Throws for a Rose

Well, not that I was two months late or anything, but I finally got round to making a little quilt, or throw, or blanket, or giant hanky, or whatever you'd like to call it, for my friend's brand new little person. What a poppet, look at how her outfit matches rather well with her new quilt. Isn't she clever?I had to come up with the goods on this one, because I had not, so far even sent a card. Disgraceful. Actually, worse than that; I had sat the daughters down to create beautiful glue and glitter covered spectacles to behold, which they had dutifully done, and then I had lost them. Isn't that even worse than forgetting? I am hoping that when CR gets big enough to lie on her tummy, she will be able to fiddle about with the little bows which join the layers together, and the fun of trying to eat them will help her forgive my rudeness. Her mother couldn't have given a monkey's of course, and indeed may well not have noticed at all, this being her third baby; she most likely rather has her hands full with multiple children, and so perhaps is not in a position to be ticking off who's-sent-what lists. Still. What a terrible friend I am.
Hopefully, there will still be lots of lovely sunny days left, and CR will perhaps lie on her quilt and kick her nice fat little legs about in the sunshine.
Welcome to the world little sister!

Songs

I often find tunes forming in my head, and since having children they have become, well, rather child-like. So much so that I appear to have composed one song per daughter. At the moment they are rather proud of them, but then, they also like songs about fat egg-men falling off walls, winding up bobbins, curds, and old-aged pensioners who inexplicably eat ever larger insects and farm animals till they pop their clogs, so let's be honest, children are really no judge.

The lyrics are as follows.

Isla's Song

V1: You've got funny feet like Mummy

Funny feet like Mummy

Feet like spatulas, feet like a duck

With feet like that you should waddle and quack

Funny feet, plates of meat,

What a sight to seeeee!

You've got funny feet like Mummy

Poor old Isla B.

V2: You've got nice big eyes like Daddy

Nice big eyes like Daddy

Eyes like saucers, eyes like pools

Eyes to make people simper like fools

Lovely eyes, nice mince pies,

What a sight to seeeee!

You've got nice big eyes like Daddy

Lucky old Isla B!

Hester isn't insulted quite so directly, but her, shall we say fondness of food, and great big fat bottom and tummy are dealt with in her song.

Hester's Song

Hetty Betty Bumpkin

Lived in a pie

Sausage and onion

Oh my, my

Liver and Bacon

What a treat

Chicken and Mushroom

Nice to eat

Blackberry and Apple

In my tum

Lemon Meringue

Oh yum yum yum

Bread and butter pudding

Once in a while

That's guaranteed to

make Hetty smile

My sister, who visits us often on her days off during the week, says that her Betrothed claims he can tell when she's been to see us because she is singing the food one, which permeates the house like the smell of cake. But then, despite not having a bottom and tummy nearly so large as Hetty's, she does nevertheless like a drop of pudding too.

Going Round in Circles

It's like buses, isn't it - nothing for months and then three in a row. I am not a good blogger - I am seriously inconsistent with my posting, and this is due usually to a Sense of Humour Failure. This latest SoHF comes after a house move, which was hugely desirable and long awaited, but of course, extremely stressful.

However, we are now in our roomy house in the country, where we have such things as a garden and a utility room and even a garage. This has been a boon on many levels, not least of which is Ordering Over the Phone from Catalogues. In the last house, I would have been cornered within seconds by Isla, now two and a half, and Hester, now One. They would have performed a pincer movement in the three yards between the sofa, the table, and the kitchen and been tormenting my trouser legs in seconds. In this house, which has a rather excessive number of doors, I can run round and round in circles, often culminating my flight locked in the utility room - just me and the washing machine and the water softener gurgling away, while I give the lady my issue number and security code so I can complete my purchase of some size 36 boots in black. It is a race against time of course. Any second now one of the aforementioned will discover me and press her little face against the glass, bellowing.

