Something stupid

*sneaks back in quietly* No, not been gone for over 2 months, not me.

It’s not that I’ve forgotten about this place, or even had much to say, it’s more that in the run up to Christmas I’ve needed about 38 hours in a day and I still don’t think I would have finished everything I needed to do. So, since last time, what have I been doing? Well, the last entry was a little self-pitying, no? But I needed it, it gave me the push to do something about the situation. I posted how lonely I felt on a parenting forum that I use and got a whole bunch of lovely replies – some from people who don’t live anywhere near me but were lovely in saying they wished they did, and some from people who did live near me. I met up with a couple of them, including one who turned out to be the mum of one of Zoe’s friends at nursery, tis a small world indeed. So now I have some lovely new mum friends and feel a lot less reliant on the nct mum that I still see weekly.

In Zoe news, she starts proper nursery next month! My little baby! We had her name down for a local nursery a couple of years ago (you have to be quick for the nurseries round here) and then, in October, put her name down for a Church of England nursery attached to a small C of E primary. Church school wasn’t something I’d really considered, but my friend, in the process of trying to find a school for her daughter, had looked at it and said it was a good school and I should consider it. It only takes 30 children in the nursery – 15 in the morning and 15 in the afternoon, as opposed to the other one which takes 60. But when I put her name down, they said there was a waiting list so I didn’t fancy our chances much. Then, in late November, i got a letter inviting her to start in January – because she has an early September birthday, she’d jumped the waiting list for next year & got into the January intake (where they basically see if anyone waiting for next year can start earlier, it’s usually done in order of birthday). So, it’s taken some juggling and it means we have to find a childminder (which has been a nightmare in itself, only one childminder currently picks up from that school so our choice is limited but one misfortune after another means we still haven’t met the woman yet) to cover whilst I’m running courses, but Zoe starts there in the middle of January, 5 afternoons a week. To be honest, she’s a bit scared, she doesn’t deal well with new situations, especially ones that mean I can’t stay with her, but the nursery send someone to see us next week and then the next day, we’ll go and look round and hopefully she’ll settle easily because it’s a small group, barely bigger than the daycare nursery group she’s in now. The sad part for me, apart from the fact that my baby is growing up far quicker than I like, is that she’ll lose the friends she’s made there. Hopefully we’ll still see a couple of them, but of course, most of them will be going to different schools/nurseries so it was inevitable – although I did speak to one mum at the Christmas party whose daughter is down to go to the same nursery in September, when Zoe will still be there (she won’t start proper school until Sept 2011) so hopefully they’ll remember each other.

I handed my notice in for my internet job. There’s nothing wrong with the job as such, it’s easy to do and I’m certainly going to miss the money, but I was feeling massively guilty every day. Trying to fit 4 hours of work in with Zoe around wasn’t easy, especially when we’re out and about so much, and I didn’t want to spend my evenings working and not really seeing Duncan. My last day is tomorrow and hopefully it’ll only be a few months before I’m getting some money from the nct for my courses.

This has been the real stress of the last couple of months, my nct courses. I was due to start running my first postnatal group at the beginning of November, so the week before, I went to check out the venue because I had no idea where it was or what the set up was. Imagine my horror on getting there to discover that I had no venue. Turns out there had been an attempt to book it but the venue had said no because, whilst they’re happy to do evening courses (antenatal classes) they had no suitable room for day courses. I was subsequently thrown into a complete panic, but rescued by the wonderful Janine, who was a postnatal student with me and qualified earlier this year, she’s also in my nct branch. She has a dedicated room, and said I could use that, and she managed to get hold of our bookings lady and get something else sorted for me – despite me emailing & calling this woman for months, she still wouldn’t give me the password I needed for the bookings system. So, the course started at the beginning of November, but attendance was so poor. For the first 2 weeks, only 2 mums turned up each time – only one came both weeks. The third week, all 3 turned up and whilst they weren’t particularly chatty, I was prepared and I felt really confident doing it all. But the fourth week, one didn’t show & one phoned to say she wasn’t coming back at all (for various reasons). I then found out the one who just didn’t bother to show had gone away for a couple of weeks and wouldn’t be back the week after either. Running a session with 2 is pretty much impossible and with 1 it is impossible, so the rest of the course was cancelled. I felt so down about the whole experience, it took me a long time to get my self confidence to a place where I felt I could do this, and then it was just one disaster after another.

