This week we have been mainly....tired

We're all so tired!

Poor Leila's teeth started troubling her a good few weeks ago as her four molars started coming through.  We were giving her calpol at night and then bongela and teething granules through the day as needed.  At times though the poor thing was still grabbing her mouth in pain :-( We're not sure if it was teeth-related but she hasn't been resettling in the mornings so well, and as we're already onto a single nap in the afternoon she has been struggling to get through the mornings till lunch. So she's been tired - and so have we!

But then this week we flew to the UK for a quick visit and on top of teeth trouble she has been super gringy and poorly.  There was one morning when she just would start crying for no reason at all every 5 minutes :-( we could not figure out what was up, so tried calpol and then baby neurofen as well to help her out.  At this point through she decided that she no longer wanted to take anything from the 'spilly spoon' we have for medicine, or the syringe.  We tried and tried, but she suddenly would not take anything. By the evening she had a fever and we tried everything to help her sleep when she woke up at 9pm, but ended up at midnight forcing calpol in.  A horrible night for us all.

Her fever is now down, but she's just snotty and tired (as usual when travelling she's struggling to get a decent nap during the day or sleep through in the morning)

Our tiredness?  Well as well as being up with her all night and on the go all day, our days and evening thoughts have been filled with job hunting.  Hopefully we'll all be able to rest easy soon.

Plastic box go-kart

We've recently bottle the final beer we'll be brewing in Cairo, and so have dismantles our brew room.  Inside our home-made cooler we had a large plastic box around which we packed insulation.  Tonight we took the plastic box out, gave it a wash, and realised it had wheels on the bottom...so we decided to turn it into an impromptu go-kart for Leila.

Unfortunately she's a bit heavy now and her weight on the wheels has led to the plastic buckling, so sadly no more go-kart for the time being :(

Pickle: The first trimester

I’m not sure who laughed first, but it wasn’t long before all three of us were just looking at each other and giggling.  Scotty was holding Leila on his hip and I was holding the test stick when we found out that we were going to have an addition to our little family.  It was a slightly nervous laugher, but a happy one :-)

I was nearly two months gone when we returned to Cairo and made the appointment to see Dr Cherif.  For the next two weeks I was definitely feeling more tired than usual and often had a general queasiness feeling about me.  I just made sure that I got my head down whenever I could during the day.  Despite the queasiness I found myself always feeling hungry. Maybe it was the combination of still breast feeding on top of the pregnancy (eating for three?!).  My cravings tended to be savoury and carb-based or dairy-based, but not for the piles of chocolate that we brought back from the UK with us!

I was just over two months when my body started to ‘change shape’.  It’s not that my jeans or tops were becoming tighter, but a feeling of filling out as I notice that my belly button has already flattened out ready for the bulge!

Naming the wedding photo

Reading Mog

Leila got this Mog The Cat board book for Christmas, and seems to have mastered the story...

This week we have mainly been.....teething

Poor little Leila is getting her bottom molars through and they are really troubling her L  Her top ones came through without us noticing (!) but her bottom gums have been really swollen for over a week now and she is even moaning and holding her hand to her mouth in the evenings!  We’ve been giving her Calpol as she goes to bed and bongela and teething granules through the day.  We’ve realized though that without a bongela dose when she wakes for her early morning feed (around 5am) she won’t go back to sleep – making it a really long morning for her before her afternoon nap. This morning I did give her bongela and she went back to sleep for another 2.5 hours – enough time for a shower and a quick check of email (actually, make that a ‘slow’ check of email….our dongle is only giving us dial-up speeds at the moment – ggrrrr)

Leila is also doing lots and lots of copying at the moment. She is copying sounds as we speak and actions too.  We had great fun the other evening when she was doing the dance for Looby Loo and Hockey Cokey with Daddy and then doing Round and Round the Garden on our palms.

Colouring and dancing