shadows of echoes of memories of songs

Just like starting over

j4 — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 11:18:15 GMT

Hello! Does anybody still read this?

I am basically declaring LJ bankruptcy: I haven't read my friends feed for so long that there's just no way I can catch up, so I'm not going to try. If enough people are still around here, though, I might start reading & posting again. I miss conversations that aren't just retweets and soundbites and outrage; I miss social media that isn't centred on advertising, news, or 'news'; I miss you guys, individually and collectively.

If you want a very quick update on the state of the j4: I am typing this from underneath a sleeping 8-week-old. The rest of my life is a mess, but she is the Best Baby. <3

Running for the wide open spaces

j4 — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 00:27:10 GMT

So I tried to explain this to someone face-to-face, or at least side-by-side, but there are some things you can only say in the small hours of the morning with your head resting on a shoulder and your hand resting on a glass, and other things you can only write down, or at least write around, and maybe this was the other sort of thing after all. I don't really know how to get there, but here it is: I was pushing my big cargo bike up the short sharp stab of hill that I can't quite get the momentum for, and the sun was warm and the wind was cold, and I was rushing and late already in that way where a minute can't make any difference, and a red kite circled lazily overhead and I watched it until it eddied out of sight, and my heart was wishing and waiting to dance, and my head was full of a thousand things, the problems and the possibilities, and I realised: I love this fearsome cacophony of feeling, this messy tangle of compromise, the delight that trips laughing like children through the forest of spinning plates and the hours of anticipation, the needs and the hands and the faces, the unfinishedness of the poems into which I'm madly written, the songs that make me say this, yes this, just this. My fingers are full of a tangle of threads, woven through my body, leading me into the next moment and the next. Even when I'm standing still, part of me is running through the long grass, leaping into space, and silently shattering like sunlight on the river.

My insect life

j4 — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 00:00:50 GMT

Red wall, red chair

Red chair. A boot. Still life
or love in all its banality
as how he sits, or she removes
her shoes, or he crosses his ankles,
protrusions of bone. Still life
in the old walls yet, pinned
photographs curl like wings.
Here we have made and broken
beds and hearts and promises,
rattling words in skulls. Still life
and life only, not a meaning
or a story or an effortless break-
ing down of everything into its
parts, finally departs. Still life
wherever you leave it, complete.

Is this thing on and on and on

j4 — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 23:37:28 GMT

It's been so long since I've posted anything of substance that I've basically forgotten how to do this. HOW DO I EVEN LIVEJOURNAL. So I'm just going to type and see what comes out, and then post it and then feel awful about it for a while and be avoidant about looking at the comments and oh you know how it goes.

Seriously, though, I feel like I literally don't remember how to write anything longer-form than a tweet. A series of tweets, maybe. "(1/3)". Like trying to make a speech while struggling to keep your head above water, shouting it out in gulps of air. It feels like the internet's all broken and polluted now anyway, no air between things; we didn't used to have a word for "content" when it was all content. Not that I was, of course. I guess in some ways I'm more content now, more settled -- or set -- in my ways, less inclined to stand for certain brands of bullshit. Oh god though listen to me, puffing out hot air like a pompous great wheezing walrus, "I am this, I am that", words, words, and do you see what I did there, and besides. Is any one of us not basically just wandering around in the dark? Maybe running our hands over the outlines of something half-perceived, or maybe just petulantly kicking something and hoping it isn't a wasps' nest?

I had a voice in here somewhere.

Memory goes, but not memories. I can't always remember the name of the thing any more. (It was all there, only the names were not.) Things I thought I had stored in my head turn out to be broken links, digital husks; but the fingertips of past relationships come reaching out of the mist, too too solid (oh, for goodness' sake, stop that, you are not Lord Hamlet (no, stop that, too)), and the old music gets louder, the needle returns to the -- no, don't force it, you can hear it if you just listen.

The bits that make sense are decoupling like a slow-motion explosion. Blow the bloody doors off and see all the people.

The things in my life I want to write about have too much backstory, they're compromised by context, they're anchored to things I can't say. They're shot through with the threads of other people's secrets, and untangling my own loose weave will mean unravelling other people's hidden seams. Everything is tied to someone else; sometimes it feels like every thing in the world is a place where something, a thing I was doing when. The smell of his aftershave, 10 years later, still makes me turn my head. The arms of his jumper around my shoulders. Hooks in my flesh.

Maybe if I stack up enough half-sentences they'll start becoming.

So there's a thing in my brain that I want to write about but it's so huge and many-tentacled that I can't possibly wrestle it out of my head in one go, and I know that if I try to pull it out one limb at a time you'll all say "but that's not a genuine many-tentacled thing" or it'll keep crawling back in faster than I can drag it out. I'm not even sure if it is a many-tentacled thing or if it's actually something more like a mist or a colour that's seeped into my pores. Maybe it's a disease, or a new skin that I'm growing. I can't tell. Maybe it's a hopeless metaphor for a formless malaise.

I also don't know who's reading this any more. I'm terrible at keeping up with reading LJ myself, so I feel I can't really ask other people to read/comment on what I write; and while I sit there chewing my fingernails in that particular dark cave of fail, lots of beautiful friendships melt away. Who's reading this? Who's out there? Have you all gone to Dreamwidth? Should I follow you, or are we all just slowly dispersing into adulthood or beyond?

I don't know where I am. Or rather, I know where I am, but I don't know where anything else is. Either way, it's a bit cloud-tangled and mapless in here. Perhaps if someone shouts or shines a torch I'll be able to figure out where the voice or light is coming from.

It's a wrap

j4 — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 21:34:56 GMT

I am moving my plastic-free July posts to my shopping blog (first posts there in about a year...) because that seems like a more sensible place for them. I won't delete the versions here, but subsequent plastic-free July posts will be over there instead. I've massively cut the first day's post to take out most of the rambling emo; the second is more or less unchanged, and today's is ALL NEW. Sorry to all those who've already commented on the first two here, no obligation to go and comment again!

A load of wrap

j4 — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 21:42:11 GMT

Day 2 of plastic-free July involved a trip to the Co-op to buy potatoes for dinner and anything else from the shopping list that I could find in the 3 minutes or so before Img got tired/bored. This was never going to go well, because the Co-op (despite its supposed commitment to the environment) wraps pretty much everything in plastic, to the extent that I'm always slightly surprised to find myself not plastic-covered when I leave. So here's my shop:

Yes, literally everything I bought is plastic-wrapped. :-( But hey, I only said I was going to try this, not succeed.

Yoghurt and cream are, as far as I can tell, basically impossible to buy plastic-free. I bought the biggest pot I could get, i.e. the best yoghurt-to-plastic ratio. (Img particularly asked for the little Peppa Pig yoghurts.)

Potatoes: now this one was annoying. I specifically wanted big potatoes for doing jacket potatoes, and normally I don't need a plastic bag for those: I only buy 3 at a time (one for each of us), they're not squishy or wet or falling-apart-ish, there doesn't seem any reason to pack them. The Co-op had some loose potatoes, but these were the only baking potatoes in the shop. I could have just bought something different, but I was relying on getting these for dinner! (Although in fact in the end we had the quiche which I'd forgotten we still had in, and that came in a cardboard box, so the potatoes were not only unnecessary plastic but the cause of an unnecessary shopping trip. FAIL.)

The fish cakes were super-cheap (67p!) because they're nearly at their best-before date (I'll stash them in the freezer). I buy a lot of stuff that's nearly at the end of its shelf life because a) it's cheap, and b) I feel as though I'm saving it from getting thrown away. This is probably a bit irrational. (The strawberries were also reduced.)

Naan bread always comes plastic-wrapped. Even in our local shop which sells about 20 different varieties of naan, they're all wrapped in plastic so they last longer.

Now for the things I didn't buy. I had a long list of fruit and veg to buy but just couldn't bear to buy it all plastic-wrapped since I didn't need it right then; I'll try to go to the market tomorrow on the way home from work or at lunchtime. I was going to buy some bread but the Co-op only sells plastic-wrapped bread (and most of it is a bit plastic-tasting too, to be honest) so again I decided to wait. They didn't have any Coke in cardboard boxes, or any Shloer (glass bottles and bonus 80s nostalgia!), or in fact any non-alcoholic drinks I could see anywhere in the shop that weren't in plastic bottles or tetrapaks (apart from a few individual cans).

So what are the answers?

don't buy any dairy products
don't buy naan bread
be more organised about planning meals
don't give in to pestering (and/or don't take Img to the shops)

I guess nobody said it was going to be easy...

Plastic banned

j4 — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 22:31:30 GMT

I have a big backlog of things I want to post about, but I'm going to grit my teeth and pretend it's not there so I can get on and post about Plastic-Free July.

Last year I thought "oh yes, that sounds like a good idea, I'll try to do that," and then July caught me a bit by surprise, and on the first day I bought a packet of crisps (having apparently completely forgotten that the PLASTIC BAG counted as plastic) and was so fed up with my inability to remember a) what month it was or b) what things were made of that I gave up. To be honest I think that says more about my sticking power than about the all-pervasiveness of plastic.

This year July still caught me by surprise; I guess I've only had 36 years to figure out what comes after June. However I was working from home today so I was in a slightly better position to avoid accidentally buying plastic-wrapped food; in fact I managed not to buy anything plastic today because I didn't buy anything.

Of course, that doesn't mean I didn't use any plastic... far from it. Since I didn't buy anything, I tried just to keep an eye on everything I used, and make a note of it all here.

