Milk and marbles

-whelmed

2010-06-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

Totally trying to make myself crash, I think. I'm doing so much at the moment! My house is tidier than it has been in years (although let's not mention the ever-present ironing mountain), I'm winning the battle with the weeds in the garden (for the time being at least!), have successfully grown my first ever vegetable plants from seed (sweetcorn, in case anybody cared), doing chairman of the board stuff all over the place, and still helping my little amazing Pearl grow and learn and play and everything else that goes along with that. I'm tired just typing this.

We leave for our grand Floridian holiday in exactly a month and I could not be more excited. Pearl knows we are going on a plane to visit Mickey Mouse with her cousin and Nana and Grandad and everyone else, and that it will be hot, and we will have a swimming pool, and she just about poos herself if you mention that we will see turtles like from Nemo. This will be the trip of a lifetime, I cannot wait. I haven't been in 5 years and I miss the place!

Before the holiday I've got to fit in a load of meetings and Pearl's birthday celebrations and I just know that the next month is going to disappear. I'm loving this weather, I love the Summer and I never want it to go away. But since I live in England I know it won't last long so I'm just enjoying it while it is here. I'm catching myself a lot of freckles working out in the garden most afternoons with my little helper. Vitamin D, I love you!

I do not like them, Sam-I-Am!

2010-06-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

1. I kinda just mostly forgot about making blog entries. Oops, sorry bout that. (Also means my google reader has hundreds of unread items, cack.)

2. Four teeth sprouting at once + very bad hayfever + growth spurt = a poorly, irritable and in pain Pearl. For weeks on end, with no end in sight. Which means at the end of the day all I want to do is pass out. It's been an effort just to sit on the sofa; the ironing pile is competing with Mount Everest; etc etc. I'm not happy about having to give Pearl Piriton multiple times a day, but she was really suffering and while it doesn't relieve her symptoms entirely, it helps enough to make it worthwhile.

3. Perhaps this is compounded by the aforementioned (Point 2), but I cannot remember what I did before we got our Boba carrier. Praise be to that wonderful, wonderful creation. We LOVE it.

4. Just to add to the general madness around here, Pearl is now nappy-free during the day. And most nights her night-time nappy is dry, and she just goes on the toilet when she gets up in the morning. I've had a few people ask how we did it, what made her learn so quickly... and I can honestly say I have no idea. I'm loving not having to wash nappies every other day. I love that it just happened so naturally, almost without me realising. One day I bought knickers for her, the next she was wearing them, and we haven't looked back since. In hindsight I think she may have been 'ready' for longer than I realised, but hey-ho we're on the same page now. I really didn't do anything specific. We've always cued her about when she was eliminating, and for a while she's been telling us when she was wee-ing or when she needed to poop. I don't know, I really don't. To be honest I think I'd got worried about "potty training" until it just happened. People seem to make such a big deal of it, like it's some big thing to tackle. We're probably just lucky with our Jamjam. I know that (like weaning, or walking, or talking) children reach milestones at different ages, and she just happened to reach hers a bit early. (She's been in knickers constantly for two weeks, and she'll be 2 at the end of July).

5. Peekatures:

On an old bus at Amberley Working Museum

Dippy eggs

My poor puffy-eyed misery guts

Looking all grown'd up on a toy tractor at Spring Barn Farm

Best boot fair buy of the year - 10p for a brand new pack of bath crayons! I love these colourful additions to our bathroom. (Yes, she is sitting fully clothed, playing in the bath in the middle of the day. I love my girly!)

6. I've had some really lovely evenings out lately, just at that sort of party where people try to sell you things, but it's been with wonderful company and it's making me not hate Worthing quite so much.

7. That's all, folks. Somehow in the midst of this hideously awful hayfever, I've also got myself a chest infection. Hellooooo additional wheezing, and a hoarse voice. Yesterday I sounded all husky and sexy, today it's almost completely gone. Boo, hiss, ouch.

5. Last one, I promise (and completely unrelated): Britain's Got Talent is such a pile of shite. Wish I could find the remote, or be bothered to get up off my arse and switch of the damn television. Also on my shit-list: fucking football. Don't even get me started.

Three, five, four, five, six, five, six, Baa Baa Black Sheep, yessss

2010-04-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

1. Cats

(Disclaimer: don't judge me please, this is just my ramblings about our cat situation at the end of a very long day, after nearly 2 years of this stress).
Our cats are strange little creatures. They were weaned too early, although we only discovered this by accident when the lady who sold them to us inadvertently told us their date of birth (weeks after we'd bought them), and when we counted back it made them only 5 weeks when we took them away from their mother. We're not sure whether their mum and dad were related, but they're definitely kitties with additional needs. Not the sharpest book on the train, as my sister would say. Anyway. They stopped using an indoor litter tray when they were about 6 months old, and went out the cat flap and enjoyed time outdoors as well as lots of lap time and cuddles. (As an aside: I know there are lots of differing views on letting cats outdoors, but in the UK this is the norm, in case you're reading this from another country and are appalled.)
When Pearl was born they began going to the toilet in the house - in protest, because they were stressed, whatever - and we ended up having to keep them shut in the kitchen, because I became overwhelmed with having to look after a newborn and clean up after two cats. Since then we have trialled giving them full access in the house lots of times, and they always end up fouling in our home again. We think that there are some neighbourhood cats who haven't been helping the situation, chasing our cats around. Although from what we can gather talking to our neighbours, our cats do their fair share of terrorising as well! We took them to the vet, who basically confirmed what we'd suspected: that they are probably stressed because of Pearl. I can deal with the neighbours' cats but I can't get rid of Pearl! We let them loose in the whole flat this week, and today I came home from shopping with Pearl to find they'd shat at the bottom of the stairs, and pee'd at the top of the stairs. We've already had to remove a huge section of carpet because they'd urinated on it so often we just couldn't get rid of the smell. We've managed to remove the offences (cos if they smell it and that can make them go in the same place again) as much as we can but I am at my wits' end now. I know that we could just get a litter tray, but when they are shut in the kitchen (with access to the garden) they go outside to go to the toilet. I don't want a litter tray in our small kitchen - literally enough room for the cats beds, scratching post, the hoover, and a bucket. I can't take the risk of letting them in the house again, and that breaks my heart.
I love our cats so much because they were our babies before Pearl was our baby. We got them not long after I had the first miscarriage and they were our everything. It is not fair on them to be confined to one room in our house. It is not fair for us to try and re-home them. Pearl loves them so much too! I'm in tears typing this because I don't know what to do. I hate that I am that awful person who had pets and then had children and pushed the pets out.

Chino:Keke:
And together as one giant fluffball of gorgeousness:

2. Carriers

Today we got our new Boba carrier. I could not be happier! We have already used it for over an hour today. Since she was no longer able to be worn in the Moby wrap, we'd had no alternative to her sitting on my hip for most of the day. My back was getting so sore and the Boba is just what we needed. I am one happy Mama. I tweeted a picture this morning if you want to see what a happy toddler looks like!

3. Cocksucker

I think I've mentioned before that our flat was previously owned by a total cock, who must've done all the work himself and has done a totally shitty job. The latest thing to come to light is the plumbing under the kitchen sink. Two weeks of hell with backed up pipes has somehow culminated in the washing machine getting emptied into the cupboard under the sink. The pipe that sends all the wastewater outside into the drain became separated from the plumbing under the sink. Most of the kitchen was flooded: all under the cupboards and the floor tiles. Of course it happened just as we were going out the door to Tumble Tots - I'd just nipped back in the kitchen to grab Pearl a snack for afterwards, and lucky I did otherwise the flooding could've been much worse. I shoved a giant tub underneath the aforementioned pipe, which is now filled with wastewater. It occurs to me I don't know how we'll lift that thing out from underneath. Nevermind.

4. Career

Bobby is so busy at work! So busy! It is amazing for him, for us, to have everything we worked so hard for finally coming to fruition. But I didn't account for the loneliness I would experience in the evenings when he is working late yet again. Some evenings I don't mind, and I just get on with some housework or ironing, or watch a film, or waste time online. But evenings like tonight I just want a hug and some adult conversation. I was meant to be going out actually, to a card making workshop, but had to cancel because he told me this afternoon his appointments were running over. He didn't even start his last appointment till nearly 8pm. It's good, it's so gooooood. I am looking forward to getting 3 whole days together as a family this weekend before he jets off to Rome to work the tattoo convention there. I am so lucky to have such a talented hard-working husband. Now we just have to find the time in his schedule for him to tattoo me.... heh. One day!

On and on

2010-04-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

The garden is coming along beauuuuuutifully. I couldn't be happier with it! We're still getting out there most days. Pearl is getting very good at watering everything in sight, and at digging, and planting seeds. Today I let her loose with a packet of sunflower seeds. We managed to plant a few intentionally, but she got quickly bored of that and wandered off pushing them in the soil randomly around the garden. I'll be interested to see how many of them actually grow! Today we planted our new lavender plant, and a teeny starter rose bush, and some other things I can't remember the names of but that looked and smelt glorious. We also planted some chives and rosemary seeds. I've never grown either of those herbs before, so I hope they are successful. We've got some gorgeous golden thyme and sweet marjoram growing in an old sink, that Pearl loves sniffing. When getting her undressed for bed this evening I found a load of pulled sprigs of thyme inside her vest... that must've been itchy but she smelt lovely!

Other things we have been up to this week are documented below. (The pictures are from my phone; camera is still hanging in its bag in the hallway, charger is officially lost.)

Organising our living room bookshelves by colour (which is the most impractical thing I have ever done - before they were organised by subject/type, now I have NO idea where anything is!):

Took Pearl to a beautiful Park with our beautiful friend Monique, where she forgot briefly whether she liked swings or not:

Found a bargain at a jumble sale - a lil table and chairs for Pearl for just £2.50!

Got Pearl's name printed on the back of her Tumble Tots t-shirt. Chose a super girly font and I'm not even sorry:

And finally, my favourite shot, taken this afternoon. We'd just spent 2 hours working in the garden, and when we came back inside she wanted her shoes off and she climbed up there and laid back. She asked to watch Peppa Pig, and then she ate her snacks and chatted with me about our day, and then she chose her favourite book at the moment (one of the Alfie series, this one in particular) to read together. My baby is growing up.

