
First I had Marcel.

Then Charlotte.

Last week something new happened to me as a mother. Something that has never happened before despite my having 3 babies already. Anna started to suck her thumb! Now Anna is only 14 weeks old, so it is extremely cute at the moment. I will be completely horrified though if she is still doing it once she is in a school uniform. I have just spent the last hour googling it like mad to see how easy it is to break your child's habit if it goes on too long and checking its possible orthodontic and phonetic implications - and whether you need to saw off their thumb at some stage if you can't crack it. Surprisingly the consensus seems to be that between 70 and 90% of babies do this - why didn't the other 3? Are they freaks? And no one seems to be suggesting amputation as a necessity further down the line. This is a relief as I was beginning to wonder if a dreaded dummy would need to be substituted as it could at least be withdrawn at some point in the future. And as you know dummies are about as far up my popularity list as infant formula - and that isn't a compliment.
So it looks like she's going to be allowed the thumb, for now...
Is this cute or what? We had just hung Anna in the door-bouncer for the first time ever when Thomas stuck on the radio and she decided it was a door-dancer rather than a door-bouncer! With Léon already a bit of a musical babe, I shudder to think how noisy this house is going to be once they are both teenagers!
I saw this in ASDA car park today and fortunately had my mobile phone on me. I instantly thought of dad when I saw it.
Dad has had Alfa Romeos for a while now but has been talking about buying something else once he gets his pension this year. He seemed to be tossing up between a Jaguar and a new Fiat 500 (Stop laughing! He's a sweet, if eccentric man!)
Anyway, I thought of dad because mum is constantly complaining that if he has a small errand to run he steals her little red Nissan Micra, as if he almost prefers it to his Alfa, citing fuel economy etc as the real excuse for constantly borrowing it.
Here is the sporty Nissan Micra Coupé, so it is like a dad version of my mum's car.
Better still, it has one of those hard tops you can press a button and fold away into the boot. Dad claims to this day that his favourite ever car was his old Sports Honda Civic with a fold-away roof.
Come on Daddy, I think this would suit you more than a boring old Jag, (though the Fiat is cute).
Sometimes bilingual kids have a different outlook on life. I was singing to Pudge the other morning:
Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout.
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain
So Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout again.
'He's called Peter, you know!', he replied
Huh? Apparently the Danish version of the nursery rhyme is called: Lille Peter edderkop (Little Peter Spider).
Oh and incidentally - there are about a dozen different English versions - I must sing the whole repertoire every morning to gain me an extra half hour under the duvet!
I got up thinking I would take Léon and Anna to the beach or the park given the weather forecast was for sun and 10 degrees. I phoned to ask mum if she fancied coming along. She explained she had to babysit Gordy at lunch time to let Amanda visit her sick aunt in hospital, so I decided taking all 3 to Kelvingrove park might be fun. I arranged to drive mum in.
While I was driving up to pick up mum, she phoned Amanda to let her know we were both coming. Amanda explained something weird was going on outside. She said police and an ambulance were outside the flat.
By the time we arrived in town, at 11 something, police had erected two tents and blocked the road in two places. I tried to drive into Park Quadrant - no way José said the police officer on the line. Can I enter the street from the other end? (it is a one way street) I asked. No one is getting in or out, he replied. Hmmm - I was beginning to realize it was a serious something. After explaining we had to babysit for a relative, we were finally allowed in - but were told no one was being allowed to pass the police lines.
As we went upstairs, two neighbours were arguing with the police - pensioners, they needed their car to attend a hospital appointment - again - no way and no info. They walked off into the distance to hail a cab.
After a walk in the park we were followed into the close by the CID - they wanted to interview the Buchanans - they had found 2, but not the right 2. They said they'd return at 4pm. They turned up at 4-15ish. Amanda said she had heard a bang the night before around 11-30pm- like someone closing the boot of their car a little more roughly than usual, but nothing more. She had looked outside to check her car was ok, it was, so she had gone to bed. The CID must have been short of info because they stayed asking Amanda every second of the previous night, taking 4 pages of details down and speaking for nearly an hour and a half. Amazing!
