It went a little like this ...

The beginning ... (there's also the blog pic to the right)

The middle ...

New step courtesy of a couple of railway sleepers. Eeeasy peasy!! (Unless you want to talk about said railway sleepers causing the trailer to flip while we were going around the corner on a busy road at a busier intersection, buggering the trailer somewhat and requiring us to try and fit said sleepers into the back of a station wagon to get them home, in which case, not so easy peasy at all)

The end ...

Hanging baskets of rosemary.

Our friend Mr Fugly who's keeping the lavendar company.

And the lavender, because we do have a special place in our hearts for lavender (plus I'm practising taking better photos). There's a special place in our tummies too, as it happens. Cuinn's always been a fan, for reasons known only to him, and he even ate the lavender cutting I'd taken from another bush in the garden on the way to the garden centre, then spent the rest of the way there affirming to us 'nom nom nom!'

A big boy haircut and an iceblock

Firstly, this was the head of hair - gorgeous moppy little ginger kid. But, his poor head was getting sooo hot, and it was stupidly tricky keeping a hat on him, so off to the barber we went. The unfortunate creature that he's got in a death-grip there is a kitten we found down on the rocks by the river when we were out walking last weekend. Unfortunately our older animals are all getting a wee tad too grumpy with young 'uns for him to stay with us, so he went off on Tuesday to find a new home. The little ginger thought it was absolute magic, although it was all a bit stressful because I had to keep saving its life - he was rather inclined to cart around by the neck.

The depressing result of the trip to the barber.

And his first iceblock - it went down so well, there wasn't even mess. Took him about 10 minutes to scarf the thing, start to finish.

Stuff that's happening

The ginger kid got a climbing frame (to replace the playhouse we pulled down because it was grooooooooss. And knackered. And stinky), and spent some very happy time helping the husband put it together.

There are a good 10 million other photos to post. I will make time. I promise!

Again with the bullet points

- I ordered all the curtains for the downstairs last week, paid a 50% deposit and was generally pleased.
- Until I got a phone call telling me that the fabric had been discontinued and they couldn't supply enough fabric to make my curtains.
- They're coming back tomorrow with more fabric samples.
- The first fabric I chose was perfect.
- Poos.
- We paid an astronimical amount of money to have the tree that was about to fall down cut down.
- Turns out they under quoted by more than half because it was a really dodgy tree.
- Thank heavens for quotes.
- I still feel a little bit guilty though.
- I bought them some beers to say ta.
- I think they'd probably have preferred having a cherry-picker on site and not being afraid for their lives for about 3 hours.
- Bummer.
- The tree guys told us that the tree was one good wind away from splitting completely and falling down, and it would've taken the side of our house and the sunroom out if it had.
- There was a pretty impressive storm the other night.
- Phew.
- The peach tree came right out of the ground and there was nothing wrong with that.
- Except shallow roots, apparently.
- It makes me a bit nervous when the neighbours are letting off really big fireworks to the background music of bottles clinking into the recycling bin.
- If any of them hit my house, I'm going to plant Wandering Dew in his lawn in the middle of the night.
- He has an awesome lawn.
- Wandering Dew will be excellent punishment.
- Assuming that his rottie doesn't eat me.
- Note to self to take dog treats if Wandering Dew is required.
- We do actually like the neighbours.
- I won an awesome Fun Ho! giant dump truck on Trademe for Cuinn the other day and I'm very excited about it.
- Jazz cat has been out and about, but is still being locked in the house at night.
- I wanted to keep her in for another week, but she was starting to get miserable.
- She seems to be really enjoying the grounds.
- We thought that the dogs would take quite a while to settle, based on a past move.
- They're happy as happy things.
- Excellent.
- It's really entertaining to watch the dogs run laps around the house at top speed chasing each other.
- They also think that the river is the business.
- I bought a persian rug.
- It was 70% off and I loooove it.
- YAY ME!
- We went to Plum (a historically awesome Wellington cafe) the other day, and they've ruined it. It's all shiny and beautiful and everything matches.
- We were most disgusted.
- I have it on good authority (chur Pal Nikki) that Olive will be a suitable replacement for cafe awesomeness.
- I'll let you know.
- We had a marvellous time poking around Petone stores yesterday, then we took Cuinn down to the water to chase seagulls.
- He chased them right into the water.
- Oops.
- Apparently from his perspective, that just added to the seagull-chasing fun.
- I'm making inroads into the dirt, slowly, and things are getting organised.
- We're getting a quote for a re-wire at the moment.
- Especially after we blew the fuse and it took my new computer with it.
- 2 days after the computer arrived.
- ARGH!
- We've got a quote for a heat pump.
- We won't be doing much else except weeding for a while after we do those two big uns.
- I'm really tired.
- REALLY tired.
- I'm trying to remember all the things we've done so that I can bring you up to speed, and all I can think about is going to bed.
- We haven't seen the wood pigeon for a few days.
- We're a bit disappointed about that.
- Although at least the cars aren't covered in undigested berries.
- That's a bonus.
- We got a letter from Fertility Plus yesterday about the embryo transfers, telling us what will happen with the next one when we move ahead with it.
- It seems like a lifetime ago that we were having embryo transfers.
- I feel weird about it for no known reason.
- The husband put up a new washing line the other day and it's seriously in the most awesome spot ever.
- Or it could be that anywhere in Wellington is an awesome spot to dry your washing. Quite windy here it is.
- I really should just go to bed and try to think of the important stuff we've done tomorrow.
- Oh! But before I do, the neighbour wants to drop our chimney and remove our fire place, which is an excellent idea in theory, except it seems that the wooden floors don't go all the way under the fireplace.
- I have no idea what to do about the floor if we do get the chimney and fireplace removed.
- Tiles maybe?
- We're going to put deco lightshades through the entire house.
- Heh.
- I found an awesome pink dome one on Trademe last night.
- Heh heh.
- I'm not joking.
- I'm going to bed.
- Night!

