Things Go Moo In The Night…

Sweet little booties for the twins

 We were given a lovely gift the other day from our friends Rachel and Malcom ~ hand knitted wool booties for our winter weans! They are so sweet and soft. I can’t wait to put them on two pairs of tiny newborn feet.

By the way, for those of you that might be interested: Malcome and Rachel have a lovely website where they are sharing great frugal, “good stewardship” ideas and tips, complete even with video instructions sometimes! They’ve stareted something called, “The Touchwood Project.” Really interesting! Not one bit preachy or radical while deffinately informative and helpful. Their website address is:

www.touchwoodproject.com

Even if you aren’t sure, it’s still worth a look.

Cheerio for noo! Time to get Elspethy changed and ready for a sook and a kip. :-)  (I’ll just conveniently kip with her hahha!)

Erlend and Elspeth are away to Aberdeen so our peedie bairn can be checked for epilepsy at the Children’s Hospital. Being pregnant makes me soooo hormonal that I’m like a coo looking for her calf! And the thought of my wean and my husband on a plane… yeah, it’s not as if the plane wouldn’t crash if I was there but that’s my main worry. So I told Erlend to call me as soon as he gets to Aberdeen so I can breathe a sigh of relief.

My poor Elspethy! She has to have brain scans and heart scans and blood tests with needles! But she’s with daddy and she adores daddy and Erlend is a fantastic father so that brings me endless comfort.

It’s easier when we drop her off at her godparents’ house and go somewhere ourselves because we’re so distracted. To be left behind uuuugh! But even when me and Erlend are off to Aberdeen ourselves for appointments we still get depressed and miss our baby!

While my wee family is gone I’m going to try and get some decluttering done around this hoose. But my heart is really strained with this twins pregnancy and now it’s gotten to the point where the least exertion on my part sets it off. I’ve been assured that it’s not dangerous ~ but it certainly is exhausting and I end up in bed gasping, short of breath, and feeling like death warmed over.

I’m certain I can at least get the clutter cleared off of the kitchen counter. I’ve done that before without too much complaint from my heart. Erlend kindly picked everything, every toy, every baby book, every anything off of the kitchen and livingroom floors and set them onto higher places so I can put stuff away without having to bend over. Which really sets my heart off! (Not to mention my furious pelvis.)

I’m due for a c-section at the end of January but I will not complain if my body decides to show these twins the door a bit earlier! But only as long as it’s safe. The twins are doing VERY well: Big, robust, healthy. But it feels as if my own body is getting more and more trashed as each day passes. I try not to stress it but it’s rough being crippled, in excrutiating pain 24 hours a day, with a crazy heart to put the icing on the cake! It’s not dangerous etc etc etc… I know. It’s easy for medical folk to be relaxed but that’s because they are on the outside of all this physical crap!! The heart issue is genetic and runs right through my mother’s side of the family like a wide river. I made it to 28 before I felt anything. For a while there I thought I had escaped!! But nope. I guess you can’t run from genetics haha! (Turns out the pelvis thing is probably genetic too. Mom had issues, couldn’t get me out and I was only 6 pounds vs. Elspeth’s robust 8 pounds. I have other relatives that couldn’t get their kids oot either. Their pelvises just plain wouldn’t open up and were shaped kinda funny. My Aunt Diane is adament that my pelvis is TINY. But I’ve been buxom for so long I forgot that yes, I was a very slight girl with absolutely no curves. “A male pelvis” as our community midwife commented. “Yes.” I told her. “Even when I’d wear pink and have fingernail polish … I’d be called ‘young man’!!”)

I don’t look young man now! I look like a buxom pregnant lady with a delightfully matronly figure! How fun to have children even if pregnancy totally SUCKS.

I miss my wean already. And my mellow, easy-going-even-with-a-pregnant-hormonal-wife husband! They’ll be back in twelve lonnnnng hours. Hopefully I can get something done around here so the downstairs at least looks decent. Just in time for Elspethy to rip it apart again hahahaha!!

Cheers!

Twins!! Can you believe it? Yeah, I know I haven’t been around for like six months but pregnancy is rough and I’m sooooo crippled. Been down with some hard-core heart misbehaviors but fear not, none of that stuff is dangerous. Keeps me too lightheaded to think straight but it won’t kill me. But my heart is starting to quiet down and I’m beginning to feel slightly human. Albeit a very over-stuffed human being! I’m in my 6th month but look like I’m at least TEN months along!!!!! I’m due at the end of January with a scheduled c-section since I can’t get babies out the regular way.

TWINS!! It’s just so cool! Two babies for the price of one pregnancy. A bargan if I ever saw one! Erlend is just as thrilled.

