Look Ma, no hands

The Little Madam is now officially a toddler in the fullest sense.

That's right, folks. The wilful, chatty little girl who pokes her index finger at random objects whilst "counting" from three to ten, sings along to the Wiggles (and knows the actions) and throws major tantrums if you don't let her play with your glass of juice, is now walking all on her own.

From the tentative steps between couches exactly one week ago, she is now walking up and down hills and has finally worked out how to make her sit-on car go forwards.

I'll get around to posting a photo soon, I promise.

Re-work

Yesterday it all ended. My contract finished, my replacement (temporary until they find a full-timer) is all set to take over and my nanny has said goodbye (although she came back a few hours later to return the spare house key).

This means that from now, if TLM sleeps in, I don't have to get up at 6.30am anyway to get ready for work. It means that if I want, I can attend Tuesday morning Yoga Babes classes (those are the classes where you can take your little one to class with you).

It also means that, apart from two mornings per week at her childcare, I am once again solely responsible for TLM's education and entertainment.

It's not that playing with TLM isn't fun, fascinating and often quite wondrous, but I'm thinking about getting another job.

Admittedly, there are probably very few jobs out there which are both interesting and require only 7-8 hours of attendance per week. So I'm thinking of perhaps re-training as a technical writer or something similar. My written communication skills are fairly good, but I'd need to learn lots more about web-editing software, MS Word and so on. And of course, I'd have to start showing more interest in software in general, because that's what I'd be expected to write about.

I'd really rather not end up stacking supermarket shelves or shelving library books though.

Excuses, excuses

I've heard it said that women who're up the duff gleefully use their constantly-changing body size as an excuse to go shopping for some cool preggy gear.

And one great side effect of following a wardrobe de-cluttering regime, is that afterwards you'll have lots of space you didn't have before - space for those new clothes you might need now that you've thrown away all those tapered jeans, massively shoulder-padded shirts, platform shoes and tube skirts.

But yesterday I discovered a new excuse for a shopathon.

If you sometimes take your child to the kind of playgroup which has access to a big sandpit, loads of freely-available finger paint but no bibs or washcloths, then you need to own outfits for getting mucky in. And if you don't have any, you'll need to buy some new outfits so you can wear what you have now, as mucky gear.

But I'm sure you have some tried-and-true excuses to share...

Playing away

It was a bit of a busy day today; TLM and I spent most of the morning visiting her childcare centre, and soon after we got home - with barely enough time to change into something less paint-spattered - I had to leave to go to work for the afternoon.

It's funny how TLM can behave quite unexpectedly sometimes. I was expecting her to spend the first hour at the centre clinging to my thighs with her tightly pinching fists, before feeling comfortable enough to explore this den of toddler-iniquity. But on arrival, she took one look at the playdough-covered table and didn't even bother to say "seeya later" (but since it was the first of 4 pre-enrolment visits, I was obliged to hang around and try to look useful).

My kid had such a ball; after the playdough was the jigsaw puzzles, the sticky transparent finger paint i.e. glue, the actual finger paint, the books, the steps (or the "beestup" as TLM refers to them) and the sandpit. The ease with which she mixed in with the other kids makes me confident that, when the day comes to actually leave her there for 3-4 hours so I can get my hair cut, swim, shop or nap, I won't have to worry that I'm doing a bad thing.

In the afternoon, the nanny came by and took her out to play with a couple of adoring young girls. So all in all, a great day for TLM.

I, though, am absolutely knackered. I got about four hours of sleep last night (though thankfully TLM slept in till 7am so it could have been three hours of sleep), didn't get a midday rest because I had to rush from childcare centre to work, and my trainee had to put up with hearing me talk with my mouth full because of course I didn't get a lunch break.

Which super villain are you?

Yep, still awake.

I haven't done one of these quizes for ages. This one was sent by my mate Desiree, a visit to whom is way overdue:

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 65% Spider-Man 60% The Flash 60% Superman 55% Robin 50% Catwoman 45% Supergirl 43% Iron Man 40% Green Lantern 40% Batman 40% Wonder Woman 23%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Head explosion leading to sleepless nights

I'm having terrible trouble sleeping tonight (which is why I'm blogging at midnight), and I think it's because there's so much going on in my head right now.

There's the mere-est of possibilities that it's due to a Brain Gym overload - perhaps spending half an hour desperately trying to beat last night's score wasn't the most relaxing way to end my evening.

Or it might be because today The Little Madam took five - five! - unaided steps. We were in my mum's living room, encouraging her (TLM, not my mum, although she could do with some exercise too) to walk to and fro between us. First couple of rounds, I thought I saw her take one or two unaided steps, then three or four, before culminating in a massive five completely hands-free pitter-patters. TLM was pretty excited about it too; she giggled gleefully in a way that reminded me of that first time she let me hold her torso upright while she pumped her little legs up in down. I was really stoked of course; normally it's the boy who sees her milestones.

But that's not all. This being my last week, I've been training the lad who's been hired to replace me for the next couple of months and I keep thinking of things that I'd better not forget to tell him.

And that's not all either. TLM and I have our first visit to the childcare centre tomorrow. While I'll be with her for this visit (and probably the next two or three), it's still a reminder that her scheduled abandonment there is soon to start.

But wait, there's still more. My brother and sister-out-law are probably selling their house soon, and the boy and I have expressed interest in taking over as the new owners and inhabitants. Buying your first house is stressful enough. Thinking about trying to buy a new house and sell your old one at the same time is a nightmare.

It's all too much.

My brain in lycra

The boy must have started worrying about my brain's atrophy as much as I have. Last week, he asked whether, if he bought a Brain Gym game for his Nintendo DS console, I would play it. Normally, when given the opportunity to try out a new computer game, I would answer with something witheringly negative like "Only if the alternative is to handwash your Y-Fronts for eternity" (Wii tennis excepted).

But he particularly emphasised the Brain Gym's reputation for re-building wasted grey matter, and - because I'd quite like to have an intellect again - I said I would.

True, I did do poorly in one of the games because I didn't understand the question (third time lucky though). But I was hooked for that brief time between dinner and my bedtime, and I could almost feel myself getting smarter. Although part of that might have been wishful thinking.

poohs

I suppose it's really quite appropriate that The Little Madam's disposable nappies all have pictures of Winnie the Pooh on them, considering the amount of "pooh" that goes in them.

You're probably not that interested in TLM's bowel habits, but it's my blog and I'll write what I want to. Anyway...

Poo wouldn't normally be a topic I'd want to blog about, unless it were an unusual colour or came out looking like a cactus. But just twenty minutes ago, I made an unprecedented 4 nappy-changes in less than five minutes. Literally, no sooner had I fastened the tabs on the new nappy, when I'd notice the characteristic grunts that signalled another brown blob had made its escape into the outside world.

Only a couple of nights ago I'd watched a TV show about waste and recycling, in which the resident expert gave a big thumbs down to disposable nappies. It made me feel so guilt-ridden that I contemplated having another baby just so that we could buy reusable nappies and have a reason to feel virtuous.

Sieve-like

For two months, I carried around in my head the date and time of The Little Madam's next appointment with the pediatrician. During that time, I rang the out-patient's desk repeatedly in hope of getting the time changed to a more nap-friendly one, finally succeeding after about a dozen calls. During that time, I decided to forgo a visit to a live Bill Bryson reading because it was on the same day as TLM's appointment.

So how the heck did I manage to forget all about the appointment when the time came?

Verbosity

This morning we interviewed two candidates for the role I'm vacating. The fact that I was going to be taking part in the interview was a complete surprise to me; I'd thought I was only going to join in on brainstorming interview questions, then make my exit before the arrival of the first hopeful.

Because, if I'd known, I would have tried to rehearse.

I've been told (okay, mostly by people who are too polite to tell me my writing sucks) that my writing is fine. My public speaking, however, is in dire need of polishing. Apart from the spoonerisms and the tripping over of words, I just couldn't avoid babbling on and on and going off into tangents, instead of focusing on what my job actually entails.

I was much better when the second interviewee showed up. That's when I realised how much difference it can make, whether those on the panel are any good at asking questions.

I'm not certain, but it appears that the job might go to the bronzed, hazel-eyed young man who wouldn't look out of place on an American soapie.

An a-ha moment

There's a great walking track at the end of my street, which leads to a well-touristed lookout point. I usually walk this track on my own, and in the summer I've often set out quite late in the day so that it's getting dark by the time I've turned around for the return journey. And I would often come across lone males loitering about off-track.

Being a woman, encountering lone male loiterers tends to detract from the pleasure in my hour of fresh air and exercise. But I was probably just being paranoid.

Perhaps that guy was jogging (because they always seem to be wearing skimpy shorts, even in winter) along and had paused to admire the abundant scenery. Perhaps, after the first one stopped, another guy running behind him glanced over, briefly agreed on the loveliness of the view over the town below, then ducked into the bushes for a wee. We all know how much men like to wee outdoors. The the first guy sees him out the corner of his eye and remembers, "Yeah, my bladder's kinda bursting full. I could do with a wee too." And he ducks into the bushes, forgetting that perhaps it might be a little more polite to find a different spot. And then, embarrassed, they see each other and leave.

