Why I Am Still Bad Mammy

Over the last couple of months, I have started to believe that I am now less Bad than I used to be. On closer examination, I have come to the conclusion that that's not true, I simply have stopped worrying about it. Also, now The Baby is almost not a baby anymore, there is slightly less to worry about. However, here are some reasons why I still deserve the title of Bad Mammy:

• I still don't take her to do exciting and stimulating activities. That's what I pay nursery fees for, surely?
• Even though she is crawling around the floor all the time, and picking up and trying to eat anything from the floor that looks like it might be food (even though it could really be a piece of paper, money or an ant), I'm still shockingly bad at keeping the floors clean.
  
• I have moved her off formula, and stopped sterilising, before the Government-prescribed age of 1 year (because, at the stroke of midnight on their first birthday, ALL babies' stomachs can suddenly cope with this).
• The baby-proofing equipment is STILL in the cupboard under the stairs.
• I have not even thought about trying to reduce her dummy usage.
• I forget to put socks on her all the time.
• If she is having a tantrum, and I can't think of what else to do, I give her a biscuit. (Homemade biscuits though, surely that gets me some Good Mammy points?)
• I tell her she's naughty. Which is apparently really bad for their self-esteem, and just encourages them to be naughty, because they are being told that's what they are. Just what I need, a toddler with self-esteem issues.
• I let her steal my food, even when she's just had her own meal and I know she's not hungry. Wonder why she's so bloody huge?
• I enjoy being at work and away from her FAR too much.
  

But that's not too bad, right? Thankfully, by now lots of my mammy friends have relaxed now their babies aren't fragile, precious little newborns anymore, and I've made some almost equally Bad Mammy friends, so I feel much less alone in my rubbishness! But I'm sure the toddler phase is going to throw up plenty of opportunities to do things wrong. Bring it on, I say.

Happy Almost Birthday

The Baby is 11 months today! This means that I now have exactly 1 month left of having a baby under 1. That's scary. And it's making me realise that very soon I am going to have to stop calling her The Baby. Not sure I'm at all ready for that. Also, what will I call her? The Toddler? It doesn't quite have the same ring to it. The choice of "The Baby" was deliberate. Obviously she is my baby, so it didn't take the greatest leap of imagination to come up with that, but, to me, she is also THE baby. The only one in the whole world. Obviously, I don't really mean that literally. I don't come over all blind and deaf if there is another child under one in the room. But as much as I love my nephews, and my friends' babies, they don't take over my universe the way she has. And I guess no matter what I call her, or however big she gets, she will Always Be My Baby. And even when she finds out I have a penchant for quoting lyrics from the early works of Mariah Carey, I will always be her mammy. I'm happy about that.

Developmental Milestones pt 2

As The Baby is now the ripe old age of 11 months minus two days old, I thought that now would be as good a time as any to update you on her development. And I couldn't think of anything else to write.

So here are the things that The Baby is currently dabbling in..

• Crawling. As if she has a rocket up her bum. I may have mentioned this once or twice. That's because I still cannot get over how fast she can go. Like a teeny, mischievous, destructive cheetah.
• Eating me out of house and home. She's good at eating. Things she does not like - raw tomatoes, asparagus, and.... I'm out.
• Pulling herself up on the sofa. And the toilet. And the cooker. And the rickety table that quite often has a cup of tea on it. And the back of my legs while I'm standing at the kitchen worktop, so I then can't move.
• Screeching, shouting and otherwise making a lot of noise. Usually in the middle of Asda, which is clearly the most exciting place in the world.
• Putting things in places, and taking them out again. Quite cute when it's her toy box, less so when it's my pyjama drawer.
• Developing strong emotional attachments to inanimate objects. This week it is Bedtime Bear. Bedtime Bear solves all problems. Nearly.
• Playing with cause and effect. Baby drops the toy, Mammy picks it up. This is good. Baby drops the toy again, and sure enough, Mammy picks it up again. Baby drops the toy again, Mammy decides to teach her that sometimes dropped things stay dropped. Helpful passer-by picks up the toy. Bum. Baby looks smug.
• Expressing her likes and dislikes. Ooh boy, especially the dislikes. She is currently reserving most of her venom for getting dressed in the morning, and getting undressed at night. To say that she is not a fan would be something of an understatement. This is the one problem that Bedtime Bear cannot help with.

And some things she is refusing to do..

• Walk on her own, or which I am profoundly grateful. Oh God, imagine how much trouble she's going to get into.
• Say "Mama". We have "Dada", we have "Ta", we have "yaddle yaddle", "loggle loggle", and what may have been "Colin", but nothing for me. Boo.
• Feed herself without decorating the kitchen in porridge.
  
• Let go of anything that she's not supposed to have - keys, phones, bottles of shampoo. You can try and take them away. See Expressing dislikes, above.