Elspeth is doing great! She had her first birthday at the end of October ~ a strange day because it’s also the day her grandmother died in 2005. (My mum, not Erlend’s.) Elspeth is standing up now so any day she’ll be walking. She loves to chatter away and she says a lot of cute things like, “Light on!” and she blows when she sees a candle. (Or I say “candle” haha!)  Me and Erlend are having so much fun being parents. Elspeth is a joy to have in our lives and we can’t wait to add these next two into the fray! Hopefully Elspeth won’t mind too much???

Ok, time for bed. This beached whale of a too-pregnant woman (can’t…breathe…no…room…for…lungs…) doesn’t have the stamina to stay awake much at all haha! And it’s going on 11 so I’m about to keel over!

Cheerio fae noo!

(Since I don’t have permission to use names, I’m being vauge on purpose.)

The press is coming!!

Which is actually a good thing because once we discovered that our bees were not wasps, but in fact honey bees, neither myself nor Erlend wanted to exterminate the critters. But they have to go. What to do?!

Killing them woudl be such a shame because of all of the colony collapse disorder and honey bees disapearing in droves all over the world! Personally I think killing them all off would be quite irresponsible too, in light of the dearth of honey bees. Hence our desire to have the bees removed rather then exterminated.

So we’re kinda on a “Save The Bees” kick and it seems that the local press is very interested in helping these honey critters to live and be relocated.

We have the local radio station + one of the local papers coming here to the hoose.

But in an interesting development, we also have two beekeepers coming as well! The local paper called (sorry, no names!) and told me of a lady that can help, gave me her name and number, and wished us good luck. Well, said lady actually called me! We chatted about the situation and then it turns out WE KNOW EACH OTHER hahahaha! Too funny!

Having two beekeepers coming is a good thing too because now the press won’t have to be worried about “What are we going to do to save the bees?” and can report on a hopeful outcome while also broadcasting the story and possibly enlisting the invaluable help/knowledge of more bee people.

(Also, the beekeepers can do most of the talking and that’ll get me off of the hook hehehehe)

I’ve been informed that removing this colony from our lum is “going to be hell” so any help will be deeply appreciated ~ especially by the bees!!

I’m actually not all that nervous about the press arriving because they’re not coming here for me hahaha! So I can relax. They’re coming for the beezees.

We’ll have the radio station, the local paper, and two beekeepers aboot ~ all while, get this: a man from the department of agriculture is here inspecting Erlend’s silage pits.

And here I thought that our 3rd anniversary was going to be a dull, non event!

Yeah right. On a farm????

Flying Cat, that clever feline indeed, was spot on: I said to Erlend last night, “Well… I did want to try my hand at keeping bees. But not inside of the hoose!!”

So, anyhoo, it seems that K~~~ and H~~~ up the road not only rescue me when my tarts blow up in the oven but they also specialize in rescuing panicking pregnant ladies from an infestation of bees. While K~~~ called around to try and find a bee getter-outter, H~~~ hustled down to the farm (in an antique car no less!) and closed himself in the bee-ridden livingroom armed with a can of wasp spray. I heard a lot of moving aboot, shots of spray, silence, more moving aboot… and H~~~ soon emerged with the bottom of a pasta sauce jar full of wriggling bees. They looked like honey bees to me. I don’t think that our lum dwellers are wasps.

H~~~ then whipped out a folding ruler and proceeded to engineer a Fireplace Blocking Device created out of cardboard and duct tape. With this in place we soon had peace and quiet in the livingroom.

Until this evening, at exactly the same time as yesterday evening! All of a sudden… the livingroom began to fill up with baffled bees!! Only they were anything but agressive and always stuck to the window in a desparate bid to escape. So Erlend got rid of the bees and then we perched in the livingroom and watched the cardboarded fireplace like a pair of hawks. A bee appeared, then two more… but we had no idea how they got out! An hour or so later we saw two bees wriggle their way out of a weensy crack in the mantelplace!!!!!!

I give these bees much credit for creativity… “C’mon, mates! Just follow the light!!”

Erlend set upon this (and every other crack he could find) with paper towels and stuffed everything good. Then we sat there and listened as a massive swarm of honey bees built up behind the cardboard. TALK ABOUT CREEPY!! I was just in there working on my book (by now the wean had been bathed and put to bed) and all I could hear was bee upon bee buzzing away just behind the cardboard, looking for a way to escape…

I fled. It’s all just a bit too Alfred Hitchcock for me!!!

With that said… are there any beekeepers aboot that might be able to help us remove the bees from the lum without having to kill them? Because their days are numbered otherwise…

(Seriously, I could write my own “Katie Morag” version of life on Orkney!!)