All change, please!

2010-04-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

The picture quality really needed to be infinitely better than that of my phone, but at least I remembered to document this transformation in some form. (Bob had his camera at work, and my camera is still hanging in the bag in the hallway, with a completely dead battery.)

So, yeah, my family are amazing, and this week they all rallied round. They turned our shoddy, overgrown, rubbish tip of a garden into a useable beautiful outdoor space that we have already spent hours and hours in. Pearl loves being outside, but the garden was so overgrown before that it just wasn't an option. Everytime we go outside she squeals with sheer delight. She loves running around on the poor freshly laid grass, and digs in the soil, and pulls the plants out of the pots, watering everything in sight with her child sized watering can... toddler heaven!

My whole body aches from digging and from lugging giant bags of compost around, and I have gathered numerous freckles and even slightly sunburnt my head. My fingernails are dirty and I can't seem to get them clean. I have swept an outside concrete path more than I ever imagined necessary. I am so excited at the prospect of spending this Summer outdoors, watching our little garden grow.

My head is full of ideas for things to grow, and we have plans to paint the fence, and put up a new gate and and and...

I am so happy right now!

Predictable

2010-04-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Pearl's first proper Easter has been a success. Somewhat. She isn't a chocaholic (unlike her mother), so while she was very pleased to have people giving her gifts all day, she seemed disappointed that they were all just chocolate underneath the boxes and foil. Like I tweeted (with some incredibly poor grammar - one must not tweet while distracted) earlier, she ate more peas than chocolate yesterday. She opened up all the eggs and put them in a little bucket, and just carried it around. She liked playing with the toy bunnies her grandparents bought her. She loved the egg cup and the plate and spoon, and the set of books. She loved the Easter ring that her Daddy gave her:

She enjoyed baking the chocolate fudge cake for dessert on Sunday, and making the chocolate nests. Making biscuits in the shape of bunnies was the highlight of her week. But, yeah, the chocolate thing confused her I think! People were very generous, so I think she'll be living off Easter's supply of chocolate for a good while yet.

My friend Alex blogged about her feelings about Easter and its mixed meaning and messages. That really got me thinking. I grew up in a Catholic family where Easter was the whole shebang, starting on Ash Wednesday and going through lent until He rose again. It wasn't that my family were overly religious, but we went to Catholic schools where it was hammered into us. We'd have new dresses to go to Mass on Easter Sunday, but when we got home my mum had always got us Easter baskets with some kind of gift and chocolate combo. I know what Easter is meant to be about, but I know what it has come to be about for most modern families. One of my friends (in fact, quite a few) posted on Facebook complaining about how children these days were taught that the Easter bunny came like Santa to leave chocolate. And how nobody understood the 'real' meaning behind it.

Like most people I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things; but it's only been very recently that I've begun questioning the things I was brought up to 'believe'. My feelings about religion change almost weekly, depending on what I've read, my frame of mind, or who I've been talking with. I know that I made the conscious decision to stop going to Church, and not to get Pearl christened. I know that I am probably closer to Atheist than the Catholic that I was brought up. But still the Easter debate of Jesus vs. Bunny did cause my brain to go into overdrive for a moment or two. I quickly told my brain to shut the hell up, and just did what I knew Pearl would enjoy.

We bumped into the Easter bunny in M&S the week before the big day, and he gave Pearl a chocolate egg, so when we gave her the eggs on Easter Sunday she made the connection herself that the "bunn abbat" had sent her the chocolate. She is too young to understand anything about Church, we have never taken her to Church. I will explain it all to her when she is old enough, but for now it was enough that she enjoyed the time with all her family gathered together. Running around with her cousin, eating peas off everybody's plates during Sunday lunch. And of course, unwrapping all that bloody chocolate.

Hope everybody else had a lovely extended weekend.

(Re-reading this, I find it noteworthy that while I can try and enlighten myself about all sorts of things, it's hard to change your habits about capitalising words when writing about religion!).

One sleep forward, two teeth back.

2010-03-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

I totally jinxed myself by writing about how much sleep I'd been getting. Cue: new teeth, an ear ache, snotty nose, and some miscellaneous pain that she can't pin point but that makes her wake up crying every 15 minutes. Long stretches of sleep are totally over-rated anyway.

In other news: new wardrobes are fitted, but I had to do an emergency trip to Ikea to get more hangers. I own waaaay more dresses than I realised, and putting away the dozens of bags of clothes is turning out to be a very long process. I'm having to try on everything as I put it away, so that I don't end up with things in my wardrobe that I don't/can't wear. Easier said than done, because I get all nostalgic about things I haven't worn in a while, and can't quite bring myself to part with some serious crap! I need a best friend to come and assess my clothes with me and tell me honestly whether something suits me or not. Pearl just doesn't seem to be able to give the feedback I need... haha.

(Will post pictures of the allllmost completed bedroom after the weekend. Got to fix up bookshelves and finish the aforementioned mammoth clothes sorting task. But trust me it looks good!)

Cycles

2010-03-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

So, if you've read my blog before or you know me in real life, you will know that Pearl is what I like to call a 'milky baby'. She has always needed to nurse very frequently. Didn't matter what I did to try and space out her feeds, nothing ever worked and if anything it would make her more frantic about wanting milk. There's never been any kind of rhyme or reason to her feeding pattern, other than wanting more when she was poorly. And although I'd go through stages where I felt like I needed to get control of the situation, for the most part I just went with the flow. I believe that babies know best what they need, and it's our job to learn to interpret and provide.

You might also remember that Pearl has never been what people call a 'good' sleeper. I don't like talking about babies in terms of 'good' or 'bad', but if I were to classify her sleeping behaviour I would say that perhaps waking 4-20 times every night wasn't an ideal situation! Along the way we'd tried night weaning on more than one occassion. Tried everything that people like Dr. Sears suggested. And Pearl very politely suggested that she wasn't ready. (By very politely, I mean, screaming endlessly - and this is crying in my arms, not the dreaded CIO [which I have strong feelings about, but I will save that for another post]).

Anyway. Over the course of the past week, Pearl spontaneously started sleeping for longer stretches at night. She asked for milk less during the day, and woke up less for it at night. We've gone from sometimes stirring every 15 minutes to make sure that she was still nursing (cos god forbid I roll over and button up my pyjama top!)... to sleeping her longest stretch of sleep ever. Last night I nursed her to sleep at 7.30pm and the first time she stirred asking for milk was 2am. That is a miracle in our house. I feel so much better for having had a decent stretch of sleep for a few nights in a row. If you'd have said to me a few years ago that anything less than 8 hours constituted a decent stretch of sleep, I would've laughed in your face. The problem with Pearl was never getting her to sleep, it was getting her to stay asleep. Turns out I really did just need to trust her to get there in her own time.

The only downsides to all of this: the sudden drop in frequency of nursing meant I got a blocked duct for the first time in 19 months. And apparently if you go to bed at 7.30pm and sleep really well, you have to then wake up for the day at 4.30am. I'm very glad it's daylight savings time at the end of the month!

And now for the non-Pearl part of this post: a whole year after we bought new wallpaper for our bedroom, this week we finally got the chance to put it up. Freshly painted woodwork, beautiful wallpaper, new bedsheets waiting to go on, red bookshelves going up tomorrow, and new wardrobes being fitted on Tuesday. It'll only be the second room in our home that we have totally decorated ourselves - all the others are still half finished because a certain baby arrived two weeks before her due date. Slow and steady wins the race.

My Funny Valentine

2010-03-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite songs to sing to Pearl is by Kimya Dawson, it's from the childrens' album she made and is called "Little Panda Bear". (Kimya's daughter is called Panda).

I love singing the line "...and there's no other one like you". Cos particularly at the moment I really feel like there is no other one like Pearl. She's always been a very definite character but lately her personality is literally exploding out of her. She's so funny! Like, proper makes me crack up funny.

She's discovered that shopping can be fun if there are things for Pearl to choose. Finally, shopping without a meltdown at the end of every aisle! At Sainsbury's yesterday she chose a punnet of strawberries (flown all the way from Egypt, ack!) but because she never really used to like fruit, and because she'd chosen it herself I obliged and bought that strange out of season food. By the time we got to the till she also had some flower and cupcake hair clips, a CBeebies magazine, some cheese and some bagels. She was SO pleased with herself and has since told everybody we meet about what she chose. How empowering for her to realise what she can do, how she is able to communicate! But she also understands if we can't take things home (or, "paaaay", because I explain to Pearl that we can't take it because we haven't paid for it, so it has to stay in the shop). In Tesco she wanted to pick up one of those childs' digital cameras, but was perfectly fine about saying "byebye" to it when we had to move to the next aisle. In that same Tesco trip I got her her very first dressing up costume, a Woody outfit from Toy Story. She's been wearing it at every available opportunity since then, I think I tweeted a picture a few days ago and can't figure out how to post that twitpic here, so have a look in the twitter feed over there ---->

For the past few days she seems to enjoy using the word 'no'. She's said 'no' before, but I don't think she really understands what it means because we try not to use negatives when talking to Pearl. For example, instead of saying "No, don't tip your water cup onto the floor", I'd say something like, "Water stays in the cup for drinking, please keep the cup held up". For a while she liked putting her hand in her drink and licking the water off her hand. I didn't stop her because it doesn't really hurt anything, but I would say that she'd get more to drink if she used her hands to bring the cup to her mouth and drink water like that. Of course I'm not perfect and today I did yell "Nooooooo!" when she knocked 4 raw eggs onto the floor! But on the whole we try and keep it positive, and I really think it shows in how Pearl behaves. The times when I'm tired, or haven't quite got my brain in gear, and I just go into auto-pilot saying negatives, it really affects her behaviour immediately. Like if I give her a positive explanation about changing what she's doing it goes down way easier. Today she also tried to climb up and pull down the television, and once I'd uttered the immortal word "don't", it became climbing city!

