Prodding the Baby

Gertie woke me with a 'boo' when she arrived in our room at some ridiculous hour that I believe some people regard as the morning today. I don't, and so I promptly sent her straight back to bed.

The baby monitor chuckled - quickly revealing that she had not, in fact, taken my advice, but had instead decided to go into Gilby's room. I went straight in and found that she had woken him up by poking him through the bars of the cot.

Furious, I physically escorted her back to bed this time. But of course it was too late; there was no way that Gilby was going to go back to sleep now. Admitting defeat I turned on the light.

"Daddy, I'm afraid it really is going to have to be the morning," I explained as I brought Gilby into our room. "Hold him for a sec while I go and get Gertie."

But could I get Gertie? No I could not, because she was already fast asleep with her blanket over her face. She remained that way for another hour and a half. Brilliant. Thanks for that, number one daughter.

High Five!

I am delighted to have been tagged by Mum With Carrot in Her Hair for the High Five meme. Beginning my blog has been a major highlight, but so many people have offered that so I won't include it. Here are five other highlights of my 2009:

1. On the 3rd March at our twenty week scan finding out that 'Minibunks', as we had christened my bump, was not only healthy and growing perfectly but was a boy! Now we would have a little brother for Gertie, which I knew, despite my husband's protestations, was what he really wanted. Gilby arrived safely (though not quite in the manner planned) on 27th July.

2. My husband getting through to the televised stage of Masterchef. Strictly speaking this should be his highlight, not mine, but I was thrilled.

3. Getting my bicycle for my birthday. I probably shouldn't include a material thing, but it really was a highlight as I had wanted one for ages and my husband managed to select the perfect model. The timing wasn't brilliant as I was seven months pregnant and I have had periods in my life where I have had a slightly better centre of gravity than that, but it has had plenty more use since the birth.

4. Having my poem, Apgar Score, published. Since this post is all about me(!), I will reproduce it here:

APGAR SCORE

There was a final tearing wrench
before we went from one to two.
They held you up in alien air
And took you for a minute.
Then they placed you on my skin.
I smiled, uncertainly, for the camera;
You turn your squashed-up face away
And in to me, as though to tunnel back in.
I didn’t know what to do
So I cried, I think;
And you cried, I think.
But somehow we muddled through.
Soon they took you from me again,
And did some things to that tiny you:
Weighed and measured and judged.

On display in that glass box
You passed your first tests.

5. This one might also seem a little odd, but it was going to the NATE (National Association of English Teachers) conference back in April. It was a whole weekend away with the chance to think about my teaching in a very focused way with no distractions. I had also been trying to get to the conference for five years and this was the first time my school had agreed to let me have the time and pay for the trip. I went with a good friend and had an amazing time - and these 'solo' experiences are so rare now.

So I know that lots of people have already been tagged with this, but I would like to pass it on to:

Hungry but Happy Mummy

It's A Mummy's Life

And anyone else who hasn't already been tagged but would like to share 2009 high points!

Day Six in the Big Sober Household

It's day six in the Big Sober Household.

And the housemates have fallen off the wagon.

It began with a sloe gin, currently involves wine for Mummy and cider for Daddy, and will end...well, who knows?

I would like to blame the adverse weather conditions. In fact I'm going to.

We had no power for nineteen hours. No heat, no light, no hot water, no hot food. And whilst it looked more and more beautiful outside as a foot of snow fell, inside the picture was grimmer.

We couldn't go outside and enjoy the weather as we knew that we wouldn't be able to get warm and dry again afterwards and I don't do 'cold' very well at all.

We were four in the bed by this morning. It was way too cold for Gilby (who definitely takes after his mother) and began turning blue at about 3am. So we broke the rule and let him into our bed. What else could I do? And we couldn't very well refuse Gertie when she began screaming at 5am because there was no night-light and she couldn't find her door.

By lunchtime I had had enough. We do have an open fire for this hearth-mother, but our log delivery is due next week and we only had a handful left. Not good. So my husband stole a 4x4 from work and we invaded the in-laws, affectionately known as Grumps and Mumps.

And a sloe gin was just reward for finally building the perfect snowman in their garden (in the dark).

We will resume the January detox tomorrow, when normal order is restored. Ish.

Helluva Day So Far

It's been a helluva day so far.

We have had endless pony rides, been on holiday to Africa, opened dozens more presents from Father Christmas, mended a broken sleigh, (that was very tricky and involved lots of cardboard tubing) had our own bear hunt, and sported a succession of bizarre haircuts - and we haven't left the house. (It was way too cold for that.) Gertie's powers of imagination are amazing.

Sometimes I don't quite get it and she will tell me, "No Mummy, not like that. You need to have your legs much further apart to ride a pony," as she leads me twice round the table in the kitchen on my tiptoes trailing on 'ribbon' reigns.

"Oooh, wow, we're going really fast!" I cry, anxious to contribute something to the make believe.

She will give me a withering look. "That's not fast, Mummy. Don't be silly."

"Oh."

And apparently, I still had my helmet on when I went to kiss her goodnight. Easy mistake.

I don't usually embrace her play with this much enthusiasm; in fact, as you can tell, I'm pretty rubbish at it. But I am back to work next week as my maternity leave with Gilby ends, so making the most of every single second. And actually, that's just about as long as it takes to fly to Africa these days, as it happens.