The stories I could tell

Thank heavens for bullet points.

- The people who owned this house before us lived here for 15 years. I think it was last cleaned just before they moved in.
- The oven was so disgusting we had to throw it out.
- Both toilets need to be replaced. Fortunately the worst one was near a sink, which was handy for throwing up in when I tried to clean it.
- They built the kitchen around the fridge. I kid you not. The fridge was so stinky we bought a new one of those too, except as I found out yesterday when the new one was delivered, the kitchen went up around the fridge and it has to be dismantled to be removed. So I now have a new fridge in my lounge and the old one still sitting in its cavity waiting to be dismantled.
- They took all the sink plugs.
- All of them.
I kid you not.
- They also took the light fitting from the master bedroom.
- I emptied the vacuum 3 times doing the master bedroom. The master bedroom isn’t that big. I emptied it twice doing the bedroom opposite, and that’s only a little over a door width wider than a queen sized bed. Thank heavens there are only 2 carpeted areas in the house.
- I scrubbed the stairs old schools (on hands and knees with a scrubbing brush) and I’ve never seen water turn that colour before.
- I also slid down them shortly afterwards because I scrubbed off all the filth/grip.
- Whoops.
- Cuinn absolutely loves the hideously over-grown garden. He also loves that he can throw something into the greenery in front of the deck and it disappears from view. There’s now a lot of stuff in the greenery in front of the deck.
- The inside walls of the house need to be yellow.
- I really want a Persian rug, or something like it for the lounge. We were going to carpet, but have decided to go for a rug instead.
- Persian rugs, or anything like them are REALLY expensive.
- Poo.
- I still want one.
- This house loves clutter. That’s going to take some getting used to.
- The weather has been absolutely beautiful since we arrived.
- All the fuses in the house come to a single point. Thank heavens said point has a circuit breaker.
- There is no washing line.
- You can’t run the dryer if anything else in the house is on, or it blows the fuses for the entire house.
- I don’t like the way the circuit board crackles.
- A rewire is not going to wait.
- The previous owners say they are going to get all their crap out of the garage on Saturday. I don’t believe them, so I’ve ordered a skip for Sunday.
- Just joking.
- Sort of.
- I was told that putting vanilla essence in a dish and placing it in a room helps to absorb smell, so I tried it. It works fantastically, and this house smelled really bad.
- If you use the vanilla trick, don’t try sniffing the vanilla to see how well it worked.
- I can’t find our electric jug, all my baking trays or a particular saucer, and I’ve unpacked all the kitchen stuff.
- That’s not good.
- I’ll post pictures once a box pick-up has been done by the movers because at the moment, all you can see is boxes (and the new fridge in the middle of the lounge) so there’s no point.
- Caffeind in Petone does excellent coffee.
- I ripped my favourite jeans yesterday.
- The previous owner provided me with measurements to get curtains for the upstairs bedrooms because the house came with no curtains at all, just some knackered wooden blinds.
- She buggered up the measurements for one room.
- I had very expensive curtains shortened too short. Like, 15 cm odd off the ground.
- Am spectacularly furious.
- Unless curtains are deliberately short (fall below the windowsill), they look stupid.
- My pear curtains travelled with me from Auckland and now frame the French doors. They look awesome. Home is where the pear curtains are. As soon as they went up, Al and I started to feel better.
- Cuinn’s room is the sunniest in the house, looks awesome (apart from being painted pink, walls and ceiling), and is really cosy. He loves it.
- I need a draught excluder for his door because it finishes about 3cm off the ground.
- I’ve found the perfect one.
- It's expensive.
- Even in pounds.
- Al and I are homesick, but these things take time. We do like it here, we just miss our friends and workmates and workplaces.
- The husband loves his new job – apparently there’s a coffee machine in the smoko room and that’s all that matters.
- There’s no dishwasher, and no room for one.
- I kind of like it.
- At this stage.
- There’s a wicked Chinese takeaway up the road. Uber wicked. Best Chinese takeaway I’ve ever had. Fried rice isn’t oily and vegetables are perfectly cooked. Most impressed.
- I've had Chinese takeaways twice this week.
- I also want a door stop to match the draught excluder.
- The credit card is willing, but the husband will squeak.
- We really miss our dogs and our cat, but by the time they arrive on Friday night, the house will be set up and our influence will be stronger than the last owners’ and hopefully their stress will be less.
- I’ve only heard one car travel fast past our house since we arrived.
- There’s a wood pigeon that hangs out in a tree above our driveway.
- Cuinn looooves it.
- Parking a car under where a wood pigeon hangs out is not a good idea.
- The cat door is entirely metal.
- There’s a big rottie next door that the dogs are going to spend much time talking to I imagine.
- There is no TV aerial. Or there is, but it’s knackered.
- Either way, we have bunny-ears in our lounge so we can get kidzone.
- The telephone line had been taken down.
- There are telephone jacks absolutely everywhere.
- They’re really ugly.
- I have no idea how they talked to anyone on the phone with no telephone line.
- I’m going to start repeating myself if I keep going.