To be honest, I still don’t feel in a very confident place about the practical aspects of qualifying. Because my course was cut short, I now need to do a second full course and a shorter 3-week course to get the hours I need to qualify. I’ve booked a whole bunch of courses for September and need to qualify by then to be able to run them (you can’t run more than 2 courses, or in my case 1 normal and 2 short courses before you qualify), and whilst the essays are coming along nicely, the courses aren’t. I have another course booked for the end of February and have a grand total of 0 people signed up. I’ve emailed the (exceptionally useless) booking lady who is supposed to book and fill our courses for us about the possibility of changing the venue (for various reasons) but she hasn’t gotten back to me. If the Feb course doesn’t go ahead, there is no way I can qualify in time to run the September courses. It’s a nightmare.

What else? I saw my consultant the week before Christmas and, even though I’d not lost the full amount of weight they had said in June, I had lost around half and they were happy with that, so they finally gave me the clomid! I was so happy. And now I’m so frustrated that after a couple of normalish cycles, they’ve gone strange again and it could be weeks before af finally arrives and I can start the clomid. So frustrating. I can take the clomid for 6 cycles this time round and if we ever wanted to do this again, I can have no more than 12 months in total using it, so this is really our only shot. Duncan won’t entertain the idea of a 3rd, I’d love more than 2 but I can’t put myself through the last 2 years again, it’s been far too upsetting.

We went away at the beginning of December, to Centre Parcs for a few days. Zoe loved it – swimming every day, she gota lot braver in the pool and even went down a few of the small slides with Duncan and tried a bit of floating and kicking her legs. We also got lucky and she didn’t get an ear infection. She also met Father Christmas, but was pretty much terrified and wouldn’t tell him what she wanted for Christmas, or even go near him. The photo we have is quite funny.

And so, Christmas. We had a lovely Christmas, just the 3 of us. Zoe was so excited throughout December, counting down every day on her advent calendar. She woke quite early on Christmas morning – 5:15 but Duncan managed to convince her to stay in her room with him until 6am when she brought her stocking into our bed to open. She wanted just 2 things for Christmas – a skipping rope and a doll’s house, both wishes fulfilled. When she came down and saw the doll’s house, she went straight for it and we had to convince her, about 10 minutes later, that she had other presents to open as well. She did very well – the doll’s house was her main present – it was my old one, furniture included, so completely free, thankfully. We also got her some playmobil, which she loves, books (of course), couple of games and the other favourite – her Handy Manny talking tool box, which is noisy but she completely adores (for those not currently forced to endure Playhouse Disney, Handy Manny is a Disney programme about, you guessed it, a handy man and his amazing talking tools. She adores the programme). As for me and Duncan, he got mostly books from me & some old sega megadrive games. For me, Duncan bought West Wing dvd box set as well as the two Buffy dvd sets I needed to complete the collection & Gavin & Stacy series one dvd and a few other bits and pieces.

We hit the sales on Boxing Day, although we didn’t really get that much. Duncan gets given vouchers throughout the year from work and we use them towards Christmas presents each year, but this year was a bumper year and we had £600 left over, so we spent £50 in HMV  and I spent another £50 in Waterstones, both using the vouchers, so technically free. Plus I got to go to the Lush sale on the first day, which I never usually do, and got a £40 gift box for free.

So, that’s it. Quite a lot when I think about it but I don’t really feel like I’ve done all that much. 2010 is going to be the year of me qualifying, lots of knitting projects, including things for me, and, hopefully, finally, a positive pregnancy test. Fingers crossed.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and get everything you wish for in 2010.
Until there is a next time…
xx