What Would Little Z Do?

Jan4

In the beginning (I mean, when Little Z was a baby), I realised I’d somehow developed the worry of what felt like a million mothers rolled into one. I went from being a fairly relaxed human being to become a hand wringing stress head that would worry to the extreme at every turn in his little life. Like leaving him for the first time whilst we travelled a 10 whole miles to a shopping centre, to spend time together as a couple. I did reasonably well. 3 hours and 3 calls is not bad for the first time you leave your baby in someone else’s hands.

Or like when he went through the first surge of separation anxiety (how many of these are there by the way? It seems there are multiple. Why?!). He spent about 2 weeks attached to my hip and wouldn’t go near any adult he hadn’t seen for over 24 hours. I know now that this was a phase. But at the time, my mad mother worrying logic calculated the following:

Baby is nervous around adults and also children, which means baby doesn’t like people, which means he isn’t going to have many friends, which means he’ll be by himself in the school playground and could be picked on and bullied.
Oh my God.

Cue making a mental note to enrol him into karate classes so at least he could defend himself when he got older.

I’m pleased to say I still haven’t enrolled him. And if I now do, it’ll be because I want him to enjoy a sporting activity rather than learn to beat other children up like some kind of mini Bruce Lee.

These days I am slightly less worried about Little Z and will gladly leave him at the grandparents and run like hell to the nearest restaurant or shopping centre (I am joking, obviously). I’ve accepted the mad mother high worry levels post baby are here to stay for, probably, forever but I know I’ve relaxed a bit and mostly have a grip on them. I realised this during a slightly surreal conversation with the OH over the blissful lazy Christmas and New Year holiday period.

Our conversation placed Little Z in various hypothetical situations that we’d either spotted on telly or seen in the news.

(I have to stress here, we hadn’t left the house for a few days and all thought processes were descending into the slightly bizarre)

Have you seen the secret of Crickley Hall? Its a supernatural drama about the deranged ghost of a headmaster. There is a scene in it where he actually leans over the sleeping face of a woman and whispers that the children are “mine” in such an eery way i nearly switched it off that instant.

This would just be a red rag to Little Z though. God forbid anyone utters the word “mine!” and he will instantly let you know who is the real owner of, well, the item in question is not important. It is ALWAYS his. The message is usually enforced with a full on tantrum and swift swipe of said item in question. That mansion wouldn’t need any kind of exorcism. It just needs a Little Z type toddler to go in and declare who is in possession of anything here. Oh, and that cane is his too, thank you very much.

Second scenario to be discussed was if an eagle attempted to swipe him away (after having watched a supposed real video of an eagle doing something similar in Canada).

Now Little Z is not as fat or heavy as the toddler in the video but we know he’d be fine as he would utilise his new found weapon of choice. Biting.
Where did this come from? And why am I the prime target. He seems to like doing it in the midst of being excited mainly, and will want to dig his teeth into my arm or leg, whichever happens to be in closest proximity. There’s been a few surprised screams on my part over the last week or so. At the moment he thinks it’s hilarious. That eagle would have no chance.

There were a couple more including the boring and important one that was too scary for me to acknowledge just yet. How will Little Z cope in nursery? I know I need to put his name down soon and I know it will be ok. He’s now fairly sociable and will either hover around shyly or, if he’s feeling brave, actually run to within someone else’s comfort zone and declare a big “Hello!” then grin expectedly.

So yes! I know worry less about some things (such as eagles/ wildlife/ ghostly apparitions swiping him away) and worry more about nurseries and letting him out into the big bad world. I think this is definitely progress.

Being Superheroes

Nov12

Recently I keep coming across things that make out parents are in fact superheroes. Juggling family life with with long hours of work as well as raising children and spending hours driving around from club to club dropping off and picking up from their after school obligations. Heroes with invisible capes. With no ability to fly but with powers to juggle and organise and throw a party together in an instant and, mostly, to do it all without much sleep.

