A Year in Pictures: Week 3

Saturday 15 January


I spent most of the evening playing Jumbline on the iPad. I'm a girl who knows how to party on a Saturday night.


Sunday 16 January


She wasn't entirely sure what to make of her new bath-time pal...


Monday 17 January


This was Daddy's idea :)


Tuesday 18 January


We went to the play barn this morning for Bethan's birthday. This is Joe; he's nearly 4 weeks old and he weighs about 6.5 lbs. Today was supposed to be his due date. I know everyone says it but it's hard to imagine that Daisy was this size not that long ago...


Wednesday 19 January


This huge pile of clothes is what Liz brought round for Daisy today. That girl is so spoiled :). Included in the pile were three swimsuits, so we're all set for Florida.


Thursday 20 January


Thursday mornings we go to Baby Sensory Group. Today it was all about different textures, and it turns out Daisy's favourite was the whisk...


Friday 21 January


Uncle Ryan bought Daisy these Converse (and another pair that look like Nemo) when she was newborn. She's very excited that she's big enough to fit into them now!

A Year in Pictures: Week 2

I have a feeling it's going to get tough trying to find things to photograph later in the year, but I did OK for week 2...

Saturday 8 January


Daisy and her friends went to Lily's first birthday party today, and we attempted to get a photo of them all together. Daisy was overdue a nap and was quite cranky, but we still managed to get a couple of shots before she stopped co-operating. From left to right we have: William, nearly 5 weeks old; Robert, 3 days older than William but 5 weeks premature when he was born; Dougie, nearly 4 months; Daisy, 4.5 months; and Lily, 1 year and 1 day.


Sunday 9 January


A friend gave us this bouncer and Daisy loves it! She doesn't actually bounce yet, as her feet only just touch the floor, but this is officially her new favourite thing.


Monday 10 January


Daisy doesn't just drop off to sleep during the day. She usually needs to be in the car, so I tend to schedule my trips to the shops etc around nap times. But I refuse to take her out in the car purely so she'll go to sleep, so if I don't need to go out, this is what we do instead - put her next to the hob with the extractor fan on full power.


Tuesday 11 January


All legal and above board! Daisy's passport arrived in the post today, which I thought was mighty quick as I only submitted the application last Wednesday. I was getting a little worried that it might not come back in time for our trip to Florida on 5 Feb, especially when the woman at the Post Office said it could take around 3 weeks to come back, which I thought was cutting it a bit fine. But in the end there was nothing to worry about. 24 days and counting till we see Annabelle & Corgan (and Keri & Keith of course)!


Wednesday 12 January


Someone's found her thumb :-). I wasn't keen on the idea of her sucking her thumb but as she won't take a dummy (I was even less keen on this too), at least she can self-soothe now.


Thursday 13 January


Non-maternity jeans! Granted, they're men's, but they are quite big - round the waist as well as the length and at the knees - and they'll have to do until I can fit into my regular jeans. I refuse to go out and buy another pair when I have 9 or 10 perfectly good pairs waiting to be worn.


Friday 14 January


Nanna sent Daisy a present. Because, you know, she doesn't have enough clothes :).

A Year in Pictures: Week 1

Right, I need a project. Something that will require me to blog on a regular basis, otherwise this year's entries will be even fewer and farther between than last year's. So I'm going to take a picture a day and post them here each week. That will mean at least 52 blog entries. I'll post Saturday to Friday and will put the posts up the following Tuesday, which gives me three days to get the previous week's pictures organised into a blog post. The photos won't all be of Daisy (although let's face it, most of them will be), and will be of everyday stuff that we do. Here goes:

Saturday 1 January


Having gone to bed before midnight on New Year's Eve for the first time since I was at school, I spent New Year's Day with my two favourite people.


Sunday 2 January


This is a video still, hence the poor quality, but all my regular cameras had run out of battery and it never occurred to me that the video camera has a still camera function as well. Daisy rarely sleeps anywhere but in her cot or the car, so when she didn't immediately wake up when we got home, I had a little fun. It's not the same quality as the ones I saw on an e-mail forward, but then I don't have much imagination, nor do I have all sorts of materials lying around to get creative with, plus I was just desperately hoping that she wouldn't wake up :).


Monday 3 January


This is what my house looks like with all the Christmas lights on. No, it's not on fire. I really must learn how to use my camera properly...


Tuesday 4 January


Daisy's teething. She has had two little buds on her lower gum for about a month now, and in the past week or so she's started sucking her fist a LOT. Then the wet fist comes out of her mouth and onto her clothes.


Wednesday 5 January


This is what I see when I look in the rear view mirror. Which obviously I only do for genuine driving-related reasons, and not just to remind myself of how cute she is.


