Keeping busy

I went to a stress management course a few years ago and determined that on one hand, it is important for each of us to accept and acknowledge all the many and varied strings to our bows that we attempt to pluck/strum/fiddle with simultaneously and therefore accept how very busy and clever we are to remain standing at the same time… On the other hand, though, I was shown how important it is to my sanity and sense of self to create a veritable cacophony with all the many and various strings I keep taut at any one time… Perhaps as long as you’re able to acknowledge all that you’re playing you will be more likely to hear whether you’re creating a tune or a ear-bleeder…

Right, that’s enough of that metaphor. Suffice to say, at the moment I’m torn between attempting to do nothing but be at one with my child and getting fun things done in order to make me feel that each day has been well spent.

It doesn’t help that the Boy is currently on nights and so I’ll be with the Tilster 24 hours a day until Friday lunchtime. To add insult to injury, on Saturday I will be co-hosting a table at a local craft fair and so perhaps, this week, I will attempt to focus on two tasks alone.

Being at ONE with a short-tempered and short-attention-spanned baby and MAKING STUFF in order to be able to hold my head high and my table FULL come the weekend.

Busy but focussed but chilled but happy but not over-stretched and not over-tired and not over-wraught…

AND NOT BLUE.

In theory… 

Images of recent busy-ness – Nigella’s Black and White tart and a Tea Mitten Cosy for a gorgeous friend’s birthday pressie.

Blue and bells

Spring is a funny thing. You wait all winter for the longer evenings, for the glimmer of sunlight that lengthens the days, for the signs and symbols that there is light and life beyond 3pm, for the chance to venture out without layers upon layers of woollen rigmarole…

I recall being sent to bed on a school night while the daylight remained strong, listening to the shrieks and delighted chattering of others who still enjoyed the sunshine. I recall vowing that when I was a ‘grownup’ I would savour those evenings and make sure that I would not waste the long days.

Now, though, the days seem to go on too long. The early nights that I yearn for are blighted by the bright light in our south-facing bedroom. The teething Tilly who moans and shrieks by day sleeps fitfully at night and her parents are left as broken shells who cannot speak, let alone frolick and play in the sunshine,. The 6pm watershed that marks the moment that the bottle of wine can be opened is, all too often, long in coming and bitter when it does arrive.

I am feeling blue.

And today, the memory of a beautiful weekend walk in the wooods is succeeding in keeping me a slightly brighter lavender blue rather than a bluey-grey.

Mobility Issues

Hmmm…. I am reminded of the Friends episode (The One with the Stain) where Joey tries to convince Rachel that there is enough room in his apartment for the baby after it’s born:

No room? It’s a baby. It’s like this big. (Holds his hands about a foot apart.) Y’know, I mean you-you could you could put it over here. (A desk.) Or-or-or we could put it right here. (The chair.) Aw, it’s cute, right? Or-or we could put it over here. (By the bathroom door.) You wouldn’t even notice it. Where’s the baby? (Mumbles that it’s over in the corner.)

For the first five months of her life, Tilly was that (holds hands about a foot apart). If I left the room, she would be where I had left her, which, on more than one occasion, was the kitchen table, the bed, the rug and propped in the corner of the sofa cushions…

We travelled to Washington DC last week to visit the Sis who departed there before Christmas and thus had not met the Tilster.

Tils was a model baby, despite jetlag and so much sightseeing activity, and the Sis is besotted.

So far, so soppy.

However, the one glitch in the plan was her sudden success at movement. My child is now a spinning top and cannot be left anywhere. Name a surface and I can guarantee you it will not be safe. The bed? No – she has [nearly] fallen from there to the floor… The floor? No – there are a myriad of dangers and perils awaiting the speedy steamroller including walls, tables, chairs, sofas and even soft toys, which interrupt her intended trajectory and send her speeding into said dangers even if she –and I- had thought she was going to avoid them.

Thankfully, the bedding plan worked for the duration of the week (strategically piled towels, a rolled yoga mat for bumper, all covered in a cot sheet) but had we travelled even a few days later I fear she would have been up and outta there quicker than a prison break!

There is nothing for it but to strap her to or in various objects in the hope that she does no longer term damage to herself.

  

When left to her own devices on the floor, she rapidly descends into a shrieking harpy who cannot decide whether she prefers to be on her front or back.

‘Tilly, if you don’t like it, you can roll over…’

This is taking some time to sink in.

One skill at a time… one skill at a time.

Pretty pictures of DC to follow – oh the knitting, oh the paper goods, oh the ‘old towns’…

I know I’m biased but…

When she’s not screaming, she is pretty damn cute.

 

PS. It’s important to know that I photoshopped the above picture to remove the dangling bogey from her schnozzle. Parental delights know no bounds.

Admiration and Organisation

Have you ever had those moments where you realise that childhood experiences you COMPLETELY took for granted were in fact GARGANTUAN feats of planning and preparation on the parts of your parents and not, as you presumed, your god-given right as a small human being??

