They tell you how tired it makes you, though that’s diminished enormously in the last two to three weeks, to the point that I even managed to tidy the (downstairs of…) the house before Christmas, to my never-ending pride. A week of washing dishes and getting laundry done did wonders for my sense of personal well-being, to say nothing of that of the rest of the family.

What they don’t tell you, is that at least some of the tiredness is derived from being completely unable to sleep. You wake in the night, you think “No! I’m knackered, go back to sleep!” Then you sit there for half an hour. Then you decide that you really need to go to the toilet. Then you go back to bed for half an hour. Then your stomach decides that, since you’re awake anyway, a snack might be nice. You go downstairs, trying to keep the number of lights you put on to a minimum, because you’re determined not to be awake, really. You find some food, down three quarters of a pint of milk, and go back to bed for half an hour. Then you realise that you really are awake, now, so you might as well play on the computer for a bit.

And so it goes on. Until a good two or three hours has passed, you go back to bed, sleep the sleep of the just and righteous for a bit, and then the toddler wakes up. And that’s it, the day’s up and running.

It’s a terribly inefficient way to run your body.

And what have we done…?

Well, it’s been a bit of marathon event, this year: it started with my sister and her husband on Christmas Eve, continued with my Mum on Christmas night, and my Grandma on Boxing Night, before winding down with Kevin’s family today. We’ve still got my mum’s sister to go, on Saturday, but we get a couple of days grace before that, and frankly, we need the rest.

For all that, it’s been very nice; where Christmas has been of extended duration, it has compensated with gentleness of pace.

This is the first Christmas where Daisy has had the faintest idea what was going on, and she is now exceptionally good at unwrapping things, and at going “*gasp* Wow!”, regardless of the contents. Top presents on the day we’re the little kitchen affair, and the farm, but the staggered nature of the occasion meant that every day brought a new set of Top Presents.

Last night, we took a print out of the Jump Family Tree, and a folder full of supporting documents for the perusal of anyone who was interested. As I think I’ve mentioned before, the annual Christmas Party is generally the only time of the year that the bulk of the family comes together. I am most unlikely to see Phil and Jan, Tim and Sheila, Will and Judith, Dave, Aunty Beryl or Aunty Elsie again before next Boxing Day, but there is a sense of belonging that pulls us all back together, for one party a year, at least. Anyway, we spent an excessive amount of time researching the family, in the first half of the year, and there doesn’t seem to be much point in doing that, if we don’t then share the information with the other people to whom it’s relevant.

I think most people had a bit of a look, in greater or less depth.

We decided to dispense with the giving of presents to all except the children, and instead had a whip-round for charity. We raised ?265 (Is that a lot? Were people buying incredibly cheap presents for all these years?) and decided to spend it on a bore hole in Bangladesh, and some carpentry training, which I think made everyone feel more warm and glowy than another box of Adidas deodorant could ever have done.

Today we did some fairly basic shopping, followed by Christmas Dinner with Kevin’s family, in Caroline’s new kitchen, which is starting to show some of the promise that their house has always had, underneath layers of dust, grime, nasty wallpaper, dodgy wiring, dodgy plumbing, leaking roofs, etc, etc. It’s taken them the better part of three years to get it to this point, but today, for the first time I moved from believing that it was going to be fantastic one day, to actually seeing how it could be.

Daisy, her cousin Niamh, and her Nanna, all got thoroughly over-excited, and eventually I went and hid upstairs with Caroline rather than deal with them, which did much for my peace of mind. If it was going to end in tears anyway, there wasn’t much point in my torturing myself waiting for it to happen…

Daisy has had two late nights in a row, the first excessively late, so we’re hoping for a lie in tomorrow, and maybe an early night, too. In any case, we’ve got no plans - I think a lazy day will do us all good.

PS This post knocks Kevin right off the front page of the blog - he just doesn’t seem to have anything to say at the moment. Do you remember when this was his blog, and I just chipped in from time to time? I’m not sure I like it. I’m starting to feel responsible. Say something, Kevin, please…

Particularly the sort with the letters in. So far, I’ve had one telling all about someone’s Dad who’s gone blind during the year; one about a contemporary of mine who’s been diagnosed with skin cancer, and her husband’s industrial leg-crushing accident; and one from someone who is supposed to be married, but the card is just from her, with no explanation of what might have happened to HIM - I figure, one of two things, and both bad.

It’s just a relief that the last post comes tomorrow. I’m starting to feel weighed down with bad news.

… made management before his 31st birthday…

Today he was interviewed for, and offered, the Development Manager job in his current place of work, and he’s thrilled to pieces. It’s great in the short term, in that he really wanted the job, the challenge of it, and the opportunity to affect how the place functions. But it’s great in the long term, too, because he’s broken the glass ceiling. You can’t be a programmer forever, the technology moves too quickly, and sooner or later you can’t keep up any more. For a while there, it seemed like the step into management was missing, somehow, and he couldn’t work out how to bridge the gap. But he’s done it.

*beams with pride*

Today, Daisy has started saying “It’s me’s” instead of “It’s mine”. It’s odd, because yesterday she was saying it right, or occasionally saying “It’s mine’s” which is close.