Life's Little Pleasures

I have been invited by The Wife of Bold to join the meme to list the ten best things in my life that are free. I love to think about life's little pleasures and remind myself of them - especially at new year, even though they change all the time. Some of them I can engineer, and some of them just have to happen spontaneously. Here are my current ones, in no particular order:

1. Watching a good crime drama with high production values. My addiction for Morse a few years ago has now been replaced by series like Wallender.
2. Doing anything together as a family, like our walk on new year's day or all going swimming.
3. Reading a book in the bath. It feels really indulgent and I am going to do lots more of it in 2010.
4. Riding my bike to the shop. My husband bought me a very retro 'sit up and beg' bike for my birthday last year and if it is a nice day I so enjoy a ride down to the local shop on a Saturday or Sunday morning when he is home to look after the kids. I feel healthy and free.
5. Scrapbooking. Creating a beautiful record of our lives and generating order from the chaos of a bundle of photographs and some dog-eared tickets or a theatre programme gives me a real sense of satisfaction.
6. Feeding scraps to my two chickens, Cecily and Isolde. They are so absurdly grateful and I feel a little like Ma Larkin.
7. Seeing my name in print. Sadly, even if it is just for a silly letter or filler in a magazine I get a little narcissistic buzz.
8. The feeling of total relaxation that comes when the house is completely clean and tidy and I am on top of all my chores. This one happens very, very rarely.
9. Watching Gertie do something charming and unprompted, like give her baby brother a spontaneous kiss, or throw her arms around my neck and clasp me in a suffocating cuddle, or do something little and helpful around the house without being asked.
10. Sitting by a roaring fire with my husband on a cold winter's evening when we have shut out the weather and the woes of the world.

Good. I feel better for all that. Looking forward to seeing if any of them happen today!

Gertie the Friendly Ghoul

I seem to have been writing about sleep a lot lately, mostly because I haven't been getting enough so it is frequently on my mind.

But as well as the baby, Gertie has her own sleep issues. We have had a nightmare (pardon the pun) getting her to sleep in a bed. We tried to make the transition from cot to bed back in May, just after her second birthday. Partly because we would need the cot a few months later for Gilby when he arrived and we wanted to disassociate all the change from him by doing it early, and partly because Gertie was moving into her own, grown-up bedroom so it seemed a good time.

And it was. She has always been a good sleeper (unlike her little brother!) and for a few nights it all went really well. Then for some reason we had to have the travel cot out and that was it. She wanted to be in the travel cot and not in her bed. She also liked to fill the cot with dozens of her 'people'. This is what she calls all her soft toys and dolls even though it makes her sound like the leader of a cult of cuddly animals.

And as she herself has grown over the last six months, and filled the cot with more and more toys until it just looked so uncomfortable for her to be in there. It also meant that she had to wear a nappy at night since she simply couldn't get out of the cot to go to the toilet.

So after all the disruptions over Christmas we did a really mean and parenty thing and pretended that we had left the cot behind at Gertie's grandparents house, thereby forcing the issue so that she would have to sleep in the bed.

Again, this went well for the first couple of nights, after the novelty of getting up once or twice to go to the toilet had worn off. But then the midnight visitations began.

Silently she will enter our bedroom. We will be fast asleep and will sense rather than see the ghostly, thumb-sucking, blanket-trailing form that might then suddenly loom out of the darkness by the bed. It is really eerie. And unlike during the day when she can talk for Olympic Gold, during the night she says nothing.

So I don't know if she is sleep-walking or not. She is happy to be ushered straight back to bed but may well appear again a few hours later. She has also taken to coming in and not waking us up; I know this because her door and our door will be tellingly ajar come the morning. One night this week I discovered her just sitting on the step outside the bedroom door.

So our sleep is disturbed once again. And annoyingly, Gertie's appearances are usually between the hours of midnight and three, just at the time when Gilby seems to be soundly asleep and not needing a feed. And my ears are constantly on the alert for Gertie the Friendly Ghoul...

Bashing the Pedals for a Perfect New Year's Day

We've just spent the most perfect new year's day.

Gertie got up quietly and played with her little brother for a good hour this morning, giving us a tiny lie-in following last night's (moderate) celebrations to see in the new decade.

A large, leisurely breakfast followed; then a long walk through the woods from our house to a nearby pub for lunch beside a roaring log fire. (Entirely appropriate for this Hearth-mother.)

On the way home there was plenty of splashing in puddles, or 'bashing the pedals" as it is forever known in our family since this is how Gertie used to pronounce it when it first became one of her favourite things to do.

Lots of fresh air for the children put the colour back into their cheeks and means that they have both gone down to bed willingly and a little early.

How different from hungover, unproductive new year's days of old! The me of now bears hardly any resemblance to that person a decade ago who hadn't yet met her husband, was barely at the start of her teaching career and who most definitely did not have any interest in having children.

I spent the millenium eve a decade ago on Westminster Bridge awaiting the fireworks and 'river of flame' with a group of girlfriends. It was a cold, depressing evening, with my overriding memory being of drinking too much cheap wine from plastic cups resulting in us having to take turns to surreptitiously wee (if such a thing is possible) within a huddled circle of the girls due to the fact that we couldn't move off the bridge because of the crowds. I lost my sister for a couple of hours, she sprained her ankle and it took hours to get back home. Now this year's experience was far less dramatic but much, much happier.

What a difference a decade makes.