An Easy World

The mancub loves the park. We go there most days and he goes on the swings, I take him down the slide and we play in the sand pit. Today we were in the sand and a little girl came to talk to us. She was swinging her legs and chattering away, when suddenly she misjudged her swing and kicked a load of sand right into my little mancub’s face. It was just the saddest thing ever :(

What made it sadder was that he didn’t even cry. He just sat there looking really confused with sand in his eyes, up his nose and in his mouth. When he dribbled it was all brown and sludgy. I think I felt my heart break open a little bit.

The girl apologised right away and came to see if he was okay and I scooped him up and did my best to brush the sand away without making it worse, but was really scared of trying to rub it out of his eyes. I actually wanted to him to cry to wash it away, but there were no tears. Such a big brave dog.

This is the first time that he’s been hurt by another child and I was surprised at how calm I was to be honest, as I was totally freaking out inside. I just felt so protective of him and it brought home how utterly defenceless and vulnerable he is. He seems so big now, but he’s still just a little baby bird.

Big cuddles all afternoon now I think.

I thought I’d start adding a few recipes that I’ve found for me and the mancub. In general we eat the same food, so although I’ll mainly add recipes that are suitable for babies, you can be sure that they will be yummy for grown ups too. I’m still working through some camera / IPad issues, but hopefully will be able to upload photos too at some point.

ANYWAY… These are the cheesy lentil wedges from the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook. I prepared them last night ready for lunch today, but ate half the batch last night as they are so yummy!

Preheat your oven to 190 and grease a 20cm baking tin (at least an inch deep). You need 225g of red lentils, which you rinse well, as well as an onion, an egg, a slice of bread made into crumbs, 100g of grated cheese and some herbs and seasoning.

Begin by getting a saucepan and heating either some butter or olive oil then fry a finely chopped onion til soft. Add the lentils and cover with boiling water (I also added a Heinz baby stock cube). Simmer the lentils until they are soft (so for around 20 minutes) then take the pan off the heat. Add in the breadcrumbs of one slice of bread, 100g of grated cheese, an egg, some mixed herbs and season with black pepper. Mix the whole thing up really well.

Take the mixture and press it into the baking tin. I actually used my small roasting tray, which worked out fine. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes then leave to cool. If you leave it over night it will be well set and you’ll be able to cut it into wedges or slices for your baby to handle. SUPER DELICIOUS (especially served with HP brown sauce).

Long time no see! I haven’t updated in a while, in part because I’m trying to get less screen time, but mainly because there have been no major developments. Life is just pootling along nicely.
We are still in between routines. We had made some headway in setting into 2 naps, but the mancub was getting tired and I realised that I was trying to keep him up, rather than listening to his cues, so we are back to 3 again for the moment.
However, the thing that is changing is his breast feeding pattern, unsurprising, given that he is now eating a decent amount of solid food three times a day, plus a small snack.
At first he dropped his morning feed, but we have reintroduced that as he likes to have a breastfeed when he wakes up as he finds it comforting. So now, somewhat strangely, the feed he seems least interested in is his bedtime feed. He has an afternoon BF at around 4pm, followed by dinner at around 5.30pm, then up for his bedtime BF at 6.30pm, (he has this feed before his bath and massage, so it’s not needed to get him to sleep). The length of this feed has diminished from 20 minutes to less than 10 minutes and recently he just fusses the whole way through it, pulling on my breast and grumbling. I considered that perhaps it was a supply problem, but on reflection I think that he just doesn’t want the feed and is probably still full from his food. He sleeps through the night, so I assume that he’s getting a sufficient amount.
So now I’m wondering whether to offer this feed at all. I always thought this would be the last to go, but I am considering replacing it with a quiet story and a cup of warm water instead. I don’t want to lose this lovely snuggly time, but it’s becoming a battle and I’m not really sure if it’s serving a purpose.
Does anyone else have any experience of dropping the bedtime feed, or of adjusting their routine to accommodate this sort of change? I may brave dropping it tomorrow and seeing how we get on..l I’ll let you know!

