Little things, all good

1. The weather has turned cold, so I got my winter coat out again. And found that it no longer does up.

2. On the other hand, I am wearing proper clothes again, instead of a ragbag of contrivances, and it halves my getting-dressed time in the morning.

3. This is due to the generosity of a friend-I-have-never-met, another slim midget, who packed up all her old maternity clothes and sent me the best-stuffed parcel I have ever had in my life. Next time I go on holiday I'm asking her to do the packing.

4. We think we have a moses basket (a free one, that is, because they're awfully expensive for something you only use for a handful of weeks, but very useful for those weeks). The baby up the road will have outgrown it before October, and when we've finished with it it can move on to another couple who are starting to think baby-shaped thoughts.

5. Actually, I'd quite like this baby to be a day late, which would make its birthday October the 31st. Easy answer to why we don't do Halloween, because actually, we don't. Not in a joyless, denouncing evil and picketing shops that sell devil's horns headbands kind of way, but just ignoring it. But it would make life easier to be able to say "no, we're not doing Halloween, because it's your birthday, and that is infinitely more important".

6. Over three weeks now without more than fleeting twinges of nausea. The sheer joy of being able to eat again

7. As a direct consequence of (6), finally putting some weight on. I'd been expanding merrily, but not gaining any weight, which seemed a little odd.

8. Also as a direct consequence of (6), drinking espresso again (only once a week, oh pregnancy food fascists, and it contains rather less caffeine than filter coffee anyway). I almost wept at how good it tasted.

9. Another direct consequence of (6), being able to get into to Norwich most Sundays to go to church again (hence the espressos, as Sunday morning buses are few and far between, and I have an hour or so to kill before the church doors open, which I spend in a cafe with a coffee, a pastry, and a book, pretending to be Continental).

10. I'm 99% certain I can feel movements. Quite a lot on Friday night, at a concert of early 17th century chamber music in an Elizabethan chamber. None at all during Eurovision. If movement indicates approval, this is a seriously cultured baby. If the reverse...