For a start, our house is full of plastic toys and other kiddy stuff. (Yes, of course it's possible to get stuff for kids that isn't plastic, but there's a reason so much kids' stuff is plastic: it's easy to clean and hard to break. These are fairly significant factors to consider when buying something for a preschooler.) To be fair, almost all Img's toys either a) gifts, b) hand-me-downs or c) from charity shops; I rarely buy her new toys. And when I say 'hand-me-downs', that's not only from her 5 older cousins but from previous generations: the plastic ride-on horse-on-wheels my parents gave her for her 1st birthday is the one they gave me for my first birthday. It's not just toys but tools as well: the orange plastic dish and brown plastic sippy-cup she uses were mine (and then my sister's), as you might be able to guess from the colours (nowadays you'd only be able to get them in pink or blue). But we've certainly bought plastic stuff for Img: a potty (we have two, one is second-hand and one is new); a bathroom step-stool; wellies; an Elmer rucksack with big plastic ears and trunk... if I added it all up it'd probably make me feel so guilty I'd never buy her anything again.

It's not just Img, though. We use tons of plastic every day. From where I'm sitting, just glancing around rather than examining the room systematically, I can see: the plastic tablecloth (see above re 'easy to clean'); Img's plastic mat (with dinosaurs on); the phone; the router; all the plastic-coated tech stuff (headphones, iPhone case, cables, etc); a stack of CDs in those horrible fall-apart-ish cases; pens; a water bottle (I do reuse them until I lose them or they break); loads of plastic bags (again, I reuse them as long as possible -- I still have carrier bags from the 1990s!); a blister-pack of antihistamines... ah yes, the medicine. I realised when thinking about this earlier that my inconvenient tooth (one of the other things I wanted to blog about) was introducing masses of plastic into my life. The denture I'm wearing while the implant settles is plastic, and I'll only have it for 3 months after which it'll be completely useless. (Can you recycle dentures?) I've also got a brush for cleaning it, a tube of denture-fixing glue which came in its own little plastic ziploc bag (though that will be useful for toothbrushes etc when travelling), a plastic tube of denture-sterilising tablets, a plastic bottle of mouthwash, and I can't even use my normal plastic-free toothpaste (Lush 'Toothy Tabs') at the moment because it's a bit gritty and it gets stuck in the hole where the implant is. (To be honest I also worry about using that long-term because it doesn't have any fluoride in it.) Medicine seems to be a really plastic-intensive area and unfortunately it's not one where I want to start coming up with "creative" alternatives.

So we're starting from a baseline of "saturated in plastic"... then there's the food. In a fortuitous coincidence, our Abel & Cole fruit and veg box arrived today; that's mostly plastic-free (though we occasionally get things like spinach & greens from them in plastic) and mostly hassle-free as well. (I've considered switching to Riverford, partly because they're a co-op and partly because they've really thought about the environmental cost of their packaging, but we had a trial box from them and addedentry thought it wasn't as good for some reason.) Tuesday is also a milk day: we get milk in reusable glass bottles from Milk & More. So we are already trying to reduce plastic in the food we buy. But let's have a look at the rest:

Breakfast:

Milk: glass bottle, delivered by milkman.
Toast: sliced bread in plastic bag.
Butter: spreadable, in plastic container.
Coffee: in 500g tubs made of ... cardboard/plastic/foil?
Juice: orange juice from a carton; Img had a mini-carton with plastic straw (she doesn't usually but we had one left over from a picnic)

I don't know what the coffee tub is made of: it looks like cardboard but it's definitely treated with something; it's a bit like tetrapak material, and the lid is plastic, and there's a foil inner lid. If I bought it in smaller quantities I could get it in glass jars (with plastic lids), but that makes it more expensive for me (and possibly heavier to transport hence using more energy...?). Douwe Egberts coffee comes in glass jars with glass lids (with a plastic seal), but it's not fairtrade... However I could get my coffee from SESI and reuse my giant coffee tubs. I will try and get a small amount of their coffee to try this Saturday (no point buying it if I don't like it). Real coffee might be easier to go plastic-free but then I'm using more energy making it.

Bread is tricky; the bakery is only open for a few hours first thing in the morning, and the Co-op only does bread in plastic. Milk & More sell bread but while their pictures show lovely fresh loaves, the actual products are all cheap plastic bread in plastic bags. The market on Saturdays has fresh loaves in paper bags, but it's too stale to slice by the next morning, so it's no good for a week's breakfasts. I guess I could make bread every night ready for the next morning? Switching to cereal is no better: cardboard boxes, but always with a plastic bag inside. I guess cereal maybe lasts longer than a loaf so it might work out slightly better...?

Butter: if I didn't buy the spreadable stuff I could get it wrapped in greaseproof/plasticised paper instead of in a hard plastic tub; is that actually any better?

Juice: we could get orange juice in glass milk-bottles from Milk & More. I don't particularly like it, but Img isn't that picky about juice and would probably drink it.

Lunch

Leftovers eaten out of a plastic tupperware. I've had some of those tupperware boxes for decades, and even the flimsy ones from takeaways (yes, I know, takeaways are bad) get reused until they fall apart.

To drink, I had a can of Coke. OK, so buying anything from evil corporate Coke is bad, but let's shelve that issue for a minute; if you’re going to buy it plastic-free, you either have to get individual cans (the most expensive option) or packs of more-than-6 (10- and 12-packs come in cardboard boxes; 6-packs come in plastic shrinkwrap; bottles are all plastic). What I should really be doing, however, is buying better and more ethical cola. Abel & Cole sell cans of Whole Earth cola, which isn't actually much more expensive than Coke (it's about the same price in the quantities I buy it in), but tastes rubbish. Waitrose do Fentimans cola in glass bottles and Ubuntu fairtrade cola in cans (bonus geek points for the name); annoyingly, their 'essential' (cheap) cola only comes in 2-litre plastic bottles or plastic-wrapped 6-packs. They're also not particularly convenient to get to (they do deliver, but that's adding a van journey -- if I went there myself I'd be on a bike). A while ago I looked into whether a Soda Stream would be a more energy-efficient way of feeding my fizzy drink habit, but it turns out those are differently problematic: see http://sodastreamboycott.org/.

I think the answer here is to stop drinking fizzy drinks, and stop drinking juice because it all comes in tetrapaks or plastic bottles, and just drink water instead. (Or beer! Beer comes in glass bottles! So does wine! I think I may be on to something here...)

Img's snacks/drinks

Banana: plastic-free!
Juice: from a tetrapak
Rice cakes: plastic packet
Peanut butter: glass jar with plastic lid
Philadelphia: plastic tub

Tea

Fresh pasta - in a hard plastic packet
Carrots - from the veg box, so plastic-free
Grapes - in a plastic punnet wrapped in plastic film, also from Egypt so about gazillion food-miles, general failure on every point here

There's no way I could get a lot of this stuff plastic-free -- fresh pasta is a convenience food so the answer there is "don't do that then", i.e. I should either make my own pasta (please don't tell me this is "actually very easy", I just don't have time to do it) or eat something different. Grapes are all from miles away (why can't you buy UK grapes? I know you can grow them here!) so I shouldn't be buying them anyway. Rice cakes only ever come in plastic packets, so again the answer is "eat something different". It's hard when Img doesn't want to eat all the things I'd be happy to eat, but then as some angry blogger pointed out recently (can't find the article now) the whole idea of "not liking" certain foods is a massive privilege and we really shouldn't allow ourselves to entertain the concept at all. On the other hand I don't think "plastic-free" is the only -- or even the most important -- criterion for choosing what to eat, either. It's an absolute minefield.

I think the take-home lesson here is "don't buy anything, ever; but even then you will be full of fail in some other way". But that's a rather depressing conclusion.

Also, now I've written all this it's probably too late at night for me to have a bath. My shampoo, of course, is in a plastic bottle. :-/

In one year and out the other

j4 — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 22:59:07 GMT

Happy new year! And a very belated merry Christmas, since I never posted anything for that either.

I think this is the last day I can legitimately get away with using my fruithat icon, even though ACTUALLY twelfth night is INTERESTINGLY not today but last night and we are already courting BAD LUCK by having taken the decorations down tonight. Anyway. It's 2014! There are a lot of 'review of the year' things going round but I already can't remember anything that happened last year. I spent the last 3 months of it with a hideous cough and the previous 3 months feeling faily about work and before that I have no idea, though I definitely read some books somewhere along the line.

I didn't really make any new year's resolutions this year either, which doesn't mean that I don't feel the need to improve anything in my life, but is more an indication of my current level of confidence in actually achieving anything, viz.: approximately zero. I made vague resolutions to go running more often and to have more fun, but have no idea how to go about achieving the latter and feel too apathetic to do the former (also at the moment it would be more like swimming anyway). In the meantime I guess I will read some more books and try to stop Img falling off anything particularly high.

Badger on her

j4 — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 23:07:41 GMT

I have had enough of today and I have had enough of this cough and I am totally devoid of inspiration for anything to blog about so instead in a brief nod to Clovember here's an awkward & badly-lit selfie of me in a badger hat:

If even a badger hat WITH SEQUINS doesn't help then something is definitely Not Right.

ETA: image now resized, sorry about that, blame the iPhone LJ app!

Hexagony

j4 — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 22:34:32 GMT

Today's post is over there, on one of my other blogs, and it's about a silly computer game. Or perhaps it's about my life.

