Making it up

Sometimes I hurry and scurry into the kitchen, and gobble food while loading the washer and rushing the washing up.

Sometimes I scrabble for a shower, and luxuriate in the temporary bliss of cleanliness before I am reanointed in dripping milk or baby posset.

While he sleeps, sometimes I tweet or reply to emails or try to catch up with blogging. Or spend a little time reading to Smallest or attempting to educate an older child.

While he sleeps I sometimes try to sleep as well, but I resent that weakness when there is so much else to do.

And sometimes when he sleeps, I hold him, and watch him. I savour each breath and cherish each moment. I wish there was a way to hold on to these feelings other than in words that cannot be but a surface capture, or in pictures that only catch an instant.

But words and pictures are all I have.

This is a book I’ve been flirting with on and off for months, never quite sure why I couldn’t get into it, and determined to sit down and give it proper attention at some point. Today was the day, I’ve spent hours under a feeding baby and I was determined to finish it.

And finish it I did. Which left me with somewhat of a quandary. You see, I wanted to love it. It’s a debut novel, published by Two Roads who have shared some wonderful books with me in the past, and I enjoy reviewing for them. But me and this book just didn’t gel.

I don’t know what it was that didn’t work for me. The prose is excellent, the characters well drawn, the story flows and is (mainly) believable, the setting beautiful. Perhaps the story is too stark, a little too relentless – there are hints of happenings to come that at a late stage of pregnancy I just didn’t want to read about, which was one of the excuses I’ve been using to put off reading. It kind of reminds me of Steinbeck, there’s a quiet desperation to the way the novel progresses that just depressed me as I went along.

So, would I recommend this book? Not if you are pregnant I don’t think. To much foreboding and unhappiness contained. Though I’d very much like to read other opinions of it, to see whether I’m overreacting in my hormonal and somewhat exhausted state.

when I have about a billion blogpost ideas in my head, and probably enough time to write half of one.

Surprised I’ve only used that title once before too.

So let’s see, what’s the quickest and easiest post? Oddly, it isn’t a photo, as that requires attaching phone, finding photo, editing and uploading. The ones I upload direct from phone are too enormous for words and at some point I’m going to have to find a way of downloading them, batch editing (at which point I’ll add a watermark) and re-uploading without changing name or location so that I don’t have to go through fixing all the links. At some point. Not now.

It could be to use my needy tweet from early. It’s another insides/ outsides moment.

So here you go. I said

Sometimes I wonder how other ppl see me – fancy defining me in a tweet? #oddquestion #mayblogifigetanyanswers #needytonight

Lou from Bloggomy (aka Bobbity666) had first go. She said:

Helpful and thoughtful. Strong enough to stand up for something important to you.

Then Mamacrow joined in.

kind, clever, skilled, knowledgable, well read, funny, interesting, great writer, runner, determined, awesome mum + my friend

crap, forgot pretty + gorgeous. One tweet isnt enough!

bollockes. Add ‘generous’ as well please

And Michelle from Mummy from the Heart added

Caring, home-schooling earth mother who is a bit of a geek! #definedinatweet

I moved away from twitter for a while, and came back to a tweet from overwhelmed mum

Supermum, unstoppable but delicate underneath, brave & intelligent

Why did I need to read all this? Because sometimes I lack perspective. Sometimes I’m tired and all I can hear is the note in my voice that tells me I’m losing the plot. I’m not as patient as I want to be. I don’t explain, I snap. And instead of the home cooked meal I have planned, the washing up stacks up on the side and I end up buying fish and chips on the way home from the shops.

So I reach out for a bit of validation, and my friends don’t let me down. What I need to do though, is reach inside myself, and find those parts of me that they see, and let my children see them too.

(Thank you so much to those ppl who were there for me tonight. If you’d like to play along, either at me on twitter, or feel free to define me in a comment. Maybe some of your other friends would like to try it too?)

And for once it wasn’t with a politician, or one of my children.

Let me set the scene. It’s about 7 in the evening, glorious day, and I’m about to drag 4 children around lidl. I park the car, and as we start getting out, a football bounces past, knocking into the car door. It’s pursued by a medium sized boy on a scooter. Instead of picking it up, he kicks it around the carpark and scoots after it, narrowly missing Big as she lifts Smallest into a trolley while I’m by the car wrapping Tigerboy. Small shouts at the boy, who then disappears down the steps into the neighbouring park.

A few moments later and sure enough the football reappears over the wall and bounces past my car again.

