Be careful what you say when you're asleep

The boy has a habit of talking in his sleep. It's not a case of dozing peacefully and then suddenly yelling things like "Watch out - there's a monkey in the swimming pool!". When the boy sleep talks, it sounds just like he's woken up.

Many times now I've called on him in the wee hours of the morning, to fulfill his promise to resettle The Little Madam when she cries out in the night. And many times he's answered by sitting up and telling me he's onto it. And then talking to TLM as though she were in the bedroom with us, before resuming his deafening snore.

At first I didn't realise that the boy wasn't actually awake at these times; once I did, I got into the habit of shoving the monitor to his ear with the volume all the way up. At least anything he said after that came straight from a conscious mind.

Early this morning at around 2.30am TLM cried out, as has been her habit of late, so I prodded the boy as politely as I could and asked him to get into gear. I wasn't expecting the verbal abuse that followed. The word "obssessive" was used and I'm sure the "F" word too. TLM eventually went quiet again anyway, but I couldn't get back to sleep for ages because I was so mad at the boy for being so unsupportive. Mean, even.

I was still mad at him this morning when he stuck his face in the kitchen, where'd I been taking care of TLM since about 6.30am. But the anger was pointless, because the boy claimed to remember nothing of his nighttime misdeeds.

Or is it just another dad's ploy to get out of childcare duties and avoid retribution? Hmmmm?

A one-nap girl

For the last three days now, The Little Madam has been reasonably happy to have just one afternoon nap per day. I put her down for a morning nap around 9-9.30 anyway just in case, because she always looks and sounds a bit tired by then. But this is always followed by half an hour of listening to her (via the monitor) talk to herself and play with her Ocean aquarium cot toy.

Yesterday she napped for a whole 2 hours! I'm so unaccustomed to this that, after the first hour spent on the Internet, I sat around twiddling my thumbs and wondering when she was going to start making "Get me outa here" noises.

But if this turns out to be more than just a temporary nap glitch, then it's potentially going to be a great thing. I'll be able to take TLM out for the morning without having to get her home after about an hour and a half. We'll be able to attend swim classes without me worrying that it's impinging on her lunch time and nap time.

To some extent, I will be able to restart my daytime social life.

What worries me now (and there's always something for me to worry about) is that I've gotten into the habit of offering her midday breastfeed before her afternoon nap instead of after she wakes from it. I want to start weaning really soon, and somehow I don't think that giving her rice milk in a sippy cup is going to have quite the soporific effect that a good suck on a nipple does. It'd be like shoving the boy's face into a car exhaust and expecting it to have the same relaxing effect that a couple of puffs on a cigarillo would.

Balls (sweating the small stuff) *

My sister-out-law, fantabulous mother to two gorgeous but allergy-prone kids, passed on a suggestion for finger food - balls.

That is, meatballs, riceballs and any other foods suitable for a nearly-12-month-old, shaped into balls.

And The Little Madam likes 'em.

Surely a trivial piece of information compared to stuff like the war between Israel and Hezbollah, or the high possibility that our electricity bill for the rest of the winter will top four hundred smackaroos per month.

Yet the success of the balls has been instrumental in transforming me - albeit temporarily - into a picture of optimism and serenity.

* Apologies for any mental images of sweaty testicles which this heading may have induced ;-)

Good old teen rebellion

Just to give me an idea of the potential trials which lie ahead when The Little Madam becomes a (hopefull un-spotty) teenager, we watched Mirror Mask on DVD last night.

It's a story co-written by Neil Gaiman, famous for his fantastical graphic novels (the name of which I can't remember, because I don't remember much these days) and novels.

There's a teenage girl who is utterly dissatisfied with her life in a circus, where she performs with her family. In her spare time she draws, creating an amazing surreal world on the walls of her Brighton bedroom. Her mum gets sick, ending up in hospital, and the girl is both terrified and guilty. The last thing she and her mum did before the mum got sick, was argue over the girl's wish to leave the circus life and live like a normal teenager.

The night before her mum's surgery, the girl falls asleep and dreams that she has entered the world on her bedroom wall. She meets weird creatures and attempts to save the White Queen, who has fallen into a deep sleep (and who is the spitting image of her mum), whilst at the same time avoid being captured by the Black Queen (also a spitting image of her mum).

It's a bit of a coming-of-age story, like Labyrinth but without the rock star. It also reminds me of a children's story which I once saw dramatised on the telly, Marianne Dreams (about a girl who, in her dreams, enters the world she draws during the day).

It's a lot weirder than either, with a world peopled by impressively alien inhabitants (such as orbiting giants and cat-like sphinxes who are terrible at guessing the answers to riddles). I give it an 8/10 :-)

Spoonfeeding by stealth

These are a few of my strategies for spooning food into The Little Madam's mouth. If you have a similar problem with your little darling, perhaps you will find inspiration here...

1. Get her father to stand in front of her and pull funny faces. While she is distracted, quickly put the spoonful of food into her mouth.

2. Hide each spoonful of food with something she really loves, like pear and banana puree from a jar.

3. Just as she's about to take a drink or a bite of oven chip, quickly spoon some food into her mouth. You have to be fast though, because her mouth will be too small for both a spoon and a chip.

4. This works if she's got a cold and has to breathe through her mouth - she'll have her mouth closed whenever the spoon is hovering near, but she has to open it to take a breath some time right?

But if you have some cunning plans which you don't see on this list, feel free to leave a comment...

Chomp

Before seeing our GP the other day, I'd suspected that perhaps The Little Madam was suffering from an iron deficiency. There was an article I'd come across, suggesting that this can cause loss of appetite and increased susceptibility to colds and other viruses. It was me to suggested putting The Little Madam on supplements, not the GP (though I'm sure I did a good enough job making it think it was her idea).

I managed to get the syrups into TLM by adding some of it into the first spoonful of her food - I could usually get one spoonful into her mouth - and the rest by syringing it into her mouth while she screamed in protest (can't blame her really, I hate cherry flavoured medicine too, always have.)

It's been only three days and three doses, and there's a huge improvement on TLM's appetite. She still won't take much from a spoon, but yesterday she actually ate a whole meatball, a whole riceball and about four kumara wedges. And this morning since breakfast she's been snacking constantly on bits of toast.

It doesn't seem to have done anything for her willingness to take naps though - lately we've had days where she'll only nap at noon, after an exhausting morning of abandoned nap routines, the arm-flapping she does when she's overtired, and finally a breastfeed. And then there have been the days where she won't nap at all.

But one out of two ain't bad.

A wheezer's progress

Yesterday I took The Little Madam back to the doctor's for her follow-up appointment. Apparently the wheezing is better than it was, although they still can't tell me whether what she's got is anything more serious than an unlucky string of cold viruses.

So we've been advised to continue with the inhaler for another week (TLM now hates the spacer, even though she was quite relaxed about it the first few times) and get some nutritional supplements into her. And there's another follow-up appointment on Friday.

The interesting thing about the supplements I bought was the blurb on the respective boxes. This stuff is aimed at babies and toddler who are recovering from illness or are fussy about food and don't eat much. And the latter very definitely fits TLM's profile. But here is an excerpt from the instructions for use:

Dose: 10 drops daily in milk, water or food.

Okay, so I can't add it to the milk, because she's breastfed. I won't add it to her water because she doesn't drink much water at any one time and it'd end up going down the sink. And I don't see the point in adding it to her food if she refuses to eat anything from a spoon. I did think of syringing the stuff into an oven chip, though.

I'll let you know how we got on.

love me, love my aura

An old school mate from many, many, many years ago (we're talking ages 11-13 here) found me via the Internet. I haven't a clue how he managed to do it as I never use my full name on the Internet - but he did it. Curiosity got the better of me, and I ended up Googling myself just to see.

Well, I didn't find myself on a full-name search, but when I tried just Googling "Violet" I found quite a few interesting-sounding sites. Like, there's a soft-porn site with my name on it. And an American town. But I'm not this clown.

I also found this personality profile based on the violet-colour aura. Now, I may or may nor have a violet-coloured aura (current mood tells me I'm probably kinda blue), but it's still nice to know that we are right now in the middle of a Violet Age.

Mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown

In less than two weeks, I will be able to say "I survived my first year of motherhood". But between this moment* and then, please don't leave me alone with sharp implements or a gun.

* 1.30am, after having resettled a screaming baby and then found myself unable to get back to sleep - and hell, she's going to get me up again in a couple of hours any.

Aye Carumba!

Is it possible to get another cold when one is still in the throes of the last one? Because if it is, then The Little Madam must have done just that. We've been giving her doses of the inhaler every 4 hours during the day, which ought to clear her airways and decrease the coughing somewhat. But since yesterday she's been sneezing lots more.

I know that it's healthy for young children to have their immune systems "challenged", but this is totally feckin' ridiculous.