Or maybe this hill is gay pick-up spot and I, resident of this street for almost longer than Keira Knightley has been alive, just didn't realise until my neighbour mentioned it.

The latest visuals of Baddha-kona-asana Baby *

(Baddha-kona-asana Baby - it sounds like a Hindu pick-up line, doesn't it? It's what the yoga teacher called The Little Madam because of her favourite pose.)

I know the rellies over in the UK are probably itching for some new photos of The Little Madam, so here they are.

The top one is TLM gettin' cosy with an unidentified male companion (the boy is already on the alert in case his shotgun is required), and the lower one is of TLM at a beachside park, wearing her Thomas the Tank Engine cap and engrossed in filling her nappy with sand (don't ask).

Lost plot

I've figured out why I find the show Lost so frustrating. It's because even though stuff keeps happening, nothing is ever resolved. The writers should take a leaf out of the Joss Whedon Book of Good TV Writing, and build in story arcs that begin and end with each season.

I don't know if it's a woman's thing or what, but I think closure is good.

Valentine's Day via the stomach

I had the problem I always have when it's time to get the boy a gift - I don't want to spend up large because I'm not bringing in a heck of a lot of bacon, and anyway he's probably only going to want computer peripherals anyway.

So I did what I always do. I put it off until it was too late to do anything really cool, like organise a geek-o-gram or surround his workstation with embarrassingly cute photos of me 'n' him 'n' The Little Madam.

This afternoon TLM and I went out for a walk to the shops and bought the boy a nice litte card. It's got a picture of a fluffy middle-aged couple and the words "Soul Mates" on the front, with the word "Forever" on the inside. That's probably the most touchy-feely I've ever gotten in my choice of Valentine's Day cards. Then I bought him a bottle of Chardonnay just to be sure.

The boy's Valentine's Day prezzies to me were actually presented yesterday - a sweet bunch of blog-pink roses, adorably too short for the one vase I possess, and a heart-shaped, berry-topped chocolate cake that looks solid enough to substitute for Elven bread during a long march to Mordor.

But, as the boy said, it's good for you because there's fruit on it.

Survival

During my frequent ruminations about the pros and cons of adding to the Short and Sweet family, I started to ponder about the meaning of the phrase, "surviving the first year". When The Little Madam turned one, I had technically "survived the first year".

But let's think about that one.

Sure, I survived in the literal sense; otherwise this would be a blog from hell (that's assuming only Christians go to heaven).

But how much of me survived? Of my brain cells, not many.

So what can I do to slow my mind's downward slide into moron-ity? How can I ensure the survival of what's left of my brain?

• crossword puzzles - never been any good at 'em, unless they were the ones in the children's pages.
• computer games - these and me have never mixed, and are even less likely to now that the grey matter is not as agile as it used to be.
• blogging - in theory, writing is good for the brain because it gets both hemispheres working. But it's easily to blog mindlessly.
• evening classes, in anything - that's in competition with sleeping, eating and telly-watching.
• eating fish - if it involves food, there's a good chance I'll take it on. But I don't like tuna and eating fish and chips every night might just turn me into a pimplier and fatter smart person.

What do other people do to prevent their intellect's extinction?

Thank God

For days now I've been trying to work out how to migrate all my links and Bloglines blogroll to the new template, and every time I've ended up restoring to the old template because I couldn't make it happen.

You are now looking at, finally, the new look Short and Sweet Like Me, and you can thank this theology blogger.

I like this pink. I like it very much.

Playing away from home

It'll only be about three weeks, before my work contract finishes and our wonderful nanny moves on to full time study. She's so good at filling in a whole morning for The Little Madam, that TLM is sure to notice that suddenly her days are not as chockful of finger puppets as they used to be.

And this is why I've decided to enrol TLM into two mornings per week at a local childcare co-op. This way, she'll continue to get some of the stimulation of learning and playing with other adults and children, and I'll continue to have some guaranteed child-free time. The boy would prefer I got another part-time job, but really it wouldn't be easy finding a job and childcare for the same time, would it?

Although there is a slight niggle in the back of my mind that tells me it's slightly indulgent to pay someone to look after my daughter when I'm not even going to be working...

road hogs

The last Inside New Zealand show was quite interesting. It was about 4-wheel-drives, or SUVs as North Americans refer to them (and what I'll refer to them as, because it's easier to type), and how they are a menace to society, their owners and to the environment.

I'm sure I 'm not the only one who hates SUVs. They take up road space and parking space, and their drivers have a reputation for driving dangerously and irresponsibly. But one of the interesting things shown up in the TV show was how easy it was to become corrupted by the feeling of greater power, ease of use and the ability to literally look down on other drivers.

They gave two non-SUV drivers each the chance to drive one for a day or two, kept an eye on their driving and asked them for feedback throughout. By the end of their time as SUV users, the single working mum was a total convert, though the guy had gone from thoroughly enjoying his exalted position to feeling a bit silly for having such a large vehicle for no good reason. Both drivers had started to display deplorable driving habits.

But knowing that you're more likely to kill another driver or pedestrian (or trike-riding family member) whilst driving an SUV than a normal vehicle, doesn't seem to be enough to put people off buying them, because for the most part they themselves are generally safer in an SUV than in a car.

So I reckon any strategy aimed at reducing SUV-caused road carnage has got to focus on the desire for self-protection rather than the relatively altruistic notion of wishing to do no harm to others.

Whaddya reckon?

The Change

After many weeks of inviting me to change over to the new Blogger, then telling me it wasn't possible after all, Blogger has finally allowed me to take the big step. It may mean that leaving comments will suddenly become more troublesome, but I hope that won't put you off leaving your mark on my posts.

Hell, I might even change the blog template to celebrate...

Love in a hot climate

I've gone back to using my desktop computer lately, because then the boy and I get to at least be in the same room together when we retire to our respective online pastimes.

But tonight my hard drive started beeping ominously at me. I know it wasn't anything I did, because the beeps started right after I'd downloaded the latest photos of The Little Madam - and that's all.

Once I was sure that the noise wasn't coming from a truck backing up outside the house, I quickly did what any IT Help Desk will tell you when you ring up with a computer problem. I turned the computer on and off again. It didn't work though, because the beeping came back.

So I went running to the boy, who is my own personal IT Help Desk. He reckoned it was overheating, maybe because its 27 degrees in here, maybe because it's an old hard drive and the fan isn't working any more.

It's at times like these that you're grateful for possessing a networked laptop, eh? Unfortunately, the photos are all on the beeping computer so I can't post the cute pictures of The Little Madam surrounded by a dozen soft toys in the big leather recliner; the Little Madam practising her Mexican wave; and The Little Madam sitting in her toybox, having tossed all the actual toys onto the floor.

The Little Madam, by the way, is still hot. I've been trying to get a urine sample to take to the lab, but it's not easy sticking a plastic bag onto a wriggly, toilet-untrained child who has an inconvenient tendency to poo when she's got a plastic bag stuck to her privates.

Friendly reminders

Despite all the advice to do pelvic floor exercises, from pregnancy books and antenatal classes, I find that the only time I do them is when I'm reading a magazine and come across an ad for incontinence pads.

The month was sultry...

At the risk of sounding like one of those annoying people who always find something to complain about, I'm going to...complain. About the weather.

December was such a total disappointment in terms of weather, because even though it was supposed to be high summer by then the actual conditions were depressingly similar to those of mid-winter.

But January couldn't have been more different. Going from December to January was akin to leaving mid-winter Wellington on a jet plane (temperatures in the single digits and a bracing galeforce southerly for extra chill) and landing in the Aussie outback (30-something degrees C in the shade) a few hours later. It's been a shock to the system and I still haven't gotten over it.

As I did a lazy shuffle down to the pharmacy (for some Nurofen for The Little Madam), this afternoon, be-hatted, sun-glassed and a little sweaty, I wondered whether the hot days are hotter that they used to be or whether I'm just getting too old to tolerate the temperature extremes.

I suppose the answer, really, is less clothing and more swims.

Hot and cold

On the verge of starting her first swim classes for 2007, The Little Madam is sick again.

It started yesterday afternoon, after refusing to eat lunch, waking really early from her nap and displaying a surprising disinterest in the fluffy fauna at the Picnic with the Animals day.

First she was subdued, then she was irritated. Then she was hot and dry with a body temperature of over 40 degrees Celsius. Numerous cool sponge baths and a dose of Pamol later, she was cool enough to put to bed for the night. The boy, poor soul, was up most of it checking on her and resettling her, even holding a cold can of beer against her body while she sat on his lap watching World of Warcraft characters hunt each other down.

TLM seemed to make a miraculous recovery today, but by evening she was one hot potato.

