The social niceties of being four

Isabel's birthday is coming up in August and, being the youngest child in the year, she's been to several birthday parties during the course of this school year. We're now planning hers, and I'm starting to realise that there is a large range of social pitfalls which we need to negotiate now that she's in school. Life was much easier when she was younger. Those I've identified so far include:

1. Venue: she's really enjoyed a couple of the parties, and requested the same party for herself. We went to one in a local soft play centre last week which was great (possibly because it was on a Friday and therefore empty - she and her friends had a school INSET day but everyone else was still in school!) and I've now booked hers in the same location. Does that make me a copycat? I think I may just have to suck that up - as the last birthday of the school year I suspect this may happen more than once over the course of the next few years!
2. Invitees: I had a long conversation with a neighbour about this recently to try to understand who you're meant to invite to these things. Several parties so far have been for the whole class, but since the soft play party is £11.50 per child that's going to bankrupt us. Result - someone's going to be insulted. Again, I think I'm just going to have to suck that up. Or suck up to the bank manager. Either way, a lot of sucking is going to have to take place!
3. Party bags: Do I go educational (a nice book!) and impress the parents, or buy cracker-filler crap and impress the kids? Or a combo of the two? Either way, that's another addition to the total bill...

Actually, all I really want can be summed up in two points: that Isabel has a good time, and that I don't bankrupt myself. At least the cake's sorted: CostCo does a delicious and large cake, which you can have personalised, for about £12, and it feeds at least 30 people. And that's my top tip for the day!

Sleep, or the lack of it

Almost without exception, everybody who sees me at the moment says two things: (1) what a cute baby or how old is he/she or some other baby related question, and then (2) how's she sleeping? People are so interested in how much sleep Emily is getting, and then making a judgment on how tired I may or may not be, it's really funny.

So, for regular readers (hello all four of you!), here's a sleep update. She's not a bad sleeper, but does a lot of it during the day. Like all small babies, she resists sleep at all costs between 6pm and 10pm (although it's 9pm now, and she'd nodded off, so I started writing, but the act of blogging and making a cup of tea has been enough to rouse her from her slumber, curses! But it's low level grizzling rather than full blown rage so I'll carry on typing for a few minutes...Husbandio, the lucky git in this house who isn't breast-feeding, is out on the lash, leaving me to deal with two smalls by myself). After her 10pm-ish feed she usually sleeps through until around 3am or 4am, feeds from one side, but then often falls asleep without a full feed from both sides, causing her to wake up again an hour later for dessert. Which is MOST irritating! Not going to bed til 11pm, being woken up once in the night for half an hour, and then being up at 7am at the latest is bad enough, but being woken up twice in the night is taking the mick, if you ask me.

I don't want to wish her babyhood away, but this aspect of it I could happily dispense with. Roll on the day when she's in bed by 7.30pm, stays there (quietly!) for 12 hours, and visibly recognises me when I walk into the room. It's all plain sailing from there (ha!).

Deja vu

Apart from the fact that she's more chilled than her big sister was, young Emily is in many ways very similar to the way Isabel was as a baby. She has the same little facial expressions and gestures, and I sometimes feel like I'm reliving part of of my life over again. It's interesting, because there are some things I'm deliberately doing differently this time around. I think I made Isabel more clingy than she might naturally have been because my tendency when she cried was to try to stop it, usually by carrying her around. With Emily, I'm really trying to understand the reason behind her crying, and to solve the problem rather than just alleviating the symptoms. To date, there's only two occasions which really make her cry - when she's hungry or tired. If I think she's due a nap I leave her to grizzle for a few minutes in the Moses basket which I don't think I ever did with Isabel, so hopefully she will be a very good sleeper and able to settle herself easily as she grows older. Isabel is very good now at going to sleep, but we did have to go through a period of putting her down and letting her cry at night for what seemed like weeks (but was probably only a few minutes each night for a couple of weeks!) - am aiming to avoid that this time.

There are also some things I'm deliberately doing the same - for example, I just signed us up to do a baby massage class. It's a five week course starting next month, and I'm hoping to do it with some of the NCT girls, all of whom have now had their babies (leading Isabel to describe them as the pregnant ladies who aren't). Best of all, it's free, under a UK scheme called Surestart which more people should take advantage of - lots of activities for people with babies and toddlers. Must take advantage of these things before it's time to go back to work. Since Emily's one month old already, and I only have six months off, I can already feel the time slipping away...

