Sunday 10 February 2013

Nothing of Note

Hello World. Miniscule percentage of it anyway. I have been hidden away for what seems like an absolute age. Illness has swept through the household like Jordan through a male stripper troupe. We have had the pleasure of the sick bug and continuous coughs and colds. This all means that I have been a. stuck inside and b. wondering around in a tired haze unable to think straight. A cold means that the baby can't settle properly as she freaks out when she can't breathe through her nose. Sick means one or more are throwing up, and I am then up scrubbing the carpets or changing the sheets in the early hours of the morning. Then there are the inevitable children in the bed which means a very unsettled night as we attempt to sleep anything up to five bodies in a bed made for two.

There are times when I think, 'four children is a most agreeable number of children to have' - almost easy even. We can be walking to school for instance, baby happily asleep, boys scootering amicably beside the buggy, Bea chattering away to me about something or other and I am dressed, clean and wearing make up and I know the house I am returning to only needs a very small spruce up before it is suitable for people to visit - those moments are a total pleasure and I think it could almost be possible to add to the brood. AND then - all you need is an illness, a family drama, money worries or a succession of bad nights and BOSH, four children seems three too many to handle. I get to 6pm and feel like I am on the last mile of a marathon and pray to the motherly gods that K will arrive home incredibly early and act all 'knight in shining armour' like - scooping errant children up and throwing them in to bed as he simltanesouly brushes their teeth and reads them a story so that I might collapse in to bed. As I lay in my bed, awake, night after night at various times with various children, I wonder how on earth the woman up North who has 16 children could possibly handle it. I feel intimately acquainted with this family of 18 as it is now Bea's favourite thing to watch. It was a documentary on Channel 4 entitled '16 children and wanting more' that I happened to record and one day, as they were arguing over what to watch, I suggested it, as I thought they would find it amusing to see what a really busy house was like. It backfired because Bea and to some extent George were transfixed. Bea has watched it again at least five times since. She now wants 16 children herself and has gone about turning her room in to a small version of the busy household - complete with many various sized shoes all lined up in a row - she even knows their names and talks about Sophie from '16 children'.  Anyway, obviously when you see the mother and father shepherd around all of their brood, and even take them on a holiday to France, it does make me feel as if I'm slightly ridiculous finding four a problem. But I am at the moment. It is bloody hard work. I am still breastfeeding and sleeping with Cybs which means that on a good night with no illnesses, coughing fits or wet beds I am awoken a few times, but then Ted can still not be relied upon to wake up past 5am so some times I am surviving on a teeny tiny number of hours sleep which makes the days quite hard work. The days are not high octane but incessant.  There is the washing, the bane of my life, piles and piles of dirty washing, clean washing, ironing, etc. Then there are endless bits of paper, which need finding, recycling, putting away, picking up off the floor, signing and returning to school or learning from.  Toys are the same - thousands of them. And THEN the constant preparation of food. I am now sure that the only reason humans need food to survive is to keep them occupied at weekends. Buying, sorting, preparing, eating, clearing, cleaning up after each meal - four times a day (we eat separately from the children in the evening) - it is my life's bloody work. 

I have become ranty. Sorry. It is not to say the whole of my life is one big misery - far from it - I am generally quite a happy chappess. It's just that any happiness is hard won. And it also explains why I started three blog posts and never finished them and therefore why it's taken so long for you to hear from me.  Well that, and the fact that I have literally nothing to write about. Before now I have managed to muster a post from very little actual news but we are really now scraping the very barrel of what constitutes 'matter of interest'. Babies have been born which IS fantastic and interesting - both remaining Godmothers have delivered and there is now another baby girl and boy in the world. However I can't really elaborate too much on that - birth is birth and they weren't mine. Kent Sister had a beautiful, beautiful baby boy. The most beautiful baby in the family since the wondrous Harry was born 19 and a half years ago. (I prefer newborn boys for some reason - they really suit being newly born). Magician Godmother has also had a stunner of a baby girl and so far all is going well with both babies. Bea and I have spent the last two weekends visiting each one in turn and fighting over who gets the longest cuddle with the newborn. Other than that the most interesting thing to happen to us is that half of G's days of the week socks have mysteriously disappeared so that he can only have one warm foot a day. However even I can not spin a tale about sock disappearance. They will turn up eventually.

As for the weight loss progress - it was going well and I lost a further 3.5 pounds, pushing me to just over half a stone. Then things have stalled. So has my scraping of the barrell. Literally nothing to tell you.

There is stuff coming up though.  I am going to try and break free from Cybs in March for my first night out without her.  She will be seven months old. So far I have only accepted invitations to events where she can come along with me, but as the responses to the invitational email started to pour in to my inbox, I realised that more and more of the respondents had small babies and some were considerably smaller than mine and they were intending to join sans enfant, so it was probably about time that I got my arse in to gear and started expressing some milk so I could go it alone.
I don't tend to leave my babies when they are small. It's not like I'm a total 'attachment' parenting type it's just that I don't express milk as I a. don't like it and b. think it messes with something that nature already has totally sorted. Also the struggle I had with Bea to feed and all the 'helpful' advice I got from professional and non-professional sources telling me to express in order to stimulate my milk was just hideous. Bea was feeding every hour anyway so trying to bloody produce anything in between and get it in to a bottle was beyond stupid. I felt like a failure and every fruitless expressing attempt compounded my feelings and in the end I gave up and just sat, ate and fed and she slowly began to put on weight. How different things are with C. Whereas Bea used to slowly, so slowly, inch her way up the growth chart on the bottom line, C is in danger of coming off the top of the chart. She is 19lbs now. I am unable to hold her for long periods. Crazy. Although intensely satisfying to finish my child bearing career on a feeding high.

I probably apologise too much in life generally, but I really do apologise for this woefully inadequate posting. I thought it might be better to hear something rather than nothing but now I fear you may be wanting to get back the five minutes of time you bothered to invest in this.  I shall attempt to improve my outlook on life and get back to you with a slightly more uplifting insight next time. I shall hope that the sun comes out and gives me back my va va voom.  With a bit of sun and sleep behind me I should be more able to find something fun and vaguely interesting to say about seven missing socks. I really need to get out more.

A toute a l'heure xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

















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