Important one today

Okay, I haven't blogged for a while but today's post is important.

Two very lovely people are searching for their children, who have been kidnapped by their natural mother.

If anyone in the Texas area sees this, I'd be really grateful for them spreading it around any active forums and local information sites.

Other blogs

I read a few other blogs but, being a journalist, obviously ones about writing tend to draw my eye. One of the best ones out there is the How to Write Badly Well one written by Joel Stickley.
You can find it here, it's well worth a visi.

It's almost two years

In just a little more than two weeks James will be two-years-old. My little boy is a toddler, getting up to all sorts of mischief and wanting to be in to everything.

He doesn't speak yet. Well, he does, but it's a language that only he understands, we get the odd recognisable word now and then. He's very fond of No and there's an occasional yeah, Mummm, Dadda, something that my mum thinks is Nannan (and who am I to disappoint?) and things which might be yo-yo, shoes and anything else that starts with a sssssss or shusssssssss sound as he likes to say that a lot.

His lack of words do not, however, mean he is unable to communicate or us to communicate with him. He's as bright as a button and understands everything which is said to him, and an awful lot of things said over his head that he's not supposed to be listening to. He has also mastered the imperious point and grunt system of telling us what he wants.

Almost February

As the title says, it's almost February and with that month comes my birthday. This year it's one of the big ones as I turn 40.
It seems strange to say it, I shall be 40. I remember when my mum and dad turned 40 and I certainly don't feel anything like I expected they felt back then. Forty seemed so old, I don't feel old, I don't feel any more grown up now than I did when I turned 21 although I am such a different person.

When I was 21 I was three years into my career and loving every minute of it, had met a really irritating bloke who I just couldn't get enough of even though I knew he probably wasn't a good long term bet and had moved out of home.
Now I'm about to turn 40 I've been married, separated and will, hopefully, soon be divorced. Have met the most wonderful bloke who really is my missing link, keeps me sane, challenges me constantly and even when we're fighting, I still love more and more each day.

I also have my son. My amazingly wonderful son who I still can't believe is mine sometimes. I've watched him sleeping and he is so beautiful and I have to catch my breath at the thought that me and the OH are responsible for him being here.
Having James has made me happier than I've ever been, even at the height of my career, which I loved with a passion. He drives me to distraction, he angers me beyond belief but, above all else, he loves me unconditionally and that makes me a better person.

So, as I turn 40, I will reflect on the good fortune that has brought me to this point in my life, I shall wish for at least another 40 good years and I shall try and persuade Mike that James should have a brother or sister so that there is someone else who will love him unconditionally as I love my brother.

Thank God for the NHS and some wonderful staff at Frankie and Bennys

Last weekend was a nightmare weekend. We went away down to Banbury on Saturday morning after James' Christmas party with all the mums and babies that we go to our groups with. Nice easy drive down, lovely new Holiday Inn Express, met up with Mike's father and sister and had dinner at Frankie and Benny's (James shrieking because of the Christmas parties being in and the poppers etc going off).

Went to bed, he didn't sleep much and woke up at 4.30am but did go back to sleep but he was generally being a bit of a monkey all morning. After we'd had breakfast I was sat on the floor in the restaurant at the Holiday Inn putting his coat on and he was pulling and wanting to be running around. He broke away from my hold and turned to the right, tripped up over his new shoes (which were on his feet but they're a little bit bigger than the sandals he's had before) and fell to his knees, smashing his head on a solid wooden chair which was underneath the table next to us.

He got a huge lump and an instant bruise with a lovely purple line right across it where he'd hit the edge of the chair but after five minutes of crying he was okay and running around as normal so we went off on our merry way and visited the local wildlife park and then went to Upton House before saying goodbye to Mike's family.
We went to visit our best friends who live in Banbury and James had his tea there and then Mike and I headed off back to the Holiday Inn to get James ready for bed and to pop to Frankie and Benny's for our tea. We decided to get steak as it was our first proper meal out for months and James was sleeping and dozing off in his chair.

The food had just arrived when he sat up, coughed once and then projectile vomited everywhere. Nightmare! The staff were brilliant, took our meals back and put them on the hot plate and Mike went to grab clean clothes from the hotel while I cleaned James up and took the Buggy Snuggle off the pushchair etc. At this point wasn't really thinking much of him being sick as he'd been okay during the day. Got him changed, settled back into the buggy, food was due to be brought back and he did it again.

