soundtrack

I grew up with... Well, without music, pretty much. My mom never had much time for it, really, and that was that. One of her standard jokes: "A CD? But I already have a CD!" I'm not denying I was around before CD players were, but it's emblematic. My dad never played his Stones collection in front of her, or us, for that matter. In my memory, the soundtrack to my childhood consists of tediously monotonous football results on the car radio driving back from my grandparents on assorted Sundays.

I got my first radio/cassette player when I was around 13 years old. From my mom's first salary going back to work, incidentally. It's not that she is 'against music', she just doesn't have an innate need for it, like I do :-) So that was the end of my life without music. I haven't looked back since. Squirt hears music on a daily basis. I still miss that I didn't. He might grow up to think my taste in music is pathetically old-fashioned, but he'll know what it's like to soundtrack your life, accidentally.

Who knows? He might even buy me a CD for a birthday one day!

tomato

Squirt eats a tomato with his lunch every day. He loves them. But to be honest, he's not that fussy about food in general. Yet. I'm knocking on unvarnished wood here, like mad.

Yesterday, I gave him a couple of Pure & Honest brand cherry tomatoes. To be fair, they were really good! No cheating, ingredient-wise, when it comes to tomatoes. Squirt was chew-suck-chewing quite seriously. Not a smile to be coaxed from him. He was looking at me accusingly the whole time.

I swear he was thinking, in so many words: "Where have you been hiding this good stuff all of my life?!"

tall tales

Squirt is a very talkative little man. He babble-babble-babbles away, and he's not shy about it either! This past week, at least three passing strangers asked him what he was trying to say. I told them that I would very much like to know, too. But that was form. I didn't want them to feel silly about not understanding. It's all a matter of being plugged in, you know! Yesterday afternoon, for example, he told me he loved the new Moke CD (The Long & Dangerous Sea), but wasn't too sure about Muse (The Resistance).
You're thinking that's all just projection? Not true. I liked both CDs on first play.

squirt

Baby Boy is no longer a baby, really. I might not want him to grow so fast, but he does. Henceforth (yes, really!) he will be known as Squirt :-)

homely

I'm drinking lemon scented tea... I'm wearing a scarf! And eventhough it is freezing outside, I'm enjoying the tea, and the scarf is - horror! - purely for decorational purposes!
OMG! I'm turning into an actual, real-life mother!

vulnerable

I've got to get this off my chest - quite literally. Damn the consequences, I guess. I haven't been sure about showing vulnerability since I started this blog. I'm still not sure. But if I don't do something, I'll scream!

The breastfeeding is over. Baby Boy is done. I'm not. But there are moments in a mother's life - I'm discovering this, like every parent must - when you're not in charge. As simple as that.

I knew this moment was coming. I knew it was coming soon. I had my own deadline of January 6th - @ 14 months, rather randomly picked. I knew that this wasn't going to last forever. I knew it wouldn't last as long as I wanted it to, either. I knew that from the beginning, which was far from smooth, and through all the hiccups and obstacles along the way.

The moment came yesterday. Actually, it was the culmination of several moments. Yesterday was just the 'grab that darned ostrich by the neck and jank its blissfully unaware head out of the sand already'-moment. So I tore the plaster off. Followed by such a bad migraine that I had to call Man to come home from work so I could go to bed.

Baby Boy was 13 months & 2 days when it happened. A grand score after a bad start. But it might take a while for me to see it that way. Today, it feels like the umbilical cord is truly severed at last. And unlike the first time, it hurts like hell!

mushrooms

Still not finding time to blog. Maybe it's better that way ;-) Maybe words are not for me - for now. I have plenty of visual stuff though. I'm still enjoying my photography course. Love 'taking orders', so to speak ;-) An opportunity to capture something other than Baby Boy, eventhough he is - of course - worth every bit of proverbial film ;-)

