Here! Alive! And fat!

Well, hello.

And how are you? Much been happening lately?

Nah, not much going on here, either...

Except I'm having anopther baby in a month. A MONTH.

That leads to noises like 'yarrrrrppppkkkkgaaaahhh' forming in my mind and usually dribbling out of my mouth. What are we doing? We have one already. That's plenty, surely. He takes up all of the room we have, and deprives us of excessive amounts of sleep already. We're full.

Yeah, right, lady. Should have thought of that 8 months ago, you thoughtless slapper.

Contrary to what the above may suggest, I haven't just found out about the whole baby thing. We have had a few month's warning, and I wasn't under the delusion my increasing gut was purely the result of too much cider and cheesy doritos (though that's contributed to it, obviously). I had great intentions of doing a lovely regular pregnancy blog (because what the internet really nees is another simpering woman comparing her foetus to fruit and posting pictures of above-mentioned gut every ten minutes). But I failed. And for that you should all be truly thankful.

Unlike last time, I have so far avoided being bundled to hospital and made to pee in a bucket, so that's been refreshing. Though there are still four and a bit weeks, so there's still time for them to get in some crazy hospitalized torture. Though if we have our way we're going all knitted-yoghurt hippy and birthing this one at home, complete with dolphins, whale song, Mongolian nose-pipes and a lot of ooommmming (or should that be mooing? Probably). Anyway, I'll fill you in on all of those plans in a whole other "home birth the badger way" post (in about seven or so years' time, when I finally drag myself onto this here interwebs and remember I have a blog again. Though by then blogs and internets and all probably won't exist, and we'll all be hovering around communicating telepathically, I expect.)

So, yes. I am big with child. Lumpy seems pretty excited about it all, and his baby-knowledge and all-round expectations are remarkably similar to mine. "Babies cry all the time," he declares, before screwing his face up to demonstrate: "WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

He's talking like a right proper person now. It's brilliant. Though he does talk a lot. Good god, it's a never-ending stream-of-consciousness commentary on everything around here. But I much prefer that to the screaming of ickle babies, so that's fine. But I should dedicate many, many posts to him and who he is now, because he is, in all seriousness, utterly awesome and amazing, and I feel sorry for everyone else who doesn't have a Lumpy, and who have to put up with their frankly substandard children. We got the best one out there, so sorry about that.

I have a few more weeks at work, and then will hopefully get in some intense lazing before this new one shows up. Though knowing my luck and my children's desire to prevent me having any leisure or fun or anything at all ever, he'll probably turn up ten days early, just as I start leave, just to spite me. The malicious little unborn.

So, here we go again. I am fairly petrified at the thought of having another newborn to deal with, plus the Lumpy - who is an unending delight, obviously (see gushing paragraph above), is also rather demandingand requires lots of attention all of the time NOW NOW NOW.

I like sleep. Lumpy only really learnt to sleep when he was about 20 months old. There are tears and wailings and baby-throwing threats in our future, I fear.

But hey. We're old hands at this now. So I'm sure we'll cope somehow. Or at least be more open to active neglect.

I really will try to post here more often from now on. After all, you don't really have anything to do on maternity leave, right? Just lots of hanging around with a baby who sleeps allt he time? Right? That's what it was like, if I remember correctly. I'll probably get that best-selling novel written while I'm at it. And cure cancer. And sort out world peace. All before lunch (which will mainly consist of crisp sandwiches).

I get the feeling I may be rambling. But it's a post! A post! Lumpybadger is back! Wooooo!

Oh, and the new one? We have a name:

Flumpy Pie.

The first part is because it couldn't really be Lumpy 2.0, but we're not actually all that imaginative. The second part is down to Lumpy, who, when asked what the baby in mummy's tummy was called, gave an enigmatic, slightly disturbing, smile, and declared "Baby Pie." We don't know where this came from (though I'm sure some time in the past I made an ill-judged joke about putting babies into pies, which Lumpy seized upon with blood-thirsty joy. Of course.) Though it may be that he was actually thinking of 'Baby Pi'. He's very advanced, you know, so that's probably it.