Last night I went to my first WI meeting. Yep, that’s right, the good old jam making, Jerusalem singing WI. Apart from it wasn’t, because it turns out that I’m not the only twenty something that’s had the idea, and instead of it being full of homely old grannies, it’s full of, well.. people exactly like me, young people who are interested in craft. Kind of disappointing actually, I was hoping for Helen Mirren posing with a bowl of grapes.

The Women’s Institute (or WI), if you’re not familiar, is a very British institution, ranking alongside croquet and a glass of Pimms on a sunny afternoon. It was founded during the First World War as a way of bringing women together to share skills, particularly around craft and food production. It was made famous by the film Calendar Girls, which was based the true story of a WI group who posed naked to raise money for charity. The characters epitomised all the WI stereotypes: all very Middle England. All in their sixties.

My experience was a far cry from all this. We met in a small community centre in Brighton and there were around 20 women aged from early 20s to late 40s. The focus for the evening was cupcake decorating and we were taught by one of the members to make little roses out of royal icing, to make a piping bag out of grease proof paper and to make little collars for our cakes using wrapping paper. These were all really useful and new skills and I really enjoyed getting creative in a new way and was pretty pleased with how my cakes turned out.

I had taken a couple of my Mum friends along and it made a change for us to have something to focus on other than our babies, who were all safely tucked up in bed. I think there’s a real danger when you’re a stay at home Mum, that everything becomes focused on the baby, and I like doing things that are just for me in the evening, and this was perfect. If you’d have told me two years ago that I’d be spending my Monday evenings cake decorating with the WI, I’d have laughed at you, but I tell you what, I loved it :)

News flash: I quit Twitter. I’m pretty sure all 23 of my followers are still reeling in my absence, but come on guys, you’ll be okay.

I gave up Twitter after it occurred to me that I very rarely have anything to say in 140 characters or less, and at the times when I do, saying it aloud to the person next to me usually suffices.

That one was easy, next up, Facebook. This was actually a pretty hard decision. I visit Facebook multiple times nearly every single day (and by day I mean hour). I have some friends with whom this is my main, or in some case only means of communication. I am scared that I will lose contact with these people, will miss seeing their photos and reading their updates. But here’s the thing: No one is updating. It’s a rare treat when anyone other than my local cinema has uploaded a picture or a status update, and i’ve found myself on one too many occasions flicking through the wedding photos of someone i don’t even know, just for something to look at. Note to self: this is not a productive use of time. Plus, I’m not sure I’m completely in control of the privacy settings any more. Friends of friends seem to be able to see and comment on my photos even with the tightest settings on. People can see what I’m reading and commenting on, which is fine, but I’m not in control of it, and it’s time to turn the telescreens off. I quit.

I’m going back to the long forgotten medium of times gone by, the group email as a way of communicating with friends and family. I hope this will generate more good quality communication as opposed to just ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ and have already exchanged proper emails with people who usually just sit mute in my friend list. Similarly I am going to cease to use Tumblr as a means of social networking, although I will continue to blog. It makes no sense for me to replace scrolling through photos of friends of friends with scrolling through pictures of elephants smiling, (athough that elephant smiling is pretty awesome you guys). As such I have unfollowed everyone and will just update my own blog. I’m sure I will still check in with some of you occasionally, as you are an excellent source of information, but I totally understand if you no longer want to follow me, although I would obviously be stoked if you choose to stick with it. Your call. It’s been fun.

So this is it, I’m going social network free. Vive la revolution! Like!

Don’t make it hard now, it’s an Easy World.

X

We are in that awkward in between stage. Somewhere in between 3 naps and 5 breast feeds a day, and 2 naps (one long, one short) and 4 feeds a day.

I had my schedule so set, and knew exactly when we could go out, when we had to be home, when he could nap in his pushchair or Ergo, when to change his nappy, when… Well you get the picture, I had it all sewn up.