A walk in the woods prompted these:

image

I know I don't have enough time for all the things I want to do in a short, short day. Nor do I have time to blog about it. I might not have (m)any readers either, but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't feel the need to post. To maintain at least a semblance of 'I was here'. Sort of. I'm like that. But don't worry, I've got it under control ;-)

And I know image is everything. So to uphold a hint of movement on this blog - even if it's corner-of-your-eye stuff - I'll post my latest images. Course work. Make of it what you will ;-)

bread

The (first) week's assignment for my photography course is 'Our Daily Bread'. It took some insomnia to come up with an idea. But it's a good one; I can use it twice!
My dad will retire this November. He's worked for De Hoogovens, now Corus Steel, his entire working life. 47 years! I think that's impressive.
I had already planned to go to IJmuiden/Wijk aan Zee to take some pictures there, for a retirement-gift-idea my mom came up with. Moving that trip forward a little, we went last weekend. So I could use some of the pictures I took for tonight's assignment (not to mention spending a sunny, warm, early-autumn afternoon playing with sand on the beach, with Man & Baby Boy!).
Because Corus provided me, through my dad's hard work, with daily bread for almost 19 years of my life. And then some, on and off. There are still occasional days of bread (and coffee, cookies, and home-cooked meals...) of course, courtesy of De Hoogovens, when we visit my parents.
I sincerely hope to be digesting morsels & crumbs off the Corus table for years and years to come. By means of my dad's well-deserved and hopefully thoroughly enjoyed pension ;-)

juxtaposition

In this house - like I said before - you can eat off the floor.
Which means you can't really 'eat off the floor' as the saying goes.
Which is a bit of a contradiction, seeing that Baby Boy heartily eats off the floor on a daily basis...

sheer brilliance

Just now, Baby Boy said "hé dikke!" ('hey, fatso').
Either that, or he said "Heidegger".
I'm going with 'Heidegger'. I'm calling it early-onset genius.

brave

Finger painting with Baby Boy. Or should I say 'body painting' ;-)
'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'. The title just popped into my head. Projection, projection... ;-)
I was called 'brave' on beforehand. And yes, it was. I was ;-)
Two baths later, I think the yellow paint came out of his hair...
:-D

aftermath

Baby Boy was here!

selfservice

Pappa is working late (not home till 11pm!). Mamma has a long day too, consequently. And Baby Boy is his usual self, which means active & baby-babbling away :-) Which is fun :-)
But when mamma needs to express some milk and pappa isn't there to pick up the slack, give the baby a bottle, mamma thinks - mamma knows - Baby Boy can hold the bottle himself for a few minutes.

Baby Boy is lying on the floor, half-heartedly holding the bottle, crying his eyes out. You're the mommy, I'm the baby, ain't no selfservice happening here!
Aw shucks!

fall

Autumn is coming for sure. It's still pretty warm outside, but you can smell it.
The grapes don't appear to care that we did next to nothing to sort out the garden this year...
Having a baby means making choices - & to be fair, letting the garden go a bit wasn't a hard one to make.
I so didn't miss getting my hands dirty ;-)

not okay yet

Baby Boy is 10 months old today. Ten whole months!
And he only drinks a live feed in the morning these days...
I'm okay with that. Which surprises me. One day, a couple of weeks ago, I gave up the struggle of trying to feed live during the day, and it felt like a release. It seems that you really do get to a point where it's okay. Which gives me hope. I hope that I will find myself okay with the idea of the End of Breastfeeding one day. Because that day is coming. I can smell it in the air like I can smell autumn around the corner. And it makes me sad. I'm not okay with that. Yet.
I'm so not okay with it, that I waste way too much precious time on expressing milk during the day, just to keep up production for a good morning feed. And that makes me sad, too.
I'm on a swing here. Part of me thinks I'm mad. That part is getting ready to throw in the towel some day soon. The rest of me isn't. The rest of me is sad. The rest of me wants to keep on breastfeeding forever. It wants Baby Boy to stay small, be cute & drink a live feed.
I know the rest of me isn't very realistic. A tad dramatic. Very sweet, but a bit away with the fairies. But part of me loves the rest of me, and the rest of me wins. For now.
It will last until it's okay to stop.

tv

Man was not too impressed just now. Baby Boy said "Pappa!" to a telivised Gordon Brown...

