Happy #Caturday

I know its silly but I love it! Every week I'll try and post another photo of our little darlings. This is Dallas in a box (taken with an Olympus OMD EM5 if you're into your photography). At this very moment they are racing around like mad things!

6 Things that surprised me about being pregnant

So it’s been 30 weeks, I thought I’d write a post about my pregnancy misconceptions. I’m a first time mum and my own mother isn’t around to tell me what to expect so it’s been an interesting experience to compare what my layperson expectations of pregnancy were to experiencing the real thing.

Banned Food & Drink list

Everyone knows you can’t drink alcohol or caffeine when you’re pregnant so that didn’t come as a great surprise. However, freshly squeezed juice that’s more than a couple of hours old? Large fishes? Soft cheeses? Beansprouts and other veg that have been stored in a plastic package where water may have condensed? These were all news to me. It didn’t cause too much bother to me though as I’m not a great cheese eater (thankfully mozzarella is ok which is pretty much the only cheese I like) and I don’t eat any of my friends from the sea. I’m just missing my daily cappuccino and the occasional mojito or glass of wine.

Aversions instead of cravings

Talking of food, I was expecting crazy cravings at 2am. Thankfully that didn’t happen. What I wasn’t expecting was for things I already loved to start making me feel ill and not want to eat them. Nutella and Coffee (decafe naturally), but why!? I had to shake up my whole breakfast routine.

16 Week scan results

Its common knowledge that you can have an Abortion up to 24 weeks (in the UK anyway). So I wasn’t expecting much ‘baby’ in the 16 week scan, actually a grey slush of a few blobby cells was what I was expecting. Amazing there she was, fully baby shaped, chilling with her little legs crossed and waving her arms about. Eek! It all became real in that moment. Actually, those scan photos (seemy previous post for the photo) were the best ones so far because since then she’s been in an uncooperative position for scan photos.

Anti-cat hormones

For the first month or so my little Leeloo would have nothing to do with me :( I’m pretty sure she still thinks I smell funny but she’s got used to it by now and lowers her standards enough to sit on me (when Daddy isn’t around of course).

Maternity trousers

I wasn’t a skinny girl before I got pregnant, not massively overweight either but large enough not to want to wear skinny jeans. My personal opinion on skinny jeans (and generally any trousers that taper thinly at the ankle) is that you end up looking like a large arse on a stick. Even a skinny pregnant girl is going to look like a python who ate too much at once. So why-o-why makers-of-maternity-clothes are skinny trousers all I can seem to find in the shops?? I'm in need to get some bigger clothes again and hope to have a more successful shopping trip this time (fingers crossed).

Morning Sickness

Well, where do I start with this one, this one topic was full of surprises.

• It's not just restricted to the morning! At first there was no actual sickness just horrendous nausea from about 3 in the afternoon onwards. I could hardly see straight and was terrified there would be a *keyboard incident* (but thankfully not).

• Brushing my teeth related. What the hey? When the sickness did finally kick in, it was in the mornings but only as a result of brushing my teeth. Very odd. I got myself a new electric toothbrush which helped a bit but not for long.

• A change in breakfast routine was required, I needed something in my stomach so I started having coco pops (something that might have made me ill at 6am previously anyway).

• Morning sickness gives you red freckles. I had to google this one! They go within a few days or so but it’s really strange. Something about the blood vessels in your face breaking – eewwww.

• It seems to go on forever, its supposed to stop around 14-16 weeks but mine went on for weeks after that. It was around week 23 or 24 that I worked out if I switched the coco pops to chocolate milk I’d be ok again. Phew! (and my blog site name was born).

So there you go, I'd be interested to hear what other mums-to-be found strange or unexpected so please comment below.

Why Mums Get Nothing Done

I had to laugh at this. It's going to be a while before mine is this age but I'm quietly pleased I'll be at work when this shenanigans is going on - just add two curious cats to the mix and its going to be utter chaos. Good Luck Mike!



Video by Esther Anderson. See it directly on YouTube here.
See more of Story of This Life's videos at http://www.storyofthislife.com/

The Vaguest of Good Fortune To You

My fortune cookie made me laugh, while positive, it was quite possible the most vague statement ever "Good things are coming to you in due course of time".