Tell me the truth about livejournal

j4 — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:33:52 GMT

Go on, indulge me:

View Poll: Is there anybody out there?

Not intending to fish for compliments, not promising to change what I post in response to popular opinion, just curious as to who's reading and why.

Llama attack

j4 — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:17:11 GMT

I've decided to make the last few posts (but not this one obviously) friends-only, because they're largely about Img and nursery and stuff and I suspect I probably should be a bit more circumspect about who reads them (though obviously the NSA is still reading them anyway, and Google is probably projecting them on to the moon as we speak). To be honest I should probably make this whole journal friends-only since I have other public blogs for stuff I actively want to make public (as opposed to stuff I'm not too worried about people seeing). It used to be a point of principle that my LJ was entirely public except for very occasional admin posts about change of address, but I'm not really sure what that principle is any more, and I suspect it doesn't apply when I'm posting about someone who doesn't get a say in it. I also suspect that having points of principle about LJ is like having strong opinions about daguerrotypes or something.

(Is there a way to make only posts after a certain date friends-only? Or only posts with a certain tag? There are a few posts I want to keep public. Maybe I should just put them somewhere else. And then I think oh really who cares, only 12 people read this anyway. 12 people and Google and the NSA.)

It's been fun to watch people unfriending me as I post stuff though (I'm guessing it's not so much the content as "oh I forgot she was on my friends list but now she's started posting again, can't remember who she is anyway"). Ah, the drama llamas of yesteryear. To be honest the friendslist angst all seems pretty trivial now compared with the real feeling that my actual friends (some of whom are also my LJ friends, of course) are slipping further and further away from me in time and place and connectedness and it's not some kind of big drama, it's just that people sort of softly and suddenly vanish away. I am very bad at taking people off 'friends lists' but it's starting to feel like the people-I-sorta-like-but-basically-never-see-or-talk-to are diluting the actual friendships (though this is more of a problem on Facebook where I'm 'friends' with loads of people I haven't seen or significantly thought about for a quarter of a century. Need to do something about that.) Maybe that's silly and maybe it doesn't make any difference and maybe the real problem is that I'm a dreadful correspondent or that the people I want to stay friends with just aren't that into me. Not fishing for compliments here, just musing on the way friendships change and the way everything seems to get stretched thinner as I get older.

So tired.

I me mine

j4 — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 21:38:32 GMT

In the very short time since my last post, Img has started using the first person pronouns a lot more, so I think we're at some kind of tipping point. This morning she padded into our bedroom and told me "I'm a bit grubby" (a safe bet for a toddler, though she didn't seem to be any more so than usual); when I picked her up from nursery she ran to me and said "MY mummy!"; when a dog barked loudly as I was pushing her home in the buggy she said "That noise is waking me up" (ironic given how hard she was resisting going to sleep at the time) — and there have been lots of other examples. We definitely get more "mine" than "me" or "I", but then defining the boundaries of "mine" is a big thing in her life at the moment. (Rule of thumb: if she can see it, it's hers.)

Yesterday we also learned a new word, "argycue", as in:

Img: "Imi and Iris had an argycue."
Me [trying not to laugh]: "Oh dear, what were you arguing about?"
Img: "Smatching."

I like the idea of it being a cross between an argument and a barbecue, I guess where one of the participants gets roasted.

All the things she said

j4 — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:05:03 GMT

I was going to do a quick general update on the State of the Img, but it's turned into a long update on her talking. (Those of you who follow me on twitter will have heard lots of the things she says already, but this post is as much for my record as anybody else's.) Updates on other aspects of her life may follow if I get round to writing them...

Img is basically talking all the time now, and the things she says are increasingly coherent. She's constantly telling us what's happening right now — to the extent that she'll say something and then say "Imi's saying [whatever she just said]", or she'll cry about something and then stop to announce mournfully "Imi's crying"). She talks about what's already happened, too, and it's lovely that she can now tell me what she did at nursery (Tuesday: "Imi banged Iris in the face with a teddy!" Thursday: "Mummy, Iris is Imi's best friend"). She doesn't have much sense of time yet, although she's learning the words for relative time, so will sometimes say "today" or "yesterday" about things that happened months ago, like "yesterday Mummy was on the fun run and she ran really fast!" (that was back in May, I think). It's amazing how much she remembers from when she didn't have the language to describe it, too; the other day we were cycling past the end of the road that leads to the church hall where we used to do 'Sing & Sign' classes, and out of the blue Img suddenly announced "Imi used to go to Sing and Sign and we sat on the floor on coloured mats" (so not only did she clearly remember the classes, but she remembered the location too). It makes me wonder how much else she remembers that she doesn't have the words for yet, and whether it's a blessing in disguise that we've forgotten our babyhood by the time we've acquired enough language to describe the prison bars of the cot, the fear that the milk had gone away for good, the unexpected joy of a bright object or a familiar sound.

With talking, of course, comes arguing. (I taught her language, and my profit on it is she knows how to answer back.) There are days when everything she says starts with "No, but" ("No, but Imi wants a biscuit") and we're now getting "actually" as well. (Img: "There's an orange one with a picture of Mr Tumble." Me: "How do you know that? You've never even seen Mr Tumble!" Img: "Imi has, actually.") Sometimes she even gives us reasons for the things she doesn't want to do, such as "Imi doesn't want to go to bed because Imi wants to play for a little while", but "because" is often used a bit haphazardly and the reasoning is usually a bit circular. Sometimes cause and effect is completely backwards ("Imi fell over because Imi hurt her leg") — interesting hearing her try to figure it out.

Oddly, she is still talking about herself mostly in the third person, though we're getting occasional use of "me" and "I" and "mine" and it's correctly used when it does appear (as indeed is the third person grammar). She's very keen to know everybody's name though (often pointing at strangers and loudly saying "Mummy, what's that woman's name called?" on buses etc), and she knows my first name and addedentry's (and occasionally uses them to address us, which makes us sound like terribly modern parents to anybody who's listening). It still feels odd somehow hearing her address our friends by their first names (though goodness knows what else she'd call them, I'm certainly not expecting her to call our friends "Aunty" or "Uncle", let alone their titles and surnames!) and it still amazes me how well she knows who's who at nursery — not just her fellow toddlers, however unusual their names are, but their parents too: the nursery pickup is an endless litany of "that's Jessica's mummy and daddy", "that's Johannes's daddy", "that's Romaro's mummy" etc — though since I don't know most of them from Adam she could just be bluffing! (She doesn't know the other parents' names but then the nursery staff never use them, probably because they can't remember them.) She also knows her own first name and surname (as well as knowing that we live in Oxford, and on Planet Earth — thanks to the Clangers for the latter!).

Other new developments in her language are that she's started talking to her toys, and even occasionally putting words into their mouths; she's also started telling stories, though they're usually along the lines of "once upon a time there was a mummy and she had a cuddle". Her all-time best story so far though was this amazing horror story: "Once upon a time there was a horrible monster and he had spidery legs and spidery legs and spidery legs and spidery legs and spidery legs and spidery legs and..." she must have said "and spidery legs" about 100 times, while I nearly cried with trying not to laugh. The more I think about it the more hilarious but also terrifying it is. I'm imagining it as a cartoon strip with a little pale face narrating and spidery legs protruding into the frame, slowly filling the successive pictures until it's just a big scribble of spidery legs obscuring the face. SPIDERY LEGS.

Possibly because she's generally such a confident talker for her age, her little mistakes often make me giggle (though of course I don't laugh at her unless she's deliberately being silly/funny with words, which she does more and more — she enjoys talking in silly voices, putting extra letters on the end of words, and inventing words/names e.g. calling me "Mup" and addedentry "Mep"). "Hostipal" is such a classic toddler transposition that it sounds like she's just putting it on; "Imi doesn't berember" (always uttered in a rather sad tone) is lovely; we hear a lot that she "smatched" things from her friends at nursery or vice versa; "Imi ate a too little much" is an odd one but she's quite attached to it. Other 'mistakes' are actually rather inventive, like when she spoke the words of a song and then said "Imi's not tuning it".

I should also mention her brief and probably-accidental excursion into swearing, when she trotted into our bedroom one morning and announced "Imi wants to fuck the milk". I didn't know where to put myself! She repeated it a couple of times, I said "that's a funny word, what does it mean?" and she started saying "Imi wants to mup the milk" instead, leading me to suspect she was just being silly and making up words, but goodness me, I hope she doesn't come out with anything like that when anybody else is listening. (Though my family still all remember with glee the occasion when, as a toddler, I apparently stood on a chair in a quiet little tea-room and said "Bugger!" very loudly several times; so I guess we have form for that sort of thing.)

As well as talking we get loads and loads of singing; she picks up songs quickly and sings them tunefully enough that strangers can recognise them. Current favourite seems to be the alphabet song, which she can do more or less accurately (though "enemenopee" is definitely all one letter, "y" is always "wide", and "next time won't you sing with me" is something approximating to "next I want to sing with me", i.e. she's got the sound of it but doesn't really get the words). Mostly the singing is lovely, though sometimes it drives me crackers, like when I'm trying to tell addedentry one short admin thing but literally can't retain a thought in my head to the end of a sentence, much less make myself heard, because of an incessant loud repetition of "Nondon nidge is nalling nown" or "the peels on the pus go pound and pound"...

All in all it's adorable though and I love listening to her talk and sing — which is just as well because as far as I can tell so does she!

Don't underestimate the things that I will do

j4 — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 21:51:48 GMT

So over the last couple of days I've been thinking about "having it all".

