A new normality dawns ?

Well things have settled down a little in the last few days.

Helen's ghastly pain has still not gone away but it is being masked by drugs at least, so she can move around more comfortably. Sadly, it's back to the doctor tomorrow though to see if we cannot make some inroads into finding out what is causing it.

The US contingent of the grandparental army have finally named the date(s) of their arrival. Diane is being sent ahead as an advance party to be followed a few days later by Gareth. The Bournemouth contingent are still on manoeuvres in Tunisia and we continue to live in hope that they are going to contact us to confirm their return date.

Helen went to her NCT mothers/prospective mothers coffee morning yesterday. Finally got to meet Harry ("not Willow") Patten , Xander (not to be confused with Stizostedion Lucioperca which is pronounced the same but spelled differently, only grows to about 8.5kg and tastes of river mud) Booth and Freddy ("not Sheikh") Spear . Also present were Lois ("not Lane") Emily Strachan/Morris and Harrison ("not Ford") Holbrook. Molly ("not Malone") Sendall contrived to sleep through virtually the whole event. Amy & Carl had their baby yesterday, but we have yet to meet Sacha ("not Lifan") Lim. We still await the arrival of [baby name] ("not B") Weir and [baby name] ("not Crawley") Kirby.

Many of you will have seen the headline on the front page of www.bbc.co.uk yesterday "Large rise in infant sofa deaths". Had us worried for a while, but then we realised that all of our sofas are really quite old. Sorry, the sleep deprivation seems to be affecting my sense of humour.

Molly did not sleep quite so well last night, but she did allow us some respite for a couple of hours on at least 2 occasions. So on balance, as the rosy fingered dawn of a new normality appears above the horizon (or is that just my rose tinted specatacles at work ?) things are really beginning to look up.