A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 26th September 2015

September 2015's photo an hour fell on 26th - and we were off on a coach trip to Big Pit in South Wales!

Here's what the day looked like...


7am - A bright and early start to catch the coach.

8am - Waiting for passengers...

9am - Over the Severn Bridge to Wales!

10am - We've arrived!

11am - Donning our hard hats and safety torches to do the underground tour of the mine.

12pm - At 12pm we were actually underground (where no electrical gadgetry was allowed) but this was the view when we emerged about 12.45pm.

1pm - Wandering round the rest of the museum.

2pm - Onto the next destination, Carleon.

3pm - Dressing up clothes at the National Roman Legion Museum (no adult sizes sadly).

4pm - We found a little café for some afternoon tea.

5pm - And off home we go!

6pm - Back at the first drop off point and it's a gorgeous autumnal evening.

7pm - We decided to go out for a meal at a local pub.

8pm - Off home after dinner.

9pm - Reading up on sciatica (from the 'What to Expect when you're Expecting' book). Thankfully a couple of weeks later, mine cleared up!

10pm - A little bit of knitting and sewing before bed (if you want to see what these turned into and where they ended up, click here...)

 

 

 Jane rounded up all the photo an hour people over on her blog...
 

 

Also, check out what I was up to in...

September 2014

September 2013

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 18th July 2015

I realised the other day, there's photo an hour posts that I haven't published yet and they're nearly a year old. So, I'm going to play photo an hour catch up for a couple of weeks (hopefully along with some other posts thrown in).

This is what Saturday 18th July 2015 looked like...


8am - Healthy breakfast.

9am - On our way out to a steam rally for the day (where we would be helping play a fairground organ which dates back to the 1890's.)

10am - Andrew helping set things up for the organ.

11am - First lot of music being played!

12pm - Watching the transport in the ring at the steam rally.

1pm - Still playing...

2pm - Steam engine trailer rides around the site.

3pm - Time for some afternoon tea, you can't beat a portion of cheesy chips!

4pm - Watching the plane display.

5pm - In the early evening, lots of vehicles pop out to a local pub for a road run; we went out in the car to watch.

6pm - Watching the vehicles arrive.

7pm - Chatter over a pint or two (although not for me!)

8pm - Back at the rally site and tucking into some cottage pie, mash and veg (Andrew had to finish off my portion as any pregnant person will tell you, one of the most annoying aspects of the whole thing is not having enough stomach space to eat big meals!)

9pm - I did have space for some cake though (the rally was celebrating its 60th anniversary).

10pm - A quick spot of geocaching on the way home.

11pm - And time to try out my new pregnancy pillow! (I can safely say now, it was a brilliant investment) :-)

Jane did a round-up of July photo-an-hour-ers (can I get away with that?) over on her blog...

 

Also, check out what I was up to in...

July 2014

A Photo Every Hour - Sunday 12th June

This month's photo an hour was chosen by Jane and fell on a Sunday. For us, it was the morning after the night before... Our lovely friend M married her other half, G on the Saturday in Cornwall (Lily's first ever wedding!) and we'd decided to spend the following few days staying with Andrew's sister-in-law who lived nearby.


8am - The night before, she'd stayed up late being a party animal. It must've tired her out as she slept til 8, a whole two hours later than her usual wake-up time.

9am - Sorting out the stuff from the wedding.

10am - Andrew had breakfast on the go while I decided what we were going to eat and where we were going to visit.

11am - Brunch!

12pm - And brunch for her too...

1pm - We took a chance leaving Lily with Auntie J while we nipped out to the supermarket.

2pm - And when we arrived home, there was a hungry little lady waiting for us!

3pm - While the sun was shining, we took a walk into town.

4pm - Pauline's Bakery in Newquay always has the most amazing selection of cakes in the window!

5pm - First visit to the Newquay seaside.


6pm - And the sea air must have done some good as it sent her to sleep :-)

7pm - After a nap, she was well up for playing again.

8pm - Roast chicken for dinner.

