Knitted Cutes

I am always in awe of people who have the aptitude for knitting, and infinitely grateful to any of them who put that skill at my disposal.

Having another winter baby, I was determined to come up with a solution to the revolting sweaty snow suits that are available for babies while also finding a way to keep the new little cherub warm and snugly.

I’m lucky that my friend Natalie knows her way around the knitting world and suggested this pattern

  

Which looks so good I was actually wondering if she could do an adult sized one for me!!

I picked up the finished suit on Monday and I’m SO in love with the finished article. Having raided the button pot and spent last night sewing on the buttons it is now ready to go.

Typical then that we’re in the middle of a mini heat wave isn’t it?

Keith commented that he thinks she will look like Sack Boy from Little Big Planet which I choose to see as a good thing.

Alfie does the Dancing

I just wanted to share this video with all of you who don't believe that my son has suddenly become the frickin Energizer Bunny.



Send help in the form of booze and tranquilizer darts.

Our Days are Numbered

It is so good to have the levels of testosterone back up to normal at FTC.

I did enjoy the break, but a week was long enough and the dog is a poor substitute for a welcome home snog. Plus the neighbours managed to block the drain yesterday and who would have dealt with that?

Something really weird has happened to me as a result of The Tails being away and instead of looking at the calendar wondering how many minutes there are left until the birth, I am now totally focused on enjoying these last few weeks as a family of three.

Last weekend we took full advantage of a “75p weekend” at the local cinema and took Alfie to see his first film. I was a little concerned that he might either get bored or distressed so I chose a film that neither Keith nor I wanted to see on the basis that we wouldn’t care if we missed it.

Clearly I had no need to worry, because if the film was lacking, the popcorn was not and Alfie managed to lay claim to the whole carton and growl at anyone else who dared put a hand near it. Growl, and slap our hands away.

He also screamed at several points in the film which was OK because the whole cinema was full of young children, but also presented an unique parenting challenge to Keith and I who were totally unable to deal with him for laughing.

Whoever in Madrid taught him how to scream like a teenage girl I have three words for you:

I.HATE.YOU.

My ears hate you.

In fact, everyone in central Bedfordshire now hates you.

There is part of me that wants to do a full on belly laugh at him when he runs around SCREECHING with a grin nailed to his face, but that part is getting drowned out by the pain in my ears, and the overwhelming urge to slap Keith round the face when he encourages Alfie by joining in.

Let’s hope he finds it as funny when Alfie fails to realise that homes and libraries have different rules.

Despite the utter chaos, I really had missed the random interjections in my otherwise normal day.

Last night I was in the shower when Keith burst through the door with a look on his face that gave me a good insight into a younger Keith on Christmas morning.

“I totally forgot to tell you!!”

“oookay” I say subtly putting his razor back on the shower tidy and straining to hear over the noise of the water.

“when we got to Madrid airport we had to go up the escalators and round to get to the baggage reclaim ... ”

“right”

“and when we got there ...... THERE WAS A HANDLE GOING ROUND THE CAROUSEL!!!!!”

After a brief pause there was only one response to that statement:

“NO. F’ING. WAY!!!!!!”

And suddenly both the interruption and the expression made perfect sense.

And I laughed.

In fact I laughed so hard I actually had to cut my shower short so I could carry on laughing without having to deal with water in my face at the same time.

If you need to know why such an innocent comment was so funny, look here. 

My belly hurt by the time I clambered into bed.

Which reminds me, for anyone looking at the update thinking c’maaaahn with the pregnancy news I do have something to share:

Braxton Hicks. Truly the highlight of my day.

Remember please that I didn’t have them last time, so this is all new turf to me (along with pelvic pain but that’s not quite so jolly) and it took me a while to work out what was going on. The only way I can describe how they feel to me is like an old fashioned lift stopping too fast or going over a humpback bridge – except that w’OH!! feeling in your throat lasts for minutes at a time.

I love it!!