It's possible that this is a side effect of the MMR (Measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination she received just over a week ago - the nurse did say that a proportion of kids will get a rash or fever within seven days of the jab. Or, TLM might have something else. I hope it isn't ursinia again because, apart from the horribleness of the infection itself, what kind of parents must we be to allow TLM to succumb to the same bacteria twice in less than two months?

The unthinkable

I didn't think it would be possible, and I really didn't want it to be true, but I have at last found a Buffy book which is mostly boring.

I recently ordered Michael Adams' Slayer Slang off Amazon, after literally years of humming and ha-ing over whether I wanted to get it, because I read a good review of it somewhere. Plus, I'm quite interested in linguistics on a layperson's level (Bill Bryson - really! - has written some great linguistics books).

Unfortunately, this book is as dry as a really effective nappy worn on a hot day.

Big balls

As you know, I'm on a mission to get back into shape, a mission which took on a new intensity after I saw a photo of myself in a swim suit.

So far I'm still doing a 35-minute fast walk home from work four days a week, which has done good things for my thigh muscles but less-than-impressive things for my office look (I wear my powder-blue walking sneakers with everything). If The Little Madam is still napping when I get home, I do my sit-ups, half push-ups and leg lifts before I even let myself near the fridge door (although today was a complete bust, because TLM decided to have a 40-min catnap and was already waiting for me to entertain her when I got home.)

And now I have an exercise ball. (Up until now, I've always known these giant rubber beach balls as Swiss balls. However, a Swiss friend of mine - who actually owns one of these things too - doesn't understand why everyone here refers to them as Swiss balls, whereas everyone in Switzerland just calls them exercise balls. So in deference to someone who ought to know, I've stopped calling them Swiss.)

Actually, I've had my exercise ball for about three weeks now, bought on TradeMe. Unfortunately for me, I didn't notice that it would be in a deflated state at time of sale, and I didn't have anything to pump it up with. It was just as well that my Swiss ball-owner (not Swiss-ball owner, mind!) had a little air-pump thingy that accompanied her ball. Yay..an excuse to go visiting...

Did you know that, once an exercise ball is fully deflated there is a very good chance you won't be able to get it into your car (unless you drive a van, an SUV or a truck)?

When I carried my now fully inflated orb to my Toyota Echo I realised there was a real chance that I'd be carrying it back into my friend's house and pulling out the pin. There was an audible sigh of relief (as opposed to an audible sigh of a giant balloon leaking air) when, with only a small amount of grunting and pushing, I manoeuvred my object of hope into the back seat, next to my very curious toddler in her carseat.

By the way, I still haven't gotten around to using the darned thing. I think I bought too big a ball.

In our own image

I do my best not to let The Little Madam watch too much TV. I give her half an hour of kiddies shows in the morning while I shower and half an hour of Baby Einstein or The Wiggles in the evening before her bath, and that's it.

But TLM is probably doomed to grow up a TV addict anyway.

For one thing, both of her parents are avid TV watchers. We're quite discerning though, mind you, so there's a good chance she'll turn her nose up at reality shows too.

Another thing is that TLM just loves sitting on the boy's lap in front of the computer, while he's gaming. His game of choice is World of Warcraft, which means his monitor is always filled with fantastical animal-creatures. TLM watches them pounce around and roars. She sees them hit each other over the head and yells "Boom!". It's probably more fun than watching cartoons.

And then there's the fact that the boy sometimes watches old animated episodes of Dungeons & Dragons on DVD (like me, you probably didn't know it was a TV series either) with TLM on his lap.

Oh, no...she's doomed to become a gaming addict!






(Ahem...the naked look of the picture was purely unintentional.)

Corpses 'n' stuff (another post about television)

Murder mysteries have come a long way since the days of Miss Marple and Ellery Queen, haven't they?

Right after dinner tonight, while the boy did the dishes (a small miracle, but one I won't question in case he takes it the wrong way and never offers again), I kept the TV on and watched Bones.

To be honest, I tend to shy away from shows about murder these days. For one thing, the victims always seem to be female, and I'm not really entertained by constantly exposure to stories about men killing women. The other thing is that most of the shows are called CSI: something. It's like walking into a clothing shop and seeing nothing but black crew-necked t-shirts with stupid quotes on them.

The only reason I decided to watch Bones is because David Boreanz is in it. (And the only reason I watched an episode of Kitchen Confidential was because Nicholas Brendan is in it. It wasn't worth it.)

Yes, there were yucky bits (i.e. close-ups of a partially-decayed female corpse plus foetus) and yes there were forensics geeks aplenty. But the story was quite compelling and the main character is...well, such a character. She's like X-files' Dana Scully crossed with Buffy's Anya, minus the sexual tension of the former and the money-philia of the latter.

Trouble is, I'm not sure I'm going to get any sleep now that I've got murderous foetus-stealing mums on the brain.

The end of the TV silly season

Once upon a time (i.e. shortly after I purchased my first VCR and blank tapes), television was something that simply got in the way of my social life. Now, television is my social life. I suppose that's why we have a telly that's almost bigger than the wall it hangs on.

It's also why I get excited about new television shows. House is back on Tuesday nights, Ugly Betty has already started and What not to Wear will soon be starting on Friday nights.

Although apparently Trinny and Susannah won't be in it, as they've defected to another TV channel. I can't imagine the show without their cruel-to-be-kind bluntness, so I'm intrigued as to how the new presenters are going to do it. I'm also curious how T & S will continue to produce new makeover books if they can't use the What not to Wear title any more.

It's all very thought-provoking really.

And you thought my life was unexciting.

Wasted nights

Theoretically, I could quite possibly start attending life drawing sessions again, because they start at 7pm - not long after The Little Madam has gone to sleep - and finish at 9pm - leaving me an hour to get home, have a snack and go to bed.

Theoretically, I could spend every baby-free portion of my evening doing something highly productive.

In that short but precious two hour period which is free of toy-strewn floor and the little finger that points at what she absolutely must be given to play with, I could be doing all sorts of things. Like catching up on all that literature I haven't gotten around to reading (though Dostoevsky may never get a look in, unless a braincell-rejuvenation treatment is developed in time). Or getting seductive and romantic-like with the boy. Or doing some exercise. Or cleaning the mould off the shower walls. Or laying on the couch in front of the telly, with my dinner in a bowl...

Shoe fetish

The Little Madam's girly pink trainers were getting a bit scruffy and one of the laces had already broken off. So I looked around on the 'Net for some replacements.

Bobux seems to be the king of baby & toddler shoes around these parts, and here are some examples to prove it. Aren't they just good enough to cover with icing sugar and serve on a doily?

But a friend of mine told me where I could find something just as delectable, for a much smaller price tag, and that's where I went.

So when the soft orange leather shoes with navy blue flowers turned up in my mail box, I was pretty keen for TLM to do the proverbial twirl in them.

I had quite of trouble getting her feet into them though, even though I'd ordered a grow-into size. Perhaps it was due to the extremely thick fur-lining, something I hadn't remembered seeing in the photos.

And then I had an A-HA moment. That wasn't fur lining. It was stuffing, purely for the purpose of keeping the shoes' shape whilst in the post.

Naturally, when I told the boy about my moment of daftness, he said I should blog about it to make you lot laugh.

Plane-spotter and engine-driver

Public holidays always come as a surprise to me. That's probably why we tend to spend long weekends alone at home - everyone else got organised and left town already.

It's been a reasonably good weekend too, despite the boy being unwell and pretty much house-bound since Thursday (I won't go into the gory details, even if it wouldn't be TMI for you).

On Saturday I took The Little Madam to the beach, along with our Winnie-the-Pooh bucket, spade and sand-mold set. It just shows how little time I've spent on the beach, that I was surprised the molds didn't work on dry sand. TLM loved it though - she pointed at the airplanes in the distance as they made their descent onto the airport runway, making airplane-descending noises. There was also quite a bit of action on the beach itself, as surf life-saving people jogged around and got into outboard inflatable dinghies to prepare for some kind of competition.

In fact, she liked it so much that when I tried to leave she did the whole back-arching, screaming tantrum thing that is becoming more and more familiar to me now.

It's been a social weekend too. Yesterday we attended a barbeque and, though we didn't get to eat much (TLM was having too good a time and I was too busy cleaing up spat-out sausage off the floor), I did enjoy watching my little girl shuffle around after the boys (all walkers) and make cutsie-eyes at the grown-ups. And this morning at the park there was no shortage of young'uns to chase TLM through the tunnel, down the slide and around the pretend-fire engine.

Make me over

It was when the weather suddenly turned warm and humid, that I had a wardrobe crisis. Where I live it's only really warm for a couple of months a year, so I have an excuse for having mainly winter/autumn work clothes - long pants, leather coat, tweedy skirts, ankle boots (to wear with the trousers), knee boots (to wear with the skirts) and tops with long sleeves and little natural fibre, all mostly in black or a similarly slimming shade.

Add to that the fact that my waist has spread somewhat since after The Little Madam's gestation and birth, plus the fact that I now wear only shoes I can walk home in, and what I can actually wear to work on a not-cold day is down to one skirt, no shoes and two tops which only look good with trousers.