Edit: I'm sure there are implications for me, here, too. But I'm not willing to explore them. It's too scary.

etsy

I designed and ordered this stamp for - well, pretty much all my papercraft projects :-) I'm well-impressed by how it turned out! & it's only an inch in diameter! & it wasn't even very expensive at all!

I recommend this Etsy shop if you have any stamp needs! And I recommend Etsy in general if you are looking for an original gift idea, handmade by someone else (or you could shamelessly copy. Although I would never come right out and recommend that in black on blue in public, of course. Let alone that I would ever do such a thing...)! I also recommend Etsy for you to browse in a lost moment, just to see what people come up with and create! Love the concept of this online marketplace!
& no, I'm not getting paid by Etsy. Honest to your Higher Power, they don't even know I blog.

cold

From watching too many Detectives, Thrillers, and other edifying death-related television shows, you get the feeling only dead bodies spend time in the morgue... Not so: Michael Jackson did, too. He was buried last night. That means he spent the past 11 weeks in one of those drawers.
That really does send shivers down my spine!

(Don't even get me started on burials. I saw 'Return of the Living Dead' at a way-too-tender age - I was 10, I think - and have never gotten over it, really...)

itch

Paper is more my scene than fabric, really. Well, not when it comes to what to wear, so much ;-) But when it comes to crafting, I feel much more comfortable posting about my paperwork; I'm a Paper Girl!

I'm using all kinds of scrapbook-like techniques when working on Baby Boy's photo book (which is probably why I have only just finished his first month...), but I'm too cheap to buy all kinds of bells & whistles. You can spend several paychecks on what's out there - it's unbelievable what they come up with; new stuff every day! I do enjoy looking around online & 'real life' craft shops for ideas, but to be honest, I don't even want to buy most of the embellishments that are available. I enjoy creating my own. I suppose you could say I'm actually scrap-booking ;-)

A couple of months ago, I discovered - all on my own! - that newspaper covered in acrylic paint is really cool to work with. You can see the print shine through if you don't lather the paint on too thickly. I used this flower, and others, in a collage, in BB's photo book and on a handmade card.

A few weeks ago, I sort of felt like I should make something again, as opposed to drooling over what other people get up to. Surfing the net, which is how many creative plans get conceived over here, I stumbled upon this beautiful newspaper snowflake garland tutorial. Don't ask me how I got there, suffice to say, I was spending too much time 'shopping around' again (trust me, you can click-read-click your life away quite easily) ;-)

But it was time, I felt the itch - I decided to celebrate Baby Boy's first official word by creating a newspaper garland with sheep, hearts & stars, along with a matching card :-)

I'm not much impressed with my photographic skills on this one, but I do like how this little project turned out (click the picture to enlarge, you'll get a better look that way!) :-D

train

Calling me 'mamma' is still in its infant shoes, as is Baby Boy. I know I blogged he picked up the pace, but that was then - way back then...
Since then, BB has started calling anything humanoid 'pappa'. At times questioningly, mostly quite convincedly.

Last week, I decided to visit my parents. Just on a spur. Which really was (and still is!) something to be impressed by. It meant taking Baby Boy in his sling and a huge backpack full of his stuff onto a train, changing trains in Amsterdam, and onward. 2 hours door-to-door, approximately. It seemed like a huge mountain to climb on beforehand, but while I was absolutely wrecked when I got off the train to meet my parents, it hadn't been as much of a challenge as I'd envisioned.

Sweetened by pieces of bread and a bottle of diluted applejuice, Baby Boy had been a dream! He looked alternately out of the window and at the people in or entering the carriage, calling everyone, invariably, "pappa!".

priorities

Baby Boy knows what's important in life.