But yeah, the past few days she's been loving saying 'no'. No to lunch, no to nappy change, no to going, no to staying, no to sling, no to a drink, no to pushchair, no to puzzles, no to taking shoes off, no to mummy going for a wee.... the list is endless! If you phrase your question differently (or just don't make it an option!) you'll usually discover she does want lunch, and she does want her shoes off. She is the funniest lil creature.

Twwly recently blogged about changing tactics, and it made me realise we'd gradually stopped using distraction as a tool because it often just made things worse. It almost highlighted the thing she was doing, like bringing negative attention to the situation. I've found that letting her work through her emotions, and acknowledging them by saying we know she is sad for whatever reason really helps. We went out with her grandparents last week and when we were in the cafe she wanted to get down and run about, but it was very busy and I just didn't feel it was safe. Not to mention we still had plates full of food. She got upset but somehow when I said to her calmly, "Pearl, I know you are sad because you want to run around, but it isn't safe, and Mummy is still eating her lunch. When Mummy has finished eating we can go and play together". She did a little bit more crying but I didn't try to shush her like I might've done before, and she then settled down happily to eat some of my cake! It was nothing compared to previous outings where in a similar situation I'd try to distract her and everything would escalate so quickly.

Oops this is a bit long, particularly with not much in the way of visual stimulation. I got all carried away typing, if you read all of that you may have one of these Lindt chocolates I'm eating right now. I'll send it through the power of internet magic... pahaha sorry. (Especially sorry to Alex, know how much you love them!)

"Miyohlk"

2010-03-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

Today Pearl said 'milk' properly for the first time. And the word had a fantastic South-East London twang to it. (One can run from one's roots, but one can apparently not hide them when one has a tiny parrot in the form of a child). Until today it had been a strange throat-y or nasal-y noise, like 'mmmmmnnnk', or even better, 'gnnk', accompanied by lots of signing. But this afternoon I asked her what she wanted, and clear as day she said 'miyohlk'. I think my heart pretty much melted/exploded on the spot.

Then she got straight back to her two-day long assault of whining. But that brief, sweet moment of clarity in Pearl's toddler gobbledy-gook language made all the whining bearable.

Totally off topic: all these crazy ass weather events have really got me spooked. Bob is out for the evening and so far all I've done is eat chocolate orange and read news stories about the natural disasters that have been happening. Damn scary earthquakes and freaky waves and floods and shit. Because I needed something else to keep my stupid paranoid mind occupied... I really have seen 'The Day After Tomorrow' one too many times. Haha.

The bath of times

2010-02-27T12:18:00.001-08:00

She loves bathtime! Always has done, and it's such a lovely part of our day. She doesn't have a bath every day, because unlike most children who seem to respond well to the bedtime routine of bath-story-bed, if she has a bath it ramps her excitement up about 34 levels. She then not only has trouble settling down to sleep, but then has a really restless night. We never bothered with putting her in a baby bath, we just had her in the bath with us. Sometimes these days she has a little bath by herself, but we like sharing that precious time together. Her favourite bath pasttime at thte moment is to examine our tattoos and she sometimes checks her own skin for them. She had a bit of a melt down last week because she couldn't find her pizza ("pitzz") tattoo... the one that is on MY arm. I wanted to laugh so much but I had to be restrained and explain kindly, and validate her feelings about the situation etc. What a little cracker.

I love this photo, it looks like we're having a super serious in depth conversation. Often times Bob will just snap away with the camera, and it's not till we look back on the photos afterwards that we realise just how grown up our lil bubba is. She has such a wide range of facial expressions that you sometimes miss when they happen in a microsecond. It's times like these I am so grateful that we live in the age of digital photography, because we get to re-live all of this amazing-ness instantly and up close and forever. The photo I posted at the top there makes me smile from ear to ear, and also laugh a little at how crazy her teeth are. One day she will have a proper mouth full of teeth but right now they're still crazy. She seems to be a bit behind her peers with regards to teeth, but the way I see it is the later she has them, the less time they'll have to potentially go rotten. My Granny was telling me that my Dad didn't have a tooth in his mouth till he was 13 months old, so at least we're doing better than that. She seems to have realised that she has proper teeth for chewing now that she has 4 molars, so she's enjoyed nomming on more raw veggies lately.

Back to the topic at hand: bath. Pearl loves the bath so much she likes to make all her favourite objects take trips to the bath too. This morning it was my phone. My 'already-battered, not insured, still got another 10 months left on its contract' phone. Bob was in the shower, and I was down the hallway getting a clean nappy for Pearl. I was just heading back when I heard Bob yelling my name. She'd apparently just walked right in there and dropped my phone over the edge of the bath. (We have one of those showers over the bath). Under orders from Bobby, I took it apart immediately and towel dried it, then put it on the radiator. I left it there till lunchtime when I braved putting it back together. Miraculously it still works! Usually Pearl has been very good since we explained to her that only bath toys can go in the bath, but obviously the lure of my phone just lying on the side was too much temptation. At least it wasn't in the toilet... we haven't had any mishaps in that area yet and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed!

No sleep till Brooklyn

2010-02-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

So, I've discovered the only downside to my 'job'... the lack of sick leave. I'm proper poorly but can do fuck all about it. Can't do the one thing my body really needs, which is rest, because I have an extremely rambunctious 19 month old to look after, and a home to take care of. Meals need to get cooked, nappies need to get changed (and washed, along with all the other million clothes she wears in one day!). Time doesn't stand still just because my stupid crappy immune system was unable to protect me from yet another virus.

What do full-time mothers do in these situations? I'm lucky that my husband has been willing and able to get up early with Pearl, to allow me to try and grab whatever additional sleep I can. But then he has to go to work and we're left to our own devices. I feel awful because I've had the television on far more than I would like, but it's a good distraction that doesn't require me doing very much. She was happy to sit on the sofa under the duvet with me to watch Ratatouille yesterday, and if she's happy then I'm happy. Well, coughing, aching, snotty, but sitting down so that equals some kind of happy.

But yeah, I'd love to know what mamas do in these situations. These are the situations in which I would be grateful to have had my child when I was older, so that her grandparents would be older and retired and therefore perhaps able to help look after her while I feel like a bag of crap. Would also help if I hadn't moved far away from my own parents... what I wouldn't give for a bowl of my mummy's chicken soup right now! I'm having to make do with whatever super quick meals I can bear to stand and cook for us all.

This too shall pass.

formspring.me

2010-02-14T13:11:00.001-08:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/lallydone

Who needs actions when you've got...?

2010-02-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

I'm having a very strange February so far. I would like a do-over, or to apply for a transfer to another month, or some sort of time machine to get me back to January, because January was probably the most awesome month of my life. I just didn't know it at the time. I don't think that there are enough words to explain it, or maybe there are too many words, and I'm worried that if I start typing I won't stop until my hands physically break.

I think maybe I will be able to talk about February once this month has finished. I'm pinning all my hopes on a super March. Springtime, new beginnings and all that.

Here's a musical interlude in the mean time. Listening to this song at every available opportunity at thte moment. 7 times on the drive to London today alone. Music is my saviour, as always.

(Excuse the strange youtube user video, dont know how else I can share this amazing version of this song with you though.)

In the mean time... http://www.formspring.me/lallydone

Peace out

Racing

2010-02-02T04:39:00.000-08:00

To update briefly on Friday's events: I managed to get out of the house, albeit while Pearl was shouting 'Mama' in a very wobbly voice behind me. I had a bit of a wobble in the car, and did consider turning around more than once, but made it to Brighton eventually. By all accounts her grandparents were able to calm her quickly, however she didn't want any part of her 'normal' bedtime routine if it didn't involve Mama or Milk. They read lots of stories and played quietly, just letting her lead the way really. She finally succumbed to sleep while watching "Ratatouille" from the comfort of Grandma's lap, about 2 hours after her normal bedtime. She stayed asleep until about 11pm, by which point I was already on my way home, but it meant she cried inconsolably for about 15 minutes until I came legging it in the door.

I did have a feeling that she would go down relatively easily, but that the first time she stirred she would want me and only me. She nursed for well over an hour once I lay down with her, and hasn't wanted to leave my side since then, but that is totally understandable. She's been asking for milk very frequently for the past few days, although I think that's a combination of her molars giving her jip and the Friday night stuff.

Today I am feeling a bit fragile. My back is up and I'm all defensive about our style of parenting. The past week has thrown some strange encounters our way, and I hate feeling like I have to defend the way we have chosen to raise our child. So many people just blindly go through their parenting career, and seem to take offense if somebody else does something other than what is 'normal'. If I choose to do something with Pearl and you've done it differently, it doesmt mean that I'm criticising your choices. Does that make sense? It's a scenario I encounter all the time with breastfeeding, but more and more it's happening with every day things. I think I want to write more about this when I have more time. Right now Pearl is napping and I want to use the time to read more of my current book, "Mothering Your Nursing Toddler".

I need to remember to breathe, and that the proof will be in the pudding. And Pearl is already the best pudding I ever made.

Nnnnng blergh

2010-01-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

I have a cold, again. So does Pearl, although hers is already waning thankfully. I've been breathing through my mouth all week. This is not attractive and needs to end soon. I want to be able to taste my food again, and to be able to sleep lying down without feeling like I'm suffocating. Additionally, a cold plus sleep deprivation can drastically reduce one's ability to behave rationally. Pearl's cold preceded mine, so for a few days before I got snotty she was stirring almost every 10 minutes overnight. My poor body just didn't stand a chance. I've got a mouth full of ulcers, which is my foolproof sign that I am run the fuck down. I don't just get one or two at a time, I get clusters of the buggers, and usually on my tonsils too. This time they're on my soft palette and going down to my tonsils, also under my tongue. Real nice, immune system, thanks.