Actually, it's not quite that bad. Last weekend I spent my baby-free exercise time at the shops, searching for summer outfits. I came home with two cleavage-y tops and one pair of floaty, drapey trousers which I can't wear until I get them hemmed up (the shortness of my legs is the bane of my style-life. I can never buy full-length trousers or skirts and just wear them the next day.).

Common sense would tell me that I'm only going to be working for another 6 weeks or so, so it's a waste of money buying any more nice gear that can't be machine-washed. But common sense has never stopped me in the past.

I've got three Trinny and Susannah books on reserve at the library though. If those two What Not to Wear dudesses can't help me find a couple of decent ensembles, I don't know who can.

Bullet points

• I had a quick look at the preview of new Kiwi movie, Black Sheep, on You Tube and it looks like fun. Especially the catchphrase, "Violence of the Lambs".


• The Little Madam has learned a new word. After several viewings of a Wiggles DVD called Toot Toot!, this afternoon she poked me in the eye several times and gleefully exclaimed "Eye! Eye!".


• I'm currently enjoying a book called Dime Store Magic, by Kelly Armstrong. It's one of the boy's fantasy novels, but isn't full of unpronouncable names with too many consonants and not enough vowels. The world it's set in has demons, half-demons and a generations-old feud between female-only witches and male-only sorcerers. It's probably how Charmed would have been if it hadn't been an Aaron Spelling production.


• I'm having trouble leaving comments on some people's blogs. Is anyone else? Once I click the "Publish" button, I get a pop-up screen full of html-ish error messages. So if you didn't get a comment from me today, I did try.


• The boy and me have been invited to a Wii challenge this weekend. I think we'll do well in the ten-pin bowling, but the tennis won't exactly be a walk in the park. The last time (and the first time) we played doubles tennis on Wii, I actually experienced muscle fatigue in my serving arm.


• That's all folks, until I can produce another worthy-ish brain dump.

Almost the only lonely only (try saying THAT fast)

It seems that everywhere I turn I see people who're having their second babies soon after their first.

First there was that friend whom I heard from about once a year - the last two times were birth announcements; then a friend in the UK, whose daughter is around The Little Madam's age, recently sent me photos of their newborn second daughter; then another friend, whose son is four months younger than TLM, told me on Monday that she's well into her first trimester of offspring number two; then the very next day I meet a lovely couple with an 18 month-old bum-shuffler (bum-shufflers of the world, unite!) and her not-much-younger sibling.

Now, I've already posted about my ambivalence regarding a possible Little Sir or Littler Madam so I won't go into it again. But all this sibling-creation going on around me is definitely forcing the subject back into my already-crowded little brain.

Plus, it was a good excuse to post a silly subject title.

A fine soiree

Shock, horror! Last night I went to a party alone (The Little Madam and the boy stayed home) and didn't get home until after midnight! Although I must admit that the last half hour I was at the party, was spent waiting for friends to decide whether they needed me to give them a lift home or not.

Still though, I went to a party. On my own. All dressed-up and made-up and everything.

Though I didn't drink at all, and about 70% of my conversation was about kids.

Does it still count?

A big bonus to being present at this little birthday bash, was that the art-loving hosts own several works of mine.

Yep, these guys actually paid good money to possess and display some of my paintings and prints. Some of the other guests even uttered ego-stroking remarks about the prints, while the drunker ones examined the nude and wondered out loud whether it was a self portrait (to which I hastened to reply that I'd painted it before I had a child so it would be impossible to compare it to my present figure, and in any case how the hell does one paint a self portrait of one's back?)

Of course, all this fun would have been impossible for me if it hadn't been for the boy's willingness to perform babysitting duties.

Not Nigella

I cooked dinner over the last couple of evenings - individual shepherd's pies (with pastry and everything! Though it was shop-bought...) on Wednesday and minute steaks with salad last night. Both dishes were really very simple (I wouldn't have bothered otherwise), and yet today the thought of making all that effort again...well it was like how I used to feel every Sunday night knowing that tomorrow I would have to go to work and pretend to care about it.

So after the boy had put The Little Madam to bed, I sprawled on the sofa like a heat-exhausted, prospect-less dole-bludger, and asked if we could just not have dinner tonight 'cos I couldn't be bothered.

Does anyone else get tired at the thought of organising and cooking dinner every night (though, to be honest, it's more accurately 3-4 nights per week), or am I just a total sloven?

Performance artist

Is it too soon to post another cute photo of The Little Madam? TLM is 17 months today (only one more month of non-walking before we're referred to a specialist), and we celebrated by taking in a trip to the zoo. Before that though, I engaged her in a spot of painting. She really gets into it, eh?

Bye bye

The Little Madam knows how to wave, but she usually doesn't quite get her timing right. By the time she responds to someone's farewell, they've already left the building and gone round the corner.

Today though, after visiting friends with an energetic and sociable 19-month-old, TLM not only waved at our hosts as we were leaving, she also said quite audibly, "Bye bye" - twice.

Those aren't her first words, but for some reason they're the ones that have made me go all squishy.

The big date

Just before Christmas, our lovely nanny told me she was available for evening babysitting. Two weeks later (last night, that is), the boy and I headed out for an evening of celluloid and popcorn.

It was quite tricky deciding on the movie, because it had to be showing at a time that was after The Little Madam was in bed, but not so late that thirty minutes in I would disturb the rest of the audience with my snoring. I wanted us to go see Night at the Museum, because anything with Ben Stiller in it has a chance of being wildly funny, but the boy wanted to see Casino Royale (because he's a boy).

In the end Casino Royale won out, because The Empire was screening it at a reasonable time (8.10pm).

The night before, TLM had been really resisting bedtime - it took about an hour for her to settle down - and my fear was that she somehow knew what we were up to and was planning to disrupt it. Fortunately, on the big night she quietened down not long after the nanny arrived (early, to allow for time to master our many TV remotes).

We arrived at the cinema in plenty of time to get food at the adjoining cafe, and I sauntered up to the counter to buy our movie tickets. Too bad it was sold out, eh?

Why the hell didn't I get the tickets in advance? All the way back to town in the car I mentally beat myself up. (The boy berated me for doing so; he could quite easily hire professionals to do it properly, he joked. To which I replied that we ought to be trying to save money and surely it'd be heaps cheaper if he just did it himself.)

By the time we arrived at the cinemas in town, we were too late for the early-ish screenings and too sleep-needy for the late ones.

Plan B was to have a nice dinner instead. So we did. We went to Big Thumb, that superb Chinese restaurant with the very odd name. Afterwards, we strolled down the main strip (the first time I've been down there on a Friday night for a looong time, let me tell you), browsed in a Whitcoulls (he looked for DVDs and I searched fruitlessly for a Trinny-and-Susannah -makeovers-for-fat-mothers book).

It was a nice night, and hopefully the first of many.

A good start to my New Year's resolution

Before The Little Madam was born, I used to walk home from work. I did this right up until I was about 8 months pregnant, and before I was forced to start getting the bus instead - due to massive hugeness - the journey took me about 45 minutes in the middle of summer.

It was around about that day when, no doubt due to some traffic jam in the middle of town somewhere, it took me 50 minutes to get home on the bus (mostly including a half-hour wait for the damned thing to arrive at the bus stop), that I wondered whether it might be just as quick for me to do the homeward journey on foot, after all.

So this afternoon, I left the office the very nanosecond the clock struck midday. I strode as quickly as my short legs would allow, dodging old ladies and kids on their school holidays, getting nicely warm and hopefully also developing an attractive glow.

I was home in 35 minutes - or 33 minutes if you go by the time on my kitchen clock, which is conveniently a couple of minutes slow.

If I can keep this up for the rest of my work contract, I can expect to earn at least a little firmness around the bum. Then I'll have to work on the tum.

I said, "Say hi to the New Year for me"

An old friend came to town for the New Year. For some reason, none of his more sociable friends are in town, so he decided to spend New Year's Eve with us.

He's known me since I was a that thirty-something party animal with mostly male friends and a weakness for much younger men. So I hoped he wasn't disappointed when I told him that the boy and I weren't planning on seeing in the New Year with bubbles, dancing and a crowd of drunken strangers.

In the end though, it was great catching up with him - it's been a few years since he took off on his big OE and became the darling of Essex's female population. But it was only 9.30pm when I offered to drive him home (the boy was indulging in a feisty red wine and was therefore ineligible) so I could get to bed at a decent time.

And so I didn't get to say "Hey" to the New Year - at least, not until around 6am this morning when The Little Madam's siren wails rudely disturbed my sleep.

I think this year I will break my long-lasting policy of not making New Year's resolutions. This year I resolve to get myself into shape. Not necessarily great shape, even a so-so shape will suffice for now. I just refuse to permanently become an Asian version of the "fat Italian mama" stereotype.