Hester is going through the Oh, A Phone! I Want It! phase, which is what makes ordering from catalogues a bit tricky, so I give her my mobile phone. This is foolhardy in the extreme. I have yet to lose it completely, but have so far eventually located it 1) in bed in the cottage from Well Known Toyshop's village play set 2) in Hetty's shoe and 3) in the dustpan and brush. On all occasions is it very sticky and has bits poking out of it, as though it has been hung, drawn and quartered and its innards left hanging out.

But our happiest moments (or rather mine) come when, ground down by running circuits round my house, I shove the girls in their newly acquired brilliant outdoor all-in-one all-weather suits and throw them in the garden. Then I stand drinking tea at the command and control post (otherwise known as the kitchen window), and watch as they lick water out of the bird bath, and then put sand in it, before applying it, masque like, to their heads.

I am hoping there will be fewer SoHFs in the coming months, so don't worry, the next bus should be along soon.

Hands Full

When you have your second baby, you realise you know quite a lot about babies. You have felt the terror, anxiety and panic the first time they vomit/cry/fall off something/choke/get innoculated, and don't die as a result. I cried the first time Isla was sick. Hester's first emission of vomit sat happily encrusting itself upon my shoulder for an entire day.

You have embarked upon many strategies for problems I shall now list. (Or 'issues', as I like to call them. I worry I will tar the daughters with the brushes of my parenting neuroses. So if I say that my daughter has a sleep issue, instead of a sleep problem, it just sounds as though she has a healthy enquiring mind. As in, she takes issue with sleeping through the night. She takes issue with being fed with a spoon. She takes issue with eating whatever her mother has put in front of her. See? Whole different kettle of fish to My Daughter Has A Sleep Problem, a tabloid-style headline which screams of lousy parenting, and means we require one of those TV nanny ladies. Not that I'm eschewing TV nannies. I'd really rather like one to come and live with me and do some psychological jiggery pokery involving small morcels of food on my daughter's plate. And bingo, she's eating brie and liver fricassees within a week. Then the nanny can go upstairs to be filmed in infrared light diagnosing the smaller daughter's yells and getting it to remember how to go through the night again, which said daughter teased me with for three whole nights, then forgot. Actually, perhaps I should call them problems; then someone might overhear and mention me to their production editor friend, who would just happen to be talking with Big Tough Nanny Inc and I would feature on their pilot show and have all my parenting problems solved till the daughters go to university. Rather than prison. Close parenthesis.)

A long while back in that paragraph I was about to make a list. (An irritating by-product of sleep deprivation is the construction of extremely long sentences, which never achieve the direct object. A bit like a University Challenge question, where you forget the wh- word at the beginning.) Anyway - you've dealt with sleep (our leitmotiv), eating, separation anxiety, socialisation, stairs, hitting, nappy rash, pushchair choices.....and having done a lot of being there doing that, you are astonished to discover that you are all somehow still alive and happy and healthy. And this is a very dangerous position to be in when you have Baby #2. Why? Because of Smugness. You think you know it all now, and so when Baby #2 arrives, you smugly assert that whilst naturlich it will be tough going, you will nevertheless glide through the tough times with a knowing wink and say to yourself, ah yes, but no matter, it will pass. You sat smugly in the evening, belly full of baby, and said, yeah, as if, we won't make that mistake again...

And then you have to eat your hat. Because you forget to factor in Baby #1, now Big Sibling. It's all very well knowing how to teach Baby #2 independent sleep, but when Big Sibling is crawling up your trouser leg asking for soddages or singing Old Macdonny had a farm whilst hitting its pink spotty wellies against the very cot in which you are attempting to shush pat Baby #2 to sleep, you suddenly realise you are back at Square 1. Only it's Square 1 on a whole different board game called Whoa There Second Time Mom! People are sympathetic towards you in the street not because you might be suffering the nervous anxiety and overwhelming panic of being a First Time Mother, but because you have Got Your Hands Full There.

