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November 30th, 2009
03:47 pm - In amongst...
all the other insane activity that December brings we now have the added bonus of a hilarious toddler in tow, witnessing everything for the first time. This is absolutely joyous but, as we discovered yesterday, can also be Toddlergeddon.
We took her to Toys R Us. Yes, we are fucking mental.
She ran in with her arms flung wide taking in the floor-to-ceiling wonder of it all. We laughed at her gorgeous little expression. We weren't laughing for long, oh no.
Toys R Us has been specifically put together to induce heightened emotional states in children. Even the most placid of nippers turns into a possessed devil-child when confronted with a room bigger than they have ever experienced FILLED WITH COLOURFUL SHIT. It's awful.
Thankfully, Mimi's tantrum was over a ball ("boool! Booooooooooool! Pleeeeeese?") and then shortly after because she wanted to run around. There were lots of bigger children whizzing around on trikes etc and it was a bit dangerous. But what's danger to a child in pursuit of brightly coloured plastic?
In the end we just picked her up (little legs going like the clappers, teeth gritted) and removed her from the store. And within moniutes she was back to her normal happy little self.
Toys R Us is the enemy.
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November 19th, 2009
03:37 pm - It's a rare moment...
that sees me with time available to update my journal. I need to do this more often - mainly so that I can remember the literally masses of cool things my gorgeous daughter subjects us to.
She climbs!
On things, in things, over things. She is a one-toddler accident waiting to happen. She has sustained MANY more 'ouches' since her trip to the hospital and clearly has inherited her mothers poise and grace.
She eats!
With a fork, with fingers, with chopsticks, with gusto! Cor, she don't half like food. And bless her heart, despite not liking EVERYTHING (who does?), shes willing to give everything a try.
She jabbers!
Continuously, at length, to anyone. Her repertoire of words is getting ridiculous. From 'Mimi Pickcha!' to 'Pretty lellow caaaah!' and just about everything in between. Her current favourite word is 'Sawreee'. This is my fault. She had a rotten cold the other week and I felt guilty every time I had to wipe her nose because it was getting so sore, so I said 'sorry darling'. Lo and behold! Every other bloody word is 'sawree'. And to add extra hearty lashings of unneccessary guilt, she does the sign for it too! Making a little circle around her heart with her stubby fist.
She sings!
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Baa Baa Black Sheep (to the tune of twinkle Twinkle)
Wind the Bobbin Up
Ha Ha Ha, He He He...
Home Home, Time To Go Home
And her adaptation on an old favourite: 'Pretty Bells! Pretty Bells!'. She refuses to believe that it could possibly be 'Jingle Bells'. Stubborn little monkey.
In other news: Work is chaos. Due to a liberal blanket of family illness, the masses of work entailed in Art on the Street and other commitments, we are only just putting out our Christmas stock and getting our Christmas window ready. Given that we are normally prepapring for this in September, it's all a bit rushed and scary. This year the theme is The Nightmare Before Christmas. We've put it off and put it off because in previous years we wanted to win the annual Christmas Window Competition and didn't want to take any risks. However, we won last year so we can do what the hell we want! Hurrah! It all ties in beautifully with Tim Burton's new exhibition at MOMA in NYC. Hopefully we'll have photos to follow.
Right, madam is due to wake up at any minute and I still haven't done the work I intended to do for AotS, so best crack on!
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October 30th, 2009
10:13 am - Hello Journal...
it's been a while. I'm such a busy bee right now that free time to 'do stuff' is in short supply, so I'm taking advantage of Mimi playing with her new steering wheel ("BEEEEP!! BEEEP!! GOGOGOOOOOOOO!!") to spend five minutes or so updating the world at large on the events of my boring life.
Well, Mimi has done her first stopovers at Grandparents, which is enormously liberating for C and I as a couple. Lie-ins are just so good. I'd actually forgotton how good. In fact, the lie-in is actually far far better than the night out beforehand! I'm such an old fart.