I see red. Still fastening the wrap sound my waist I head over to the wall and proceed to give the bunch of teenagers at the other side a piece of my mind, asking them what they think they are doing and how they would feel if the ball had hit the toddler or baby that they couldn’t see.

The temptation to keep the ball that Big had retrieved was quite high, but instead I had her throw it back and we headed into the store to a virtual round of applause from others in the carpark.

So, did I overstep the boundaries? Would you have done the same? Or would you have just quietly disappeared the ball without confrontation?

One of the drawbacks of following lots of book bloggers and publishers on twitter is hearing and reading teasers for fabulous books day in and day out. So I’ve been hearing about the Hungergames and the forthcoming movie for ages, but hadn’t had chance to read it. Then (after some rather heavy hints ) I was given the trilogy for Christmas. All I needed was some time to read…

Fast forward a few months to spending some hours a day trapped under a baby. I’m catching up on my reading. I’ve read 4 books in the last 4 days. It’s brilliant. Not so good on the reviewing though, as balancing a laptop on a baby always seems wrong somehow

The first book I read over the weekend was The Hungergames itself. I’d been a bit nervous about reading it, as I always am when I pick up something that has been raved about all over the place. But from the first page I was hooked – and it wasn’t until I was partway through the second book that I noticed it’s written in first person present tense, which is a style that usually puts me off!

I usually find that that style of writing actually comes between me and the story, as it jars rather when I have to insert myself into the narrative. In this case though it’s more like Katniss moved into my mind and I co-existed with her, seeing through her eyes, feeling her pain and struggle, living her story. I don’t know quite how that was achieved, but it works. It wasn’t until I started rereading bits of the book that I managed to find excerpts that annoyed me (like the sequence where she puts on her leather hunting boots before her trousers. I mean, really?)

It was kind of a relief finding parts of the book that I could criticise. Is that bizarre? Probably. Nice to know that the author is human though, and the editor fallible

Seriously though, I really enjoyed thise book. And Big snatched it from my hands and is equally enraptured. I thought that the gore and violence (there is gore and violence throughout) would put her off, but she seems to have coped with it admirably well. And although I’m not sure that the complexities of the stories have really sunk in for her, I’m looking forward to discussing it when she’s done reading.

So, if you haven’t read the Hungergames, and you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, I’d highly recommend giving it a go. Thoughtful, provocative, well crafted teen SF that has plenty to offer to adults, on all sorts of different levels.

I’m lying here between two sleeping children. Smallest is out for the count, Tigerboy is a bit more restless. I’ve probably only got a couple of minutes before he decides he needs a top up. And that’s fine. If we’re up most of the night, we’re up most of the night, because one thing I’ve learnt with children is that each of these phases passes, usually when you least expect it.

I’d never intended to tandem feed. I wanted smallest to self wean before get brother was born. But it didn’t happen, and so for several nights she lay next to me sadly, waiting for her turn. And sometimes she fell asleep before he did, and sometimes she didn’t.

Then, she stopped asking. She stopped looking sad. She started talking about milk for the baby, and singing to us as she fell asleep. And I think, without either of us really noticing, she’s weaned.

I feel a little sad. I didn’t cherish those last few feeds because they were uncomfortable and stressful, feeding her while tigerboy built up to wanting his next feed. I hope she might remember the experience more fondly and that she doesn’t feel pushed out or replaced. She seems to like her baby brother and she’s getting lots of attention from her older siblings as well, so hopefully all will be well.

But I still wish I’d known our last feed was our last. And that I’d enjoyed it too.

Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Oh, OK.

There is this.

Which surprised me rather. Not only did I not ask for any nominations, I was even a little negative on twitter about the whole award concept – it doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with how good your blog is, but a lot more to do with how much begging for votes you do. And when the nominations were opened, my timeline was suddenly full of begging, what’s more, it was being RTed all over the place too. Not good.

I note with interest that the MaDs this year have introduced a judges pick into their shortlists:

After four weeks, we�ll count up all the nominations and the four blogs in each category with the most nominations will become finalists. Our judges will also pick one blog for each category that they would like to see in the finals � we think this will give smaller, or newer blogs a chance to shine even if they don�t get quite as many nominations as bigger, more established sites.