And even as I sit here mourning the loss of that naughty baby's sleeping skills, so hard fought and won, I am dimly aware through the haze of my 2.5 hours sleep that I am thinking, ah, but it'll be easier with the Third.

Lost in space

It would seem from the date that more than a year has been lost. It could have gone the way of the green spotty beaker, the yacht piece from the jigsaw and one tea-spoon from Well Known Toy Shop's fabulous tea set, and been sucked into the warp in the space-time continuum located between the stairs and the fireplace. However, it would be more precise to say that it got lost in my being pregnant again and here I stand, singing Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes (Knees and Toes), banging a tambourine on my bottom and typing one-handed, whilst 22 month old Isla eats a toy croissant and sticks Fimble stickers to and in her ears, and 5 month old Hester Grace eats Isla's toothbrush. This is the only toy she will happily engage with at the moment because it is rough and rubbery and probably slightly dangerously too long for a baby to be sticking in its mouth, but delicious to chew on, which she does like a rabid dog. We live much of our lives like the opening sequences of a first aid video.

I had just emerged from the fug of a particularly virulent vomiting and diarrheoa bug last Christmas to discover I was suspiciously still sans painters and decorators, and having laughingly performed a pregnancy test, discovered I was in fact, not quite so hilariously, pregnant. Quite how that happened we don't know. I blame Julian but he holds me squarely responsible. My mother maintains ones body goes into baby overdrive after the first birth so she blames hormones, which I think the most sensible answer. The fact that she was also struck down with a lingering case of pregnancy a mere 5 months after the birth of My Brother/Baby #1 would suggest she is either a) right or b) being self-justificatory, if such a word exists. Still, I'm going with her theory, because otherwise it is, I must confess, a case of having thrown caution to the winds and having the winds fart it back in your face again.

Still, little Hester Grace is a treasure, if somewhat full of cough and cold, and her sister is very pleased with the addition to the family, give or take the odd grape-in-Hetty's-mouth incident. And after a pretty intensively gruelling first 5 months we are now at, I would say, a sort of equilibrium, all of us. Happy with our musical instruments and our toy foods.

****, *********, ***** and toes.

Fiery Dressing Gowns

Staying near the subject of dressing gowns, I am delighted to say I got a new one for Christmas. This will be a vast improvement on the incumbent dressing gown, which was in a sorry state of disrepair.

On the night of the stomach bug, Isla had not bothered much with sleep, and even despite waking 7 times in the night, awoke bright and early at quarter to six. There was nothing for it but to get up, and trying to make the best fist of it, I decided to embark on some puree-ing. Half past six in the morning is a really stupid time of the day to be boiling great cauldrons of apples and carrots, because you just set light to yourself, and you look down and your dressing gown is ablaze. It is possible that you may just about find some wits, and manage to pat it a bit, which you discover simply spreads the fire about a bit more, so that it is flickering around over the entire dressing gown, like brandy on a Christmas pudding. Then if you really find some wits, you will throw it off and stand there in nothing but a pair of odd pink ski socks and a see-through thermal vest, stamping half-heartedly on it. Then, having leafed through the other two dressing gowns in the house and discovered that they were vomited on yesterday in the height of the stomach bug and have not of course made it anywhere near the washing machine, you give the stricken charred dressing gown a last pat and put it back on. Smell like a bonfire all morning.

I am now however, the proud owner of a flowery pink and lilac satin dressing gown, which I swan around the house in, feeling silken. Isla sort of slides off it if I carry her, but she likes sucking on the belt and tries to pick up the leaf pattern.

Much more interesting than the old burnt version, and somewhat more fragrant.

Isla One - Mummy Nil

Apparently babies can't count. But I beg to differ. Isla can - she waits till we begin the latest round of sleep training and on night 3 - the night when it all begins to slot into place, she gets one of the following; a cold, an ear infection, a cough, a sore throat, some teeth, a growth spurt, or a stomach bug. Then, sleep training has to be abandoned, since the snot or bile production resulting from her blood-curdlingly angry roars is not entirely conducive to sleep. I think even the most leave-them-to-cry-their-heads-off prone of the baby experts would probably have to concede that there is no point embarking on Campaign Sleep Through The Night when they're ill. No, you just have to soldier on, and you sleep in your dressing gown.

