Hello everybody!

I am uuuuunnnncomfortable! Very much so. In the middle of the night I wake up with leg cramps, I'm having a few brackston hicks, and the little lady in there is now big enough to make me feel like my sternam is located in a very inconvenient place - where her feet are actually meant to be.

But enough about that. Yesterday I held my own birthday/baby shower afternoon tea! It was soooo lovely to be surrounded by my half a dozen or so favourite-est girlfriends, people that I know I don't want to miss the opportunity to have one last really good gas-bag with before the bub comes in two weeks and I lose the art of conversation to the art of breastfeeding and managing a toddler, holding down the fort in the run-up until xmas and having my partner home from work for a month to help me keep on top of things and settle in to a routine. It was fabulous. I baked up a storm, made a pavlova look very appetising (I confess the pav part came from a box), and made some lovely fruit salad and some even lovelier percolated coffee. I love having my girlfriends over, and with the table being just the right size for seven of us it was a beautiful way to spend the afternoon, gorging ourselves on cake, fruit, and coffee. What an excellent excuse!

It makes me think this morning, while I just ate the last of the fruit salad with a little cream, about how it really was an important thing to do - to take a moment to savour the sweet things in life. My friend Mychelle will often remind me that as I pass a rose in full bloom, stop, like a small child and smell it. Breathe it all the way in, until you can taste the sweetness and really appreciate all the work that this little being has done, the rain water it has stored, the messages it has sent to the ground and back again, and the pollen that it has given to bees in exchange for a little tlc in the landing on her petals.

And that's one of the reasons that I decided to do the very unorthodox thing and have a baby shower, even though I've been there and done that before! I wanted to take time, with my favourite women, and welcome them and thank them in my home for looking after me during this time, and the time to come.

Friendships are fantastic, and there was a time when I didn't have any female friends at all. Back when I worked with all men, which I've spoken about before, I happily skipped over this fantastic part of being a woman. Well, not anymore...now I love the company of other women, and thank goodness I've been blessed with quite a few who feel the same way about life as I do, and have deep souls that they don't mind sharing...