A wheezer in the making

Still coughing her little guts out, the Little Madam had also been wheezing quite loudly all day today, so I was glad that we were already scheduled for a follow-up appointment with our GP this afternoon. A couple of times now, in the early hours of the morning, I've jerked awake because I thought I heard her wheezing after a bout of coughing. Then I'm paralysed with indecision - do I go check on her and risk waking up an already wakeful baby or do a stay in bed and risk finding a blue baby in the morning? I'm starting to get better at sneaking into her room.

Later today, the doctor listened to TLM's chest and back before prescribing a session on the nebuliser, followed by a dose of Ventolin. I had to sing several rounds of Ten Green Bottles again (supplemented by several verses of Old MacDonald, for variety) because she sure doesn't like have a rubber mask clamped to her face.

The good news was that this took away all the wheezing, and therefore it's unlikely that she had bronchiolitis. The bad news was that it's highly likely that we have produced a little asthmatic. And I can only blame myself because it's in my genes, not the boy's.

Of all the ways I can be a bad mother (e.g. I cook badly, clean infrequently, and often resent getting up in the middle of the night just 'cos the little one needs a cuddle), passing on a genetic predisposition for asthma is one I didn't need to add to the list.

Geeks - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

We receive a letter from our telecommunications provider a few weeks ago, informing us that on 26 July we would have to change our static IP address or be unable to access the Internet. When I show the letter to the boy, he dismisses it and assures me we didn't have to do anything. Something along the lines of trust me, I'm an IT professional and I know what I'm talking about.

So I stick the letter on the fridge and we forget about it.

Then one evening, we can't get on the Internet any more. The boy fumes and mentally pounds his keyboard, wondering what the hell has happened to our vital link with cyberspace. I'm especially frustrated the next morning, because The Little Madam has surprised me by taking a nap without any of the usual squealing or protesting and this is my time to blog.

When he gets home in the evening I thrust that letter in his face and say I told you so. Sure enough, he gets on his computer and changes the IP address on the router and the gates to cyberspace are once again open.

Hooray.

But guess what - the boy has very generously bought me a laptop, enabling me to blog from anywhere in the house. And it comes in a very sexy bag too. But here's the thing - he spends the evening setting it up for me while I'm in bed trying to catch up on sleep, not quite finishing before he heads on to bed. Then this morning I can't access the Internet from my computer. What did he do? I don't know 'cos even when I was a computer programmer, I was always one of the non-geeky ones.

Fortunately the boy's computer is working fine.

The pros and cons of having a mobile baby

Pros:
It means she's growing up. Awwww!
It's so cute when she follows me around.
It's exciting because fully-fledged crawling/cruising/walking is just around the corner.
No more worries about pressure sores from sitting in the same spot all day. (Just joking - like a baby can get pressure sores!).
Look forward to buying her shoes and calling her a toddler.

Cons:
Nappy-free time is problematic (if you know the answer to this quandrary, please please please leave a comment and tell me what it is).
It's really inconvenient when she follows me around. Like, to the rubbish bin for instance.
I might have to find a way of containing her when I want to shower or go to the toilet.
More run-ins with furniture than ever before.
We'll have to shop for playpen walls and stuff RIGHT NOW.

Explorer by day, banshee by night

Yesterday I took The Little Madam to see her GP. She reckoned that TLM could well have some sort of bacterial infection, and prescribed a week's worth antibiotics. She also prescribed two doses of redipred, a corticosteriod designed to fix that wheeziness once and for all (well, until the next time she gets sick and wheezy).

By the time we got home I was feeling really optimistic that it would all be uphill from there. TLM has just started really exploring our living area. Previously she seemed content to bum-shuffle around the carpted area and leaf through books and magazines; now however, TLM tends to aim for the rubbish bin, the cupboards and anything that looks like a potential climbing frame. I wouldn't be surprised if crawling and cruising set in by the middle of next month.

All those good feelings melted at bedtime though. Unusually, TLM screamed from the time I started singing her bedtime songs (my voice does have that effect on people, but she's used to it) and didn't settle until 90 minutes, four visits and an extra breastfeed later. Then 90 minutes after that, we got an encore.

The boy is sure it's the effects of the redipred. It hadn't occurred to me that corticosteroids could have such a dramatic effect, because I've been treated with similar medications all my life (for my asthma and hayfever) and never suffered ill effects (except I used to blame it for stunting my growth, which is probably quite inaccurate as it's more likely due to a regrettable family gene which produces short females and tall males).

At first I didn't believe him and thought it was probably a developmental thing. But I remembered that she was pretty hard to settle on Saturday evening too, and that day the doctor at the After Hours place had given her a dose of redipred...

So we have one more dose of this evil fluid to administer. I'm going to be very disappointed if TLM continues to wheeze after all this suffering.

The Brothers Grimm

Today I'm taking The Little Madam to see the GP - a couple of days earlier than we're supposed to, but her rattle-y breathing is a bit worrying. Anyway, just as a wee distraction from all the doom and gloom of my blog lately, I want to tell you about a movie we saw over the weekend, The Brothers Grimm.

If you're at all interested in the origins of fairy tales, as I am, then you should watch this movie. I have no idea about the accuracy presented, but there are some fascinating references to the tales of Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and others. Despite the fact that one of the brothers is played by Matt Damon - not badly, it's just a bit distracting when you realise who the actor is - and the silly comedic beginning, this film becomes quite engrossing.

It's very reminiscent of Sleepy Hollow, actually.

Like most fairy tales (at least the non-Disney versions), there are beautiful maidens in peril, dark magics, truly scary evil people and lovelorn heroes. Get past the first half hour or so and ignore the strange Italian guy, and you'll have an enjoyable film.

The doctor is in, but she's no House M.D.

Poor Little Madam. Her cold seems to be getting worse, not better. Yesterday I could hear wheezing, and it wasn't coming from my asthmatic self, so I took her to the after-hours medical centre. The doctor was really nice, but couldn't really tell me whether The Little Madam was just experiencing a particularly nasty virus or something else.

There was mention of bronchiolitis, she couldn't be sure. Because TLM has had so many colds in such a short space of time, there's a possibility of it being some sort of allergy. She even had a session with a nebuliser, to fix the wheezing.

I sang umpteem rounds of Ten Green Bottles to calm the poor wee thing down, because she cried during the ear inspection, the cold stethoscope on her chest and back, the nebuliser and the one-off application of some sort of medication which I've forgotten the name (and purpose) of.

By the time TLM was settled back at home and straight into her cot for a much-needed nap, we'd stocked up on Pamol (for the red left ear), Demezin (for the snot and possible allergy) and inhaler (for the next time she gets wheezy).

I've given the boy strict orders to do his smoking well away from the house (normally he smokes in the doorway), because apparently it's a major allergan. We also have to book in for a follow-up for Wednesday. I guess The Little Madam will most likely be missing yet another week of swims and playgroups.

Cabin Fever

Due to The Little Madam being poorly, and the terrible weather outside (there've been gale-force winds, hail, pelting rain and an air temperature I can count on the fingers of one hand), I haven't left the house in three days.

When TLM's up I either play with her or do housework. When she's down for a nap I sit and twiddle my thumbs, hoping she won't scream and wait for me to find her stuck in the corner of her cot with her head under the blanket.

We really could do with some fresh air and company.

Time speeds like an overloaded freight train with faulty brakes

I just realised that in exactly three weeks time it will be The Little Madam's (TLM) birthday.

Where did the time go?

It seems like only a couple of minutes sonce I had to support my baby's head whenever I lifted her.

On the other hand, Life Before The Baby feels like decades ago (especially for the boy, who wonders whether my libido has emigrated to sunnier, more decadent shores).

This brings me to the question of whether to hold a birthday party for TLM. I was thinking it would be nice to have a little lunch or afternoon tea thing with just the immediate family. It would be an opportunity for TLM's first cake experience (and if she's anything like me, it'll be the first of many).

But it's only three weeks away, and it takes that long just for me to get around to cleaning the trackmarks off the toilet bowl (I did tell you that there've been lurgies in the house).

Comfort

Long time no blog post, eh? It's partly because of this house of sick people who need looking after, but it's also because only two rooms in this house are kept heated and the computer lives in neither of them.

The Little Madam is coughing and sneezing her way through the week, missing out on a Mums and Babies tour through the local art gallery. She's hot like a little pocket warmer and we've almost finished the small bottle of Pamol which I only bought last weekend. If she isn't better in a couple of days then it's off to the doctor's we go.

The boy is still giving his tummy some TLC, which at least means that I haven't had to cook for several days now.

But when he returned from his business trip, he brought back seasons one and two of Gilmore Girls. We've been watching episodes back to back every evening, and this keeps me from slipping over the edge into self pity.

Good DVDs, plenty of fruity biscuits and a warm bed - that's really all you need when you're un-seriously sick.

A house of lurgies

Once again there are sick people in this house. I, who am still getting over the 'flu from two weeks ago, am the healthiest person in this household right now.

The boy has some mysterious illness which sends him on urgent missions to the bathroom every couple of hours, and causes him to soak his pillows in sweat at night. When I rang the doctors' office to make an appointment, it sounded so bad that they fit him in to the afternoon even though technically they are full up today.

