Baby Face

Happenings abound. Our annual Artisan Fayre was splendid as ever and very welcome as a dip in energies prevented me doing extra markets before Christmas. The big day itself was good and happy. Pickle and I stayed with my parents in a very damp and lovely part of Somerset for a few days. I was not permitted to leave the sofa (to be honest, I didn't put up much of a fight) and Pickle had a great time amassing wonders. Mum was a bit twitchy every time the phone rang because my sister-in-law was due to have their first baby on January 1st. Luckily she has stayed put well past National Hangover Day and we're all now impatient to meet her, particularly her mum.

Meanwhile I have been working and readying our home for my new daughter. My laptop is going through a tricky patch in its relations with my external harddrive, so I can't access photos, but I do have this scan picture:

I had an extra scan because her growth chart looks disasterous, but it seems that is because she is trying out a new position every time she's measured. I've told her my preference for head down, but you know how hard it is to get kids to listen.

So all is well. Pickle has gone back to school having not had enough holiday to really recover from last term and the excitement of Christmas, but she is happy to do so and I, while predictably tired and experiencing mild versions of various pregnancy ailments, am basically hale and hearty and deeply grateful that my family is growing in this beautiful way.

Wishing you all joy this year - not simply happiness (although go ahead and have a bunch of that too), but the kind of wriggling, skipping joy which makes it nearly impossible to behave sensibly.

The Result

Three cycles of IVF, nine months, hundreds of injections and pills and bruises and side-effects, two bouts of OHSS, all my money, enormous stress and heartache and many wet pillows: all worth it. At least one little embryo has snuggled in and taken root in my belly, now busy growing and changing and becoming more robust every day. I'll have a scan next month to do a headcount and see if I have a singleton or twins. Gulp.

So I am very grateful to my sperm donor, whoever he is. Despite the fact that he will never be any kind of a father to these beings, I am thinking of him today, on Fathers' Day, and hoping he knows what a gift he has given.

Of course I am also thinking of Thomas. Pickle made the most wonderful Fathers' Day card at school. On the front is an intricate design of hearts and his violin (relevant to the only true memory she has of him), but it's the words which make it:

For those of you not fluent in five-year-old, the translation is this:

'Hi Dad. I hope you do survive. I do dear Dad. I want to dig you up. I love you. I love you. I do love you.'

The Burn

At 25141 words I'm just ahead of my National Novel Writing Month word count target, so here I am, as promised, with no excuses to make (yet).

Our house is being held to ransom by a couple of particularly stubborn molars (or particularly tough gums), so all bets are off on what may be achieved in the coming week.

Pickle and I went on a brief foray into the city (for winter boots - for her - the price of which made me sweat a little) and were confronted by this creature:

Pickle was, understandably, uncertain, but then decided she loved her and produced some fine moos for the good people of Exeter to enjoy. She stands outside The Real Food Store, a community owned food shop, bakery and cafe. I can heartily recommend it if you're near. It is the only time strangers have joined in with our whispered chorus of 'If you're happy and you know it, touch your nose'!

After the horror that was Hallowe'en, I was nervous about taking Pickle to the Sticklepath Fireshow. Every year there's a crowd of thousands and the surreal play which precedes the fireworks is about half an hour and even less comprehensible to a toddler than to the rest of us. Four generations of our family went in the end and we all had a good time, despite Great Granny scuttling off to get lost in the crowd and Great Grandpa struggling to move at all over the lumpy ground and Pickle being startled awake by the ambulance siren in the safety bit before it had even started.

As ever, the set was impressive. The two skeletons to the left were crafted by that most handsome of woodworkers, Thomas Hine and if you click on the Fireshow link above, the big dragon head was also his.

Hundreds of volunteers make the whole spectacle happen and the work of each of them was rather lost on our girl, happily snuggled in her ear defenders (one of our best buys ever), but she did wake for the fireworks - the best display I've ever seen, which I won't demean with our dodgy photos.

And she was quite mesmerised by the burn. Great Granny couldn't believe people had worked so hard to create such a huge and intricate structure, then those same people would merrily set light to the whole thing and start again for the next year.

As we watched each new piece collapse, we talked about how rare an opportunity it is to see a fire on this scale, and particularly to watch a building burn.

Fire is an energy much feared in my western/British/English culture, or so it seems to be in the main. Anger is never welcome; there is no admittance of a healthy way to express anger. Sometimes we can justify it, but never welcome it. Sex is something that is mostly discussed within the safety of comedy, or else it furnishes us with many of our swear words.

When I first became pregnant I was shocked by the fierceness which came along with the tenderness. I hadn't experienced it until a crowd surged in my direction and I locked my arms in front of my belly, ready to take them all on! With most people I never mentioned this new intensity; it is the opposite of what pregnant women and new mums 'should' be feeling. But the truth, now as much as then, is that, to protect my daughter, I am capable of things I could not later justify. This is a fire which will not go out.

And so to a whole group of people desperately trying to keep their fire alight. I can recommend no blog higher than The Hermitage and in particular this latest post on travelers. Do please take a look. The two little films are each haunting in different ways and Rima's artwork is worth a visit in itself.

I love living where I do. You've probably gathered that by now, if you've been here before. I spent a few years being nomadic, but really I'm a roots person. And as a rooted person, I am grateful to all the traveling people for adding their difference to my world. It is perhaps a way of life less afraid of fire and passion than the one around me.

I hope we can learn.