A big update....

Wow, it has been awhile since I posted but most of that time was the Christmas rush as well as our holiday to the beach.  Here is a big update of what's been happening with everything over the past couple of weeks:

Christmas:

Well, Christmas was very full on.  The week before Christmas was a blur of packing, getting final presents, wrapping and helping out my Mum because she had 20 people over to her place for a Christmas gathering on the Sunday and 20 people coming over for Christmas lunch on Christmas day.  It was crazy times.  The Sunday of the Christmas gathering for my Mum's brother and his family was massively hot - originally we were going to have it outside but it was just too hot so we had our day inside.  JBB was also really tired and we were going to leave early because I thought we had no chance of being able to get him to have a sleep while all the kids were playing but he came up to me and said 'tired Mummy', so I put him to bed and he had about 2 hours sleep which was fabulous.

On Christmas eve, I spent the day finishing our packing for our trip away.  I also had packed us all bags for Christmas day because we would be leaving at 7am and would not be back to the house until after 9pm.  Once I had most of our house in order, I went around to my Mum's place and helped her get ready for the 20 people Christmas lunch.  I also had to make my maple syrup pork belly and a dessert for Christmas night with JourneyMan's family.

My younger sister is getting married in the New Year to a lovely man of Indian heritage and we always have dinner together at my Mum's place on Christmas eve and watch the Carols by Candlelight on the TV.  This year we decided to honour the Thai and Indian heritage in our families and we made a Thai and Indian feast, it was delicious!!  Thankfully it wasn't too late a night because we knew that Christmas day was going to be a very full on day.

On Christmas morning, JBB was up at 5:15am and Father Christmas had visited this very good boy!! It took him a little bit of time to get in the hang of opening up the presents but after awhile, he was very proficient and 'ripping it'.  He had such a good morning.  Father Christmas gave him some clothes, some Thomas train tracks and trains and a new bike - he was very, very spoilt!!

After a play with the toys and a shower and bath for everyone, we headed over to Mum's place for another round of presents (we were all very spoiled!!) and breakfast.  It was a big cooking day so basically we were cooking and organising from about 9:30am to we sat down to lunch at about 1pm.  Lunch was a bit scattered this year so we are looking at a change of format for next year to make it a bit easier for everyone involved!!

After lunch it was more presents and Christmas pudding and then we watched the dvd of photo's from my Dad's funeral - we wanted to have some recognition of him and it was nice to see all the lovely photos again.  It was very emotional though and thoughout Christmas time, I found I was grieving a lot of the time.  My Dad loved Christmas and I missed him so much, it was very hard.

After that we headed on the 90min drive to JourneyMan's sister's place for Christmas dinner and presents with JourneyMan's family.  The drive was super tough, JourneyMan needed to have a sleep so I drove most of the way and by the time we got there, we were all exhausted.  It was nice to see JourneyMan's family and spend time and have presents with them but it was 9pm by the time we got home and it was just too much in one day.  We are going to have to think about what will happen next year because that was really too much.

Once we got home, we finished our packing and took down the Christmas tree and tried to clean up as much as possible - we needed an early night because we were leaving for our holiday the next day at 4am.

Boxing Day

As it happens, I set the alarm to pm rather than am so we didn't get quite the early start that we wanted. We ended up leaving at 5:30am but that was okay because we still missed most of the traffic and JBB was pretty good in the car.  We stopped about 90 mins down the road for breakfast and then stopped again around 90mins later to take JBB to a big park along the way.  We had a pretty good break there and then continued on for the rest of the 7 hour trip.  JBB fell asleep so we continued to drive and he didn't wake until we almost reached our destination which was fantastic.  We stayed in a cabin and got ourselves organised and unpacked.  My brother, his wife and their 2 daughters arrived about 2 hours after us so we went and helped them to set up their tent.  My Mum, Sister and two of her boys arrived a couple of hours after that and we were all there.  We had an early night and commenced our holiday.

Holiday

I can't believe how quickly those 10 days went - it was like the blink of an eye.  JBB had the best time every day playing with his cousins and there was never ending entertainment with a pool, a playground with a jumping pillow and the beach all within a few minutes walk of our cabin.  JBB was beside himself he was so happy.  The weather was beautiful though we didn't do a great deal of sight seeing because we were a bit like slaves to JBB's schedule.  He gets up between 5-6am so JourneyMan and I take turns in getting up with him and taking him away so that the other one can have a sleep in and I tell you, I needed it, I was absolutely exhausted.  Thankfully, JBB still has his afternoon sleep so most days I also had an afternoon sleep - it was bliss.  I got a lot of reading and sleeping done on the holiday but that was about it.

It was very sad up there too though.  My Mum and Dad started taking us to this holiday place when I was about 8 years old - we have all been going up there ever since.  It was very hard this year up there without Dad and sometimes I was overwhelmed with sadness.   I know that it is stupid and doesn't make sense but I think some part of me was hoping that he would be there when we went there because he always was.  We are thinking it might be our last year of going up there though I am not sure of it yet - we will look at our options.

Home

We got home on Saturday and immediately set about unpacking, washing and cleaning the house.  We both had to go back to work on Monday so we had to get on to things straight away.  Yesterday was a pretty lazy day though I had the cramps and a headache big time so I didn't get to organise our food for the week - looks like it is going to be a bit of a slap dash week.

Boo2 (New baby)

So, most of the time everything has been going well with Boo2.  Before Christmas I rented a doppler because I was starting to have panic attacks that something was wrong and this helped to keep everything on track.  Most of the time I have been feeling pretty good but the cramps are becoming more and more frequent now which is not only painful but very worrying (even though I had this with JBB, I still can't stop myself from worrying).  They have been so bad that I have been having trouble walking, yesterday was an especially bad bout.

21 week scan

So, Boo2 is growing well and is measuring correctly and in the anatomy scan, we have found that everything is in its rightful place but today we found out that I have only a 2 vessel placenta and not the normal 3 vessel one.  I have read up what this means on the internet and I am very scared though I am trying to keep my panic to a minimum until I see the OB tomorrow - then I have many, many questions to ask.  I hope and pray that everything is okay with my little baby boy, Boo2 but as usual, the panic threatens to take over at any minute.  I am very worried.