An interesting step, and I hope it does help to make the process a little less just a grab for votes. I’ve also seen suggestions from the MaDs that ppl should post rather than tweeting – not going to help all that much when various ppl then auto tweet their posts, or get their tribe to do it for them

I blogged on the topic of awards last year. I’ve just been back and read it, and yup, I’m still in the same place. I’d still love to win. I still have an eclectic blog that doesn’t fit easily into any other categories. (Still waiting for that life coach sponsored category for disorganised blogger with the best of intentions. Could they be twinned with a house decluttering and organising company please? Then I’d have more time to be organised on the blog, honest…) And I’m still not going to beg. I have even less time to spend on it all atm, given the new arrival (who is just stirring, deciding he might be hungry again. Gonna rename him bottomless pit. Oh, if only he were bottomless. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with his rear end and its prodigious output…)

Where was I?

Distracted by a baby, who’d a thunk it.

Ah yes, awards. I’d love to win. I’m not going to beg. There are better blogs and bloggers out there, probably who can be more convincing about themselves, their lives and their desires than I can be as well. And what is the Change category for the BiBs about anyway? Don’t quite understand. But thank you for the nomination. And I’m already practising my “I’m very happy for the winner” smile. (Though as I can’t afford the ticket for BritMums live, I’m not going to have to do it in person. Which is one silver lining I suppose.

Today we had a plan. It was to go over to a friend’s house, Laura of the Mummy Life for a newborn photo shoot. Before that I needed to see a health visitor to double check tigerboy’s jaundice.

However, tracking down a health visitor proved slightly more complicated. The midwife who discharged us on Monday had tried to arrange a home visit for today, so before I headed out to a clinic I thought I’d better check there wasn’t anyone coming here. Turned out that “please visit on Friday” had somehow translated to “pop in next week” and there was definitely no one on the way here today So I headed down to the clinic that’s held in the library, to find a total of three health visitors sat without a single baby in sight. That’s cost effective then!

Tigerboy is doing fine. He’s put on another 9 oz since last Friday (guess he’s on the gold top then ) and while he’s still a tiny bit yellow, it’s well within breastfed norms. He does awake, he does asleep, he does feeding, he wets, he poos, all is well. Take that, hospital doctor who next to never sees exclusively breastfed babies. (Don’t get me started on norms, averages and all the rest of it, I can rant for Britain, and frequently do.) So I stuck him back in the wrap and headed home, picking up a tiny bit of shopping on the way, and then we packed ourselves into the car and headed off to see Laura.

Lovely afternoon. Laura took lots of pictures, mainly of tigerboy, and the other children played pretty well together, even the two toddlers. It was nice to spend time irl with someone that I usually only get to tweet with. And then home to do swimming run – Big swam a mile for Sport Relief tonight

And that was Friday.

I realised today that while I’ve been out with tigerboy a few times now, it’s generally been in the car. Hospital appts, trips to the leisure centre, sidetrips to the shops. We walked at the weekend to Tim’s brother’s house, but that was in the rain, and only just down the road. So I was quite pathetically excited to pop him in the beautifully cosy stretchy MaM wrap today and head off into town to grab a few groceries.

There is something very comforting about wearing a very small baby. When they are well wrapped their heads tuck into a kissable position just under your chin, and you can feel their breathing against your chest. I tend to walk with one hand placed against their body to begin with, although as the wrap supports them securely against you this is just a personal preference thing. And I love the way other ppl coo over them when you’ve got them there – much more so than when they are in a pushchair.

I don’t think I went out with Smallest when she was this young. She was a November birth though, so the weather wouldn’t really have encouraged it. Today the sun was shining, though it was still fairly cold, but with the wrap around us both I didn’t need a coat. It was just great to feel independent again, even if I wasn’t striding out in my usual way. Had to keep reminding myself to straighten up as well – my posture has gone to pot over the last couple of months. (She types, and sits herself up again!)

I love these early baby days. And I need to cherish them, as I know full well I won’t be doing this again. Pregnancy has taken its toll, and I wouldn’t get through it anywhere near as well again. My body is too old – irrespective of actual age or years elapsed. My hips and pelvis just wouldn’t take it again. So expect lots of soppy posts and pictures, both here and on twitter as I try to come to terms with that, and immerse myself in something that previously I haven’t really valued.

Disclosure – the MaM wrap was sent by Babyarmadillo for review.

This is something I’ve been considering carefully over the past few weeks while taking part in Karen’s Rubbish Diet challenge. I was quite pleased with how we managed – our bin this fortnight (including the week after I had a baby at home!) contained 5 carrier bags of waste and a few bits of polystyrene. Three of those bags were disposable nappies and sanitary items, as I wasn’t up to dealing with cloth in the first few days after baby was born, not to mention that he’s rather small to fit in most of the nappies I have!