Remember, all babies are different and develop at their own speed. She may be lazy. Or she may just want to embarrass you by making you lose the "my baby is better than your baby" contest.

This is Normal Now.

I was reading something somewhere the other day (it may have been an interview with someone like Amanda Holden in something like OK. Who knows? Doesn't matter) about how you spend the first year of your baby's life waiting to wake up and feel normal again. It's so true, for me anyway. I love my baby, love being a mammy (however Bad I may be) and all of that, but somewhere in the back of my mind has been the belief that things will get back to normal someday. But it's been gradually dawning on me that they won't. This is what's normal now. This is my life. Nappies, watching The Baby like a hawk (albeit a slightly blind and easily distracted hawk), childcare schedules, worrying about salt content, planning excursions around pushchair-accessibility - these are the things that shape my day and occupy my increasingly addled brain. You might think this is a bit of a depressing realisation, but actually, it's oddly liberating. Accepting that your child-free, carefree days are over means that you can look back on the ones you did have with fond nostalgia. And you're really appreciative if you get to play out for a night! You get less annoyed at the rubbish parts if you're not subconsciously thinking they are getting in the way of a more fun life.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I need to get out more. After all, I am getting life epiphanies from OK magazine.

Brain Gone All Dead

Sorry, I'm being a bit rubbish lately, aren't I? I have a confession to make, that last post wasn't even original, it was something I posted on ScaryParenting a couple of weeks ago. I just didn't want to leave you, my faithful readership, down. I'm sure your lives would have continued somehow though.

Anyway, I've still not got anything scintillating for you I'm afraid. My brain's gone dead, probably because I've had to work really hard at work to make up for phoning in sick with a lurgy on Monday. It was not fun. No idea what it was. I possibly caught a chill, which sounds so lame and old-fashioned that I refuse to believe it could be true, but I did go for a walk to the beach in the rain in £4 pumps from Primark. And no socks.

There are probably tons of things to report about The Baby, who is generally being cool at the minute. She is getting in all sorts of trouble with her ever-improving crawling skills, and learning new things all the time. And either I am being less Bad at the moment, or I am just so Bad and so used to it that I don't even notice it anymore. Hmm. I think it could be the latter. I promise I will do you a round-up of developments soon. Bet you're on the edge of your seats.

The No-Nap Workout Solution

I have cracked it! The secret to being able to eat whatever you want and lose your baby weight at the same time! Forget diets, Pilates, or expensive gym memberships, The No-Nap Workout Solution is where it's at.

The concept is simple - take your baby into the living room, and wait until she is rubbing her eyes, whinging, and generally carrying on like she is tired. Take her upstairs, lie her down, give her a kiss, and go back downstairs. After about 5 minutes, realise that you can hear some odd banging sounds through the monitor. Go back upstairs, to find your baby crawling about, standing up rattling the bars, or doing something else that is patently not sleeping. Lie her back down, and go back downstairs. Go back again in another 5 minutes to find her standing up again. Decide she isn't tired, so take her back downstairs, whereupon she will immediately start whingeing and rubbing her eyes again. Restart whole process and repeat until you have buns of steel, and have burnt off the calories in the Mars Bar you had in lieu of lunch.

Not Interesting Enough To Warrant a Title.

Had a nice day with The Baby today, despite the fact that she still/again has a cold and is covered in snot. Note to self - do not wear black tops when your child has a cold and is likely to wipe her face all over you every 10 minutes. I also ended up having to change my trousers today, as The Baby decided to spill my latte all over me, and the floor of Debenhams cafe. Not just any latte, but a still quite hot latte with a ridiculous amount of caramel syrup in it. Lovely. My friend's baby decided to follow suit and knock his mam's juice over too. I don't think the staff were best pleased with us.

Had some retail therapy to get over the fact that David Cameron is actually in charge of the country. I am losing the will to be a politics bore now, I have decided just to give them all the benefit of the doubt, see what happens, and hope that the arts don't get too shafted. And root for David Miliband, who I am developing an odd little crush on. Bless him and his wonky little face.

And I finally found a food The Baby won't eat! Tried to give her asparagus today, with absoutely no success at all. I'm almost relieved to discover she doesn't like everything in the whole world! Shopping lists, however, are still a firm favourite. Oops.

If You Are What You Eat...

..The Baby is a mountain. A big mountain of food. Doesn't matter what type of food. Any food will do. Here are various food-related things from the last few days.