You know it's not going well when both parents are sleeping in their dressing gowns. Parent sleeps on ready alert. Heaves tired body out of nice warm bed at Madam's bidding. During the ear infection phase her bidding was merely to fall asleep on A Parent, standing up. She'd roar, be picked up, feel a bit better, put her head on Parent's shoulder, and fall asleep. Parent will try to put her back in. Roar. Gets picked up, feels a bit better, head on Parent's shoulder. Parent stands there for half an hour, not moving - then if lucky, Parent able to place extremely heavy bundle of joy delicately back in cot. If not, roar roar roar - another half an hour of standy up sleepy, as we called it. Well done, you got her back down, I'd say when the Dressing Begowned Husband came back to bed. Yeah, he'd say - standy up sleepy.

And that's not the end of their counter-assault. They seem to be fit and healthy. Are going to bed properly for naps, going down well at bedtime. So you begin to consider the next strategy in Campaign Sleep Through the Night - eliminating a leftover night feed from the days of the cold, dealing with that rogue 2am habitual waking resulting from the growth spurt, or cutting out the dreamfeed at 10.30pm. And bang - immediately she tunes into your brain wavelength, clocks trouble, and goes on hunger strike or refuses to drink her requisite (minimum, according to Goddess of baby food Annabel Karmel) three quarters of a pint of milk a day. And that requires one heck of an iron will in her mother; riddled with self-doubt, it becomes in her mind a case of wilful neglect - refusing to feed a poor tiny little starving baby in the night.

Isla One - Mummy Nil, as her father says.

Contraband

In none of the baby books I have read (and as a neurotic first time mother I have of course read many, in an effort, it would seem, to make myself feel even more inadequate than is already natural for a beginner) has the importance of contraband been stated.

Babies like what they are not meant to have. Put a brightly coloured rattle in front of one, and and a corkscrew, and they will go for the corkscrew. They know bright colours are meant for babies, and dull colours are not.

We have harnessed the power of contraband. Isla has a basket of contraband. The basket itself is contraband - it is wicker, it is shedding threads and probably has sharp bits on it. There are ribbons tied to the basket which Isla chews and sucks and carefully picks up with a thumb and forefinger. In the basket are such illicit treasure as the wooden bit of a corkscrew (I am not that bad a mother - I took out the actual screw), food jar lids, a wooden spoon, a jar of vitamins (extreme contraband), some measuring spoons, an old nurofen packet, an old infacol bottle, an old shampoo bottle, a load of other old things and a load of plastic spoons.

In the five minutes before feeding time, all items are explored with gusto and thrown on the floor, leaving just the right amount of time to defrost one of the many delicious homecooked meals I have lovingly pureed, get her beaker ready, find a bib and if I'm lucky, make myself a cup of tea.

The tea is a luxury. In fact, it's beginning to feel like contraband.

Things Babies Like

Oh, there is nothing babies like so much as sparkly lights. We had to re-do bedtime last night because I overstimulated the daughter with the Christmas tree. She went bonkers in her bed and said to me (I translate), it's your fault, I'm not going to sleep a mere 5 minutes after you've put a twinkling thing slap bang right on the route upstairs to bed. You had successfully completed the wind-down to bedtime with That's Not My Dinosaur and a nice warm drink of milk and then we walk past that amazing sparkly amazing twinkling lovely amazing thing and you expect me to yawn and fall asleep. Yeah, right. Like, I'm so not going to am I.

Fair do's I thought.

Actually there is something else babies like, but for different reasons, and that is crisp packets. These aren't so much sparkly as really flappy and noisy and you can cover them in saliva and then wipe them everywhere.

Remote controls are a big hit too. Isla appears to be reading Ceefax page 100.