Anyway enough of the poorly whining. Tomorrow I'm meant to be going out with my husband in the evening for the first time since Pearl was born. Snot and all. Pearl usually nurses to sleep, and during night-time hours she will usually only accept comfort from me, so it would've been unfair to her and to any potential babysitters for me to leave her after hours. At 18 months she still usually only wants me at night, but Bob's parents are the ones who will be babysitting. I know that she loves them so much and... well I don't know how she's going to act but I will only be about 1/2hr away, so can be back here quick if she really needs me.

Part of me thinks that she might not go to sleep at all. Maybe cos of the excitement of having her grandparents here, maybe because she won't get the warm milk and relaxing hormone nightcap. Part of me is totally panicking and thinking about cancelling, because I'm abandoning her when she needs me most and will she think I'm a mean heartless mummy? Part of me just knows that nothing Pearl has ever done has been predictable, and really what's the worst that could happen? One night won't permanently disturb her bedtime routine. I mean, she sleeps so unpredictably already, perhaps an evening shakeup might be what she needs. Who knows.

I won't be drinking but I am looking forward to some adult conversation, and an excuse to get dressed in something other than my daytime mummy clothes. I've been outfit planning all week, like an excited school girl, but it just occured to me that most of the clothes I'd been thinking about are probably in the giant mountain of washing in the bedroom. Tomorrow morning I will have to root around and see what I can wash on a quick cycle, so that it will dry in time for our evening adventures.

Fingers crossed I can at least make it to the party before I have to come back to my bubba.

Recipe for success

2010-01-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

An additional hour's sleep for Mama, a lovely bath, the most delicious juicy orange we've ever eaten, drop Dada to the train station, a morning of playing, food shopping while Pearl slept in the pushchair, lunch at M&S cafe, a new owl rug for Pearl's room, Pearl biting a raw unpeeled garlic clove, cooking our best ever spag bol, a super-long pre-bed story session, 4 new words in one day, Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate, Design*Sponge blog browsing, and a present in the form of an American Apparel long hoody from my husband.

Tomorrow's recipe will include such classics as, "going to Carpet Right to choose new carpets", "buying a new nappy pail", "making rhubarb crumble", and "cleaning the bathroom".

(Forgot to say, this photo and the other one a few days ago were both taken by Bob. Still haven't charged my camera, crap.)

Unreasonable

2010-01-21T13:06:00.001-08:00

We live in a hundred year old house that was converted into two flats (one on each of the two floors) about 10 years ago. It's great because we get high ceilings, and access to our own bit of garden, and some gorgeous original period features. Beautiful windows that let in lots of light and alcoves either side of the chimney breast. But it's rubbish because it isn't purpose built, so the sound-proofing is pretty much non-existant. The person who carried out the conversion obviously did not give a shit about helping the occupants of the two flats live peacefully in such close proximity. Downstairs have beautiful original wooden flooring, but combined with the high ceilings, open fireplaces and their lack of soft furnishings, we can hear 99% of what goes on in their home. When we're busy during the day, this isn't really an issue. (Aside from a couple of occasions of unusually loud reggae music, but thankfully that's been few and far between). However, like most young couples, their lives would appear to revolve around the evenings and weekends. Their kitchen is directly below our bedroom, and while I'm trying to help Pearl go to sleep, we can hear them chopping their food, talking, moving pots and pans, getting things out of the cupboard, even hear their boiler clunking as they use the hot tap. We hear them walking up and down the hallway, shouting down the length of the flat to each other, moving chairs at the table. The other night I lay in bed at 2.30am listening to the only slightly dampened sound of their television. The male neighbour has got such a deep booming voice, it sounds like he's speaking in a bloody megaphone. If he laughs or speaks loudly it wakes Pearl with a start.

We share a communal entrance hallway (about 1m wide by 2m long), which contains both of our front doors and the main front door to the outside world. Because of where these doors are, we have the stairs to our home actually within our own front door. Somehow, anything they cook or have within their flat that has any odour, manages to waft up our stairs and make our whole flat smell like whatever they've been using/eating/doing. Today that smell was marijuana. I got home from a frantic shopping trip with Pearl, during which she'd spent the whole time doing that back-arching tantrum thing because I hadn't let her bite into a raw onion ("Pah [Pearl speak for apple]?" "No Pearl, onion". "PAH!" "Bubba, it's an onion, look here's an apple!" "MmmmmNO Mama, PAH!" etc). I was laden with shopping bags and the nappy bag and a wriggling Pearl, trying to open the front door in the dark, and the last thing I wanted to do was come back to a home that stank like it had been hot boxed by some teenage stoners. Blergh. I've never smelt it before from them, so I really hope it's just a one off. I don't have a problem with people smoking weed, but it's just not something I do, particularly with a small child in the house.

Anyway. I'm sure they hear everything we do as well, particularly lil' Miss stompy pants. All her monster impressions must annoy the hell out of them - she may be tiny but she makes the floor shake when she runs up and down the hallway. And the other morning she was hitting her hammer and peg toy ten to the dozen, probably long before they had to be awake. How very considerate of her, hah! I'm sure they have no idea how much of their lives we can hear, and I'd probably be embarrassed if I knew how much they could hear of us. Still, annoying none the less, to have Pearl's sleep so unnecessarily disrupted every single evening.

All I know is that if we ever have the money to move, I want somewhere detached. No stinky noisy neighbour worries in my future, please.

"Cheese!"

2010-01-19T13:19:00.000-08:00

I get to spend every day (and night, don't forget the nights!) with this wonderful lil' human. Growing and learning and playing and non-stop all the time amazingness. Her speech and language are developing so quickly. She says new words almost daily, my favourite is still how she says 'flower'; "hlaw-lawh', lots of exaggerated mouth and tongue movements but she tries so hard to get it just right! Her co-ordination amazes me, especially how she feeds herself with cutlery. She can feed herself soup too, which took a few weeks of extremely messy lunchtimes but now she's got the hang of it there's no stopping her! She plays with toys and uses her imagination in ways I wouldn't have expected for someone of her age. She makes me cups of tea with her tiny tea set, she "COOK!"s multiple meals every day, mixing and pouring and "snip"-ping ingredients from her play food set. She loves going through all her animal finger puppets and making all the different noises together.

I know that every parent thinks their child is a genius, but I hope I never stop being amazed by all the things she is capable of. She is so considerate of others, too. I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but she seems to understand the concept of taking turns. And if she sees another child upset while we're at toddler group, she'll come to find me to tell me, or she stands near them making enough noise to alert somebody that she knows something is wrong.

I get kissed by that cute little face and climbed all over by that ever-growing body, I get hugs and I get my trousers tugged in a frantic manner when I spend too long doing something that doesn't involve her. I get my nose, eyes, mouth, and ears poked whenever she feels like she needs to remind me that she knows what all those body parts are called. I get to be the one who scoops her up if she's fallen over... or if she's landed on her face after trying to run down a slide! I get to battle with her to let me help her clean her teeth, explain to her that we mustn't empty out the whole pack of babywipes in one go. I get to make pictures with her and make sure she is clean and presentable. I get to wake up 20 times a night to help her get back to sleep, and yet still I feel a huge grin take over my face when she wakes up in the morning, immediately full of beans and excitement about the day ahead. I get to chase her round the supermarket, and let her chase me down the hallway while she practices being a monster.

I must've done something good.

Floor beans

2010-01-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

Today was back to business as usual. A 'normal' Tuesday, the first 'normal' day we've had since before Christmas I think. It was fucking awesome! We had playgroup this morning, which Pearl loves. She got to make a snowman picture with glue and cotton wool, although I think by the end she had more stuck on her fingers than on the paper. She ran around and played with the dolls and the cars and the kitchen, and moved chairs around, and went on the mini slide a shit ton. She was super excited when it was time to do singing today, frantically clapping her hands and saying "Yeahhhhh" at every opportunity, which everybody seemed to think was adorable. Ok, I thought it was adorable. I'm just glad to have my proper girly back, and to be rid of that snotty whine monster.

It was also a return to business as usual for her eating habits. She's still asking for milk really frequently, but I can manage to get her to have a drink or snack instead, or to have a cuddle, or sometimes I can just distract her by saying "oooh look what's over here...". If I've tried those things and she then still asks for milk, of course I will oblige. But as I was saying; her appetite appears to have returned. Thank goodness for that! I'm feeling very proud of what she ate today, considering how little she has been eating, so I'm going to type it here for my own purposes. She has always had a relatively small appetite without being poorly, so this was a really amazing day for her.

1/4 of a bagel
1/4 biscuit and some raisins
Bowl of soup and 1/2 slice multiseed bread toast
1/2 orange
1/2 pack mini cheddars
2 mini sausages
1/4 banana
1/2 apple
1/2 avocado
Bowl of wholegrain rice and half a chicken breast
1 yoghurt
Loads of water and milk throughout the day

Written like that it may not seem like a lot, but it was superb for us. By the time she'd finished eating her dinner, she kept saying "poo", and rubbing her tummy... don't think she'd ever experienced having such a full stomach, she must've felt like she needed to poop! It was so cute because she looked really concerned about her lil tummy. I'm also really pleased that she ate that variety of fruits. She's always preferred savoury foods - for months she favoured green foods (broccoli, avocado, peas, spinach were top of the list), and would hardly touch anything else. She doesn't seem to have the massive sweet tooth that I have, which can only be a good thing really. Lots of parents complain that their bubbas won't eat savoury foods, so I'm not complaining because she loves vegetables! I also know that there are far better snacks for toddlers than mini cheddars, and usually she has something better than that, but I feel like I would be being hypocritical if I sat and ate mini cheddars and never gave her anything remotely treat-y.

Speaking of treat-y, I bought some bourbon biscuits today that I just remembered about. I'm going to get off the laptop and go eat those. Who needs exciting evenings down the pub when you can have a pack of bourbons while you watch Bill Bailey's guide to the orchestra?!