The mysterious disappearance of slayage.tv

I didn't notice until a couple of days ago, that The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies has disappeared into the cyber-void, it's domain name having been taken over by some cheap-looking portal to a bunch of Buffy-free commercial sites. This was where I used to go to find academic articles relating to the Buffyverse, where I went to feel intellectual (though sometimes requiring a little help from a very thick dictionary).

A couple of blogs I found, commented on Slayage's disappearance and reckoned it would be back soon, but I don't know - it's been a couple of weeks now and there's still no sign of it.

Happily, I discovered Junior Watcher, and All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the series is still being updated.

I just hope that I still have enough working brain cells to understand it all.

Pretty pictures

Spending half hour or so examining photos of The Little Madam and me, is an effective way of convincing me that Trinny and Susannah's tips on posing for photos ought to be taken seriously.
That's one reason you won't see my face here - I have way too many chins and jowls, way too little muscle tone.
But TLM doesn't have that problem though.

S.A.D.

I think it's just the god-awful weather we're having at the moment - the wind, the blanket of grey overhead, the cool temperatures - but I've found myself feeling inordinately slothlike these last few days. Before you blame it on post-gluttony digestive slow-down though, let me assure you that I haven't been pigging out that much.

When it's sunny and warm, I itch to get out and about even if I have nothing particular in mind to do.

When it's yucky, especially if the wind is provoking a sneezy-wheezy response from me, all I seem able to do is potter about indoors feeling dozy.

Last night we finished the last of the three DVDs I rented in the weekend - DVDs which I almost didn't get to rent at all because it was at that moment that I discovered my bank balance was -$1.26.

We both really enjoyed A History of Violence (Cronenberg-directed, yet so lacking in wierdness), thought the film-student movie Hidden was too dull to continue after the first, arty-farty, 20 minutes, and had mixed feelings about Before Sunrise. I think that a 24-hour romance while training around Europe is all wonderful and memorable if you're in the middle of it. But it's kind of boring when you're watching someone else experience it, and you can only barely remember what it was like to be a single traveller with the whole world in front of you.

Lights, camera, action...

For the first time since I first moved into this house we all live in, it was decorated for Christmas. The boy wanted to be sure that The Little Madam got a taste of what Christmas was like when he was growing up. So on Christmas Eve, after TLM was tucked up in her cot for the night, the two of us set about hanging up the tackiest of flashing lights, shiny orbs and coloured ribbons (standing in for streamers).

Photos were taken (hopefully to be posted well before next Christmas) of TLM admiring the pretty lights, ripping open her presents and wearing the red velvet dress sent by her grandad from the UK (velvet being not nearly as inappropriate as you would think, for a summer Christmas, because we've had a terrible summer so far).

Having just started to say "yum yum" in relation to food, TLM's utterance was the biggest light in my mum's day when she said this after a mouthful of home-made dim sim. I hope it's made up for my regretful grumpiness on the Friday when I had to cart my mum around the supermarkets during the pre-holiday rush (my blood pressure has gone back to normal, but it took a while).

There were laughs aplenty at dinner - mainly coming from TLM herself, whose cousins were engaging in a massive peekaboo game with her. All the chortling didn't stop her from eating more dimsim and more deep-fried wontons though. The other adults were really impressed at this display of "good" eating ('cos the cousins wouldn't eat anything), but it makes me wonder what's going to happen in a few years time when it's going to be a bad thing that TLM so loves her fried and fatty food.

Another "bad" mother

I've just finished reading Confessions of a Bad Mother, by a Brit called Stephanie Calman. I do enjoy reading about other mothers who rely on the telly to keep their kids calm, openly admit to not enjoying the job on occasion and resort to bribery with food.

And the pop culture references were amusing without getting irritating, too.

It just stinks

Geez, you know we're coming up to Christmas when every other ad on the telly is for perfume.

Things that make you go "Eeek!"

The boy and I watched an amazingly creepy movie last night on DVD, Silent Hill. Apparently it's based on a game, one which the boy has never played because he thought it sounded too scary for him.

Boy, it was creepy alright. If you fill two hours with the most skin-crawling scenes from Ring and mix it with some of the wierdest dream sequences from The Cell, that would give you an idea of just how much "Eeeek!" was going on.

There were little, scurrying creatures in the basement that slow-burned to nothing. There were brain-coloured, pigeon-toed, creatures whose arms writhed under their skins and whose torsos exploded with blood that could melt helmet plastic. There were corpses, wrapped in barbed wire or gutted and hung from chain-link fencing.

And I haven't even told you about the over-sized man-eating beetles, the pyramid-headed butcher and the distorted sexy-mannequin nurses in the abandoned hospital.

It's probably not a good idea to watch this if you're nightmare-prone.

Bug update

What The Little Madam has sounds like ursinia, but it's not ursinia because accoring to the Internet it's a flower. TLM loves flowers, but they don't make her poo.

Apparently this particular bacterium is a notifiable one. I received a call from the public health people and had to answer lots of questions about whether TLM had been in recent contact with sick kids or sick kids' poo (not if I can help it), that kind of thing.

So on the one hand it's a good thing that it's almost Christmas, because playgroups are finished for the next couple of months and she's not allowed to attend those until she's experienced at least two full days of healthy poo. On the other hand it's bad because now she's on antibiotics so she's not allowed to drink alcohol (just kidding - I'm sure her tolerance is even lower than mine).

Footloose and dairy-free

What a thing to be told so close to Christmas! I got a call at work (on my cellphone initially, but I never hear it ringing and after a while people stop trying to contact me on it...) and it was the people at the After Hours clinic.

The labs results on The Little Madam's poo sample had come back and apparently she's been a victim of some bacteria which I couldn't spell - You-sue-ree-ah or something. Then I was transferred to a doctor and I told him that TLM's been more-or-less fine except for the mild temperatures and the worsening diarrhea, and that I thought she might have become temporarily lactose-intolerant.

And that's when the doctor told me to keep TLM off all dairy products for at least the next two weeks. Not just cows' milk and cheese and yoghurt, but anything that has even the smallest smidgeon of dairy in its manufacture. Then, just for good measure, he told me to put her back on the sick-baby diet (i.e. crackers, bread, rice and water), a diet that even prison inmates don't have to put up with.

That means TLM's first food-accessible Christmas is going to be one in which she can't have more than the merest taste of roast turkey, ham or cake. And certainly no ice cream.

It also means that while the rest of the extended family is lying about stuffed with food, a certain somebody will be demanding extra aided-walks around the house.

Being short didn't save me from looking like Quasimodo

A friend of mine, also a mum, had been having terrible problems with her back recently. It was so bad for about a week that she couldn't even look after her own 19-month old son. She's able to stagger about now, but apparently it's going to be 4-5 months before she's "better".

All my life I never had back pain. I could do high-impact aerobics without shoes on and not get shinsplints, and I could use my back like a crane and never experience a single twinge of discomfort. I'd always put this down to being short, because most people I knew with dodgy backs were tall.

Lately though, it seems that every time I put my back under any sort of strain whatsoever (getting the buggy around the narrow porch, over the step and through the front door is a prime asking-for-it example), my back responds with acute pain and sometimes the inability to move easily for several minutes at a time. In the evenings, the boy gets his massage thumbs out and finds knots the size of golfballs on either side of my spine.

Perhaps, in my old age, my body is finally paying me back for all those times I pogoed in my extraordinarily heavy Doc Martin shoes.

New television crush

Now that I'm completely and utterly up-to-date with Gilmore Girls, finished with The 4400 and waiting for season 3 of Deadwood to come out on DVD ('cos we've already missed too many episodes screening on the Prime channel), my new TV series of desire is Heroes.

It's quite comic book-y, sort of like X-Men but with more time to develop a half-way believable background history and characters. My two favourites are a pretty cheerleader (shades of Buffy here) who comes to the realisation that she is virtually unkillable, and a nerdily lovable Japanese guy who can bend space and time i.e. can stop poker games at the most convenient moment or travel to another country in another time.

There is a bit of gore though - some bad guys get literally torn apart by a brutal other-personality of an otherwise lovely mum and let's not forget the part where the cheerleader wakes up in the middle of her own autopsy.

The Little Madam won't be watching this of course. For the time being at least, she is perfectly happy with The Wiggles, Thomas and Friends, Fifi and The Flowertots and Boobah.

Spot the baby

The Little Madam is well on the road to recovery, thank you very much. The poos are are now infrequent and olfactorily unobstrusive, the appetite is back and so is the urge to walk everywhere (which is killing my back).

But now there's a new worry. Since last night TLM's arms and legs have been covered in little pink spots. They don't seem to bother her at all, and they are definitely not meningoccal septicaemia spots. It's been suggested that they're heat rash, from her earlier fever, or else a viral skin infection piggybacking on her tummy bug.

One thing I'm not going to do though - if I can help it - is look it up on the Internet. The last thing I need is to fill my limited head space with the gory details of obscure and scary skin afflictions. I'm just gonna keep an eye on it over the weekend and get her back to the doctor's if her skin hasn't cleared up by then.