"I'm in my favourite recliner (pappa), got the remote, got my booze, all's well with the world!"

monster

I finally found out what this is. And it's a bit of an anti-climax.
My parents have an ancient paper encyclopaedia. And under 'beetles', there it is. Apparently, it's so common, that it features in the only picture accompanying the beetle-entry, comprising about 15 drawings of beetle species (considering that 30-40% of all insects are beetles, that's not a lot). Now that I know what it is, I have googled it. It is said to be so wide-spread in European gardens, that I can't believe no one I showed it to has ever seen one before! It's not like it's tiny to the naked eye or something. The encyclopaedia is rather exact about it; it measures 2.9 cm. But hey, that was back in 1975 (as I said, the encyclopaedia is ancient). I'm pretty sure this one - and the one that passed through Tuesday a week ago, because once you see one, apparently, you see all! - was much bigger. At least, and I say at least, 3.1 cm.

It's a devil's coach horse beetle. Which does juice up my imagination. More so than its Dutch name, which is, literally translated, the smelly short-shield beetle. It's not poisonous, but its bite can be painful. Poor Baby Boy...

& did he learn a valuable lesson? No, he didn't. This is him trying to lift the glass off last week's visitor (before you worry, my hand is firmly on top of the glass, taking the picture with the other hand, doing what a mother does best: multitasking!).

Anyway. Mystery solved!

sick

We all have serious colds over here.
It started with Baby Boy, and that left me wondering what he caught when I didn't...
I shouldn't have. And anyway, with the type of hugs & kisses BB lavishes on me @ times, there was no way I wasn't going to catch it, too ;-)

A day or three ago, it was only Baby Boy who was leaking from all orifices. And he looked droopy. And we felt really sorry for him. Poor little mite! He was wearing a t-shirt which said 'STOER', which means 'cool'. But he wasn't cool - at least not where 'cool' isn't a superlative for 'cold'... So I went out and bought a baby nose spray. Which didn't really help him much.

Yesterday, I started feeling sick. And sorry for myself, too... Baby Boy is feeling slightly better, which is a good thing, because I have found out I'm no Mamma of the Year when feeling off-ish... Somehow, spending large chunks of time on the floor is the first pass-time to go off the schedule when I'm leaking and feeling like I'm fraying at the edges.

This morning I decided to use Baby Boy's nose spray for myself. I hadn't been feeling well enough to go out and buy my own (yes, I know, you're bringing out your violin...), and seeing that it wasn't doing much for him anyway, I decided to live dangerously & disregard the warning on the packaging leaflet ('Never use someone else's nose spray'. At 4 euros a spray, I would say that, too, if I was the manufacturer).
It was on the chest of drawers in a darker corner of the living room. Next to the synthetic oxytocin I had been using for breastfeeding. I have used a score of different aids to keep breastfeeding, but that is a long, and different story. I remember thinking earlier, to make sure I pick up the right spray. Which, of course, I didn't at 05.30 in the morning, feeling clogged and sorry for myself. Serves me right. I took three hefty squirts. Then looked down at the brown vial of oxytocin in my hand. And was left clogged. With serious let-down reflexes in both breasts...
Oxytocin is not a cold medicine.

long time...

... no blog!
But when you know your two-and-a-half readers have other things on their minds (and rightly so), and you go on a little holiday of sorts yourself, there isn't much pressure to put out.
Added to that the fact that I want to do too many things in too little time, blogging takes a serious backseat, and I prove to myself once again that I'm not sure this is my scene...

