"Back" to normal, nearly, and Olga's bump

After 10 days on codeine painkillers and anti-inflammatories, my back has recovered sufficiently to allow me to put my socks on in less than 5 minutes. I had last week off work (as much as you can when you work from home, between my laptop and phone I was never far from my emails) as I simply couldn't sit at my desk for more than 5 minutes without the pain becoming unbearable.
The GP has referred me to a local Sports Physician - Dr Philip Bell - who happened to be the England Cricket Team Doctor between 1996 and 2001, so it's just down to my medical insurance company to decide that because my back hurt 5 years ago they might not cover me for this next treatment. Bit like saying they won't cover me for a brain tumour because I had a headache once. We'll wait and see what their decision is.
I was sensible and chose to not take part in last week's LGCC Cricket Nets, but I'll give it a try tomorrow, although I'll try to take it a bit easy and not bowl at 100 mph like I normally do ;-)

Olga is as well as she could be. I'd describe her bump as more like a mound now, but she's coping fantastically with it, and whenever I stop for a minute and take a proper look at her, or she puts my hand on it to feel him kick & punch, I get a wave of excitement and can't wait for him to arrive. Olga's 32 weeks exactly today, 8 more weeks to go - on paper at least - so we'll be on full alert from 36 weeks. Bags are already packed...

In other news, we've reduced the asking price on the house to something more sensible, and we had 3 viewings on Saturday, with another one due next Saturday afternoon, so it would be typical if we sold the house and agreed to move just as Olga goes into labour.
Finally, we submitted our choices for Lara's school before the deadline in the middle of January. We'd only visited two of the three schools, but the one we didn't see is our third choice anyway. To be honest we'll be happy if she gets into any one of them, but we voted separately on the order we'd choose, and both of us agreed on the 1-2-3, which was reassuring.

Shares in Persil & a new gadget

The night time toilet training is going as we might have expected, at least it's no worse than we expected. So far we've had one night without having to change Lara's sheets at all, but other nights we've had to change it 3 times. We're using the "lifting" method mostly, where we plop Lara on the potty every couple of hours during the evening, often she barely wakes up at all. Then during the night we're relying on Olga's bladder for a wake-up call, and when Olga's answers the call of nature, she pops in to see how Lara is, and persuades her to go on the potty. It does mean that the washing machine is getting some heavy use at the moment, and hence why it would be good to buy shares in Persil.
This week we've deployed the "Chart and Stickers" attack too, and Lara is loving that, and she's understanding that she gets a sticker on her chart when she gets herself to the potty in time.

This new routine does mean that Lara is waking earlier than normal, we can tell when she's unlikely to go back to sleep, and this is any time after 5.45am. It's proving easy to occupy her for an hour now by pulling her table out so she can do some drawing, or she looks at her Mr Men books (I'll not say she reads them!), or more likely she'll watch a DVD of Russian cartoons over and over, she's not bored of them yet, and there's very little talking, although she is learning the little that the Wolf and Rabbit are saying (Volk and Zayets, Nu Pogodi! (Волк & Заяц Ну, погоди! for our Russian readers!)). That DVD/TV combi we bought at Christmas for her room is paying dividends, we couldn't care less about the "No TV in the kid's room" school of thought, we control what she watches at the moment, she's happy, we're happy, and she's hearing more Russian conversation than she would otherwise.

The other gadget we've invested in is an Asus Eee-pad Transformer Prime, an Android tablet that comes with a detachable keyboard, so you can use it just like a normal netbook, or you can detach the keyboard and use the screen as a tablet PC. It's fantastic, and only crept ahead of an iPad 2 when we found out how tricky it can be to transfer music, photos and videos onto an iPad.  Lara is already comfortable with it and we've only had it for 4 days (she was OK with it after 2 days!), to the point where tonight she asked where her eee-pad was when she got home from nursery, as she wanted to listen to the Cinderalla story that I downloaded for it.

