Phuthu Stay Phut, Don't go!

Update 1:

14kg’s – that’s how much this pregnancy has blessed me with. That’s quite a nice way of saying it hey? But it’s true…a whole fourteeeeeeen! And I’m not done yet!  I thought that I’d just get that off my chest to begin with and I must say that I feel lighter already. NOT!

Most people say “No way, where did it all go? I can’t see it”.  I luff these people. LUFF!

So I’ve done a complete analysis of the situation and besides water, extra blood and extra tissue, there is most certainly extra fat tissue accounting for the extra weight. The storage cells seemed to have gathered en masse at the top of my thighs resulting in the total loss of my ITG (inner thigh gap).

A little also went to the boobs, but that growth seems to have stagnated a little. And then there is the face – I feel like I have been given an overdose of Botox from my forehead to my chin. Great if it were just my lips and brow area but who…who….who would want to have their nose infused with botulinum? Not me. You don’t have a choice in pregnancy though – you just have to suck it up and embrace the swelling and tell yourself “this too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass”.

However facetious I may sound, being pregnant is wonderful, not only do you get to carry a little life inside you, you also get to stick your tummy out when you’ve eaten one too many pancakes and people are none the wiser – they just think you’re “glowing”.

And even with an extra 14kg’s, it’s hard to believe that so many people tell you how cute your tummy is!

But the one remark that I haven’t heard in ages and the one that was usually reserved for aunties and long lost uncles with false teeth is “but my goodness you’ve grown”!  Except only now the reference is to growth along the x axis and not the y axis.

So all in all, the extra weight is totally out of my control…I just baked these cupcakes….and photographed them….

I solemnly swear that I in no way, devoured at least 3 of each delicious….

…..sublime…..

…heavenly…

…..wicked, creamy, exhaustingly tasty flavour. I practice extreme self-control, like most pregnant women.

Update 2

I celebrated my 29^th Birthday and had a baby shower all in one week. Sjoe, I was so spoilt I can’t even begin to explain. I was spoilt with flowers, quirky jewellery and girly stuff on my birthday and I learnt a plethora of new terminology at the baby shower and received so many special gifts. Periwinkle is a lucky little periwinkle!

Update 3:

Our dinner club pic was published in the Essentials magazine, courtesy of my friend Kelly. There’s something about having your pic in a magazine that makes you feel the need to purchase the magazine don’t you find? Sucker.

Update 4:

And then there is the “my husband lost his finger story”! Yes, in a pure act of Darwinian genius, my man managed to cut off the tip of his finger in the brake rotor of his bicycle. I’m told that this is a common occurrence amongst men – there’s a whole community out there with fully or partially cut off fingers. Invitation by clumsiness only. Converse to that, there is a community out there that wants to know “What happened to your finger exactly?”. From the Woolworths checkout cashier to 4 year old whipper snappers to grannies with purple curls, everyone wants the story.

It’s quite simple: The bike was upside down, he got distracted, put his hand in the spokes to slow the wheel down where and accidentally got one digit caught in the rotor. A little flying saucer of flesh crashed to the ground, Jem picked it up, put it back on and began riding out the valley.

I met him at Steve’s rooms – Steve is a good friend of ours who happens to be a doctor. He stitched the poor little piece of flesh back on and it didn’t look too bad but it didn’t look great either.

Anyway, throughout the week it got worse, turning darker shades of grey until it was completely black.

Eventually he went to see a plastic surgeon who pronounced the tip of the finger dead. “We’ll need to do a skin graft and might need to cut off a bit of the bone”. I was absolutely devastated at the thought of my man losing flesh and bone from his finger, never mind what was going through his mind!

I mean what does one do when this happens? Do we have a little funeral for the lost tissue? Do we bury it in the garden and say our goodbyes? Do we donate it to a worm farm? Do worms eat dead finger? Is dead finger yummy? All these legitimate concerns started going through my mind.

It was gruesome but the graft had to be. When I first saw this picture, I thought a.) grose and b.) Aaaaah how sweet that he kept his wedding band on…until I realised that it was the wrong hand and the “rings” were actually clamps.