The Little Madam began her cold yesterday, just in time to miss the first swim class of this term. She's mostly still quite cheerful, but her appetite is at an all-time low (even spurning the freshly roasted oven chips) and the lower half of her face is continuously covered in snot and dribble.

It's only a matter of time before I'm struck down too. See, this is why I don't like the idea of fate.

I party

I'm not just a desperately unsociable SAHM you know. The boy and I were invited to three parties this weekend. Three. However The Little Madam (TLM) and I only made it to one (it was The Editter's).

Granted, it was at three in the afternoon and I didn't have anything alcoholic to drink, but it was still a party and I still got to talk to some new people. TLM tended to be the centre of any conversation I partook in, but I suppose that's to be expected when she's always either on my lap or climbing off it.

I even met another blogger, and we bonded over the fact that neither of us read the other's blogs. At least this meant we had something to talk about because we hadn't already read about it.

A model baby

Yeah, right.

But actually, yes. The Little Madam (TLM) is this year's model for the Ministry of Health's 10 month meningococcal B vaccination*. Some time after I return the consent form, TLM's face will be splattered over the walls at medical centres all over New Zealand. Only it won't look quite like her, because they Photoshopped the top of her head and gave her flat hair.

I promise you she won't be turning into a little Brooke Shields (a la Pretty Baby).


*Ironically, TLM is in fact overdue for her MensB shot, but don't tell the Ministry.

She squeals

For a while there The Little Madam (TLM) was going for her naps really well - three books in the living room, two songs in her bedroom and into her cot. The I wouldn't hear from her for at least an hour.

That isn't happening any more, and only some of it can be blamed on the imminent arrival of her second tooth. Now she lies in her cot and practices her squealing and squawking. It takes two or three goes before she'll actually settle down and sleep.

Either she's trying to tell me she only needs one nap per day, or she's just trying not to nap at all. I'd hesitate to believe the former, because up till now she's been a little slow on the nap development; even two weeks ago she was needing three catnaps per day, when other babies her age are onto one or two long ones. So I'm more inclined to think it's just TLM telling she who's the boss of her.

Exciting evenings at home

We actually had a neighbourhood party to go to last night, but due to the boy's non-appearance and therefore my need to stay at home and babysit The Little Madam, it turned out to be another evening at home and bedtime (for me) at 9pm.

I did get to watch some telly though.

Did anyone watch last night's episode of Project Runway? It's the one where they have to get into teams and design a lingerie collection. Did anyone think that Santino I'm-so-great should have got the chop, and not Daniel Can't-work-to-deadline? Santino has been more creatively interesting so far, and I reckon that's the only reason he made it through. Daniel was the better team leader because at least he accepted sole responsibility for the team's low score. Though both of them were utter control freaks who wouldn't accept any real creative input from their teammates. What do you think?

Now that I'm re-watching Buffy DVDs again, during The Little Madam's naps (now that she sleeps for an hour at a time), I'm having a re-think of which season is my favourite. Up until recently I always proclaimed Season Six as my favourite because it's so dark and dirty. But perhaps, having just seen some Season Three episodes again, it's really Season Three which is the best. Season Three has Faith, the mayor, vampire Willow and The Zeppo. Season Six has Buffy 'n' Spike, evil Willow (there's a pattern here, eh?) and some very annoying villains (I never liked Warren - at least the mayor, the Master and Glory were likeable in their own way). Am I right?


Gosh, my life is exciting.

Still boy-less

The boy texted me last night to tell me that he's not coming home today after all. Apparently his flights were messed up, and he's still in Singapore. This is bad; I'm just no longer accustomed to being the sole responsible adult in the household.

And yet, I loved living on my own pre-boy.

When the technician came around to test our alarm monitoring system and accidentally blew a fuse (not his fault, we have a faulty light switch in one of the rooms), I had to ask him to replace the fuse wire for me. I can't do it myself you see, because even with a ladder I'm too short to reach. It's always been the boy's job.

He's also the one who hold Baby when she's about to get a vaccination jab.

I hated taking the rubbish out on Wednesday, because that's a nasty job which I normally persuade the boy to do.

And woe betide me if anything should happen to my PC, because he is my computer whisperer. Ditto for the DVD player.

He did however, buy me a massage seat so that I wouldn't miss his magic fingers (I don't mean that).

And The Little Madam hasn't seen her daddy for days now. Will she look at him questioningly when she sees him?

Nomenclature

It's not because I'm copycatting The Editter, who has changed her blog name to Georgia, but I've decided to change Baby's blog name. She's not going to be a baby for much longer, after all, and anyway "Baby" is a fairly boring name which does nothing to express her personality.

So from here on I'm going to refer to her as The Little Madam. It's a little long, but it does tell you a heck of a lot more about what kind of personette she is.

Eleven months

Today is Baby's eleven-month birthday, and it's also my second day as a temporarily single parent.

Don't panic, the boy hasn't left me for a perkier, younger model; he had to go to Jakarta for work and he swore he's coming back before the end of the week.

Yesterday, my first day as Baby's sole parent, was not quite as scary as that day the boy went back to work, two weeks after Baby was born. That day was was terrifying; yesterday was merely a little tense. It was tense because I knew that I won't be getting any Baby-free breaks for about four days, and if she decides to have a terrible night I won't be able to ask the boy to go and settle her for me. It'll be all up to me.

Anyway, today Baby turned eleven months. Wow. It's hard to believe it's been nearly a whole year since she was born.

At eleven months, Baby definitely prefers feeding herself oven chips to being spoonfed mashed potato. She throws a tantrum if I take my Empire magazine off her, before she rips the pages out and puts them in her mouth (I thought tantrums were a Terrible Twos thing - obviously she is very advanced in this respect).

Even though Baby is still not crawling, her bum-shuffling is impressively quick. If I prop her up against the couch she'll happily stand there for about five minutes before getting bored and demanding to be tickled or bounced.

She's now more likely to wake for only one nightfeed than two, and for the last four nights has allowed me to sleep for around 7 uninterrupted hours overnight. But then she'll wake up at 5am wanting to watch a Baby Einstein DVD.

Her hair still sticks up; food seems to work at least as well as hair gel.

Why I kinda support the Animal Liberation Front

Trying to practise what I'm preaching...

I was always going to be the kind of bleeding-heart liberal that disapproves of the fox hunting set, and supports those people at PETA who spray paint on fur-wearing supermodels. I never managed to grow up to become Jane Goodall or a veterinarian - nor even join Greenpeace - but my heart's right there.

In my opinion it's pretty arrogant of mankind to think of animals as things to be used and abused. In my world view, if creature can feel pain then we should try to avoid causing them pain (this idea doesn't run to cockroaches - I hate 'em).

I eat meat of course - it's in my Cantonese upbringing - but there's a line I draw between having an animal killed because we want to eat it, and killing an animal for fun. It's immoral. It's just as repugnant to kill an animal for food, then discard the flesh simply because you couldn't be bothered cooking and eating it before it went off. (And that is the real reason I hate throwing out food).

There's a real problem with vivisection though, because I've benefited from many medications in my life; drugs which probably wouldn't be available if they couldn't be tested on animals. And this is where my animal rights stance really falls over.

I could give up eating meat, with a little persuasion (or a trip to India). I could give up wearing leather if vinyl could be made "cooler". But the question of medicines is a tough one.

Sweet tooth

Because the boy and I are supposed to be Baby's role models, we should really eat better. I can hardly expect her to be happy with mandarin segments and cinnamon-y porridge when the parents are following our instant noodle lunches with numerous chocolate biscuits and individual cheesecakes.

This means that one day soon we will have to give up individual cheesecakes and chocolate biscuits. Or eat them when she isn't looking. Other scoffable yummies I should ration are:

ice cream
apple slice smothered in warm custard
sticky date pudding
custard squares
doughnuts
apple and rhubharb crumble
hotcakes with maple syrup, banana slices and loads of cream

Yes, I'm a dessertaholic. In the days when my friends and I used to frequently meet for coffee, I always made a point of getting a really sweet cake-y thing to offset the bitterness of the really strong flat whites. One of scariest moments of my pregnancy was when I had to consider the possibility of gestational diabetes, and the sugar-free diet that would have to follow. If I'm having a really bad day, the boy often brings home cake of some sort to put a smile back on my face. And it usually works.

Will I be able to give up sweets? It might be easier to just be more furtive around my daughter.

Almost-burnt offerings

You'd think I would have learned by now, after that time I turned a casserole into charcoal, to be careful using the oven. But no.

I've decided to give Baby roast vegetables every day, because at least she eats them. This is all fine and good, but it is such a bad idea to put the veges in the oven while Baby's having her morning nap, then sneak off to use the Internet for a few minutes.

Because half an hour later, I'll suddently remember that I haven't checked on the roast veges in an awfully long time.

And then I'll knock furniture over in my haste to get to the smoking kitchen.

Fortunately, the potatos, pumpkin and carrots are okay - only slightly more charred than they ought to be.

Well, Baby's got to get used to my cooking some time, right?