In trying to prepare for the much-anticipated trip-to-meet-her-Auntie, Tilly, the selfish wench, has entirely expected us, her thankless parents, to orchestrate her travel to and survival in Washington DC for the next 8 days. She hasn’t raised a single finger to offer assistance in the week long frenzy of washing, sorting, list-making and buying that has occupied our existence since Easter.

How my mother managed this on a regular basis (with a pilot dad and us living in the US with British family to visit, trans-Atlantic flight was a pretty regular occurrence in my childhood) with three/four children and often on unbooked, last minute seats scattered around the plane… I will never know.

We have sufficient muslins, babygros, milk powder and sunhats in small sizes to open a local nursery school, while the Boy and I are likely to wear the same three items of clothing on rotation for 8 days. We can only assume that the varying degrees of vomit, sweet potato and poop will single us out as ‘new parents' as well as ‘tourists’…

Oh hell.

The Boy has never been to the East Coast and is OBSESSED with the West Wing so I will be sending him on reccies to find President Bartlett while I wait in a variety of locations to see if Bradley Whitford may want to discuss important campaign issues with a young Mum with a beguiling accent.

Of purees and dribble…

Have plastic accoutrements…

Have pureed sweet potato…

Have a VERY messy baby…

Successes so far include broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potato and BANANA in a big way.

Dried fruit with apple not so successful…

Carrot a complete write-off.

Ah well, live and learn…

More stitching and only a little bitching…

Busy fingers in attempts to drown out noise of screaming baby with the clack clack clack of needles…

Limited success on the drowning out front, but great success on the creativity front.

This mobile was so much fun to make. It feels a little bit ‘Blue Peter’ in that it uses up old buttons, a wire coat hanger and scraps of fabric. All that’s missing is the washing up liquid bottle…

 

 

 

Also finished off this scrummy little vest for my new nephew, Harry. That kind of name requires vintagey-looking buttons and a homespun look about him, don’t you think?…

My little madam has been a little monster for most of the day – oh, please, let’s put our lovely daughter in a carseat for four hours to go meet Harry. That will be just splendid.

Frankly, I could leave her in a lay-by and no one would know. Apart from the fact that I’ve just told the internet.

If anyone finds a moody, but incredibly well-dressed, baby somewhere off the M1 tonight, she’ll more than likely answer to ‘Tilly’. By screaming.

Stitching and not too much bitching

Oh it is so very satisfying being creative.

Does that sound nauseating?? I mean it in its most sincere way.

 

A little knitted picnic for my 6 year old goddaughter’s birthday. The basket was a post-Easter sale find at Waitrose – the sum total of charity shop yarn and basket was about £12. Hoorah.

Patterns found on many and various websites including:

Sandwiches adapted from Jean Greenhowe here.

Knitted doughnut here.

Knitted strawberries here.

Pie slices and battenburg from this lovely little tome of patterns.

And cupcake pattern purchased from the GORGEOUS Little Cotton Rabbits.

The exception of the creativity came in the form of the SCRUMPTIOUS lemon meringue pie made for us by the gorgeous Emily and Emilie (one cousin, one friend) . The happy travellers made a very generous but entirely uneventful stop on their world tour of travelling extravaganza to sunny St Albans and enjoyed the delights of a home kitchen, mixing up mac’n’cheese, pancakes, cookies and suchlike. The highlight of their trip was the daily pooping escapade of my delightful daughter and endless episodes of Friends.

The fun never stops around here.

New Vogue Patterns

Love the glorious neckline of the jacket on this fabulous Badgley Mischka.

Can’t work out if this is gorgeous and chic or ‘old lady in Savannah’…

Whereas this is FABULOUS in a Desperate Housewives kind of way and.... POCKETS!!

These are interesting with midriff options…

And then the glorious Vintage Vogue… OH MY GOODNESS CHECK OUT THE METERAGE.... far too much fabric to justify for any but the most SPLENDID event…but that skirt is FABULOUS

And then the collar... oh my goodness the collar...

And finally, there’s just the fabulously high-fashion and fabulously bonkers jumpsuit!

 

Get thee sewing my ladies, get thee stitching!

In the wee small hours of the morning

I had a realisation.

I guess you could call it *the* realisation.

I looked at my sleeping daughter and had ‘the moment’. She will be four months old this weekend, and it has taken me this long to feel ‘it’.

The much talked about.

The BOND.

That amazing, overwhelming, innate radiance that you *should* feel the minute they put the baby in your exhausted post-labour arms.

I’ve spent the last four months in a ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’ state of affairs, proudly telling anyone who would listen that I was FINE with the lack of feeling and simply patiently waiting for the moment to come. In truth, I had horrendous fears of simply never feeling ‘it’… Maybe some people just ‘have’ kids. Maybe some people don’t want to smother their child in love and adoration and are happy just having a small, diaper-wearing buddy around the house. Maybe the absence was all I was going to have.

And I can’t tell you what changed.

To others in the same situation, I don’t have a magic formula to what makes it better. I can just say that after a feed at O Dark Thirty O’Clock last week, I looked at the sleeping baby in the cot and my stomach went ablaze. I don’t know about butterflies…. there were fire-breathing dragons in my abdomen and I suddenly realised that I LOVED MY CHILD. I would throw myself in front of any thing, any one, any anything to make sure she comes to no harm.