• We were at a barbecue the other day, and The Baby ate, among other things, rice cakes, some carrot, some cheese slices, some Milky Bar buttons, and a HUUUGE burger. It was massive. And she just shoved it in her face with great glee, while I tried very hard not to think about the salt content.
• We are off bottles! Woop. Lots of parents struggle with this, while we did not even have a tiny tantrum. I'm not sure she noticed to be honest. As long as the milk is coming, she doesn't care how it comes. Ditto for how it tastes. Tried her with cow's milk, straight from the fridge - again, guzzled. I love that she's being cooperative, but also a tiny bit sad that she's not my teeny baby anymore.
• This child has no table manners. Now, I realise that 10-month-old babies are not exactly renowned for their grace and ettiquette, but do all babies eat their expensive, organic fish pie by sucking it straight from the pouch? So uncouth.
• I have spent all this afternoon making biscuits, after realising that spending £2.15 on 10 biscuits, just because they have no additives and are made of spelt, is ridiculous. Unfortunately, as you may have gathered from the other week's green cake debacle, baking is not my strong point. This is mainly because I don't like to be told what to do when it comes to food (or most things, in fact), which is fine when you're making a stew, but not so much when making biscuits. So after replacing golden syrup with apple puree, leaving the ground ginger in the shop, and using not enough sugar and too much flour, I have ended up with a boxful of things that are not quite cakes, and not quite biscuits. Ciscuits, perhaps. Still, I'm sure The Baby will eat them. They are made of food.
  

Sorry!

Being lame and keep forgetting to post. I'm blaming tiredness - I'm still not entirely caught up on my sleep after election night, mainly due to my slumber being interrupted by random thungs like my sister phoning to ask me if I think she has DVT ( you're 250 miles away, I don't know, go to the hospital), and Husband managing to set his alarm for midnight instead of 5.45 am. I have some minor victories to report (for once) and only a tiny amount of Bad stuff, which I will do later, when The Baby is not trying to press all the buttons on the laptop or play with my mug, as she is doing right now...

Flagging!

This blog post is the cyber-equivalent of propping my eyelids open with matchsticks. I really wanted to stay awake and watch the election. But I'm seriously flagging already and it's only 1am. Most of the results are coming late due to high turnout. BBC coverage is not funny, Channel 4 is not timely enough. I don't have any crisps. Conservative have just taken their first seat from Labour. Am getting bored of the word "swing". Pretty sure I will fall asleep soon. And who can say what the country will be like when I wake up? (Probably exactly the same, just going for a bit of melodrama.)

Pampers. Full of ....

Dear Customer
We are always striving for improvement, or failing that, to spend less money. So, in order to make your nappies better, we have made them worse. We have made them smell really weird, so you will be constantly sniffing your baby's bum, wondering if she has done a poo. We have taken away the stuff that, you know, keeps them dry, at the back. This is to improve the fit. OK, they may leak everywhere, but at least your baby will be happy with the answer to "Does my bum look big in this?".
The new version of these nappies will be trialled in selected packs, which will be completely indistinguishable from the old ones when buying them. There will be a small card in the box asking for your opinion on these changes, which you won't read, but that's ok, because we don't really care about your opinion anyway. And, it goes without saying, we're still going to charge you a fortune.

Maybe Tomorrow..

I will post something. I am planning to be up all night anyway watching the election. Bit of swingometer action. Can't beat it. Although I do like the idea that bloke off Channel 4 said about demonstrating the swing by having big robots fighting instead. That would be cool.

Sorry, being rambly. Tired after another mini week at work, which incorporated a few fails, including missing two buses home, breaking my camera (although this didn't actually happen at work), the whole network going down for two hours (not a fail on my part, but still a fail) and making some terrible cups of tea. And I missed The Baby lots. Not sure if that's a fail, as it's not a good feeling particularly, or a win, as it proves I'm not heartless.

Anyway, as you can see, I am being incoherent and tedious. More tomorrow as I get simultaneously over-excited about the election and depressed about the prospect of Dave Giant Iggle Piggle Face as PM.

Clean Clean Clean Clean Clean

Yessssss-ah! My house is finally clean. It has taken me all day (hampered at times by The Baby's sudden transformations into a very noisy limpet), but the house has been blitzed from top to bottom. It looks good. It might even look the best it ever has, but I would still stop short of saying it is immaculate. Immaculate I cannot do. I may have mentioned this before, but I have friends who, despite having jobs, babies, and often a pet and/or demanding or lazy husband to run around after, still manage to have houses that are show-home perfect. To these women, I must ask this question: WHERE IS ALL YOUR STUFF???? Where is the electricity bill that came the other day, but you think they've overestimated it, but need to read the meter? Where is the birthday present that you bought but have not yet given to your brother-in-law? Where is the button that fell off your cardigan yesterday? Where are the 7 boxes of dishwasher tablets you bought because they were on offer, without realising you don't have space in your cupboards for them?
Now I know everyone has a bit of a tidy when people come round, but I often have the sneaking suspicion that even at their worst, their clutter levels would barely reach a 7, to my 486. I think that what actually might be happening is that some people, unlike me, are blessed with the ability to deal with things straight away, put things back where they find them, and not buy things when they don't have the faintest clue where they will go. But I would dearly love to find out that other people do have all this stuff, and it's all straining against the door of the cupboard under the stairs.