Since then my man has made a wonderful recovery, the stitches are out, the tip of the finger is round and of course, its the rosy colour it should be. I must mention that during the healing process, my man felt extremely proud to have mastered the art of left-hand butt wiping. Your thought for the day..

Best of all though, none of the bone was sacrificed and Jem’s finger gets to live happily ever after!

Update 5:

Last update: Our little periwinkle is due to arrive in 4 weeks. Wooo heee wooo heee wooo heee (that’s me practising my breathing!)

My husband has been begging me to design some new Phuthu cycling shirts. Shame, I feel bad – his are looking a little sad and he just keeps wearing em, week in week out…Such a good Phuthu Punter he is.  So one evening I hauled my pregnant butt downstairs and changed them a bit…okay quite a lot.

My man asked for more “white space” which as a designer I LOVE  but it ain’t so great for mountain biking, you know what I’m saying?! The shiny white you see below will turn to a lightish shade of brown in about 2 hours in the valley. Kind of like the brown you see when your tea is a bit anaemic, neither here nor there (and not so tasty). And I’m not so sure it will look too sexaaaay with the black sleeves. I can do pink and orange together but brown and black…mmm, nah!  But hey, at least everyone who wears the shirt will get to look good in it at least once. And I really must stress here that I have nothing against light brown, it really is a beautiful earthy colour and mixes well with other earthy colours, so no offence to any light brown molecules out there! Luffs you.

So if you are wondering what the “CamelToe” reference is to then hell you need to do some reading hee hee!! You can find all the details here which I’m sure you’ll find either amusing or terribly grotesque depending on whether you’re an A or B Type personality or alternatively just grossed out by references to pieces of clothing creeping into places that they probably weren’t meant to creep into. Sjoe that was a long sentence.

FRONT

BACK

This is how it all started…………………………It was the day before my birthday and I’d climbed into my car to head for work – I laughed, this was funny!  Not being one for big parties, surprise or otherwise, I kinda hoped my 40^th would slip by with no one noticing…..

Then, throughout that morning I was sms’ed cryptic clues on the hour, something about  “sweaty palms”  and  “adrenaline” etc etc.

The big clue was to come at 2 pm…”check under your car passenger seat” the sms read. This is what I found……

I knew immediately what it meant! A chopper flight! How exciting! I was to be at Virginia Airport for an Intro chopper pilot lesson at 4pm sharp!

Excitedly I headed down there ready for my lesson…..”too windy I’m afraid” was the instructors advice. “You’ll never be able to hover…” . “we can re-schedule for next week”

So I left a little disappointed but still excited for my flight to come.

I headed back home to my wife and this is what was next at the top of the stairs…..!

The rest is Censored censored censored censored. Then it was a romantic dinner for the two of us at our favourite little local restaurant. All this and it was only the day before my birthday!

The day of my birthday had arrived. My gifts were opened one by one revealing great gifts from my wife, cats and unborn child. (wonder where the cats got the money?) After that I had planned to go for an early morning cycle – dressed up and ready, I headed down to the garage to get my bike and this is what I found!

I was to go to the country club for a lesson with the golf pro! Just what I needed, it was awesome and it’s definitely bumped my game up a notch.

My next instruction was on my car door window:-

I was to head off to Oscars (our other favourite local eatery) on my bike at 2 pm. I suspected there would be one or two guys there for a quick ride. Sure enough there was a big bunch of bikers led by Rohan, ready for a quick downhill spin into the valley of 1000 hills. Best part was it looked like the van was heading down there too and we didn’t have to ride out again! I didn’t event mind having to wear a kiddies bentley belt with a hippo head attached to the front!

As we got to the dam, another surprise, there my lovely wife had arranged a small gathering with cake and cool drinks! I just needed to supplement that with a few ice cold, ten rand quarts from the local shebeen and the sunset at Fundani’s development canoe club’s container clubhouse was complete. Cant get much better than a cold quart at sunset in the valley of 100 hills with my wife and friends.

Next morning was to be the biggest surprise of them all! My birthday was a thing of the past and I had set my alarm nice and early to go for a ride which I had pre-arranged the night before. As I got up I was handed my next clue card!

