This weekend Lovely David popped over to continue sorting out our electrics. Soon, we may have lighting – actual lighting! – in our kitchen; lovely though the fairylights are, they don’t half make gloss-painting difficult in the evenings. Or, indeed, any time past about four o’ clock. While he was here, we talked over the options for how we’re going to heat the new kitchen and bathroom. It’s been really quite cold here in Devon in the last week, and yesterday morning a random thermometer reckoned the outdoor temperature was minus six, which is really quite fresh indeed. In the house, we have the loveliness of the stove, which defeats pretty much any cold weather, replacing it with a sense of tropical well-being which has one reaching idly for a glass of Malibu and perhaps some SPF40. However, the extension, while much warmer than either our old kitchen/bathroom building of woe or the outdoors, is still rather parky, truth be told, now that we’re into Proper Winter (as proper as we get in the UK, anyway) and we have a gaping hole in the backdoor because the catflap died the death in the demolition project.

However, all is not lost. The majority of the necessary pipework is in place for us to add a back-boiler to our woodstove, which lives at the other end of the house, thus giving us hot water and two radiators, one in each bedroom, to boot; Quercus and I were both dubious as to whether or not our stove could power that much, but Lovely David points out, quite rightly, that the stove barely lifts a finger for the heat we need for the main house, so could clearly manage to work a little harder, provide heat all over the shop, without breaking a sweat. How exciting, thinks I. Imagine – wood-fired water. (There is something so wrong, wronger than a wrong thing indeed, about the idea of fire and water together in a sentence like that. But I like it.) So, over Chrimbly, it looks as if Lovely David will be joining us for mince pies, a spot of Doc Witch‘s gorgeous-sounding Solstice Cake, the odd sprout, and, ah yes, a good deal of plumbing. Quercus and I will have to channel out the cob walls in the original house to make way for plumbing pipes through into the extension, and we’ll have to come up with some radiators to fit upstairs, while Lovely David will be, suitably plied with mulled wine and perhaps the odd homicide-inducing carol, safely ensconced in the attic, doing, er, plumberly things. My, we know how to enjoy ourselves, don’t we?

In other news, the witchling looks about ready to start trying ‘proper’ food. I am dead chuffed to find that we have managed six months of exclusive breastfeeding; I really wanted this to be the pattern for us, and once we got past the initial learning curve of inserting breast A into mouth B, it’s really been very easy, I’m happy to say, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything differently now. I quite like the idea of giving her large chunks of vegetables and fruit and whatnot to gnaw on; she’s been taking a careful interest in this eating business for about the last three weeks or so, watching plates, knives and forks moving around, and reaching out quite ambitiously to grab glasses of water whenever possible. (Let us draw a veil over the time she grabbed her grandma’s glass of red wine, shoving it towards her tiny open mouth with a rapidity which spoke of paper bags, park benches and illicit Jack Daniels in years to come.) I’m both excited and saddened by this, if I’m honest – she still seems so little to me, yet every day she is growing, learning, and becoming capable, and she seems ready for the next bit of adventure, so I am trying to simply feel glad that breastfeeding her has worked so well for us.

One other thing. I haven’t had a drink, as in alcohol, since the month I became pregnant. I have read bits and pieces about drinking versus not drinking when breastfeeding, and wondered if anyone out there has tuppence-worth to add to the debate…?