All Aboard!

Hello stranger - it's been a while and so much has been happening!


Since having Rowan we've moved house in both senses - took our lovely boat on our last trip down the canal and moved house as in onto terra firma, to the country mind, not just around the corner and have been making chutney and jam since!

Our last trip has been part documented by the lovely Laura in her blog - please take a look, very convenient because it was hard work looking after the baby let alone taking photos of the trip as well. Laura and Boyfriend were on the journey one way and left us somewhere East to public transport it home. We carried on and after stopping off for a big birthday meal for Jam in Bow we started the Limehouse loop. There's an electronic lock at some point, just outside the Olympic stadium. It was brilliant, huge and like something out of a movie, especially from my angle: I was feeding Rowan inside, looking up at these huge walls with lights casting shadows everywhere. Jam said it felt like we were going into a crusher! I concentrated on Rowan, letting the friends crew the boat. We stopped off somewhere near Victoria Park for the night, cracked open a bottle of birthday bubbly, then tequila shots all round ( I declined of course, the little one can do without the alcohol right now!)

The next day it was just Jam, myself and Rowan crewing the boat - we weren't much help, but it was a nice day and we had fun. We totally forgot that it was the Angel canal festival and were held up waiting there before we could get through the tunnel back to our mooring. It was great though, a couple of friends Scarlet and Odysseus joined us for the tunnel and festival wardens were manning the lock, whilst the Pearly Kings and Queens were serenading us from the other side - it was quite surreal actually, singing along and dancing to 'My Old Man' as the water in the lock filled up and we were surrounded by happy festival people, a really lovely ending to a fabulous weekend trip on our lovely boat.

Once back on the mooring we cleared away all the rubbish, cleaned and scrubbed as best we could as the light was fading and our energy levels dropping, our lovely neighbours did pop round with a cake for Jam which helped raise the spirits! Later than expected and slightly ragged, we packed up the car and headed out.

More on the new life soon, I'm not sure what to do with this blog as I'm no longer in London living on a boat, or pregnant! I shall start something new, for the new life and perhaps keep going with the memories and stories from the last few years of boat life anyway, for I hadn't planned to move so soon, well, we'll see, my little boy is crying now for Mummy's attention! Better go!

One Handed Whizzkid

I'm amazed at how much I can get done with only one hand. I normally write with my right hand, but when I was at school I broke my right wrist on a ski slope ~ it wasn't even whilst on the skiing holiday it was on the dry ski-slope practise session beforehand. I was petrified and convinced I was going to break my leg, only did half the slope, turned around at the bottom to joyously shout 'yey I did it' and fell, breaking my wrist...~ and I remember having to start my new geography book with my left hand. I was good. A little slow but at least you could read it. From then on I practised writing with my left hand as much as possible and when people asked if I was left or right handed I would proudly say, 'mainly right-handed, but ambidextrous really'!

Hilarious!

So now, putting it bluntly, depending on which boob is being drained, one hand is supporting the boy and the other is frantically texting/typing/eating chocolate or whatever is close to hand/drinking/reading/knitting (that one is admittedly a little harder!)/mopping up spillages/brushing hair/making tea/you get the picture...

I know I could use one of those slings, but to be honest I'm still a little tender down there and don't fancy crushing my stomach too much just yet - I have got a brilliant shoulder sling a friend bought for me in Canada, it's a Pippalily and it's got a beautiful design of dragonflies on it and I even have a picture of me using it for the first time...

Oops = upside down, bit like how I feel at the moment! He can feed whilst in it too, but I like to sit down whilst feeding and it's then that I seem to want to do everything all at once and oh crap, I've really waffled on here about nothing that I even wanted to waffle on about and it's time to get on with the cycle of feeding/nappy changing/sleeping, in which I'm not sure where I'm at right now but hey...

Jam asked me to juggle this morning with a pomegranate, lemon and apple, whilst I was feeding, making tea, buttering toast and washing up... I did it too, what fun we have!!

Baby Gazing

Please forgive my absence, I'm rather busy you see,
Not busy writing, reading, or watching lots of telly,
We don't even have one of them on board, what a waste of space,
I'm just happily sitting here ~ gazing ~ at my baby's beautiful face.