The day-off from Hell

I stayed at home today to look after The Little Madam, collect and deliver her poo sample and take her to see the GP. The boy was all in favour of this, even though technically it's something our nanny could do while I went to work. It was no holiday.

Despite TLM's temperature dropping to something resembling normal, she's spent the day veering from one extreme to the other. On moment she's laughing at the little Wiggles singing Hot Potato, the next she's screaming unconsolably - and then maybe she has a big poo explosion.

One poo broke through the nappy banks and onto her trousers. When I tried to pull them off I also succeeded in flicking bits of it over my face, shirt and jeans. Oh, and also the rug.

Then there was the poo which squirted out while TLM was in her cooling bath. As soon as I replaced the bathwater and the baby, there was an even more frightening explosion.

By the end of today I thought she was screaming herself hoarse because I was unwittingly passing on stress-y vibes, but the boy has had no better luck since he got home.

Bug-ridden. Again.

And there I was feeling sorry for myself this morning because of my violent hayfever...

Mere months after The Little Madam's last bout of gastroenteritis, my little bean has been struck again by a tummy bug.

It didn't start out that way. It began with a temperature of 38.1 degrees Celsius, which I promptly treated with Pamol. Apparently TLM stopped screaming the moment I left for work this morning and played happily with the nanny right up until the meds wore off.

Then came more high temperatures, more grizzling and, finally, a really foul and runny poo. A couple of quick calls to the Healthline nurse (because I accidentally hung up on her the first time) told me it'd be okay to keep the sick bubs at home, but by the end of the day her hot little bod went into egg-frying temperatures (40.1 degrees, to be precise) so I took her to the After Hours clinic.

Do you know how to get a urine sample from a non-toilet-trained girl? You tape a specially designed little plastic bag to her girlie bits, force her to drink water and hope that she wees before she poos. In our case, the poo won. I thought I was being clever by grabbing an old pudding pottle and retrieving a poo sample for the lab, but it turns out that you need a special pot for poo samples and anyway the lab was closed and will only take fresh specimens.

By the time all this finished happening it was about 2 1/2 hours past TLM's bedtime, and she still had to undergo a cooling sponge bath before she could go to bed. It was pretty damned close to my bedtime, actually. She's sleeping now, poor thing.

Glad to be a temp

With The Little Madam waking up lots of times during the night, looking for cuddles to distract her from teething pains/dreams/the mental urge to walk in her sleep, I'm really not well focussed in the mornings. So while it's nice that we have such a great nanny to keep TLM entertained and on her toes (metaphorically, anyway), I've not been able to give my job 100%.

Meetings are the worst. Not only do I have to sit through 90 minutes of discussion about topics I'm not particularly interested in, but I have to fight the urge to give in to my body's need to make up for lost sleep as well. It doesn't make for a career-wise combination.

I'm probably luckier than most, in that we can live quite comfortably on the boy's income ('cos geekiness pays) and I'm actually making money with my job (I've worked out that, after childcare and transport costs, I'm making about $40 per week). But once this contract is finished I think I'm going to stick with being a SAHM, at least for a while.

Of course, TLM will be enrolled into some kind of daycare pretty smartly - just a couple of mornings a week or something - because she's going to miss all that stimulation and I'm going to miss all that baby-free time.

The Wii in Mii

It's been a while since my last blog post, hasn't it? In fact, I think the last time I took such a long blog hiatus, I came back with a brand new baby.

This time I haven't so exciting an excuse. I've just been busy - busy catching up on sleep, watching DVDs (Touching the Void was great - harrowing, but great. I was expecting more of a dramatisation and less of a documentary, but actually it was probably a good way to do it) and aquainting myself with the new Nintendo Wii (rhymes with "pee") which the boy bought us for Christmas.

Everyone in the family has an avatar, or mii - the boy's looks like a saucy Frenchman, mine looks like a disappointed Asian TV news reporter and The Little Madam's (which hopefully will remain unplayed for the time being) looks like a very wise six-year-old.

Being mostly a non-gamer, I expect that I'll only be playing with the Wii when challenging the boy to a game of ten-pin bowling (I thrashed him last night) or golf (he thrashed me). Although the pool game could be very useful in improving my game (I'm famously hopeless).

So there you go.

My big night out

My work is putting on a big do for the staff tomorrow evening. We're all going to a pantomime (Aladdin), followed by dinner and probably drinks after that. Not only that, but it's staff only i.e. no partners, so babysitting isn't going to be a problem for me (hee hee!).

The only thing that worries me about my going out on the town for the first time in about 18 months - apart from the possibility that the boy doesn't get home in time to take over care of The Little Madam - is that my staying-out stamina is somewhat diminished these days.

I reckon that by the time the panto has finished it'll be pretty close to the time or night I'm normally horizontal on the couch, fully-fed and almost too drowsy to watch the rest of the Angel DVD (or else I'll be tensely waiting for TLM to get over her teething gums and go the hell to sleep). By the time dinner arrives I'll be wishing I was home already instead of making small talk over my warm lamb salad (which I hope will be on the menu). When everyone else is getting nicely sloshed on wines I'll be trudging to my car, tiredly walking into rubbish bins like a drunk person.

On the other hand, it'll be a night out and I'm going to do my best to stay awake through it all.

Log off

I've decided to stop obsessively logging The Little Madam's day-to-day details - her sleeps, her eats and sometimes even the state of her bottom. While it's often been handy to go back weeks or months to see how much her napping has improved (or not) and that sort of thing, I really don't want to be recording the times of her bowel movements when she's off doing her Ph.D on motherhood neuroses (is it still stalking when it's your mum whose watching everything you do?).

It's only been a couple of log-free days, so I still catch myself trying to recall how many grapes disappeared down TLM's little throat, and whether she sang in her cot until 6.35 or 6.37, but I'm confident that I will adjust.

So to mark this special occasion I'm posting a photo of TLM attempting to eat yoghurt with a spoon.

Armchair adventuring

Hot on the heels of the last adventure book, I'm now reading Touching the Void. You might remember the movie a few years ago, based on a true story about two guys who run into trouble on a mountaineering trip in the Andes.

No, it's not the one about the football team that ends up eating each other.

It's the one about what happens when you go climbing, fall and end up risking the life of the person who's stopping you from tumbling into the abyss.

I'm not going to deny this book is well-written, but if ever a book could be improved by a little celluloid magic it's this one. There was a load of climbing jargon and no glossary. Too lazy to look for my dictionary, I had to guess what a col is, and whether a serac is an ice formation or local slang for mountain goat droppings.

It's still a gripping story, but I'm going to look out for the DVD.

I'm just Wiggling

I was a little sad when I heard the news that the yellow Wiggle is leaving, because I've become so accustomed to having Wiggle-ness in the house. Our DVD of The Wiggles Movie gets played a lot, and I must have borrowed every single CD of theirs the library owns.

The Little Madam has learned (from me!) to move her head from side to side in time (sort of) to the music, and lately I've been taking it a step further by demonstrating some Wiggly dancing. I thought I was doing really well, waving my arms around, pointing my fingers, twisting and turning around as per sung instructions (thank the gods there's no dosee-doe-ing). After a couple of songs though, I noticed that TLM had stopped trying to imitate me and instead was sitting quietly with a quizzical look on her face, as though wondering what the heck I thought I was doing.

And thus, spazzy dancing is learned.

Getting into position

Someone from the parent's group I meet with, told me about a regular yoga class which welcomes babies and toddlers. Apparently, during the class, the kids mosey around the room, hopefully playing with the toys they brought from home or else bum-shuffling onto their mum's yoga mat just as they are attempting to Salute the Sun.

The first time I tried to make the class, it just happened to have been cancelled and I didn't find out because I'm not on the e-mailing list. The second time, we arrived so early that the whole place was still all locked up, and I couldn't be bothered hanging around for 20 minutes in the galeforce winds on the off-chance that the class hadn't been cancelled again.

Third time lucky.

There were five of us, each with one child and his or her toys, plus the instructor and his child. This made for a yoga class with an amusing difference. In the middle of all those downward-facing dog poses was the discordant banging from a piano played by someone too short to see the keys. For some, whole sequences were interrupted by requests for "boobie". I myself missed a couple of forward bends when I leaped off my mat to find a biscuit and a sippy cup of milk for The Little Madam, to stifle her "I'm hungry" moans.

TLM had a great time - she always does when there are other kids' toys to play with. Although the fun ended during our ten-minute meditation period - surprise, surprise - when she insisted on climbing aboard my supine form and using my stomach as a trampoline. Well, that wasn't when the fun ended; the fun ended when I tried to encourage her to climb off me and she accidentally caught the floor with her head.

I think I'll go back next week, with cushions.

More news on the upstanding-baby front

The Little Madam and I went to visit a neighbouring mum-and-daughter this afternoon. The girls, both the same age, seemed to enjoy each other's company, and I enjoyed having a natter with another adult whilst safe in the knowledge that TLM's entertainment was being taken care of. The other little girl talks like a Teletubby, but is otherwise cute, smart and already walking a few steps at a time.