Whatcha gon' do, come back back again

2010-01-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

Pearl is fiiiiiinally better! She's not completely back to her old self (see: excess snot, cough, and whining) but she's not sleeping/crying all day and night long, so anything is a marked improvement on that dire scenario. Fuck me that was a challenging few weeks. It was heartbreaking watching her get more and more poorly, and being able to do fuck all about it other than make her distressed four times a day, trying to force her to take some medicine to alleviate some of her discomfort. I have never been more grateful for the fact that she is still nursing, otherwise she would have had pretty much nothing to eat in over a week. I mean, she'd nibbled like a bird at some tiny amounts of food, and we'd offered her nutritious snacks and meals as usual, but the only thing she would regularly take was breastmilk. Now she's on the mend she's still asking for milk a gazillion times a day, but we are gradually getting back to 'normal'. She devoured all the food we had today and that made me do big smiles.

I love cooking for Pearl (and Bobby). (And therefore me, I suppose!). It's especially more rewarding now Pearl is able to "help" cooking, and that she is able to "help" me pick out the produce at the supermarket. I think she's getting old enough to make the connection between what we've bought and how we prepare it, and the final outcome of the meal. She gets so excited when she sees the stack of broccolis for sale, and she was squealing "pepper" over and over when we were choosing red peppers. She understands when I say that we can't eat things if they're not cooked (see: trying to break into a pack of uncooked sausages while we were unloading the shopping). She appears to understand if we have to wait for something to cook. I love it when she bends down to look in the oven to check how something is doing! I desperately want to get her a toy oven of her own, but we have a fairly small home, and plus those things cost money. I'm keeping an eye out in our local charity shops for one, because I think I could sacrifice some space in our cramped home just to see the fun she would have playing with her own sized pots and pans. As part of her Christmas presents we got her a huge pack of toy foods. It contained loads of fruit and veg, but also fun stuff like pizza, and chicken, and pasta, and even some pringles. Not that she's ever eaten pringles, but still. She knows what crisps are! She spent ages on Christmas morning playing with it, and putting together plates of food for us. I think this 'role playing' stage of her development is already the most fun to be a part of and to witness. And there's so much more to come. My baby is growing so fast!

I wanted to say that I know my blog is visually boring because I never add any photos, but that will change soon I promise. Gotta upload all the latest ones off Bob's camera, and also gotta charge up my little point'n'shoot thing to capture more of the day-to-day stuff that Pearl and I get up to.

Oops

2010-01-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

Life totally went into overdrive for a few months there. I didn't forget about my blog: but every time I remembered, I just didn't have the time to sit down and write something even semi-interesting. I kept thinking, "Oh I'll update when such-and-such has happened", or "When I've finished doing this", but nothing is ever really finished, so I don't know what on earth I was thinking.

Right now I can't think of anything else that happened since I last wrote a blog, because I am incredibly tired. Exhausted, actually. Pearl is very poorly. Today we took her to the hospital for the very first time since she left it after she was born. We're still at my parents' house, and since we arrived on Boxing Day, Pearl has been getting gradually more ill. Her temperature has been rising and her mood worsening. She's full of snot, and coughing, and vomiting... today she was crying inconsolably and just not herself at all, which combined with all the other things meant we took her to a&e. I'd originally phoned grab-a-doc (the local out of hours Drs service around here) but the Doctor I spoke to said that it sounded like she just had a virus that was going around, and that she'd be fine in a few days. My mama instinct told me that this was not a satisfactory answer, and calpol was doing jack shit. My Dad drove us to the hospital since I was all in Mama-freaking-out mode. The thing on the wall said that the wait was around 4 and a half hours, but we were seen within 10 mins. I haven't got the energy to type out the long and short of it, but basically her temperature was 38.6 when we got there (thats about 101 something or other, I think) and the Dr wouldn't let us leave till she was more calm and not burning up. She refused to take any medicine, so they had us strip her off and brought in a huge fan to try and bring her temperature down. It took about 45minutes for it to get to 37.8, at which point the Dr said we could go but that if we were at all unsure, or if she got worse, to bring her back in. We were sent away with antibiotics and a 'diagnosis' consisting of a severe upper respiratory tract infection, severe left inner ear infection, and suspected tonsilitis. My poor, poorly bubba!

As it turns out, today would be the first day ever that Pearl decided she no longer liked medicine. She's always taken calpol fairly easily if it's been necessary, but today - no way was that getting anywhere near her mouth! So getting some foul tasting antibiotic in her has been an interesting challenge. We've managed about 1 and a half doses so far, and hoping for better luck tomorrow. She is the most poorly I have ever seen her, and it breaks my heart. She's woken up a gazillion times since she went to bed this evening, just sobbing in her hoarse throated voice, smearing snot all over my shoulder and generally being not right at all. I hope the second day of 2010 is better for my lil jam.

Glazed

2009-11-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

The bloody engine light has come on in my car again. It came on a few weeks ago, so I drove up to my mum and dad's so I could take it into my dad's work (car dealership with garage) to get it checked. By the time I got there the light had turned itself off, and my dad said I just had to wait for it to come on again. And this evening it did. I was kinda hoping it would just go away: that if I ignored it, somehow the problem would miraculously solve itself. This is something I used to like to do a lot, but when you have a child it's not really the most sensible way of dealing with things. I have cut my ostrich-like behaviour down to a bare minimum, and this really isn't the situation to start behaving like a strange bird again. I think partly I want to bury my head about this because I got the car from my dad, and he and my mum do so much for us that I feel guilty presenting him with more work on my behalf. Especially since I know we probably won't be able to afford the repairs ourselves, and that my dad will have to sort it out for us. I hope my little car is ok and that the 'engine malfunction indicator' light has just come on by accident, or is nothing too serious.

I still feel like I'm in a bit of a daze without Calla here. I kinda lost track of this week and I can't believe it's Saturday tomorrow already. We'd made loose plans to go up and visit my family on Sunday if Calla was here, so I guess we could stick to that at least, as it ties in well with getting my car seen to. I want to go to Bluewater while we're there (it's like 15mins from their house) and start my search for a new pair of boots. My last pair finally gave up the ghost after 9 years and I haven't found a replacement yet. I was trying to explain to Bobby why I find it so hard to choose a new pair. Basically, if we were millionaires I would have multiple pairs of boots to go with every different outfit. But we're not, and so the pair of boots I choose has to be versatile enough to match different outfits and occasions. I am asking a lot out of one pair of boots, particularly as I have stupid chicken legs (read: really skinny) and need a pair that will fit my calves and not make me look like I'm wearing wellies. I don't want a high heel, I don't want chunky heels, not too rounded in the toe, proper knee length, preferably with some sort of buckle/strap option and of course a zip not lace-up. I failed my search last year and spent last winter without a pair of boots, which is not something I wish to repeat. Bootmakers - don't let me down again!

Woah

2009-11-19T06:36:00.000-08:00

My birthday was fun, I ate a lot of Indian food and caterpillar cake (thank you Marks and Spencer!), and generally just enjoyed life. I made a flying visit to London, stayed at my Mum and Dad's for the night, and came home to get on with prepping our house for the imminent arrival of our Canadian visitor. Unfortunately she fell sick and couldn't come. So gutted! Obviously we're so upset that she couldn't come but how awful for her to be too sick to travel - hoping she feels better soon. I know we will get to see each other again soon! Last time we were meant to see each other, we had flights booked to Canada and then I fell pregnant with Pearl. By the time we would've been due to fly, I was so far along and was on the cusp of requiring a doctor's note, and I had been super sick while pregnant so didn't know if we'd even get it. Also, because of the aforementioned pregnancy, money was tight. So we had to come to the very grown-up decision that it was better to just say goodbye to some of the flight money, rather than have to spend even more while out there. Anyway. It would appear that some strange karma has come between our paths again, but I know we will meet again some day. She's my Canadian soul mate. If you read this Calla - we love you and hope you are feeling better.

Without our special guest, this week it's just business as usual here. Every day so far while Pearl has napped, I've been cracking on with ironing. Today I decided that 'Murder She Wrote' was calling me, and so I've sat down with this mini laptop and put my feet up for a while. I'm going to look up some more recipes for the spare bananas we've got in the kitchen. I've started intentionally buying too many bananas so that we'll have enough left to use in baking. This morning we made another banana loaf, but I'm thinking something involving peanut butter would be good this afternoon. I love cake!

Spoil(t)

2009-11-12T12:00:00.001-08:00

It's my birthday tomorrow. We're not doing anything in particular to celebrate, as far as I'm aware. Pearl has only started recently accepting any sort of evening routine (previously it was ever-changing in terms of time and structure - her choice, not ours). That routine culminates in laying down with me to go to sleep. I just don't feel it's fair at this point to try and force her to go to sleep for somebody else when she's not ready. If she hadn't been all super disrupted with sleep the past few weeks I probably would've considered trying it. Not at the moment tho.

It's not a special number birthday, it's only plain ol' 26. I'm not excited about it. I mean, I'm not one of those birthday hater types, but it is just another day really. I'm just gonna go about it like I would any other Friday, except for I know that Bobby has bought me an awesome present. I know what my present is and I spoiled it for myself, but I don't regret it because it's fucking rad! Plus it's only a day early, so whatever.

Basically, we're not exactly swimming in buckets of cash, like most people really. So for Bobby's birthday we decided that instead of spending money on a present that he would like, but not necessarily get lots of use from, he'd choose a new pair of boots. Practical and exciting, I know. But he was more than happy to do it (it was his idea in fact), and I did wonder whether we'd do the same thing for my birthday. However, Bobby said he wanted to get me a specific present, and it's not that I don't believe he'll get me great presents: he always does. I just didn't want to feel like we were being frivolous. This feels dumb to type so I'll cut to the chase. He got me Lips, that amazing XBox equivalent of Singstar. I love Karaoke, I love singing and this is actually my idea of heaven! He brought it home this evening and I wanted to test it out right away, but I've gotta wait till the morning because Pearl is asleep. I think she'll love it too because she already sings into the microphone on her toy piano, and music (as they say on Yo Gabba Gabba) is AWESOME!

So therefore, I am now excited about my birthday because I get to wake up and play Lips while I eat breakfast. Amaaaaaaazing!

Anyway. Time to go watch that Seth McFarlane almost live thingy, I'm half watching it while typing but it deserves my full attention because so far it's been hilarious. See you on the other side of my half century of life!