Part of me loves that they learn the language, then start trying to apply rules of logic to it at a later stage, causing it all to go wrong.

Call me sad, but I found myself watching Animal Park this morning, which usually bores me to tears. Today, though, Longleat Safari Park held an Escaped Animal Drill - only about three people in the entire park staff knew that it was a drill, and they had every single park keeper at emergency stations to look for a lion. The tension was palpable, even though the viewer knew it was a set up. It was wildly dramatic, and I was completely gripped.

So, yes, we’re having another one. I’m twelve weeks pregnant, and starting to feel a bit better than I have for quite some time. And the particularly good news is that they found one baby, no more and no less, it is fully equipped with arms, legs, a head, a nose and a heartbeat, and they didn’t find anything else.

The trip the LWH was a fairly positive affair: we didn’t have to wait for two hours with an exploding bladder, like we did for the first appointment with Daisy; the two people we dealt with were reasonably friendly; I wasn’t prodded and poked beyond what I could stand; and everything appears to be normal, which was the thing I was terrified might not be true. The midwife agreed with my assessment of how the interventions cascaded, one on top of the other, last time, and we shared a hope that that might be avoided, this time, if the baby contrives to come a bit earlier. At least I managed to avoid being induced; that would only have compounded the thing, I’m sure.

To be perfectly frank, I hate being in hospital. I’d be a classic home-birther, but for the fact that I ended up having both an epidural and an episiotomy, last time. A little piece of the back of my mind thinks it makes sense to have a straight-forward hospital delivery under your belt before you start dispensing with the hospital. I’m just hoping to keep it all to a minimum, and get home as soon as I can, that’s all.

Of course, by that logic, aspiring towards a home birth means committing to having a third, which I am most certainly not promising at this stage. We’ll see how two goes, thank you very much.

I don’t need to buy Christmas cards. I picked up a random number in the sales in January, and I have enough, with about three to spare. Aren’t I clever?

PS The more astute observers will note that I am Way Behind on the Plan, which is the way these things always go. Still, at least having The Plan means I know how far behind I am. Always look on the bright side.

Inside the Catholic Cathedral

Today, we visited the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. I’m always struck, when I go in, by how I don’t hate it nearly as much as I feel like I ought to. It’s a concrete sixties monstrosity, which was falling down by the mid-eighties, and so isn’t even fit for purpose. The corrosion of the bells above the main door has stained the concrete green, in a way that they’ve only partially managed to clean off in the recent renovations, and as a piece of architecture, it seems forever stranded in a state of just-missing.

That’s what I think when I’m sitting here, postulating. When I’m actually there, though, I love it. It’s so calm, so peaceful, and so focussed on God. I love that all the windows are dark blue and purple, giving it a twilight quality even at 1.30pm. I love the big crown of thorns sculpture that dangles over the altar (I wanted to say communion table - I’m such a non-conformist protestant). I love the stations of the cross around the outside edge, and all the little chapels dedicated to this and that. Mostly, though, I love the people. All the staff, even the tour guides and people, just seem to radiate this spirituality that really touches me. A foreign nun, being given a guided tour by one of the staff, stopped to take photos of Daisy in one of the chapels (I let her - she’s a nun, and anyway, Daisy’s cute), then gave her a blessing. I don’t even know what that means, but I know that it’s the sort of thing we don’t do enough of in my church tradition. And I know Jesus did it, so it can only be good.

Inside the Anglican Cathedral

I find the place much more of a spiritual experience, even on a Saturday afternoon when they’re moving the furniture round for some kind of chamber orchestra to play, than I’ve ever found the Anglican cathedral to be. That’s impressive, don’t get me wrong. It’s the biggest protestant cathedral in Europe, it’s impressive on sheer scale, but it’s only like a incomprehensibly large parish church. With a cafe. And being there feels more like visiting a building, and less like calling in on God.

And coming on the back of many generations of protestant snobbery, that’s saying something.

Today I (or should I say, Daisy) found this:

God for Us, with Don Moen.
Buy this dreadful CD on Amazon.

The thing is, I have no recollection of how it came into the house. None at all. The price label implies that I spent a whopping ?14.99 on it, which must mean I had an income at the time - it seems like a ridiculous amount of money, now, to spend on a CD I knew nothing about, and didn’t play for some years.

The style is… well, imagine a cross between a Broadway Musical and Daniel O’Donnell doing his spot on Songs of Praise. I swear, some of the songs end in such a way as to leave me craving ice-cream in the lobby. But it also reminds me, just slightly, of a tape we had in the eighties, called Communion, and which we played on a permenant loop in our car for about three years. I think it’s the American accents that do it - they way they insist on singing to “Gard”, that I struggle to take seriously. Like they’re worshipping an overweight man in a uniform, who’s watching the football when he’s supposed to be monitoring the CCTV.

I’m determined to play it to the end, but this could be a contender for the next Swaps party. I can’t really imagine playing it twice…

Again. I can’t quite believe how many times he’s changed it in the last few weeks. Hopefully this is a version he can live with for fifteen or twenty minutes…