Don't give them excuses like this!

Never mind swine flu - the disease that really should be concerning us is man flu, as indicated in this article on the BBC news site. It is a truism that men fare worse when it comes to colds and flu - or at least, they suffer louder. It's something I've managed to knock out of Husbandio over the years, using this handy set of techniques, which I present here to my female readers. Use this kit with my blessing. It's a mixture of carrot and stick, and has worked well for me.

1. Never offer any sympathy for a cold. Simply cover the sufferer with a blanket (head included, if need be), prepare one mug of Lemsip, and then leave the room. After all, you don't want to catch the lurgy too.
2. Never react to sniffs and sideways glances, which are clearly designed to elicit the phrase "Are you feeling any better?". This only allows them to regale you with a list of their symptoms.
3. Suffer stoically through your own colds, with the help of drugs (I'd recommend Contac) and alcohol.
   
4. Offer lots of sympathy when they are actually properly ill!
   

Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel?

I'm a creature of habit, and when I first started writing this blog I would sit down after Isabel was in bed for some blog time before watching a bit of TV and then hitting the hay. Emily's arrival has knocked that sideways since, like all tiny babies, she's usually up in the evenings until between 10-11pm. That's never been my best time of day, making it tricky to get any blog posts written.

However, the last two days she's been in bed by 10pm (i.e. final feed starting around 9pm) which is a really good sign. If we can ease that gradually towards 9pm and then 8pm that will give us our evenings back, which will be marvellous, both in terms of amount of sleep, and also just in regard to feeling like a normal adult with the ability to have a couple of hours each day to do grown up things. Like watch TV - how sad that watching TV is the choice I make when I have free time. I really should take up knitting or something to try to be a bit more creative and constructive. I guess I could do that, and combine it with watching TV....!

He'd never have made it in America

Being on maternity leave means watching daytime TV. Fact. It's probably the law. Not all day (cough) but I am quite a fan of Real Rescues (BBC1 after BBC Breakfast finishes!) - a nice cross between reality TV and medical dramas.

This morning's episode was mostly about an idiot builder who'd fallen about 3', which isn't far, but had landed on the end of a scaffolding pole and broken some ribs. Since the story wasn't too compelling my mind wandered, and I started thinking about the presenter, Nick Knowles. He is, after all, the thinking woman's bit of rough (so they say, I couldn't possibly comment...). I like Nick Knowles - he's quite funny, reasonably easy on the eye, seems like a nice bloke. But he has quite brown teeth, I noticed earlier, I bet he's smoked for years. And it got me to thinking that someone like him could never make it in the US, he's just not perfect-enough looking. In order to become a TV presenter over there you've got to have that cleancut American look, perfect teeth and a very bland accent. Our Nick would fail on all counts. On the whole though I think I prefer the Brit way of doing things - I don't want to watch a load of clones. Having said that, this lack of clones has left us with presenters like Vanessa Feltz and Anthea Turner, so there's a clearly a flaw in the plan somewhere.

What's in a name?

We debated long and hard before picking Emily's name (and even now, I admit, I consider her to be Pumpkin first, and Emily second. I'm sure this will change over time. I hope it will....). We considered that picking a name is like buying a house - in other words, we both had to agree. I spent hours reading the whole Oxford Dictionary of First Names (OK, not the Asian names chapter) and came up with a pretty long list, which Husbandio then spent about 19 seconds decimating, leaving only two names. How is that fair? Anyway, Emily was about the only one we could both agree on.

One of the things which was important to us when choosing a name was that it must definitely be a name (i.e. nothing made up), and pretty classic. We also didn't want a name that was too popular, but I now realise that we may have not done our research properly here. Apparently Emily has been the top name in the US for the last 12 years although fell to number three in 2008, while in the UK, Emily was number four in 2007 (2008 data isn't yet available). I just hope this doesn't mean there are several Emilys in her school class - Isabel's the only one in her class, which is great. Although there are two Ambers (#48 in 2007 - so what are the chances?) and two Louis's. Fingers crossed....

Why are babies so awake in the evenings?

Someone's got to do some research on this, because it is most peculiar. Emily's had a great day today - fed regularly, slept well (even allowed me to have a nap, marvellous) and is even now chilling on her playmat having had the day's penultimate feed. I'll try to feed her again at about 10pm and get both of us into bed straight after that.