Words

2009-11-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to do this but never quite get around to it. I'm going to put it here so I have a proper hard copy for future reference. At 15 months, Pearl can say the following words:

Mama
Dada (Dad)
Cat
Dog (doorg)
Duck, and quack, these are interchangeable and have the same meaning
Nana
Grandad (ghan-dah)
Grandma (ghan-mah, or an-mah)
Frank (ank, or rang)
Apple (Pah, bah or praah)
Banana (narn)
Up (UH! UH! UH! UH! UH! UHUHUH! etc)
Down (dah)
Shoes (Soo, or oos)
Yes - comes out as yeh, or sometimes yep.
No
Bath (bah)
Book
Please (klees, or clhease)
Thanks (sanks)
Go
Mickey (Kaka, this is also used for Minnie Mouse)
Sling (clhin)
Bread (rehd)
Milk (Gilkh)
Butter (bahr)
Flour / flower (Flaahr)
Toast (Toosh)
Cake (Cack! Cack!) (For rice cakes as well as proper cakes)
Sausages (Sssssoooooos)
Drink (glink)
Igglepiggle (guh)
Upsydaisy (day)
Crisps (clisp)
Phone (ohhhn/ohw)
Spoon (boon)
Fork (orc)
Hot (oht, or a noise made by breathing in quickly, like 'ooh ooh', so she knows it'd hurt)
Chocolate (cockluch)
Biscuit (isk, eeskee)
Fish (shhhhhh)
Door

Words she's only said a few times but she's still said 'em:

Moomoo (her cousin's nickname)
Fiona (Nona)
Dylan (Deegh, or din)
Keke cat

If she sees food she likes, she'll say 'mmm nom nom!'.

She makes the noise of a the following animals if she sees them either in book, on tv, or as a toy:
cow (moo), pig (a very cute snorting noise), sheep (haah haah haaaah) (yes, literally that noise!), snake (sssss), cockerel (a very high pitched COCK!), dog (oof). Any sort of lion/tiger/dinosaur/monster all get the same 'roooooarghhghgghghggggggggrrrrrrr' sort of noise. She does a fab tractor noise too, its all brrrrrruuuuumgrrrrrrmmmmmhhhh and amazingly cute.

She can sign the following:
Milk
Finished
Yes
No
Nappy change
Fish

She tries out new words what feels like every minute of every day, I'm sure I've forgotten some for this list, but I needed to write it down before I forget. She's growing up so bloody fast!

Today is an oatmeal day

2009-11-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

Pearl did not sleep last night. Well, she did sleep but it was incredibly fractured and interrupted by bursts of crying and lots of writhing around and having milk and coughing and more crying and strange whimpering and it just went on and on and on. Usually if we have a night like that, I try to keep the following day fairly laid back. I usually try to keep the following day laid back because if she's tired and I'm tired, we're both grumpy and irritable and I thought that it worked best if we didn't have any pressing arrangements to attend to. Today was the exception to that, and much to my surprise it actually works far better if we just keep on keeping on. First thing this morning was all tense and there was lots of whining over breakfast, so I decided that we needed to get out of the house, so we left bright and early to go to our Tuesday morning toddler group. I wore Pearl in the Moby Wrap there and back. It's our sling of choice, we've tried others along the way but this has been our true lifesaver, I have no idea how I would have coped without it. I feel like that closeness helped us both to get out of our cranky-tired moods. It's like wearing her resets our relationship, cancels out any bad mood vibes and it honestly calms me right down.

She ran around like a crazy little imp at toddler group, climbing everything and exploring and playing alongside her friends (occasionally getting walloped by another child, or pushing somebody else over if they dared to get on the slide before her!). On the way back she fell asleep. I stopped off in the mini Tesco to get some bits for lunch and dinner, she stayed asleep. When we got home I put away most of the bits, then decided to screw the housework and just take advantage of my sleeping babe, so I sat down and watched some daytime TV. I got to sit down for almost 2 whole hours! In total she slept for 2 and a half hours. Pearl hardly ever sleeps for that long at a time, even at night, so it was a real treat for her and me. She woke up super refreshed and I felt like I was more ready to continue auditioning for the role of 'world's best mummy'. We ate lunch and then set about doing some errands. Usually on a Tuesday afternoon I do a cleaning job, but I ended up only being able to do half of it because our quick errands turned into getting caught up in queues in the Town Hall and subsequently in the bank.

We came back and I prepared and roasted vegetables as quickly as our puny little oven would allow. Pearl was getting all antsy and tired and hungry, so I decided we'd make some fruity flapjack while we waited for our dinner. She loves baking! She helped me pour out the oats and measuring the ingredients, and stirring the oil and sugar, and mixing it all together, and lining the baking tin. While I put it in the oven and then boiled some spaghetti to go with the veggies, she decided to sample the delights of cat biscuits, from their bowl on the floor. Apparently they don't taste half bad. They even taste better than roasted squash, which she refused to eat once we finally got to the dining table.

I love how she eats spaghetti, all slurpy and with both hands, shovelling and mouth warped and frantic, and all over the place and then that final satisfied 'smack' as she sucks the last bit into her mouth. We finished dinner, and she found a piece of Cadbury's finger on the floor that she'd discarded after lunch. I asked her if she was tired, and she signed yes, so we put on our nunights winding down music. After we'd read a few of her favourite books, she asked for a massage so I obliged - it is so nice seeing her little face with that blissful smile. I wish I had somebody to give me a full body massage every evening! Quick change into a night-time nappy and pyjamas, she is ready for bed. We wave goodnight to everything on our way to the bedroom: music, toys, sofa, bathroom, cats, kitchen. We gather Mickey and Minnie Mouse and her bedtime duck, lay down on our bed and 20 minutes later she's got a tummy of milk and is absolutely fast asleep. I zip up her sleeping bag and creep out of the room.

I just ate a huge chunk of the flapjack we made and it is damn tasty! It's not just oats, it's got my favourite seeds in it - pumpkin, sunflower, linseed, as well as chopped almonds and dried apricots and cranberries. Sooo gooey and amazingly more-ish. I'm hoping Pearl gets better sleep tonight, not just for my own selfish purposes, but because it can't be nice for her to feel so tired all day long either. Bobby is working late tonight so I'ma go grab the rest of the box of chocolate fingers and our sofa blanket, and watch this programme about why we talk. Tomorrow it all begins again. Although I guess it never really ends!

I need something

2009-11-05T12:17:00.000-08:00

I need something to channel my passion. Now that I've finally figured where my passion lies, I need to use the motivation it gives me, and start using my brain properly again. My passion is breastfeeding and child-centred parenting and basically anything that involves using your instinct and being led by mother nature to nurture and raise your child.

I've done the La Leche League breastfeeding peer supporter training (a 12 week course) and instead of fulfilling my need to learn, it just fuelled the fire in my brain. I want knowledge, I want to help other parents, I want to spread the word about how your baby knows best, about how truly wonderful it feels to wear your baby in a sling or wrap, about the miracle of clearing a baby's blocked nose with one squirt of breastmilk. I want parents to never have to feel the mental anguish of listening to your child crying: going against your natural instinct to follow "advice" from health professionals who are themselves following "advice" that stems from some seriously antiquated practices. It scares me how prolific these practices still are in this day and age. How low the breastfeeding rates are in this country (in fact, how low they are in so many first world countries around the world), how fervently people defend their right to feed their child a subpar alternative to breastmilk. How blase people have become about breastfeeding - I hear too many pregnant women say that they hope they'll be able to breastfeed. What on earth do you think your breasts are there for?! Only around 2% of women have a true medical reason for being unable to breastfeed. The rest of you: that's choice. I suppose it's all so closely woven with people's need to work, (which btw, it is still perfectly possible to breastfeed even if the mother has to return to full time work, it just takes a little more effort), or just to continue living their life as they were accustomed before baby came along. People have busy lives and they are heavily scheduled, this just doesn't work with a new baby. You have to let go! There are huge misconceptions that people still have about what a newborn baby needs, about how foreign independence should be to any human that young and yet it seems to be what parents strive for. How warped our perception of what a "good" baby is. How formula companies infiltrated our healthcare systems and that they are still allowed to advertise... all this confuses and upsets me and infuriates me in equal measure.

I could type and type and type and still probably not write down every topic that peaks my interest in this area. I hate that I may come across as judgemental: this isn't my aim at all. People make decisions that they believe to be in their (and their baby's) best interests: obviously, this I don't doubt. What I doubt is the generations of poor practice and misinformation that has filtered down to make some strange stuff the norm. Just because something is popular doesn't make it right. To steal a quote from elsewhere: never confuse prominence with significance. I think I get frustrated with how easily people are led. Well, it's not even that they're led, it's just that they only see one path and it's easy just to keep on trucking, I guess. Use your brain!

"Breast is best" isn't just some anti-formula campaign: it's the truth! It is what mother nature intended you too nourish your infant with, it is the way we are designed. I see smart people choosing to let their milk dry up (or in some cases, never even let their baby suckle to stimulate milk production) so that they may get back to their "normal" lives asap. Dude, you had a fucking baby: your life will NEVER be the same. How about putting them first? They are only going to be this tiny once. I guess what gets me is that perhaps I feel like it devalues all the hard work I put in parenting Pearl. (I'm not so pigheaded that I can't see my own character flaws.) Breastfeeding wasn't always easy for me! It was hard, sometimes when she would have woken for the 19th time in one night, when I'd been sitting up feeding her for what felt like hours (and sometimes it was hours), when my nipples were sore, through engorgement, through growth spurts (oh the torture!), when I'd see my husband sleeping soundly next to me. I worried endlessly about whether she was getting enough milk, about whether my letdown was too forceful, about whether she had wind or was sensitive to something I'd eaten. I pondered over whether she would be sleeping better if I just gave her a bottle. I wondered (and still do) whether I will ever know what it feels like to have a full night's sleep again. But as with everything, this too shall pass. And I fucking ploughed on through every little hiccup, I did what I had to because Pearl comes first. And because I like using my brain, while I was pregnant I spent many hours reading all about how amazing breastmilk is. Like, literally amazing. Seriously. So if I ever got any doubts about what the heck I was doing, I just needed to visit the filing cabinet in my head, and pull out some facts about what my breastmilk was doing for Pearl physically (and what feeding her was doing for our attachment) and I'd put any crazy thoughts I had aside.