Thursday 6 January


My photo frame was finally delivered this week. It originally arrived in November, but when I opened the box it was in a mahogany frame, and I'd asked for an oak one as all my furniture is oak. Actually the mahogany looked really nice as it matched my hair colour, but I thought it was probably better to get an oak frame than to buy new furniture, so I returned it. Due to snow and Christmas, it didn't arrive back until today, but I'm really pleased with it.


Friday 7 January


This is one of the presents I got for Christmas: a '4D Cityscape' of New York. First you put together the base, which includes the rivers and surrounding boroughs, then you put the islands on (Manhattan, Liberty, Roosevelt etc), then the buildings go on top of that. And to satisfy the fourth 'D', you put the buildings on in the order they were constructed. Except some of them weren't so easy to identify so we had to do a bit of time travelling. Unfortunately there are two pieces missing, but don't worry, I've e-mailed the company and asked for replacements :).

Three Months Old

I know everyone says it, but I honestly have no idea where the last three months went. Sure, at the time some days felt like they would never end, particularly in the first 6 weeks, but overall the last 90 days seem to have flown by.

Daisy is holding her head up for significant periods now, so a couple of days ago we broke out the Bumbo and she loves it.


I found a load of clothes on Sunday in one of the drawers in Daisy's room that I didn't know were there. I thought that drawer was full of 3-6 months clothes but there's quite a lot marked newborn or 0-3 months, so I'm trying to put all the outfits on her over the next few weeks before she's too big for them. It's a good job she's small for her age!

Talking of small, we went to the weigh clinic this morning and she's 10lbs 7oz, which is small but she's roughly following the 5th centile line on the growth chart. That's to be expected for a 3-week-early baby. I actually like the fact that she was small - it means we got to experience her as a tiny baby. I've lost count of the number of babies I've heard of being born in the past three months at 8 or 9lbs - makes me glad Daisy was small; I thought delivering a 6-pound baby was painful enough!

Night times are getting much easier. I bought a blogging app for my iPhone so that I could blog while I was up in the night, but she only usually wakes up once a night now (although when she wakes up for the second time around 7am we go back to bed for a couple of hours) and only then for about half an hour, so by the time I've checked Facebook, Twitter and my RSS Feed there isn't usually time for blogging as well :). For the past few weeks we've got into a routine of bath at 17:30, then a feed, then bed at 18:00 and a bottle at 23:00. This will send her through to anytime from 03:00 to 06:00 - usually closer to 04:30 - then we get into a 3-hour cycle during the day. I'm happy with that; much happier than if she was insisting on being fed every three hours at night. She has got the idea that the day is for being awake and the night is for sleeping, which is great, but she hasn't realised that she still needs to sleep a good portion of the day, and she only really sleeps if she's on the move - in the car, in the buggy or being carried. Unfortunately all of those things require me to be awake, but as I'm getting a lot more sleep at night I rarely need a nap during the day.

Every morning when she gets up I see a load of hairs on the sheets, but I guess that's to be expected. She sleeps on her side, switching from one side to the other each time she feeds, and during the day when I'm not holding her she's on her back, so she's losing hair all around her head. She looks like a monk in reverse ;-).

Another picture? OK. Here she is in her favourite place.

A Matter of Black and White

I had a day off parenting duties on Saturday so Clare and I went to the theatre to see the new touring production of Chess. Clare had never heard of it (born in the 80s, you see) and the only time I saw it was more than 20 years ago so I didn't remember much of it, other than the action revolves around the World Chess Championships in 1979 and 1980 (racy, I know) and its most famous song is I Know Him So Well.

I have good memories of it the first time round, but having seen it again I'm not entirely sure why. I remember the song One Night in Bangkok at the beginning of the second half, but I'm fairly sure that most of the plot must have passed me by the first time I saw it. It relies on a certain amount of understanding of what conditions in Soviet Russia were like at the time, and at least a passing knowledge of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against Soviet-imposed policies. Which obviously we all had before we arrived.

Actually, the reason this particular rendition of this particular show isn't up there among my all-time favourites is precisely because it required a knowledge of those things, and the reason knowledge was a prerequisite was that the singers were, as ever, largely drowned out by the music and it was extremely difficult to hear what they singing. If it weren't for the fact that the female lead was almost always understandable, I would have blamed the sound desk entirely, but as she was much clearer, my conclusion is that the other actors were simply not enunciating. Which was a real shame, because I'm pretty sure we missed a lot of what was going on, and came away feeling a bit underwhelmed.

This production was choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood of Strictly fame, and this side of the performance was very well done. A lot of the instruments were played on-stage by the supporting cast, which was very unusual and worked really well, but all in all, my impressions were that one of the male leads behaved like a spoilt child, the other was totally flaky and it didn't take much to turn his head, and the female lead, whilst a great singer, was just a bit of a cow. I'm sure if I had been able to hear the words being sung I would have come away with a lot more than that...