I'm hiding in the corner of my kitchen

The final day of packing up my life is in full swing, and I'm trying to stay out from underfoot as a small army of packers loads my life into boxes. There are a LOT of boxes. I had to climb over about 20 just to get to the corner of the kitchen so I could hide, and I only started on the other side of the kitchen.

We decided to camp one more night at the house tonight (should be interesting with the little ginger) and then that's us - on our way to Lower Hutt to meet our container at our new house come Saturday morning.

My house looks weird with nothing in it. It feels friendly, and yet there's no suggestion of the living that's gone on in it. It feels like there should be a suggestion of the living. Although, I just realised I left needle mountain in a kitchen cupboard, and the packers would have come across that sometime yesterday. That's kind of funny - how would you record that on an inventory ... ? Heh.

An instant, and an eternity

On 18th August my niece Mikayla, my younger brother's youngest child, died. She was 8 months old that day, lost to SIDS.

She was a beautiful, funny, dribbly, squeely baby girl, and her loss echoes terribly. I couldn't write without acknowledging her, and yet what can I say? It's a grief beyond words.


I thought I might need to bring you up to date in bullet points, but when I listed it all out I was a bit too horrified, so I'll pass on sharing and give you the two majors that you'll be most interested in, though I could always scan a copy of the $1,250 vet bill we copped last week to have Jazz cat's knee reconstructed if you were after something to laugh hysterically at ... I thought I might need to bring you up to date in bullet points, but when I listed it all out I was a bit too horrified, so I'll pass on sharing and give you the two majors that you'll be most interested in, though I could always scan a copy of the $1,250 vet bill we copped last week to have Jazz cat's knee reconstructed if you were after something to laugh hysterically at ...

Seriously though, how does a cat bugger its knee?

Anyway.

We have completed 3 frozen embryo transfer cycles, each of them unsuccessful. We did the cycles one after the other, but with only 2 remaining frozen embryos and quuuuuuite a bit going on at the moment, we're going to take a break until next year, give it six months or so, and then do another cycle. We apparently have strong embryos of excellent quality which are surviving the thawing process, but just aren't sticking.

Second, we're on the move. A transfer opportunity came up for the husband in Wellington, he applied, he got the job, and so. We banged our house on the market after a mad rush to get a few things that needed finishing (erm ... the kitchen for a start) finished, sold about two and a half weeks later with a settlement date about 3 weeks after that, which brings us up to this Friday coming. The movers come in on Wednesday and start loading our life into a container bound for Lower Hutt, and then on Tuesday the husband starts working a very different lifestyle shift which will see him spending more hours at work (12 hour days) but more days at home with his two gingers. We've bought a house, so watch this space for another round of house do-upping. Once the purchase has gone through. Which is another story altogether.

How fares the kidlet a couple of months on? He's not dull to have around, that's for sure.

The reality of IVF

That reality is that the positive results are the minority, and this cycle we have fallen into the majority.

It's excellent medicine having a manic little ginger screaming around the house - it doesn't leave much space for thinking about anything other than the positive outcome of our journey prior to now and that we've already got what a ridiculously high percentage of couples who seek fertility treatment will never get.

And cue cycle two.

There's a good chance (50/50) that this one'll be Rupert.

And, done.

More or less anyway.

