And my husband thought I took too many photos of my nephew...

Maybe he's a little bit more than 50% Italian?

(he's certainly some percentage of psycho ham when it comes to having his photo taken)

Suddenly...

... it all became terrifyingly clear:
his social life was completely dictated by his mother.

The darkness

You know how babies generally like to pull hair?

Well, the baby who lives in our house likes to pull my hair right out by the roots and then examine the strands caught around his tiny fingers. Pleasant.

I'm not proud of this, but the other day I was so desperate to get a few more minutes rest after a mutual nap while he played on the bed (read, pulled on my hair) that I yanked some strands out myself, rolled them into a more or less cohesive clump and gave them to him to play with. Some days I gross even myself out.

I'm thinking of getting him some kind of doll or doll head with long hair, to save my own.

Really?

I can have my own blog when I grow up?

Boy

Time to confess that not only did I want my baby to be a boy due to my adoration of my amazing nephew Harry*, but also because of Fussy and Finslippy. Before I even wanted to have a baby, I'd read about Jackson and Henry and be floored by the cute and the funny and the impossibly articulate.

That's kind of shallow, right? Oh well, he'd be just as awesome as a girl.

Only pinker.

(* I now have another amazing nephew (and godson), Matthew, but I don't know him that well yet.)

The strawberry - a cautionary tale

o.m.g.

I just found the notes I kept soon after Matteo's birth of when he fed, for how long, from which side etc (that only lasted a few weeks). How in anyone's name did I manage to wield a pen, let alone make coherent notes when I was obviously in the deepest depths of sleep deprivation hell?

Not planning on choosing that scenario ever again.

Tough life

Before the fall

'What, I have to stay like this now?'

He has the pissed off, poor me look down pat

'Where the hell are my cot and my blue bunny? Can't you see I need to sleep, woman?!'

Could this be summer on its way?

(Fingers crossed)

He must know he's part-Australian

Matteo doesn't usually hold on to me when I carry him around (after all, it's mummy's job not to drop him!), but today he fell asleep in the stroller on the way home from Waitrose, at about the time when he'd normally have his longest nap of the day. Usually I just leave him in the stroller til he wakes up. However, since he's been napping in his cot rather than his bouncy chair or on his playmat (and he seems to be over the toys dangling from the arches now too), he sleeps so much better and longer. So I unstrapped and carried him, half-asleep, upstairs to his cot.

He clung to me like a little koala.

Placeholder

I guess I'm not blogging much anymore, huh.

I do have a pretty crazy 'mummy' social life now though. Coffee dates, lunch dates, Rhymetime at the library, Magic Music Box, just hanging out with the little guy... Five more months of this until I go back to work three days a week. I could get used to it.

Hmm. I'm liking this tie-dying a bit too much.

Here comes the soppiness

But truly, I have never felt more privileged than I have today when Matteo, grumping and overtired, fell deeply asleep in my arms. To soothe him into that state, and be a safe place for him, even though I know babies can pretty much sleep anywhere, felt like such an honour.

And then, because I'm pretty tired myself from a cold, I took him, still sleeping, up to our bedroom and lay dozing with him for an hour. He woke up for one final bottle before bed and is now all tucked up in his sleeping bag with his bedtime bear. Asleep again and, if experience is anything to go by, we won't hear from him until around 6am tomorrow.

There is a lot to like about this mother stuff.

Didn't you know?

All the cool babies are sleeping with bunnies on their faces these days.

Confession

My baby is just over 16 weeks old, and to date I have never changed his nappy in a public place - other people's houses, yes, but never in a baby change room/ladies' room. Not even in Starbucks, where I spend an ionordinate amount of time and money.

I almost did today, but needed to get to the post office before it shut so let him linger, so to speak. Judging from the huge grins he gave me while I weighed parcels, he most definitely approved.

The washing machine is struggling, however.

Things I thought I would never ever be able to do again when I was newly postpartum

(and now do all the time)

• Read a book
• Sell books on Amazon
• Sleep during most of the dark hours without being woken until morning
  
• Be woken by anything other than our baby crying
• Sit in a coffee shop and read a book
• See a film at the cinema (ok, I've only seen two so far)
• Housework - I wasn't missing this, I can tell you
• Make a meal
  
• Write in a journal
• Organise all the digital photos of our baby

Add to all that my very active presence on ebay as both buyer and seller of baby items and , while I'm not back at work yet, I'm achieving more than I ever dreamed would be possible. I am so glad to be out of that helpless, hopeless space.

Tomorrow we start a mother & baby yoga and baby massage course, and I'm slightly apprehensive. I'm no yoga bunny and I am fearful of a huge dirty nappy at just the wrong moment.

