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Showing posts from 2012

Happy Holidays.

So, today was a weird day. I put the bratface in the pushchair (which we never do for trips to central London) to take her to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park with friends. We got there without incident, and when we got out of the tube station I reached for my phone in my back pocket to see what time it was... only to find that I'd been pickpocketed. Phone, gone. Luckily I'd backed it up just a couple of days ago so I didn't lose any pictures, but still... pain in the butt. All good, I'm being very zen about "stuff" these days, so I borrowed a mate's phone to cancel mine and we headed into the park. A couple of hours in, we found the baby change facilities for fresh baby butts all around. We took it in shifts to visit the grownup bathrooms, and when my turn came around I left Madam with the pushchair and our friends. Duty done, I came back, collected Madam in her wheeled throne and we headed out. I went for my bag, only to realise that it wasn'

Thanks.

So, right now I should be baking four pies, a few dozen cookies, a carrot cake, and some dinner rolls. That's before prepping all the meat and veg for tomorrow's yearly Thanksgiving bash at ours. What am I doing instead? I'm watching my daughter throw puzzle pieces around the room and cast her eyes around for the next household item to destroy. And enjoying every second of it. It's not like we had a near-death experience last night, but a trip to A&E was close enough to suit me. She's totally fine, she just slept really fitfully, I realised she was burning up, and then she had a weird little episode where she wouldn't look at Himself or me which prompted me to jump in the shower with her, still in my pj's, trying to get her temp down. When that didn't work, the panicky mother in me had us all in the car on the way to the hospital. They checked her ears and throat (and the tongue depressor made her lose everything she'd eaten in the last

I'm ba-aaack.

Yeah, it's been a while. I'm trying to raise a tiny human, my hands have been a bit full. Literally. The She-Beast has two teeth. She bites me sometimes. It hurts, but not as badly as it hurts me to smack her. It's painful to see the shocked look on her face when I pop her sweet little mouth (full of razor sharp piranha teeth) and the tears well up in her eyes like I've told her she can never have chocolate again. At the same time, one of these days it's going to be a baby at one of our groups that she bites. Not cool. Hence the discipline, although at this rate I'm going to have to resort to a muzzle as she doesn't seem to be learning her lesson... more than once, she's laughed at me when I smacked her. *sigh* Turns out we're actually related. We've just come back from Texas, where we spent a week offending the locals and exposing Madam to her grandmother's loving attentions. We arrived in London spoiled (Madam) and exhausted (bot

Yum.

Three guesses as to what's on my glasses in that pic. If you guessed that Madam threw up in my face, you'd be correct. And it wasn't just a little. And some went in my mouth. I always wondered what my reaction would be if she ever chose to reenact that iconic movie moment. My choices were myriad, as I'm sure you can imagine, but to what I'm sure you will agree is my credit, I did not throw her in the floor or scream. I didn't even throw up on her (which I think would be poetic justice and more than a little revenge for the last eight months). I instead handed her to her father (who had the shocked look of a man who's just seen a dismembered dead body on his face) and calmly took off my glasses and wiped my face with the burp rag Himself hesitantly extended in a shaking hand (horror or repressed laughter, jury's still out on that one). I then had the presence of mind to snap a quick pic of my much-maligned glasses before trotting off for my second s

I was allowed to procreate.

I talk absolute nonsense to our daughter during the course of the day. I'm taking this opportunity to list a few of the bizarre things that I find falling out of my mouth during my twelve hour monologues. 1. "Do you sense an outing in the offing?" 2. "Look at your legs all akimbo..." 3. "I will take your poop nugget and give you a clean butt. Is that a good trade?" 4. "Is your daddy indulging in a bit of animalistic puffery?" She's going to be so weird. *grin*

Feathers and felines.

