yup, definitely a baby

We had a Duthie family outing to the hospital yesterday (with Scarlett, and Rob's mum in tow) for our 19 week anomaly scan. I love going back to the RPA - it is where Scarlett was born and where I had all my treatment and surgery. Even though this is second time around, it still moved us enormously to see our growing baby jumping around, swallowing great gobfuls of amniotic fluid and jiggling its hips. Shake it baby. It has a tremendous spine and at one point I queried whether it might be a greyhound. This was better than the question Rob asked of the doctor when we were pregnant with Scarlett - 'how will we know if we are having a dwarf?'. I managed to pass this off as the idle remark of a New Zealander obsessed with hobbits. Scarlett took more interest in what the lady with the jelly stuff was doing to Mummy's tummy. I think she thinks the lady is hurting me because she climbed onto the bed and hugged and kissed me during the scan. We saw the four chambers of the baby's heart, the brain and the little feet. Anyhoo, here are a couple of pix of our baby.

Matron, pass the smelling salts...

...I was heard to mutter on hearing the news that after seven months - SEVEN MONTHS - our flat in Islington will finally exchange and complete next Friday. I'm not sure if it is wise of me to believe this information even though it came straight from the trusted keyboard of my solicitor. We accepted an offer in March. MARCH. Ever since we have had delay after delay mainly as a result of the gibbering idiot our buyer put in charge of his legal affairs, a lawyer our buyer has since reported to The Law Society. To say I am relieved would be putting it mildly. On top of Rob's job loss, the realisation that as a result we can't afford to buy a bigger house, a pregnancy and facing up to having to move from our beloved house to a larger rented house to make room for our growing family, having to deal with all of this flat sale stuff from the other side of the world too has been, shall we say, a strain. Bring on completion date October 27. What a glorious date it sounds. Having said that we love having Rob at home all the time (he does all the cleaning, laundry, driving us about, cooking, shopping), are looking forward to our move in January to the lovely new house and can't wait to meet the new Duthie in March or as Scarlett refers to the non-existent bump 'my baby or sister'. October is Good Food Month in Sydney. Last night after work I met Rob and Scarlett in Hyde Park and we went to the Night Noodle Markets. The park is lit by red lanterns and 50 odd food stalls sell all kinds of Asian food, wine and beer accompanied by a DJ from Cargo Bar. We drank wine and beer, ate noddles, chicken and rice and took it all in. Sydney does outdoor events so well,it was a magical night.
We are house sitting again at the moment at Zoe and Paul's house in Curl Curl on Sydney's northern beaches. It's quite a bit further out from the city than where we live but feels like such a friendly self-contained community with great local shops and surf beaches a-plenty all within a few minutes walk or drive. It's so nice to be able to pop to the beach for just an hour rather than the whole day. Wednesday afternoon was baking so we went to Freshwater Beach, had a lovely walk along the beach and around to the ocean pool where we swam. Pulling the plug on Scarlett's bath water and finding all the remnants of sand left behind is so lovely.
We have an early dinner with friends tomorrow night before Rob picks up his Mum from the airport - she's staying for a week, and on Sunday a late lunch with friends. Shame the forecast is for rain all weekend. In fact as I type rain has just starting lashing the window of my 26th floor office. Oh joy.

The house that Rob built

Just had a right laugh on a weekend away in the Megalong Valley (yes, that really is it's name and it is mega long) in the Blue Mountains.I always laugh that this region west of Sydney is described as mountains when it is in fact a long range of canyons that you look down on. I just don't get the Blue Mountains at all. Ok, they are quite a bit higher than sea level than the rest of the state but mountains is really pushing it. Let's just say as you drive along the flat road that runs along the top of the range, you are hardly transported to the cuckoo clocks and leiderhosen of Switzerland. The biggest town, Katoomba, is quite a tip, full of crummy 'antique' shops and fudgeries and apart from a view hotels with nice views down the valleys, being the home town of 'yulefest - the annual Christmas in July festival' doesn't impress me one bit. Give me the alps any day. That said we headed off on Friday evening to meet up with neighbours Rob and Freya and friends Deb and Ewan and their son Joshua at a house Rob built for Ewan's uncle (pix to come). It is in the middle of nowhere deep in the Megalong Valley and is accessed by dirt track and after passing through 3 separate farm gates. Kangaroos, hop, cows moo, horses neigh and really loud sqawky birds wake you at 5am. That's if you have been kept awake all night by possums on the tin roof and a bird that makes a sound likes it's opening an closing an umbrella. The house is a huge wood and glass structure with a main house and two guest cabins connected by a wooden walkway. The loo is one of those composting ones you don't want to inspect too closely with a torch but which is entirely odour free and fantastic for the environment - the human 'compost' going on to be reused in the garden. Thought Scarlett would freak out when she saw the big dark hole but she couldn't care less. The house sits at the bottom of a huge sandstone escarpment that looks amazing as the sun hits it throughout the day. It was 35 degrees on Saturday so we entertained the kids with a container of water and a sandpit. After a big lunchtime sleep we all piled into the back of the flatbed farm truck and bounced off across the fields to see horses and cows. The kids LOVED the truck, no seatbelts, in fact no seats, just lots of bouncing about. Later we fed the horses carrots which sent Scarlett into hysterics of laughter as their big teeth and lips snaffled the food from her little hand. Salivatastic. We were shattered when we got back home last night and were all in bed by 8.30pm fast asleep. Today we're off to the north shore for 3 weeks to house sit for Zoe and paul. They have a house you could fit ours in at least twice, it has a pool, a big garden and best of all is 5 minutes from two fantastic surf beaches and I get to commute to work by ferry which I'm looking forward to. I'm sure Zoe and Paul think we are quite odd wanting to move into their house, but for us it's like a holiday. Then there's only 3 weeks after we come back home that we head to Blightey. Yahoo!