But I'm here now :-D Let's see if it sticks ;-)

mamma, pappa

As if he read that last post, the next day Baby Boy picked up the pace on calling me 'mamma' :-D And admittedly, it's pretty cool to be called 'mamma' :-D

Also new this week, every time BB hears a noise outside (pretty much every five minutes, on average, as there is still a lot of construction going on a couple of blocks away), he looks at me expectantly and asks "pappa?". Have to disappoint him, most of the time - "no, pappa is at work...". Adding that when he hears hammering and drilling, it most likely isn't his dad. Who has a lot of talents. But home improvement, or singing, are not two of them ;-)

words

On Wednesday the 12th of August, Baby Boy said his first word!
Well, he's been saying 'pappa', 'pappuh', 'pap' & pretty much any other form of the word's repetitive syllables. And he means his dad when saying it, too! He's been doing the same with 'mamma', but that doesn't necessarily mean 'me, the mamma wrapping the girl within', at all times. Ah, never mind - that day will come too :-) I am not upset about this. Much. No, but seriously, I'm not :-) As someone pointed out the other day, he sees me every day, the whole day long, pretty much, so he doesn't really need to speculate about me by 'name' ;-)
I was dying to find out what word, out of the millions available to us all, Baby Boy would choose as his first! Not that I really want him to grow up faster than he already does, but being a bit of a word-junkie myself, it is just one of these things I was looking forward to, a little more so than other developmental hurray-moments.
And there it was! His chosen word! It's 'schaap' (sheep), pronounced as 'aap', which incidentally means 'monkey' - I'm so proud :-D
The only thing left to hope for, is that 'sheep' will not substitute 'mamma', and that we, the parental units, will not henceforward be known as 'sheep & monkey', or 'schaap & aap'... ;-)

baby boy...

... spreads joy & happiness, some frustrations - and food. At times.

wuss

That whole giant ant-wasp-beetle-thing story cut deeper than you'd think!
This morning, I forgot to take the black elastic band out of my hair before taking off my shirt, and it got tangled to the side of my face. From the corner of my eye I saw this Huge Black Thing swinging from my hair, and I actually - almost - screamed!

what I made

But I was going to show what I made when my sewing machine broke down & got fixed.
Because I said I would... Not because I'm particularly proud, nor because I want you to tell me I should be. Making things myself is not something I do a lot. Ah, I should say "I didn't do a lot of that", because I have only just re-invented being creative, a little, and I have at least the intention to do some more art-ish-tics - *no fixed time frame* ;-)
What I'm trying to say is, I don't have a lot of experience (unlike so many intimidatingly talented people out there! ), which doesn't quite mesh with being a perfectionist ;-) I find it very hard to be proud of something I made, especially when it's kind of cute - and definitely well-intentioned (always that!) - but not quite perfect...
Anyway, here are the pictures:


Baby Boy loves his store-bought heart-with-labels, and he loves to run his nails over the letters I appliqued on the covers of the wicker baskets a week ago, so I decided a combination of those two favourites might make a good baby gift for Man's second cousin's new baby (breathe! complicated compound sentence finished!).
But I imagined it a lot nicer than it turned out... And if there is one thing I find harder than to enjoy something my-own-hands-made, it's giving it away to someone I don't know that well really. Okay, face it, I find it hard to give away something I made myself even when I'm happy with the result, even to someone I know well. Because I think the recipient might think I'm too cheap to buy a gift... That they'll see the tag, which says 'handmade' (yes, the tag too...), and they'll say "that's a bit on the unnecessary side of things, honey, we can tell it's handmade just by looking at it"...
Suffice to finish with, I'm not sure this particular handmade heart will make it to that particular new-born. And that I'll keep practising. And that I really don't know why I posted this log, apart from the fact that I said I would!

fiend

Yesterday, Baby Boy had his first Brush with Nature - Up Close & Personal. He had grabbed hold of a huge monster that was taking a walk through the living room, insect-style (what was it doing there in the first place?!).
I was busy with the breast pump, BB not directly in my line of vision, and when he cried out, it was just after a bit of thunder outside, so I didn't immediately disentangle myself to see what was going on (bad mommy!). But when he cried again, I unplugged to see what the fuss was about. The Thing was stuck to his little hand, and it must have bitten him, or done something with its pincer-stinger-thingy! Bastard!
I checked BB's hands, and kept a close eye on him for the next few hours, but thankfully there seemed to be no ill effects... All the better since I couldn't find out what the Thing was, apart from it being an insect through basic determination. Here are the pictures, the building block measures 4.5 cm!

