Three Beautiful Things

1. A parcel for Alec: a knitted tanktop depicting a workmanlike digger, sent south by Nick's gaming friend Simon. 2. We pop into the Oxfam bookshop to show Alec to Sandra the manager, and get chatting to one of her volunteers who is a proud grandfather. "You can look at babies for hours," he says. I can only agree. 3. Shhh. One of my favourite moments of the day is when we lay the sleeping Alec in his moses basket and snuggle up together. He'll probably join us later in the night, but for now, it's just the two of us.

1. I am so glad we have an 11am start. 2. After the class, we tell each other how amazed we are at the visiting mother's ease and confidence with her eight-week-old son. We are all wondering how we are ever going to get that stage. 3. To wrap myself up in the duvet and sleep until Nick gets home.

Natalie commented the other day to say that she has started her own 3BT blog . Go Natalie! 1. We think we should probably get up. I guess that it must be at least lunchtime. It turns out that it's only twenty to eleven. 2. Nick's dad is still thrilled with the results of his cataract operation -- "The curtains when I woke up the morning after. All those reds and greens." Plus he is thoroughly enjoying the sharing of his gory eye surgery story. Now he has gout -- but it seems that even this cloud has a silver lining. He can fit into a pair of shoes (the colour of a freshly picked up conker) that were previously too big. "They're handmade, look, beautiful. We found them in a charity shop for £6." 3. "This is going to be more of an amuse bouche than a bowl of soup," says Nick looking anxiously at the single serving that is going to have to do for two of us. But there's some cream that needs finishing, and leftover cold potatoes in ...

1. Nick has a day off, and we sleep in until almost noon. 2. The carrycot portion of Baby Badger's transport arrangement arrives. We put it together to make sure it's all in order. When I come into the sitting room where Nick is watching a baseball game, the cot is in the corner. "I'm just practising," he says. 3. The bath bomb -- which smelt deliciously of orange and spices -- has left brick red scum round the bath. It's very satisfying to clean it off.

1. We have an accidental lie-in -- Nick thinks he turned the volume on the radio alarm clock down while he was dusting -- and we wake more than an hour after our usual time. First, it felt good to sleep in. Second, how wonderful to have a husband who dusts. 2. To lay down a burden. 3. My husband says as I cross the room to greet him: "You're starting to waddle now."

1. It's Nick's first day back at work after his week off. He hits the snooze button and goes in late. 2. Reading back my shorthand. 3. I went to a lunch party for literary ladies on Monday, and everyone was full of the new Sunday night costume drama, Downton Abbey -- except me, because I hadn't seen it. Now that it's not football night, we can sit down to watch the scheming would-be heiresses and ambitious staff slug it out in a stunning country house. We are completely entranced. I felt bad about inflicting it on Nick; but he gets very caught up, and at the end he says the writer Julian Fellowes Got It Right because he is properly posh. "He knows how people would address a Duke."* * Say the Duke of Westminster is your landlord. If by some chance he came round to collect the rent, you might want to show some deference and address him as "Your grace" -- "Sorry about all the sheets, your Grace. We could really do with a new washing machine...

I've been told that filling the freezer up with easy meals is very important in the weeks leading up to the birth. Does anyone have any recipes that freeze well? Or any freezer tips? Or even any recommended blogs on the subject? I've never had a freezer before, so I'm finding my way a bit. 1. If I'm working, I tend to not notice Baby Badger's movements -- it's horrible to suddenly realise that the last wriggle I can remember was just after breakfast; and I'm always relieved to feel a flutter (or a massive four-way jab as the case may be). 2. I like to stick my supper in the oven and forget about it until it's time to eat. 3. The scent of lavender on my pillow.

1. I am not waking up this morning. It is pointed out to me that I am growing a baby and probably need the sleep for a reason. The next thing I know, it's half past nine. 2. There is a satisfying heft to this tin of bread pudding. 3. Finding a perfect slice of mushroom in the packet of dried porcini. And the smell of vermouth boiling off in my risotto.

1. Blackbird's alarm call. Newton's cradle . 2. Nick finds me gasping and retching in the kitchen, breakfast half set out. He rubs my back and says: "My brave girl." Later, he takes the fish pan that I can't bear to look at out and scrapes it into the compost bin outside. 3. Dog let off the lead chases after a magpie. The bird launches into the air, making the same ratchetting alarm call that disturbed me this morning. Ha ha.

