Here’s some pictures from the munchkin’s birthday and the morning after.

This one is from first thing in the morning when he was opening the presents that Great-Gran from England sent while Mum had her on the phone.

Paddington Bear is apparently better read upside down.

Here’s the amazing cake that Becka made, it has Sarah from LBT on it, and then Clifford, Elmo and Curious George all having a party.

Blowing out the candles (not that you can really see that portion of things)

The fire pit in action

The next day Mum came over and the munchkin took her outside and patted the bike and told her “Seat! Seat!” so she had to sit down and show him how the bike worked.

It was a good time had by all, as I said before. Munchkin keeps asking me to sit on his bike too, but I can’t bend down that low…it’s been so tiring lately that my limbs are too achy thanks to the fibromyalgia. Stupid illnes.

Today is the munchkin’s second birthday, it’s still a long strange trip. This time two years ago I’d just been given the wonderful epidural and professed my love for the anesthetist. We’d been in hospital overnight. I was on a pitocin drip and my water had broken just before 7 a.m. I was told to nap for a couple of hours and then we tried standard delivery but the child with the huge head he got stuck, and so he wound up being delivered by C-Section at 4:28 p.m. on 4/26/06. He was 9lbs 6oz and 20 3/4 inches long.

Right now I’m not sure exactly how tall he is, somewhere approaching 3 feet, and he weighs about 35lbs. He’s currently trying to rescue a chameleon from the cat, and playing in the newly fenced off yard, while Gran and I clean up and prep to cook and a friend of ours is helping keep an eye on him and clear up the yard around the fire pit and get more fire wood chopped ready for marshmallow cooking later on.

Here’s a few pictures showing how he’s changed over the past two years.

The first picture of him ever taken. He was about fifteen minutes old at this time, and still angry as you can see. Mum took this one as he was being taken to the “waiting area” for his other grandparents to see him.

This one was taken a few days before his first birthday.

And this one is him this morning. More interested in other things than the camera.

My little baby is definitely looking more like a little boy.

Yes, that’s right. I’m featured on the website I got my hair dye from: Amphigory. Amphigory sells all kinds of fun and unusual things. They sell wigs, hair dyes, accessories and make-up.

I wrote to them thanking them for their wonderful product that I’ve gotten so much joy out of and sent them a couple of pictures and they’ve put them up on their site: check it out here. I’m fourth down!

So, here I am rocking the self portrait again this week.

This was taken last night after Mum and I got back from taking the munchkin to a local restaurant to eat. We spent four hours (at least) yesterday re-doing my hair with Nuclear Red, Pimpin Purple and Blue from Special Effects and Paul Mitchell respectively. Hair dye. Yes.

The pink was starting to look rose and orange, so it was time to get things going again. I have to say that I absolutely love Special Effects hair dye. It’s not every dye that you can leave on your hair for almost an hour and the hair is light and fluffy and fresh and clean rather than stripped and nasty when you’re done.

See what the others are doing with their self portraits this week, by checking things out at MidLife Musings. It’s still hosted by Cass, don’t worry, but just on a different blog!

Happy Easter.

This was taken this morning while I was making wontons for our Easter dinner at my FILs. The munchkin saw me get the camera out and asked to be picked up. So, here we go. This is my first Self Portrait Sunday on this blog for a while because I was using my now defunkt photo blog for them.

Anyway, it’s been a pretty busy day so I wouldn’t be surprised if things are slow on this week’s entry but I’m going to stop by and check them out.

This is more of a family portrait really. Nimue was snuggling with me and the munchkin came over to pet her, so I decided to try and get a portrait of all of us. Not going to mention how many tries it took to get all of us decently in the photo where you could actually tell what’s going on.

Cass is using Midlife Musings to host Self Portrait Sunday now. Check out this week’s entry to see what’s going on with everyone who participates.

The munchkin keeps trying to play basketball like the “big boys” who live across the street. It’s so cute.

More kitty spam! Nimue is settling in nicely.

Fear the kitty spam!

We have our own personal good news this week. We adopted a kitty from the Humane Society. Her name is Nimue Caledonia. Nimue for the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian legends and Caledonia for the ancient Roman name for the Scottish areas that my family hails from.

As you can imagine I’m very VERY happy to have this new addition to our family. My husband surprised himself and me being also happy about the cat. He has allergies to cats and couldn’t be around my old cat Ani for very long at all, but given we have the filter and the allergen reducer on the A/C unit and tile floor and I found a light haired cat who wanted to come home with us we thought it might be okay and so far he hasn’t had any allergy attacks despite the fact that she’s a very lovey-dovey kitty and likes to climb up on everyone and lick and nuzzle with them.

Nimue had a little bit of a sad story before coming to us. She wasn’t abused by any means but she was born at the shelter and had been taken home by another lady and then brought back. The lady had been calling the shelter and her vets office every day complaining that the cat was too noisy and was keeping her up and couldn’t they do something about the fact that she meowed too much. The workers at the shelter told her that perhaps it was best if she just brought the cat back to them and they would hopefully find someone else to take her. The munchkin and I came in two days later and she came up to the bars and stretched out trying to touch me. The workers had been telling me about another cat called Tigger who we had met on the previous Friday while visiting but he had longer fur and I felt that we were meant to have a female cat.

When “Angelina” as they were calling her came up to the bars and I found out her name I had a feeling she might just be our cat, and then when I heard what had happened and saw how lovey and gentle she was that was it. She came home with us.

I’m always amazed at how much good work the humane society does. Leesburg Humane Society is a no-kill shelter, which means if an animal doesn’t get adopted they’re at the shelter until they die of ill health or natural causes. The shelter is often over crowded because of this as most people want to adopt puppies and kittens or will go to a shelter which does kill the animals because they’re saving them.

I also know from working there that they take a huge loss on every pet they adopt because they charge only $50 for dog adoption and $40 for cat adoptions no matter what age the animal is. They have either already spayed and neutered the animal or will give you a certificate to get that done for free from your local vet, and cover all the animal’s shots for the first year, which means on each animal they adopt they lose at least $150 dollars. Add to that the fact that the shelter operates entirely on donations and it’s really hard for them to keep up.

They do have a thrift store in town which sells clothes and other items (like a Goodwill does) to help with their financial upkeep but that’s all they have other than people’s generous donations. They would have closed down a few years ago were it not for a very kind man giving them a stipend out of his will.

They have a large area of land and as well as rescuing cats and dogs of all shapes and sizes also rescue larger animals and farm animals. When I worked there they had a huge boar, two shetland ponies, several goats and a horse, right now they have two horses, rabbits, birds, cats and dogs. Many of these animals will never be adopted but remain at the society where they’re loved and cared for until the natural end of their days.