In other news today

Baby was all fussy and whingy today, and I feared that virus number four had hit. But all is well. She's just cut her first teeth.

Half a dozen eggs and a silver coin

When my brother and I were sick as kids, my mum would always practise her folk medicine skills on us. Usually this meant plying us with hot, bitter tea - tea so bitter that it really was worth making a "miraculous" recovery in order to avoid a second mouthful.

Another of my mum's favourite home remedies was the liberal use of a special brand of eucalytus oil. A handkerchief doused in this stuff creates the effect of a hurricane your sinuses, making you believe you can actually breathe through your nose.

But her most-used remedy was this - take a hot boiled egg, remove the yolk, put a silver coin inside the whites, wrap this up in a clean handkerchief and rub it all over your chest, back, neck and face. Repeat about six times, washing the silver coin thoroughly in between eggs.

Mum really believes this draws out the evil humours in the body and reduces fever. So much so that she walks around with a permanent egg-y smell around her, to which she is completely immune.

We had a visitation today, right in the middle of a food-fight between Baby and me (she was winning) and a minor tiff between the boy and me (over how helpful it isn't when your partner tells you that your stressfulness is showing). Despite cold, windy and rainy weather (normally enough to put her off leaving her house unless it's to collect her pension), my mum dropped by with half a dozen eggs, a silver coin and a bundle of clean handkerchiefs.

And you know what? I do feel better for it, although afterwards I had to clean crumbled egg whites off the floor and light a few matches (for the smell). Maybe it was the hot rub. Or maybe it's because my mum came through.

Cold Scores

Number of colds/flu suffered since the beginning of June : Baby 3, the boy 2, me 2.
Number of healthy days in June: Baby 24, the boy 10, me 8.
Perkiest family member: Baby (of course!)

Number of social get-togethers missed this month due to sickness: 1.
Number of social get-togethers we have been invited to in the last three months: 1.

It turns out that we've all had influenza, probably the very strain which this year's flu vaccination protects against (and which none of us took). The doctor says that young children get sick frequently but don't suffer to the same degree. This explains why Baby has just a couple of unsettled nights each time, but the boy and I both feel like death warmed up, then quick-frozen, then put into a very hot oven without any basting.

Couple time

Second on that list, aimed at new parents, which includes the words "sleep when baby sleeps" (okay, but a 4 1/2 hour sleep then a 2 1/2 hour sleep is not as satisfying as a 7 hour sleep), is usually the phrase "factor in baby-free couple time".

Despite the fact that Baby refuses to stay asleep for a whole evening, the boy and I do get baby-free time together. We just have to stay at home for it. So it's just as well we have a huge collection of DVDs, a 42" plasma tv and a DVD recorder.

TV is now my main hobby*. Blogging is what I do while the boy plays World of Warcraft, so we can still be in the same room together. Going out on the town is something I've got on my list of long term goals.



*Shows we must watch:

House is great because for a whole hour I get to pretend that my mind still works well enough to keep up with the high-speed clinical diagnostics talk (is it ovarian cancer? An uberculoma mass? Rabies?)

I love What Not To Wear partly because I can secretly (well, not so secret now, eh?) relate to the fat menopausal woman, the butch tomboy, and the SAHM whose toddler looks like she belongs in a Pumpkin Patch catalogue but dresses herself in her husband's lumberjack shirts.

And Project Runway is the only bitchy reality tv show I watch, probably because I enjoy making fun of Heidi Klum's silly maternity frocks.

(I also love Gilmore Girls. Although it's set in a super-wholesome town where no-one ever dies of a horrible flesh-eating disease or a badly-placed bitch-slap, it's full of really clever dialogue that makes me wish I was a smart as Lorelei or Rory.)

sex and drugs and naughty search words

There've been a couple of spikes in this blog's stats over the last few days. I wonder if it's because I've used words like breast, drugs and peekaboo pole-dancing kit in recent posts? I wonder if I'll get another spike now that these words have just appeared in the latest post? Hmmm...

Social leprosy

I'm so sick of cold viruses now. Baby's just started her third cold since we got back from Fiji - that's less than one month ago - I'm only just getting over mine and the boy is now in the throes of his second since Fiji. Frustrating as this is for my plans to sleep train Baby, there's now much more at stake - our social life.

When Baby's got a cold, we can't go to our mothers' group meetings or swim class or visit friends or entertain. A trip out in the buggy means wrapping her up like a burrito in several layers of hats, hoods and blankets, and strictly adhering to the use of our plastic weather shield. No-one gets to cuddle, play with or breathe anywhere near the vicinity (except for me and the boy who are already sick anyway).

In future I'm going to have to think twice about borrowing stuff from the library, because library books are the number one way of passing on germs if you're a reader (I know this for a fact, because when I started working at a library I caught three colds in two months). Either that or disinfect anything likely to get into Baby's hands.

I wonder if there's such a thing as Echinacea for babies?

Time

One of the children's books in the latest batch I borrowed from the library, is about time. And one of the pages has a picture showing a young baby, a pre-teen girl, a youngish adult woman and a grey-haired woman.

From new life to aged decreptitude in less than a second.

I've seen insurance ads on the telly which effectively do the same thing i.e. show a baby grow up, find a job, get married, greet his new grandchild and finally, dodder away to his grave.

Am I the only one who finds these sped-up lives thoroughly depressing?

Drugs

There's a part of me which likes to think that herbal rememdies and other "alternative" treatments are somehow better than the drugs of Western medicine. It's the same part of me which feels guilty for taking Baby out on a half hour drive to get her to sleep (the petrol cost!), or for using disposable nappies.

On the other hand, there's the enormous convenience involved.

For days now I've been so congested I could barely breathe at night, but I didn't want to take anything for it because I'm still breastfeeding. But I reached a limit yesterday, when reading to Baby became a chore (because I had to stop every page to sneeze or blow my nose) and when Baby's no-eating antics threatened to blow my serene-mum act out the window.

So I sent the boy out to the pharmacy to buy some Sudafed.

I just have to be careful with the timing; I take some pills right after Baby's first post-bedtime breastfeed (as long as the next one is more than 3 hours away), and that sets me up for the night.

And last night I actually got to sleep for the five hours between Baby's first post-bedtime breastfeed and her second (this one, at least, will hopefully disappear after sleep-training).

So, despite the fact that natural therapies sound so wholesome and healthy, I'm afraid I'm all for the quick fix.

Peekaboo!

I feel lucky that Baby really enjoys looking through my old Ezibuy catalogues, because they're free and they keep her entertained for hours. But I'm getting sick of reading her the same old board books before each naptime and bedtime, so it's time to get some more.

Mostly because I'm too lazy to go traipsing about the bookshops looking for good babies' books, I've been looking around on the Amazon site for books to add to Baby's collection (and not least because her favourites are actually library books).

Entering "That's not my bear" resulted in a list of several other books in the same series, which pleased me no end. That's not my monster and That's not my dragon (I'm probably showing my fantasy/horror bent here) are already on my wishlist.

Entering "Peekaboo" not only resulted in a couple of potential buys, but also a few amusingly inappropriate items, such as:

-Peekaboo Nightie Lip Gloss
-Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit
-Alien Peekaboo (there's no picture, but my mind sure does boggle)

But what I should really do, if my snot-clogged sinuses will let me, is to put on my hat and gloves and super-thick coat, put a well-wrapped up Baby in the buggy and trot on down to a nearby specialist children's bookshop. I could do with some exercise.

The Dolly Parton look is Sooo OVER

TMI warning: if you don't want to read about breast shrinkage, then leave now.


First I noticed that the breast pads kept falling out (fortunately, this mostly only happened at home).

Then I noticed that my bras were looking a little wrinkly.

Now I realise that my boobs have shrunk - not to their previous perky shape though; just a more petite version of the moo-cow look I've been sporting ever since Baby's tumultuous appearance on planet Earth.

But there's no way in hell I'm going to go out and get refitted for new maternity bras, not when I'm expecting to be lactation-free in the next 2-3 months.

So the world is just going to have to put up with seeing drapery where there shouldn't be any.

Snuffles

The entire household has come down with colds, although luckily the boy has been the first to recover (probably because he was the first to succumb, and then passed it on to Baby and me).

It was a cheap trick on Baby's part, but she's succeeded in getting her sleep-training weekend postponed. I reckon by the time the next window of opportunity comes up (after the next cold, her fourth Meningoccal B vaccination and the boy's business trip abroad), she'll be old enough to give up night feeds for hard liquor.

Anyway, the poor wee mite is irritable by day and sleepless by night (okay - sleepless, full stop (that's period if you're North American)). Congestion abounds (except Baby has the benefit of our steam vaporiser and I don't), and appetites are all over the place (she won't eat her solids except with extreme deception; I've been beating a path to the fridge which is so well-worn that I should really call it State Highway 93).

It might well be the reason Baby didn't enjoy yesterday's swim class very much, and why she wasn't exactly pleased when I dunked her head in the water. Oops.

Not too young to be a shallow ageist

I'm pretty sure of it. Baby prefers the young and pretty.