The second week I figured out a few solutions, and found the bag of hand me down tiny wraps a friend had given me a couple of months ago. And the post partum pads I won helped me cut down on my own waste production, and of course the toddler went back into cloth, except overnight. Although tomorrow I’ll be writing more on that

Given that many of my cloth nappies were from free cycle or hand me downs, they haven’t cost me much to buy, and yes, I do end up doing more washing, but overall, I think they are comparable in price to disposables, and of course, they aren’t going to take hundreds of years to rot down in landfill. (Plus I’m not throwing out clinical waste.) So that aspect of cutting down on waste has been money saving too.

Other parts of the process are more challenging. We live on a very tight budget atm – sign of the times, as well as sign of having four children now! The cheapest fruit and veg is the pre packaged stuff from Iceland, Lidl or Aldi, sadly – hugely cheaper than buying it loose at either the coop or the local greengrocer. Growing our own would be more cost effective, and maybe next year I’ll actually be able to do some of that, but this year the allotment is just a dream – no way can I get there and do digging with four children in tow! So the best I can do is try to choose stuff packaged in packaging that can be recycled – I need to find somewhere to take all these plastic bags that I’m not putting in the bin any more!

Buying carefully with food only helps our budgeting though if I’m budgeting with other expenses as well. So for big expenditures I use a cashback site – the bunkbeds I bought yesterday generated £8 cashback. Not too shabby. And I use comparison sites for things like mobile phone deals and credit cards (although when it comes to buying, I go back to my cashback site, so that I get the affiliate fees, not the comparison websites…).

The one thing that I’m not too good at is writing up and sticking to a budget. Part of the difficulty there is that our income fluctuates – freelancing/ self employment will do that to you. I’d love to find some regular writing jobs, instead of having the occasional sponsored post bringing in the cash, but realistically, I haven’t got the time or energy for job hunting on top of everything else atm. So squeezing every last penny until it yelps and ensuring we are getting any and all benefits we are entitled to is as far as I’m going atm.

I love book giveaways, and so many on book blogs get very low entries. I’m probably shooting myself in the foot doing this, but I thought I’d try a roundup to get a few more ppl entering. Do let me know if it’s useful (which would encourage me to keep doing it), and let the blogger know how you found it!

So, there’s a fab competition on Mummy Alarm to win a year’s subscription to Reading Chest, not precisely a book giveaway, but enough reading material to count Closing date 23 March I think.

Ali from Fantastic Reads has got a signed copy of Ash Mistry and the Savage fortress up for grabs, along with a great guest post from the author. Closing date 19th march – today!

Lovely competition on Babbleaboutbooks to win a signed copy of The Fairlyland Olympics – design your own olympic medal by Sunday 15th April.

Lovely giveaway of Nick Butterworth boardbooks over at babykearney just for sharing your child’s favourite bedtime story. Closes 25th March.

I will happily add competitions to this post for the rest of the week, then I’m hoping to do a new post each Monday – please if you’ve got a book competition you’d like publicised, drop me a comment or mention it to me @liveotherwise on twitter

This afternoon I sobbed into the washing up.

Not over blogging, lists, awards or anything online before anyone asked. I was dripping into the bowl of plates as I felt like a failure – we are likely to run out of milk before morning.

Yes, I was crying over unspilt milk.

Pathetic, eh?

No, not really. My house is a tip. The bedroom changeover I’d planned for before the big day didn’t happen because the big day happened 10 days early. The tidy up I need to do so that we can actually all move around the living room still hasn’t happened. And I wanted to go out today for a walk with tigerboy in the lovely snuggly stretchy wrap that arrived for review, but I had a sponsored blogpost to publish and I prioritised that, forgetting that dp was going out, and at that point I would be unable to.

So I didn’t get my walk to buy milk. Not that I’m fit to walk out to buy milk after yesterday – the back of my right thigh keeps going into cramp, I think from carrying the car seat various places. And tomorrow we’re out for lunch, so I’m going to struggle to fit in getting out to buy milk before that too. And my mother is coming on Sunday and I don’t have a present for her.

So, to all those ppl thinking I’m doing fine – I’m doing pretty much how you’d expect 11 days after having a baby. I have too much to do, I feel like I’m failing at most of it, and I’m a hormonal mess.

Hohum.

Two lots of swimming lessons. A new baby check at the hospital in between times. Numerous feeds. Washing up, reading books, writing blog posts and emails, making pizza.

Doesn’t sound like much, but I’m tired. So that’s your lot. Goodnight.