Hairstyles

Okay, this post comes with a warning: it has pictures of my head, with NO makeup, just after I woke up, and with a swollen pregnanty chin. (I must be freaking mad to post this.) So scroll down at your own risk.

However, every risk should have a reward - and, drumroll....

I need help picking a new hairstyle. Something to hide my huge nose, please. I have had issues with my nose since I was a teenager, always trying to look at people front-on, so they didn't notice the profile. You can probably appreciate this could get a little tricky when I was in a crowd. I'm sure I sometimes looked like a carnival clown, swivelling my head like mad.

Apparently bangs are supposed to help, and I think they might soften my face up a little and hide my expaaaansive forehead. I went onto one of those hair trial websites and went mad, and here are the results.

This is me wearing Keira Knightly's hair. I hope she doesn't want it back. If I went with this one it would look a bit less messy, I'm a neat hair freak. This is about the natural colour of my hair, and it also has a bit of natural curl, so I reckon this would work.

This is Jennifer Aniston's hair. If I had this one I would have to straighten it every day, which totally wouldn't work with a brand new baby. The real question is, what do you think of the bangs? Workable?

Cameron Diaz was kind enough to lend her hair. Again, the bangs? Are they ok?

This last one from Faith Hill. I'll wear it with my pearls and fluffy high heels when I clean the bathroom:

So what do you think? Curls? Bangs? Banging curls? Advise me, please....

When will she arrive?

I've started to feel a bit like the bottle that holds the ship. It was relatively simple getting all the necessary bits in, and they arranged themselves in a logical order to create something amazing. But now how do I get the ship back out? And how do I do it without breaking the ship or the bottle? And the ship just keeps getting bigger!

Every morning I wake up disappointed that the baby and I are still inhabiting the same body. I'm starting to experience the worries that I'm sure come to every new mother. Will she be late? Will she be healthy? Am I mentally and physically ready to give birth? More importantly, will I totally embarrass myself during the delivery? Shriek too scarily? Break down and cry? Try to leave? Poop? Will Mr Accident still respect me afterwards?

When I start to worry too much I think about the Queen - if she gave birth and then went on to rule a country while wearing pearls, I reckon I just might be okay.

Pavlova

We're heading out to dinner at a friends tonight, so I made up a pavlova. It's basically egg whites beaten with caster sugar, with a little vinegar and cornflour folded though. It's dried in a low oven and it comes out like a big meringue. (Isn't meringue the weirdest word? Spelt nothing like it should be.) You top it with sweetened whipped cream and fresh fruit. I'm still debating whether this one needs some fresh mango as well - I might just eat the mango all myself, no sharing.

The biggest challenge with pavlova is peeling it off the baking sheet. It always looks perfect on the tray straight out of the oven, but once I've had at it with a spatula and a knife trying to get it into a serving dish it's just a mess. I've found it's easiest to just give up, peel off the bigger pieces of outer shell and then flop the middle across as a mess. Put the shell on, hide the cracks with heaps of cream and voila! No one need ever know. Except now I've told everyone with internet access. I'm so sneaky.

Here is what the BBC says a good pavlova should look like:

Look, no cracks! It's a miracle.

Tinkles, wee and urine

I went to visit the obstetrician today. This always involves wee - it's unavoidable. At my first doctor they asked me to pee in a cup when I arrived. Despite the initial embarrassment of handing a warm cup to a nice nurse, I had no issues with this method. However, on my first visit to the new doctor they gave me my own specimen jar, and they wanted me to pee at home and then bring it in. This was the single deciding factor in my choice of new handbag - it had to be large enough to carry and conceal my wee jar without embarrassment. It's not cool to be running errands and dig through your purse, having pulling out the wee jar in order to reach your wallet. People look at you strangely. It's like carrying a concealed weapon. I guess I could whip it out if I got into trouble; if someone threatened to throw wee at me I would be far more disturbed than if they threatened to shoot me. So anyway, the crux is that every morning before I have a doctor's appointment I need to pee in a little yellow lidded jar.