Talking of being an old fart, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) queen_moonshine and I headed off to Breezy Cosmopolitan Brighton this week to see Dizzee Rascal! I KNOW! This departure from the usual was a breath of fresh (sea) air and we had a hoot. Dizzee was aces, obv. Emily had a brief moment of obsession with a rather bouncy chap called, endearingly, 'Smurfie Psycho'. He did a song about Coca Cola, which is about as much as I can remember of his set as I was busily scanning the room for the presence of someone older than me. Thankfully, it seemed that a group of schoolteachers were having a night out. After spotting their display of inappropriate parent-dancing I felt a lot more relaxed about jumping about a bit. Incidentally, the Brighton Dome looks like the set of Strictly Come Dancing and is a bit of a weird environment for Dizzee. And me too in fact. I feel slightly bizarre about watching a gig in a venue where my feet don't stick to the floor and middle-aged men try to chat to you in the coat queue. Eeeek.
In other, glorious news - I am on the committee dedicated to bringing fine art to Maidenhead High Street! We're hosting an outdoor art market on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th December. It's a whirl of logistics, organisation and PR, but we hope it's going to be a big success. It'd better be, given the hours we're all putting in for the cause!
Signing off now. Promise to be a bit more communicative!
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October 8th, 2009
03:29 pm - Doing too much?
I sometimes wonder how I manage to cram it all in.
I work four days a week, am a mum to an exhausting whirlwind of a toddler - looking after her all day for four days a week, keep on top of the household chores, take Mimi to two toddler classes a week (three this week), keep various playdates and I've just become a committee member for the first outdoor art market in Maidenhead.
To top this all off, I don't drive. Therefore I am (often literally) running from one place to another pretty much all the time. Tomorrow, for example;
7am: Up - tea for Clyde, Morning Milk for Mimi
7.30am: Bath & get ready (me)
8am: Bath and get ready (Clyde & Mimi)
8.30am: Make Mimi her breakfast. Mum usually pops over for coffee.
9am: Leave the house for work
9.30am: Start work, do banking & wages (Mimi in tow).
11am: Leave the office to take Mimi to Sing & Sign
12.15: Leave Sing & Sign, return to work, feed Mimi her lunch and recommence work
2.30 to 3pm: Leave work, head to supermarket (often) then walk up the hill home
3-3.30pm: Get home, Clear up house, attempt to get Mimi to nap, think about her dinner.
5pm: Make Mimi's dinner
5.30pm: Mimi eats dinner
6pm: Bedtime hour commences - quieten down house, put cushions down in living room for Mimi to cuddle up on.
6.20pm: Pjyama time
6.45pm: Bedtime Milk
7pm: Bedtime for Mimi.
Today we went to a baby gym with Sam & Cameron. When we returned home Mimi was utterly utterly exhausted. After lunch I attempted for nearly two hours ot get her to sleep, but to no avail. One one side we had morons drilling and on the other side DEVIL CHILD was being his usual evil self and screaming blue murder. She spent the whole time JUST about to drop off then being woken up and crying. She's so tired. So, as much as she's alright now, come 5pm she's going to be a miserable little nightmare. Great.
I need a break.
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October 5th, 2009
10:33 am - Good Morning Internets!
I woke up this morning thinking that I'd made some awful alarm clock faux pas, as it was pitch black and the street lights were still on outside, but no. It seems that Autumn/Winter is officially upon us. Hurrah!
I bloody love Winter, but this semi-darkness thing that we are currently experiencing is going to take a bit of getting used to. My preference is for cold, crisp and bright. Not warm, damp and dark. I am not a mushroom.
Anyway, this freak phenomenon aside, I am a bloody tired girl today. I stayed up a bit late last night and spent all day yesterday racing around after our Mini-Speedster. She is like a toddling Usain Bolt - blink and she's shot off to another potential danger zone at high speed. Exhausting.
