20 Apr

regroup

Yay for looong weekends! It’s an extra long one in our neck of the woods, what with Easter and then the Anzac Day holiday on Tuesday. And I don’t work Thursdays either, so that’s SIX WHOLE DAYS off. I plan to shut the door on the world and pretend it doesn’t exist. It seems we’ve been pulled in all different directions lately, what with all the birthday parties and things for families and friends, plus there’s been a fair amount of Family Drama going on in Dave’s lot (that I’ve contributed to, unfortunately) that we’ve just had enough of, so I’d rather not be part of it for the next almost-week, if that’s okay with everyone.

One of the main things we miss about living in the UK is being on the other side of the planet to our families. Which sounds harsh now I’ve written it, but it’s true: when you’re away from everyone there’s no pressure to be the good daughter or son, or fit in with their expectations or plans. You can just do your own thing. Dave’s parents in particular have a habit of calling him up in the morning and saying they’re having a gathering that afternoon, will they see us there? And then acting all disappointed if we say well no, actually, we’ve got other plans. Look, it is lovely to see them, but you know, we don’t get a lot of time together just the two of us as a family, and it’s a bit frustrating to be hit with the guilt if we don’t want to do what they want. So it was a lot easier to enjoy our independence with distance on our side, is all I’m saying.

A couple of our friends have a great solution to this. They tell people they’re going away for the weekend, but then they don’t actually go. I asked Dave if he wanted to try that, since we’ve already heard Monday’s supposed to be spent at a friend of the family’s and that’s not likely to be the end of it. “No, we just won’t go to anything,” he said. Well, we’ll see how that goes.

So, what do we plan to do with our six days of solitude? Well, DIY mostly. We have delicious ideas of getting on with some of our projects, like priming and painting the surrounds of our new windows, and finishing painting the wall outside, if the weather holds. I’m so impressed with people who manage to chug through project after project, while we’re still sitting here with our list, so wouldn’t it be nice if we can get up some momentum? Otherwise, I’d settle for some quality, non-housework, non-pissing around on the computer, time together, so we can work on getting us back.

Oh, and Dave said something about “Portal 2”, I’m sure that’s code for “I want to take the baby so you can spend an hour in the bath and then watch chick flicks all afternoon”. Right?

 

20 Apr

bite me

Teeth, as I have said before, suck. We should have stuck with hard bony ridges like tortoises did. I don’t understand what their evolutionary advantage is when they hurt us coming in and decay during normal use. What did cavemen do before floss? All we used to be able to do is pull them out when they hurt, so why bother growing them in the first place?

Bianca is teething, you see, and it is hell. I hear tales of babies who have no trouble and just wake up one morning with teeth popping through. Not ours. Generally we’ve been having a day and a night  of nasty fever, and then sometime the next day I’ve found a new tooth, and that’s been bad enough, but now we’re up to the eye teeth and it’s been almost a week of nonstop grizzling and crankiness interspersed with fevers. It’s out of character and getting pretty wearing. I can’t even tell what’s going on in there, apart from a general lumpiness in the upper gums, because if I stick my finger in her mouth she bites it like she’s trying to joint it at the knuckle. Even when she’s asleep she’s gotten smart enough to clamp her mouth shut if I try. I hope they’re all coming out at once because if we have to do this three more times and then again for the molars… I feel so sorry for her. And me. But mostly her.

Of course what I’m really hoping is that all this is actually due to teething and not some sort of horrible illness that I’ve been ignoring. But she refuses to tell me so you can only tell after the fact.

So teeth, I’m not sure of the point. The interesting thing is the buds for the teeth form around the sixth week of gestation, so they’re all just in there, waiting to pop out. A couple of months before we got married, (this story is going somewhere, I promise) I went to the doctor about my rosacea and she gave me some antibiotics which were the second-best treatment and did a really good job of clearing it up. But, they weren’t good if you were pregnant, so I had to agree to go on the pill and stop taking them well before we started trying to conceive. But the best antibiotic treatment, she wouldn’t even risk on me if there was even the smallest chance we might get pregnant, because it had been shown to stop the tooth buds forming in the foetus. Which still amazes me, and gets me thinking about all the many many things that we take for granted but that have to line up right in order to make a healthy baby.

So I am definitely grateful that Bianca’s teeth are coming through as they should. I just wish they’d hurry up about it, is all.

 

04 Apr

one

It’s utterly amazing to me that it only takes 365 days to go from this:

To this:

Happy birthday, Binky! To celebrate, I’m taking you to Ikea today. That’s as exciting to mummy as Sesame Street is to you!