And it was here that TLM's latest mini-milestone happened. She crawled up to the step leading to the kitchen and crawled up the step! Then she slid around and launched herself off the step until upright, her hands landing against the legs of a nearby change table. And there she stood, slightly turned towards us with one hand in mid-air.

It was a proud moment. We even took photos, although we had to encourage TLM to repeat her feat a few times before we got the timing right.

For the rest of the afternoon, TLM wandered about the lounge looking for things to pull up on. I imagine it won't be long before she's standing up in her cot at night, with hands shaking the bars and demanding to be let out to play.

Swim and sink

And about time too.

Yesterday the boy offered to take The Little Madam off my hands for the afternoon (okay, just two hours rather than all afternoon - but I'll try not to complain), and actually managed to go for a swim in that time.

In contrast to my younger and fitter days, I only managed to crawl 18 25-metre lengths of the pool - and that's with a breather every couple of lengths. Still, it was wonderful to be in a pool and not be crouching in the water clutching a slippery young 'un. I just hope I can keep this up on a regular basis. Perhaps with a few more swims I'll be able to wave vigorously, without feeling the echoes in those fleshy bits where my triceps used to be.

After my swim, I sought out a cafe where I could have some lunch and a little quiet magazine time. But when I tried to pay for my ham'n'cheese toastie with my ATM card, I was horrified - and embarrassed - when the card was declined. I made three attempts, just to be sure, before the manager took pity on me and told me I could pay her later (quite touching really, because I'd never even set foot in that place before).

Then, during the walk back to the house, I realised what had happened to my bank balance. Long story short - earlier in the week I'd discovered that I was underpaying my nanny by 6% in holiday pay, and instead of transferring the difference into the Wages account I'd stupidly transferred the total corrected amount for two weeks wages - on top of the automatic payment which had already gone through. And now I was heavily in the red, earning my bank unknown dollars in overdraft interest fees.

Sometimes I could just smack myself on the head and call me a half-wit.

Second-baby jealousy

Yesterday I found an email in my junk mail folder, that turned out to be a message from an old friend with whom I thought I'd lost contact. It was an announcement that he and his partner had just become second-time parents.

Now, the last time I saw my friend, his other half was about 6 months pregnant with their first child and I was still in my keeping-it-secret first trimester with The Little Madam. So that makes their first-born about 18 months old. Which means that second-born was conceived when first-born was only 9 months old.

But I didn't tell you that in order to make any judgements about having 2 kids so close together. I don't have any opinion on the matter.

I mention it because it makes me a little jealous. If she was so keen to have a second baby so soon, then surely the previous 9 months of baby-raising must've been a total piece of cake, without the months of sleep-deprivation and rocking the baby to sleep for three hours every night. They must've had an easy time of it, to feel confident about doing it all again already. And that's what I'm jealous about.

No more lonely nights

After almost two weeks away on business, the boy is back tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how The Little Madam treats him on his return - will she be joyful at the sight of her beloved daddy, or spurn him for leaving her for so long?

But that's not why I decided to blog tonight, despite having almost no Internet service via the wireless network. I'm blogging because I can't answer the following question -

When the boy arrives home tomorrow, should I plan to make him a lovely homecooked dinner, or simply hand TLM over and disappear for a day or two?

Her first Christmas parade

After bearing the brunt of a couple of major tantrums this morning (all because she wanted to stay in the swing when we were at the park - because, y'know an hour in the swing just isn't long enough), I hoped that The Little Madam would behave better at the Christmas parade this afternoon.

She didn't enjoy the parade as much as I'd hoped, but then it was really hot and unshaded, the band music was really loud (especially the bagpipes - why are bagpipes so loud?) and she didn't recognise any of the giant TV characters like Spongebob or Scooby Doo. I think the fairies went down well though. (Now I'm struggling to recall whether we actually saw Santa Claus...)

What TLM enjoyed much better was the post-parade visit to the central city park. It's got this unusual gravel-moving/wetting apparatus which the toddlers were really loving, and she got a kick out of throwing gravel into my jeans turn-up cuffs (funny how the stuff gets everywhere - later when I changed her nappy it was full of poo-coated gravel). She behaved impeccably, making me wonder whether she only throws big wobbly fits every now and then to prevent me from becoming complacent.

It was a sociable afternoon too, because I spent a happy couple of hours chatting with a young Jordanian mum and watching TLM play with her 4-year-old. And then I met a fellow MacLaren Mac3 buggy-owner, and we bitched about how poorly-made and designed those things are.

All in all, a good end to the day.

Food fight

Today I've been going bug-eyed crazy-monster, because The Little Madam has been really acting up since yesterday afternoon. She whines and whines and all I can do is offer food and drink, sniff her bum in case she's got a pooey nappy and make sure she gets to bed nice and early.

Plus, her food-throwing habit has increased in intensity lately. For a while, it looked like it was more or less under control, but now she starts dropping food mere minutes into her meal.

When the kitchen floor starts resembling the "before" photo in a vacuum cleaner advertisment, I try to interpret that as a sign from Madam that she's had her fill. Or, she doesn't like what's on offer. But as soon as I start clearing up, I'll find her popping bits of food into her mouth which had been sitting on her bib.

It's possible that she finds my expressions of annoyance entertaining - but I've already tried simply ignoring her behaviour and it wasn't working anyway.

Perhaps it's just getting to me a lot more at the moment 'cos the boy is away on business, which means I've had little baby-free time (apart from when I'm working) for over a week. And maybe TLM misses her super-fun play-time Daddy, and is taking it out on me.

I'm wondering whether TLM acts up for the nanny...

Is it weta season?

The boy really doesn't like bugs. If there's one flying around the living room, he can't just ignore it like I would; he won't rest until he's squashed the life out of it, usually with a current edition of the Dominion Post.

And wetas really give him the willies. Before he left on his business trip, his rubbish-taking-out task came to an abrupt halt when he discovered one of those creepy crawly things lurking next to the bathroom waste bin. I had to go in and wrestle it out the window (because I don't like to kill bugs - unless they're flies or cockroaches) before he would finish the job.

I don't know how The Little Madam would react to a weta, although I almost found out the other day. But I swiftly removed it from in front of the kitchen door before she had a chance to find it. I suspect she'd just put it in her mouth.

And then, this morning, I was unloading the washing machine and put my hand on a newly-washed weta - a monster of a thing - and squealed like a boy with the willies.

Never before have we been so inundated with these buggers. I wonder what it's all about?

I know I shouldn't worry, but...

I always assumed that The Little Madam's bum-shuffling was just an alternative to crawling and nothing more. So it annoyed me when I kept coming across advice from SPARC (a government organisation hell-bent on making us Kiwis do more exercise), about the importance of crawling to neurological development in babies, toddlers and young children. It seemed to me that they were ignoring bum-shufflers, because surely bum-crawlers don't end up all retarded do they?

But the Plunket nurse, at TLM's 15-month weigh-in, seemed terribly keen that I encourage her to get crawling. And she crushed my already diminishing peace of mind by referring to some research linking bum-shuffling with learning difficulties.

So I Googled it, as you do. And there are numerous mentions of bum-shuffling being linked to learning difficulties, especially dyslexia.

So for the rest of the evening I'll be searching the discussion boards for anecdotes about bum-shufflers who grew up to be Nobel Prize-winning scientists, Mensa members and polymaths.

Sleeps, books DVDs

The nanny’s nap spell has broken.

After a weekend in which I was proud to have gotten The Little Madam to take 2-hour and almost-3-hour naps respectively, I arrived home from work this afternoon to hear TLM squealing away in her room as though determined to prove that she was wide awake. There was to be no nap today, and no doubt the catnap she took in the car on the way home from her outing at the Botanic Gardens had something to do with this.

So TLM’s bedtime tonight was a full hour early, at 6pm (i.e. 5pm in the afternoon if you’re going by real – non-Daylight Saving – time). Still, she went to sleep almost straight away and as long as she’s not ready for action at 5am tomorrow I’m fine with that.

And I’ve broken my parenting literature habit. For the last week or so I’ve been engrossed in To the Poles (without a beard) by Catharine Hartley. It’s a true account of a woman whose obsession with walking to the South Pole, without any previous polar experience whatsoever and almost no physical training, drives her to become (with one other) the first British woman to walk to the South Pole. And then she decides to have a go at the North Pole as well.

It’s pretty riveting reading, although Catherine does come across as a sort of Bridget Jones on ice (there’s the 30-something-ness, the drinking, the fags, the embarrassments – though not the romances).

Now that I’ve run out of Gilmore Girls DVDs to watch in the two hours or so between TLM’s bedtime and my plunge into the depths of sleepiness – at around 9pm – it’s back to the Buffy’s. The Season is Four, the episodes are This year’s girl and Who are you – or, the ones where Buffy and Faith swap bodies. It’s so very Face/Off.