The perfectly formed fingers, delicate and long,

Made for the piano, time for Rowan's song.
The sweet dimple in his chin, just like his Dad's,
And cracking side-burns that Jam wishes he had!

Gentle purrs of pleasure as he suckles on my breast

Losing track of the days in this idyllic love nest.

Rolling eyes and a beautiful smile,

I know it's only wind but let me play for a while.

Auburn head of hair that curls when slightly wet,

Ancestral colours lest we should forget,

Deep blue eyes, will they stay or change to green?

Shh, he's gently sleeping now ~ blissfully serene.

I'm in another world and don't ever want to wake
The joy I now behold can make grown men shake,

Whatever did I do before this miracle came?

Who cares, life's amazing and will never be the same!

Picture taken by Anna Deacon, eagerly awaiting the rest of the set ~ she's a fabulous photographer! http://www.annadeaconphotography.co.uk/ my link button missing for some reason and baby is waking, so had better post this now!!

Welcome to the World!

Well, I am over the moon! On Friday morning our little angel of a boy arrived. He is everything and more I could have ever dreamed of! He's got my nose, Jam's chin and auburn hair, a proper red squirrel!! My grandad was a red-head, my sister and Aunty too; awwww he's so beautiful!!

The Cesarean was fine, I was really nervous, but calm and expecting it. Having the canola fitted was the worst part, I hate those things (the tube for the drip, canola may not be the right word)! The anesthetists were so lovely and really put us at ease, going through their cd collection to find some nice music, they said I should have bought one of my Hidden cd's in, but we ended up plumping for Frank Sinatra. When we told them about living on a boat they were really interested and after the procedure on the way back to the recovery ward we lost Jam only to find that he'd stopped to give my blog address to one of the anesthetists who was interested in reading it and finding out more about living on a boat!

When they lifted our baby out, they held him up for Jam to announce 'Oh Flora my darling, we've got a son, it's a boy!' He was taken to the side and checked and passageways cleared, he started to cry, then weed on the nurse, Jam started singing the lullaby he used to sing to him and he calmed down and grabbed his fingertip, then Jam bought him over to me and held him close to my face and he stuck his little hand in my mouth and up my nose and had a good look and I cried with joy. It took a bit of pulling and pushing as they sewed me back up, which was just a weird sensation and I was convinced that my legs were in stirrups, even when they took the curtains down and showed me ~ apparently your body remembers the position it was in when it went to sleep so that was why it felt like that.

Back on the ward I just held him and held him and he suckled and looked at us and it was incredible. Our little miracle safe in our arms, we've called him Rowan. When we were choosing names we were certain of our girl's name - Romilly Bella, and really struggled with the boy's name, liking Morgan, or Rowan, or more recently I'd been thinking Barnaby. His middle name would be Courtenay, the same as Jam's, slightly breaking the tradition in the family that the second born son would take Courtenay as his middle name, but hey.

I stayed in hospital for two days. It was so hard when Jam left in the evening, I should have slept whilst Rowan slept during the night, but he was on me, suckling and I was just gazing adoringly at him, unable to do anything else. The second night was the hardest, it was still quite hard to move around and the noise of the TV's from the other beds was too much and the nurses would turn on the lights every time they came in to take blood pressure or give out medication. It was hard getting up to put him down in the cot and then get back into bed, only to have to get up again because he didn't want to be there. One of the ladies from another bed, who I had chatted with in the waiting room came and helped me, I burst into tears, she was really lovely and said it was all completely normal!! Of course it is, and now we're home it is all so much calmer and more relaxed and I'm going to have to post this quickly to go and feed the little angel - more on this soon with photos, I just wanted to welcome him to the world... xxxxx

35 weeks pregnant and a slight panic

When you are pregnant you can sign up to all these websites which send you regular tips and tricks and offers and little reminders of what's going on inside and out of your body. So why does it come as a big surprise to me when I get an email saying 'Hi Flora, you're 35 weeks pregnant'? I suddenly find myself in a mild panic, worrying that I haven't packed my hospital bags yet, washed any of the baby stuff we've been given in baby friendly soap powder or prepared my husband sufficiently or myself for that matter!