On Tuesday morning after breakfast addedentry went off to work. I got Img dressed, took her to nursery in the cargo bike, came home, changed into smarter clothes, picked up my work laptop and my handbag, cycled into town in time to do half an hour's work from a café in preparation for a meeting, had the meeting (with a very senior academic), did some more work in a different café, cycled to St Anne's for a conference. After the day's talks had ended several of the delegates went to the pub; I texted Owen to check how he was getting on with Img, she was having a post-nursery nap, so I stayed at the pub between the end of the talks and the conference dinner. The conference dinner didn't go on ridiculously late (and Owen had texted to reassure me that Img had gone to sleep OK); cycled home in the dark, talked to Owen, did a bit of work on my presentation for the next day.

On Wednesday morning I was feeling really quite ill, didn't manage much breakfast (was going to have a rice cake but Img asked if she could have it after I'd eaten about two bites, and I felt too feeble to argue), cycled back to St Anne's for day 2 of the conference. Owen took Img to nursery, cycled home, and got the bus back into town to catch a train to Canterbury for a different conference. I gave my presentation, stayed for the rest of the conference (which finished at lunch), went for lunch with a colleague/friend, did an afternoon's work in the office (one of the three offices where I currently have a desk!), cycled home, changed into less-smart clothes, got the bus to nursery with the buggy to pick Img up, walked home with her (so that she could have a nap). Did some vaguely useful stuff while she napped, gave her a feed when she woke up, had a FaceTime chat with Owen, then let Img watch Andy Pandy on YouTube while I made tea (cheese & beans on toast). We had our dinner, played a little bit, read some books, then got ready for bed. Read Img a 'sleepy story', gave her a feed and got her to sleep; I stayed up for a little while, couldn't face doing the washing up, checked work email, arranged a meeting with a Professor of Russian for the next day, then decided to get an earlier-than-usual night: went up to bed with "Master and Commander" and a cup of peppermint tea, read a bit, went to sleep.

Wonder of wonders, Img slept until 5:15am this morning, so when she woke me I felt loads better; gave her a feed, got her back to sleep, had another doze myself, she woke me again at 7:30, at which point we got up, got dressed, went downstairs, had breakfast, played a little bit, then I took her to nursery in the bike. I had booked today off work (partly so I could do nursery pick-up and drop-off without worrying, partly so that I could go to an all-day meet-up with Oxbridge web folk -- this no longer really 'counts' as work for either my main job or the one I'm currently seconded to, but I'm interested and the people involved are friends too) but the web-folk meetup was cancelled at the last minute (due to illness and emergency meetings on both sides) so I had an unexpected free day. On the way back from nursery I stopped at the big charity shop that I don't often get to go to, bought some clothes for me and some books for Img, then went to the Co-op to buy food before cycling home. At home I did last night's washing up, put some laundry on, tidied a bit, ate lunch (leftovers from the meal Owen cooked for Img on Tuesday night), finished reading "Master and Commander", tidied a bit more, hung out the laundry, got changed into smart clothes, and went to meet the Professor of Russian (yes, on a holiday, it was the only day we could manage because she's off to Russia on a field trip in a couple of days) in a café (because it was near the station and she had to catch a train back to London). My line manager came to the meeting too (and bought us coffee), she'd forgotten I was on holiday. After the meeting we talked work for a bit, then I cycled home, changed into less-smart clothes, sorted through my postcards and stuck some nice ones up on the huge bare bit of wall in the dining room (which I've been meaning to do for a while), then walked to nursery to pick Img up in the buggy. She napped again, we got home, while she napped I read email/Twitter/etc, then when she woke up I fed her, we FaceTimed Owen again, then she played 'Happy Mrs Chicken' on the iPad while I made tea (pasta with broccoli, fruit salad for afters). After tea Img said she wanted to "see the dark" so I took her outside to help me get the laundry in (she said she was cold and wanted to go inside). Img checked that I was OK with her toy stethoscope, we read some books, then got ready for bed. She had her feed (too tired for a story) and went to sleep. Now I'm writing this before going to put more laundry on (nappies this time) to wash overnight, probably faffing a bit on the internet and then going to bed.

Tomorrow is my normal day off work, and my mum's visiting; we'll probably go out for lunch (unless she brings lunch with her), we'll play a bit, and hopefully Img will nap after my mum's gone home. Then in the late afternoon Owen gets back, and also Img's friend Zoë is coming over to eat pizza and watch DVDs (teenagers in training...) while Zoë's parents finish packing (they're moving house at the weekend and I gather it's quite hard to pack with a toddler who keeps unpacking as you go...).

The thing is... I've pretty much always lived like this. The only difference is that now there's a child in the mix as well. I have always ended up cycling frantically to and from home, work, meetings, pubs, the station, choir rehearsals/concerts, orchestra rehearsals/concerts, whatever. It's always been an endless game of fox/goose/grain with different modes of transport and assorted instruments/laptops/luggage/shoes/clothes/partners. I had to slow down a bit when I was off on maternity leave (I took a long time to get usefully mobile/functional again, I couldn't cycle with Img, and I wasn't going to work), but otherwise basically I've been "trying to have it all" for the last 20 years or so. Even more so when I was going out with Owen and he still lived in London, so we were trying to live together 90 miles apart and go to every gig/concert/film/party available and each hold down a full-time job. Why is "having it all" only used to apply to a woman trying to look after a child and does a not-working-from-home job? Why not anybody who has, say, a job and a time-consuming hobby and a long-distance partner and a garden to look after and... you know, all the kinds of things that people do whether or not they have children? And yes, I know the answer to that "why not" is "because patriarchy", and because if you're looking after children you're supposed to (or at least supposed to want to) do that 24/7 and never do anything else except [vague handwave] child things ... but, well, it's still silly. So let's stop saying it. PROBLEM SOLVED!

(I have a separate rant about the phrase "work/life balance" and the implied idea that your work is not ACTUALLY PART OF YOUR LIFE, but that will have to wait for another time.)

Hair anxiety

j4 — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 16:32:49 GMT

I have a kind of ongoing conversation with myself about shaving my legs. (Yes, that's the kind of boring thing I talk about, even when I'm talking to myself.) It's hard to transcribe the voices in my head because observing them tends to change them, but I've eavesdropped on this one often enough that I reckon I can capture at least some of it faithfully:

"Those legs are getting pretty hairy."
"So? That's fine."
"Well it doesn't look too good."
"IT LOOKS FINE."
"Actually you know what I really don't like the way it looks."
"Oh well then you're a slave to the beauty myth. Call yourself a feminist etc etc."
"OK so I'm not allowed to prefer smooth legs?"
"Well in theory you're allowed to, in an ideal world you'd be allowed to, but as things stand you can't have that thought without it being caused by oppressive heteronormative gender stereotyping."
"Right, so I'm not allowed to like what the patriarchy likes? Isn't that just a different sort of lack of freedom of choice?"
"Um... no! It's different. Because you get to choose the better option, not the one that makes women do painful stuff in the name of beauty."
"But shaving my legs isn't painful."
"No but that's not the point. It's mutilating your body just for the sake of -"
"It isn't 'mutilating' anything, any more than cutting my fingernails is. It grows back, you know."
"- and anyway by not shaving your legs you're supporting other women."
"How?"
"It shows women that they're allowed to have hairy legs."
"So I have to do things I don't like to show other women that they're allowed to resist doing things they don't like?"
"Yeah! ... No, wait, no! Gah, the point is you're not supposed to like smooth legs. Hair is natural, yada yada."
"OK shitting in the woods is natural but you know what I really prefer using an actual toilet and not having to use leaves to wipe and so do you, you hypocrite."
"That's different."
"Is not."
"Is too."
"Is not. PROVE THAT I LIE."
"Ahahaha I see what you did there. Bet nobody else will pick up on it though."
"This is getting a bit meta, isn't it?"
"Always a risk when talking to oneself."
[pause]
"Was that the fourth wall?"
"I wasn't counting."
[pause]
"OK, so ... back to the conversation. Hairy legs look scruffy at work. Shaving your legs when you're going to be showing them off at work is just like wearing a tie or something. Hairy legs look scruffy on men too, but men don't tend to wear shorts when they're trying to look smart."
"You're trying to change the subject."
"You're trying to evade my point."
"Ah but anyway you shouldn't be trying to conform by wearing skirts. Especially not short skirts. What are you trying to cash in on your 'erotic capital' or some such bullshit?"
"No, it's just, you know, it's AUGUST."
"Even in August, you shouldn't be focusing on trying to conform. If you were really serious about staying cool you'd wear like a kaftan or something but I don't see you trying that."
"OK, so maybe I'm conforming, but look, I have to conform to some social norms to be taken seriously in my job."
"Which means you're PART OF THE PROBLEM! You shouldn't cave in to that sort of pressure!"
"But I like my job and I like being able to help pay the mortgage and feed my family. Also I actually think it's totally reasonable to expect people to look tidy at work: it's about avoiding foregrounding the clothes so you can get on with concentrating on the important stuff."
"That's unreasonable! People should be able to see past all that surface stuff to the real person underneath."
"Yeah well people should be able to see past fonts and pictures to basic functionality when looking at prototype websites but actually they generally can't. So we work with what we've got and what they can do."
"You mean you're an enabler for being wrong and stupid?"
"No! I mean I'm conservative in what I generate & liberal in what I accept."
"Oh hark at you. Anyway your job should be the same. If it won't accept you with scruffy clothes and hairy legs, then it's a bad job and it's CRUSHING YOUR SOUL."
"I don't have a soul. Aren't you supposed to be an atheist too?"
"Figure of speech. Anyway. BAD JOB. Crushing your something-or-other-that-atheists-have. Get a better one."
"But I like this job. And I don't mind having to wear normal clothes and look like a normal person."
"Well you should! You are SELLING OUT and facilitating oppression!"
"Also I want to wear skirts occasionally. OK usually when all my nice trousers are in the wash, but still. Some skirts are nice."
"You don't really want to wear skirts, you're just - "
"Hang on, you can't play 'false consciousness' twice in the same argument. Penalty card."
"But that's the patriarchy."
"YES BUT -"
"No buts. Anyway it's not only work, I like to look smarter for parties and things as well."
"THAT IS ALSO THE PATRIARCHY! You are trying to conform to what men will like!"
"I am totally not. Firstly nobody has ever turned me down for being too hairy (and nor have I turned anybody else down for being too hairy even though all other things being equal I prefer non-hairy to hairy, but all other things never are equal). Secondly - "
"Are you nearly done?"
"- No. Secondly: I am married, so I already succeeded in attracting someone if that was what I was trying to do, and anyway I am currently too exhausted to be interested in trying to attract anybody, and besides if I was thinking about trying to attract people I'd be thinking about what women would like too - "
"Which is the same, because blah blah male gaze - "
"- shush. Anyway, I am not doing what you say I am doing."
"Look anyway if you must wear a skirt then just wear it with hairy legs."
"But it looks scruffy. I don't like the way it looks."
"Nobody will notice!"
"I'll notice. They're my legs. I am closer to them than anybody else."
"But you shouldn't care if - "
"I hope you're not trying to do that again."
"No! No."
"I will feel scruffy. And then I will feel less confident in what I'm doing. Maybe that's stupid but there it is. Think of it as a placebo."
"[silent eye-roll]"
"So anyway I am totally going to shave my legs because I am a free person."
"[outraged expression]"
"But... not right now. Right now I will just cover them up with these trousers that probably should have gone in the wash yesterday. Because that's what I feel like wearing. Not because I now feel even more guilty and conflicted about shaving my legs."
"Right on, sister!"
"[sigh]"

