You Are Missing The Point, Kirstie

Are any of you watching the Kirstie’s Homemade Home series?  I like nothing more than a good craft activity with my cup of tea; and theoretically, crafting with tea WHILE WATCHING CRAFT ON TV should represent a new level of joy.  However, I’m thinking that Kirstie does not truly understand the joy of the craft.  She is only crafting in order to enter competitions and win prizes!  And she moans about how she is not enjoying whatever she is making because it is too much pressure and it is like homework.

Kirstie.  No. Put the craft down, tear up your competition entry forms, and put the kettle on.  Now start again.  Pick it up at your leisure.  Do not worry about what other people think of it.  Home made things are SUPPOSED TO LOOK HOME MADE, OTHERWISE THEY ARE JUST THINGS. 

Anyway, I say all that, but then I realised I never posted any pictures of the blanket I knitted while I was pregnant.  TA-DA!

OK, it does not look much, but it is very nice in real life, honest.  And Kirstie?  The nugget doesn’t care that this is a prize-less blanket.  She cares that it keeps her warm, that she can put it on her mouth, and that if necessary, she can be sick on it.  We are both satisfied.

The Circle Of Life, Part Two

The alternative title for this post is, I bet I can make you cry with photos of tiny clothes.

I reached a milestone this week.  At four months old, my teensy little nugget is finally big enough to fit into clothes for babies up to three months, and so it was time to retire some of her smallest outfits.

Check out this vest!

An actual human person, wore this! With hindsight, I cannot believe she was so small (even though at the time I could not believe that I had pushed her out – it seemed biologically impossible.)

Teensy striped pyjamas!  Did you ever see that website Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things?  I would love to see him look at very small pyjamas.

Anyway, not everything is aww-inducing because of it’s midget sized.  There’s all the Circle of Life-ness about it.  Like this yellow cardigan.

My daughter is now the fifth cousin in eight years to be wearing this cardigan.  Parents, though you may be horrified at the expense of children’s clothes, you have to admit that per child, they work out pretty well (though of course, unless you go for five children yourself, you will not derive all the benefit.

And then, there is something pretty nice about your daughter wearing clothes that you wore when you were a baby.  Also, eighties fashions are SO IN, so she is bang on trend.

But the best of all is when your daughter wears something that your mother made for you.  SOB!

If you are entirely unmoved by this post there are two possibilities: i) you have a heart of stone ii) I am still very hormonal and have completely misjudged what normal people care about.

The Circle Of Life, Part One

You remember how I made that resolution to Do Things Now, While I Can?  Haven’t yet been doing much.  Do have plans to go to the Sylvia Plath exhibit, because you can never start a child’s feminist education too early.  Unfortunately, the nugget and the menace (my daughter, and my friend Sara‘s son, respectively) appear to have extremely busy social lives and we haven’t yet been able to schedule a date.  However, we did manage to go to see the Lion King in 3d last week.

This was the nugget’s third visit to the cinema.  The first, at 3 weeks, was to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two.  This was almost entirely successful, because extreme tininess = extreme sleepiness.  It did take three adults to take this tiny baby to the cinema though, because this was still in my ‘I CANNOT TAKE THIS BABY OUT BY MYSELF, PEOPLE WILL BE ABLE TO TELL THAT I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING phase.’

The second time, nugget was about 9 weeks, I think; and I went with my NCT group.  This was less successful.  Only one Mum got to see the film all the way through – the rest of us had to deal with wailing and nappies and the trickiness of bottlefeeding in the dark when you aren’t used to it.   This is the counter intuitive thing about mother and baby cinema screenings.   They turn the volume down so as not to disturb the babies; but all that means is that you can’t hear the dialogue when the baby next to you has a wobbly.  As it happens, this was a blessing in disguise; as the film was One Day, and it meant that I did not have to listen to Anne Hathaway’s terrible accent.

But the Lion King!  Oh my, I have forgotten how good it is.  It actually makes me sort of look forward to the years ahead when I have to see every single Disney film over and over and over again.  Also it is quite entertaining to re-enact key scenes with your daughter as Simba…

…even if this does mean you have to be Rafiki.

C actually does look a bit like Simba.   She has the hair/mane.  And the ears.  I also have the bags under my eyes like Rafiki (though I do not have his beard.)

