August New (by sarah)

You may or may not have noticed a dirth of posts and onlineness from me - this is due to a slight no computer issue 🙁 But I've got a temporary solution currently!

So what shall I be upto in August? Well like the rest of the summer so far it will be full of craft and writing workshops - mainly for kids 🙂

I am also back on the papier mache thing and having made a giant sheep last month am working on a piece of textural art work for the visually impaired which I hope will be exhibated in September.

If I can extract stuff of my broken laptop there will be the long awaited for poetry book and of course there is a family wedding for which bunting is being made 🙂 There is the village feast, boundary walk, and Jean's birthday which is going to be in Essex this year hosted by my aunt 🙂 as there is a Christening on the Sunday we are going to!

Alaric's family are visiting too which is exciting as they haven't met Mary yet!

I do of course have lots of other things to share and write about which will be coming soon 🙂

Al’s Back (by sarah)

Alaric has had a bad back for months - he thought he'd initially just strained it but it has gone on and on - from home he was reacting I thought it might be a slip disc as I had similar problems when I had one.

He finially went to the Drs with it again - this is after having been surviving for months on pain killers he was prescribed to help him sleep through the pain. hopefully it is just a slip disc or pulled muscle - they are sending him to physio but it may also be a type of arthritis so he is booked in for an x-ray.

Mean while he will continue wondering about in a back brace so he can actually drive etc... My main fear with this is that it will weaken his core muscles but in an effort to get his back better he has been doing core muscle exercises daily anyway. Fingers crossed as a house hold with to duff backs is not a good thing!

Hormonal Strops (by sarah)

I realise that I never did blog about what happened at the Drs after the whole abulence thing - well I had to go to the hospital where they took a biopsy and examined me and their conclusion was that it was actually my hormone levels and the mega bleeds had coincided with mammoth all night breast feeds by Mary. This sometimes happens with women.

Anyway I was already on the hormone to help stop the bleeding and it dwindled and disappeared for about 4 days and then I was out of hormone and had three days before my next Drs appointment - I started bleeding again which got heavy mainly due to the fact that I thought I'd stopped bleeding and that it would be ok to breast feed Mary again :/

I saw the Dr and she wants to get the biopsy results before doing anything like giving me the coil but she gave me a lower dose hormone which is the pill basically. I'm ok on this one - the higher does one though it slowed the bleeding a lot quicker made me so tempramental - Al say's he's never been shouted at so much in his life. The first three days I was a monster - there was even a thrown plate :/

I was going form shouting about the minutest thing that had 'gone wronge' to then bursting into tears because I was shouting at people for no reason and was a bad person. I was having hot flushes and I was hungry ALL THE TIME. This had settles down abit around the time I ran out of tablets. The smaller tablets had me a little bit grouchy the first day and a half but I've been fine since.

I am still bleeding though which is rediculous - it's over four months now since I had the baby and I didn't realise how drained I was feeling. On the plus side it is getting sorted now - I'm not too worried even though I have gained 1/2 a stone as I am being able to do more things as have more energy with less bleeding which means more exercise and hopefully more weight loss in the long term.

I did almost cry at the Drs about the breast feeding thing - basically I've stopped which makes me so sad and makes me feel like I am letting Mary down and I thought I could get it right with her - I already feel I stuff the breast feeding up with Jean. She said it was ok - that I'd given the baby a good start.

I still feel I am letting my babies down with this aspect of things and I don't think there is anything that anyone can really say to alter that :/

Anyway I am feeling a lot better.

June’s Challenges (by sarah)

Looking at what I have achieved since the New Year I have decided that June's challenges are going to be a Finishing Projects Month and a Game Design Month.

FiPoMo and GeDeMo - I did a GeDeMo last year which worked really well and I got a beta version of a card game I use for writing workshops out of it. I also got it a fair way towards the sellable version. It is part of a group of games that can fit together to make a bigger game and as it looks like I'm in the running workshops business now I really need the game completed.

I'm going to start of by making a large slightly altered version to use at children's writing workshops. Then I want to get the poetry card pack actually out there and selling - after that there is a lot of other things like making the next card packs and designing and testing the board which is going to be heavy on the graphics side of things I feel.

For the FiPoMo I am going to focus on getting the illustrations for the Little Books of Poetry sorted out and editing the poems - yes the first week of May I wrote 70 children's poems - mad, insane and it melted my brain!

I have a deadline for some of these. I think that will take up all of the time to be honest.

3 Months and Counting (by sarah)

Mary is coming up to 4 months but was three when the picture was taken - she is belly laughing, attempting to sing along with me and Jean and looking round at the world in interest. She will remain sitting up if you put her in that position and if place on her front she makes slow progression towards what ever it is she wants!

She loves fabric and cloth and has unfortunatly sampled the delights of cat tail :/

Her favourite toys are the Minni Mouse Jean bought her and Gaia (the planet earth soft baby toy with mirror in it etc..

She will stop crying at the sight of her sister or me with the glittery guitar. She loves me singing the alphabet but only if I sign the letters at her whilst singing. She moves her hands in a sort of poo sign whilst going red and still appears to do the milk sign though this is probably parental wishfulness.

She loves sucking her hands and is the drooliest baby I have ever met! She even acts excited when Alaric comes home from London!

Health wise she has had the vaccinations, she appears to have an issue with cow milk (formula) and right from word go has had more skin issues than Jean.

Her sister is far too huggy with her and still gets annoyed if people try to 'take her sister away' ie hug the baby. She also tells us off if we say Mary is daft!