Soon to be upstanding

No longer content to rest on her bum, The Little Madam has started to get up onto her hands and knees and occassionally attempt to stand as well. She's not quite there yet - she still needs someone to prop her up against the sofa so she can pull everything off it onto the floor - but this afternoon when I pulled her to standing by her wrists, she liked it so much she demanded several encores.

TLM even tried standing up in her baby bathtub, which had me trying to formulate an emergency flooding plan.

It's probably going to mean a few disturbed nights, as she's sure to continue practising in her cot.

Still, I'm really quite excited about it.

Those longer naps - it's not all good.

Ever since the nanny started working for me, The Little Madam has been doing two-hour naps - at least, she has on the days the nanny has worked.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, the nanny took care of TLM and put her down for her naps - and TLM has napped for two hours.

Thursday, when I don't go to work so I can take TLM to her weekly Waterbabies class, TLM only managed an hour and a half.

Today, Saturday, was the same.

Also, lately TLM has been resisting bedtime. Normally, she's so tired from nap-deprivation that she almost welcomes getting into her cot. Now there are tears as soon as the last line of Rockabye Baby is sung. After I've closed her door, I've ended up going back in once or twice before she'll settle.

So, not only is TLM sleeping better for the nanny than she is for me; all that extra day sleep she's been getting means that she's just not tired enough to go to bed for the night without a fight.

I suppose it's another example of how mothering doesn't get any easier as baby gets older, it just gets different.

Chainsaws

The boy got a fright early one evening, when he went into The Little Madam's bedroom to put her down for the night. Protuding freakishly from the ceiling was a wavy, translucent vine. He fetched a ladder and cut it off, but really this had opened up a nice big can of juicy worms. And it had also probably solved the puzzle of why, every time I tried to switch the light on in TLM's room, the lighting fuse blew, forcing me to retrieve the Civil Defence shoebox from the storage cupboard and the fuse wire from our office.

It's funny how much growth can end up on one's house over the winter, without its inhabitants noticing. I really hadn't realised that one side of my house was almost completely over-grown in thick, woody vine. I certainly hadn't an inkling that it had crept into the roof cavity, looking for bits of electrical wiring to wreck.

There's a landscaping guy out there now, with his team, despite the rain and cold. They arrived minutes before I was going to put TLM down for her nap (relatively early at 11.30), armed with chainsaws and handsaws and dressed in shorts.

Do you think that a nap-avoiding 15 month-old who almost fell asleep on the way home from her swim class, but then got second wind and proceeded to empty out all her toy boxes, would be able to nap through the noise of chainsaws, thumping boots and trestle-assemblage? The answer, it seems, is yes.

Hi ho , hi ho, it's off to work I go

My first day back at work yesterday went pretty well. The Little Madam was so engrossed in the nanny's toys that she didn't even look up when I called out "Seeya after lunch!" to her. After I got in to work, I was so so busy that it wasn't until a couple of hours had passed before I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be anxiously dialling home for a report on how things were going.

Apparently TLM and her new best friend had a great time playing with toys, reading books and going for rides up and down the hallway in her little car (well, TLM did the riding, the nanny did the pushing).

And the nanny got TLM to do a massive 2-hour nap from midday, which meant that I had a nice break when I got home.

I read somewhere that when little kids start daycare, they may not show separation anxiety until the second or third day. Well, this seems to be true of TLM and her new nanny. This morning, TLM started to fuss as soon as I put my jacket on, and the nanny's prettily coloured scarves failed to distract her when I waved goodbye and resolutely marched out the door.

But I'm confident everything's going to be fine. When I got home at midday, the nanny was full of stories about the fun time they had at the playgroup, and the little friend TLM made.

And I have to admit it's quite nice to have an excuse to wear nice clothes too - at least, the ones I can still fit into.

Easy money

I start my job tomorrow, and the new nanny started today. The idea was for today to be a settling in day for the her and The Little Madam, but it conveniently doubled as the morning I shopped for work clothes.

The nanny arrived at 8am (but starting tomorrow she'll start at 7.30) and played with TLM for about an hour. But when TLM started showing tired signs at the usual time of 9am, the nanny offered to try putting her down for a nap. I wasn't expecting TLM to nap for anyone else, at least to start with. I'd anticipated she would have a whole morning of fun and games, and then crash when I returned home to get her down for an early afternoon nap.

So I was quite impressed when, after the nanny emerged from TLM's room, I didn't hear any cries or squeals. So I left for town.

Two hours, many clothing shops and a single purchase later (I'm sooo hard to clothe), I was home and expecting to hear the squealing and babbling of an actively playing 15-month-old. But it turned out that, after I'd left the house, TLM had spent the next half hour talking to herself and the next two hours after that sleeping. This left the nanny with 2 1/2 hours out of 4, twiddling her thumbs.

That was an easy 60 bucks to earn.



p.s. Hopefully we'll be able to push TLM's big nap further towards midday, so that I get my money's worth out of the nanny as well as blogging time when I get home from work :-)

One of my top five all-time most unpleasant activities

One would be - sitting in a non-airconditioned car in the middle of a traffic jam on a hot, hot day, with no prospect of moving forwards and no cold drink sitting handily in the passenger seat.

When I was at the Bank, one of the most horrible events was the annual performance appraisal. Every year I was sure that this time I would be exposed as a pretender to geekiness, but every time I survived to fix yet more bug-ridden computer programmes.

Being my mum's taxi driver used to suck unimaginably. Waiting at the meat counter for hours while she fastidiously searched for the perfect pork shoulder, seemed to drained the life out of me. Funnily enough, it's not quite so bad any more. It's probably because seeing her and The Little Madam get along so well makes me feel happy.

Cleaning the toilet. Does anyone not hate this chore? I recently tried out a new toilet-cleaning product - you just squirt the stuff around the inside of the bowl and leave it for ten minutes or so before flushing it all away. Well, that toilet bowl is now looking almost as clean as the toilets you see on the television ads for - um - toilet cleaner. And I'm almost as joyful about it as the housewife on the ad, too.

But today, the rank of most unpleasant activity has to be - getting fitted for a bra.
Not only must I study my flabby self near-naked in bright light, with the added risk of the changing room curtain blowing aside to allow any loitering perv a full-on view of my fat rolls and skin blemishes, but I've got to let the bra-fitter see me in all my un-sexy glory as well. Usually the bra-fitter is a middle-aged or elderly woman, and somehow that makes the whole experience relatively unthreatening. But when the person dropping my boobs into their respective cups, is a nubile young woman who still has her figure and a social life, well it's pretty damned close to humiliating.

Found nanny

The nanny hunt did not get off to a good start. The prospect I'd "interviewed" (not very well, because what experience do I have in interviewing job applicants? None.) on Wednesday turned up about 2 hours late due to problems with transport, and then told me yesterday that she didn't want the job after all.

I'd hoped to be able to make a decision by the end of the weekend, so if the second nanny applicant didn't work out I'd have to go with the in-home caregiver who lives in town (who is in fact really great, but I dread spending the next three months getting on and off buses with a squirmy baby on my back).

But I was saved. The second nanny applicant turned up on time and immediately pulled out a small bag of hand-made finger puppets, with which she had TLM charmed like a...well, like a snake charmer and a cobra.

The rapport, along with the impressive CV and the adoringly glowing letters of recommendation, was enough for me. I hired her.

However, we aren't going to be signing on the dotted lines until later today. So I hope I'm not jinxing things by announcing the news prematurely.

If all goes well, I'll be officially a working mum early next week.

So, how many of you are there?

The boy came up with another interesting link.

This one invites you to enter your first and last names (there is nowhere for your middle name), and then tells you how many people in the US have your name.

The Little Madam shares her name with absolutely zero people in the US, whilst I have four name-alikes.

I'm not sure how useful this is to anyone though.

Thoughts on underwear

Happy and Blue 2 asks the question - what is your favourite invention - and my answer was self-cleaning underwear.

Which, of course, doesn't exist yet.

But then I had a memory flashback.

There was this one time, on the telly, when I saw an item about Teflon-coated underwear.

That must surely have been a sincere attempt at self-cleaning underwear. Except having a Teflon on the inside of one's knickers doesn't so much clean it, as prevent anything from sticking to it.

Is that a good thing?

Now, if one were to do a poo or a wee, the stuff is just going to slide right off - where do you think it's going to go?

Once I knew a woman, recently arrived from China, who expressed disappointment at the unavailability in New Zealand of throw-away knickers. They don't sound at all comfortable, but I bet they'd be handy.

All credit to the other bloggers

I don't normally push other people's blogs, because it's hard enough getting you lot to read this one without pointing you elsewhere. But I'm compelled to tell you about - nay, rave about - The Big Side Order. It's creator, Gary James, writes wonderfully and wittily about his adventures in the Yorkshire wilds, looking for love and the way back to the car. If you haven't found it already, go see him and tell him I sent ya.

And in a moment of diplomacy, let me assure you that if you're already on my blogroll then I'm loving reading you right now...