twittered - I was promptly corrected by Barney on that one - Grubbly-Plank was Care of Magical Creatures, not Herbology! ) - moving houseplants which had outgrown their pots into larger pots, and splitting some where there were several of the plant in one pot (four spider-plants, all in one pot - I’m fairly sure two will survive, I’ve my doubts about one, and the last one’s future is anyone’s guess). My Easter cacti have just started to flower; they must be following the same calendar as my babies.

I had a momentary panic on Thursday evening when I was told that Cub Camp started on Friday evening, but the source of this news was unreliable, and fortunately Cub Camp is not until next weekend.

Barney’s revision continues apace; on Friday he even argued in favour of doing more practice papers than I’d suggested. I think he has benefited a lot from going through the process of sitting this exam; even if he fails (which is unlikely), he’ll have learned a lot about exam techniques, about how it’s not just about knowing the subject matter, about planning and carrying out revision, about organising his thoughts and planning out beforehand what he’s going to write, etc.

Toby showed himself to be just as logical and pedantic as his brothers, when he fell off a chair in the kitchen and came to me complaining that he’d hurt his head. “Were you climbing?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “I was falling!”

Jack wanted to know how many days there were before his birthday. Since he just turned 6 in March, the answer was, “a lot!”

I gave the living-room a thorough clean this morning - the dust was threatening to take over. When I say “I gave…”, what I mean, of course, is that I mostly supervised while everyone else did it. But everything from the light-fitting to the floor under the sofas is now clean, and the room looks a lot better. Maybe I’m nesting. I’m not convinced the rest of the family appreciates it

All the equipment for the birth has been delivered - a couple of boxes and several cylinders of gases are now stored in the cupboard under the stairs. One of the midwives who arrived with the boxes was the one who had done the whole checking-with-doctors-no-asking and sending-prescriptions-despite-being-told-no thing, and I raised this again with her, but she’s either unable or unwilling to understand why her behaviour should bother me - and once again tried to twist the truth about who had said what - so at some point this week, I shall be telling the midwifery manager that I don’t want her on the rota. I shall also be telling the midwifery manager that I don’t require a visit from herself, and asking why it should be local protocol for her to visit all women planning homebirths. I’m not feeling terribly well-supported right now; of the five midwives who are on the rota, there’s one I’ve never met, one I haven’t seen since my last pregnancy (and I didn’t see much of her then), one I’m about to refuse care from, one who panicked at the thought of teaching me to do my own B12 injections, and one who keeps muttering about my “tendency to lie breech” (despite the fact that all of my babies so far have come out head-first, and that I’ve probably another six weeks of pregnancy left, and that only one of my babies - the first - was head-down at this point in pregnancy).

Anyway. The nesting continued in the conservatory, where I sanded and painted the shelves that used to be above the radiators in there (until we took them off to paint the radiators and walls); they’re now the same colour as the walls and providing extra space for all the extra plants I’ve got after the replanting. After that, I was ready for a bath - because of both sore muscles and arms splattered with paint - and after the bath, I needed to lie down for a few minutes, so I did. And fell asleep. Hm.

In the evening, we discovered that we are nit-ridden so everyone got attacked by the Nitty-Gritty combs. George and Barney weren’t too bad; they’d both had haircuts in the last few weeks - but Freddy and Jack both are in dire need of haircuts and have very thick hair. Toby’s isn’t too thick, but he did need a haircut, so after his hair was rinsed, I took a pair of scissors to his hair - and his ear - just a little nick on the top, but it bled and bled and bled. It wasn’t a huge amount of blood, but it took ages and ages to stop, and he’s now fallen asleep with one ear sort of folded over and covered with a big lump of gauze and a huge band-aid. It was quite amusing to watch him trying to have a look at it in the mirror though…