My sister and I later performed the whole of ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight’ with her as Pumba and me as Timon.  Complete with accents and awesome dance moves and harmonies.  My nieces were impressed.  I fear that we do not have long left before they stop being impressed and become hugely embarrassed.

The Christians Seem Fine With It, To Be Honest

Over on The Feminist Breeder (do you read this blog, by the way? You absolutely must) I was reading about a nurse-in. You can read the full story there, but basically, a man threw a mother out of his shop; not because she was shoplifting, or drunk, or throwing paint at his merchandise; but because she was DUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH breastfeeding. This got reported and a lot of people went to protest by all taking their babies and proudly breastfeeding them in his shop. Good on you ladies. (It seems like nurse-ins are a thing? I had not heard of them before.)

Anyway my favourite part of this story is how The Feminist Breeder patiently explained that it is actually illegal in the US to discriminate against women like this. As she puts it ‘the guy says “But CHRISTIANS come in here!” and I said “JESUS WAS BREASTFED”.’

So I went to church this morning and the baby needed feeding and all I could think was “But CHRISTIANS come in here!” I have breastfed in the front of a mini, in the back of a mini, in a golf club, in more pubs than I should really count, in a crematorium car park, in a petrol station car park….in more or less every car park within a fifty mile radius, to be honest. There is probably not a lorry driver in the land who hasn’t had seen more than he bargained for.

Nevertheless, I did feel like a church pew was possibly a step too far (even though JESUS WAS BREASTFED…I love that). But the parish hall off to the side was absolutely fine. In fact, no fewer than four people asked me if they could get me a cup of tea. (I managed to restrain myself to one).

So there we are. Happy Sunday, Christians and breastfeeders and those who are both.  And random crazy man in Illinois?  I’ll have a cup of tea please.

Quick! I Must ACHIEVE Things!

Last Sunday, I was sat in the pub with some friends enjoying what passes for a leisurely lunch once you have a baby.  By which I mean: I ate my lunch while my husband held the baby.  Then I held the baby while he ate his lunch. (No, she won’t sit in the pram DON’TGETMESTARTED).  It took us a while to get into this groove; but now we all know what is going to happen, we  are relaxed about it and all enjoy it.

I stared around vacantly at the other Sunday lunchers until something dawned on me.

Lunchers with tiny babies.  Lunchers with proper child-sized children.  NO LUNCHERS WITH CRAWLERS OR TODDLERS.

And then I thought about it and this made perfect sense.  Especially as I had just recently been hanging out with my friend who has a one year old.  He is roly and poly and happy and interested and full of joy and SO EXCITED ABOUT THE WHOLE WORLD, LET ME TOUCH IT AND IDEALLY PUT IT IN MY MOUTH TOO!  I can see how this would be tricky to combine with Sunday lunch in the pub.

And then I thought about the implications of this.

And then I thought about it some more, because my brain no longer works especially quickly.

And then I thought DING DING DING!  This is my window of opportunity!

The nugget and I understand each other better.  I pretty much know what she wants at any given time.  She is still light enough that I can cart her about London in the sling and not have to plan journeys around which tube stations are buggy-accessible.  She is more or less predictable with her naps and so I can work round those.  She sleeps pretty well most nights so I am no longer a daytime zombie (except for recent teeth fun, of which more another day).

BUT SHE IS NOT YET THAT MOBILE.  She rolls and she wiggles but she cannot yet go anywhere further than the other side of her mat.  She reaches and she grabs and she plays, but still her favourite place to be is as close to mummy as possible.

I must take advantage of this while it lasts.  It’s a bit like when I was 8 months pregnant and thought, I must read all the intelligent classics I can because I won’t get the chance to read them anymore.  (I gritted my teeth and worked my way through A Portrait of A Lady.  It completely was not worth it.

By the way, this also turned out not to be true, because once I got an ipad, I could read every feeding time.  In this way, I have just worked my way through a five hundred page literary history.  Can hardly remember a word of it, mind you, but I have indeed read it.)

So, my first plan is to go and see the Sylvia Plath exhibition at the Mayor’s Gallery.  And if that goes well, we may go to the Tower of London.  I have ALWAYS wanted to go to the Tower of London, but have never been able to face the half-term hoards.  (Parents, when do you develop your immunity to the half-term hoards?)

So. Pretty.

