Just For A Change....

The Toddler has been an undeniable menace today of the highest order. But instead of having yet another whinge about that, I have decided to share some nice things instead. Now The Toddler is starting to put a couple of words together here and there, she is very cute and funny. In my opinion anyway. So here are some of my favourite things she has said recently:

(wondering why Husband was lying with the duvet over his head) "Daddy hiding? Daddy sheepy"

(at midwife appointment, hearing the baby's heartbeat) "Ooh, noise! Noise! Baby noise!"

(looking for spiders in the garden, and finding none) "SPI-der? Spider bed. All gone!"

(standing in a corner with a dressing gown over her face) "Where gone? Hidin. Boo!"

(seeing a worm) "Snake! Snake! Hello!"

(about almost everything) "Mines. Is mines"

(spying the Easter Eggs on top of the shelves) "Tock-tit! Mammy's."

Such wisdom from one so young.

I'm Really Very Pregnant, Aren't I?

Following on from my recent epiphany that I would soon have TWO CHILDREN, I am also now starting to realise that I will SOON have two children. For a number of reasons, it has suddenly dawned on me that I am really Very Pregnant Indeed. The first reason is that I am now very nearly 34 weeks. Which means 6 weeks left until my due date. 6 weeks doesn't sound very long. Up until now, I have been able to delude myself that I still have 2 months to go (which technically, I suppose I could have if this one decides to be late), and months, plural = A Long Time. 6 weeks is not 2 months at all, and therefore is not A Long Time. Secondly, I am nearly finished work. Woo! I have two weeks, which equates (thanks to Jesus, May and Kate and Wills) to just 4 working days, left. One of which (tomorrow) I must spend trying to remember what my job is, so I can spend the remaining three trying to explain it to someone else. And thirdly, I am REALLY feeling it now. I feel very massive all of a sudden, I need to wee roughly every 35 seconds, I can't bend down, and I have to have a little sit down after going up the stairs. I'd somehow managed to forget how tiring it is being heavily pregnant. Of course, the tiredness could have something to do with The Toddler still not wanting to entertain the notion of a full night's sleep, or of not being a total menace all day, every day. I long for the days of my first pregnancy - I don't think I truly appreciated the luxury of being able to lie down and ignore the world when you're tired, instead of having to follow a small child around ensuring she isn't turning the oven on or hiding my keys.

So, yes. New'un coming soon. Utterly unprepared. Here is my to-do list:

• Get newborn clothes out of loft. Thank God I had the presence of mind to box them according to size and gender-suitability.
• Wash newborn clothes. As well as keeping on top of regular washing mountain. Thank God Husband finally put up washing line. Hope weather holds up.
• Empty dresser of 12-18 month old clothes so can put newborn ones in it.
• But only after have cleared a path to dresser, as the nursery is currently filled with several hundred boxes of who knows what.
• Get all other baby stuff out of loft, and try to figure out what has gone missing or got broken, and therefore needs replacing. Hope this is not too much, as we are skint.
• Get crib from out of brother-in-law's loft.
• Nag Husband until he builds crib
• Hope against hope that crib fits in bedroom. Panic if it doesn't.
• Buy hospital bag
• Try and remember what needs to go in hospital bag
• Buy things to go in hospital bag
• Pack hospital bag
• Stop googling slings and just buy one.
• Try and remember what else it is that you're supposed to do in preparation for a new baby.

Do-able. Surely?

Panic....

.... is starting to set in......

It dawned on me last night (well, extremely early hours of the morning, to be more accurate) that I am HAVING ANOTHER BABY. Not that I didn't really know that (the growing bump and constant kicking are pretty good clues). I knew that I was having a baby. And I knew that I already had one (she's kind of noisy, it's hard to forget). But it seems to have only just occurred to me that I am going to have the one I already have, and then I'm going to have another one, and they're both going to live in my house, and I'm going to have to deal with them both, at the same time. I think I've been in quite a considerable amount of denial about this. I've been convincing myself that the second one won't be as hard, because, in theory at least, I kind of know what I'm doing, so I won't have to deal with that "Oh my God what is this thing that has come into my life and what do I do with it?" fog that descends on you with your first (or at least I sincerely hope not). In fact, I've been looking forward to enjoying the bits about having a newborn that you're just too overwhelmed to appreciate the first time round, such as knowing that if you put them down and leave the room, you don't come back to find them wiping their nose on your washing and sticking a 10p piece in the DVD player.