There's a bear over there

j4 — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:03:52 GMT

There are Gromits in Bristol at the moment. There are also gorillas in Norwich, giraffes in Colchester, bears in Congleton, and toads in Hull.

I first saw this phenomenon in Switzerland, with cows, and Wikipedia confirms that it was the originally-Swiss (now international) Cow Parade that started this trend off. It seems to be getting a bit silly, but I guess it's a fairly harmless silly. The idea of 'collecting' (photographing/visiting) the whole set of $animal in $town appeals to my nerdy side, though realistically I'm not likely to do it while it would involve dragging a recalcitrant toddler around with me. Perhaps I should just 'collect' similar projects and add them to the list in the Wikipedia article, because I can do that after bedtime without leaving the house.

Sadly nowhere yet seems to have filled its streets with giant fibreglass badgers.

Checking up

j4 — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:20:25 GMT

Img had her 2(ish)-year health visitor checkup on Monday, to make sure that her walking/talking/thinking etc is all basically on the right track for her age. I'd tried to explain what we were doing on the way there ("we're going to see some nurses who want to check if you can walk and talk and run around and kick a ball and things like that"), so when the health visitor started explaining to me that they wanted to check if she could walk, talk etc, Img chipped in with "and kick a ball!" which made it look rather as though I'd been coaching her for the test... On the other hand, it did usefully prove to them that she can do the requisite "put two words together" (I was hoping she'd say "Imi put two words together!" but as it was she just chattered away in her normal delightful manner, pointing out everything she could see on the toys and posters ("a cuckoo clock! a tulip and a butterfly! a book about I Want My Potty!") and narrating everything she was doing ("Imi running about! Imi running to her mummy again!") so they quickly got the idea that yes, tick, talking is just fine. (The form we had to fill in actually said "My child talks like other children of the same age" [yes/no] and I wanted to say "No, my child talks much better than most other children of the same age", but I knew that wasn't what they meant because NONE OF THE DAMN QUESTIONS SAY WHAT THEY MEAN so you have to fill it in as if you're a normal person who doesn't realise that words mean things.)

Anyway, eventually the health visitor asked about sleep, so I told her that Img was still waking a couple of times in the night (I'm not very good at lying, and since they base everything they tell parents on opinion and anecdote anyway I wanted to at least contribute a truthful anecdote to their 'evidence' base) and it all went downhill from there. She asked if I was OK with the night wakings, and again I tried to be honest: I said that I wished Img did sleep better, but I didn't wish it enough to try to force her into changing her behaviour; but apparently that's too nuanced an opinion, because she interpreted that as "I want to change this" and started explaining that they can offer "help" with sleeping. I asked if the "help" meant controlled crying, and she looked surprised and said "well, yes" as if WHAT ON EARTH ELSE might anybody possibly want to do, and I said no thank you, not interested. Health visitor asked how I got Img back to sleep again, and I said by feeding her, because yes we are still breastfeeding. She then asked if we'd tried "sending someone else in to her when she wakes up" i.e. letting Owen do it, and I said yes but it doesn't work, and she looked sceptical, and started explaining that "she's only waking up for comfort". I tried to explain (without biting) that no, she's waking up because that's physiologically normal for human beings of her age (in fact for most humans), and she's getting up because she wants comfort, which is emotionally normal for human beings of her age, but HV kept insisting that Img "just wants comfort", as if this was somehow a deliberate act of naughtiness, or perhaps as if a 2-year-old should have loftier aspirations than feeling safe and loved and comfy. I mean, I know there are different ways to comfort a child, but I don't see why people think that it's bad to do so at all. I guess they think you'll "spoil" the child, that it'll become unbearable, that it'll never grow up "properly" (not like real grown-ups, who are obviously all quite content to get by without any love or material comfort in their lives), that it'll get used to getting what it wants all the time (because obviously it's not possible for children to learn that "I want a hug because I am sad" and "I want to watch Peppa Pig all day" are different categories of want, so the only safe approach is to deny them everything just in case).[*]

Anyway, after a bit of nearly-arguing about sleep and breastfeeding, I said a bit less beat-around-the-bush-ishly that I wasn't going to try to stop Img breastfeeding, and at that point the health visitor got all defensive and a bit huffish and said she absolutely wasn't trying to stop me breastfeeding, not at all, "I wish more people carried on breastfeeding this long", and I didn't have the energy to explain that if you constantly badger people with "solutions" to the conditions that allow for breastfeeding then OF COURSE THEY WILL STOP BREASTFEEDING. And then she tried to tell me some rubbish about how I shouldn't worry because little girls stop breastfeeding of their own accord much sooner than little boys, and I said "oh, that's interesting, I didn't know there had been much research about that," and she looked at me as if I was from Mars and then said "... oh, it's just based on what I've heard" or something, and I said "Oh right" in a way that hopefully conveyed what I really wanted to say. Anyway, apparently it's all because boys are much more soppy about their mums, and I tried to explain that people treat boys and girls differently because of stereotypes and prejudice, e.g. boys are discouraged from seeking comfort and hugs because they have to be 'tough' so perhaps they cling to the feeding for longer, though of course on the other hand there's lots more pressure for mums to stop breastfeeding boys because ARGH BREASTS ... and she looked blankly at me and said "Well I've never heard of that happening" and at that point I lost the will to live and just said "Well, anyway, she'll grow out of it eventually" or something along those lines.

I was very glad that they didn't weigh Img at this checkup (because she'd already been weighed at the 2-year followup session for the Intergrowth study that we took part in, and the health visitor decided that was recent enough), so there wasn't as much of an opportunity for them to hassle me about her weight. I can't help wondering where the cut-off line is between "Your child doesn't weigh enough, give her more formula" and "your child is obese, put her on a diet", but I think it probably comes at about 3 years old. (When Img was a baby I got a lot of hassle from health visitors who seemed to think that if your baby was "below average weight" then there was a problem, but I was usually too exhausted and upset anyway to just yell THAT'S NOT HOW AVERAGES WORK at them, and it's hard to try to give remedial maths tuition to someone who's telling you that you're rubbish at breastfeeding and hinting that your baby is going to die if you don't double the amount of formula you're giving her [NB Img was basically tracking the expected curve for the 9th centile quite happily at this point but because they were making me weigh her once a week it looked like her weight was fluctuating a lot].)

Oh, and, one more tiny thing: the health visitor asked, for some reason (I can't remember what this arose from or whether it even made sense at the time), if Img was happy with paddling "when you take her to the sea", and I said that we hadn't been to the seaside with her yet, and HV looked at me like I was TOTALLY WEIRD, and I said we hadn't really had much time or money for holidays and she carried on giving me the YOU'RE WEIRD look and then changed the subject. Does everybody else go to the seaside all the time or something? The seaside is a long way away from Oxford! We have a baby who sleeps badly so we didn't really want to stay overnight in strange places too much! (I guess she was thinking "Oh but it's only a 4-hour drive and your husband will do all the driving so you and the kids can just sleep in the car LOL" but I think if I'd admitted that we don't actually have a car then they'd have probably tried to take Img into care.)