The frozen embryo replacement cycle has been quite the doddle, all in all. I started blood testing on day 10 which showed no real ovulation-type action, so I had a couple of days off and had bloods taken again on day 13. Day 13 blood work showed a surge in hormone levels, so I repeated the blood test on day 14 and had a scan which confirmed a follicle was ready to pop, then hey ho, the embryo was thawed on Wednesday and replaced on Thursday, day 19 I think it was (it was a 5 day blastocyst, and so it was replaced 5 days after ovulation, to mimic the normal way of things). Just like that. Nothing much to it. Far too simple really. It's such a huge, uncertain thing, that leaves you feeling a bit 'what next?' like, because it's just done, and there are no bruises to heal, no pain to nurse, no drugs to take, just all done, off home to wait. Wait as though you are pregnant, but ... well.

I had a blood test yesterday, to check hormone levels were such that a pregnancy could be supported if one was underway and as the clinic was only going to ring if there was anything wrong and I didn't hear from them, one assumes at this point that the environment is good and it's all down to the embryo and whether it's strong enough. I can't even tell you what number we're rooting for - 3 or 4 is as much as the lab was able to tell me. Actually, they said it's 3, 4 or 9, but since 9 was busy trying to make a break out of the nurse's room at the time, that narrowed it down to 3 or 4. At least it's not both. Or better not be anyway. 3 seems to have good juju - a factor of 9, a third less ... personality, perhaps? than Cuinn. Perhaps. Or, as a friend (cheers Lynn), cheerfully suggested, three times the life. Ye gads. Four is also good of course - an even number to Cuinn's odd. Even number = even temper? Maybe? Pretty please?

What was uber awesome was that our obstetrician Paul, who cared for and delivered Cuinn, works 2 days alternate weeks at Fertility Plus and it all just kind of worked out that he was at the clinic on Thursday. I don't know if he was always going to do the transfer (there were other specialists in the clinic that day), or if he did it because we asked him if he could when we saw him there (we have Cuinn to thank for the seeing bit actually - having exhausted all the entertainment the water cooler/reception desk/selected rubbish bins/other people waiting in the waiting room could provide, he opted for streaking down the hall on his way to whereever he could make it before he was caught and shot past the office that Paul was in,giggling his head off with Al in pursuit, which caught Paul's attention, thereby bringing his presence in the clinic to ours) but either way, we couldn't have asked for more that someone who has been so involved and close to us with our journey was able to make the transfer. Full credit to his reflexes, he also managed to get a photo of the embryo (well, the fluid that the embryo was in - you can't actually see the embryo) in the split second between it shooting out of the catheter and embedding in my uterus.

So now, we're waiting. There's a pregnancy test within the next couple of weeks, but we're keeping the date under our hats. Just one of those things. We'll let you know though. Of course.

In which the kid gets spoiled. Again. Still.

I started blood tests today (day 10), which were in theory to be daily up until ovulation but the results have showed that my body is disinclined to rush, so we're taking a couple of days off and they'll have another look on Friday. We're not particularly phased - it'll happen the way it happens. At this stage it's probably a week away from embryo replacement. Possibly a bit longer. Will keep you posted.

And so

We've started our frozen embryo replacement cycle. Nothing much to it really. I rang the clinic on day one to confirm (we're now a couple of days in), they send me out the necessary forms so that they can track my natural cycle with blood tests (we're drug free for this one - and also relieved that Diagnostic handles all fertility blood stuff) and scans, then come ovulation they thaw out one of our little warriors and pop goes the embryo, as it were.

The only question I had really was about the thawing of the embryo(s), and what happens if it doesn't survive the thaw. I wondered if that cycle would be a bust and we'd have to do over, and then potentially do over and over for the next 5 months or so. But no, if the embryo doesn't survive, then the clinic gets our consent to thaw another and we continue to move forward. It didn't escape me that at the end of the cycle we could be pregnant, or potentially have lost all our embryos, but it's the nature of the beast isn't it, when you're dealing with an unnatural beast. However it plays out, whether our family is complete with Cuinn or there's another little ginger shockwave on its way, we're good. Relaxed. Celebrating the little ginger we already have. Looking forward positively, but not foolishly. I think.

There was something else I was going to say, but I've forgotten, so you can have more kid pictures instead.

Watching Kidzone in the morning. No idea why it's more awesome done in a trolley dangling a water bottle, but apparently it is.

Helping Dad cook dinner. It was really cute as he poured left over stock into the measuring cup (you can kind of see him tipping the carton up), until he poured the stock from the measuring cup all over the bench. To be fair, he was aiming for the blue bowl, but the kitchen did smell rather chickeny afterwards.

On his new bike which is MUCH easier for Mama and Dad courtesy of the nice long intended-for-big-people-to-use handle. Excellent. Photos are fuzzy obviously because it was very important that we didn't stop moving. Still, you can see a happy little face.

Busy in the rain

(In case it crosses your mind that he may actually be less playing with/peering into the manky water in the wheelbarrow, and more about to drink it - you'd be right)