After its little scrap with Baby Boy, it found itself dead. & no, not by me - I'm too scared for my karma!
Four reasons why it wasn't Michael Jackson, even though it's dead:

• I couldn't find it on the internet,
• it was really BIG, relatively speaking,
• it was actually black,
• last but not least - apparently it didn't like children.

Do you know what this thing is? Please let me know, FFR!

daredevil

I fixed my sewing machine the other day!
Right in the middle of a little project, the machine decided it had done enough over the years. Not for me, by the way; I'm not a gifted sewer (in either meaning of the word), I generally don't aim higher than straight seams and even that sporadically - but the machine is second-hand, and it has clearly & visibly been used before.
Anyway, I switched it off for a break, and when I got back to it, it didn't want to switch on again. My first instinctive reaction was to cry ("I don't have time for this crap! I hardly ever want to sew anything, really, and when I do gather courage, I need it to go smooth, and I need all potential mishaps to at least be my mishaps, not the equipment's failures!" - that type of tantrum).
But then I remembered my parents were coming over that afternoon: my dad was going to be there, and he can make pretty much anything electrical work again! Daddy will make it all better! Just like he used to! (how, @ times, I miss those imaginary days that grown-ups could fix everything, but that's another story!)
Aha & okay! Safety net in place - crying put off till after my dad tells me it's hopeless, I decided to 'go in' and see if this isn't fixable for beginners. I turned the machine over onto its side and peered at the bottom cover. CAUTION: no user serviceable parts! A little emblem with a screwdriver and a wrench and a big cross through both. SERVICE TECHNICIAN: disconnect electrical plug before removing cover for service! - I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want a technician who needs that particular bit of warning anywhere near my sewing machine or any other electrical appliance, but that's beside the point.
Those warnings didn't deter me one bit! I took screwdriver to hand, threw caution in the wind and unscrewed the cover. Found the inner workings of the switch-thingy, switched it to the 'on' position, decided never to switch it off again, and Bob was my uncle (figure of speach-wise anyway)!
That's all! I know, a bit of an anti-climax, but I got my sewing machine back and finished my project - will show & tell in my next post!

That afternoon, my father took a look at the machine, and at what I did to fix it, and decided that's what he would have done, too - now how's that for a girl?! :-D

9 months

This last Thursday, the 6th of August, Baby Boy has been living in the Outside World for exactly - to the day - as long as he parasitised (in the best possible meaning of the word) inside of me! Another milestone in the lives of both of us!
He's still getting mamma-milk (only as a supplement to 'food-food', of course) and I am so proud of that, considering the effort we both put in to get it happening & happening right, that I just wanted to have that mentioned :-D
Baby Boy is beautiful & cute & growing (way too rapidly!) into himself; it's fun & amazing to watch...
& I'm well aware that this is a soppy post to the point of 'bring out the violins', but this is my blog, & I write what I want to ;-)

organic fantasy

They have re-invented their line of organic foods at the local upmarket grocery; all the labels are now... well, how you'd expect the 'target-audience' to like them. Bolder fonts in white on natural colours and hints of idyllic country living. Okay, the last bit is my interpretation ;-)
I always look through the whole selection of baby food on the shelves - try to give Baby Boy as much variation as possible - which includes organic. I don't mind organic. Organic is food, right?
I spot 'Blueberry Fantasy' among the organic fruitmixes - now that sounds interesting! I check the ingredients, and discover they have added a handful (7%!) of blueberries to a lot (93%!) of - organic, they feel they need to mention - apples!
They call the line 'Pure & Honest', and I can't fault them there; it's a lot more 'Fantasy' than 'Blueberry', but they didn't actually lie.
Still, I didn't buy the jar. Somehow felt cheated. Another idyllic country dream shattered...

slob

I use the vacuum cleaner every other day and mop the floor every week. So how come Baby Boy still manages to look like Mamma never even heard of cleaning?!