Touch your toes? Only Lara can

It's painfully amusing at home at the moment, as if something needs picking up off the floor, the quickest way is for us to shout for Lara. Olga has an obvious reason why bending, touching toes or lifting anything heavier than a lamb madras is a no-no, but since the end of last week, it's a bit struggle for me too. I've had lower back pain on and off for years, most likely caused by a change in posture after I mangled my knee playing footy back in 2003.  Previously it's been treated with heavy duty nurofen and some physio, but this latest bout was different. So different that it required a trip to the GP on Friday, who has diagnosed sciatica, and prescribed elephant tranquilizers and anti-inflammatories.
There was a funny moment on Friday morning, after I'd gone to get Lara up for nursery, and the pain nearly made me chunder, so I headed to the bathroom and lay on the floor. Lara came and found me, and this was the conversation:

Lara: "Papa, why are you on the floor?"
Me: "I thought I was going to be sick, Lara."
Lara: "Do you need the pan? I can go and get it." [We give Lara a pan to be sick into when she's under the weather]
Me: "No, thank you, Lara, I'll be OK now."
Lara: "If you're sick on the toilet, Papa, I can clean it up. I'll get tissues."
Me: "It's OK, Lara, I'll not be sick now."
Lara: "Or you can be sick in the sink or the bath. I'll clean it up."

Humour is the best medicine.

Since then the other non-Lara news is that I struggled through the cricket club AGM on Friday night, and that officially ended my reign as Second XI Captain, as my successor was voted in. I did resign, rather than being sacked, given that my efforts this summer might not be 100% aimed at Littlewick Green. 

Nappy-free house for 2 months?

Given that Lara has her new bed now, and has settled perfectly into it, not falling out once, we decided it's finally time to take the plunge and dispense with the night-time nappy. Up to now we've been quite content for all three of us to enjoy nice lie-ins, as Lara's good at sleeping until 6.45 at the earliest, and often past 7am. We've had no reason to rock that comfy boat?!
But now, we've decided we have to take the plunge at some point, and probably better to have those disturbed nights now before Junior arrives - the chances of them synchronising their efforts at waking us are pretty remote.
We've been talking to Lara about this for a couple of weeks, and all this week since she's had her new bed, but last night was the first night we tried it. We woke her for a potty visit (we're happy for her to use a potty in her room for night time tinkles to start with) just as we were going to bed, and whilst she wasn't delighted at being woken up, it had the desired effect, as she slept right through until 6.50 before we heard her stir, and it was difficult to tell if she'd woken and tinkled or tinkled and that woke her, but either way, it was a very good first night.  Fingers crossed things carry on that way, although we have a mountain of clean bedding ready to go at a moment's notice.

Making the bed

This weekend was dominated by a bed. Lara's new "mid-sleeper" bed arrived at 9am Saturday morning. Argos had been very efficient - first calling last Saturday to say delivery would be this Saturday between 7am and noon ("if that's OK?"). Then on Friday evening they texted to say it would be between 10am and noon. Then the delivery man phoned at 8.30am on Saturday to say they would be with us in an hour, and sure enough 30 minutes later they turned up, complete with two large, heavy boxes and a mattress. I'd just had time to dismantle Lara's previous bed, ready to put it back together in Junior's room.

It took me 45 minutes to unpack the boxes, get the wood into organised piles and sort out the screws, bolts, nails and other fiddly bits. It took Lara 0.45 seconds to knock down one pile of wood that was leaning against the wall. There were two parts to the assembly; the bed frame and then the chest of drawers/slidy desk part. The bed frame went together without any hiccups, the instructions matched the way we wanted the frame, with the ladder to the left of the bed... This was about 2pm by now, and I set to putting the chest of drawers together...
Which is when the fun started. The instructions for the chest of drawers were based on the ladder being on the right-hand side of the bed.. I hadn't appreciated this, and followed the drawings religiously, and ended up with a chest of drawers with a shelf unit that fitted perfectly under the bed, except the drawers were behind the ladder, and so wouldn't open fully. Hmm, I'd just nailed the back of the unit on as well...
So, I took a deep breath, got the nails out (with extreme prejudice), took the whole unit apart and put it back together in the ladder-to-the-left orientation. It was 5pm by now and Lara and Olga had already gone up to Lara's friend, Zoe's, house for drinkies, so I packed up for the night and went to join them.

After a bit of a lazy morning on Sunday, then a bit of work, then a lovely walk down by the Thames in Cookham with the boys (crisp, clear weather, and we bumped into another 5 year old male Airedale called Stanley), and a quick trip to the pub for a swift half (Lara's idea!), a roast chicken dinner, I set about finishing the drawer unit and fitting the slidy desk after tea. It was 9pm before the last screw was tightened, but the desk slides out, the drawers open and close, and Lara hadn't fallen out of bed after her first night on Saturday.
We're really pleased with the end result, and Lara is too. I climbed up onto her bed this morning whilst she was pretending to do homework on her desk, when I was told in no uncertain terms that "NO adults are allowed on my bed".
I took some photos as I was building it, here's the result...