AROUND HERE LATELY

• The 6 year old has learnt about Pinterest and has been keen to jump aboard (is that a pun?). Alas, to our dismay we discovered you need to be invited to join. Not by a friend, by the actual Pinterest dudes. Taking themselves a bit too seriously perhaps? In any case, we played along and have been awaiting acceptance with baited breath (I would like to say this just applies to the 6 year old, but I did feel the same longing to be accepted that one feels when waiting for a potential date to call, masked with the same feigned indifference of "I don't really care if I never hear from them again"). Finally tonight we received our official invitation, which delighted the 6 year old who has grand visions of pinning pictures of the "dream house". Back story: we have a running joke about one day being able to afford our "dream house". We all have slightly different ideas about details of the dream house (the 6 year old and I insist that the dream house must have a pool; Alex insists it must have at least one room dedicated to storing his bicycle collection), though we all agree that the dream house is, in essence, some kind of mansion that two of the three of us know we will never be able to afford. The other has already begun saving and has "30 or more monies" (30 individual coins, not dollars) in her piggy bank, which she believes is almost enough for a down payment. Bless.

• I have had recent doubts about what to do as far as a career goes. I am starting to realise that I went into my PhD with the aim to eventually become an academic, and never really entertained the thought of doing much else. Now, with the baby looming and my previous single lady freedom well and truly dead, I'm starting to question how realistic this goal is, especially considering recent funding cuts and increasing job competitiveness. Not really sure what to do post-baby. Perhaps I could get paid to blog??

• Speaking of which, I have discovered a fantastic "mummy blog" (apparently this is a phenomenon now?) of a woman who is much, much funnier than I could ever hope to be. Also, her life is a lot more interesting than mine. I'm struggling to produce even mildly entertaining material - there's only so many times one can write about weird pregnancy symptoms, and the 6 year old is shamefully well-behaved so not much material there.

• Along with wasting time reading aforementioned blog, I have been watching a lot of stuff on iview. My current faves are this and this (no judgement). There has also been a lot of Masterchef and Sailor Moon watching in the house, which is fine except for the fact that I often have a Katy Perry/Sailor Moon theme mash-up running through my head.

• We have YET ANOTHER head lice infestation. I've honestly lost count of how many times this has happened since the start of school this year. On the upside, we are now experts in lice treatment - I can name at least 3 different brands of lice shampoo (and which of those actually works), and we have the combing conditioned hair bit down to a fine art. We also have a nice collection of lice combs (5 and counting), which is going into the baby's dowry.

• I have been both excitedly awaiting and fearfully dreading the start of birthing classes (next week). Material to be covered in Class 1 includes: The 3 stages of labour (which was news to me, I always thought labour was just one long drawn-out process), when to come into hospital/what to bring, reason for induction, and role of the support person. Sounds like one of the more upbeat classes, as we have coming up in future weeks: postnatal depression, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, vacuum and forceps use during labour, and post-birth contraception. We will be paying particular attention to the last one.