She made goo-goo eyes at the attractively presented young retail staff at the duty free beauty counters.
She cries when she gets a cuddle from a senior citizen. Up until about a month ago, this included her own grandmother.







When I took Baby to our GP to get her checked out, just to make sure there's nothing medical standing in the way of full-on sleep training (we aim to start this coming weekend), she absolutely charmed the pants off the elegant young woman sitting next to us in the waiting room.

But the kindly, bespectacled old gent who very gently looked into her ears and listened to her lungs, made Baby burst into tears.

Perhaps it's not too late to start using eye wrinkle cream.

Cute corpse

We watched The Corpse Bride the other night, and it was well worth the wait (the wait for the DVD to become available for weekly rental, that is). The boy, of course, accused me of selecting a movie based on Johnny Depp's involvement. That didn't stop him from watching it with me though (nor does it stop him from watching Pirates of the Caribbean multiple times).

It's a great little story, told in excellent stop-motion animation. The music (it's a musical, by the way) is groovy and the walking, singing skeletons are more whimsical than scary. Think Mexico's Day of the Dead.

And it's chockful of the voices of acting greats, too - apart from our Johnny, The Corpse Bride stars Helena Bonhom Carter, Emily Watson, Christopher Lee and Albert Finney. Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous and Little Voice) is in it too, but she wasn't mentioned in the DVD extras so I'm assuming her performance is a musical-chorus one (she does amazing imitations of the likes of Shirley Bassey in Little Voice).

It looks great, sounds great and leaves you with a nice warm fuzzy.

Conditions

I'd have to be totally off my rocker to want another baby, right?

It's different for the boy, because he doesn't have to incubate for nine months and forego deli food in all that time. He won't be getting up to feed a newborn every 2 or 3 hours. He won't be spending all day feeding, settling or changing a baby. And he certainly won't be the one doing this with a toddler to entertain and care for.

So why am I even considering having a second child?

Mostly, it's because it would be nice for Baby to have a sibling. Without a sibling to fight with Baby won't have as much opportunity to practice self defense (or offense). Without a sibling, Baby won't get to learn to share toys and love until she gets to preschool.

There's also my age. At forty-cough, I haven't the luxury of raising a single chile for a few years (and thereby completely forgetting the horrible bits) before deciding that it would be nice to have another baby.

And, now that Baby has started to sleep fairly well (and without any change in behaviour from us, her parents), I'm already starting to forget how horrible it was to survive on 2-hour blocks of sleep for nine months (or is that just because my memory is so poor?).

So I've been thinking about what would have to happen in order for me to want another baby:

- We'd need to move to a bigger, more child-friendly house. This means that the boy would have to agree to actively search for a new home and be prepared to take on a mortgage. Previously, my suggestion that we move has always been met with an "Okay" but no actual action.

- We'd have to think about how we can do a better job second time around, regarding putting the baby on some sort of routine and consciously putting the baby to bed awake. We have to do everything we can to avoid another feed-all-night hell.

- The boy would have to consent to hiring a nanny or home help, at least for the especially hectic times.

- The boy would have to agree to make a whole lot more effort in bottle training the baby, so that I could sometimes have a few hours' sleep and leave feeding in his hands.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

She's on strike

I've been very keen, over the last few months, to wean Baby off her night feeds. I really didn't expect that she'd go on strike entirely.

Since Monday night, she's only bothered to breastfeed twice. I wonder if this is temporary and due to getting over a big cold, or the start of something permanent?

The little darling's library of contemporary literature

In case you're wondering, when I read out loud to Baby I don't choose from the pile of books I'm reading for myself. Baby's literary treats tend to be board books, since they double as great teething toys and I don't have to worry that she'll ruin her appetite with the pages.

Baby really seems to get a kick out of turning pages; in fact when we were on the flight home from Fiji I gave her a folded-over sick bag and she played happily with it for many minutes.

Her current favourite is Bathtime Peekaboo, which answers questions like "Where is the cuddly penguin?" with "...under the bathmat?. Peekaboo!" She's probably going to miss it when I return it to the library in four weeks.

Her previous library favourite, which we took to Fiji with us, was Anne Geddes' 123. As you'd expect, it's full of Geddes' trademark too-cute photos of infants in strange containers; it's way too sugary-sweet for my tastes, but Baby loved those pictures of babies in flowerpots and dressed as daffodils.

Touchy feely books get a lot of attention too, such as That's Not My Bear ("That's not my bear, its nose is too rough" and the bear has an appropriately scabrous nose). This too, is a library book - and not worth stealing because the last page is ripped up.

The only two books she really likes, which we actually own, are The Very Hungry Caterpiller (it might be because she enjoys poking her forefinger into the holes where the caterpiller has eaten through something) and The Real Mother Goose Touch and Feel Book. The Mother Goose book has cool touchy feely bits, but I suspect Baby likes it mostly because there are plenty of pages for her to turn.

Post-holiday reading

The boy took about half a dozen books with him when we went to Fiji, confident that he'd have plenty of leisure time to fill. I took only two books, Marion Keyes' The Other Side of the Story and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife.

I'd started to become a bit disenchanted with Marion Keyes' books. I still think her early work is her best (Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married and Watermelon are highlights) and haven't been so enthusiastic about the later novels (The Last Chance Saloon was a low point).

But I actually quite enjoyed The Other Side of the Story once I got about halfway through it. Like all her later books, this one lacks the wit of the first ones, but the story was quite good and none of the main characters were particularly irritating.

I'm still ploughing through The Time Traveller's Wife. It certainly is very imaginative, but I'd have to agree with Make Tea Not War about the annoyingness of the two main characters and the ick-factor in a relationship where one of them is middle-aged and the other is a small child, when they meet.

Also, I've got Gregory Maguire's Wicked, which sounded extremely interesting when I first heard about it (The Wizard of Oz, from the point of view of the Witch of the West), and Keither Laidler's The Last Empress.

Wicked isn't grabbing me, although I have to admit I've only read the first two pages so far. It's just something about Maguire's writing style - I had a similar problem with his Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister (a re-write of Cinderella, in the same vein).

I'm actually having more fun with The Last Empress, despite it's dubious educational value. Maybe it's the detailed descriptions of how eunuchs were made (chop chop!).

Wassup at ten months

Baby turned ten months old today. Only two more months to go before we can try her out on dairy, egg and wheat (just a precautionary measure due to my highly allergic family history) - that means cheese sauce, crumpets and pizza!

She still doesn't crawl, and when you hold her up she still tends to keep her legs bent. But she's very good at sitting.

She's also good at turning the pages of her boardbooks, but if you give her a book with normal pages, there's a good chance some of those pages will disappear down her gullet.

Baby's slowed down on the weight gains (now just under the 50th percentile), but apparently this could be due to genes taking over. In other words, she could still end up being a shorty like me.

Her preference for junk food is getting stronger all the time. It's now pretty hard work getting her to eat fruit and veges. If it were easy to inject fruit, veges and mince into oven fries, I would.

I finally started dressing her up on a day-to-day basis just a few months ago. Instead of wearing a babygro day and night, she's now cavorting around in candy striped bell-bottoms and funky flowery tunics. She look so cute I can't get over it.

Once we got back from holiday, Baby's sleep improved again. Now she does 6-7 hour stints most nights and nap times are just as likely to be a breeze as a battle. Does this mean we ought to put off calling in the sleep consultant?

She's definitely becoming a little girl rather than a baby. Soon I'm going to have to think of a new moniker. How about Daddy's Girl?

Not under the influence

Baby just gets better and better at staying awake.

When we were in Fiji, the boy sent me to the bar to get dinner while he stayed in the bure to settle Baby for her bedtime (it would take at least half an hour of songs, rocking and crooning). As you do, I met a couple of Aussies and we got talking. One of the guys, who claimed to have parented (not just fathered) five children, recommended that I drink brandy before the next breastfeed, to help Baby sleep. So by the time I returned to the bure with our dinner, I exhibited the telltale signs of having indulged in the top shelf (i.e. a face like coal-fired barbeque).

Unfortunately, the next breastfeed did not result in a quick Baby-snooze. If anything, alcohol works way better on me than it does on her.

The day we decided to come home early from holiday ('cos we really needed a break), a fellow parent overheard my (admittedly overwrought - you know, for effect) tale of woe to the resort reception. She caught up with me later and, after confessing to having overheard my private conversation, offered to supply me with some Phenergan (the kindness of strangers, eh?). Somewhere in that conversation, she mentioned how Baby Nurofen had put a friend's baby to sleep within 20 minutes, so when I heard her offer in my mentally-deficient state, I accepted.

Unfortunately, she gave me Phenergan rather than the Nurofen.
Also unfortunately, if anything it hyped Baby up even more than usual for the flight home. (Basically, she only fell asleep as we landed at our home port, after bouncing in time to many rounds of Row Row Row Your Boat and some cleverly hypnotic finger-clicking from the boy).