It got me wondering about the kind of superheroes we have in our little family of 3. Then it came to me. We would be the Avengers. It’s obvious when you think about it. Really.

First, The Other Half. With his assertion first thing in the morning of “YOU’VE GOT ONE MINUTE!!!” to get us all out of the door for work on time he would have the entire street, understandably, mistakenly believing we are all part of a critical world saving mission. And sporting his one red eye from “a suspected scratch on the cornea” he is only an eye patch and long leather jacket away (oh, and bald head) from being Nick Fury. The leader of the Avengers.

Next you have the toddler. Little Z. With his ever growing defiance and fear of nothing he could only be Tony Stark / Iron Man. His stunts include repeatedly trying to jump off anything with a good height and any kind of berating induces either a fit of toddler anger or just determination to do it again. He prefers not to wear the iron man suit though. Opting instead to do all his own stunts as Tony Stark.

(I know this post is about parent superheroes but he is Tony Stark. He doesn’t care about rules).

And finally me. With my powers of shouting at the other half and stomping around grumpily at everyone over the last week (“You said you’d clean the bathroom!!!”), I instantly rule myself out of being the black widow. Damn. With my stomping, phantom increasing blood pressure, and inability to touch my toes, I fit one of the other Avengers to a tee…

Our poor neighbours.

Maybe next week we will be less superhero and more 1900s silent movie.

(All photo credits to IMDB)

Dearest 20 Month Old

Aug27

Hello My Little Man,

I actually had to count how old you were before writing this post because I’m still very much in denial and telling everyone you are “One and a Half”. Can you believe you’ll be 2 years old in 4 months time?!

It’s been a completely mad month for us all. Both your Daddy and I have been fasting all month and then it was eid. I have to admit I was worried how I’d cope now that you run like the wind and play all day (on top of work) but it wasn’t too bad! You’ve loved trying new foods and we’ve discovered you actually like spicy things like kebabs and Bombay mix!

You’re now counting to 10 and your favourite numbers are “WEWEN!” (7) and “TEN!!” and over the last couple of weeks you’ve turned into a little parrot repeating everything, even stuff you’re not meant to. Umm.. Like “Oh Gok!” (Oh God).

This month you’ve also discovered your love of slides. But you’d rather climb up them till you’re almost at the top. Then you fling yourself back down on your belly and come sliding down. Like a cross between a toddler stunt man and James Bond. I, on the other hand, have honed my panicked shrieks of “Noooo!” quite well. When it’s not the slide you’re climbing it’s the sofa, the radiator or the baby gate. You did try to climb up the living room door once but settled for hanging off the door handles. Its kind of broken now. I’m convinced that one day we’ll find you scaling the house or trying to shimmy up the drain pipe just so you have something to climb!

You still absolutely love running and you do it with utter commitment. Like a true athlete you concentrate on your run and only your run. No looking right or left. In your case you don’t even look forward. The other day in Trafford centre was interesting when you kept running straight into people’s legs. That didn’t put you off though. Till you wanted a bit of a break of course and wanted Daddy to carry you.

One of the funniest things you’ve learnt this month is how to “freeze” during the “Show Me Show Me your groovy moves” dance. You wiggle your bum and then suddenly freeze at the right time with your hands by your face and mouth wide open. Then you clap with delight once it’s over. I may be guilty of rewinding it multiple times just to watch you keep doing it.

And we finally went to see In the Night Garden!! It was absolutely brilliant. You joined in with every dance and clapped at everything. You even managed to sit still through at least half of it which was really impressive. You were in complete awe when we met Iggle Piggle afterwards and, whilst you wouldn’t hug him, you kept wanting to touch him and play with him. I was in complete awe too and it was almost like meeting Tom Cruise all those many years ago. Almost.

Until next time baby… Mmmmwaaah!

11 Months… And Counting!

Nov22

Hello My Cheeky Little Monkey

And so it is, you are 11 months old. How the hell did that happen? Actually, I’m going to be saying that every months aren’t I?

