Halloween, 25 weeks

Jane is on half-term break this week, so she's been home with me. We haven't done a whole lot, but our schedule got even more interrupted when our washing machine started leaking and we weren't able to wash her Spiderman PJs so she had to choose another Halloween costume. She chose peacock-stranaut.

I had a midwife appointment earlier this week. Nothing really new to report. Measurements looked good and normal, and I'll be back there in another three weeks. The baby is very active and everyone still feels her kicks.

Peacock Astronaut

Out to dinner at the Indian restaurant in the bottom of our building. Somehow we hadn't been there yet!

Sunset from our window. We're still keeping our eye out for a flat closer to Jane's school, but we do like it here.

Wearing her Spiderman PJs and mask to school one day last week. One of the benefits of a uniform-less school!

East Shrubbery 6. Love it.

Still plenty of flowers blooming. We have our heat on every night, but the days are still nice.

A church between home and Jane's school

Receipt showing our ballots were sent off to Texas! Vote, everyone!

We spent Monday at a friend's, carving pumpkins.

Vampire bat!

A Halloween event at a park

We finished our 500-piece jigsaw puzzle--again!

Getting bigger. I feel like I can't capture it accurately. Either I feel bigger than I am, or in this case the camera is subtracting 10 lbs.

Chestnuts

Jane and I had a playdate with her friend Victoria this morning. We were to meet at the park and play, but due to yesterday's fog, everything was quite wet. Victoria's mum offered to drive us to a different place where we could gather chestnuts. So off we went!

Chestnuts!

Hunting for the big ones

Collecting in the bag

The biggest one of all! ... until the next one

Sharing her scooter

Practicing cartwheels

A sunny day

Chestnuts before roasting!

I remember one winter putting chestnuts onto the top of Granny's woodstove. It wasn't quite the same merely roasting them in the oven, but Jane, Andy, and I peeling them around the table this afternoon was nice. :)

Baby Snorf is very active. I mostly feel well but today my back aches. I think it's because of all the bending for chestnuts today. My next midwife visit is on Halloween.

Hot chocolate

There's a shop near the children's museum that we visited today that specializes in chocolate drinks. So we got a hot chocolate, a chocolate float (100% dark chocolate, melted, served with ice cream), and I got a toasted marshmallow shake. The outside of the cup was dipped in white chocolate.

We all enjoyed ourselves.

Trying out some names

For the past few days, we've been referring to the baby girl by one of our options for names. What is it, you ask? You'll have to wait to find out! Jane has a definite preference.

Jane is having a good time in school, despite having missed a few days already due to illness. We got her a scooter over the weekend to help get her to school a little more easily. Ideally. There are a lot of hills and she's new to scooters. Plus sometimes I actually can't keep up with her! She's doing really well on it, especially considering she just started doing it on Saturday.

A few weeks ago, Mrs. Kehrer invited us out to Portishead to visit and play at a park. (She is the mother of Andy's friend, who coincidentally lives 10 miles outside of Bristol.) Her niece picked us up and she took Jane and her son out on a pelican boat.

 Jane and Louie also got to ride some rides.

 We got the electric kettle as soon as we got here (for coffee with our French press) but we just got a teapot. It didn't take me long to get used to drinking tea at least once a day!

A Lego creation. Not sure if Jane or Andy made it.

I don't know the origins of this picture! But they look happy.

Jane's Little Sister

OK, I seriously don't know why the pictures are so difficult to drag and reorder. But at any rate, we are having another girl! We had another ultrasound last week, showing a good heart, correct number of digits, all that kind of stuff. I am particularly fond of my donut shirt.

Playing at the park

 Lounging at home

Andy took Jane bouldering. I stayed home, but she told me she did a great job and climbed high! It seemed like they had a good time, though Andy didn't get to do any climbing himself.

18 weeks and Jane's in school

Jane has been pretty consistent about wanting a brother. We'll find out next week either way. I am feeling plenty of kicks. Andy has felt one (though I warned him that could have just been the ice cream I'd just eaten).

Some days I feel like I look visibly pregnant. Usually when I'm wearing maternity jeans. But these are my regular jeans and I'll let you be the judge.

 Authentic Italian pasta, or Rachael Ray knockoff?

 I took this picture because we had to get rid of this wall hanging. It was particularly disappointing because we brought so few decorations with us, but it got infested with moths. It was made in Peru, though I didn't get it there. I grabbed it at a tag sale when I lived in Madison, WI. I'll miss it! But maybe now the moths will go away...

 We made a variation of chicken cordon bleu. Since Jane can't have traditional bread crumbs, we used gluten-free crisped rice cereal. I swear we crushed it first, but it looks as cereal-y as can be here.

Not pictured: the cheese sticks and onion pieces we fried in the leftover egg/cereal batter.

 What's that? How did Jane's first day of school go? Ask my poppyseed muffin with lemon curd and espresso.

 Jane getting her backpack on and stomping before leaving for her first day of school. Here, she is in Year 1, because she is five. We'll see where they'd like her to go when we're back in the States. Right now is she just five and is in the equivalent of first grade.

Walking in on the first day with Dad and Mom

 No kidding, we were right outside the school, and Jane asked, "Dad, how did the whole Earth form?" so we had to stop and answer that real quick.

 This will be her first full week of school. She is happy enough once we get moving but she is clearly tired because it's hard to get her up in the mornings. I can relate to that. (I have a lot of trouble finding a good sleeping position.) There have been no tears and she likes her teacher. She isn't always forthcoming with details of her day, so we have to take the snippets as she reveals them.

But we're all glad she's there!

There are often hot-air balloons in the sky here. We just saw another two this morning.

 We went out the other day in search of an armchair. Gloucester Road has a bunch of shops and we ended up getting quite a few things. And Jane spotted this friendly Lego police officer. We didn't buy it!