Of course there are legitimate reasons why people can't breastfeed, I am not denying that for one second. Some women truly have low milk supply. I've met them and it is heartbreaking but not their fault, and thank fuck for breastmilk alternatives in these situations. (Although as an aside, in bygone days when women had low milk supply, their babies would be nursed by a relative or friend who would either re-lactate or was already feeding her own child. This is still widely practiced in many cultures around the world.) There are circumstances in which it would be impossible for the mother to maintain her mental health or any semblance of normality if she were to continue breastfeeding. I salute those mamas who fed for as long as they were able to.

I am not saying formula is poison, as people like to assume I think. But don't tell me that it is just as good as breastmilk because it straight up is not. How can it ever be, for starters it's based around cow's milk (milk made for baby cows!). Breastmilk is a custom made, one time only offer kinda thing. Human milk for human babies! I'm just saying: give yourself a chance to do something amazing.

This stuff just spins around in my head every day, and while I am not so naive as to expect that I can change the world, I'd love to give it a go. Only trouble is, I don't really know where to start. I guess my peer supporting stuff is a good start. I volunteer multiple times a week at breastfeeding drop-ins, and it's lovely to see mums come to us with a breastfeeding obstacle, and help her and her baby get past that and then see them continue coming to the drop-ins to socialise with other like-minded mamas.

Booby power.

Ooooooooooh!

2009-11-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

I don't feel that the British really 'get' how to celebrate Halloween. Having spent a Halloween in NYC (the year before the 9/11 incidents), and having experienced how truly wonderful and awe-inspiring that was, any subsequent non-NYC Halloween was of course going to pale in comparison. The Halloween in question was spent with my Aunt and Uncle and my two gorgeous cousins, we took them trick or treating and on a Halloween parade, and on some sort of Halloween version of an Easter Egg hunt. Everybody seemed to get into the spirit of it (aka, have fun!) and it was just an all round good feeling kinda affair.

I guess maybe it was more memorable because I was watching my young cousins enjoying all the amazing Halloween events. When I was younger, me and my brothers and sister would sometimes dress up for Halloween. I remember going to a couple of themed parties, one with my Brownie pack. My Dad would take us trick-or-treating but usually only to the few neighbours that we knew, and in the car round to my Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents who lived nearby. I remember (and have since seen photo evidence of) my parents going in fantastic fancy dress to parties. But none of this really comes close to what I experienced in NYC that year.

Anyway, last year I put Pearl in a cute pumpkin outfit that one of my Mum's friends had bought her. (She'd also bought one for my niece, so they were super cute and matching for the day). It didn't really matter too much last year as she was only 4 months old, and still in the "I'm just going to lay here and wriggle and burp and pull faces" phase. I didn't want to buy Pearl a costume this year; not just for lack of money, but also because they mostly fucking sucked. Plus, at this age it is only something that would last her one Halloween, therefore one days' worth of wear. No, no and no. So I decided to go with something that I could make from things we had at home. Nothing that required a sewing machine (too little time, not enough skills). Nothing too elaborate (she struggles to keep socks on, never mind some ott costume). I settled on a pirate! We have got an awesome red and white bandana that used to belong to Bobby's Grandfather: which incidentally he wore as part of a sailor costume many years ago. I decided that a bandana would be do-able, since she sometimes likes to wear one when I do. She's got lots of navy and white striped clothes. We bought an eye patch to sit on her head and clip on earring in a Poundland shop. I cut up some old blue pyjama trousers of Bobby's to make a sash to go round her waist. The piece de resistance was a stuffed toy parrot that I pinned to her shoulder, although that only lasted all of 20seconds before she was frantically trying to rip it off her t-shirt!

All in all her costume was a success, and we even went to visit our friends to share some Halloween fun together. We ate delicious home baked pumpkin based treats - pumpkin and chocolate brownies, and pumpkin oatmeal and raising cookies. Pearl played with her friend, who was dressed as a verrrrry cute witch. Then we went to Grandma's house to show off the costume, and that was as far as it lasted. She ripped the bandana and eye patch combo off her head, signed to me that it was finished and then went about the rest of her day. I think that while I still feel that Halloween in the UK doesn't have the same feel as in the US, maybe with Pearl around we can make it awesome in our own way. Can't wait till next year and she'll be old enough to do some proper fun activities together.

We did manage to get some lovely photographs before she de-costumed, I must remember to ask my MIL for a copy of them soon. Maybe one day I might have the time to use our proper computer with a harddrive (the one I use to browse the net in the evenings doesn't have one) and maybe one day I will actually post photos with my blog. Sooooooon.

Today

2009-10-28T13:49:00.001-07:00

I sat in my car, parked outside my house, for almost 1 and a half hours while Pearl napped at lunchtime. She has been sleeping so dreadfully at night (still!) and her daytime naps have been pretty much non-existant, so I wanted to take the opportunity to ensure she got some decent quality sleep. She always sleeps well in the car. Well, sleeps or screams - nothing in between, and it's always luck of the draw as to which car personality I'll get on any given journey. Anyway, today was sleeping, and I was glad of it, for her as well as for me. I sat and wasted time on my phone, playing online, listening to the radio. Just switched my brain off for a little while, which is very much needed in times of sleep deprivation. I totally understand why they use it as a form of torture. At 15 months into this whole wakeful nights thing, I may have developed the ability to rouse the absolute minimum amount required, and I may have somehow learned to function on 2hour stretches of sleep, but all it takes is one even worse night and I am a zombie.

Other mums at the groups I go to with Pearl seem to think that I am either insane or amazing. They'll exclaim how good I look, you know, considering how little sleep I get. They always want to help: to tell me the one trick that'll for sure get her sleeping through the night, or to point out the oh-so-obvious flaw in my nighttime parenting (and daytime parenting, for that matter, because of course if I 'let' her wake me up so much at night, then God only knows what I 'let' her get away with during the day!). Or they'll admit (in hushed tones) that in fact their baby doesn't always sleep through the night... and did I have any advice for them?! If there's one thing I've learned in my grand old 15 months of human raising, it's that every single child is different and that, as with many things in my pre-Pearl life, everybody has an opinion and most of the time they should learn to keep it to themselves. And that everybody worries about what everybody else is doing.

Sometimes I'll meet a comrade - somebody experiencing the joys of 2am, 3am, 3.16am, 3.42am, all too clearly as well. How well these conversations go usually depends on my (and their) mood. It's like with everything in life. Some days you're fighting fit; full of beans and feel like nothing could smack you down. Some days (maybe after a night of nursing your toddler back to sleep 15 times), and you feel a bit defeated. Either way it is always nice to swap notes with these mums. Mostly because if you're still talking about a child who wakes this often at night, you're not letting your child "cry it out", or other some such sleep training bullshit. And if you're not doing this, then in my eyes you are wonderful, and worth swapping notes with. I will write about my hatred for "cry it out" some other time. Anyway. Today (before the aforementioned car napping) I met another mum who just said a few words to me that helped me steel my strength for the night that was drawing ever closer. It's hard to have a conversation at baby groups when most mums practise "cry it out" within their family, and they just don't understand why I have never, and will never, do that with my Pearl. But this particular mum just helped me remember why I do what I do. I can't even remember specifically what she said, I just know it involved talking about sharing sleep, and the strange concept of a 'good' baby.

So I sat in my car, looking like a loony, but doing it all for that little ball of insanity and hilarity and love and amazingness. My latestt crackpot idea is that if she naps better during the day, she might sleep better at night. I have no idea if this is true for Pearl but I'll try anything if I think it might work. I do what I gots to do.

Oops

2009-10-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

Between getting addicted to watching "True Blood", (we ploughed through the first series in a week), and then being at my mum's for a long weekend, I kinda forgot about updating this thing.

Pearl had her MMR almost a week ago, and boy are we feeling the effects of that. It wasn't even a choice for us - I didn't have it as an infant, but I did have mumps while I was at University and it was a pain comparable to childbirth, except it was more uncomfortable and lasted for weeks. It totally screwed my already crappy immune system, and the months following mumps were one long stretch of throat infections and clusters of ulcers on my tonsils, combined with being extremely tired all the time. I could not put my child through that. Since the decline in the numbers of parents giving their children vaccines against diseases such as measles, there have been a number of epidemics in our county and the surrounding counties. Including some deaths in Brighton, from a disease that's meant to be well under control. Pearl actually had measles at around 10months and it was truly awful. So the couple of weeks of potential grumpy-ness following the vaccination are more than worth it. Anyway. She is grumpy, seems like she has a bit of a cold/headache/earache thing going on, but I feel pretty darn awful myself so who knows whether it's the vacc or just general poorlyness.

She's been sleeping like a newborn the past couple of nights - that is to say, not very much. I'm not sure if my not feeling well is because of the sleep deprivation or because I'm really coming down with something. My back, neck, head, ears, all hurt. Feels like somebody's punched me in the kidneys.

This is boring for me to type, but I've typed it now so I may as well post it. I'm awaiting the return of my husband, hopefully he's bringing cat food since they are whining from behind the kitchen doors.

One after the other

2009-10-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Milk, sleep, milk, milk, cry, milk, milk, milk, groan, wake, "CATS!", "Dada!", drink, plodding, falling, whining, food flinging, playing, music, bathing, milk, teeth cleaning, tired, "CATS!", not tired, milk, not going to sleep, carseat, power nap, snacky snack snack snack snack snack (& milk), puzzles, tantrums, drawing, mischief, lunch, fish in hair, new shoes, carseat, party, sausages, chicken, LOUD NOISES, tantrums, milk, cake, tired, nap, dog, "CATS!", quack quack, shopping, milk, carseat, objection, jelly babies, dog, "CATS!", dinner, piano, dog, drums, piano, bath, piano, fish, car, "Dada!", milk, pyjamas, milk, milk, milk, sleep.

