School is not compulsory

We joined Education Otherwise, the UK's home education charity organisation support network thing, on Friday night, filling in an online form. The members' pack arrived today. It's a very good pack; I was impressed. We have a membership card, a list of local contacts, a list of national venues that give discounts to home educators similar to the discounts they give to schools, the newest edition of School Is Not Compulsory, a little handbook about the law and useful information for dealing with Local Education Authorities (where "dealing with" doesn't mean "being unnecessarily confrontational towards" but covers everything from "being benignly ignored by" through "working with" and on up to "fighting in the courts") and other stuff, and a newsletter - with a whole section by and for children.

That was a very very fast turnaround, I think. Mind you, the person in question processed our application at 00:42 on Saturday, so perhaps she got it posted Saturday morning.

So! Now we have a support network in place, which is nice, and I can get familiar with it before I actually need it much, and also we got a free book.

(On the other hand, we're not going anywhere today, because I overdid it at the weekend and caused my knees to swell up, my shoulders and chest to get sunburnt, and I think I strained my eyes in the sunshine. Linnea seems quite content to practice her Independent Play in the cool, dark indoors, though; all the windows and curtains are closed against the heat, due to get up to 32C today, and we're usually hotter here than the local forecast predicts).

Yup, Still Pregnant

I've been noticing more and more that my favourite posture is leaning slightly forward almost exactly as I do when tricycling; it's rather difficult to maintain when sitting about at home though. This baby, much more than Linnea did, has definite ideas about how I should sit and stand and lie and walk. I often wake flat on my back, hips aching, baby blissed out and quiet, and have to ask Rob to roll me over so that my hips and back can recover. The baby doesn't like me lying on my side though, and tends to wake aggressively.

The heat means I've swollen very slightly; I can still get my wedding and engagement rings on, but they're not comfortable, and all the cycling in the sun on Saturday made my knees swell hugely. Yesterday I did a little walking around Oxford looking at the outsides of pretty buildings and the locked gates of shady parks, and my ankles swelled a little. Not much, for a pregnant person, but some. Hardly surprising, I suppose.

Linnea rubbed cocoa butter into my bump this morning and talked again about the tiny baby in my bellybutton. I think she's in for a shock in 5 weeks or so.

She chose her own lunch. At 10 am she led me to the fridge and demanded potato salad. At noon she led me to the fridge and demanded cake. Then she wanted gingerbread mans. Then she ate some wholemeal bread, without butter, and a huge pear. It all seems to even out in the end.

My antibiotics, for the sinus thing I had last week, are making me queasy and tired. But I have to keep taking them lest I create a supersinusvirus, which would be really very tedious at 33 weeks pregnant in an average of 30C heat. Linnea's cough is still coughy, and still not bothering her in the least, so I've decided to stop giving her the syrup in case it's been suppressing the cough and she'd be more productive without it. It could just be the heat and dust and so on of all the cycling and walking she's done this past month.

We've booked my mother's flights for her visit to see the new baby, based on the c-section date, since that's easiest. I won't need her so much for a homebirth anyway since we won't need to find extraordinary childcare :) but of course she's not keen ("My baby isn't!" as she said when I said "But it could be worse, Mum, at least my baby's ok," some 18 months ago).