So it FINALLY happened!! You have teeth. TWO of them! I wrote this last month whining about how you had 0 and then it suddenly just came out of the blue the next week. I’d been looking out for your top two teeth for so long it took me totally by surprise when you bit me one day and I realised one had popped up on your bottom gum. Typical!

So what else has been happening?

Well, you are currently screaming “TaaaaaTaaaaa” repeatedly. You’ve been doing it for days and days and yesterday I went to bed with it echoing in my head!

You’re also learning the art of efficiency. So, somedays, instead of picking things up and putting them in your mouth you worked out it would be far easier to place your mouth directly onto the food. I’ve also caught you doing the same thing with your milk bottle. Why place it to your mouth when you can lift your entire body and place your mouth over the bottle? Hmmm.

The weather forecast excites you to bits. Completely on par with Iggle Piggle. I just don’t get it, but you’ll shout happily and even clap through the while thing. You love it do much we’ve recorded one so you can watch it before you go to bed.

And you know that baby boy down the road, the one that can do everything? You met him for the first time the other day and instantly held your hand out to touch his face (you like doing that!). He was a bit shy and frowned back. I don’t think he felt ready to have his face scratched by you just yet. But I’m sure it’ll come, in time. He is very cute, very round and his eyes light up whenever he sees a bird.

We’ve also started planning your first birthday party! Two of them. When I say planning, I mean I keep texting your daddy with various “menus” and “what do you think if?” type things. He usually replies with “can we not just buy lots of pizza?”. It’s still a work in progress but I’ll definitely buy balloons because I know you love them.

I better go, you’re trying to repeatedly share your dummy with me. Its a lovely thought but tis a bit gross baby.

So, until next time. Mmwah!!

Emerging from the Baby Fog

Nov18

I’ve recently noticed a few things that have made me believe I may be finally emerging from the baby fog. I mean, for one thing, I am starting to remember exactly what i was talking about 30 seconds previously. This is just amazing. A massive achievement for me. I was getting so sick of forgetting what I was talking about midway through a sentence that I was starting to give up finishing a conversation. I’m not sure my hubby actually noticed me say “oh, forget it!” countless times. But still. After the 10th time of forgetting what the hell you were talking about you kind of get a bit frustrated. As well as that, I think I *may* be finishing my time on the “emotional baby roller coaster of those first few months”. This bodes well for my husbands sanity and his bald patch. The poor guy has been at the receiving end of emotional outbursts for a few months now, as well as a lot of “I don’t know why I’m crying!”. I went through a phase of crying at everything. And I mean everything. Even hypothetical scenarios like “what will I do when my cousin gets married (to the guy she’s just started dating) and moves away and I won’t see her regularly!”. Or when I cried my eyes out when the vampire with the terrible British accent died after two episodes on Vampire Diaires. That was a bad one, from what I remember.

These little self discoveries clicked to me when I went round wedding dress shopping with my cousin last weekend. I watched her try on about 12 wedding dresses and I didn’t cry once! I’m hoping this proves my time on the emotional roller coaster is coming to an end. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think I am still a lot more emotional than I was before the baby. But I’m probably on the emotional tea cups now (I hope). A bit of nausea, a bit of boredom and a whole lot of spinning, but it makes a nice change from the extreme highs and lows of that emotional roller-coaster.

Mind you, a couple of strange things have happened recently. Last week I was trying to get to the cupboard under the stairs and went to step over the very visible laptop wire. Somehow, even with it in full view. I misjudged my footing, whilst looking at the wire, tripped over it and went flying solidly into the floorboards, banging my knee in the process.