I was expecting them to be uncomfortable or to focus on my back or belly and feel like achy muscles, I was totally unprepared to feel like I’m tipping off the top of a rollercoaster for half the day.

In some ways karmic justice since my entire department is leaving me behind to go to Alton Towers in a few weeks.

But then who needs Alton Towers when you have Braxton Hicks and hormones? WHEEEEEE!!!!

No, I've got something in my eye dammit!!

My friend sent me a link to a post this morning that I just really wanted to share.

You'll either get why I've posted it or you won't.

A Welcome, With Thanks

Brief interlude for me and the Princess ... *shudder*

This might seem like a mundane post, but to me this is a glorious moment of calm at FTC.

I have managed to pack the kids off to the other side of Europe for a WHOLE WEEK which means I have free run of the house to indulge my pregnancy whims.

Seems I have quite a few that up to now had been drowned out by the chatter of toddler, husband and other demands on my time.

Mostly I have been spoiling myself with the kind of birth preparation I did buckets of with Alfie but have totally neglected this time. I have had early nights, pampered my skin, watched birth videos and hynobirthed my ass off.

I have even had a chance to catch up with all the incredible people I follow on Twitter and they have introduced me to a site that actually made me pump my fists.

I don’t admit that lightly.

Keith and I are both more than a little scared at the thought of having a daughter who is swamped in pink and personally I am also rabidly adverse to my daughter being defined by the kinds of gender definition that seems to start almost from the moment of birth. 

But look at this site, seriously lookit, Princess Free Zone!!!

This is where I dance a little jig at knowing that there are other people who share my horror at the anti-feminist attitude of large corporations to little girls.

If you think I’m over exaggerating here, I’m not. If you want me to scare you with the numerous t shirts and toys that tell your daughter she’s too pretty to think from before she even knows what thinking means, just ask, I’ll happily flood your mailbox until your spam filter runs away shrieking!

PS is bad that half of me wants to tell the boys to stay in Madrid another week???

Lost: One Plot

I am writing this in the hope that some second + time mums will read it and make me feel better about some current weirdness that has invaded my life: Anyone who reads this and make the “crazy gesture” will get hunted down and sat on.

I’ve started having flashbacks to Alfie’s birth recently, but these flashbacks feel like they are being triggered by my olfactory system by a smell I can’t quite smell.

Yeah, I know, believe me I know.

I’ve had really vivid flashbacks to being in the labour ward, wandering around the room waiting for the induction to work. The odd thing is the visual image isn’t the focus, it’s the sense of anticipation and contentedness at the thought of meeting our baby that really comes through.

I’ve also had flashbacks to being on the post natal ward when I was padding around, my little snugglebug in his goldfish bowl crib, and again it’s not the visual but the emotional that really comes through to me.

These aren’t negative flashbacks in any sense, the moments I am reliving are the moments where there was anticipation, and hope, and contentment and calm – rare as those were – but what bothers me is that I can’t work out for the life of me why they have started.

I know there is a big hormonal shift in the last few weeks of pregnancy when oxytocin and prostaglandins start to ramp up in preparation for labour. There is also a pheromone called estratetraenol which hits its peak at the same time, so it is not beyond the wit of man to guess that one, or all of these things is causing this latest strangeness.

But what weirds me out is the way they strike, not by gently floating into a daydream, but suddenly, like a switch has been flicked and I’m right there reliving the moment completely. Just like when you hear a song, or smell a familiar but long forgotten smell and wham-o you are 11 years old again and suddenly you’re back on a bed hallucinating that there are giant buttons on the ceiling and that you can taste a red balloon.

No? Just me? Good to know.

Maybe this is my mind taking what nice memories it can find and using them to reinforce the training I have been doing as part of my Natal Hypnotherapy? 

Answers on a postcard please; along with some reassurance that I will one day rediscover the plot, perhaps just hidden under a pile of papers and a little tea stained.  

There is a chance I might be nesting ...

After looking all over the known interwebs for the types of sheet I wanted to put on my little girl's crib, I may have hit the jackpot.