Saturday was an exercise in crisis management, whereby Clyde had to work all day and my Mum had to spend the day with her leg in the air due to a vile infection in her toe. So C dropped Mimi and I off at the shop at half eight where I executed a marvel of multi-tasking by giving Mimi her breakfast AND attempting to set up for our arm of The Big Draw. A couple of hours of staunchly refusing to nap later and Mimi was whisked off to Cliveden by her Obachan and Ojichan. The rest of the day was mayhem. We took far more money than is usual for a Saturday and managed to harangue people into 'getting their sketch on'. Mimi was delivered back to me at 5pm, insane with tiredness and desperate for a bit of Cbeebies. By the time Clyde collected us from work the pair of us were hallucinating with tiredness and Mimi was physically assaulting balloons left, right and centre.
I need to go to the bank, but now it's pissing down with rain. I also need to go to the gym, but suspect that I might fall asleep on the crosstrainer, causing all manner of health and safety nightmares.
I must do a Romilly update post soon. She's doing all kinds of cool stuff and her vocabukary is mad. We often hear her singing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' through the intercom and she has an almost obsessional love of handbags. Yesterday she bumped into a wall because she had a colander on her head and couldn't see where she was going. Gorgeous little nutter.
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September 21st, 2009
03:19 pm - Romilly's Big Ouch & The Fear Of Scrutiny...
On Friday morning our usual hassled routine was underway - bathing, dressing, breakfasting etc prior to heading out for a few hours in the office where Mimi hares around like the little cutie she is and I do my weekly paperwork, daily banking etc.
Except this Friday we didn't make it in.
Background: Mimi loves the step down to our kitchen and often sits on it watching the world go by. She does this adorable reverse-shuffle in order to position her little bottom in the right spot.
On Friday morning I was stood in the kitchen and mum was stood by the back door watching her do her cute little shuffle and plonk herself down to eat a little bit of sausage that she had clutched in her hand. After a minute of sitting down she saw something that she wanted and stood up to head for it. However, her new and very grippy little shoes stayed where they were while the rest of her body, quick as a flash, propelled into the corner of the kitchen unit head first.
The thud was sickening. I screamed and grabbed her, holding her to my chest as tight as I could while she screamed and screamed with pain and fear. I grabbed the phone and dialled for an ambulance. I couldn't hear what they were saying, so my mum took Romilly. As she pulled her away from me I saw her head and screamed. Her whole forehead was swollen and purple. The scream must have done the trick because an ambulance arrived in under four minutes. When the paramedic assessed her she seemed to calm down a little, but was still semi-hyperventilating. He seemed to think she was fine. I asked him what he would do if it was his daughter and he said 'I'd keep her at home and see how she is'. I disagreed and we got in the ambulance. This was very fortunate, as she started to ramble in the ambulance and was pointing at things that weren't there. The paramedic then began to take my concerns seriously and I held her tightly, stroked her head and sang to her as we rushed to hospital. we were checked in to see a paediatrician asap.
At the hospital she regained her senses somewhat and was, albeit very wobbly, attempting to have a bit of a play in the waiting area. Clyde arrived while we were there and we were eventually transferred to the Assessment Unit. Her temperature was taken, she was weighed and her breathing checked again. This is where it all got a bit intimidating. Up to this point she had been seen and assessed by the admissions nurse and paramedic. From hereon she was examined and I was questioned by two further nurses and three doctors under the observation of an absent consultant who was kept informed along the way. I was asked the same questions again and again.
"What time did this happen?"
"Exactly what did she bump into?"
"Was she knocked out?"
"Has she had any previous stays in hospital?"
"Is she under consultant care for any illness?"
"What time did this happen again?"