The panic leads to me putting on a calming CD to try and breath through it and sitting on the edge of the coffee table whilst bursting into tears. Jam is poorly and trying to rest but comes through when he hears me sobbing and comforts me. Through the tears I sob, 'tell me it's all gonna be alright', he says 'I'm going to be alright', I sob a little more, squeeze tighter then say, 'what did you say?' He looks deep into my eyes and repeats it, and I say, I thought you said that, I actually said 'tell me IT'S ALL going to be alright, as in ME and the BABY, not YOU!' Then the laughter sobs break in and he reassures me that EVERYTHING is fine. I'm doing an incredible job and he had wondered why I was worrying about things I couldn't control, then the CD starts skipping at the 'little donkey' ambient dribbly variations on a theme part and he offers to make some tea and talk about what's bothering me.
[You may be interested to know the chap who wrote little donkey in 1959, Eric Boswell died in December last year.]

The pregnancy preview email also said I would be having whacky dreams and should write them down. I do this anyway, they are usually quite bizarre. Last night I couldn't sleep very well and wanted to get up at 5am, but forced myself to sleep some more after another trip to the loo (poor Jam has to change the loo nearly every other day at the moment instead of weekly.)

I woke having dreamt I'd had the baby, it was a boy, but I was also performing a concert for my album launch at the same time, and kept forgetting I'd had the baby, and would run backstage and Jam would be holding the baby and it was a girl, with really crusty hair, then I'd go back on stage and talk about the album and find that the words for the songs were all muddled up on the songsheet insert of the CD, which was a long thin sheet of black satin and one side of it was in Arabic, and the other side had a big lion and the words KAPLAN and I would be joking with the audience, doing a stand-up routine instead of singing the songs for I couldn't remember the words. I was saying things like, 'so, I'm 8 months pregnant and I've been watching this bellydancing DVD every day, that's right, every day, I'm really good at it, see, I'm watching it on the shelf, I'm looking at it every day, I think it's made a huge difference don't you? Then I'd remember I'd already given birth and run backstage to see the baby again....

The kindness of other bloggers

I was so overjoyed to read this post by a fellow blogger on her blog Edible Glitter, a lovely looking, exciting and diversely filled blog, which I love dipping into! I was shocked, surprised, then overcome with gratitude that still makes me smile now ~ it's amazing how kind people can be, saying such lovely things ~ and I've not been blogging regularly for very long and I didn't even know she had written it, I just found it whilst looking at her blog!



My darling friend LLG linked to me in her fantastic blog encouraging me to get on with the regular blogging and despite going into a slight panic at the thought of people reading what I'm writing I've overcome that now I think and am actually enjoying it.



It's incredible to think that we've been using the internet for years and yet it's still quite new and exciting, lots of things to explore, learning every day, ~ I guess it's similar to 'about to become a Mum', you hang out with friend's children or your siblings forever and never think you're actually going to do it yourself, then suddenly there's a whole new world of nappies, sick and baby classes to explore. Maybe that's not such a great simile, equating the excitement of writing a blog to having a baby, but most people DO think of their blogs as their babies, the above two ladies included, and why not? I'm beginning to get the bug, in fact I feel like I'll be looking after two babies soon enough! Bring it on! I can see it now, nappies on the laptop, posting pictures on to the baby... ;)

New Year New Boat New Life

I'm not properly keeping up with this blog malarky, it's been a while, but a lot has happened and at least I don't have any followers to let down so far, it's only me and my own desire to write this every week! Must try harder!

So the big news is - I'm going to have a little baby, that's all a bit exciting! It means we are moving on to a bigger boat as well, I shall probably get stuck climbing on and off our lovely boat soon enough, so we're moving on to our neighbours boat, which is a beautiful wide-beam one with an Heritage stove, like an Aga, a separate bedroom and bathroom, it needs some work doing to it because it's a brand new build and so the floor needs painting, bathroom tiling, pipes all need boxing in and steps into the boat need building, so we've got some work to do, but we're getting there, slowly!

We were meant to be moving on at the beginning of January but the pipe for the Aga to the diesel was drilled into the top of the diesel tank instead of the bottom and has caused a few problems, so we need to wait for the coal boats to come along and buy some more diesel and some spare so that we can work out exactly how high up the pipe is. Muppets in the boat building yard!

It's been one thing after another with this boat but hopefully we can get on there soon, be warm and dry and not damp and cramped and get the boat properly 'shaken down'. Can't wait to have enough space to lie down on a rug and streeeeeetch!