Slightly worse still, and I’m still not sure how this happened, but, during our hunt for a wedding dress trip, I happened to be standing patiently outside the changing rooms waiting for my cousin to try on dress number 3. As I aimlessly glanced around the shop floor I noticed a woman who looked like she was focussed on finding something in particular. She looked familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on who she was. In her focussed hunting she wandered over to where I was standing, only noticing all the products on the shelves. Then I gasped with a sudden realisation, grabbed BOTH (yes, both) her hands and bellowed an emphatic “Hello!!!”. She was clearly terrified at being grabbed and in that same split second, jumped out of her skin and tried to save herself. She then realised who I was, raised her hand instantly to her chest, and relaxed. Slightly. She was my cousins Mother-In-Law-to-be. We’ve only ever met once before and the very excitable greeting was not one she looked that comfortable with. She was very pleasant for someone whose blood pressure had probably gone through the roof and as we were talking I felt more and more mortified at what I’d just done. She made her escape quite quickly and (thankfully) finished with “see you at the wedding”. Phew.

This better not be a new phase.

Twitter Mums

Sep29

It was really cold in November 2010 I was really heavily pregnant. I had 3 weeks till my due date and i was housebound because of the heavy snow. Insomnia had kicked in good and proper and I would spend most of my nights surfing the net on my phone, usually reading gossip, and occasionally the news.

At the time I used to use Twitter for mainly gossip and to see what the celebrities were upto. Once i’d flicked through the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry I’d move on back to Facebook and maybe even read the Daily Fail if I was desperate.

Then, one evening, I read a story in the papers about a girl who had very recently given birth to a baby boy and who had tweeted through most of her labour! Immediately, I went to have a nosey on Twitter and, sure enough, her timeline was filled with tweets about contractions, eating crumpets and about how cold it was outside (It’d been snowy and icy and sleety). I was about to have my own baby in a months time so I wanted to know everything about what labour was like. She made it sound quite easy and it put my mind to rest. I added her to my timeline (She was a celebrity after all!) and went about my way.

(She is called Rachael by the way… And on Twitter as @InceyWinceyMum)

Eventually I had a nosey at the people she followed and discovered something special. I’d found a whole community of online mums. Loads of them! Mums who had babies, mums who were due to have babies same time as me, mums with toddlers, working mums… It was like walking through a door to an undiscovered little treasure.

And there were blogs!! Blogs! I’d never really come across these before but people were actually blogging about their experiences of bringing up a baby, some about family life and others about topics like post natal depression. It became a very quick and very strong addiction. It couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I gave birth to my Baby Boy mid December via C section and the next few weeks were hard. I couldn’t drive for 6 weeks. I had a very new baby in my arms, I was totally knackered and tonnes of snow meant I couldn’t even go out for a walk. Not that I felt much like it but i felt a bit trapped at the same time as feeling my life had changed. Completely. I was responsible for a baby and I didn’t have the first idea of what to do.

Tweeting other mums during those first few weeks was an absolute saviour. Why was my baby throwing up so much? What was reflux? How could you control it? How the hell do you latch a baby on?… Other mums out there, in the same boat, provided helpful suggestions based on their own experiences and it helped me from freaking out or feeling like a failure.

The absolute best thing was having other mums on Twitter during night feeds. It made me realise how little people actually sleep, mums especially. And at a given point during the night there are a bunch of new mums awake doing a night feed. Most importantly, it kept me awake during the period when baby was feeding every 2 hours.

My Twitter feed is now more real life and less celebrity. I’d much rather know about baby clothes than the latest designer shoes!

Dear Baby – 9 months!

Sep29

Well baby, how the hell is this time flying by? You are now 9 months old and it’s getting closer and closer to my return to work… Arrrghh!!

Actually I shouldn’t moan too much. I think I’ll be able to go back part time, 2 or 3 days a week so that’ll be good!

So this month…

You absolutely love crawling up to the TV and then pressing all the buttons on the cable box. You weren’t too interested in the PS3 as its not got many pretty lights so, one day, you decided to just smack it furiously. All the lights came up, the CD popped out and your own eyes lit up. I’ve never seen your dad move so fast. (Hee hee!)