But The Toddler is still going to be The Toddler. She's not going to suddenly decide not to have inexplicable fits of rage at 1.30am. She's not going to stop wanting 13 choruses of Jingle Jangle Scarecrow before she finally gets bored and wanders off. She's not going to suddenly realise that face-washing is not evil, and submit peacefully instead of flinging herself around the bathroom in indignation. In short, The Toddler is still going to be Very Hard Work.

So what do I do when they both want something at once? How do I deal with one of The Toddler's epic rages when I've got The New'un stuck to my boob? How do I change The New'un's nappy if The Toddler decides to jump on it, or steal the changing bag? I suppose the answer is that I just suck it up and get on with it, like every other mother of more than one has done since the beginning of time. I do what I've always done and just muddle through, and accept that, at times, one or other of them is just going to have to wait. I accept that I am going to be tired, and frazzled, and confused, and very probably even more grumpy than normal for the forseeable future.

Or, I could sell The Toddler on ebay. I'd miss her though. She's pretty cute. Not at 1.30 in the morning, mind.

I Want To Be A Hippy

I have a new obsession. You may remember, a while ago I wrote a post about lusting after prams. But I knew that I did not have several hundred pounds to spend on a new set of wheels, and so put all thoughts of shiny new ones out of my mind. And instead, I now find myself obsessively googling slings. Especially, for some reason, the fabric ones that wrap around you about a million times and give you the look of an at-one-with-the-universe earth-mother. I want to look like that. I have no idea why. I never have before in my life.

So I have been mooching around t'interwebs looking at slings. And dear god, I thought pram shopping was complicated. Which it is. But so is sling shopping. There about 75 thousand different types of sling. Ones with buckles and straps, ones with padding, mei tais (not a rum-based cocktail, sadly), ring slings, pouches, wraps.... Even shopping for a wrap, which is essentially just a really long piece of fabric is not exactly simple - you can get stretchy ones or woven ones, and there are about 50 different brands, and prices vary so wildly I have trouble remembering that they are all essentially oversized hankies. I really really wanted a stretchy wrap, but I have just stumbled across a very exciting-looking hybrid type thing called a wrap conversion. They have hoods on. My mind is in turmoil once again.

So all I have to do is decide on a sling. Oh, and then persuade Husband that even though we now own three pushchairs, a sling, a backpack carrier, and possibly another couple of baby carriers of various types lurking in my friend's garage (I still own the garage and the flat it is attached to by the way, I don't just go randomly storing baby paraphernalia in my friends' homes), it is really necessarily for me to spend a WHOLE lot of money on a new one.....

An Attempt....

I was just about to write about how we had taken the brave step of trying to get The Toddler to go to sleep without her dummy, and how it didn't seem to be going too badly so far.

But then she started screaming quite a lot, so we caved.

And now she's going to know we are liars, as Husband told her, kind of on a whim just to see if it would work, that they were all broken. So it will serve us right if she never believes anything we tell her ever again.

The Week in Witterings..

Hello! Sorry I've not written anything in a while (because I know you're all just sitting there on the edge of your seat waiting for my latest installment of "wisdom"). I'd like to give you some kind of great excuse, but really, it's just because I'm crap.

I'm very tired today, and am about to settle down with a glass of wine (!!!) and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones (we are watching all our DVDs in alphabetical order, it has taken us more than 3 years to get to this point. Not because we have millions, but, again, because we're crap), so this post is just going to be a nice incoherent ramble ("how is that different from normal?", I hear you cry) about various things that have happened lately.

First and foremost, The Toddler has had The Pox. Chicken, not Small. It took me a while to figure it out though, and then I think I was in denial about it for a while, hoping I could still send her to nursery. As I mentioned on The Day Of The Tantrum, The Toddler had not been well, and in a fit of uncharacteristic concerned-Mammyness, I decided to take her to the doctor, to be told she probably had a virus, and would be fine. The next day, she developed three spots on her back, and then more, and I spent the next two days obsessively typing "chicken pox rash" into Google Images. Don't do it, especially if you're eating. In the end, I had to conclude that she did indeed have chicken pox, although possibly the mildest case there ever was. She had a dozen spots, one sleepless night of itching, and a cough, and other than that, she's been exceedingly lovely.

