Easter

Here's what we looked like on Easter morning, having attended church for the three preceding evenings, culminating in champagne and hot cross buns at 12am at the end of the Saturday night vigil!

I bought Piper a bunny, and Gord a different bunny, and then I thought I'd better buy myself one too, in case Gord didn't think of it, and just as well I did! Piper's purple egg is from Pippa and Poppa. She's had a cold this week - caught it from me - so we've been rationing the chocolate intake. At the moment, only the bunny's head and ears have disappeared, along with a tiny top section of the egg. Needless to say, Gord's bunny and my bunny have long since been consumed!

Anyway, I'm sure you were all incredibly interested in the state of our Easter confectionary!

The highlight of our day today was having photos taken, largely to capture my pregnant belly. Gord paid for some of it, as a Christmas gift for me, and we got to organising the shoot this month, which is when I'm looking most impressive anyway! I found a photographer via google (you can look at her website here) and booked her. She works with natural light, as opposed to shots set up in a studio, so she came to our house and we posed in the beautiful golden afternoon light coming in through the loungeroom windows. We ended up nekkid, even, which felt really natural. I can't wait to see the results - might even publish one here! Depends how risque they are!

Gord and Piper are playing memory at the moment, and singing Baa Baa Black Sheep. I believe Piper's being the mum and Gord's being the whiny kid - it's somewhat disconcerting hearing our own words coming out of her mouth! I've made a cake, which is taking longer to cook than the recipe said, so the anticipation is growing!

Back to the pregnancy stuff (!), it's just so cool how Gord and I are both really excited about the upcoming birth. Not only because we'll get to meet this new life, but also, I'm actually looking forward to the labour. I think it will be different from last time, even though last time went so well. I'm just carrying way less angst about everything, and hope this means I'll be able to surrender even more easily to the whole process. It's felt really good to get the bedroom all painted, and a new doona and doona cover organised. Just need some curtains on the windows now! We haven't picked up the birth pool yet, but I really feel like the baby could come any time now and it would all work out fine. I've even managed to finish the placenta bag...

What's that? you say... We're planning to have a Lotus birth. What's that?? you say. Sounds fancy or whatever, but basically what it means is we won't cut the umbilical cord, so the cord and placenta remain attached to the baby until they drop off in their own time, in the baby's time. It's based on the idea that the placenta belongs to the baby, having developed from the same cells that the foetus came from. It can remain attached for three to ten days. You wash and drain the placenta well, and then salt it daily until it detached. It seems like a fairly mysterious process to me, but one worthwhile engaging in - we can tell you our experience, once we have an experience to share! We didn't do it with Piper, cos we didn't know about it then....

Anyway, will wind it up here and check the cake! Love to all...