Mum and I stayed to keep Gordy out of Amanda's hair while the police spoke to her. We were really great at babysitting. At one point I thought mum was next door in the bedroom with Gordy, Mum thought I was next door in the living room with Gordy - Gordy of course had shut himself in the bathroom, climbed on the toilet, opened the bathroom cabinet, and had squeezed the entire contents of Amanda's Chanel body lotion over the bathroom floor. He knew however that wasn't on because at that point, Derek got home from work and asked if he'd been a good boy, to which he sheepishly replied 'No!'
Over the course of the afternoon, we had been supposing that a young male had probably fallen off the scaffolding on the adjacent building and been killed, so we were surprised to hear it was a young woman's body that had been found. Anyway, after the police left I found this on the BBC. I guess we might hear a little more over the next few days. I uploaded the photos I took to flickr. It feels a bit eerie to think Amanda may have heard a young woman die last night, and that she may have been lying there not quite dead half the night... sends shivers up your spine.
I was just discussing lizards with Thomas. Anna was reading a book about lizards, you see!
It reminded me of a traumatic experience from my childhood I thought I had already told him.
When I was 5 my school took me on a school trip to Calderpark zoo, Glasgow's zoo that closed down about 5 years ago. When I was 5 there were only 3 TV channels, no Discovery Channel. And our TV had been black and white most of my life. So I wasn't as clued up as today's kids - I knew cats, dogs, cows, horses, elephants and tigers but I wasn't au fait with chameleons, iguanas and the likes.
It was a rainy Glasgow day and most animals were hiding in their shelters. They took us into a building marked Reptile House. I didn't know what reptiles were and no one explained it to us. I was a sweet wee girlie girl. I skipped in excitedly hoping to see cute little fuzzy animals like tiger cubs or polar bear cubs only to come face to face with a large iguana. I jumped back in horror. What had happened to this poor animal's fur? I wondered. Just as had happened with the clowns, I was too shy to ask an adult why all these animals looked liked that, so I puzzled it through in my naive 5 year old head and concluded there had been a fire in the reptile house and all the animals had been burned. For weeks I woke up in a sweat every night as cute furry little animals burned in my dreams and turned into ugly chameleons. What an imagination!
I suggest maybe we should always explain things to little kids even if they see completely obvious to us adults! It could avert months of worry!
I have just been reading an interesting article about childbirth on the BBC. I sounds like things are a wee bit different down south but I believe everywhere has got it wrong. And childbirth is definitely something I know about! I have been considering the best way to approach it since I heard an American describe giving birth without epidural as 'doing it the old fashioned way'. In France too epidural is the norm - with it being taken for granted unless you ask to opt out. I feel having been through it every possible way (except caesarean) I am qualified to comment.
I have to agree with the first statement. Of course women go into childbirth the first time underestimating the pain they are about to suffer - that is because you can only describe that intensity of pain to someone who has already been through it, by which time it is too late to describe it to them - maybe someone who has fallen into a mincing machine and crawled out in time to be run over by a truck could just about get what you mean if you try to describe it, but failing that everyone is going to go into it first time round wearing rose-tinted specs and then panic.
Here in Glasgow what seems to happen is that they teach you relaxation methods and tell you about the pain relief available. That is to say they tell you you can get an epidural which will anaesthetize you, morphine which will take the 'edge' off the pain or a tens machine which they let you try. They make it sound sweet and idyllic - like it will be sore but as long as Mr Right is there holding your hand you'll be fine. I think in the back of their minds they assume that once the pain hits the mum-to-be will simply ask for one of the pain relief methods, probably epidural and they will hand it out with a knowing smile.
Anyway here's what I would do, if I was in charge. I would mention the relaxation methods because they definitely help when panic hits, if you have moral support. I would then send each mum-to-be home with a DVD of a real birth - and I don't mean 2 minutes in a taxi as you see on the likes of Eastenders - I mean an average 12 hour screaming, crying, yelling birth. I think as a woman looking into that stranger's eyes you would get a much more realistic view of what she is about to go through. I know some satellite channels show birth these days, but they only show you the last 10 minutes, (and from the side!) - so you have no idea of the hours of exhaustion that precede that point. That would be step one. The advantage to this method too would be that if you did go for pain relief, you certainly wouldn't feel like you had failed in any way, and neither would your partner if he watched it with you.
