Random ramblings from the Texan in London.

My kid is weird. Kid Mach 1, that is. Kid Mach 2 is too young to show his true colours. He might still be "normal" like Himself... you know, my ninja accountant husband. Exhibit One. I present for your appraisal the following picture. That hat? Her choice, both as a purchase last winter (hence the jauntily perched angle on her melon, it's too small now) and as a wardrobe choice today (when it was really too warm to need a hat, but her stubbornness knows no bounds). Exhibit Two. This morning while I was sorting her breakfast in the kitchen, New Kid started kicking off on the sofa. I asked Madam to go see if she could make him happy as I was up to my elbows in jammy toast. She said "okay" in her piping little voice and hied herself to the front room to cheer him up. How did she do this, you ask? She got about six inches away from his face and shouted "HAPPY!!!"... When that didn't work (insert shocked disbelief here) she came back ...

My son is six weeks old today. That's right, my SON. How surreal. We won't mention how he's the size of a three month old. Fee, fi, fo fum. I feel like I should record some of the details, because let's face it, my memory isn't one of my most stellar qualities. It's not helping that the six weeks he's been on the outside seem to have literally flown past. One second he was a newborn, I had a lapse in judgement and blinked momentarily, and now he's six weeks old. He smiles. A lot. Sometimes he laughs in his sleep, which is doubly hilarious because he hasn't laughed while conscious yet. He has angry legs when he's thwarted. Same goes for his arms, he thumps me well and truly when I'm slow giving in to his demands for breastage. He'd rather I went topless and stayed on the couch with him in my lap for easy access 24/7. When he's sad, his sad face is the saddest sad face anyone ever had. Ever. Most of the time I'm ...

That's right, folks. New Kid finally deigned to exit my ovarian Bastille, and we are now a family of four. Things they don't tell you about adding a human to your already populated household: 1. 1+1 does not equal 2. 1+1, in Toddler/Newborn Math, is actually more like 5. The constant threat of random violence (intentional or no) from Toddler toward Newborn puts you on permanent alert, there's always a nose that needs wiping just as you've gotten Newborn to latch on for a feed, or Toddler decides they're starving TO DEATH while you're up to your eyes in Newborn Poo (so completely warrants the capital letters...). 2. It doesn't just take twice as long to leave the house. Add in a buffer of half an hour to however long you think it's going to take you to walk out the door. Someone will poo and require a change. Or will dump the half a coffee you never managed to drink down themselves and will require new clothes. Or will fall over because th...