This used to be an easy proposition, but I now have a sizable belly to contend with. The jar is small, the belly is big, and I haven't been able to see my lady-bits for months. This results in a literal hit and miss affair that consumes my morning. It usually takes a couple of goes to get it right, so this needs a fair bit of hydration, which brings its own problems. Sneezing suddenly becomes a stressful event.

My appointment was supposed to be at 1215 but I didn't get in until about half past one. I tried to be understanding, but it was over my lunch and I was so incredibly hungry, and I needed to pee again really badly, but I was worried about going to the bathroom in case they called me and I wasn't there. When I was finally seen I was so relieved that it was the shortest appointment in history. Baby is well, she still has a head and a spine and a heart beat, and I still have blood pressure. More than that I don't know - we didn't have enough time! I do know I am sitting on the 85kg mark, which is a solid gain of 20kg over the pregnancy, with only 11 days to go until the due date. I'm starting to get impatient!

We need help

My fully grown, manly husband likes to spoon his dog. While she's spooning my dog. Perhaps it's because she is not pregnantly hormonal and doesn't yell "get off me, how can you bear to touch me, I'm the size of a fully grown hefalump who just ate a whole plate of nachos!" every time he tries to show her affection. Hmmmm, I might need to see a psychologist about my pregnant body image issues. Perhaps I can schedule the appointment for the same time as he sees one about SPOONING HIS DOG?

It does make for some cute photos though.

And she's definitely smiling in that last one.

The Nursery Reality

So after hyping you all up for the nursery photos, I got myself so excited I went and took them right away regardless. So, without further ado, here is my totally-not-how-it-looked-in-the-catalogue nursery.

The small white drawers are just chipboard, but I painted them white and they are doing quite a good job pretending to be real wood. I bought the cloth boxes under the change table from Howard's Storage World (I love that place - I think Howard and I would get on just fine). They hold all the changing paraphernalia for bub. Please note though, none of this stuff has actually been baby road tested. My cunning system may fall to pieces in the face of screaming, pooping reality.

I love love love this lamp. It makes me happy. Yes, I am that shallow. It gives out just enough light for night feedings, but probably not enough to read by.

There are plenty of soft toys in the crib at the moment. They will all be moved to the toy box when Bub moves in, but for now they are cute and I love looking at them, thinking of the people who sent them for baby and how many people she will have to love her when she finally arrives.

For some reason everyone seems to have sent pink elephants. These ones are gorgeous:

Since we live in the tropical north, the quilt from the set will not see much use until we migrate south again. Instead, I pinned it to some green fabric I had lying around to make it a tab top, and attached it to a dowel. It fills the wall space well, and I doubt the realtor will notice my illegal, small and very high up nail-holes when we move out.


The mobile in front of the quilt was something I banged together using a bird pattern from the net. I made a couple of leaves and then attached them all to sticks from the yard. It's not very practical, and the birds are always overbalancing, but it was made with love. And isn't that what really counts?

Fantasy vs Reality - the nursery

Well folks, the nursery is finally ready! Are you excited? By far the best thing about moving into the new house was finally getting to spend hours and hours with an allen key putting together very small furniture. Mr Accident and I got the basics set up very quickly, but then I kind of stalled and left a great big pile of hand me down clothing strewn around the room for weeks because I couldn't face sorting it. It looked a little like this, but without any helpfully working women in sight.

Then yesterday I fell into a Mum-to-be frenzy and tidied the whole room.

Before we moved I went all out and bought jungle themed nursery items, including the equally useless bed and curtain valances, and two random little cushions. Here is what it looked like in the catalogue, isn't it darling?

They even offer suggested paint options for the walls:

Needless to say, my nursery looks nothing like this. At all.

Since we're renting a house where we can't paint anything, and we are not allowed to put holes / nails anything onto our bare and unhappy walls, it kind of limited the design potential. I know Nester would rush in here with a hot glue gun and a big hammer and tell me to get over myself, everything is fixable (especially teeny wall holes) but I'm a little nervous. The realtor is scary!

Anyhow, it's raining with fierce thunder and the light is all wrong for pictures, so I will just leave you in suspenders until tomorrow, when I will post highly disappointing pictures of my totally non-designer nursery. I promise!