I knew what they were doing. It was a gentle, but persistent cross-examination. We were deliberately placed in an area of the ward where we could be watched closely. Romilly was examined from head to toe - even down to the removal of her nappy. All the time my poor little baby was just confused and upset. She didn't want to be pulled about, she just wanted a cuddle and to play with the toys the nurses had given her. She managed to get a decent sleep on my lap at one point, which helped a great deal. The examinations she particularly disliked were when the pressed against her head (which must've hurt like mad, poor little sausage) and having her throat looked at. She wasn't a big fan of the main doctor who was treating her, but she was very enamoured with a tall blonde doctor called Angus and shook his finger 'hello' and gave him a special beaming smile.
Eventually she was given the all-clear by the consultant who 'felt confident that the injuries were consistent with the reported accident' (or similar wording). This just made me feel rather annoyed. Not 'Romilly is showing only superficial injury and will probably just be very bruised and a bit cranky, so we think it's safe to go home'. I completely understand that when a child is admitted to A&E with an injury that it has to be taken seriously (more so now than ever, given the Baby P case), but it seemed that in amongst all the assessment and observation that Romilly's actual well-being at the time was being forgotten about. The doctor that Romilly disliked had a bit of a brusque bedside manner, granted, but was it really necessary to say 'I'll discuss this with you later' to his colleague in front of us, thereby making us feel like something was really wrong? And why did no-one want to see her Red Book even when I offered?
I dunno, I'm probably reading too much into it, but what i do know is that C and I went home exhausted from it all. The fear and stress of your baby in pain is absolutely the worst feeling in the whole world without the fear and stress of being scrutinised as well (The whole time I just kept thinking about that couple who had their children taken away from them and were adopted by another couple, but even when it was finally proven that the parents had done nothing wrong their children had been adopted and they had no legal leg to stand on and coupldn't get their children back). I guess on the whole I'm glad that they are so thorough, but equally mistakes do happen. Probably better to scare and offend me with their procedure and actually manage to save a baby with it in another case. My short-term discomfort was for the greater good.
Whenever I remember her topple I feel so sick that I just have to scoop her up and kiss her all over her gorgeous little head. She's so precious and perfect. I'm sure she'll have lots of bumps and ouches in her life, but I can only hope they are few and far between and that Clyde and I are always there to patch her up and kiss her better.
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September 10th, 2009
07:27 pm - A week of weird and wonderful...
I'm not kidding, it's been bizarre.
Starting with the small stuff:
Two men keep popping up wherever I go. One is a rather round continental European who dresses rather too smartly and too continentally for Maidenhead High Street on a Wednesday afternoon. The other is a very bedraggled looking man who is permanently clutching a can of strong cider. They are outside the bank, outside the gym, hanging around the doorway of Boots and (most scarily) sitting on the benches near the shop. It is perturbing.
Mimi has discovered that calling people 'pretty' when they are miserable makes them smile. So far today it has worked with a bank employee and a girl in a shoe shop. She was also chased by a cat today.
I opened a fortune cookie and was informed that I was due a windfall. Still waiting for that one, but it was a nice way to help me digest my Hong Kong chicken.
I removed the phone from my daughters clutches to discover that she was having a lovely chat with her Granny. The keypads are now locked on all the phones.
Following a truly mental 45 minutes of cameras, sound people and terrified contestants running around the shop, I find that I will be on prime time BBC1 next year. The whole experience flew by and now I am left with a terror of being cut to look like a complete moron. If that bastard Chiles takes the piss out of me, I will personally seek him out and throttle him.
On Saturday the Mini Mental will be doing her first overnight stay away from home. Granny B is on duty and I am both nervous and excited. Not about having a late night out, you understand, but about having a lie-in. A PROPER LIE-IN. OMG! *bliss*
I have acquired a step machine. It is a beast. It is also the most monumentally exhausting exercise I have ever done. It makes my going-like-the-clappers on the cross trainer seem like a stroll in the park.
Next week I am meeting up with an old school friend who I haven't seen in EIGHTEEN YEARS, thanks to the wonder of Facebook. She has a daughter a bit older than Mimi and I'm hoping we will all get on like a house on fire.
See? It's all been happening!!