He sleeps

Dear internet

(or rather, dear lovely kind people who read this blog)

Some advice if you can, please. We are planning to have Matteo's christening in June, if I get my act together and check that the date our preferred priest (who married us) is available tallies with the church availability. So far, so fine. But what to do afterwards? I know it's traditional to have some kind of meal/tea/party, but we seriously do not have room to have people over to our house, even if it is a sunny day and we can corral everyone outside. June days in London can be sunny (our wedding day in 2006 was glorious, as were the few days following), but nothing is guaranteed. Especially not the weather forecast...

Any suggestions? It would be nice not to have to leave the church and that be the end of the celebration. We could book a big table in a restaurant, but we can't afford to pay for everyone, and something more relaxed would suit me better.

Actually, (how satisfying it is when blogging about a problem provides an answer) what I would really like - and I will do this, but may be stymied by the weather - is to have a big picnic in the town park, which is in walking distance from the church. People could BYO blankets to sit on, and a plate of food, we could provide drinks (and we could even buy them en route). Now, that I like.

(But please do make any other suggestions you can think of. Especially if you've ever lived in an English terraced house and wanted to have a party!)

Youtube

Turns out there is an excellent free way to share videos of baby behaviour with my family in Australia. Sure beats emailing huge attachments.

Matteo is moving out of the Moses basket into the cot tonight. Fingers crossed it will be almost as smooth as moving him to his own room was.

Blessed

Matteo was in bed at 8pm last night. This morning I woke around 7, and went in to his room at 7.30 as I'd heard nothing from him and he is usually awake earlier. He was lying in his Moses basket, arms by his sides, peacefully awake. When he saw me, he smiled a quietly delighted smile, and kept on smiling as I told him I was going downstairs to get his bottle. I came back up to find him still quiet, still beaming.

What an angel-boy. He's now asleep on his playmat.

Snow days

This motherhood deal is pretty sweet, if you don't count the nine weeks of emotional hell that came before the last couple of wow-i-love-this-kid, and what-a-gorgeous-smile, and you-are-really-joining-in-this-conversation! and fewer nappies! and more sleep!

I just have to keep remembering to call myself 'Mummy' when I'm talking to him, and not 'Auntie Anne'...

Any day now, 'cow'

Any day now, 'cow', you are so dead.

What, you have to photograph everything?

Yeah, I'm still watching you... and could you do something about this 'cow' please?

People. Ugh.

The world would be a better, if smellier, place if dogs were in charge.

Examples of human crapness from today's little errand-running trip into Enfield Town with Matteo in his sling:

1. Post office employee decides it's ok to keep a queue of 13 people waiting while he reads and then signs a card for a fellow employee, putting it back in its envelope before he calls the next customer. Actually, two of the cashiers did this. I only really noticed when my least favourite, exceedingly customer service-free cashier was involved. (Our local post office used to be staffed by knowledgeable employees who'd worked there for years. Then it was bought by Londis and turned into a supermarket with a post office section at the back. Now there are rarely more than three cashiers manning the counter, longer queues than ever before, and the cashiers were all new except for one. It took ages before any of them were up to speed with postal information.)

2. Man smoking while waiting for the same bus as me puts his cigarette out on the bus timetable stand when the bus arrives. How is that ever an ok thing to do?

Ah well, at least there's none of that in our house where I tend to be most of the time at the moment due to, I don't know, possibly the demands of a 9-week-old baby. Who just happened to sleep from 11pm to 5am last night - way to go Matteo!

So a gratuitous photo might be in order. Speaking of which, recommend me a reasonably priced, good quality digital camera with a decent length zoom? I'm happy with automatic everything else.



(This is the Superman pose he adopts when on his playmat and contemplating punching the stuffing out of poor Dylan the (not-very-much-like-a-donkey) Donkey. (Who has weird pink strings coming out of the top of his head. Do toy designers not think anything for babies should be vaguely realistic?)

He often does this while his nappy is being changed too. Maybe he just thinks he's so cool because he can just lie back while someone else takes care of the dirty work?

Internets (or at least those of you out there with children), can you help me?

Matteo is 8 weeks old on Sunday. During the day, when he's not sleeping, I talk to him, read to him a bit, sing nursery rhymes to him, and he has a bouncy chair with toys hanging down above him which I sit him in sometimes, and if I need to get something done I park him e.g. in the kitchen and try to remember to talk to him about what I'm doing while I do it. I try to get him on his tummy for 'tummy time' but he pretty much hates it. I'm thinking about getting a playmat for him, one with an arch and dangly toys for him to reach for. M is mostly working during the day (at home) but also sings to him and

I feel like I don't know what to do with him really - do you think at 8 weeks old he needs more? What did you do?

Belatedly announcing...

Matteo, born 9 November 2008. For an almost 8-week-old baby he's a pretty cool dude.