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Share your GOOD news with us all!
5 anos atrásWhat's the BEST thing that's happened to you this year?
(Use this as an excuse to practise superlatives, if you like; or otherwise, just practise your English and say something lovely about some wonderful event that has taken place).
After two years of severe, debilitating depression and intense, overwhelming agoraphobia following the loss of my first two sons and my then-girlfriend's miscarriage, in November 2016, of my third child (I do promise this story is going to get a lot sunnier very soon, fellow Verblingers! Bear with me!), my fiancée became pregnant in January 2019. Baby Fingal is due on 29th September, and we're all very excited about his arrival.
For the first 12 weeks after Fingal was conceived, my partner was determined that he was a she. She dearly wanted a baby girl; and I didn't care either way, so I went along with her enthusiasm and we were checking out frilly little pink dresses and booties and so forth. She has excellent intuitions, and so I was as sure as she was that we were expecting a girl. (She has an eight-year-old son from a previous marriage, and she doesn't want to put herself through any more pregnancies, so it was really "now or never"). And so there we were, in the doctor's office office, she was stretched out getting gel rubbed all over her tummy, while I was kick-boxing with my stepson; and I let him forearm-smash me to the ground and I tapped out, and said "Come on, let's sit down and watch the screen and get a peek at your pretty sister". ...But I wasn't watching the screen: I was focused tightly on my sweetheart's face as the doctor informed us that the baby has meat-and-two-veg dangling between HIS legs. She was not at all disappointed; in fact, the news filled her with glee, just as equally as, I'm sure, if the news had been in the other direction it would've filled her with glee. ...And THEN I looked at the screen. And I fell even more deeply in love with that miraculous little child.
My Dad's already been out to visit us in Hanoi; he came for my 50th birthday in April, which was a lovely gesture, a great effort on his part, given his failing health. He's coming out again in October in order to learn how to change sh*tty nappies (I confidently predict he'll quickly declare that he wasn't very skillful at that task 5 decades ago and is "too old" to learn now). Whatever happens, it's all going to be a lot of crazy, messy, noisy fun having Grandad and Fingal together with us (perhaps for the last time ever - I do hope I'm wrong about that) in the autumn.
Happy days!
