29 March 2009

We spent just about the whole weekend with the Nelsons, enjoying their humor, hospitality and great food. They're such a wonderful family. Savannah and Madison love Jacob's company.

28 March 2009

Savannah earned her B swimming diploma today. The requirements were: swimming lengths fully clothed (long pants, long sleeved shirt, and shoes), back stroke, breast stroke, freestyle, treading water, diving, swimming through a hole 6m away, floating, jumping in and turning around under water, swimming 300m in one stretch. What a star. The C diploma classes commence this Friday.

27 March 2009

I'm beginning to sink my teeth into and make great progress on my Dutch conversation profile. 16 down, 14 to go! I'm grateful for this challenge, as it's forced me to put my pride aside and just try, as I do know enough Dutch to communicate. The only way to improve is to begin somewhere and try, try, try.

26 March 2009

Dates are rare and few and far between, as babysitting is costly and difficult to organise and family live afar. Imagine my excitement at a lunch date, with Bryn, while the girls were at school!

25 March 2009

I love the sweet jasmine scent that has bombared our living area this week. This flower reminds me of my childhood. My parents, still to this day, have a huge creeper growing along the fence down the driveway.

24 March 2009

41 weeks. Bryn and I visited the midwife this morning. I begged her to help the labour to get started, so she agreed to do a cervical stripping. Owww. I was begging Bryn for an epidural at that point and the midwife laughed and must have thought to herself, these crazy foreigners, they are such wimps. I have done this au naturelle twice before and honestly don't have any appetite to repeat history. Anyway, the plan for the winding down of this pregnancy is as follows:
If nothing happens before Friday, I will see a gynaecologist for an ultrasound check up.
If nothing happens before Saturday, I'll visit the midwife at 8:30am for yet another cervical stripping.
If that doesn't work, Sunday will be spent with the gynae again for a check up.
Monday will be the midwife cervical strip.
And goodness me, if all that doesn't bring on labour, the gynae will induce me on Tuesday at 42 weeks.

At least I have a plan. At least each day that goes by gets closer to the arrival date. At least I have Bryn all to myself from Thursday. We're going to the movies after we drop the girls off at school in the morning!

23 March 2009

Madison has mastered all 26 letters of the alphabet. She insists on working on her letters everyday. Her favourite game is 'knock knock'. All the letters are face down, she knocks on a letter, turns it over, reveals the sound and chooses a word that begins with that particular letter. Today we started sounding out 3 letter phonetic words and this is what she managed. Clever little bug.