Finally...

We've had a few balls in the air recently and it looks as if a couple of them are falling into place. We've been trying to sell our flat in London and despite having had an offer made and accepted in March, it has been dragging on and on and on because of the wording in one sentence of the contract that our buyer's lender's lawyers didn't like. I could scream. This week it looks as if all will finally be approved and we can move on. Since Rob was made redundant, it has played on my mind. We have also been waiting to find out if we could rent a house owned by the family of good friends of ours. It is much bigger that our house with avery large garden and now that we have another baby on the way, it's a move we need to make in the early part of next year. We heard this week that the house is ours from January at a terrific rent. We'll rent our house out and move to the new place in plenty of time for the baby's arrival in March. Best of all it'll have a guest room so we can finally have people to stay with us without handing them a blanket and pointing them in the direction of the couch. Also after a few weeks worrying about the baby's progress, all appears to be well. At 17 and a bit weeks, I am still not showing and have no symptoms of pregnancy (just like with Scarlett) so was relieved to hear a lively heartbeat at our four-weekly check up at the hospital this week. In two weeks we have the big 19 week scan when we make sure its arms and legs are in the right place and that it only has one head, although two heads are better than one. It's been great as two good mates here are expecting at the same time and we are all due within a week or two of each other. The weather is gorgeous at the moment, we are spending lots of time at the pool and beach and are going away this weekend with our neighbours to the Blue Mountains to stay in an amazing house our neighbour Rob built for our other neighbour Ewan's uncle. Confused?.

Action packed

Here is the pic of Rob and Scarlett at the launch party for Good Food Month that appeared in the social pages of the Sun-herald our sister paper. I am out of the shot, because I work at the paper, and Scarlett is looking at me.
What a great three days we've had. I took Friday off work as it was Mum's 11th anniversary. Every year I like to take the day off if I can and do something nice. This year we packed ourselves off to Clontarf reserve, a gorgeous park, beach and shark-proofed pool on the middle harbour, overlooking yachts at anchor and enormous harbourside homes. We bumped into Zoe, Sam and baby Bronte who were there meeting other friends. Zoe ended up leaving Sam with us for a couple of hours to play with Scarlett while she raced off to the shops. It was a gorgeous day that allowed me plenty of time to think about the good times with Mum, but also made me sad to see my beautiful girl running around so happy all day knowing she and Mum will never meet.
On Saturday we spent the morning at the pool where Scarlett delighted all with a display of serial pooing that led from the baby pool to the toilet. By the time I managed to race her into the shower, almost everything she had deposited in her bathers had made its way out of the leg, creating a trail of poo piles even the sloppiest detective would have no trouble following. Thankfully the lifeguard thought nothing of the drought and whipped out the fire hose to clear it away. After the pool it was off to Coogee beach for Cait and Pete's son Max's 2nd birthday party. It was lovely to sit in the sun and catch up with them over a few fruit juices and slices of birthday cake. We all had a big sleep on Saturday afternoon in preparation for taking Scarlett out for dinner. We used to take her out a lot when she was a baby as she'd nod off in the pram but we wanted to see if she could behave well eating with us in a restaurant. We booked a table for 6pm at a great local Italian place that is used to families and young children and it went without a hitch. She loved her share of our pizza and pasta, entertained herself watching the other diners and enjoyed drawing on the paper table cloth with her pencils. The staff were all over her and she loved it. We then did the promenade thing through Leichhardt a popular pursuit in our suburb, lifted straight from Italy, when families get all dressed up and walk up and down the main street eating gelato and watching people in bars and restaurants. Young lads in tricked up cars drive slowly up and down the main drag blasting their car horns that play the theme from The Godfather. Scarlett enjoyed herself so much she cried when it was time to go home for bed. On Sunday morning we raced to get the paper to see if Scarlett's picture made it into the social pages and it did!. She flicked through looking for pix of Uncle Brett and photos of our other media mates who are normally in there. When she saw herself she was so excited. We had a brilliant afternoon at the home of our mates Chris and Stef and their kids GG and Harrison. They have just moved back to Stef's parents' enormous home on the harbour. It has a pool and overlooks yachts and multi million dollar houses. The kids ate, played and bathed together while we had dinner and a good catch up. Fell in to bed shattered last night but was kept awake by various parties going on around the place as it was a big Rugby final weekend and it's a bank holiday here today so no one (except journalists it would seem) had to come into work today. Was very sad to be dropped off at the office today by Rob and Scarlett knowing they were heading off to the fish market to provoke crabs and then onto the pool for the day. Sob.