The iLee Bird Gets The Worm

Have you ever lifted up your shirt and found a nice little ball of fluff in your belly button??
Just sitting there, looking all innocent, like it had been there your whole life, but you know that's not true because you showered only a few hours earlier.

I have.

And I'm coming out!
That's right, it's time the whole world knew... I have belly button fluff!!

I thought this was a common occurance, but the topic came up in conversation (I have no idea how) the other night at my parents house and it turned out I was the only one in the room that had ever found that cute little ball of fluff in their naval.

So, with the wonders of modern technology that is wireless internet, we looked it up online.

I was relieved to see that I wasn't a total freak, and in fact there were lots of websites devoted entirely to naval fluff.
Quite disturbingly, one guy has kept his belly button fluff since 1984 and is now on to his third jar full!
It's true and I can prove it, here's the jars...



And I've noticed something, every time I find some belly button fluff it's blue!
It doesn't matter what colour t-shirt I'm wearing, it's always blue! Why is that??

So where does the fluff come from??
My research has thrown up several suggestions...

"I believe that naval lint is the by-product of all the missing socks in the world...must involve some sort of multi-demensional behavior. All my tee shirts are white..wherefrom the blue grey lint?"

"My own personal theory is that what you ignorantly refer to a "navel fluff" is in fact the moulted beard-hair of tiny dwarves that frolic in humans' belly-buttons. By making the above ridiculous claims regarding "navel fluff's" origin, you are denying these tiny beings' very existence. Shame on you."

"I subscribe to the theory that the 'lint monster' places fluff in our belly buttons whilst we sleep."

Do you have any suggestions??

I'll leave the last word on this entry to a little guy I found during my research called 'King Fluff'



"I experience seasonal fluff, strongly correlated with wearing long underwear in the winter. its most important function seems to be in amusing my wife"

Today I saw the greatest thing ever created, my baby!!
Sarah and I went for her first scan, and here it is...



We didn't learn a whole lot, but at least we definitely know Sarah's pregnant!

Ok, what we did find out was...
1. We are having one baby, not two, so all you people who said it was twins were wrong (thankfully!).
2. Our baby is 64mm from crown to rump (they don't count the legs because they're just curled up into the body).
3. The due date for Bean to appear into this world is 6th August, which also happens to be Sarah's birthday (although only 5% of babies are born on their due date).

If you want to download or print your own copy of this picture (I'm talking to Kelly here!) then go to my Flickr and download it, I have the full quality image there.

I got to see Bean's heart beating, I saw his arm and his leg and I cried a little.

Today was a great day!!

It's something I haven't done for a while, but then, there hasn't been cause to do it for a while, because my team, Manchester United, have been rubbish of late.

But all that was forgotten yesterday as we played our arch rivals Liverpool.
(I'm talking football by the way, the English kind)
It wasn't a great game, and I wouldn't even say we deserved to win, but that isn't the point.



There was no score as the game was heading into the final minute, but we were pressing forward. The ball is whipped in from the left hand side and up jumps Rio Ferdinand to head the only goal of the game.

At this point I scared Sarah by doing a dance around the living room, probably making our neighbours think the house was falling down in the process.



But I don't care, we beat Liverpool with a goal in the last minute, and that my friend, is sweet sweet sweet!

This morning we got a date for our first ultrasound scan.
It is Thursday 26th January at 12.05pm.

So, we'll finally be able to put to bed all the rumours about us having twins.
I've decided we will be able to cope with twins, even though it would be scary and hard work.



Will we find out if Bean is a boy or a girl? Or 2 boys or 2 girls or 1 of each! Who knows!?!
I think it might be too soon to tell the sex, but I'm hoping we can find out.

The biggest question of all though, isn't twins or triplets or boy or girl, it is in fact...
How will Sarah cope with having to drink a pint and a half of water before hand, will she vomit it right back up? Will it even go down in the first place? Will she be able to keep it in until the scan is over or will she pee herself??
All of these are excellent questions, and I will provide the answer next week.
Stay tuned!