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Today is the last day of the Chinese New Year. If you're in London, try and make it down to China town as today is the day it all kicks off with parades and entertainment. The parade starts at 10:15 today at Duncannon Street. I'd love to be down there with my camera but I don't fancy getting pushed around in the crowds in my current state (plus I have prior plans today). I'll have to live vicariously through twitter :)

VisitLondon.com have brought out a rather handy map which shows where the parade will travel. Head over to their Chinese new year page to see what's going on and for full details of the map.

Drawn By Light Exhibition Review

Over on my OCA video course site I posted a review on an photographic exhibition called Drawn By Light. Its still on at the Science Museum in London (until 1st March) so head over to my other blog to read all about it :)

Whats cute & grey and has a hard life? PhotoFriday - 'Gray'

On my UnderwaterPhotography blog I try to do a PhotoFriday post when the mood strikes me (or the theme is good). This week the theme is Gray (one presumes so that they can jump on the #50Shades bandwagon). Earlier today I posted mine on social media with the tagline “What’s cute and grey and likes to be tickled”, well Manatees of course, get your minds out of the gutter! This is my follow up post for a more close-to-home look on how one poor Manatee has fared in the dubious clutches of our very own cat Dallas. No wonder they are on the verge of extinction! Actually, this Manatee is a hardy little chap, he’s been fixed several times and is still going strong as Dallas’ go-to toy when he wants to beat the crap out of something other than his sister. If you’re stopping by Three Sister Springs looking for a souvenir (or a trip to see the Manatees since its the right time of year), we got this one from Birds Underwater. When Dallas was a only a little kitten he claimed him as his own (even though the Manatee was well over half his size) and has been dragging him around the house ever since. I don’t think Dallas would be so bold around a real manatee (water notwithstanding). Here is a short video of one having a good old fashion scratch (they are like giant underwater puppies).

Scratchy Time with Ringo the Manatee from Suzy Walker-Toye on Vimeo

Happy Chinese New Year

Year of the Sheep

So my little baby girl is going to be born in the year of the sheep like her mum was! :) What does that mean? Well, according to Chinese Astrology the personality of sheep people is as follows...

People born in the Year of Sheep are tender, polite, filial, clever, and kind-hearted. They have special sensitivity to art and beauty and a special fondness for quiet living. They are wise, gentle and compassionate and can cope with business cautiously and circumspectly. In their daily life, they try to be economical. They are willing to take good care of others, but they should avoid pessimism and hesitation.

Apparently this is about right according to my Husband the Rooster, who we should all believe because he is known to be very honest :)

It's going to be a good day...maybe

You get a feeling about a day by the little things that happen. Today the giant fluffy hat of winter is gone, the sun is out, I have cool shades on my face and two songs came on my music shuffle one after the other which had me bopping along on the train (doing my best fraggle rock impression)....

Uptown funk

Funky Nassau

Oh but then I decided to blog about it and discovered you cannot seem to embed videos using the blogger mobile app (there's no HTML option and the desktop version of YouTube on my mobile wasn't showing the embed code link), so hopefully the links work. *sigh*

EDIT: I had to go back and fix the links anyway so I embedded them. Lesson learnt.

Happy Pancake Day! Nom Nom Nom.

Photo copyright Jack Zalium licensed under creative commons from flickr.

I broke my pregnancy Nutella fast tonight with some Nutella filled pancakes and Ben & Jerry's Chocolate fudge browny ice-cream for dinner (because thats how we roll)! Even though Mike hasn't cooked them for ages they were perfect :) The photo above isn't one of mine (because the phone photo I took whilst trying to fend off two cats and not letting my ice-cream melt was a bit of a mess)!

What did everyone else have for pancake day?

Welcome to my new blog

Introduction

Hi. I'm Suzy. Scuba_Suzy on twitter.

For those of you who follow my underwater photography blog, you may know that I'm now expecting a baby. 28 weeks now. I figured I'd need a little extra space on the internet for my baby and cat photos which don't really fit on the other blog! So here it is... my new space. I hope you like it. I'm hoping this blog will be more 'lifestyle'. I'll probably post more random stuff here, reviews (and not just about camera & underwater gear but baby related and other gadgets), personal photos, links to cool things I find interesting on the net, money making tips (I'm going to be so stint during maternity leave).  I expect that even my lovely husband will make an appearance now and then with his two-penith.

Why Chocolate Milk for Breakfast?

Well, its the only thing the stopped the morning sickness! Besides, who wouldn't want chocolate milk for breakfast :)

Test Post

This is my first blogger post. I'm testing out what a typical post might look like to customise the site with.