I've also tried sipping camomile tea before her breastfeeds, but I don't like the taste and probably couldn't drink enough of the stuff to have any effect.

There is one glimmer of hope, though. Baby really likes turkey meat (which is a nice change from liking hash browns, oven fries and greasy sausages). Apparently turkey meat is really high in tryptophan, which can help induce sleep. And I know that for the three days at the beginning of this week, in which I gave her turkey meat for lunch, she napped pretty well (if she goes to bed without screaming blue murder and sleeps for at least an hour, that's napping pretty darned well).

Never give up, never say die.

Thoughts on travelling with a baby

I don't know why you can't get dehydrated baby food. It should exist, because when you're planning on a two-week holiday with a baby you have to plan on packing forty-odd jars of baby food. That stuff's heavy, you know.

What's worse when you're rooming in a duplex - having childless neighbours or having neighbours with an equally sleepless baby? When it's the former, you feel bad that maybe your baby's screaming is keeping the neighbours awake or putting them off their nookie. When it's the latter, it's likely the babies will set each other off all night. I don't know.

Today I discovered that I needn't have made do with my maternity swimsuit, because I do in fact have a very nice non-maternity swimsuit. I simply forgot I owned one, because I hoard all my old clothes and then forget I have them. But I still can't find those almost-new polypropylene thermal tops that I bought last winter, and which I was looking for when I found the swimsuit.

There's an old saying, possibly Chinese, the gist of which is that it's necessary to travel in order to appreciate home. Well, it's bloody true.

During a holiday is probably the best time to discover that your baby really likes oven fries, hash browns, fruity yoghurt and barbequed sausages - they're always available at the breakfast buffet and give her a valuable introduction to the world of fast food.

Next time we travel with Baby - if there is a next time - I'm going to spend more time researching drugs. Pamol was great for preventing ear pain during the airplane's descent, but we haven't come across anything that'll make nudge her to sleep (Phenergan does nothing. Nothing).

You get more smiles and much better service if you have a cute baby with you. But then, you really need it.

Before I forget

My memory is infamously bad; my closer friends have all accepted it, but there are many aquaintances out there who probably simply thought I was a total snob. It's not just people's names I'm bad with, but their faces too.

This impediment is so bad that I once pretended to know some guy who greeted me on the street. It wasn't until half way through our movie date that I realised we'd never met before - he was merely chatting me up that time.

At work, I completely covered the frame of my computer monitor with yellow Post-it notes, because otherwise I'd spent way too long looking up instructions on how to do stuff. I had to record every single password and PIN at the front of my work diary.

If I didn't have this blog I'd have a hard time recalling what films or books I've enjoyed in the last six months. Even if I've known them for years, I still have to be reminded of most friends' or family members' birthdays.

I think it started with my being really unobservant, which in turn was because I was always shy and self-conscious. When you're so worried how you came across to others, then you're hardly going to properly notice what's going on around you, right?

Only nowadays it's worse than ever, due to being a mother and being older.

A cousin - the one whose husband I kept inadvertantly snubbing - once suggested that it might a mineral deficiency. I can't for the life of me remember what that mineral is though.

Posing in Fiji

I just know you've all been waiting with bated breath, for some holiday photos. So here they are...

This is the view from our bure. No matter how boring you think it might get sitting on the beach all day for days on end, this is one thing I'd never get tired of looking at.

I'm trying to remember which Pacific Island culture has this code thing going on with wearing flowers in your ear; a flower in one ear (left or right, I dunno) means you're available, a flower in the other ear means you're married and a flower in each ear means you're married but looking for action...

There's something about piers that make me want to photograph them. I'm sure it isn't just phallic.

Anyone looking for a swimsuit model?

A dish of my own

Once, back in the days when I used to share a flat, I watched one flatmate work on a particular recipe, hoping to develop that perfect dish which she could always serve reliably to dinner guests.

I thought it was a great idea to have one dish that you know will turn out perfectly just about every time, a dish that will please your dinner guests rather than embarrass them. But in those days - in fact, right up until the boy moved in and became the default cook in this household - it was always safer for my friends if I limited my food-related social gatherings to chips 'n' dip at home, or eating out.

But finally I think I have My Dish. It's perfect because it's simple to make, doesn't have a million ingredients and is tasty, filling and suitable to for Baby to eat. The recipe is from one of those Ministry of Health booklets which provide iron-rich recipes aimed at babies and toddlers; this one provides a variation for the adults in the family. This is my version -

Violet's Slightly Edgy Cottage Pie
Filling
400g of steak mince
1 medium-sized, sweet apple, grated
1 cup of grated kumara (New Zealand sweet potato)
1 cup of water
3 tablespoons of vindaloo paste or medium strength curry paste
And any non-watery vegetables you want to add, e.g. peas 'n' carrots, sliced mushrooms, julienned green beans.


Put the first 4 ingredients into a pan and simmer for 45 minutes. At this point you can remove a portion for your baby. Lightly steam or boil the additional vegetables and add to the mince mixture, along with the vindaloo paste.

Transfer the whole mixture into a casserole or pie dish.

The topping
Top this with a whole lot of mashed potato (which I mash with lots of milk and butter) and mashed kumara (because you'll have some left over after making the mince).
Top that with lots of grated cheese.
Put it into the oven until the cheese is nice and brown.

Yum.

p.s. Obviously the quality of the vindaloo paste is going to affect the yumminess outcome of this dish. I use Pataks, but I reckon any brand which you find in the ethnic section of the supermarket should be fine.

holiday schmoliday

We're back from Malolo Island, almost exactly one week early. Hi!

On the fifth day of our time at the resort, after :
1. I had hurt my dodgy wrist for the second time (this time it happened flipping up the toilet seat - go figure),
2. both the boy and I had suffered multiple insect bites (in my case, really nasty ones that turned into hives the size of Welsh mountains),
3. my skin reacted badly to the tropical-strength insect repellent I sprayed on my arms, following aforementioned insect bites and
4. Baby had woken up screaming her head off half a dozen times per night, for the fifth night running,

we decided that going home early wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Don't get me wrong, now; Malolo Island Resort is a lovely place with postcard-perfect views, extremely friendly staff, warm seawater and plenty of opportunities for snorkeling and sea-kayaking (if you aren't hampered by childcare responsibilities). From the patio of our bure, we could sit and gaze at the hammock-punctuated horizon, eat tropical fruit and say "Bula!" to anyone passing by. All the staff were baby-friendly, and most of them took to Baby from the moment they laid eyes on her tufty hair and cute little sideways smiles.

Okay, the prices of everything from restaurant food to trashy women's magazines was exhorbitant, and there was the little matter of being promised a proper wooden cot when the resort only provides portacots, but on the whole there wasn't much to complain about.

Mostly, it was Baby's sleep - or lack of. She's a sensitive wee soul, and seemed to find the change of environment overwhelmingly distracting. The boy had to practically rock her to sleep for every nap and bedtime, and every night we'd be up every 30 minutes to 3 hours trying to get her back to sleep again. I think I must've given her about 8 breastfeeds in one 24 hour period.

Having said that, Baby had tons of fun - flirting with the staff (pretty Mia, who works at one of the restaurants, was a particular favourite), playing in the sea, checking out other holidaying babies and having 24-hour access to super-fun play-daddy. She even got to ride in a sea plane - how many babies can lay claim to that at 9 1/2 months?

But we're all glad to be home now; especially Baby, whose eyes lit up when she saw the mountain of familiar toys again.

Counting down to the holiday

Excitement is definitely in the air - I'm anxiously adding to the mental packing list, the boy is trying not to think about flying (which he hates) and Baby's nap-less with anticipation

I don't know whether there is any Internet access at the resort; there's no mention of it in any of the publicity blurb, so maybe not. In that case, you won't hear from me for a couple of weeks (but if I'm wrong then you'll be getting daily updates when I get bored with lounging)

So I'll leave you with this Proust questionnaire which I found at Baboon of Magnesia...

Where would you like to live?
I love the city I live in, but I wouldn't mind living in a bigger house with a deck and an extra bathroom

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Feeling loved

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
I eat too much, and mostly it's cakes

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
That's a hard one; usually my favourite fictional characters are anti-heroes. If I can include a television character it'd be Willow from BtVS

Who are your favorite characters in history?
Mozart, because he was so damned talented but - if the film was right - not at all snobbish

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
I don't have any. Maybe that's why my life has always lacked direction.

Your favorite painter?
Shane Cotton

Your favorite musician?
The Cocteau Twins

The quality you most admire in a man?
The ability to counter a dark past with a nice-guy present

The quality you most admire in a woman?
The ability to laugh at herself

Your favorite virtue?
I don't try to change people

Your favorite occupation?
Reading magazines on a comfy couch with fellow-travellers after having spent the day sightseeing and frolicking at the beach

Who would you have liked to be?
I don't want to be anyone in particular, but I would have liked to be a more easy-going person

nap-centric

It's bad enough (to non-baby people) that my life currently revolves around the whims and demands of a 9-month-old baby, but to be more precise, my days revolve around my her naps - or lack of. Ask me whether I'm having a good day, and my answer will depend on whether she's had one nap or three (or none), whether they seemed long enough to refresh her and whether any ear-splitting screaming was involved. And that's completely disregarding whether I got any sleep myself.