OMG

I have no moral objections against people having a sex life. Honestly, no problem with a little action between two consenting (almost-) adults whatsoever. But back when I was an au pair - which is longer ago than I care to put a price tag on! - I did have a bit of an issue with something I never mentioned to the people involved: the dear mom & dad in my guest family had their (monthly? weekly? don't remember - and be fair; should I?!) bit of fun with their door open, and loud enough for me, and who knows who else, to hear! Squirm! I never knew where to look at breakfast the next morning ;-)

Okay, you've got to be wondering where I'm going with this after all those years, right? Well... When Baby Boy does his newly mastered belly crawl, he sounds just like dear old Mrs K. on a roll in the marital hay! I kid you not! OMG, I swear he sounds exactly like her riding the horse to the finish line :-D

Oh, this is a terrible story - but it's too true & had to be told :-D
Now I don't have to fear that Mrs K. will ever come across this little piece of information, lost touch with the family years ago (although I can find assorted members on Facebook, and my-oh-my have they grown up!!). But if she would read this (or any of the au pairs moving in before and after me - I doubt she started all this when I was there, or that she stopped when I left, LOL), I'm telling you, she doesn't need to meet my beautiful Baby Boy - she would know exactly what the little tyke sounds like on his exploring missions around the house ;-)

P.S. to perverts! Don't even go there! This only clicked a week ago! Little old attic trapdoor in my brain, much like playing Trivial Pursuit; Mrs. K. has not been ringing in my ear ever since way back when!

update

I slept magnificently last night!
A solid 8 hours: 9 to 5 - like a civil servant on the night-shift!
I felt so much on top of the world this morning, I even cut my finger nails!
I knew you wanted to know!
;-)

all about nothing

... she is trying to wrestle the knive away from the movie star she fantasizes about - who is possibly invisible, probably imaginary - trying to stop him from killing himself because he thinks that might wake him from the coma he is apparently in, lying in a hospital in New Zealand. Still following? Next shot is her brother, seeing only her (and obviously not the suicidal idol), standing there like a desperate housewife wielding a knive into thin air, in the kitchen of her English suburban home... A scene from 'Bonkers', British dramatic comedy, if that's a genre.
I laughed so hard I nearly cried, and it's probably not even a case of "I guess you had to be there"! It's because I'm so tired, I could fall asleep onto the keyboard! Baby Boy keeping me up all hours as included in the copy of Baby's Rights he came with? No, can't even claim that for pity! It was little old me trying to deconstruct the secrets of Sleep. Okay, it was a little too warm in the bedroom last night, that too. But I was lying there, and every single time I started drifting off, my thoughts becoming more disintegrated, I was wondering "is this it? Am I falling asleep now?" - focussing my thoughts again, drifting right back up into consciousness again... That went on till around 01.30. I woke at 05.30 this morning - and that was it. Baby Boy needed attention at this unusual hour, so I got up and - sort of - stayed up. Till I just laughed my head off at something normally probably mildly amusing, signalling it's High Time to go find that bale of hay again and hope for better nights...

It's something like the fact that I have been thinking for the past two weeks I really need to cut my fingernails. And I still haven't. Because I keep on thinking it's a waste of precious time, clipping nails. It's like that. And also, it's something completely different...

Bed! ...bed...

chicken

Ah & oh, internet. It's amazing what you can find - pretty much anything you're looking for bar a freshly-made cup of coffee. And I spend a lot of time looking for... stuff. Finding a lot of... stuff - absolute gems at times! But there's a sting in this particular tail: the danger of being creative only vicariously!
Obviously - even for me these days, with my busy-being-a-mamma-life - there are only so many hours in a day; and stupid but what can you do, when I spend a lot of my sparse spare time looking at what other people write and create, I don't have much time left to do my own art-ish-tics.
But there is another reason why it's not a great idea to spend too much time looking at other people's blogs : it's so bloody intimidating!!
Being me, I forget I click away from many more pages than ever end up in my favourites folder, but still! Some people - a lot of people, the web being world wide & all - have such a way with words!, with paper, scissors & glue!, with their camera!, with needle and thread! & so on, & so on...

