A long weekend and not just because of my shift pattern as Bethany continues to ensure we survive on only basic sleep rations with a bit of worry thrown in for good luck. Unfortunate timing as Margaret and Del were down this weekend with Diane and Tim, the former hoping for a first look at Bethany whereas Diane and Tim were the only members of our southern family members who could make it down for her Christening. They spent yesterday in the Lakes and the hope was that I would take Bethany round to my parent's where they intended to have a little buffet. Bethany, however was not aware of these plans and despite continually doping her up as instructed on Friday (I paraphrase) Alison called in work to let them know she could not go in over the weekend. After a little sleep her temperature rocketed so we took her back to the walk in centre where this time they confirmed an ear and throat infection and gave us some antibiotics. When we got back Alison and Bethany had a lie down and went to sleep and my dad brought, who we collectively call the "London Lot" (despite Margaret and Del living in Reading and Diane and Tim in Somerset) round after taking them up to the place Margaret had lived as a child, not far from our house, as they had a present for Bethany. Disappointingly they still did not get to see her this time but hopefully another occasion will present itself soon - it may have already passed but I was fairly sure that Margaret and Del's 60th Wedding Anniversary was on the horizon. More importantly, at the moment Bethany is settled and asleep and I just hope she manages a good night and doesn't need comforting in our bed - I don't want to get all self pitying again but my head feels a little frazzled with running around, lack of sleep and flu which is not helping aches and pains either so I'd rather not have another night squashed up in bed to be woken by a snotty kiss 4 hours after going to sleep and then having the mattress used as a trampoline. I mean I love you to bits Bethany but...
   Inbetween Bethany's fitful sleeps yesterday I managed to get down town and pick up the photographs we had taken of her using a voucher Helen had given us for Christmas. We were both a little taken by surprise by the photo shoot and had not really expected anything as professional. I assumed it would be similar to when she was born and someone came round the ward with a camera. That time it cost about £30 and you got various sized photos you could share out like you did with your school photo in the cardboard sleeve plus a couple of bookmarks with the same image. It was just over a month ago when we went and I thought 9 months was a good time for the next "proper" photograph of her to go into the album so I was a little taken aback when we spent an hour in the studio with different outfits and WE had to pose in them as well. That is the part that I was least expecting and had I known I might have at least had a shave or changed. The session would have gone on longer but Bethany was getting bored and letting us all know so we left with reassurances that if there were no decent shots we could come back. That should have started the alarm bells as the major part of the price will be for the studio time, however when we went to view them there were a number of good photographs, mainly any that did not have me or Alison in them (there was one good one with Ali in but any with me were horrible). It was during this viewing that we realized that what we had been expecting was rather different from what we were going to get. In the end we picked 5 photos and had them framed as a diptych one on top of the other and a triptych in a horizontal row, which cost just over £500. Anyway I picked them up yesterday and they are very nice.
   One definite positive today was when I found the remote control for the DVD player. For a couple of weeks this, along with it's close friend the video remote, have been missing either because Bethany likes playing with remotes and had buried them somewhere or because we had hid them away from her and could not remember where. Drawers and cupboards have not been tidier and I found 43p under the settee. I would not have bothered so much if the DVD player had more than a few basic buttons on the front of it meaning that while I could press play to watch a film box sets were a problem as on the TV series that we were working our way through we could only watch the first episode of each disc. Now we might finally get to work our way through that box set of "Bones" after I found first the back of the battery cover on the floor to the side of the TV stand before closer inspection revealed a number of video cassettes (you may need to ask about them) that had been pushed between the gap formed by the underside of the stand shelf and the digibox. Pulling them out I saw the remote balanced on the Scart cable and retrieved it sans batteries, although still no sign of the video remote - luckily that is a lazy remote and not essential to the operation of the machine.