Today kazzer came to visit; it was the last time I'd see her before she and hubby leave the country and return to the UK.

I picked 2pm as a good time to come over, since Baby was most likely to have woken up from her afternoon nap by then (assuming she'd consented to one). Unfortunately, she was tired and grizzly again by the time kazzer turned up, so we had to take a spontaneous drive around the bays.

It was just as well that it was a beautifully sunny, warm day and perfect for cruising along the coast. The deep blue of the sea and sky, and rich green of the mountains helped distract us from Baby's back-seat crying while we tried to fit in a whole future's worth of gossip. Then, Baby finally fell asleep (it took over half an hour) and I could finally relax and enjoy my friend's company.

Getting ready to be hated

It sure is hard to shop for tropical island clothing, when it's the middle of winter. During my two hours of baby-free time this afternoon, I went in and out of shops in such a rush that by the end of it I was all hot and sweaty (unless that's early menopause I'm experiencing...). Finally I returned home with one nice top for dinners out, one flirty skirt which also looks pretty damned hot with knee high boots, and a birthday present for my two-year-old niece (a Dora the Explorer doll).

I've been looking to the Internet for advice on travelling with babies, and found a couple of useful sites - Flying With Kids and some ivillage pages. The latter has this amusing and probably very true, piece of advice:

Don’t keep apologising to child-free passengers. They hate you anyway. Saying you’re sorry when your offspring pings his plastic spoon over the seat is not going to create a beautiful friendship. Oh, and if it still goes belly-up, cheer yourself up with the thought that, in 16 years or so, your baby won’t want to go on holiday with you anyway.

A mini-milestone

She helps me turn the pages when I read to her. It's so cool.

...but I haven't a thing to wear!

I've never stayed at an upmarket resort before. In fact, I've never stayed at any kind of resort before. Almost my entire travelling life has been accommodated in hostels, three star hotels and motels.

When I hear the word "resort", I think of resortwear, the kind you'd see featured in fashionista magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar - you know, artsy photographs of pencil-thin teenagers in nautical stripes, and beachwear that costs more than my last interview suit.

And this reminds me that I don't even have anything to swim in except for my maternity togs. That's right - the swimming costume with lots of gathering in the front to accommodate a very large tummy, is what I've been wearing to the pool even though I haven't looked remotely pregnant for many months now. That's what I'll probably be stuck with on holiday.

I don't even have a nice top to wear if we decide to eat out at one of the fancier resort restaurants, because all my "nice" tops suddenly became undersized once I developed massive mammaries.

I'm going to have to go shopping.

We're leaving on Friday morning, and I still have lots of other things to do this week. So I've determined that I'll have to do all my clothes shopping on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, between about 9.30 and 12 (between Baby's naps). How much can I transform my holiday wardrobe in 2 X 2.5 hours? If I were you I wouldn't expect a purchase expedition to rival a What Not To Wear episode.

What a poser...

Here she is trying to crawl up her cot...

Laying around...

Playing in the laundry basket...

And waiting for her close-up.

Babies don't travel light, do they?

After couple of calls to House of Travel and a promised answer tomorrow (as to whether we can have our seaside bure), I realised that packing to go on holiday is never going to be the same again.

Here's a tentative packing list:

For the boy: digital camera, a couple of pairs of jeans, half a dozen t-shirts, sunscreen and a toothbrush.

For me: a couple of pairs of cropped pants, half a dozen t-shirts, moisturiser, shampoo and a toothbrush.

For Baby: approximately 150 disposable nappies, 42 jars of baby food, baby cutlery, her Ocean Aquarium cot mobile, half a dozen cloth nappies, every bodysuit and long-sleeved shirt she owns, 2 grobags (much-used, thnx Make Tea Not War), a dozen favourite toys and books, baby sunscreen, Pamol (in case of colds etc), ear thermometer, backpack, sunhat and jacket.

I hope our baggage allowance is generous enough.

In other news, my digestive system is still punishing me for something I ate earlier. I've gone a record two days without any food (unless you count ginger kisses and fruit finger biscuits); if this keeps up I'll be fashionably thin for the resort.

Something to get excited about

Last night Baby slept continuously from 9pm till 6am, and I didn't even lie awake at night with bursting boobs.

Still alive. Just.

It's been three whole days since my last blog post. Mostly this is due to the fact that I really only get time on the computer when Baby's in bed for the night, and during the first half of the week this clashes with telly time (Desperate Housewives, House and Lost).

It's also because I haven't had much to write about. I know, I know - it hasn't ever stopped me from posting daily in the past. But if I just wrote about whatever was on my mind this week, you'd get nothing but yet more huge helpings of stuff about Baby's non-sleep behaviour, my increasing inability to cook an inspiring dinner and the fact that I don't do anything really interesting these days.

Not yet, anyway. We're looking at booking a couple of weeks at a Fijian resort, hopefully for a fortnight's time. I won't say where we're thinking of staying though, in case one of you guys decides to stalk us (after all, we will have an extremely cute baby with us).

Hopefully the anticipation of a tropical island holiday (with babysitters) will help me get over my body-falling-apart time - I think I have a tummy bug because every ten minutes or so my stomach goes into a spasm strong enough to make me to forget my name. Then there's my left knee which hurts when I walk, my ankle is compacted and my lower back appears to have never recovered from pregnancy-related looseness...

Happy Mothers Day

What a rude start to Mothers Day - Baby wakes me up for a totally unnecessary feed just as midnight strikes, then afterwards I can't get back to sleep at all (why else would I be writing this blog post at 3am?). I keep meaning to buy camomile tea, as it's supposed to help with sleeplessnes (for Baby too, hopefully), but I keep forgetting. I forget an awful lot of things lately.

The boy kept asking me what I want for Mothers Day; I told him I wanted us to go on a date, but he either didn't like that idea or just knew it would be too hard to organise a wet-nurse to show up two-hourly after Baby goes to bed.

As an alternative, I said I wanted someone else to do the housework, at least for the day. The boy offered to pay for a one-off cleaner. At first, this seemed to fit the bill, but now I realise a cleaner probably isn't going to agree to do all our laundry and dishes, and make the following week's baby food.

Of course, first choice would have been a full night's sleep, but there are three main problems with this. Firstly, one night - though blissful - would never be enough. Secondly, until Baby is properly sleep-trained (or the boy's nipples start producing milk, or we find a willing wet-nurse), it's not going to be possible. And thirdly, even if by some miracle I wasn't disturbed for an entire night, there'd be no guarantee that I'd be able to get to sleep anyhow.

At least I can be sure of one thing - I really appreciate my own mother so much more now.

Wet, naked babe

Due to popular demand (and we all know how much the stats improve when there's a baby photo), here's Baby in the nuddy. I'm going to keep this one for her 21st.

Brain bites

I was listening to a CD of children's songs by Woody Guthrie (he makes great car noises, by the way), when it struck me that he sounds an awful lot like Lou Reed.

I've been reading Why Buffy Matters, by Rhonda Wilcox. As you know, I am a super-duper Buffy/Angel fan (to be more precise, a super-duper Whedon fan), but some of the scholarly writings about the show have made me appreciate it so much more. If you've ever needed to be convinced that Buffy can be studied and dissected like a Russion novel or a John Donne poem, then this book is for you. While it wasn't quite as much fun as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, or Fighting the Forces, this is still a really enjoyable book if you're a fan.

I am way tired. I think I'm more tired now than I was when I was feeding a newborn two-hourly through the night. I think it's because I no longer have time during the day to make it up. Or else it's because I've aged since then.

Family Guy is one of my favourite TV shows at the moment. It's not only funny and wierd; it's also pretty damned shocking. And it airs at 7pm, well before most impressionable young children's bedtimes.

Baby and I have our passports in our hot little hands. All that remains to be done is for the boy to fork out the dosh and book us all a holiday.

I've started putting Baby in a dress - nothing frilly; just a red fleece tunic - and she looks even more adorable than when I was dressing her in boys' clothes. People keep coming up to us and making coochy-coo noises. At her, not me.

Did you know that rats can't vomit? According to a book I'm reading, How to kill your spouse the natural way, they can't.

It's now 9.48pm and way past my bedtime. Goodnight.

Nine months old today - you've come a long way, Baby

When I was a kid, the age of twenty seemed so grown-up. By twenty, I'd hoped to look like an Asian version of those women I saw in the television soap operas, and do lots of grown-up stuff. In my twenties, the age of thirty loomed as that magic threshold when I would no longer care what anyone thought of me; I'd be a super-confident superwoman. Needless to say, life has never turned out quite how I imagined it would.

When Baby was a teeny-tiny newborn, I expected she'd be sleeping for five hours at a time by three months.
When Baby was three months, I looked forward to when she turned six months and started to sleep just like the textbooks told me she would.
When Baby was six months, I read up on night-time sleep training methods in anticipation of starting once she turned nine months.