Step two would be to mention the pros and cons of each method of pain relief. I think telling you about them 4 weeks before birth rather than during birth would give you more time to think them through. I would say you can have an epidural but you could end up with pain in your lower back for a month every time you sit down, every time you sit against something. It will make you feel uncomfortable every time you breast feed for the first month but it does take away the contractions for the 8 hours it is in. I would mention you can't feel to push so you push exhaustedly until the forceps or ventouse are called for but again this interception won't be felt because you are anaesthetized. Of course, it will be felt for months afterwards if you need stitching because of the forceps. I would mention you can have urine problems after an epidural and need catheterised for 2 or 3 days. And that you can end up shaking all night after the effects wear off. I'd say that sex might make your eyes water for months because you have been sewn up so tightly but it does take away the pain for those 8 hours.
Then I would say morphine can make you feel nauseous, and claustrophobic and faint. I would mention it doesn't actually do anything other than skim the surface of the pain of childbirth but yes it too is available.
As for Tens machines - yeah they work for the first couple of hours when you think the pain is bad but by the time you reach the bit that is actually painful you can't feel the Tens machine, so yeah use it but don't believe it'll make things go swimmingly.
No we wouldn't have our teeth pulled with no anaesthetic because that hurts but if having them pulled without anaesthetic would mean you hurt a lot during the procedure but avoid 6 months of pain - would we maybe consider it? And as for dying - sure people die in childbirth but from the complications, not the pain!
As I went through about 20 hours of labour with Léon and about 4 with Anna I got through the pain by knowing that when it stopped, it would be over - the unbearable pain of childbirth just stops when they hit the bed - you know then you've made it. I would advocate natural child birth not because I like pain but because afterwards your world turns upside down, you don't sleep, you suffer exhaustion like you can't imagine so the last thing you need is more pain.
Léon insists on cooking most of our meals these days. He's the only 2 year old I know whose tantrums of tiredness tend to manifest themselves in his rolling about the kitchen floor sobbing: Nénaw needs to cook!
I know this is going to make me sound stupid but I might as well blog it for all the other stupid people out there.
For years I have passed breadmaker machines in the supermarket assuming they were little ovens to bake bread in.
At the weekend Thomas came bouncing up to me in Tesco with one under his arm, reduced to half price (20 odd quid), so I agreed it'd be nice to have homemade bread, knowing he's the cook, so assuming he'd do all the kneading etc.
The first day he made a loaf and I ate it. The second day he called me through to watch him make it. To my utter amazement, he simply threw all the ingredients into the machine, told it when we were getting up and then closed it. A breadmaker turns out to be the baker and the oven! And it even makes it for breakfast - like a teasmade for bread. SUPERB!
Last night Lots made a loaf before going to bed.
Oh dear - I am going to get sooo fat!
I finally got to the bottom of my tree pile mystery. Four days after East Renfrewshire council was meant to take away my trees (and 4 days after they cashed my £20 payment), I get a hand delivered letter through my door explaining why they haven't removed them. When I booked the uplift, I was informed that the £20 covered 15 minutes of 2 men working, ie 30 man-minutes. When Thomas cut the (very small) trees down the week before, I watched him move them from all around the garden into a pile on the patio - this took approximately 12 minutes. I timed him because I knew the council's policy. So it took 1 man 12 minutes to pile up my trees. The council's letter claims that because my pile of trees is so big, it will cost me £70 to have them removed from my garden. As the distance is the same as Thomas moved them, they are telling me 2 men would take 52.5 minutes to move my trees, or 1 man would take 1hr45 minutes to move my trees the same distance as Thomas took 12 minutes to move them. I have to conclude that:
I'll leave you to decide which theory is likely to be the most accurate.
I phoned them and told them to re-credit my visa card with £20 as their quote was outrageous, explained the above to them and decided that if it is the last thing I do, I will spend the rest of year cutting these trees into little pieces and putting them in my brown refuse bin so that the council will slowly but surely be obliged to remove them all from my garden free of charge! Don't mess with me East Ren!