A Week at Nanna & Grandpa's

Daisy and I just got back from a lovely week at my Mum & Dad's. We left last Thursday and drove to Manchester - the journey was fine; she slept all the way and when she woke up I pulled into the nearest service station and fed her, then we got on our way again - and we spent the afternoon with Grandma & Grandad (aka Rob's Mum & Dad), Auntie Kath and Uncle Tom, then we went round to stay the night with my friends Catherine and Ben, their dog Betsy, cat Chester and as-yet-unnamed 24-week-old foetus. The following day we drove up to Mum & Dad's, and Jen arrived after work for the weekend. Mum had arranged to have people round for a meal that evening before I decided to come, so there were 8 of us for dinner. I got Daisy up at 23:00 for her bottle and everyone cooed over her.

Saturday was my birthday, and I got the best present from Daisy - she didn't wake up till 06:20! Saturday was also the day that my old recorder teacher, Jane, was in town from her home in Peebles with her husband and son. I haven't seen her since her wedding day over 7 years ago so we arranged for them to come round for lunch. We also invited the four girls I used to play in music groups with - first I was in a trio with Lisa and Anna, then Anna and I joined Laura and Louise in a quartet. Lisa and Laura couldn't make it, but Louise and Anna came round with their girls - Anna has Tamsyn and Louise has Eden and Saffron. I haven't seen Anna for 10 years and Louise for 15, since I left for university, but neither of them has changed all that much, except that Louise has done what I've done and ditched the high-maintenance blonde highlights in favour of chocolate brown :).

We made a few attempts to have a group photo, but with 5 kids aged 6, 4, nearly 3, 9 months and 11 weeks, it wasn't all that easy :). This is the best we could do - there's another reasonably good one but Eden is mid-fidget and has come out very blurry ;).

Back: Jane, Timothy, Louise, Saffron
Front: Me, Daisy, Tamsyn, Eden, Anna

Later on my uncle, aunt and cousin arrived from Huddersfield, so there were 7 of us for dinner that night, and again for lunch the following day.

Sunday morning we went to church, thereby killing lots of birds with one stone as we saw quite a few people who wanted to see Daisy. On Sunday evening Mum & Dad babysat while Sarah, Jen and I went to the cinema to see a recording of the 25th Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables, which took place at the beginning of October at the O2 Arena. It was fantastic - Jen bought me the DVD for my birthday but it isn't released for another couple of weeks; can't wait to get it and watch it again!

On Monday my Godmother and Aunt came round for dinner (that's 6 for dinner that day, for those keeping count - Mum did a wonderful job feeding everyone!), on Tuesday morning Suzanne came round, Tuesday afternoon Jen and I went to visit Carlie and her boys (Noah is 2 and Ben is a couple of weeks younger than Daisy), and on Wednesday we went round to see my friend Sue and her son Theo, who's just turned 1. Jen went back home on Wednesday evening as she had to go back to work on Thursday, while Mum, Daisy and I went up to Durham to see Susie, who I worked with last year in Winchester and who is now at the university studying Music. So not exactly a quiet week, but we had a really lovely time and are looking forward to seeing Nanna, Grandpa and Auntie Jen again in a month.

I took this photo while we were there; makes me laugh every time I see it ;).

Ten Things I Didn't Know Before I Had A Baby

1. I'm not too proud to leave the house with no make-up on and baby sick on my clothes and in my hair.
2. The first few weeks are really not rewarding at all.
3. Mums never catch up on lost sleep - they just learn to live with less of it.
4. Poo consistency really is a legitimate conversation topic, but only with close family/other parents/health professionals/friends who know you really well and love you regardless. Don't try and talk dirty with just anyone.
5. There's no such thing as too many muslins.
6. It's not just boys who can pee directionally when having their nappy changed.
7. 'Sleep when baby sleeps' is absolutely essential but much easier said than done when there's laundry to be done, dinner to be eaten, bath time stuff and toys to clear away, milk to be expressed, bottles to be washed and sterilised, groceries to be bought...
8. When I breastfeed, my feet tingle.
9. My stomach muscles ache every time I stand up, and have done since she was born.
10. The world is a much better place after a hot shower.

A Day in the Life

One of my Twitter friends (she's an IRL friend as well) brought my attention to the fact that Greater Manchester Police are tweeting general information about every phone call they get for 24 hours from 05:00 today. They are highlighting the fact that they have to deal with a broad range of calls, most of which take up considerable time and energy but are not the kind of incidents included in crime statistics, so the work goes largely unnoticed by the public and, more importantly, the politicians.