9pm - And off to bed (with some more food, of course)

This month we had 11 lovely bloggers joining in:

Amy from Fluffy Owl's Adventures joined in on Instagram
Charlotte from Discovering Charlotte joined in on Instagram
Hazel from World of Joy joined in on Instagram
Jane from Is That You Darling joined in on Instagram
Rebecca from Halfway Home joined in on Instagram
Rebecca from Just Me joined in on Instagram
Vikki joined in on Instagram
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram, Twitter and her blog
Liz from Distract Me Now Please joined in on Instagram and Twitter
Jennifer from Adventures in Pop Culture joined in on Instagram and Twitter
Rachel from Things That Make Me Go Aagghh! joined in on her blog
Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on her blog
And of course, myself here on this post, plus on Instagram and Twitter :-)

Next month's photo an hour will be Saturday 23rd July - we're off to a local fun day with Andrew's lorry, then heading east to visit Carter's Steam Fair so it should be an interesting day.

Hope you can all join in!

 

Also, check out what I was up to in...

June 2015

June 2014

The Fourth Trimester

So, long time, no blog. There's not much more to say on that - it doesn't matter whether you have kids or not, we all know that sometimes, blogging just doesn't happen. Hey ho.

 

 

 

 

So, yep, the Fourth Trimester - the phrase that's supposed to encapsulate those first 12 weeks after which, they say..."everything gets easier".

 

Well for us, I reckon it took to about 4 months before it started feeling marginally easier. That said, part of the reason I've not had time to blog is that we seem to have had a string of problems since Lily was about 4 weeks old.

 

 

 

 

So, in bulletpoint form, here's some bits and pieces about what's been happening...

 

• Lily was tongue tied when she was born. It took 4 days for anyone to check, by which time she'd lost far too much weight (as she couldn't latch on very well to breastfeed) and the hospital insisted on formula and expressed breast milk. So, breastfeeding was not off to a good start.

• Her tongue tie was snipped at 3 weeks old - and yay, she could latch on! So we weaned her off the formula and upped the amount she was breastfeeding; by 6 weeks old, she was exclusively breastfed (and still is today). Everything should be fine now, we thought.

• Except it wasn't. From about 4 weeks old, she was incredibly unsettled, screaming in pain every evening, wanting to feed all day and often sounded like she was choking on her milk.

• So a diagnosis of silent reflux was made, Gaviscon was prescribed and there was talk of a possible cow's milk protein allergy. No dairy for me (what, no cheese?! or chocolate?!), no formula for her and oh yep, it'll take about 4 weeks to see any improvement says the doctor.

• A couple of weeks on, Gaviscon's not working and she's losing weight week after week. Next step, Ranitidine medication and a paediatrician's appointment.

• Finally at about 10 weeks old, she starts putting on weight - slowly, but at least it's heading in the right direction. Surely, that must be our fair share of bad luck now, we thought...

• Then I developed mastitis. Oh lovely. And not the type that's in the milk ducts, but the type that's in the connecting tissue, caused by an infection. So me and Lily had a delightful 3 day stay in hospital, where they found it had turned into an abscess and over the next few weeks, I had my right breast drained of fluid a total of 5 times - during which, she lost weight again, making her the same weight at 16 weeks that she was at 6 weeks.

 

• She's now almost 20 weeks and I think (hope) we're over the worst of everything now - she has gradually been putting on weight over the last month and seems a lot more settled. Her paediatrician is talking about weaning her at 5 months which is the end of June, although I'd still like to wait til 6 months if possible.

 

So the Fourth Trimester - which lasted about 16 weeks for us - it was hard and it did feel like it was never going to end but somehow (and I'm not entirely sure exactly how), we're here, almost 5 months on and with a baby that's not quite a baby any more but a little person with her own likes and interests.

 

 

 

I think the phrase is "onwards and upwards!" (or should it be "things can only get better"...?)*

 

 

 

*I bet you now have D:Ream in your head, sorry about that.

 

P.S. I'm very aware that this probably reads like a moaning, string-of-bad-news post - I promise from now on, I'll try and make things a bit happier around here (when I get round to posting it, even the birth story is actually a positive tale!).