Actual heaven!

2009-10-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks, mother-in-law, for this amazingly simple recipe.

8oz self-raising flour
6oz caster sugar
4oz butter
2 eggs
2 beautifully ripe bananas

=

Banana loaf heaven.

We've eaten pretty much the whole thing in just over 24 hours. Pearl helped me make it yesterday afternoon, and Bob just took a bite and said "What are the crunchy bits in it?"... hellooooooo egg shell, haha. This is what happens when you let a toddler help. She loved making cake though. She loves helping me with everything at the moment, and I'm more than happy to indulge her with this. Everything is new and exciting, even putting away the food shopping, and she loves being asked to do something specific, like carry the cutlery to the dining table for me, or help pull the washing out of the machine. She's very good at mixing and sorting and putting away and making piles and also at making every single chore about twice as long to do. But it is so nice to see her realise all these things that she is able to do! She gets so much satisfaction from doing what she sees me doing. And of course if her little hands are occupied pulling washing out of the machine, then there's less time for tipping boxes of cornflakes out onto the floor.

While she was sleeping

2009-09-28T03:17:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to be productive, but I woke up in a bad mood because I'd had very little sleep (thank you, Pearl's teeth). Although I was quickly coaxed into a good mood by Pearl and Bobby, the tiredness has stayed and means that I'm still in my pyjamas at 11.18am. It's all good though, I have a Pearl sleeping on my lap right now, and we're watching new episodes of 'Man v. Food' - I loooooove food and that show runs the fine line between bliss and torture for me!
I can always be productive later. I think that I manage to fool myself into thinking that I've been productive if I just look at lots of home decor blogs online. My favourites are Design*Sponge and Vintage Simple, it's like house porn. I find English home design magazines so boring and same-y, and also mostly aimed at people much older than us. Because we are considered too young to have our own home with a family, they just don't cater for our tastes. Anyway I love looking at those aforementioned blogs and coming up with little things to change in our home. We haven't really got the time to do big projects at the moment, but it's nice to have lots of ideas stored up. This means that when we ever do have a little spare time or money, we know there's something we can update with that'll make the house feel so much more fresh. For example, today I think we will be satisfied with putting up a new display of pictures in the living room. Ideally the woodwork needs to be painted, but that's nigh on impossible with a 14month old running around. I also want to try and clean the net curtains. Our dining table is in the window, and the nets have become smothered in food that Pearl has either flung, or from where she grabs at them while she's eating. It's a good look but it's time for a change, haha.
Whether I even manage to accomplish these most simple of tasks remains to be seen.

Things I did not need to see

2009-09-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today Pearl decided that after she'd eaten a really decent lunch (for once), that because I told her off for putting her hand in a pot of apple pudding, she would make herself sick. It fucking stank... who knew that cheese on toast only needs to be inside a baby's stomach for less than 15 minutes before it takes on the beautiful stench of every other sick in the world. I sound like I'm some demented mother when I say that she made herself sick. I am NOT one of these parents who thinks that their child is out to get them, for example I hate it when you hear mums saying that their child is manipulative and they're not even old enough to walk.

Anyway, she used to do the sick thing in the car seat and she's started doing it elsewhere now. It's like this: she's learned that if she is crying because she's cross, up to a certain point I will not do very much other than try to calm her down, or distract her to try and get her in a better mood. But she has learned that if she cries so hard that she makes herself sick, that obviously gets a bigger reaction out of me. I get it, she's trying to explain to me just how fucking injust I was being. I think so anyway. Is she? Well I guess this is what she's doing, since I have no way of actually knowing, but either way it's horrible to witness. She just makes this horrible heaving noise and coughs really hard till she gets sick.

I think she might have some sort of cold or virus or sooooomething because she has been so crotchety today. I also think that I have been so busy trying to be some sort of super mum and wife, but perfection is a stupid thing to aim for. I have been getting myself all stressed trying to get everything done, and I think she picks up on that. She is so sensitive to the moods of those around her, and particularly my mood. She's been all clingy like a baby monkey, I struggled to be able to get dressed today without her crying at my feet. It's made me realise I need to stop dilly-dallying and buy a MeiTei baby carrier so that I can carry her around with me and not make my spine even more wonky. I have a couple of other slings, the Moby Wrap in particular was an absolute life saver. I still use that regularly but when we're just around the house I need something quicker and more lightweight. Plus I want to start wearing her on my back and I don't find the back positions with the Moby very comfortable. I've seen in a couple of other Mama blogs that the meitei is good for that position, so I must get on that soon.

Ok writing this was interrupted by her waking up crying only 40minutes after she went to bed. She is snuffling like nobody's business... which means some sort of cold or virus, or the dreaded teething. Actually come to think of it, she hasn't had a new tooth in over a month. That means it's going to be a bad night's sleep. I'ma go watch rubbish tv for a while, and pray for some sort of sleep-related miracle to hit Pearl before I drag my sorry self to bed.

Nuhnightstime

2009-09-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

In the space of what feels like a minute, my baby girl has become a proper toddler. She answers my questions, she is able to tell me (in her own way) what she wants or doesn't want, and she also has the most insane temper tantrums and generally stomps about the house with a serious sense of purpose. Even if that purpose is to put my driving license out of the window in our (1st floor) living room, or to put her toys out of the cat flap. This afternoon she emptied nearly a whole box of cornflakes onto the freshly cleaned kitchen floor. Anyway: it's nice to feel less like having a child is just one big guessing game, and more like we might actually know what we are doing. Well, maybe for like 20seconds a day, but it's start!
When we first heard about 'attachment parenting' it was something that just felt right. It was never a conscious decision to parent in that way, it was more like it was what made sense to us. Of course I'm going to believe in my baby's cries, of course I'm going to breastfeed her, of course I'm going to do all the things that make her life best for her. My life now revolves around this little person that I chose to bring into this strange scary world and it is my job to help her learn what to do. I want to do everything I can to help her grow up confident, and to feel safe and loved. I want her to know that she can trust me and her Daddy, always and for any fucking thing she needs. Secure attachment for the win. Yes - it potentially means more sleepless nights, among other things, but heck I didn't have a baby so that I could carry on living my old life. We are already reaping what we have sown, when I watch her compared to other toddlers. For every criticism I am given about how badly she sleeps, and about how much breastmilk she still has, and how she is 'still' in our bedroom... people then turn around and go on about how wonderful she is. They say how much personality she has for somebody so small, how she seems to know exactly what she wants, what a happy bubba she is. Well for me that's the proof and pudding or however you say it, and every single thing we're aiming for in all this. Shortcuts now just mean the pudding might not rise to its full potential. (Ok I'm done with the baking metaphors, that was bad and I apologise!).
Anyway. I must make an effort at some point to write about something other than Pearl. How about this; I'm half watching Jamie Oliver embarrassing himself in New Orleans and it's allllmost as cringeworthy as watching Michael in new episode of The Office. Which was amazing by the way, but mostly because it's not actually real, whereas Jamie Oliver is really over in America making everybody think that all English people are wankers. He's a div.
The mac is burning my knee so I'ma finish this here. I'm going to go and kill my neighbours, who have decided that 9.30pm is the perfect time to pack up their house to move. Obnoxious fucking wankers. I can't wait till they move out, hopefully our new neighbours will decide to furnish their house with actual soft furnishings and not just minimalist wank so that we don't have to hear every single footstep and noise they make.
Fin.

They all have a place.

2009-09-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a blog. With a 14month old daughter, I have no idea how often I will be able to actually write posts, but I figure I may as well give it a go. I also have no idea who might read this but it's nice to have somewhere to write things and perhaps come back and read what my sleep-deprived self was thinking at any given moment in time. Well, that was an unnecessarily long and garbled sentence - unfortunately my writing tends to be like that (very much like my speech, if you've ever had a conversation with me) but please bear with me. I have to bear with myself and have a lovely husband who also bears with me. I guess Pearl probably also bears with me a lot.

Lately I get glimpses of what she's going to be like as a grown up person. We'll be having a conversation (i.e I'll be talking at her about whatever we're doing) and I'll just catch her looking at me as if to say "What the fuck, mum?!". I can't wait till she can actually answer back in real words, you know rather than just in collections of consonant and vowel sounds in various pitches. The pitch and speed of this babbling determines her mood. Lately it's been all fast and high and non-stop.

This week our home has been re-named Frustrationville, population Pearl. Also Snotsville, population Pearl and Dada. Living with a sick baby is bad enough, but add in a sick man and... whoa there! I'm a Mama get me outta here! I think the Snotsville thing makes the Frustrationville thing infinity worse, but as the snot subsides and the frustration continues I fear the worst. At least Bobby is on the mend so I've only got one ratbag to deal with. Pearl gets so frustrated because she quite clearly knows what she wants/means, and on the rare occasion that I don't understand what she wants she just loses her mind. 14months old is a very hard age to be, apparently. I can actually see why she gets cross like she does. She is SO bright and it's as though she knows in her head what she wants to do, but she isn't physically or verbally developed enough to actually do it and she gets all upset and sometimes inconsolable. It's all about enabling and if you cant enable then you have to use distraction. You'll try and distract her with a sink full of water (it's the simple things!), or with going on a 'cat hunt' (aka "Let's go find Keke and Chino... oooh are they under the bed.... noooo...... are they in the wardrobe.... noooooo etc etc). She understand SO much more than I even realise, I'm sure of it. I was able to get her to lie down for a nappy change earlier by telling her that we were going to see the ducks afterwards, and she lay down quite happily signing and saying 'quack, ducks, quack, duck duck duck quack quack'.

So far this has been like the brain fart and verbal diarrhoea of a tired mum. I live and breathe Pearl, in case you hadn't noticed. When she goes to bed I feel like I should take what everybody else calls 'me time' but I find myself going over what I've done today with Pearl, and what she did that was new, and talking to Bobby about how amazing she is, etc etc. And now I'm writing about it to the internets. I wonder if these feelings of wonder ever fade? And I wonder if I'll ever write about anything else?

Stay tuned?