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September 3rd, 2009
10:06 am - MMR Mimi...
Poor Mimi.
She had her MMR with no problems, but now the side effects have kicked in royally and she has been a very unhappy girl. First of all she had a high temperature, then she went off her food. We took her to the doctors who reassured us that she was fine and didn't have anything horrible. This was followed by a measles rash on her back, tummy, legs and finally, face. She started to pick up yesterday morning, but this temporary reprieve was quickly followed by another increase in temperature and...tadah! A swollen face.
Apparently one on ten children develop a mild form of measles about ten days after the MMR. One in fifty go on to develop a mild form of mumps. The rare one is a reaction to the rubella vaccination. We're still playing the waiting game on that one.
I know all the scandals and scares surrounding the MMR vaccination and I can honestly say we came very close to not allowing her to have it. And when she looks at me with big wide ill-eyes, dark rings underneath them and her little swollen jaw I seriously wonder whether we have done the right thing. I have to keep reminding myself that this is the lesser of evils.
Children used to die of measles. Not to mention the children who suffered brain damage, deafness and assorted other horrible fates from the disease. According to the NHS, no children have died from acute measles since 1992. So basically, what I'm saying is, we've done the right thing whether we like it or not. And I shall try to fight my guilty feelings by cuddling my beautiful daughter and reassuring her that she WILL feel better soon...
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August 27th, 2009
12:10 pm - Count Your Blessings...
Life trundles along its merry way and I often consider the smooth-natured running of our quiet lives to be too good to be true. We have the most glorious happy, healthy little toddler, a beautiful home and are happy and comfortable.
I've been giving this some thought ever since Mimi had her MMR last week. She had to have it in hospital under observation due to her previous nasty vaccination reaction. Thankfully she had no problems this time (didn't even notice the injection, due to the wonderfully skilled nurses who attended her) and was racing around the ward like a mini-mental within half an hour.
While we were there, one of girls from Sing & Sign turned up in the assessment unit with her brood. I know them well enough, having attended two terms of classes with them, so we had a bit of a chat. It transpires that their daughter was diagnosed with a genetic liver disease and has been in hospital in London for the best part of the Summer and that she'll possibly have to have a liver transplant. As it is a genetic disorder, the rest of the family are mow being tested and there's a possibility that her other children could have the same condition. Poor poor family. They were really positive about everything though and such a lovely family to boot.
The whole experience made me thank my lucky stars and scoop Romilly up for a big dose of extra special hugs and kisses. After giving me the briefest of pecks She promptly wriggled like a worm and demanded 'down!'. After all, there's lots of exploring and racing around to do and plenty of time for hugs later, eh Mimi?
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August 18th, 2009
10:51 am - Home again, home again...
Romilly LOVED the sea. Almost, in fact, as much as she loved the colossal amount of fish that she consumed during our four day trip to the seaside.
We stayed in an ace little cottage not too far from the harbour that Mimi took to with no problems at all. It seems that when it hits 7pm she will sleep and doesn't care a jot where she lays her head as long as she has her 'duddy' (dummy. Yes I know and I hate it), 'usaaaaaagisan' (Usagi-san - Mr Rabbit) and a selection of well cuddled muslin clothes to fashion into a snug little pillow. Funny child.
Our week basically consisted of relaxing, pootling about a bit, visiting places and most importantly EATING! We found an utterly lovely little italian café that had tables in the kitchen, so it felt like you were at someones house. It was chatty and bustled and we loved it. Mimi ate antipasto and olive bread then spent the rest of the time charming everyone around her (a theme for the whole break tbh).
It was nice to come home though. Weirdly enough, I was struggling to come to terms with the fact that Dream House was our home. It only really sank in when we were away from it for a few days. As soon as we opened the front door it felt right. And then our beastly daughter set about demolishing the tidy, peaceful house with an explosion of toys, crackers and discoveries from various cupboards, bags, nooks and crannies. Welcome home dear...
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