I dashed into Shewy’s room (our unborn son/daughter) and after a bit of hunting, found this!

I hurriedly packed my bags and we shot off to the airport to catch a plane to Cape Town where we picked up a rental and headed off to the Cedarberg, destination – Bushmans Kloof Lodge! Here we had a tranquil luxurious few days with great food and some great hikes!

You know you’re staying larney when you see this in your bathroom!

Big up to Lou at 6 months pregnant, hauling that big tummy up and down the rock ledges around the “Ravine hike”

The spa…..

The Picnic…..

The Cedarberg’s rugged beauty…

Did I mention how good the food was? Especially the duck…..

Monday evening we headed back to the airport for out homeward flight. My birthday celebration had been a 3 day fun affair!

I had a wonderful time full of surprises and more surprises (probably as a result of too much time spent watching the “amazing race” hey Lou?).  Thank you so much Lou, my special wife, thanks for all the effort. I love you.

I’m officially at the “baby factory” age. It seems everyone around me is having babies. There are preggy tummies everywhere and babies and children and prams and bottles and it’s like people have just discovered procreation. Seriously! What’s with that?

I’ve got 12 weeks to go. So that’s 12 weeks to get the nursery sorted, find a cot, buy some furniture and think of some non-dorky but not-too-cool names. Piece of cake!

…and that’s exactly what I feel like right now mmm..

So everyone thinks I’m having a boy, so much so that I’m convinced I’m having a boy now too. All I can say is that if we have a girl, we’re going to get one humongous surprise and all pronoun references will have to change asap!  I cannot wait for the announcement… “it’s a ….”. So suspenseful but how exciting?!

Did I mention I was excited?

I’m so excited. Who will this little karate chopping cashew turn out to be?

I’ll let you know in 12 weeks.

Check my belly button – I have an outie!

I spent this past weekend celebrating my man’s birthday…

The big 4-OH!

OH YES! I must say though that my man must be the youngest looking 4-tee year old that I’ve ever seen and most days I have to ask the rhetorical “..and how old are you hun?”. For example, if your 4-tee year old husband wanted to play soccer with a pilates ball in a busy gym – making it known by kicking the ball into the air and across the gym studio whilst other people are busy doing sit-ups and stuff – then you would say “and how old are you again?”. But it’s all okay with me, I don’t ever want to stop asking that question cos that would be the day I’d stop laughing!

Anyway…back to birthday celebrations: I planned a mini adventure for the special dude but he’s going to tell you all about it next week. The strenuous moments of the adventure however, went something like this:

and like this:

The view from the spa..

It was a tough adventure …

but someone had to do it

Have I been busy lately! But isn’t everyone always “busy”? It’s a national sport – whether you’re busy doing something or busy doing nothing, everybody is always busy. I’ve definitely been busy doing something though.

For the last 8 months we’ve been working on converting our Wedding Directory website into a dynamic site which means more functionality for our brides and easier management for us.

It took me about 2 months just to write the brief which was more like a thesis in the end. But I like being comprehensive, in fact I can’t help it, it’s one of my obsessive compulsive quirks when it comes to projects. So after all these months, we finally have our precious site looking all sparkly and fresh. Have a look at www.TheWeddingDirectory.co.za

Isn’t it perrrdi? It was a huge team effort but when you’ve got a good team and good developers, then it makes it so much easier, know what I’m saying, aight? Aight!

And then in the midst of all that, we’re doing alterations to the house which means running around getting quotes and painting rooms and cleaning up cat footprints which have been coated in cement. It’s really exciting seeing it all come together though.

And then…we have to make time for the soccer of course. A cup of tea at 8.30pm just wouldn’t be the same without Jabulani and a few yellow cards. Thanks goodness the Tour de France is on now as well because soccer withdrawal symptoms are bound to set in soon.

And congratulations are in order for one of the team. Kerry is pregnant too! Yes, be warned if you come and work at Limelight Websites…the pregnancy bug has taken siege and top buttons are shooting off left, right and centre. They certainly are not falling off due to the 10 varieties of sweets we have in the office.

And that’s all I can report for this week…need to get back to work now….