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.

Wow. Just.... Wow.

Hello peoples!

Sorry it's been a while, I've been busy lately, what with the New Leaf (has been going quite well), and actually having to do quite a lot of work at work (which has kind of got in the way of the New Leaf a bit, as The Toddler had to be dispatched to Grandma's, and Grandma is always good and plays with her). So now work manic-ness (a VERY busy weekend involving Japanese people getting stuck at immigration without the right paperwork, the East Coast mainline melting, and me having to drive a Very Famous Person around in my toy-filled Ford Focus) is over, I had been looking forward to taking it a bit easy this week, and having lots of time to rest. Needless to say, The Toddler decided to scupper this plan, by being ill (how very dare she?). So instead of getting some decent sleep, I have spent the last two nights balancing on the very edge of my bed with a very sweaty and wriggly head on my chest. Which is always fun. So you could say I haven't been in the best mood ever. Still, day off today, tea and cake date with a friend, it was going to be nice.

And then...........

Bear with me. The experience is still quite raw. It's difficult to talk about. But here goes.

After a reasonably whingey morning (usual "I don't want to sit down and eat my breakfast, get dressed or have my nappy changed" shenanigans, which I'm sure she does because she knows Husband is in bed trying to sleep after night shift and she wants him to come and help, making him tired and me feel like a failure), I left the house, planning to pop to the shop for cake before going to my friend's house. The Toddler had shown a considerable amount of resistance to the idea of leaving the house, so was already not best pleased by the time we got to the car. So, preparing myself for a bit of a fight, I attempted to murder her. Well, actually I tried to put her in her car seat, but from the screaming that ensued, my whole block must have thought I was throttling her. Which I was very tempted to do. I thought I had experienced the most epic tantrum The Toddler had to offer. Turns out I was very, very wrong. Today's effort was special. There was screaming, there was squirming, there was kicking, there was total body-stiffening, there was slithering out of the car seat and getting stuck in the footwell. At one point there was even phlegm. It was such a momentously huge tantrum, that after twenty minutes of this, when I had just resorted to putting her in the backseat and closing the car doors, in order to gather my strength for the next attempt, Husband came out to help me. Now, when you bear in mind that he was trying to sleep in bed, in a house with closed windows and doors, and that our parking space is beyond our back garden and left a bit, that's a pretty impressive tantrum.

I know that every toddler has tantrums. But I'm hoping, for humanity's sake, that ones like this are rare. I'm glad I'm pregnant already, otherwise I might be having second thoughts about bringing another one of these little devils into the world. And the worst part of it all? The tantrum made me so late setting off, I didn't have time to go and buy cake.

Trying To Be Good

Sorry I haven't written anything in a while, I'm trying this new thing called "Not spending every goddamn minute on the stupid internet". It's working out pretty well actually. It's amazing how much more you get done around the house when you stop spending hours watching strangers argue. A bit like when Big Brother finishes.

Anyway, another thing I've been trying out for the last few days is Being A Good Mammy. I know the title of this blog may suggest that this attempt is doomed to failure, and indeed many of my previous attempts to do buck my ideas up have not gone well. The reason for this is simple. I am, which you'll know if you know me or have been reading this for a while, not the kind of person from which brilliant mothers are made. I am impatient, selfish, extremely lazy, and have a whole host of other unenviable character traits which do not go hand in hand with perfect parenting. And I often feel very, very guilty about this. So I figured I could either live with the guilt, which makes me grumpy, try and not feel guilty, which doesn't work, and makes me grumpy, or I could actually get off my backside for once in my life and do something about it. So that's what I'm doing, and I don't know why I haven't done it sooner. Because it's really quite simple - when The Toddler is bored, she gets grumpy, when she gets grumpy, she is very annoying, and I get annoyed, tired and grumpy. When she is entertained, she is happy. When she is happy, she is nice. When she is nice, I am happy. Therefore, to make my own life nicer, and myself happier, I need to entertain The Toddler more, and sit on the sofa playing on Facebook less. What a revelation. No wonder people keep telling me I should write a parenting book.

So I'm Trying Very Hard. I am trying to get out of bed when she first asks to go downstairs, instead of waiting for her to get really annoyed with me. I am drawing endless spiders on the Magna-Doodle instead of checking my email. I'm taking her to the park instead of trying to get her to push her doll's pushchair round in circles in the living room. I'm trying to distract her from pulling all the washing off the clothes horse, or putting her fingers in the DVD player, instead of just telling her off and getting frustrated that she doesn't listen. I'm even trying to do housework in the times when someone else is here to look after her, so I don't spend my days annoyed at how disgusting everything is. And so far, fingers crossed, it seems to be paying off, in that we're all a lot happier.

I know that it's only been a few days. And I know that it's helped a lot that these few days have coincided with a bout of lovely weather, the disappearance of the last few symptoms of my stomach bug, and The Toddler's teeth seemingly giving it a rest for five minutes. But I can't help feel that this is the way forward. There are going to be days that test me, and I know I'm not suddenly about to turn into some Miracle Mum who wakes up at 6am to bake banana muffins and spends her evenings designing puppet shows. But I only have a couple more months where it's just us, so I am going to make sure we all enjoy them as much as we possibly can. And on that note, I think I've just got time to clean the bathroom before Husband and The Toddler come back from the park. See, new leaf, being turned!

Could Do Better.....

Afternoon of utter parenting fail today. In my defence, I am still recovering from a fairly nasty stomach bug, but unfortunately The Toddler is not a fan of my notion that perhaps she should be nice to me until I'm better. She also seems to have set her body clock to British Summer Time a little early, so that 6am is the new 7am, woo. So, along with her habit of not napping, ever, we usually have a very tired little girl by about lunchtime.

Today, my solution to this was to put the TV on. And leave it on. For about a billion hours. And I don't mean it was on in the background while we did some nice playing, I mean she stared at so transfixedly (I don't think that's a word) that I had to put my head directly in front of hers in order to ask her if she wanted a drink. She did. But she didn't want it in the cup I gave her. So I put it in another cup. Then she decided she wanted the first cup. Which I refused to give her, so she threw herself on the floor in a paddy. She's getting quite good at those now.

So, back to more TV. I read once that TV kills neurons in under-3s' brains. I hope that's not true. I don't want to make her thick. But I don't turn the TV off, I just let her keep watching, all the while having visions of trying to teach her maths in a Blackadder-and-Baldrick, "some beans" kind-of way.

Finally, teatime rolls around, where I plan to regain some Good Mammy ground by serving up a nutritious portion of home-made chicken casserole. The Toddler scuppers this plan by launching into a hysterical screaming fit at the sight of it, scrambling down from her chair, trying to throw her bowl in the bin, and shrieking "Cheese". I give up, and let her go back to the TV, where she immediately forgets her woes and joins in with her spirited interpretation of Mickey Mouse's Hot Dog Dance.

One tantrum later, and she is in bed. Phew. I'm quite glad to be at work tomorrow. I don't feel like quite such an incompetent idiot there. Excel usually does what I tell it to, and only falls down in a paddy once a day.

Merchandise

Maybe I should start my own line of maternity t-shirts...

Bit grumpy at the mo, can you tell?