Only this time, he went white, lost all colour in his lips and went unconscious and couldn't be roused so I phoned for an ambulance and they were amazing, they arrived in less than five minutes. The staff at F&B were amazing too, they'd boxed up our dinner when James had been sick the second time (though we never got to eat it!) and the general manager then came over when he went unconscious and was checking him for food/choking etc and putting him in the recovery position just as the ambulance arrived. The ambulance lady just took one look at him, grabbed him and legged it for the door with Mike following and me just stood there in shock.

Anyways, long story short, I went in the ambulance with James who'd started to come round in the ambulance, they had him hooked up on a heart monitor and he was getting oxygen. We got to A&E and they took James straight into the Resus Room and weighed him and shoved all sorts of electrodes and gadgets on him and where he projectile vomited for the third time all over me!

They weren't happy with his heart rate and something else (can't remember now) and so he was put into a Recovery Room and hooked up to an ECG machine and some other machine monitoring his oxygen levels, heart rate etc and they said they were going to call out the radiologists for a CT Scan and get the anesthetist out because of him being so tiny they didn't think he'd stay still in the scanner. He threw up again and was really pale and lethargic and had this huge massive bump/bruise on his forehead and all these doctors kept coming in and looking at him and the machine's alarms kept going off.

We went for the CT Scan and I was able to stay in the room with him covered in huge radiation shield clothing so God knows what I looked like, as he was really drowsy and so they taped him down on the machine and fortunately he stayed still for it all.
Then we played the waiting game while all the various paediatricians were called out and they waited for the CT Scan results.
Fortunately it came back normal and all his other neurological tests were clear so they decided to put him under observation overnight and they checked him every two hours. Because he was still being sick, they weren't sure if he had a bug or if it was pressure on the brain/bleeding on the brain so we just had to wait and see.

Thank God, they think he had concussion which caused the unconsciousness and the first couple of lots of vomiting, then they think he possibly had a totally unrelated bug which kept him sick for the next 12 hours or that he was being sick from the stress of the bump/hospital trauma. We finally got released at 8pm yesterday and stayed another night at the Holiday Inn and then got back home tonight.

Woolly loveliness

I've been so lucky this last month to have received some amazing wool creations from various places and I've been busy trying not to buy too much because the next Buy British Month is coming up in November.
Last BBM I got some amazing things and I've just now, finally, got my last custom slot from then sorted. Mich at Woolly Wumpkins is making me some longies for James in her gorgeous Nimbus colourway.
That, along with the longies we got yesterday from Ali at Pixie Knits, who kindly knitted up the Elvira Babylonglegs Merino DK I'd bought, mean we're up to date on all things woolly with the exception of two soakers from Lisa at The Nappy Garden.

And, speaking of the Nappy Garden, Lisa is one serious cloth temptress. Just this month alone I have on the way, via TNG, a Holdens Landing LWI dip dye toddler bedbug and I still don't know whether it's going to be all autumnal colours or all icy winter ones!
Also from Lisa and on their way shortly, are two Dunk n Fluff large nappies in some fabulous hard to find fishy prints which will be brilliantly gender neutral in the event of James ever getting a brother or sister.

While we're on the subject of babies, one of my oldest friends has just given birth to her first child, a little boy, who went nameless for almost a week. He has now been given an amazing name and it's a wonderful tribute to her late father, who was killed when we were only five years old while working as a photographer for the newspaper I later went on to work for.
So, I'd like to say a huge congratulations to Amy and Alan on the arrival of Wilfred John Samuel, welcome to the world little one.

You see, it happened again

It's now October. I was sure I looked at my blog and wrote something in September but apparently not. That means it's effectively two months since the last time I wrote, or more accurately, rambled away with a big pile of nothingness on my blog.

So, what Japes with James have we been up to in the last two months. Well, I'm ashamed to say, not a lot. Mike and I went to a fabulous wedding in September but James was invited to that as it was his godfather to be getting married and he behaved impecably throughout both the service and the reception right up until the moment he zonked out asleep in his infant carrier around 8.30pm.

We've been really lucky that he's quite small for his age as he's literally only just growing out of the infant carrier that came with our travel system. It means we're now heading to Paul Stride at York to get him a rear facing Stage 1 car seat as they're so much safer.