I've been following them for an hour now and have seen about 150 calls logged, some serious ones like a 3-car accident in Wigan and various street robberies (mostly in Salford, where I used to live), some unexpected ones like 'calling to inform us that door-to-door sales will be taking place' (it looks like it's a requirement for the police to be informed if you're going to do this), and some bizarre ones like 'man shouts "you're gorgeous" to woman' and 'man locked out of house, wants police to break in for him'. Plus there have been 25 or so prank calls or silent calls - either children playing with the phone or people making inadvertent 'pocket calls' from their mobiles. And there were 39 arrests between 09:00 and 11:30.

It's only a quarter of the way through the day and it's had the desired effect on me - made me realise just how much the police gets involved in. And how little we give them credit for.

A Month of Numbers

Daisy is one month old already. Here's a numerical summary of her first month.

Weight lost in first 3 days: 9oz (down to 5lbs 4oz from 5lbs 13oz)
Weight gained since then: 1lb 14oz (now 7lbs 2oz)
Net weight gained: 1lb 5oz
Inches grown: 1 (19.5 from 18.5)
Days before umbilical cord fell off: 8
Visitors to the house: 38
Midwives/health visitors seen since being home: 6
Bunches of flowers received: 7
Teddy bears received: 5
Balloons received: 7
Cards received: 54
Baby-gros received: 67
Baby-gros that are still a bit big: 66
Nights spent in own room: 6
Hours' sleep at a time: 2
Average dirty nappies per day: 10
Feeds per day: 8
Cotton wool balls used: 100s
Loads of baby laundry done: 18
Trips to Hedge End: 6
Trips to Southampton: 1
Trips to Winchester: 2
Sundays we made it to church on time: 1
Sundays we made it to church, albeit a little late (OK, a lot late): 1
Trips to the swimming pool: 1
Days Mummy hasn't cried in the last month: 2
Times people have said 'She's so tiny!': lost count

Here's a picture of her in the only baby-gro that currently fits her :)

Pregnancy Perks and Pitfalls

In no particular order, here are some observations on the highs and lows of my pregnancy: -

1. Morning sickness isn't just reserved for the mornings
I had a pretty textbook first trimester. From the day before my doctor's appointment to confirm that I was actually pregnant until my 14th week, I felt sick in the mornings and the evenings. Not every morning and evening, but enough to notice a pattern. I didn't realise that the sickness comes in the form of lightheadedness, rather than a stomach ache. I had a fairly unpleasant flight to the US in February, and I had some degree of morning sickness every day throughout the 5-week trip - its abatement coinciding with coming home, actually :-(. I found out that it was worse if I didn't eat within about half an hour of getting up in the morning, so I developed a routine of having half a packet of ready salted crisps first thing while waiting for Rob to wake up so we could go to breakfast.

I have to say, I don't know how women manage morning sickness during subsequent pregnancies, when they already have a child (or children) to look after and all they want to do is lie in bed. Medals all round.

2. Great skin and hair!
Actually, I didn't notice the hair all that much as mine is really thick anyway, but I LOVED the fact that I no longer had teenage skin. Unfortunately it's come back with a vengeance now :-(.

3. Back pain like never before
I'm no stranger to back pain. I've had it in some form or another for 20 years, but around my 30th week I developed a pain under my right shoulder blade which became almost excruciating at times. I was quite worried about driving 5 hours up to my parents' house at 34 weeks, and even more worried about driving back home again at 36 weeks. I won't lie to you, it wasn't pleasant, but I managed to find a seating position that wasn't ridiculously painful. Thank goodness I was driving an automatic, though - my seating position involved putting my right hand behind my head at times, and I couldn't have done that if I'd needed one hand for the gear stick and one for the steering wheel...

4. I've got a secret...
I've always thought that parents can sometimes come across as a little smug when talking to non-parents - 'until you've had a child, you don't know...' - and I'm afraid I've now joined those ranks, although I do try to keep my advice to myself unless asked for it. But I honestly did feel while I was pregnant that I had a secret that no one else knew. I know women have been having babies since the dawn of time, but being pregnant made me feel very special.

5. No charcoal or gherkins!
I was looking forward to seeing what kind of food cravings I would get. But apart from eating everything in sight during my first trimester (only in the afternoons though; mornings and evenings were reserved for throwing up), I didn't have any food-related oddities. Shame.

6. So that's what the inside of my belly button looks like...
I've had an inny for as long as I can remember. At around 28 weeks, my inny became an outy, and it looked weird ;-). I bought a silicon belly button bar from a place online, which said it would move with the shape of my belly, so I thought for £3 I would give it a try. If it didn't work, well I can't remember the last time I knowingly bared my stomach in public, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to take my belly button ring out. I'm not 18 any more, after all - and even then, I didn't have a flat stomach so my belly button rarely saw the light of day. Anyway, the silicon bar did work, and my once-outy is now back to being an inny again.

I thought of loads more while I was pregnant, and kept thinking I must write them down before I forget them... If I think of them I'll do another post.