Ask almost anyone old enough to remember, “Where were you on 9/11?” and they’ll be able to answer. Most people however aren’t quite so sure if you ask where they were on 7/7 – the day that London was attacked.

I can tell you where I was. I was in the Early Pregnancy Assessment Centre of the Southern General hospital with Bob. The night before, I’d been admitted to hospital with cramps so bad I was bent double and unable to stand up. Then I started bleeding. The Doctors said nothing with their words but everything with their eyes. They were 90% certain I was having an ectopic pregnancy and wanted to monitor me until 10am when I would have a scan.

I refused to stay in the hospital. It was so cold, so clinical and they wanted to admit me onto the maternity ward. The cruelty of this act stays with me even now, to be surrounded with new life when we were sure I was carrying death was just too much. We went home and attempted to sleep in between the tears and sadness, clinging to each other and resigned to our loss.

Early in the morning we made our way back to the hospital in silence, to that waiting room in the department of no hope. We sat in the most uncomfortable chairs huddled together already in mourning and watched the news of the bombings unfold on the tiny television. Slowly and quietly the visitors and staff crowded around us, silently hoping and praying that nobody had been badly hurt whilst our own troubles were put to the side until we were called into the ultrasound room.

It’s the longest walk, that walk from the waiting room to the ultrasound room. Every step produced more waves of nausea, fear and anxiety. In truth it was less than 20 seconds but I remember at the time absorbing the hospital smell, the ambience and the desperation of the other patients. Into the darkened room with the monitor turned away from the patient to save them from seeing the nothingness we went, and I lay on the bed. Hours and hours passed in less than a minute when the nurse silently turned the monitor towards me and pointed.

The pain, the bleeding – caused by a rampant kidney infection that had developed from an unchecked UTI. The baby? Well, he turned out to be just fine.

I’ve never forgotten how we felt that day when we thought we were going to lose the baby we’d only known about for 3 weeks and how our joy & relief was mingled with empathy for the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons & daughters and friends who lost loved ones that day. Five years and I can only imagine their pain but I hope each and every person affected by actions that day is surrounded by love, support and memories of happier times.

Posted under family

I promised you that I had lots to share and I am now able to share most of it. In my usual style, I’m going to tell you a bit of a story first.

I am a renowned rubbish practical joker. I try and play jokes on people all the time and they usually fall flat, this year’s April Fool’s Day was no exception when I told the kids that I was pregnant again and that as a result we would have to move into a one bedroom flat since we couldn’t afford to stay in our house anymore. They fell for it so well that I decided to expand it and phoned my sister, whereupon the following conversation ensued:
Me: Steph? Steph! Oh my GOD I’m pregnant. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I’m pregnant and I have no idea how it happened and how can I possibly have another baby I’ll have five kids under 10!
Steph – Deadpan: Oh my actual God. Are you kidding?
Me – almost crying: NO I’M NOT KIDDING I can’t believe this how on earth did this happen?!
Steph: Are you kidding?
Me: NO!
Steph: No way. I am too.
Me – shrieking: OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I WAS ONLY KIDDING BECAUSE IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY! Are you ACTUALLY pregnant?!
Steph: I hate you.

What this little vignette doesn’t tell the reader is that I am also renowned for being the worst secret keeper in all the land. Seriously. And Stephanie is the only person I know who actually managed to keep her first pregnancy secret until she’d got past 12 weeks. GNNNNNNNNNGGGGGG! So the last eight weeks has been torturous for me knowing but not able to tell anyone until today. Steph & Gary had their scan yesterday and there’s a little baby in there! It’s the clearest scan picture I’ve ever seen – you can see it here which is a photo of the scan and therefore not great, but clear enough to see a bambino in there. Hooray! Baby is due to land before Christmas which is just perfect. I am seriously excited

So that’s my first piece of news. My SECOND piece of news is that Bob & I’s business The Life Craft (which we’ve been sporadically blogging about here) has been entered into a really amazing competition run by Barclay’s Bank. Competitors are divided up by location and then by sector; in 12 days the judges will shortlist their favourite three entries per location and whoever gets the most votes wins up to £50,000 to develop their business. We really need people to back us just now – a task that will take literally seconds to do in the hope that we can be shortlisted. If you could take a moment to do this I really would be most grateful.

So that’s the news for just now! Onto the reviews.

I posted yesterday about our big walk around Calderglen Park with Penny the other night. When we got home, I was so knackered that I decided to have a bath. Lush had sent me a Big Blue bath ballistic and a bar of Sandstone soap last week as a freebie to encourage me to take 90 minutes as a World Cup Widow and I wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth (although I didn’t have the heart to ‘fess up about Scotland’s lack of qualifying!) I’ve used the Big Blue loads of times before and love it but the Sandstone soap was a new one to my crappy sensitive skin and I’m really impressed with it! I got off all of the dry flaky bits without irritating my skin any further and it smells really nice too. Lush are also promoting their BB Seaweed facemask to World Cup Widows but I haven’t tried that one yet.

Although I have to say I’m very jealous of our friends in the South after discovering that Lush have Spas, but they’re only in London, Leeds, Poole and Kingston! Have any of you tried them out before?

The other review I wanted to share with you is for a website that I discovered after Christmas called Dot Com Giftshop. I got these supercute Russian Doll tins for the girls to keep their hairbobbles, colouring pencils and various tiny toys in so that I’d stop standing on them and I was really impressed with the speed and service offered by the site. A few weeks ago, they contacted me to say they’d listed Adventures of a Lady in Training in their top 50 craft blogs (at #42! The cheek of it, I reckon I should have been top 20 at least!) and would I be interested in reviewing some of their products. So they sent me out some of their Heart gifts range and I have to say that yet again, I was impressed with the speed, service and quality offered by them.