1. There is a dusting of snow this morning -- as if the world has been lightly sugared. 2. As I am paying, my bottle of soy sauce falls over -- but no harm is done. "At least it's not fish sauce," says the shopkeeper. "When a bottle of that breaks, it takes a month to get rid of the smell." 3. I read until I can't keep my eyes open. It feels so good to put my book down and drift off to sleep.

1. The road is quiet for a moment, and I hear the t-t-t-t of a passing cyclist who is meandering slowly along as if he doesn't have anywhere particular to go. 2. I'm cold and sleepy, so I bundle myself up in the duvet and take an afternoon nap. 3. I like to have a second slice of banoffee pie.

My aunt has just emailed this morning to say that she has completed a walk of 100km in 24 hours and 50 minutes -- raising with her friends almost £4,000 for Oxfam and the Ghurka Welfare Trust. What an amazing achievement. Her team, Ladies that Don't Lunch , has a Just Giving page, if anyone wants to know more. 1. For the two of us together, turning the mattress is no chore at all. 2. I have a book about polar explorers for Nicola, and she has one for me. Her boyfriend is disheartened: 'I don't have a book for anyone.' 3. I like to come home late and find Nick already in our newly-made Sunday bed.

1. "So much eye-candy for the girls," says a spectator at the homecoming parade of our local troops, First Battalion The Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment. 2. We go to the very top of the Tate Modern and eat supper looking out across London as the night washes in. 3. I like to read last thing at night, and to feel my head getting heavy.

I'm in the Courier this week -- see page 27. 1. Wherever you are, whatever time it is, there is always some form of Star Trek on television. 2. I like showing Nick's mother the containers of flowers and vegetables along our window ledges. Some of them are plants that she has given me. 3. With satisfaction he says: 'The alarm will go off in nine hours. Nine whole hours.'

1. Hot apple juice with honey stirred in. 2. I have spent the day sleeping and waking -- I seem to hit a wall after a couple of hours awake, and doze off wherever I am. 3. A documentary about the Cloud Appreciation Society reminds us to look up.

1. I have slept longer than I need to, but I don't want to get up while there is a warm and gently snoring Nick to lie against. 2. She sits on the corner of the coffee table and stares at me, lifting first one white paw and then the other. She is trying to decide if it's safe to dab at my knee. 3. Through the woods, a line of street lights tells us how to get home.

Festive message to anyone who would expect a Christmas card from me: I've spent the money on badgers , instead. I hope everyone enjoys a magical midwinter and a happy, successful 2009. 1. On Friday morning, the alarm clock is switched off until Sunday night. 2. As I pay for my sewing bits, the smell of the pastie in my bag breaks free. 3. A book, Fiona Robyn's The Letters , arrives by post. I sit in the bath with it and later curl up on the sofa to finish it. I can't escape its clutches until I understand all its twists and mysteries. I felt the same way about Anita Shreve's book, The Pilot's Wife . But The Letters is funny and English and gently domestic as well as enticing. The heroine, Violet, has got along pretty well in her life by being an un-bending workaholic. But now she is 51 and living alone. There are things she wants -- reconciliation with her lover; a better relationship with her exasperating grown-up children -- and she is beginning to realise that ...

1. I crawl back to bed at 11am and wake in the middle of the afternoon feeling as if I can face the world for a couple more hours. 2. Nick comments that the cucumber (which he loathes and won't eat himself) in my sandwich sounds nicely crunchy. 3. Making up a flask of tea to take to bed. When I wake in the night, I pour myself a cup to calm my cough.

1. Waking up late on a Monday morning and then going back to sleep because it's our day off. 2. In the early evening, bright Venus and Jupiter just coming over the trees. 3. Nick's nature tends towards 'solemn and dignified', so it's a great source of pleasure to make him giggle like a schoolgirl by pouring water over his head and down his back while washing his hair.

1. I have a nap in the middle of the morning and drift in and out of sleep. The joiner fixing the window next door is whistling and ocassionally singing: ' A girl like you ' 2. The colour of grated carrot -- it's such a bright, juicy orange on a wintery day. 3. I was once the child whose colouring went over the edge; whose samplers were speckled with blood and tears; whose cutting out was jagged and torn and whose handwriting was a constant worry to teachers. I used to feel very ashamed of my art and crafts and still burn to remember the headmaster pronouncing my paper curl chicken 'a mess'. But last night, I was looking at a box I'd decorated with a cut-out, and an embroidery I'm mounting, and I felt quite pleased and proud. It must be partly experience and practice; partly acceptance of my own limitations and partly better tools. I think my motor skills have improved with age -- I'd never have imagined I'd achieve the things I've done in my dra...