And so I smiled, kissed her forehead and went back to bed.

And I’ve not looked back since.

The relief is extraordinary.

But the feeling is even better.

Yes But Will There Be Wine??

I never really understood motherhood before now. My brother-in-law called it ‘The Conspiracy of Parenthood.’ It’s been said that it’s like a big club that you think you know the membership rules for. You join and discover actually that it’s nothing LIKE what you thought. And there’s a baby-shaped bouncer on the door and you can’t get out.

I’ll never cease to be grateful for the fact that the other clubmembers that I have met so far, though, are FABULOUS…

The Boy and I signed up to antenatal classes for the information only. He spends so long seeing ill children in hospitals for work that his version of normal is COMPLETELY skewed. I was not going to rely on his interpretation of ‘regular deliveries’ to manage our own. The teacher started the first session by saying ‘I know you’re all here to make friends but I hope you find some of the information I have to give useful nonetheless’…I remember feeling that the coincidence of similar-timed pregnancies does not make the basis for a true and lasting friendship. Or, the more crude way I put it at the time ‘Just because we all had sex that month doesn’t mean that we have to get along’.

How wrong can I have been??

I also recall a visit from my husband’s brother and his young family a month before Tilly arrived. I was brought various accoutrements that had been found useful when their, now 2 year old, son was first on the scene. I happily dismissed the breastpumps and birthing balls with a naivety that makes me cringe now. The flippancy must have been rather amusing (or galling) to witness. I admire my sister-in-law for biting her tongue and not beating me over the head with my innocence. These days, the Boy and I can barely get started on a glass of wine with an un-babied friend before we are disgorging all manner of vivid trivia of ‘generic leakage’ and divulging all the secrets of the club to the blissfully ignorant non-members.

The horror, excitement, trauma and worry of the experiences that we have shared have allowed me to form friendships that I don’t doubt will last longer than one of Tilly’s nocturnal feeding sessions. And that’s saying something.

I’m honoured to become a member and join the ranks of uninitiated, unknowing and uninformed, surviving the daily assault courses of decisions, debacles and delights that motherhood seems to be.

In my last few weeks in the office, I was asked a few times what I would do with my ‘time off’. I joked that I might put the baby in a drawer and go travelling. I have so far managed to get dressed of a morning but frankly, leaving the house is a right of passage each and every day.

And so I will never cease to be grateful for the new found friends. With cake. And wine. And many and varied shoulders to cry on. The tears are by no means limited to the babies. But neither are the gurgles and the occasional glimmers of laughter to come.

Granny Rules

With her fearless attachment to the sewing machine and a mean quilting technique, this granny seems unstoppable…

Following on from the triumph of the hot pink hot hat, a fruity frock and floral dungarees for the latest gal about town.

In amongst mini-sewing, Mum has finished and delivered the Double Wedding Ring quilt as the wedding present for the Boy and I. It is made from scraps of the wedding fabric as well as other historic/vintage printed cottons in shades of blues and creams. The piecing took about seven months and the quilting about five. My mum’s arthritis almost seemed to want to scupper the whole plan but she battled through and we are over the MOON with it.

I wonder how it feels to be permanently creating heirlooms? Must be quite an honour…

Busy fingers = happy mummy

Some finally finished little projects that I have finally got round to finally sewing up, finally pressing, finally putting on buttons and finally photographing…

No mean feat to get all stages in place so without further ado…

Taken from the lovely book at the Mother in Law’s house…

Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Stripey frock for Tils…

 

Teddy for soon to arrive neice/nephew – will add eyes and coloured accessories when I know the sex of the baby…

And finally, denim ticking pinafore frock for Tilly with her first encounter with rickrack from a mummy-design… Poor thing – the first in what promises to be a long and arduous relationship with mummy’s creations!

There are no words

And so instead, there is a link.

Dear Zachary

And fourteen days left to watch it on iPlayer.

I am rarely affected this catastrophically by a documentary film: it is usually books that take the floor from beneath my feet.

I cannot say more than: Watch it. Watch it now. And then attempt to hope for one moment that anyone you know thinks a single percent of you what this family thought of him.

Routine

One of the first questions we get asked when we tell people we have a three month old baby is ‘And how are you getting on with a routine?’ followed by ‘Does she sleep through the night?’

At first I intended to shoot to kill on hearing either of those utterances: the fact that I am partaking in adult conversation while caring for something whose age I can count in hours and days should be impressive enough. We can barely see straight without clockwatching for a thing that has no concept of nocturnal or otherwise…

Now, though, we are getting there. The move into the nursery seems to have coincided with a degree of regularity of a form: bath and a splash, baby massage and tummy time, milk and sleep. AT 7PM. And she will then sleep until midnight. And then again until 5ish, with milk requirements in those gaps.

What this means though is that we get an evening back.

And to that end, I’ve been enjoying, nay WALLOWING in, the splendour of adulthood and FREETIME (of course once the nonsense of laundry, cleaning, dinner, washing up and general muslin collecting has taken place)…

And I’ve been crafting…

 

Pics of projects to come… For now, back to the needles…