Anyway, hopefully that is the last time I ever have to see the health visitors. I feel like I've failed because I should have made more effort to explain things to them calmly and clearly and rationally: things like introducing them to the idea of evidence-based healthcare (and GCSE maths), and explaining why the language you use when you talk about people's children and parenting decisions matters a lot, and maybe telling them a bit about what normal infant sleep looks like, and (for bonus points) giving some advice on how to construct questionnaires that aren't so confused and ambiguous that they make you want to gnaw your own arm off. But at the end of the day it's not my job and I can't fix everything. I do get so tired of always being the one who says "Actually not everybody does that" or "Actually I have thought about this and researched it and I have still come to a different conclusion from yours", and sometimes I wish I just didn't have to think or care about any of this at all. But that is part of a much bigger rant and I don't have time for it now (or probably ever). Img has been asleep since 9:15pm and it's probably time I was asleep too.

[*] Owen was saying recently that Img doesn't often have big meltdown I WANT THIS THING NOW tantrums, and I realised that this is partly because I "give in" to many of her requests; by which I mean that I listen to them, judge them basically reasonable, and meet them as far as possible (or explain why I can't/won't). If she wants a cuddle, I'll probably give her a cuddle, or at least (if it doesn't look like an urgent need for a cuddle) say "just let me finish [thing I'm doing] first". If she wants to watch Peppa Pig and she hasn't already watched loads of DVDs, I'll probably let her watch a bit (they're only 5-minute episodes). If she wants me to read her a story, I'll probably read her a story (though nowadays there's a lot of "mummy read it again" and I usually draw the line at 3 consecutive reads). If she wants to go and look at a snail or watch an ant running around or pick dandelion clocks or whatever, if we're not in a hurry, then sure, OK, let's go and look at things. If she wants things that are reasonable but impossible (e.g. she wants a yoghurt and we've run out of yoghurt) then I'll say I'm sorry, but I can't do that ("I'm sorry but we don't have any yoghurt in the house, but we can buy some more next time we go to the shops"). If she wants things that I think are unreasonable, I'll explain why ("you've already watched lots and lots of Peppa Pig, you can't watch DVDs all day[**]", or "you can't drink my wine because it would make you very ill"). And if she wants things that are impossible, I'll try to explain ("I'm sorry, I can't get the stars for you because they're too far away"). By and large, she seems to understand or at least accept the explanations, and she's often amenable to compromise (e.g. "can we change your nappy first and then watch Peppa Pig?") unless she's already tired, or cross for some other reason. The big exceptions are around bedtime/nighttime: getting ready for bed when she's not in a getting-ready-for-bed mood is difficult, because she basically cycles through every possible thing she can ask for that isn't going-to-bed ("Read Imi's Maisy book. Imi want to watch Peppa Pig on Mummy's iPad. Go outside. Do some watering. Put wellies on. Want a biscuit. Want a sandwich. Want some breakfast. Want to watch Pink Panther. Want to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the piano. Want some MIIIIIILK. MUMMY CARRY YOU.") until we give up trying to reason with her and exercise Adult Privilege by picking her up and carrying her upstairs, at which point she runs around like a loon giggling and squealing until she realises we're serious about trying to get her ready for bed at which point she goes back to screaming and thrashing (and stops suddenly, wide-eyed and serious, to say "Imi CRYING", before starting wailing again). And in the middle of the night there's a lot of "more milk" (probably, but depends how much "more milk" we've already done and whether it feels like a real request or an I'm-pushing-it-as-far-as-I-can-go request) and "Mummy SLEEP next to you [i.e. next to Img]" (nope, bed is too small and you are too wriggly) and "Imi sleep in mummy and daddy's bed" (nope, ditto) and "Imi go downstairs for a little while" (definitely not!). But most nights aren't that bad.

[**] I suspect we're not very far away from the next stage, which is "WHY NOT?" and I expect Img to be pretty good at that. But what she doesn't realise is that I have THIRTY-THREE YEARS MORE PRACTICE than her at being argumentative and obstinate, bwahahaha.

Grow, grow, grow

j4 — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 22:09:41 GMT

Happy New Year! One of my New Year's Resolutions (about which more in a later post) was to post here more often, so here I am. As I said in my LJ Christmas card, the reason I haven't posted more often is that Img is taking up most of my 'spare' time; so it's probably time I did an update on how she's getting on...

Img is now 21 months old, which is coming up to the point where counting in months stops making much sense, so let's say she's 1¾.

She started walking back in August, and is now pottering around quite confidently, and even running (though there's still a hint of that 'zombie baby' toddler walk about her movements). She seems to like walking -- she always wants to walk instead of going in the buggy (and I'm very happy to let her if it's not too far and I'm not in a hurry), she often says "Imi WALKING!" quite delightedly while she's doing it, and she doesn't often 'give up' and ask to be carried instead if we're walking somewhere. She still hesitates a bit on big steps, but always wants to walk up stairs holding my hand rather than crawling (though still turns round and crawls when going down stairs). She's pretty good at climbing up things, and she loves to "hop like a rabbit" (she can't actually jump yet, so it's a sort of frenetic knees-bend) and dance to music (standing on the spot and jiggling around a bit). She can also walk backwards, and clearly knows it's funny because she giggles as she does it; and she has recently learned to "POUNCE!" which is hilarious (both for her and for us).

I can't now remember exactly when she started talking, but we've come a long way from her first "duck!" -- she now chatters away more or less non-stop, and most of it makes some kind of sense (particularly if you've read/seen the same books/DVDs as she has, as she often wants to recount the stories). I'm constantly amazed at the number of words she knows -- not just the usual toddler ability to name every animal (real, extinct and imaginary) under the sun, but more complicated things and concepts as well. We now get multi-part demands (e.g. "Imi have a carry, see mummy"; "watch Trumpton on daddy's knee"; "ask mummy for more clementine in Imi's bowl") and complex observations (e.g. on being offered chicken, announcing "it's meat" and then "daddy's eating hot meat"; the other morning, pointing at me in the mirror: "it's mummy's reflection"). I wasn't expecting quite so much conversation by this age, but it's absolutely fantastic -- I can tell her things and be pretty sure that she understands (though that doesn't mean she agrees or will comply!), and she can tell me things -- communicating her likes and dislikes ("Imi like mustard NO!", "Yum yum tasty milk"), telling me why she's upset ("Imi have a ouch - Imi bite a tongue"), or enthusing about things she's read/seen ("Daddy Pig stuck on a slide!", "Yaffle goes nyerp nyerp dirty old bottle"). She also 'sings' songs and nursery rhymes, often following her version with a request for "Mummy sing it!" or "Daddy sing it!"

One of the side-effects of so much talking is that most of the baby-signing has fallen away, though it was brilliant while it lasted -- when she was about 1 she suddenly started doing loads of signs, and I think without them we'd have all been dreadfully frustrated as she clearly had lots to communicate. These days most of the signs she does are accompanied by the word, and seem to be more for emphasis -- she still does signs as well as words for "more", "milk", "eat/food", "bike", "sing", "cat" and "dog" (all among her favourite things!) and also, usefully, for "where" and "ouch".

She's eating quite well, if a bit unpredictably -- some days she'll eat hardly anything, other days she seems capable of eating her own body weight in mashed potato or banana or yoghurt or carrots or bread or whatever the obsession of the moment is. We did baby-led weaning and decided right from the start that we were just going to give her whatever we were eating, so she's been exposed to a wide variety of foods (including trying jellyfish when we went for dim sum with nou and friends!) -- she used to eat pretty much anything that was put in front of her, but has become much more picky over the last few months. We don't nag her or insist on her eating -- she knows how to eat (and incidentally can use a fork or spoon reasonably well when she chooses), she'll eat if she wants to, there's no 'magic portion size' that she has to eat in order to be healthy/satisfied -- but it's frustrating when she pushes the plate away and says "finished!" without even trying anything on it. On the other hand, nursery seem to feed her a lot (possibly because they do a lot more nagging and cajoling and insisting on finishing everything) so I think sometimes she's just really not that hungry when she gets home.

She's been going to nursery for 9 months now, since I went back to work in late March, and seems to have settled in fairly happily after a rocky start. She still shouts/cries at us sometimes when we drop her off in the morning (they assure us that she stops as soon as we're out of the room), but it's by no means every day; the daily reports we get tell us that she eats, drinks, plays, talks, etc as you'd expect -- though the nursery staff seem to find her non-stop talking a bit wearing ("she's like a stuck record!"), and they don't seem particularly interested in encouraging it. I don't find it a very inspiring nursery, to be honest; but then I don't think I could claim that I'm a very inspiring parent either, most of the time, and since nursery manages to keep her fed, clean-ish, and mostly happy, I can't really complain. Img has friends there (and apparently has taught the sign for 'friend' to the other children!) whom she plays with (or alongside, anyway), and she talks about her friends and the nursery staff (usually to tell me who gave her cuddles -- "Julie cuddle Imi! Imi cuddle Emily!" -- but also things they've done e.g. "Help Emily tidy up!") in a way that suggests she's fairly content with them. On the other hand, little incidents seem to stay in her mind for a long time -- another child poked her in the nose (not maliciously, just the way toddlers do) months ago, and Img still occasionally says "Leila Rae poked nose!" with an aggrieved look. I don't want to project a personality onto her before she's had a chance to develop her own, but she does seem quite sensitive in some ways; whenever another baby cries Img looks sad and says "baby crying", "baby sad", and usually gets a bit cuddly and clingy with me until the baby stops and/or I reassure her that the baby is OK and its mummy and daddy are there to give it a cuddle (occasionally recently I have also said things like "it's probably just crying because it's hungry/tired, tiny babies often do that").