Now he only seems to want to nap twice, and if he takes them too early he is going for an entire afternoon with no sleep. So I’m staying home while we work it out. I need to try and move his first 2 naps later in the day, so that he can then make it to bed time without having a meltdown. And what to do with this new long stretch of nap time? Yesterday he was in bed for 2 and a half hours over lunch time! Luckily my friends were over, so I used it most productively (gossiping and drinking tea).

Plus after only 4 milk feeds today he ate nearly an entire sweet potato and a load of canned prunes for his dinner. He had a little pot belly by the end of it :S

Hopefully we’ll adjust soon and life will become nice and predictable again.

Hmmm. My thoughts on this whole TIME magazine / attachment parenting debate seem to change daily. In the main it has been a positive thing for me, because it (and people’s responses to it) have been food for thought and have caused me to examine my own approaches to parenting and how easy it is to judge others for what they do. But something about it is also starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve read some amazing commentary, both here on Tumblr (Little Jacksons, Dover and Yellow Sparkle Onion Rings to name a few), and other blogs, which has made a lot of sense to me. And succinctly put, here is what I think: I think the idea that anyone would subscribe rigidly to one style of parenting because they read it in a book is bogus. Most of us look at our options, (online, in books, at the people around us), and choose those that best suit us. I think that unless you are doing something that could cause harm to your baby (and no, I do not include feeding them formula and pushing them in a pram in that, OBVS), then what you do is your own business. And I think that we can all learn from each others as mothers and that there are always things that we can do better, in parenting, as in life generally.

Less succinctly, here are some more things that I think:

I think that I wouldn’t want to label myself as any particular type of Mum (well, hopefully a FREAKING AWESOME ONE). Ahem. Seriously though, I have made choices as a Mum that are right for me and my family. These include breast feeding and baby wearing, as well as getting my baby into a routine and putting him to sleep in a cot. I didn’t make these choices because i thought they would win me some badges of honur in this online game called ‘alternative parenting’, i made them because i thought they were sweet and easy and might bring my baby a little bit of happiness. And yes, I am passionate about those choices and have put up information about some of those things on my blog, because I hope that they may be of use to people who are considering doing the same. And no, if you don’t make those same choices, I will not think that you are some sort of terrible mother, because that would be insane.

But I don’t know, lately I feel like in saying that I’m passionate about something like baby wearing, that people will infer from that I am being critical of people who use a pram. Or that I must have some holier than thou attitude. And it seems like the formula feeders get all defensive because they feel like the breast feeders are criticising them, and then the breast feeders get all defensive, because they feel like the formula feeders are criticising them for criticising them. And I’m like, does anyone actually care? Seriously? Like, anyone?

A common response to seeing my baby in cloth is, “Oh, you’re so good, I should do that, but I [insert numerous excuses here].” And I don’t get it. I’m not ‘good’ because I use cloth nappies, and I certainly don’t judge anyone as ‘bad’ because they don’t. I freaking love cloth, because I personally like reducing my waste and it saves me money and I think they’re cute. Do I therefore think that everyone should think and do the same? Of course not. Do I think I’m better than my friends who use disposables because of my choice? No, because I’m not an idiot.

I’m still not sure exactly where I stand. I seem to swing between feeling as if I should make known that I am not critical or judgemental of other people’s parenting choices, and then wondering why I even need to qualify that. I guess we all have our insecurities about our abilities as parents, and they tend to get magnified and played out in this weird old space we call the Internet. Because I’ve gotta tell you people are an awful lot more judgmental online than they are in real life, where actually, no one gives a damn about what we’re doing. No one is sitting at home, thinking about you and why you’re not baby wearing. No one cares that you use cloth nappies, or will be popping round any time soon to give you a medal. No one is celebrating the fact that your baby can walk at 6 months, because, let’s be frank they’ve got a baby of their own, who probably won’t go to sleep, or a heap of laundry to wash, or a bathroom to clean.

So that, in the nicest possible way, is my final word. No one gives a damn. So let’s move it on now.