Hurray!

I am officially going to be an aunt! I've known unofficially for a bit, but they had the scan yesterday, so now it's all official. Somehow I've managed to sidestep completely the maternal instinct, which makes my life a good deal less complex, and with a bit of luck by the time it gets me, if it ever does, I will be too old to do anything about it. But I've always thought I'd make a good aunt and god-mother, and now I get to be both before the end of the year. (The niece/nephew's expected birthday is 25th December, poor soul; I hope it avoids that one.)

My mother is being quite funny about it; she's a worrier by nature and she's worrying away that my brother and sister-in-law will have trouble with their half-finished house, flexibility at work, etc. I have pointed out that people have had children before now, and even if it's been hard they seem on the whole to cope and enjoy it. She says it didn't occur to her and my dad that life was going to be different until about a week before my birth -- but they were much younger, and by the time my mother was the age I am now both her children were at school. But now she has got quite excited about buying the future grandchild a cross-country pushchair for going to see the alpacas, which has cheered her up. She's determined that it's going to love alpacas from an early age. My brother's not been so keen on them ever since he got bounced by an aggressive male, perhaps misinterpreting his hippy sheepskin coat.