This gorgeous & classy tealight holder has been claimed by Erica for above her bed:

and they also sent this selection:

which just made me smile as soon as I opened the box which contained Feltcraft butterfly hearts, Iron-on patches, thick wrapping tape with hearts, thinner gift tape, alphabet heart stickers and decorative heart stickers which I have to admit made me want to sit down and write a letter to someone – anyone – which I could decorate with hearts. Yes I know, I’m unashamedly girly. Anyway, it’s a big thumbs up from me for the Dot Com Giftshop not just for having such a wide variety of cute and inexpensive gift items but also for the brilliant customer service experience.

And finally the bit you’ve all been waiting for – the giveaway! This giveaway has now closed

OK – up for grabs we have everything in this photograph:

and to enter the giveaway I would like you to:

1) Comment here (that gets you one entry)
2) Be a fan on facebook (that gets you another entry
3) Tweet about the giveaway (that gets you yet another entry)

Please remember to tell me in your comment if you’ve done steps 2 & 3 otherwise you won’t be credited for that entry! Also ensure you leave an email address for me to contact you on. You have until 8pm on Wednesday 2nd June 2010 to enter and I will post anywhere in the world.

Please note: I am not paid for reviews other than getting to keep the product I’m reviewing. You can therefore be assured that the review I write is unbiased.

Posted under giveaway

You know that old adage about time flying? Well, I don’t know how it happened but I’m 29 weeks pregnant and I’m very unprepared! Maybe it’s just because I know that we’re old hands at this managing a baby malarkey but until this last couple of weeks I haven’t bought or made anything in preparation for this little bundle. I disgraced myself yesterday by paying for a knitted cardigan (but it’s so cute!) and I’ve now completed a couple of things.

These are knitted to the Aubrey Doodlepants knitting pattern and for the non cloth nappy users amongst you, they’re longies which are designed to be worn over cloth nappies. I’ve made a few pairs of these before and I’ve always been impressed but this time I went down a needle size to ensure a thick fabric capable of holding moisture.

Of course, since they’re so small I had more than enough wool left to make a matching hat which I used the Fae Folk hat pattern to make. I do like this pattern but I wasn’t terribly happy at how my decreases came out so I’ll make a bigger version and see if that is any better.

I still haven’t caught up on any of your blogs this week and I can only apologise, I honestly don’t know where my time is going! I do plan to spend Monday (my birthday!) relaxing with some nice tea, a pack of Fox’s classics, some knitting & sewing and my laptop whilst I have the house to myself so hopefully I’ll be back in the swing of things at some point this year!

In the meantime, I’m interested. What is your go-to handmade gift for a new baby? Or if you’re a parent, what did you make for your baby that you absolutely loved? What do you wish you’d had time to make? Better yet, what did you make (or have made for you) that you never used?

Ooh! I forgot to mention – Annie blogged about our owl swap and another swap she was doing, she got much better photographs than I did if you’d like to nosy on over and see what we exchanged. She was a fantastic swap partner which is why I’m glad that we managed to get her into the Time for Tea swap as a last minute addition. Check out the updated participant list!

Hope you’re all well! Now, if you’ll excuse me I must go straighten my hair as I’m being taken out for a meal to celebrate my birthday

Posted under knitting

I had asked hubby to take a photo for me the other night and managed to convince him to join me. Here we are – me, hubby and my enormabelly at 28 weeks:

Posted under family

Ah well. I should learn not to make unattainable targets really shouldn’t I? NaBloPoMo has really not worked for me this time round haha.

Things have been decidedly hectic here. I have started the new job which was offered to me at very short notice, I’ve been there for two weeks and to be honest I’m hating it. It’s public sector, and the change of pace from working for a charity is unbelievable. There’s no sense of urgency or importance, my training thus far has been woefully inadequate and when I complained I was told that as a manager I’d have to deal with a constantly changing environment and essentially that I should suck it up. Great. I’m sticking with it because to be honest the lure of having no debt by April is too big but it’s going to be a loooooong few months.

In other news, my sister and I’s business venture is still on the cards. We have some paperwork to complete but all going well we should have a decision this week as to whether we have got the lease.

I am still trying to craft but not really getting anywhere. I’m awake at 6am with the kids, spend all day having my toddlers run rings around me before collecting F from school, hubby from work and returning home for 45 minutes before going back out to work all night. I am a walking shell of a woman, I have no energy and even less time so things aren’t really panning out the way I had hoped. Plus, one of my beautiful namaste glass needles has been broken in a #2-related accident so I’ve lost the impetus to knit. Bah, I hope I get my mojo back soon.

I’ll leave you with a picture of the parasite likely to blame for my exhaustion and I shall be back soon with something of interest I hope!

Posted under general crafty updates

This pregnancy has been utterly exhausting me for the last few weeks. Luckily, I seem to have woken up this morning without all the little symptoms that have been plaguing me – I don’t feel sick, I don’t feel tired and in fact I had a lot of drive today! I was going to get things done…

…until the baby woke up with a head cold. And she’s just miserable. Everything seems to have gone out the window since that point! I planned to make gingerbread men with #2, only to discover that the hens appear to be on strike and we have no eggs. I planned to go to the shop to get supplies, except every time I turn around the amazing naturist toddler has taken off all his clothes and stashed them somewhere. The worrying thing for me is that after this week, this is going to be my every day routine. I just hope we get more adept at keeping the clothes on!

I have a few different bits and pieces to update on but I’m cheating and keeping them for the NaBloPoMo starting this weekend.

Posted under general crafty updates, self-sufficiency