Announcing Our Little Passenger

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted (and I know it’s not the first time I’ve said that!) but it’s definitely time to catch you up. Life has been so busy in the past few weeks, almost everything else seems to have gotten totally out of hand. We have loads of washing to do, I have university assignments piling up in my calendar, clients who are emailing me wanting things that I should already have delivered. Luckily, none of this really matters because we are both so happy, and we want to share the reason why with you.

It looks like this:

Yes, we are welcoming a tiny little person into our lives next year in February, and I am currently in the process of growing that aforementioned person. I have to be honest, it hasn’t been easy. I basically spent the entire first trimester in a state of exhausted fatigue from what it seemed was the sheer effort of taking that little tyke from the apple seed it started at to the comparative behemoth it is today. During that time I also managed to fit in a visit to NSW with walks in rainforests and along cliffs, volunteer on an intense three-day Girl Guide camp where I cooked non-stop for 30 people, and nearly finish a crazy five-week teaching placement in a Grade 1 classroom where I taught for two weeks in a block!

Like I said, things have been busy.

Oh and did I also mention that I turned 27? Because that happened as well a few weeks ago much to my surprise. That one really snuck up on me, but I did manage a dinner party with a distinctly southern American flair (although I did not make a cake or take any pictures, typical). Oh well, next year I’m sure it will be a little something different.

As for our little passenger. Dean and I are so, so, so, so happy and excited about everything that is to come. We are both mildly terrified for February, and wishing it would just hurry up! In the meantime we’ll still be exploring and hiking as per usual, and I’ll still be taking lots of pictures (except at my own birthday, obviously) on the whole process. This does mean that the nature of this blog will change a little, but as my readership isn’t enormous I’m probably not worried about it too much. I hope that those people who enjoy reading will continue to do so, and if you decide that Maps and Mandalas isn’t for you anymore, I respect that and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading up until now.

I’ll leave you with this super adorable photograph that I took of Dean and I using my new (birthday present) tripod. We debated about the cutesy pregnancy announcement. I know that for many people struggling with infertility (of which for nearly a year and a half, we were among) pregnancy announcements can be a knife in the heart. At the same time, I felt that we had waited so hopefully for this little person to come into our lives, that we wanted to celebrate them finally being here. This picture isn’t perfect in a lot of ways. Dean is wearing his super geeky Moria Balrogs t-shirt and the world’s highest white socks (which I did end up cropping, hello vanity). Next to us, just out of the frame (thanks again cropping) is washing that we’d been attempting to dry for days inside thanks to Melbourne’s rainy weather. The sun shone through the window for all of about five seconds and we just managed to get the tripod set up and capture it in time. It’s a little piece of our lives, imperfect but so exciting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.