She's going through a phase of being really quite shy with new people, too -- she does the classic toddler thing of clinging to me and hiding behind my leg, and answers every question with "mummy cuddle". She usually relaxes a bit after a while -- generally about 10 minutes before we need to say "goodbye" again to whoever we've been visiting, sigh.

The one thing she's still not very good at is sleeping -- she still wakes 2 or 3 times nearly every night, and almost always wants a feed when she wakes (and is currently going through a phase of refusing to be comforted by anybody except me, which is sad for addedentry and frustrating for me). We've had a few 'good' nights (e.g. only waking at 1am and 6am) but they're not nearly frequent enough for my liking, and recently we've had more night-time tantrums as well. I know she will grow out of it eventually, but in the meantime it's pretty exhausting. On the plus side, she often goes to sleep without too much fuss in the first instance now (usually with a feed and a cuddle and holding her hand until she falls asleep, but Owen's also managed to get her to sleep by himself occasionally i.e. without the feed) and she does it in her own bed (after co-sleeping until she was about 16 months old because it was the only way we could get her to sleep at all -- we had to move her out because she was just too big and wriggly, the final straw being when she literally kicked Owen out of bed while he slept!), which means we can actually Do Stuff (like washing-up) after she's gone to sleep. Her own bed has DINOSAURS on the duvet cover and pillowcase ("Imi go to sleep on DINOSAUR PILLOW have a DINOSAUR BLANKET!") which I think helps to make bedtime more bearable.

On the whole, she's adorable but exhausting (she basically never stops moving or talking while she's awake, and often doesn't stop either while she's asleep). Of course it's impossible to tell what she'll be like when she's older, but early indications suggest that she's going to be small, stubborn, opinionated, and good with words -- no real surprises there given her parents. ;-)

Anyway, there's lots more I could say about Img, but I've probably already written twice as much as anybody except me is interested in reading! I haven't included photos here, to save your friends-list from baby-photo-spam, but there are loads of pics on Flickr if you want to see what she looks like. (My favourites include an unusually contemplative pose and a photo of her trying ice-cream for the first time.)

So this is Christmas...

j4 — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 17:31:11 GMT

Merry Christmas everyone! I haven't posted for a long time because somehow I never seem to have time to write anything longer than 140 characters. Here's what's been taking up all my time:

Hope you're all having as much fun as she is. :-)

Lady sees red

j4 — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:21:04 GMT

This ~~article~~ advert on Netmums made me so furious I had to have a rant here. Let's take it line by line:

Sometimes it’s hard work just looking at celebrities on the red carpet.

Wow, if that's your idea of hard work, you need to get out more. Tell you what, we'll start gently: I'll do the celeb-watching for you while you come over here & do the hoovering*. If that doesn't blow your mind, you can help me assemble some flat-pack furniture**.

* I haven't actually done the hoovering since about 2001.
** The flat-pack wardrobe has actually already been assembled with gratefully-received help from invisiblechoir. But there may be more to come!

The glitz, the glamour, the hair, the dresses…followed by the comparisons, the feelings of inadequacy, the despair when we look in the mirror and see ourselves - an ‘ordinary’ mum.

Well, speak for yourself. I see the "glitz" and think it's a bit tacky, to be honest. But if you enjoy looking at celebrities, then that's fine... but it doesn't sound like you do enjoy it all that much, if it makes you feel inadequate and despairing. Maybe you shouldn't watch it? I mean, I'm not saying there's necessarily a correlation here, but when I look in the mirror, I don't feel the need to compare myself to celebrities, & I don't feel inadequacy or despair (though I'm no stranger to either feeling in other contexts!). I don't even see "an ordinary mum": I just see myself. I know I'm not "just a mum", and I also know (after not quite a year of being a mum) that there's no "just" about being a mum.

But Netmums and My Special K think that behind every ‘ordinary’ mum is an extraordinary woman and so My Special K have devised a personalised slimming plan to help you look amazing for that special event, party or holiday that you have coming up.

I don't get it. Is this extraordinary woman behind me so tiny that you won't be able to see her unless I lose weight? If she's so extraordinary, why doesn't she just say "Excuse me, can I get past?" and come and stand in front of me? If the extraordinary woman is me, why do I need a personalised slimming plan? If I'm that great, then why do you think there should be less of me? If I'm so great, why don't I carry on being the extraordinary woman I am? And since when did "amazing" mean "thin"? And even if it did, how do you know I'm not already thin? I mean, at the moment (not that it's any of your business) I'm 5'1" and approximately a size 10. Could you clarify at exactly what point I'm supposed to feel despair for not looking like "celebrities"? Also, which celebrities am I supposed to want to look like? I mean, I'd have to grow an extra eight inches in height to look like most models, and I don't think even Special K (the world's most joyless breakfast cereal) can help me there.

If you look closely many of those same celebrities that we put on an unachievable pedestal are actually just ordinary mums too.

Oh. So remind me, why am I supposed to be emulating them with your special slimming plan? I thought being an "ordinary mum" was what I was trying to avoid by eating the cereals of self-loathing. (And less of the "we" there. I don't put celebrities on a pedestal.)

Yes they’ve been preened and primed for the red carpet event you see them at, but do you think they look like that when their toddler jumps on their head at 5am?

Well, no. But then I'm not looking in the mirror when my baby jumps on my head at 5am, and I look better in the day than I do at 5am too. I'm losing track of how this comparison is meant to work.

So don’t despair,

I wasn't before I started reading this. Now I am actually starting to despair, but not for the reasons you think I am.

first step is to sign up to My Special K’s fantastic personalised slimming plan and then let’s investigate how those celebrities do it and what can we learn from them.

Look, I'm not a scientist, but I reckon you've got those steps the wrong way round. If we want to look like celebrities, why not investigate how they do it first and then see if we can do the same? Hint: they spend shitloads of money on their looks and/or have armies of people to do their hair, their makeup, their nails, their clothes. They almost certainly don't eat Special K. I reckon if you gave me a million pounds to spend on all that stuff I could make myself look like a celebrity without any additional help from a cereal that tastes like cardboard.

1. Making the most of your assets

Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have hair like Penelope Cruz, or lips like Gwen Stefani? Ever noticed how celebrities always draw attention to their best feature? Whilst Penelope Cruz can most often be seen cruising the red carpet with shining, flowing locks, Gwen Stefani is rarely seen without her signature flash of red lipstick. So whether it’s your eyes or your thighs, identify your best asset and learn to make a feature of it.

My best features... well, that's a tricky one. Off the top of my head, in no particular order, I'd rate: my capacity for love; my writing; my musicality; the speed with which I learn new things. I find it hard to define some of the things I'm good at but they're definitely there. I've made a feature of these things by spending my time doing things other than staring in the mirror feeling miserable because I don't look like a celebrity.

Also, I'm now wondering how Penelope Cruz would cruz (ha!) the red carpet without her shining, flowing locks. I guess she could shave it all off and then her hair could come along later in a different Rolls-Royce and someone could roll it along the red carpet on its own. Or she could wear a very big hat.

There's also the possibility that e.g. Gwen Stefani's signature flash of red lipstick functions a bit like Clark Kent's glasses in reverse, i.e. when you see her without her signature flash of red lipstick you don't realise it's Gwen Stefani, so in fact you do see her without it all the time, but you don't see her without it. She might be standing right next to you RIGHT NOW. (Made you look.)

2. Work those curves

Quite often when we become mothers our bodies change and we don’t know how to dress our new curves. Take note of the likes of Kate Winslet, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Hudson and Holly Willoughby and embrace your curves. There’s nothing sexy about hiding under a black sack. Buy a dress (red is always good!) that clings to all the right places, add a plunging neckline and a little attitude and you’ll be red carpet ready in no time.

Hang on, a minute ago we weren't supposed to have curves, we were supposed to be slimming! Now we're supposed to be working our curves! Make your mind up, guys!

Also, I think there's some middle ground between "hiding under a black sack" and wearing a figure-hugging red dress with a plunging neckline, and it's the middle ground in which most of us live most of the time (thank goodness, otherwise every party would be like a version of The Matrix in which the teenage boy who made the woman in the red dress had been allowed to design all the female characters, and they'd all come at you like the excellent bit in the otherwise-appalling second Matrix movie where the army of Agent Smiths (Agents Smith?) attacks Neo, and you'd have to fight them off with super-fast bullet-time karate moves, BLAM! KAPOW! ... and that would get tiring after a while).

And furthermore, a) red is not always good, e.g. if you have red hair; and b) I bet there are people out there who think hiding under a black sack is pretty sexy, because of rule 34.

3. Never underestimate good underwear

I'm losing the will to live here, but let's go on:

Celebrities know the power of good underwear. You’d be hard pushed to find a celebrity that doesn’t love Spanx. Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba and Brooke Shields have all publically declared their love of spanx and Kim Kardashian even stated that ‘Spanx are my best friend!’

I thought they were supposed to work their curves, not use corsetry to get rid of them? (Also, if we're going to wear the bodyshapers anyway, why bother with the cardboard-only slimming diet?) Also, I already have a best friend, and she's way more interesting than a pair of control pants (also way more interesting than Kim Kardashian).

It doesn’t stop at the bottom half though.

Underwear usually doesn't, unless you're a waitress in a topless bar.

A good bra is essential and can take pounds off your silhouette. Make sure you get a fitting done before parting with your money though – figures show that approx. 80% of women are wearing the wrong bra size – and you can be sure it’s not the celebrities!