And now I realise that, at nine months, she is still a baby.

But on the other hand, so much has changed:
- We used to spend three or four hours each night trying to put Baby down for her bedtime. Now it takes half an hour to bathe, feed and sing to her and she's in bed by 6.30 at the latest.
- Baby used to just lie around on the floor and ignore her playgym in favour of staring at the ceiling. Now she's in training for the bum-shuffling Olympics and gets bored with a toy after five minutes. Though, strangely, she still finds unfamiliar ceilings fascinating.
- I used to sometimes feed her two-hourly. After a worrying phase in which she almost completely eschewed daytime feeds in favour of daytime looking and nighttime feeding, Baby is now a pretty good daytime solids-eater.
- Although she hasn't been weighed since she was five months old, I'm pretty certain that she's more doubled her weight since birth.
- Baby hated her first bath. Now she's a pro rubber-ducky player and third-time swim class attender.
- Every day I see more and more of us in her. She loves watching Baby Einstein (both of us); she sometimes has trouble getting to sleep (me); her favourite finger food is oven fries (both of us); she still looks like her dad; but her eyes are now brown (me); Baby prefers to spend most of her time on her arse (the boy); and watching computer games (also the boy); she eats tons of vegetables and fruit (me); and blows raspberries when she can't think of anything else to do (the boy).

Self defense for babies

I think it must soon be time to teach Baby to fight; once or twice during mum's group, a physically bigger baby has crawled up to her and unintentionally slapped her around a bit (just curiosity I’m assuming, rather than aggression), and all she does is take it and cry. (Of course when I mentioned it to the boy, he immediately wanted to know the aggresser's name and address so he could go over and teach the kid a lesson.)

Her upper body could do with a little strengthening anyway (which is probably why she’s still not crawling), so I’m wondering how to get her arms ready for giving punches. I doubt that karate clubs run sessions for babies, and not being able to stand up is going to make doing bicep curls too hard. I heard that visualization really works, but if I tell her to imagine her arms and torso flexing, she’s not going to understand what I’m talking about, eh?

Perhaps I could just sit her down in front of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

Messy messy

Baby is now at that stage where she simply MUST get her little hands on the spoon, during mealtimes. I'm assuming this is her first step towards feeding herself with a spoon, although half of the time she puts her hands on the spoon end and the mouth around the handle.

It's all very cute, until you see just how much fruit and cereal ends up lodged in the hard-to-reach places on the highchair (like about the harness buckles), in my hair, in her hair, all over her clothes and wherever I'm just about to put my foot.

Really, a bib just isn't enough. A hairdresser's cape might be.

A Buffy sighting

The boy brought home another DVD last night, this time a Russion movie called Night Watch, apparently recommended by Gamester at Large.

First of all I had to ascertain whether or not it was yet another movie based on a graphic novel or computer game, as the boy is extremely partial to those. I only agreed to watch it because it wasn't.

As a very general overview, Night Watch reminds me of a less-pretty Underworld (perhaps the Russians have no Kate Beckinsale of their own). Against a setting in which there are two vampire (called "Other") factions, once at war and now in an uneasy truce, there's a young boy who's about to find out that he's a vampire more powerful than any before him. There's a race on to recruit the boy, a woman who unwittingly causes illness and death wherever she goes and a girl who suffers the frustration of losing the boyfriend she let herself get vamped for in the first place.

But I digress.

There's a scene where the boy is sitting in his apartment, sharpening wooden stakes (this is after he finds out the girl vamp is after him but before he finds out he is an "Other" also), watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer - it's the episode where she meets Dracula.

How cool is that?

And the movie...well the movie was interesting, but not arresting. Apparently there are two more to follow, and no doubt they're already on the boy's shopping list.

Yes, we have no quinoa

I've been racking my brain trying to work out what protein-y food to give Baby; she doesn't like meat much, and because of my family history of allergies, I can't give her eggs, dairy, nuts or fish (at least until she's 12 months old). An acquaintance told me that her baby son absolutely loves quinoa (pronounced keen-wa), so today I went shopping for some.

Unfortunately, the health food sections of the two supermarkets I visited stock little more than protein bars, rice pasta and organic muesli. Not to be deterred, I visited the only health food shop within a 5 km radius of home...

It took only a minute or two for the shop owner to sadly inform me that they were right out of quinoa. Being a friendly sort of person, I briefly explained why I was after this mysterious pseudo-cereal.

Before I knew what had happened, he'd found out my blood type and launched into half-hour long spiel about what foods I should and shouldn't eat as a Type O. Apparently I'm not allergic to eggs, carrots and chicken, because when he hung a door key in the air it spun in an anti-clockwise direction (or some such mumbo-jumbo). Okay, I think he was just joking about the key thing. But he promised me that if I followed the diet detailed on the sheets of paper in front of me (available for purchase at five dollars per copy) for one month, I'd have a flatter stomach, a smaller bum, clearer skin and be able to eat all those no-go foods. I'd have to avoid wheat, dairy (including ice cream!), smoked salmon, avocado, coffee and a whole bunch of yummy things though.

It was interesting all right, but then I remembered my reason for entering the shop in the first place - to buy protein-y food for Baby.

So I left.

At least the oven's clean

Just as jon fears (see his comment to my previous post), this blog is going all domestic. And now for my tale of kitchen woe...

Miraculously, Baby decided to favour me with an hour-long afternoon nap today. In that time, I toiled away at the kitchen making a baby-friendly beef casserole. The recipe was from a leaflet about the importance of giving babies iron-rich food, and I was keen to try it out as a grown-up dish.

Now, although our oven is nice and clean (finally), it's just a teeny bit dodgy. For example, biscuits that should take 15 minutes to turn golden brown generally have to be rescued from certain charcoal-ness in just 5.

And that's why, when I left the casserole in the oven - with the heat on "Low" - before telling the boy about it and then leaving the house to attend another mums' group gathering, I should've gotten a premonition that Something Very Bad was going to occur.

I was a little late back and had already forgotten about tonight's dinner in the oven. The kitchen was like a sauna. Dinner was black, hard, and smelled like an unwashed barbeque.

I turned off the oven. But guess what? It wouldn't turn off.

I just hope that tomorrow I remember to turn the main switch on at the wall before I try to cook breakfast. I can just see myself standing there in my towelling dressing gown and pajama pants (yes, I have these now - I'm sure it's something to do with motherhood), cursing because the stove elements won't heat up.

Interesting

At our last Mothers Network meeting, right at the end, we took turns to talk about our non-baby interests.

And that's what made this meeting the first one I've truly enjoyed.

It was such a nice change to talk about something other than motherhood and babies, with people who'll understand if motherhood and babies creeps into the conversation nevertheless.

Along the way, not only did I find out interesting things about the other mothers (like the one who used to paint, the one who was a landscape gardener and the one who was a music-loving party animal), but I got the chance to be seen as more than just the mother of a non-sleeping baby.

Art for the young 'uns

Yesterday Baby attended her first art exhibition. She and I turned up to a baby-friendly tour through some of the respective works of Patricia Piccinini and Michael Smither, and I must say it turned out very well.

She was in the backpack - a cunning choice of babycarrier because it afforded her the best views of the artwork and also was most likely to put her to sleep when the time came.

I don't know what Baby thought of the imagined bio-engineered creatures, or the paintings of little children being naughty; every time I looked over she seemed to be communing with another baby.

By the time the hour-long talk had come to a close, Baby was asleep and I was free to unload my shoulders and scoff down several biscuits and a cup of tea (also free - now that's what I call a good art exhibition!).

There's a future in this.

Banks! - Part two

So this morning I was all bleary-eyed because Baby got me out of bed at 12.30am, 3.20am, 4am, 5.15am and finally at 7.30am, and what really woke me up was the Visa statement stuck to the fridge which reminded me that I had to call the bank today.

While Baby was sucking on a corner of buttered toast (tastes almost like cardboard!), I rang the bank's call centre number, declined to enter my access code because the call taker always asks for it again anyway, and asked her where the hell are our replacement credit cards and why the hell have they charged us a fee for them.

I was put on hold, just as Baby proceeded to gag on the bit of toast she'd tried to swallow whole and puke up her apple 'n' cereal.

So you do want to know why we haven't got our new cards already? Wait for it...

They're late because they've run out of cardstock with the "wave" design on it, and were waiting for new ones to arrive.

I was spittin' tacks. It was almost enough to distract me from all the puke and goo on Baby's hair, on her hands, and now being rubbed firmly into her eyes.

There was no point berating the poor woman. After all she's only the customer service operator - she's just the diplomat between the rip-off bank and us. But there was no mistaking the tone in my voice when I told her what a stupid bloody excuse that was for keeping our household creditless for four whole days.

We've been promised new cards tomorrow. Of course, I had to choose a new card design - that took all of half a second. We're also being re-credited the ten bucks (leaving the much larger late fee and even more enormous interest fee still to pay).

I'd change banks, but I don't have any money anyway. Damn.