The day started off normally enough... Madam awoke, happy as usual, we FaceTimed with Himself so he could see her like he does every morning, we had our breakfasts and went swimming. We ran a couple of errands on the way home from the pool, came in for lunch and Madam collapsed exhausted on the sofa because sitting in the pool watching kids splash and jump around never fails to tire her out. She woke up, we had spoken to Auntie Godmother, and were Skyping with Mamasita when it happened... Chaos. A streak of fur, an explosion of feathers, a freaked out Madam. That's right, folks, Kit brought a bird in the house. It was her first, she's always been too lazy/fat/inept to actually catch anything, and we had become complacent in our belief that our cats just weren't hunters. I don't know if it's the birdfeeder I've put in the back yard, but somehow she actually managed to lay teeth to prey. And bring it in my %*^@£$ house. Thank goodness for Skype. I s

Eine Kleine Nappymusik

So, mommyhood can be hectic. Hence the last post on here having been so long ago. Let the updates begin. Madam says "mama". A lot. And thinks it's particularly hilarious when I say "no, say da-da". She laughs, looks me straight in the eye, and mouths "mama" with intent. She also eats. A lot. Himself's sister and her husband were up for a visit yesterday, and that means cinnamon roll pancakes. Madam had bits off everyone's plates. Then we went for a roast dinner at our local pub. We got an extra plate, upon which I put a little bit of everything from my dinner. She ate corn, peas, carrots, green beans, mashed swede, broccoli, and cabbage, all of which went down with alarming speed. Let's just say, today's nappies have been a magical mystery tour through everything she's eaten in the last couple of days. Her other favourites include avocado, rusks, black olives, and I'm currently feeding her bits of a banana while

Cakes and clean kitchens.

Things are pretty good. I cleaned our kitchen from top to bottom (literally) this weekend. This would be between holding and feeding Madam while Himself painted a wall in the living room. Our house is looking good . We chose a lovely shade of duck egg blue for the wall, which has done an admirable job of covering up the patch job Himself undertook to fill the holes left by the previous owners. Not sure why there were so many holes in the wall over the fireplace, maybe they couldn't decide how high to hang the mirror... I didn't necessarily intend to spend most of Sunday in bleach up to my elbows. All I started out to do was clean the glass hood over the hob, but to get a good angle on it I had to get up on the ladder... that's when I saw the tops of the cabinets. Once seen, they could not be unseen. Out came the bleach and multiple scrubber pads, not to mention most of a small rainforest's worth of paper towels. (I know, I know, shame on me. I stick with reusab

Musings upon flailings.

My daughter has figured out that kicking is great fun. Not kicking me, or the cats, or anything specific at all. Just kicking. The sheer act of flailing her legs around seems to be (to her) the single most amusing thing that's ever happened. To be fair, I find it pretty funny too. Even when I'm trying to change her nappy or get her dressed. If you're having a hard time picturing these struggles, imagine trying to put pantyhose on an octopus. And the octopus is on speed. I took her to Costco last week to stock up on the basics... you know, thirty-six pittas, twenty-four tortillas, fifty-four rolls of toilet paper and a vat of houmous. I took the Moby wrap with us just in case their trolleys didn't have baby seats, which turned out to be a good move, because they didn't. I started her off the old way, cradled with her head on my right side. Ask me how long that lasted. *grin* Constrained Madam is not a happy Madam. So, I switched her around to upright fac

Foodish snobbery.

I'll admit it. I've become one of those vegans. You know, the kind that would rather eat at home, because let's face it, what I can cook tastes better than what I could find in a restaurant that wouldn't make me sick after I ate it. Most vegetarian food in restaurants is laden with cheese, to the point that asking them to leave it off means there are a few lettuce leaves or some plain pasta left on the plate. I've had some truly asinine conversations with wait staff in restaurants, more than once over the fact that if they offer a side salad that surely they have the resources to make a bigger one for me to have it as a main since they don't offer anything else I can eat... The one question I get most often when people find out I'm a vegan is "what do you eat?!" I find it funny, because more often than not I pull a deer in the headlights and mutter something vague about veggies. I mean, I have memories of having eaten and it having tasted go

The Great Pooscape.

This morning saw us preparing for a visit to Himself in Soho. The weather wasn't particularly auspicious, but although Madam is made of spun sugar (or spice, or something else nice) her predilection for the shower proves that she doesn't melt, so we headed out wrapped in light layers and armed with an umbrella. Which proved completely useless. I don't mind wind. It's flown many a kite for me in the past. I don't mind rain. It's good for my flowers. Singly, neither wind nor rain offend me in the slightest. It's when they gang up on me that I get disgruntled. By the time we made it to the tube station I'd given up on the umbrella because I got tired of stopping to turn it right side out again. The first half of the journey on the tube was completely uneventful. Well, uneventful in the normal scheme of things... Madam always collects adulation as her rightful due, so soppy faces/noises only dogs can hear and questions about her age are fielded wit