OK, this advice is fine. Get a bra that fits. It's more likely to take pounds off your bank balance than off your silhouette, but it will also help prevent boobache and backache, and that's got to be a good thing.

4. Time to make-up

Of course whilst celebrities have their own army of stylists, hairdressers and make-up artists the rest of us have to make do with our own talents on that special night. So why not learn a few extra tricks of the trade? If you’re not confident in the art of make-up go to someone who is and ask for a little help. You may be lucky enough to have a friend who could give you a quick lesson, but if not head to the cosmetic floor at one of the big department stores and ask for some assistance. The women working there are normally only too happy to help, especially on the quieter mid-week mornings, and purchasing their goods is not a requirement.

And I guess this advice is fine if you want to do the makeup thing. (I've always made do with my own talents on any "special night", and I've, ahem, never had any complaints about my talents.) Just so long as you know that the tangerine-faced No. 7 ladies in Boots aren't actually going to make you look like Kate Winslet.

Win a makeover for you and a friend!

Netmums are also delighted to launch our fabulous ‘Nominate a Mum’ competition. Perhaps you have a friend or family member who has lost their confidence since becoming a Mum?

Oh, Netmums. With inspirational advice like this article, how could any mum lose her confidence?

Up, up and away!

j4 — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:27:44 GMT

Imogen turned 11 months the other day, so it's about time I did an update for anyone who's interested (& for my own record, though I'm keeping notes on paper here too).

After a long time of wriggling about on her stomach and not actually going anywhere (except occasionally a couple of inches backwards), she started crawling a few weeks ago. Once she'd got the hang of it there was no stopping her, and she was soon trundling around quite happily (and surprisingly quickly). She also very quickly learned to sit up from crawling, and from there it was a short step to being able to pull herself upright by hanging on to things. She can now stand up quite happily by hanging on to furniture, and has even made a few attempts at moving sideways around furniture while holding on (I believe this is commonly called "cruising", but that always sounds rather dodgy to me) though she tends to forget that she needs to hold on (with predictable results). She can also climb the stairs, which is impressive given how tiny she is (it's a bit of a scramble but she does it quite confidently).

She seemed to be a very stressed and frustrated baby when she was younger, so it's lovely to see how much happier she's been since she's been able to move around under her own steam; she'll now entertain herself for ages by crawling around, picking things up, pulling things off chairs, pulling herself upright and getting down again. I'm trying not to hover nervously over her -- she often proves to be quite careful and quite competent when I don't throw her off balance by flapping at her, and it's surprising how many things don't actually really matter if she picks them up, drops them, or chews them a bit.

However, unsurprisingly, she's also picked up a fair few bumps and bruises in the process of all this learning, including a bruise on the bridge of her nose which went all the colours of the rainbow (and has only just started fading). If she falls she's usually quickly comforted by a hug and a kiss. On the other hand it's surprising how often she seems totally unbothered by bumps on the head that make me wince as I hear them; mind you, given how hard her head feels when she headbutts me, I guess it may actually be made of wood!

Once she started crawling she also started crawling in her sleep. Yes, we seem to have a sleepwalker. She will start wailing in her sleep, wriggle into a crawling position (despite the sleeping bag and scratch-sleeves which make this into some kind of bizarre horizontal sack race challenge) and start crawling towards me, headbutting me quite hard, all the time with her eyes tightly closed. Sometimes if she's allowed to have her little crawl she'll then roll over and go back to sleep, but as we're still co-sleeping there isn't much room for her to crawl (to be fair there wouldn't be much more room in the cot).

Sleeping is still going badly (though she's napping much more reliably and for longer periods of time in her buggy): she goes to sleep at night quite easily and happily (if we're there with her -- which means we're having very early bedtimes...), but wakes every 2 hours or so. A quick feed usually sends her back to sleep straight away, but I can't help feeling it would be rather nice to be able to have a block of sleep that was longer than 2 hours. I've tried getting her back to sleep without feeding her, and it's usually possible, but usually involves lots of screaming (and no, this is not 'crying' or 'whining', this is all-out throat-ripping screaming, and I am very glad that the house adjoining ours is currently empty). When she's actually ready to wake up (usually around 8am) she wakes happily, usually with wide eyes & little talky noises. (She does sometimes do the little talky noises in her sleep too.) She likes crawling around in the bed and climbing over me and addedentry, and I'm going to be very sad when we no longer have time to do that in the mornings because of going to work.

The talky noises are great -- not just babbling but more complex sequences of sounds which sometimes sound as if she's said a real sentence & I've just not quite caught what she said. She definitely said "mummy, mummy" this morning (*melts*) and over the last couple of days she's started making more "ooh" and "oh" noises, usually "tooo" or an unintentionally hilarious "d'oh". When she's tired her talky noises come out more slurred, so they're usually more like "blah" or "flah" or "meh". Sometimes she yips like a dog (but hasn't yet started levitating above the bed or saying "there is only ZUUUUUUUL"), sometimes she makes a big "raaarrrrggghhhhh" noise (it usually seems to be a noise of approval, e.g. when she's holding a big piece of food), often followed by a bathetic little "meh". She also has the most adorable little giggle.

Not much progress with the baby sign language except that she definitely recognises the sign for "milk" now, and the other day while we were talking about milk (in the context of buying it from the supermarket) she suddenly started excitedly making the sign. It's also fairly clear to me from the happy grin she gives me when I make the sign that she knows what it means & what's coming next. :-D

She is really enjoying eating (and we're enjoying her enjoying it!). nou has been in Oxford this past week and we've been to lots of exciting restaurants, and Img has been surprisingly well-behaved and seemed to enjoy them all -- she loved the Slovak food at Moya, ate heaps of dim sum at Liaison (actually her second dim sum -- but the first time she'd eaten jellyfish...!), tried the interesting spicy vegetables at Trichy Dosa, and charmed the waiting staff at all the places we went. She also seemed fairly happy to spend lots of time in pubs, which bodes well.

We've got her booked in with a local childminder (very local -- about 5 minutes' walk from here) and she'll start there for two days a week when I go back to work on 26th March (addedentry will still be off work), going up to three days when he's back too (after Easter). We're both going part-time (4 days), offsetting our days so that I work Mon-Thu (but working from home on Mondays) and he works Tue-Fri, & offsetting our hours so that I work 8am-4pm and he works 10am-6pm (so he'll drop Img off at the childminder and I'll pick her up). Not sure how this is going to work, it will all be a bit exhausting (particularly with the lack of sleep) but hopefully it'll also give us a bit more time to spend with Img than we'd have had otherwise.

It seems impossible that she's nearly a year old already, and that she's basically a small person rather than a helpless little animal. I am absolutely in love with her and the only thing that's still not great is the sleep -- and even that I think I can probably cope with for a bit longer, not least because I'd be really sad not to have her sleeping next to me any more, because I am A BIG SOFTY and I want to be able to kiss her on the head all the time. ♥

Cambridge: postponed indefinitely :-(

j4 — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:26:59 GMT

Over a month ago, barnacle very kindly lent us his car (hatmandu's trusty old friend Hrududu) so that we could try to drive to Cambridge to deliver a moses basket to rmc28 and to look at cargo bikes (and to say hello to all you tabs over there!).

The first attempt was stymied by, ahem, us not actually having the key for the car's petrol cap (& barnacle and the key being about 100 miles away at the time); the second attempt was called off due to predicted snow; the third was quarantined off by Img's chicken pox; and the fourth was prevented by Img's "mystery virus" (fever, non-blanching rash, trip to hospital for blood tests, kept in overnight for observation, ugh -- fortunately didn't turn out to be anything alarming). We did use the car to get to the hospital, and were very grateful to have that convenience; but on the way back it started violently overheating & pouring steam out of the bonnet and, on eventual inspection by Mr RAC, was pronounced to have blown its head gasket.

Given that our attempts to use a car at all seem to be fairly comprehensively cursed and our time will be much more limited once we both go back to work, I think we're going to abandon (or rather postpone until further notice) the attempt to come over to Cambridge in the near future; we don't really need to try out the extra bikes (in fact the nice man at the Bristol bike shop says he has another model we could try, & we can get there slightly more easily), and we're hoping to find someone else who's going from Oxford to Cambridge who could deliver the moses basket for us -- one friend says they're almost certainly going to Cambridge in the next couple of months, but if any of the rest of you could volunteer something more definite, I'd be very grateful! (rmc28, if this is all too vague & you'd rather get something definite by some other means, please let me know).

It will be a shame not to come and see you all, but hopefully we'll be able to do a general visit for fun later in the year by train (though it's still difficult to do as a day-trip, & it's hard to stay over anywhere while Img sleeps so badly...).

Separate post coming up later about the State of the Baby!

Spotter's guide to babies

j4 — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:25:26 GMT

Update: yes, it is chicken pox. Ho hum. I guess at least we're getting it out of the way early, and at least it manifested itself before we visited pregnant friends, friends with small babies, etc.

Img now has loads of spots -- new ones seem to be appearing almost as I watch, & she even has spots on her fingers, poor mite -- and is a bit whiny and grouchy, though it doesn't seem to be preventing her from getting on with learning to crawl.

The coming week is going to be a bit of a trial as I won't be able to do any of the things I normally do to get through the week -- things which involve going to children's centres or cafés or on buses or into shops, and I don't want to spread the germs around any more than absolutely necessary (and any more than I already have done). I predict a lot of Long Walks. Let's just hope there's no more snow. :-/