Uncle David and Aunty Michelles visit (by sarah)

Just before Mary was a month old my brother and his fiance came to visit 🙂 Mainly we hung around the house due to me not really being well enough to go out though I did manage one outing to the Beefeater at the Twelve Bells which was lovely 🙂

There was lots of film watching and chatting and Mary and Jean snuggles 🙂 Complete with new cuddly toys for all and some funky pens with stamps at one end which Jean has been using continually since the visit! (Though annoyingly sometimes on herself :/ )

Chinese New Year (by sarah)

Jean was really keen to do Chinese New Year so we made lots of lanterns and coughs got a take away and Jean put on her 'chinese' outfit and selected her chop sticks and away we went 🙂

Pancake Day (by sarah)

I managed to make pancakes for pancake day though there were a few burnt ones due to having to sit down etc.. but we had a normal mix of topping mostly (I hadn't managed to grow any bean sprouts this year due to that whole having a baby thing). We had blue cheese and bananna and condensed milk and sugar and lemon juice and grated chocolate and peanut butter (chrunchy) and marmite 🙂

The Two Bald Ones (by sarah)

Mary and Dad were sitting on the sofa and I just couldn't help but think of them as the two bald ones - this was not helped by the fact that Dad pointed out that Mary has hair round the back and down the sides but not much on top!

I am now carrying out my threat to put the photo on the blog under the title of The Two Bald Ones 😉

Poetry Me – a question of confidence (by sarah)

Last night I went out to Poetry Cafe which is a lovely poetry night in Chletenham organised by the Cheltenham Poetry Festival people - it often features a main poet and a mini show case of new poets (I've done a mini show case before which was fun). Yesterday was no exception with two fantastic headliner poets 🙂

I knew I had to go to this event in order to get back into the swing of things but it was hard - first off there is the anemia making me so tired and stuff still then there is the whole crutches thing and then of course children to be looked after and a time balancing with Mary's feeding as she is still completely breast fed and the event was being held in a pub. Then there was the panic whilst getting ready that cloths were either too big or too small and everything nice just made me look fat.

But I put on the black dress mum got me - it is maternity ware but I don't think you can really tell - it mainly hid the giant bandage/corset thing I have to ware to be able to walk and some black net stockings covered the compression stocking. I felt trussed up and rediculous and knew there was little I could do about it. I also knew I had to read to read at this event or I would loose the ability to get up on stage.

However I need some sort of confidence trick to be able to read especially as it was all going to be a bit awkard due to crutches and the venue room being upstairs etc... So I looked through my accessories and dug out the purple hat Al bought me at Wychwood last year and a purple flower hair band - I decided to go with the purple flower.

I ended up reading twice and I may now be doing two more events at the Poetry Festival - I am already doing the Poetry and Piaf event (reading my Piaf poem unsuprisingly).

The festival is the 31st of March - 3 April.

I am really looking forward to it plus April like it is going to be lots of writing fun for me anyway but more on that later 🙂