If we didn’t have a baby in the house I wouldn’t be so desparate but this isn’t funny any more.

Our house is being overrun with bees due to a hive being made in our lum! Even stuffing the fireplace isn’t working ~ they scriggle around it and they are flooding our house!

Erlend tried to find some kind of pest control company in the phone book but failed. Does anyone know of any pest control company on the Orkney Mainland that can help us with our bee infestation? I went outside to have a look and they came after me ~ these things aren’t joking around! I’m worried about Elspeth!!!!

Thank you!

Mummy can’t open certain windows in the house because then we are invaded by bees (of all things!) and endless numbers of enormous blue bottle flies. So we can only have a few windows open and that means it’s still hot and sticky in the hoose! I kept fussing about this but mummy thought I was asking for a sook. No, I don’t want a sook! I want to get out of this hot yucky stickyness! Ohhhhh I can’t wait for it to cool down ~ it’s not like farmers go to the beach on nice days. No, they WORK.

Mummy finally caught on to why I was so crabby and she put me in my little baby bath. I had so much fun splashing and playing with my rattle! Now I’m cooled down and I can try and have my nap. Mummy has angled the big window shade so that it directs the cool breeze right into my Playpen Of Delights.

Mummy’s note: Elspethy is learning how to say “mama” only she says “nah-nah” instead. For several days she’s been saying it randomly. “NahNahNahNahNah…” but today when I went out of sight I heard her little baby voice call out, “Nah Nah?!”

That so totally melted my heart!!!!!

(She’s 8 months old now.)

Erlend: “I’m awa for silage at _____. What’ll thoo have for dinner?”

Me, instantly turning green. “Uhhh…”

“There’s leftover pasta with mince.”

I turn even more green. “Uhhmm…”

“You could have some of the mince-and-tatties fae yesterday.”

At this point I begin to salivate for all of the wrong reasons. “Oh gahd…”

“Do you want some o’ this porridge right noo? I made it with bananas for Elspeth. She loves bananas! I mashed them up…”

Me, swallowing hard… stomach churning. “Oh lordy…”

“Weel, whatever thoo want for dinner, you have that pasta and mince and the mince-and-tatties…”

I whirl around and run for the door, hand over mouth. “Erlend, please… just… DONT TALK ABOUT FOOD!!”

Baffled husband watches me go. “Oh. Sorry.”

Obviously I don’t need to buy it now but my pelvis is back to hurting like crazy so soon I won’t be able to sit down and surf the internet much.

I’m trying to find a twin pram-and-pushchair combo. There are lots of twin push chairs but a newborn baby can’t sit up! So I have to find one that also has a pram option…

Hmmmmmm.

(As I type, Elspeth is sitting in her bumbo seat and grabbing at everything in sight hahahaha! She’s SO CUTE! Babies are such a hoot.)

It’s 10pm and I just finished roasting a duck for Sunday dinner. The house is wrecked. It’s always wrecked. I clean it and it ends up wrecked again by the end of the day. I (almost but not quite) give up!

Elspeth is still asleep ~ will she remain thus or wake up looking for a sook? I’m going to bed either way! I never mind getting up and giving her a sook ~ as long as that happens before midnight hehehe! But really, once I peel myself out of bed and sit with her in my arms I don’t mind being woken up to give her a sook.

So, Little Miss CHEEKS is going to have a sibling!! Er… yeah. That happened quick! After 15 years of no cavities, I got 5 cavities with the last pregnancy and was supposed to get them filled at the end of this month. Now I’ll have to wait! (Is there any way to slow cavities down??) I wonder how many cavities I’ll get with this pregnancy??

My heart is giving me a very hard time. It’s gotten much worse in the past year. I’ll have to talk that over with the midwife!!! Now when I go to bed, if I lie on my side my heart hammers so hard and I get such awful chest pain. Which is so odd because why would my heart go 1,000 miles an hour when I’m lying down?? I’m not exactly exerting myself! I have to lie on my back in order to calm it down some. I wore a holter monitor for 48 hours and of course my heart barely misbehaved. That’s because it comes-and-goes on a whim. And there’s only like one holter monitor for the Highlands and Islands so it’s not as if I can call up the hospital and say, “QUICK! Fit me up to that thing again! My heart is really spazzing out this week!”

I’m about to go to bed. Will my heart let me sleep? I sure hope that my heart isn’t made worse as the pregnancy progresses… I’d like to live to see my kids grow up!

I’m so happy we can add a Fat Little Cheeks #2 to the mix!! Another Little Mini-Feets. Another Cute Little Bum, Fat Little Puggie, Little Bambino, Little “Cutsie Wootsie”… and the list goes on and on and on…