21w4d

Is it too early to be nesting? Maybe I've just been bitten by the spring cleaning bug. Either way, I have been a little preoccupied with cleaning lately - vacuuming, scrubbing, mopping; cleaning and reorgansing the pantry and kitchen cupboards etc etc. It's not doing my aching back and hips any good but oh well. And at least the OH knows enough now not to argue with the obsessed pregnant woman LOL.

Shmoo and Loo's snowpeas are coming up well with all the sun we've had lately. I think the parsley seeds are just sprouting too... there's a wonky line of little green shoots anyway, so I'll wait and see if they're weeds or parsely before pulling them out. We've forgotten to water them lately after not having to water them at all because we had so much rain (I'd actually worried that the seeds might have washed away!) so the soil's a bit compacted and dry. I snuck out when Loo was asleep to pull out the weeds but didn't have much luck because it was so dry. Will have to wait a couple of days until we've gotten it all moist again. (Didn't want Loo to see me pulling the weeds out as he's too young to understand the difference between weeds & plants - turn my back for a second and he'd be ripping up the snowpeas LOL).

Hoping to get back into playgroups and homeschooling groups soon, now that the pregnancy's going well and hopfully there's not so much swine flu about. There was a homeschooling meet-up today 2 mins up the road from us and we'd been looking forward to going but Loo woke up all croaky and coughing, snot everywhere. Typical LOL. He doesn't seem so bad now but we didn't want to pass it on to all the other kids.

Speaking of homeschooling, Shmoo's doing pretty well. We do need to focus on numeracy a little more though. His reading is coming along well. He does well with all his letter sounds (phonics stuff) and we've just started on some sight words. He can read short sentences when he wants to too (bit of a daydreamer and a short attention span so it's all done in short bursts). The other day he read: 'a frog on a log', 'a baby cat is a kitten', and 'a drink of milk'.

Loo has an appointment with the allergist in Launceston in just over a week (the 19th). He'll be restested and we need to get another prescription for epipens. The eczema around his mouth has been clearing up well with the reduction in salicylates. This has also made it obvious that he is still reacting to something in his diet. The common factor seems to be soy products so we'll try to cut those out and see how he goes. I know he did react to soy when he was a baby. I thought he'd outgrown the intolerance but perhaps his tolerance for it had just increased a little. Anyway, we'll cut it out and then re-introduce it slowly at a later date. It's going to be a PITA though as I can't stand the taste of rice milk. Anything that requires milk I'll have to cook separately, use rice milk for the kids and soy milk for us.