The thing which needs research though is finding out why small babies are most awake between about 6pm and 11pm, give or take. Luckily we're able to get her into bed pretty much straight after her 10pm feed which is great - I remember being up with Isabel until midnight which is never my best time of day, and it was so draining. Even though Emily's awake, she's pretty peaceful most of the time, thank goodness - already displaying characteristics which are very different from those of her sister. Maybe she's just staying up to watch the Champions League with her Daddy - they both seem to be quite enjoying it, even though Husbandio looks rather nervous. Emily, luckily, can't yet see as far as the telly, so she's only getting the commentary. He'll make a footie fan of her yet - it's not worked with Isabel, so this is his last chance!

A typical Bank Holiday Monday

A few weeks ago, when it was unseasonably warm, one of the mums at Isabel's school told me that the warm weather was set to continue, and that it would be a lovely warm Bank Hol weekend. This clearly doomed us to cooler conditions. Sunday was quite nice, but we stayed indoors since Isabel had a cold. And then of course today was much chillier and quite showery. Which I think is probably the law on a Bank Holiday Monday.

We were all feeling a bit cabin fevery though, especially me, since we hadn't been out much all weekend. We therefore decided to do a quick outing to somewhere local. Since it was raining, we first of all drove to Chorleywood to have a mosey about and perhaps look in a shop or two, but there didn't seem to be much to Chorleywood so we didn't even get out of the car in the end! Instead, we retraced our steps and went to Chenies Manor, a Tudor manor house built in 1460, which turned out to be absolutely lovely. When we went through the gates we were confronted by a group of Morris dancers which gave the afternoon a uniquely British flavour. We'd only bought tickets for the gardens, not the house, since Emily is currently feeding every three hours so we weren't planning to be out long. The gardens were full of beautiful tulips and loads of other flowers which I was unable to identify, not being much of a gardening buff. They had separate gardens for the kitchen (growing onions, chard and beans, amongst other things), and a physic garden with medicinal herbs. The fact that I found these interesting shows how old I must be getting. There was also a mini-maze and a proper maze too, which kept Isabel amused for ages. And Husbandio, come to that! He was gutted that he'd left his camera behind since taking pics of flowers is his forte - I thought he was going to mug an OAP for his camera at one point.

So, all in all this was a really typical Bank Holiday - lots of people milling about in drizzly rain, determined to have fun despite the weather. Gawd bless us Brits and our ridiculous eccentricities.

If music be the food of love...

... then last night saw the gentle sound of sitars fill our kitchen. OK, that's rather a flowery way of saying that I made an Indian recipe, but it was really remarkable since the dish in question contained two things that Husbandio loathes, and yet (a) he still agreed to eat it, (b) he finished it all up, and (c) demanded that I make it again at some point.

I'd made spinach and potato dahl using a recipe in one of my Weight Watchers cookbooks - I've got two, and the recipes are so simple and delish that they are definitely the cookbooks I use most. The two ingredients that Husbandio hates and has always refused to eat were spinach and lentils. In fact, I don't think I've ever cooked him anything with lentils in because of his claim that he'd been put off them for life by being made to eat them too much as a child - that's what comes of having a hippy style childhood and growing up in Ibiza. I have occasionally presented him with spinach but it never goes down well, which is a shame because I love it, and it's so good for you.

Food likes and dislikes are funny things - if you love something it's hard to imagine someone else hating it. For example, I love both mango and avocado, yet Husbandio and my mum can't bear them, since they hate the texture. For my part, I can't stand olives or anything pickled (it's the vinegar I reckon, but it can make life difficult for a new jewish girl!), or soft/blue cheeses like brie, camembert or stilton. Isabel loves cheese and will eat brie and camembert til the cows come home, but doesn't like honey (what's not to like?!) or tomatoes. We all try to be good about trying new things or re-trying old things since tastebuds do change. There are exceptions though - I will not eat Marmite for love nor money, and Husbandio is the same about cream. We'll have to let Isabel choose one foodstuff which she can elect never to have to try ever again. After that, anything's fair game. Ant mashed potato anyone?

Some cute baby pics (but then, I'm biased)

The birth of Emily Catherine Rann has now been officially registered, and she even has letters on her door (if not yet after her name!).


She's been through several firsts now - nasty things like the heel prick test, and also fun things like first bathtime with her big sister.


She's also developing her own little character - more chilled than her sister was as a baby, but then again her parents are more relaxed, so that might be a contributory factor. And she has her own unique sense of humour - as displayed in the picture below of her trying to latch on to Husbandio's nose. No joy there I'm afraid...!