Summary: a short list of what's going on now, followed by musings on eye colours and what it means to be family. Lots of mentions of children and pregnancy.

***Appointment update** - went well. Boring. Fine. Hurrah! ***

News in brief:

• I am almost finished unpacking the house again. Just over a week to unpack a house after a move is some kind of record. I may even get around to doing up a hospital bag before labour begins.
  
• I have my thirty-eight week OB appointment later today. I'll let you know.
  
• Everything is rapidly going moldy and mildewy in the post-flood heat and humidity. Everyone here is battling it. The Prata Baby's mattress and the one from the bassinet have both fallen victim, amongst other things. Every time I turn around there is more growing on the walls or ceiling. Incredible. Insane. Inconvenient. I am just flat out keeping up with myself at the moment and my to-do list keeps on growing.
  

The Prata Baby and I were chatting at the supermarket yesterday, and for some reason we got onto the subject of eye colour. I asked what colour eyes he thought the new baby would have, and he said blue, like him. I agreed that this was possible, and then mused that they could be a different colour, too - perhaps brown, like Dad's? Or Hazel? The Prata Baby affirmed his guess of blue, and went on to opine that the new baby's Dad would have green eyes. I stopped and peered at him. "The new baby's Dad is your Dad," I explained carefully. "You'll have the same Dad."

Whoa. Whoa. Obviously this hadn't occurred to him. There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by a rather longer period of thoughtful fingernail-picking. Then PB tentatively asked about the new baby's Mum and I had to break it to him that he'd be sharing one of those, too. Blue, brown, hazel or green - he was prepared to accept the outcome. But the realisation that someone else would have the same Mum and Dad as him? It, like, totally blew his mind.

I used to think I'd be sensitive to conversations about where my children got what genetic traits from. Apart from a sort of general squeamishness on behalf of those who wouldn't be passing on their genes, I wasn't sure if a hypothetical Next Child would be genetically related to the same extent as the first. I remember having a complete change of perspective the first time The Prata Baby met my Grandmother. To my grandmother, idle chit-chat over eye colour is for amateurs. Even before she and PB met, she had dug out a pile of family photos showing infants around the same age, and was keen to lay them on the table and hold them up one by one, analysing everything from general build to subtle facial expressions. And that's not counting all the other information she'd collected about our family history, no matter how old or peripherally-relevant.

All of a sudden I knew she would do the same no matter where the child had come from. Whether we'd conceived with the help of donors or adopted from The Philippines, she'd be there with pictures and books and magazines, retelling and guessing and predicting and - above all - looking for commonalities between the child and ourselves. She has a very loose definition of family, my Grandmother. To her, it's not so much about blood ties as about showing up and joining in. To her, discussions of this type are about finding connections, rather than separating "us" from "them".

Perhaps I would feel different if our family had been built differently after all, but since then I'm not sensitive about discussing the baby's eye colour. Even the Prata Baby knows it doesn't really matter who shares that.

We got back in last night, albeit without internet access.

I am buggered. Absolutely buggered. Thirty-seven weeks pregnant in the middle of summer is not the time I'd recommend to move house twice within the space of a week. In fact, moving house twice within the space of one week is insane under most circumstances. Nevertheless, it has all been good, the flood did not actually reach us after all, I am overwhelmed at the amount of support we received, and we are probably three quarters of the way towards putting it all back together again. Then we really must start getting ready for this baby.

Despite everything, I actually feel as if, personally, I've had a good week. Others obviously not so lucky... but as far as our four (thankfully flood-free) walls are concerned, the care we've been shown far outweighs the inconvenience we've experienced.

I have not been able to read blogs much these last few days. Please update me! Whilst I shower and crash into bed.

In the end, the flood waters were a lot less severe through our town than the worst predictions. This was, basically, because the weather stopped dumping torrential rain on our catchment areas at just the right time, allowing the hydologists to stop releasing water from the upstream dam. The dam was already doing a lot to spare us from the more dangerous flash flooding which occurred upstream and in other parts of the state, and in the end it was able to spare us from waters high enough to reach our house, as well. Our neighbour, who elected to stay (their house has three stories compared to our one - still, they stayed up til high tide at 4am Thursday morning just in case they needed to pile into the car and leave), reports that the flood waters stopped a good block or so away and are now receding.

Earlier, they were talking about the possibility of more flooding with the king tide next week, but as the waters reached us, the media stopped discussing anything that wasn't of immediate concern. I think, now that we've experienced our longest period without rain since... gosh - in months? - and the medium-term forecast is looking a bit more accurate, this concern has subsided. However, I am having trouble getting confirmation on this. Apart from the same, basic desire to know what's going to happen next that everyone must be experiencing, my nesting mind wants to know when we should put everything back in preparation for the birth. At present - and due to the absolutely amazing efforts of our helpers who whisked the entire contents of our house away between dinner time on Tuesday and lunch time on Wednesday - it is squirreled away in four separate locations across a twenty kilometre radius and I don't really know what's where. On the plus side, I think I can actually get to the hospital I'm booked into again now, and possibly even meet my own obstetrician if need be. Yesterday it was looking very much like my choices were either telephone-guided home care, or nearest emergency room. Which is not the worst possible set of choices, but "in person with own OB at intended hospital" is much better.

At any rate, today is going to be a day for cleaning. The extreme humidity this summer has caused (I discovered once the house was empty) mildew to grow behind most of our furniture, and there doesn't seem much else for me to do today except keep an ear on the radio and take the opportunity to scrub down the walls. And maybe try to find where I left my shorts. Or at least Mr Bea's shorts, which fit me nicely at the moment. And the Prata Baby's kiddy toothpaste, which he misses very much.

Everyone and pretty much everything is safe and dry. With predictions getting ever more optimistic, at this point it looks like it will all be wasted effort, but never mind! We will sit it out for a few days and see what happens and make plans from there.

The latest flood reports are predicting levels well above 1974 levels. We have decided to self-evacuate, tonight and tomorrow morning. If one more person instructs me, jokingly, not to go into labour for at least another couple of weeks, I will... thank them for their concern and well-wishes, of course. Still, if the comments keep up it might start getting old. Wish us luck!