Week 7 : A trying weekend...

This weekend was hard. Morning sickness has really settled in now and Wednesday evening, John's nephew Ryan came to stay with us for a long weekend. He has behaviour problems that I normally cope with fairly easily but fatigue, sickness and mood swings meant I found this weekend very fraught. What is worse, we don't want to tell the kids just yet as they aren't exactly known for their abilty to keep a secret, so I couldn't explain and just had to tell him I had a stomach bug.

To add insult to injury, the weather had been really hot recently and I have found that if I get at all warm, that is when I start to throw up so I really couldn't go out of the house very easily and had to have the air conditioning, which we got to cool down the dog, on almost all the time and have cold baths.

Ryan has the attention span of a typical teenager so needed to be entertained and normally I would do loads of out-and-about type stuff with him so I needed to find stuff to entertain him until John was home at the weekend.

On thursday, luckily he slept late as I was out for the count, and then we played playstation demos while waiting for Kris. Annoyingly, he was really good at Ratchett and Clank and finished the demo completely (I had played it for about 3/4 hour, got about 2 foot into the game before dying each time) but luckily didn't have enough patience for the puzzle solving of the Star Wars Lego game or I may have had to strangle him.

Once Kris arrived, we headed for Toys R Us, the idea being to get Ryan something like an electronics kit that I could help him with to keep him occupied. However, having enjoyed the Ratchett and Clank game, Ryan was angling for that so we wandered round and eventually, to my suprise, he settled on a kitchen chemistry set. Unfortunately the set had instructions and things like beakers but none of the ingredients so we would need to go to the supermarket and pick up any bits I didn't already have.

First we nipped to Hobby craft. I had made Kris a crochet hat to celebrate end of exams and Cath had said she wanted one in pink. Kris doesn't crochet but, as the hats are just made of 5 granny squares, and so very easy to make, I was going to quickly teach her and then she could do it herself, so we bought a hook and some wool and got a free set of knitting needles with it. I was tempted to buy some more wool but as I have it coming out of my ears I managed to resist.

We then spend another £18 on ingredients for the kit and headed home. We were there about 10 minutes when John came home. I started to teach Kris how to crochet granny squares and Ryan watched TV. Kris had to run off to meet friends so we had tea and an early night.
Once John got home we popped out and got a DVD, both of them got annoyed with me as I insisted Ryan could not see anything that he was not old enough to watch and was strict about it. We watched the DVD and headed to bed again quite early - I was feeling yucky so needed it and Ryan was tired and is sleeping in the lounge, not giving us much choice once he headed to bed.

Next day again we both slept in late, had some breakfast around lunch time, and then set up to do some chemistry. We started in the lounge but soon concluded it would be too messy so decamped to the kitchen. I got a stool and told him that it was his experiments and I wouldn't interfere unless he neede me too. First we made salt dough, which took me back to my childhood - my mum used to make loads of it for us to play with instead of buying play dough. We then pushed it round the beaker to make a mountain and filled the beaker with a bicarb mxture to make a volcano. It wasn't very impressive so we shoved more bits in to make a bigger mess but Ryan was unsatisfied and wanted to watch tv instead!

I was feeling worse and worse but persuaded Ryan to at least dye the flowers we bought as a present for his Nan.

Once done he decided to have a nap so I watched Escape from Witch Mountain while he snoozed. I had promised that I would go to my mum's for a singstar evening in the morning and John insisted on driving me as he seems to think I will total the car the moment I get in it. He booked tickets for the new Batman film for him and Ryan and they would pick me up after. They headed off to get something to eat and then see the film but were back fairly early - John had booked tickets in our home cinema instead of the one near Mum's and was quite red faced as he hadn't realised. Instead Ryan and John went ice skating - again not the roaring sucess it should have been as t was "disco" night and John was the eldest there by about 15 -20 years and felt rather out of place. Still he soldiered on and Ryan enjoyed it and Johns bottom was only COMPLETELY soaked when he returned to pick me up.

On Saturday, I had booked John and Ryan into Go Ape - a rope course through the trees in Swinley Forest. I am terrified of heights so was quite glad that pregnant women were advised not to take part and instead took my camera to take photos of the boys. We were booked in for the 8.00 session so had to be up and at 'em early so it was still nice and cool under the trees. Ryan and John both did quite well and certainly enjoyed themselves, particularly on the zip wires.

By the time it was finished, it was quite hot so I was the lovely combination of queasy and hungry. We headed to an early lunch and then Ryan insisted he wanted to go swimming. We headed home for bathing suits but John couldn't find his so we nipped out and bought him a new pair, luckily for just £7. I was getting VERY hot and bothered now and didn't want to go swimming as I thought it was bound to be hot and humid and I would get worse and to add insult to injury, Ryan was insisting he had forgotten his goggles so had to buy some more (what is it with that family?! John is always whining about getting water in his eyes too). We finally got to the pool paid, Ryan tried on goggles and we went in. Even John remarked that when I got in I completely changed - the water was cool not hot and the atmosphere unsteamy - it was perfect. We pootled round enjoying ourselves and for the first time since morning sickness dug in its claws I felt perfectly fine. What is more, te two of us couldn't help but go all gooey eyed over babys having their first swim, Dad's teaching the kids to dive etc. I best bit was the section outside, which was really cool and fairly quiet and I could have stayed their for ages...

We eventually got out and, by the time we got to the car, I was feeling just as bad as I had been earlier but the little respite had improved my mood somewhat.

Next morning it was time for Ryan to go back - we had agreed that we would go to sunday lunch at his Mum's but I was feeling so yucky I sent them on their own and spent the day on the sofa with the air conditioning at full blast feeling sorry for myself. John was supposed to come home after lunch (we had originally agreed to leave the dogs at home as it was too hot to cart them around in the hot car) but then didn't arrive home until the evening but I was feeling so rubbish I didn't have the energy to object.

I spent most of Monday asleep, recuperating...