This week Sarah and I started our Newcomers Group.
We host this in our home, and it's basically for anyone who is new to our church, or Chistianity in general.
We had 3 people show up, which was a good number.
It is an opportunity to ask any questions about anything to do with God or the church or anything at all really.
I was a bit worried nobody would show up, and also that people might be a bit shy at first and not want to talk.
No worrys there I can tell you!
The group started throwing out questions and the discussions flowed right from the word go.
In fact we talked about things (that just so happened to be on my notes anyway) for a good 20 minutes, before I even bothered looking at my notes to see what we were supposed to be covering.

Hopefully people will come back next week.
I think they enjoyed it, next Wednesday will be the true test, will we still have 3 people?!?

Another thing that was 'new' this week was Sarah's first trip to a UK hospital.
Why you ask?
Well, because we went for Sarah's first anti-natal check up and they diagnosed Sarah as totally dehydrated, so they admitted her to hospital to go on a drip for a couple of days!
Yikes!

I think Sarah now wishes this was possible...


It took about 7 hours of just lying on a bed before a doctor decided to come and see Sarah, but thanfully by then they were happy she wasn't too bad at all and they let her go home.
That was a good thing, because I like having Sarah at home with me rather than stuck in a stupid hospital.
A bad thing was the 7 hours of waiting just to see a doctor (who's visit lasted all of 2 minutes during which she took Sarah's pulse, looked at her tongue and checked her ankles - oooooooooo it really needs 7 years of schooling to learn how to do that lot!).
Still, Sarah did make friends with other preggers ladies, including a Scouser (someone from Liverpool) who Sarah couldn't even understand!

We learnt that Sarah needs to eat small meals often (which we already knew) and drink lots and lots of fluids, even if they refuse to stay down!



Still, it was an adventure, but not one I plan to repeat.

You've probably already read Sarah's blog about our weird neighbours, and you're probably thinking we live on quite a strange street.

But...

There's more!

The other night we heard this noise outside, it was sort of like a train going past, but it went on for about an hour. We looked outside but couldn't see anything.

The second time I looked I still couldn't see naything, but there were 5 police cars outside.
Nothing much seemed to be happening, so I just left them to whatever they were doing.

I found out today, that it was actually a police helicopter overhead that was making the noise.

The reason there was a helicopter hovering over our street for an hour was because an armed response unit had been called to the hotel a few doors down from us, in fact the entire street had been closed off by the police, and we had no idea what was going on!

Apparantly someone in the hotel had a gun, and that was why the armed response unit was called, along with lots of other police.



Presumably it was all resolved without much fuss because I never heard anything on the news about a shoot off or anything, that would have made the national news, it's not very common for people to have guns here, that's more of a US thing!

Anyway, don't worry, I don't think that kind of thing is an everyday occurance, but we'll see in time I suppose!

No wonder Jesus wanted us in this street!!

A quick update on my jetlag.

I didn't sleep at all on the way home, and I tried to stay up until that night.
I lasted until 7.30pm, then fell asleep.

I went to bed but woke at 1am.
I was then awake until 5pm that evening!
I slept through a movie for 2 hours and that got me through to a decent bedtime of 11pm.

I then slept through until 10am this morning.
I think I'm over the worst of it.

I've never woken up (and stayed awake) at 1am before!!

Jet lag sucks!!

This maybe be something of an incoherent rant, but my excuse is I haven’t had any sleep and it’s 8am UK time (3am Canadian), so I apologise if this doesn’t make much sense. But then Ron said I should blog from the plane, and it’ll help pass the time, so Ron, this blog entry is dedicated to you.

We’ve speeding along at nearly 600 miles per hour, that’s almost 1,000 km an hour (for my metric friends!).
That’s pretty freakin’ fast!! (he, he, I just spell checked this blog entry and blogger told me to change 'freakin' to 'foreskin' he he!!)