Well, I say she's been lovely. This is what they tell me. By they, I mean my mam, Husband, my dad, and in fact everyone in the world who is not me. For me, she's a little bugger. I've just had a couple of the kind of days that make you feel like you are no good at all at this mothering thing, and that your child really doesn't like you very much, and will never listen to you, and you'll end up one of those mothers who get "can't you control your child?" looks in supermarkets. For example, she has been covered in three days worth of crusty calamine lotion, because she wouldn't let me bath her, and thanks to a recent growth spurt, her legs are now long enough for her to fling them over the edge of the bath. She crusty she had to remain. Until this morning, when Husband ran her a bath, which she was positively clamouring to get into. He turned to me and said "You hate me a little bit, don't you?". He was not wrong.

In happier news, when I'm not too tired, I have been doing well at the Engaged Parent thing. We even did an activity the other day! I normally shy away from the messy ones - I have enough trouble cleaning in the first place without purposely making even more mess, but I decided that The Toddler would do baking. It was very fun. She did not quite understand the concept of filling the paper cases, and kept spooning it back out again, and she upended half a tub of sugar sprinkles over one cake, and I will be finding said sprinkles all over my house for months, but I think we both enjoyed it. The cakes were even edible.

In pregnant news, I think the New'un is trying to punch its way out. It has barely stopped moving for the last 3 days. Which is good - I hardly want it to stop moving - but really quite painful, and most unnerving. I thought I would be used to this, as The Toddler was a mental wriggler, but I had forgotten quite how strange it was to feel like someone is knocking on your internal organs, or when your entire belly suddenly changes shape. Ah well, not too long to go now. I'm down to single figures now, and I can't decide whether 9 weeks is an unbearably long time, or disturbingly short. Possibly it's both.

Some other stuff has probably happened, but it's either even more boring than everything I've just waffled on about, or I've forgotten. Anyway, Hayden Christensen and Chardonnay are calling.

Things I Can No Longer Do

I have now reached the stage of pregnancy where I can no longer:

• Get to sleep. Or at least not quickly, and not without the aid of several pillows in various shapes and sizes. During my first pregnancy, I think I got up to 7 pillows in the bed with me. Here is a night in the life of a pregnant woman: Lie down. Wait for baby to stop squirming and kicking. Carefully arrange pillows under head, under bump, between knees, behind back etc. Kick Other Half until he moves his inconveniently placed knee. Finally achieve comfort. Settle down to sleep. Suddenly feel as if sleeping on tiny rock, as baby shifts random limb into unfeasible position. Turn onto other side. Re-arrange self, pillows and Other Half. Achieve comfort. Realise need wee. Haul self out of bed, go to toilet, return to bed. Re-start whole sodding process.
• Bend down the cheating way that most people do. Instead, if I want to pick anything up, or see to The Toddler in any way, I have to do that proper, Manual-Handling-Training, bend-from-the-knees thing. Having actually done Manual Handling training, I do know how much better it is for your back, but still, it's a wee bit tiresome.
• Put on pants, trousers, socks and shoes whilst standing, without wobbling alarmingly.
• Talk to anyone without them mentioning the size of my bump. Now, I may have mentioned once or twice that this kind of annoys me a little. I realise that it's just people showing interest, and that I'm probably exactly the same when not pregnant, but it still makes me want to go round telling people how big their ass is looking today.
• Do the washing up. Which sounds really lame, but I swear is true. Because of my height (or lack of), and position of my bump, my newly half-sticky-out and extremely sensitive belly button is at exactly the level of the kitchen worktop, so if I have to stand close to it (the worktop, not my belly button) for any length of time, it feels HORRIBLE. Thankfully we now have a dishwasher, but we didn't in our old flat, and I'm pretty sure Husband thought I was just making it up
• Go in the bath without being frightened I will never get out again.
• Fit into the shirt that I'm wearing today, which I should have realised before I left the house and got told by a colleague that I should be on maternity leave already, because I looked so massive.