So here I am, with this blog that I'm too scared to publish to people. Yet.
And here are a few pictures of what I got up to this weekend. For the tiny audience out there. So far. Hope at least all of you two like my effort ;-)

Wicker baskets - last year's "Christmas Goodies" came in one of those, but since there are always people who don't really want or need what they get, Man scored two more from colleagues!

Now I didn't really like the natural-cotton-look, especially considering the newest member of this little household: something white-ish with a baby growing rapidly into a little explorer... somehow doesn't strike me as the brightest choice in colour scheme ;-) So I declared one of them 'mine' and covered it in pink (!!),

and the other two can be Baby Boy's - you can't start too early pointing out where the toys should go (hey, a mother can hope!)!

stroppy

If Baby Boy is anything like Mamma... he's going to know way better what he doesn't want (oh, consider the Happy Hours ahead!) than what he does want... Oh crap... Oh crap!

the floor

I seem to be spending huge chunks of my time on the floor. Getting my hair pulled in all directions, being climbed upon, being slimed on, the receiving end of slaps & kicks. I feel like I'm back in kindergarten, at times - except back then, I would probably have fought back ;-)

& the challenge is...

... having a baby, really. Full stop. Every single time you think you've got it all figured out, Baby grows another little bit - brain-wise, although physically surely too - and puts you slap-bang in front of the newest dilemma. And granted, most of these dilemmas fall into the 'oh, gosh, yes, that does make sense, really'-category, but still. Baby Boy is trying his darndest to catch Mamma out!
This morning I was taking my shower, and for the first time, I put Baby Boy on the floor to sort himself out, as opposed to in his empty baby bath, as usual. The baby bath not being the best of ideas anymore as BB is doing the above - brain-wise growing - and when he wants to fish for the toys he just threw out of the bath, the bath tips, he finds himself alongside his toys, where he didn't plan on going, so much, really, so he cries - which is what he does.
Anyway, getting back to the floor, where I'd put him, cutting out the whole falling-onto-it bit - thinking I was being smart and on top of my game after Wednesday the 29th. I got into the shower thinking; "Darn, didn't close the door, now what if Baby Boy decides to go for a tummy-slithering-stroll towards the stairs?! Ah, not to worry - I'll catch him..."
So what does Baby Boy do? Head for the stairs first chance he gets? No, of course not! That would be too easy; he's got another cunning plan! He slides across the floor, all nice and dressed for the day, double-time into the shower!
Didn't see that coming! Should have, but then again, being a mamma just wouldn't be the same if I had ;-)

Wednesday the 29th...

The day started off briliantly! I got up way too late to have my cherished hour of peace-&-coffee. The paper filter of the coffee machine tore which gave me a late, hurried cup of dregs. I dropped something, stumbled, almost slipped in the bathroom, and decided it must be Friday the 13th. Which it isn't. It's Wednesday the 29th. Which meant absolutely nothing till I said that out loud. The Universe, with its inexplicable sense of humour, ruled; "You want that to mean something? Can do!"
So far, Baby Boy (almost 9 months old) is in a crabby mood. Man (the other, not necessarily better, half) left his mobile phone at home, leaving me with a perpetual ringing in my ear. The picture at the top of this page won't fill its meted out space. When I tried to call Man at his office phone, my phone (*!*) told me that I'm "not allowed to call this number" (*?!*). Baby Boy (*!*) dropped his first plate, which broke, in the tight space next to the couch where the vacuum cleaner won't go.
I'm tired, it's raining, and it's only 11.30...
(& by the way: how's this for starting in the middle & muddling right on through?!)

Edit: the picture fits now, but I had to manually resize it to fit, and now the quality sux... Any tips, anyone?
Edit 2: All that has been worked out when I changed pictures. Unfathomable, like so many things relating to computers. This time, it just worked, basically.