Back! Briefly

Hello!
Sorry I've been so rubbish lately - I've been at work pretty much constantly since last Thursday... just had to go off and stop The Baby playing with the dustpan and brush and have completely lost my train of thought. She is now watching the video for "She Wolf". Much better.
Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, been at work, so The Baby was unceremoniously dumped on her daddy for the weekend. She was apparently very lovely the whole time. Now she's back in my care, however, normal service has been resumed. This morning was mostly spent arguing about what to do. I wanted her to realise that she was knackered and nap, she wanted to eat rice cakes and play with an empty suitcase. I won, but it took two hours, so did not feel like any kind of victory.

Jet-setting Baby is off again tomorrow, we're flying to Wales to see family again and go to a wedding, which will be nice. This will be her first wedding, I hope she behaves. Knowing her, she will make an idignant sqauwk at the "lawful impediment" bit. I apologise in advance to the future Mr and Mrs Rees for any havoc my child may cause. But it's your own fault for inviting her!

Weird

All mammies, even rubbish ones like me, dread immunisation time. No-one likes to see their poor baby have needles stuck in them, no-one like seeing that confused "what are you doing to me, this HURTS!" face, no-one likes the traumatised screaming, or the prospect of a sleepless night spent shoving calpol into a boiling hot baby. The Baby has never actually reacted too badly to her jabs, but the last ones were months ago, and who knew what sort of mood they'd put her in now. So, having already missed the appointment 3 weeks in a row, it was with a slight sense of trepidation that I hauled her into the surgery today. But we all know that The Baby loves to confound my expectations. As the super-speedy, stealth ninja nurse jabbed her in the leg with lightning speed, The Baby let out a yelp of surprise and started doing the face. We gave her a cuddle and told her what a brave little soldier she was. And then she stopped crying. Just like that. As we reached the car park, she broke into a huge smile. When we got home, she played on the floor happily, shrieking with joy at everything she encountered. She went to bed with no fuss. WHAT THE HELL WAS IN THAT SYRINGE???!!!!! And can I get some more please?

Happy Days!

My friend had a baby girl yesterday! I'm very excited and can't wait to see them all. It's nice to hold newborn babies. You forget how lovely it is to just have a nice cuddle without feeling like your arm is going to drop off from the sheer bulk of her, or having your glasses stolen. Everyone says when you first have a baby "Enjoy them while they're little, it goes so fast", but you don't have any idea how true that is, until all of a sudden a year's gone by and your child has crawled all the away up the stairs and locked the baby gate on you, which you had no idea she knew how to do. Maybe that's why people have second babies, so they can really appreciate the tiny baby phase. And so that if you fall out with one of them, there's still someone to look after you when you're old.

There is Hope!

I'm so pleased! A friend, who is immeasurably cooler and more glamourous than me, mentioned being in a pilates class with Julia Restoin-Roitfield, and I KNEW WHO THAT WAS! (Cool fashion person, google her if you care). Proof! Actual proof that my brain can still function beyond the sphere of babydom, recognise names that aren't Gina Ford or Penelope Leach, and show a vague interest in subjects other than nappies, child nutrition, and hyperemesis gravidarum. This is a good thing. New mothers can be terribly boring, and as I hardly deserve that title anymore, my child being one year old, I should make much more of an effort to be less boring.

To aid this effort, I have decided to spend less time on ScaryParenting.com. Last night I took the radical step of leaving the board that I seem to spend most time staring at, and deleting all traces of it from my internet browser. I realise that a more radical and more sensible step would be to do leave the whole site, but I'm not quite ready for that. But I feel virtuous and liberated. Tonight, instead of faffing around reading other people's arguments, I managed to complete a task I've been about a quarter of the way through for quite a while. Well, four years actually. But who's counting?

A Conversation.

Bad Mammy: "How did you get over there? What are you doing?"
The Baby: "Yaddle yaddle"
BM: "What's yaddle yaddle?"
TB: "Yaddle yaddle"
BM: "Really?"
TB: "Yaddle yaddle yaddle. Gah! Gah! GAH!!! Veh veh yaddle yaddle. Loggle oggle. Loggle oggle yaddle yaddle yaddle. Eh? Euh. Euh. Plrrfppph. Yaddle yaddle veeeeeh. Grrrrrrr"
BM: "Oh right".

One

Ok, so The Baby is one. One whole year old (and a few weeks now). She nearly has 5 teeth, she has learnt how to climb up the stairs, she has learnt that shaking her head means no (and employs this new-found skill whenever she is confronted by a vegetable), and is all of a sudden starting to look very big. I realise it is getting faintly ridiculous to keep calling her The Baby. But I can't bring myself to call her anything else. I absolutely refuse to admit she is a toddler until she does some actual toddling. If she takes as long to walk as she does to crawl, Ive got a good while yet. Phew.

Home Sweet Home

Hey ho!

We are back from Ibiza, safe and sound, or as sound as we have ever been, at any rate.

Ibiza = nice. Go there. It's good. If you want more info than that, stop faffing around on my blog and go and find a travel website.

The first thing I realised about travelling with a one-year-old is that you have to redefine your idea of a "holiday" somewhat. Holidays used to be a nice break, a lot of sunbathing, reading, eating, drinking, that kind of thing. This holiday was a lot more work than that. Apparently, it's not really a wise idea to get pissed and and lie around in the midday sun when you have a small child. And you have to entertain them too. As luggage space only permitted us to take about 7 toys with us, all of which she got bored with in about 20 minutes, we constantly had to play games of "Hit Mammy and Daddy in the chest", "Try and pull things out of the suitcase", and "Play with the bidet". It's been a long time since we had such concentrated, uninterrupted family time. Man, it's hard work! But it was also very lovely, and The Baby enjoyed it too and rewarded us by being lovely and smiley (despite growing some new teeth) for most of the week.

Being me, I did manage to get in a few good examples of Bad Mammy-ness such as...
- leaving her to troll around on the shiny tiled floor all the time. She only banged her head twice though.
- getting her a teensy bit sunburnt, despite the lashings and lashings of factor 50. She sustained an interesting burnt eyebrow, somehow.
- feeding her all the time, whenever I didn't know what else to do. That child has eaten her own weight in organic rice cakes.
- letting her eat loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of bad stuff. I knew I would have to drop my salt and additive paranoia for the week, and boy did I drop it. What she has eaten: chips, fish fingers, ham sandwiches, more chips, about half a mini magnum, more chips, about 10 loaves of bread, mint ice cream, hazlenut ice cream, ham and cheese toastie, mini cheddars, bits of croissant, more chips, some pizza that she didn't really like, caramel ice cream and much more. What she has not eaten: anything of any nutritional value whatsoever.
- making no effort whatsoever to put her to bed at a reasonable hour, instead taking her to see a parrot show at 10pm.
- not realising for a few seconds that the thing she was playing with while we waited for our dinner was in fact a steak knife.

But who cares, eh? We had a lovely time, and that's all that matters. Now to try and get her used to being home again. Where Mammy doesn't play with her all day and take her to splash around in the pool, but faffs around on the laptop and only gives snacks at pre-appointed times. Poor Baby.