This place could easily take all the money I don't have if I allowed myself any more time to gaze and drool over their amazing patterns.

Somehow I managed to restrain myself, I just went for one sheet in their Cosy Flower pattern. 

If they did this bedding in adult sizes, I might have to get a set for our bed too ... or I might just try and crawl into the crib.

Alfie's First Film

Until yesterday Alfie had never watched a film. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but he seems to have inherited his father’s attention span so we would cutch up on the sofa only to be abandoned by the end of the opening credits in favour of some obnoxious toy.

Yesterday was a Sunday, the weather was autumnal, and I happened upon a child friendly film just as it was about to start, so I thought I would take a punt and see how the little man got on.

I genuinely thought that the film in question was innocuous enough - possibly because I am 33 years old and was brought up with old school cartoon violence – but clearly I had underestimated both the ability of a child that age to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and also the impact even milk carton violence would have on him.

The “oh NO!”s started just after the opening credits, and progressed in volume and pitch until there were times when only the dog could hear him. There were even a few times when he turned around on my lap and clung onto me for dear life. He was so vocal in fact, that Keith would look down the corridor from the kitchen to laugh at the melodrama being played out on the sofa.

The primary cause of the hysteria?

For those of you thinking “well of course he was scared of a bloody great tusked predator” yeah I know, I should have caught that one. Except it wasn’t just Ice Age that caused a problem, I had an IM from Keith today with a film related update:

Stuck Toy Story 3 on while I made pancakes.

calls of 'Oh NO!' came from the lounge

I came to see what was up

it was the bit where the kids enter the nursery and start misplaying with all the toys

oh if only he knew the irony of his remark!!

Irony indeed my boy, irony indeed.

So now I’m caught in something of a parenting quandary.

There has been a progressive shift in children’s films in the last few decades to move towards a genre that appeals to both children and adults, but I wonder if that has meant that very small children are now left at a disadvantage? I’m not talking about violence, because even from the advent of the genre Bambie’s mother was shot and that bloody scary evil step mother witchy person poisoned Snow White. I’m talking about the pace and intensity of the films which, when combined with violence is just too much for a toddler like Alfie.

I’m not sure I want to desensitise my son to violence by dressing it up in a cartoon wrapper, but then neither do I want to pretend that violence doesn’t exist. Does “age appropriate” come from keeping him in a space where he is already comfortable, or does it come from showing him the outer edges of that space and encouraging him to expand his view of the world?

And isn’t it curious that I find the question of films harder to answer than whether I should allow my son to see a dead cat?

I think the difference for me is about the window dressing that comes with any cartoon. I am absolutely set in my mind that Alfie not be prevented from knowing the truth that all living things die, and that he should be allowed to see them when appropriate. Real life isn’t like a cartoon though, there is no dramatic music, no schmaltz or personification or emotional blackmail deliberately designed to raise our emotion to a fever pitch.

When Alfie saw that dead cat he was sad for all the intuitive and natural reasons that one should be sad at the passing of an animal – he showed natural compassion. He didn’t need to see a flashback to missus cat and all the kittens at home waiting for papa cat to return, he wasn’t under the impression that the cat had died doing anything heroic, and there was no dramatic music designed to make him shed a tear.

I feel more comfortable with that somehow.

When Alfie shrinks in horror at personified toys being ripped apart by cartoon toddlers I wonder if it might be a good way for him to appreciate the viewpoint of something that has no voice and yet that in itself is completely ridiculous: I want Alfie to stop throwing his toys around because he doesn’t want them to get broken, or to hurt anyone around him, not because he thinks he might be causing them pain!!

But that’s the thing about Disney, people like me who have grown up with it from a very young age have no qualms in accepting that a car can learn how to be a “good winner” or that toys can create a strong community. I have witnessed a lifetime of fantasy portrayed as reality and my mind is completely comfortable with that weird duality where I simultaneously know something is complete fantasy but yet happily suspend reality to immerse myself in the story.

I’m sure as a vaguely sane adult that does me no harm at all – I’m just not so sure I can say the same for my son.