After arriving at the airport later than planned (stupid snow), we were quickly through check in and security. We brought a whopping 81 kg with us in 4 suitcases, not to mention our carry on bags, so I was a little concerned about the excess baggage charge. We were allowed to bring 30kg each and 5kg carry on, so at the very least they should have charged us over $100, but thankfully God’s favour, and the check in lady’s holiday spirit prevailed and she let us through without paying a penny extra! I did give her a sob story about how we’d only been married a couple of months and it had cost a fortune to get Sarah’s visa sorted out so we could move to the UK, oh and did I mention we’re pregnant?! The nice lady took pity on us, she marked the computer saying we didn’t have any hand luggage, so she was able to waive the excess baggage charge. Result!!



We flew with Zoom Airlines, and I have to say they were excellent. Right from the nice check in lady who waived the excess charge, to the crew, to the plane itself. I opted to pay an extra $80 to get us upgraded to 'Premium' class, so we could sit together, have extra leg room and also so they would give us an extra 10kg each baggage allowance.
Ok, it wasn't quite like first class, but I had more leg room than I'd ever had before, I was actually able to cross my legs and still sit comfortably without touching the chair in front. Then we got drinks while we still sat at the gate and we were able to watch the movies on a huge plasma TV. The plane itself was brand new and I loved it!
Best of all, Sarah and I had 2 seats together with nobody else near us! Yay! I hate those planes where it's a row of 3 seats and you get stuck with a stranger, this plane just had 2 seats, so Sarah got her window seat and I got my aisle seat.

On the way over here I slept most of the way, and Sarah hardly slept at all, this time the roles have been reversed. Sarah has slept the entire way, well almost, she did stay awake long enough for her morning sickness to reappear a few minutes after take off. Thank you Lord for sick bags, that’s all I have to say! I think that took a lot out of her, the poor little mite, and she’s slept through both movies. They’re about to serve breakfast, the smell could mean another sick bad gets used, but I’m praying Sarah will be able to eat something. I found a big stash of sick bags in the bathroom so I picked some up, it might be useful keeping a couple in the car or around the house, you know, just in case!

**Update**
Sarah not only needed another sick bag, she needed 6 in total as she threw up more than I ever thought humanly possible!!
The poor thing, morning sickness and planes do not go well together!
**End of Update**

At midnight the pilot counted us down to the new year, and Sarah and I saw in 2006 with a kiss, what a way to start!
A Scottish couple behind us then led us in a rendition of Auld Lang Syne and I heartily joined in.

It was so strange coming in to Glasgow airport (we dropped people off there before continuing to Manchester), we touched down at about 9.30am and the roads were deserted, it was like a ghost city! No kidding, there wasn't a car in sight, it was very weird for a big city!

So, I find myself pondering the new year. It’s 2006 and the thought of what lies ahead this year makes tears come to my eyes, tears of happiness, joy and excitement! This year is the first full year of being a husband, I’ve had a few months, but as 2004 ended I was just coming to terms with being engaged. I can’t wait to grow as a husband, with God’s help and guidance of course! I just want to fall deeper and deeper in love with my Heavenly Daddy this year, and also deeper and deeper in love with Sarah, my b-e-a-utiful wife.

Then I look ahead to the other HUGE event of 2006, the birth of my first child!!
OH MY GOODNESS!!!
I am so excited about becoming a Daddy, I don’t care if I have a boy or a girl, it doesn’t matter to me in the slightest. I’m just so thrilled that I’ll have this tiny little bundle of joy that will be totally dependent on me and Sarah for absolutely everything. I think little Nevaeh / Casper (or whatever we decide to call Bean when he/she is born) will teach me a few things about being dependent on Daddy’s love that I can use to grow my relationship with God. The only thing I know for sure right now is that I will love the little thing so much it scares me!

Anyway, those are my thoughts as 2006 begins. I’m sure God has many other things lined up for us too, but that’s as far as my narrow little mind can see right now.

God Bless you all, may God give you everything you’re looking for, and then some.