I just had a brief look at the Tower of London website and it says you can actually go to communion at the Tower of London.  That is Interesting Historical Fact Number One from a very brief look.  Only imagine how many more Interesting Historical Facts I will gain from a proper visit.  Also, it surely counts as a Learning and Development Opportunity; as I will be able to vary from my usual ‘being round the house monologue’ to talk the Nugget through the Kings and Queens of England.  Or I can just say, LOOK NUGGET, LOOK AT THE RAVENS.  She will like that just as much.

Maternity leave was surely made for being a tourist in your own city.  Saves drifting around the house with Jeremy Kyle on in the background on a rainy Tuesday anyway.

Is there anything else I should do while I still can?

I have just read this post and eeek, I meander.   Ah well.

She Knows Her Own Mind, This One

My capricious little nugget.  She is random to the point of utterly unpredictable.  Today, for example, we were having a family swim and I gave her an experimental dunk in the water.*  She was surprised by this, but ok with it.   That was weird….but…you’re here, Mummy, so….ok.  Whatever.  Not so much as a squeak of protest.

As an adult, I would be completely freaked out by an unexpected dunking; and yet things that don’t even register on my trauma scale can cause endless howling protests.

Some of these I get.  For example, if I thought that my hands were the tastiest thing ever and hated to be parted from them, then I would probably be quite irritated if someone insisted on periodically removing them from my mouth and insert them into various wooly garments.  Particularly if that person was fairly incompetent at doing so.

On the other hand, some things are so inoffensive that I can’t believe how much she despises them.

I think her pram is lovely.  She thinks it is awful.  What am I doing here, Mummy?  SAVE ME PLEASE!  I would give up on the pram entirely for now, except that she can’t hang about in the sling for ever; and also I can’t carry much else if I’m carrying her.

But the pram is positively a vehicle of joy compared to DUH DUH DUHHHHHHH THE CAR SEAT OF DOOM.

Someone really has to explain this to me.  I thought that the car was a cast iron guaranteed snooze inducer?  Why is it that my baby, who is fed, winded, and clean beforehand SCREEEEEEEEEEAMS in the car?  And not just for a few minutes, but for AAAAAGGGGESSSS.  (Not that I let her scream for ages, in normal circumstances, but if we’re on the M25, I don’t really have much choice.)

Dear me, I have to overcome these fears of transportation devices before the winter, otherwise I’ll be holed up in the house for months.   Any advice?

*This sounds weird, but it’s fine.  We’ve been taking lessons and they positively encourage it, to make the most of their natural not-breathing-under-water-reflexes; and to get them used to it.  Since I am almost thirty and still afraid to open my eyes under water, I’m all for this.  Can’t you tell that I’m going to be one of those ‘do as I say, not as I do’ parents?

I Have Seen the Future and It Is Squashy

One of the advantages of having two nieces is that spending time with them enables me to see how I will be spending ALL my time in approximately four years. 

It seems that a decent proportion will be spent in soft play areas, accompanied by screaming and crying.  I will need to stock up on plasters and arnica and ear plugs and tissues.  Can hardly wait.

C is still too young to appreciate the soft play jubilee.  I will enjoy these quiet times while they last. 

In other news, we went on our first tube journey this week.  I haven’t been on the tube since I was about 30 weeks pregnant.  It is still grim and hot and crowded. Still, C was perfectly happy, and that is all we ask.

Get Your Ice-Cream Here

I have a new breastfeeding pillow which has greatly improved the serenity of our feeding sessions.  C is no longer sliding off cushions and I am no longer sinking further and further down the sofa.  The only drawback is that it is almost identical in design to the trays that are used to sell icecream in theatres.  So she is happily scoffing away and all I can think about is how much I want a Magnum.

Whose Rite Is It Anyway?

Not that I want this blog to become ‘variations on a theme of why parenting books are barking’ (see also exhibit a and exhibit b) but I did just want to share these particular words of wisdom with you.

I’ve just read that many new mum’s get their hair cut ‘as a rite of passage.’

What?  I’ll rite of passage you, lady.  I have just GIVEN BIRTH.  How many more rites do I need?

I have actually recently had a hair cut.  But rather than a rite of passage, this is a necessity; since feeding is a sweaty business, and tiny hands have started to rake it, and who has time for blowdrying?