You love pulling hair. Repeatedly. Smacking faces comes a close second.

You have chosen a mentor. Your cousin; my niece. She only has to squeak and you are in fits of laughter. When she’s around you’ll only eat if she’s in eyesight. She very helpfully tries to encourage you by saying “Gug baby, eat!”. You oblige till she gets bored and wanders off to find a toy and then you’ll try to set yourself free from the highchair to follow her. So far, thankfully, you haven’t managed to escape!

You have discovered a love of strawberries that rivals your love of remote controls. You will knock a toys out of the way to get to one and, when eating one, it’s the most quiet I’ve even seen you!

After being banned from our bed after the “falling off the bed incident” we ended up sharing a king size at Grandmas house one night. Its pushed up against a wall so I was comfortable with it. My god can you fidget during the night!! It was like you were in the baby army forraging for something crucial. At regular intervals you’d commando shuffle then go back to sleep, wake again, shuffle some more, maybe change direction and back to sleep. Occasionally you’d kick me in the head or stomach. Suffice to say I didn’t sleep all night and went and bought a travel cot the next day. The bed ban stays in place!

No teeth… Still! Apparently it can take up to 18 months. That’s a lot of teething pain. Ouch

Until next time baby! Mwah!

Long Distance Peekaboo-ing

Sep16

This time last week we were on our way to our first long distance trip with Baby Boy. It was only to Center Parcs but at 5 hours it was going to be a fairly long trip with a baby in tow.

Our cunning master plan was to keep baby very awake during the morning and try to get him to forsake his morning nap. This would obviously (hmm) mean that baby would then drop off the minute we set off and sleep a good couple of hours. We would then stop for a break, feed baby, have a good play for an hour and then set off again. This would obviously (hmm) mean baby would then play peacefully in the back and eventually drop off again. Our secret weapon (the iPad with In the Night Garden on it), would be pulled out should we need it. Easy peasy!

The execution of our plan was delayed from the outset. Mainly due to trying to cram 300 loaves of various bread and breakfast foods into the boot of the car without squishing anything. You can read more about why we actually had 300 loaves in one of my previous posts.

It took about an hour to finally get clothes AND baked goods into the car and the boot shut. Once we’d loaded the rest of our baked goods and clothes into pockets of free space in the car and shimmied our way to our seats we were ready to go. Baby Boy also looked like he was ready for a long nap. So far so good! What Baby Boy didn’t tell us was that he’d decided to only have a power nap on this particular day.

About 30 minutes into our journey Baby Boy woke up, bright eyed and full of energy, and wanting a playmate. My own secret hopes for a two hour nap went the same way as baby’s nap.

The next few hours were spent like this:

Trying to entertain a baby with a string of toys. This lasted about 5 minutes each before they were (usually) chucked out the seat on the other side. Where I can’t reach

Trying to get baby to watch Iggle Piggle on the iPad. This had to be abandoned quite early when baby found it was much more fun to kick the iPad instead.

Playing Peekaboo for one whole hour. This was actually a lot of fun for half an hour when Baby Boy discovered he could do it himself. By the end of the hour I felt a bit hoarse.

Trying to feed baby in a moving car. This inevitably means food will go all over the carseat, seats of the car, on Baby Boys clothes and on himself. He fed well though. Success!

Realising I hadn’t packed a spare top for baby in my changing bag and everything was packed away in the boot, barricaded by 300 loaves of bread.

Stopping at a service stop with a baby (delighted at being freed and screaming this to any passer by) covered in food. We decided he may as well stay in them for the remainder of journey as the thought of unpacking 300 loaves wasn’t too appealing.

Watching the overtired but utterly excited baby eventually have a small nap and arriving at Center Parcs with a huge sigh of relief; we’d made it!!

Laughing at the other half when he said “I’ll never judge a parent again by the state of their baby”.

The journey back was smoother somehow. Probably because Baby Boy slept most of the journey!