Mol looks like an adolescent witch at the moment. On her birthday she lost a tooth in the morning (top floor) and a tooth in the afternoon (top floor) which made three missing in a row, and then the next day she lost another tooth (bottom floor) and so now with 4 teeth missing she looks wholey scary. When she smiles there is this row of gum. Pink. and sort of soft. And when she crunches into a carrot its even more scary. there is no crunch. just a sort of snaky like sucking.
Anyway. So, bleeding gums aside, Mol had a truly lovely birthday surrounded by her friends and family up in Suffolk. for the first time in weeks, months, centuries - even, the sun came out and melted the frosted white ground - all the acconites came out and the yellow petals blazed with joy. birds were tweeting and twittering (not digitally, i mean like for real man, nature, brilliant) blinking in the rays, thinking about the nests they'd be making in the next few weeks, wondering if worms were on the menu yet.
One by one car by car friends arrived at the house, 7 year olds leaping from their booster seats, unchained, running into the garden and screaming a lot about not very much, comparing things which are very important to 7 year olds (like plastic jewels or wobbly teeth or shoes or pants or how low they can go with the splits). mothers happily wrapping their hands around a cup of hot tea and mouths round custard creams.
Then - on a load of hobbie horses - there was the Hobby Horse Horse Grand National (actually I wasn't outside for this - but I think there was some sort of race) which I think ended with one or two jockies going on strike because they were being criticized on their equestrian techniques. (7 year olds are fantastically honest about how rubbish their friends are...)
And then we did some pasta pesto for lunch and a load of jelly and cornflake chocolate crunchy things.
And THEN... the main event: pony riding. We jumped back in the cars, and headed over to the local stables where Tilly, Storm and Daisy-Pops were waiting, tacked up, to take their precious loads on their first ever pony rides.
Ah! Sweet! Kids in crash helmets on huge hairy beasts! how happy were these children?! Not one complaint! Just a lot of squeaks of delight and squawks of laughter as the ponies made their funny pony noises (stinky farts nose-blowing coughing tail swishing etc). No one fell off. No one got bitten. No one had a fright. It was all pure wholesome country fun.
And then we all piled back in the cars (please can we go again? please please I want to take Storm home with me, please?) back to the house for some major tea and cake... and here Mothersruin nearly RuinedDaughter by buying hilarious re-lighting-comedy-candles... Poor Mol. Got so frustrated she put her face right in the candles and blew really hard but the buggering thing relit just as her chin was by the candle: burnt chin; tears; howls; embarressment; loss of face; Mothersruin feeling soooo guilty I nearly went straight to the brandy for a large dose of dutch courage (I didn't though, Alcohol doesn't fix problems we all know that, der?) - anyway. she finally pulled herself back together and the party finished off with a whoppa treasure hunt.
and then we kicked everyone out at 5ish.
and then i realised that i hadn't sat down since I got out of bed at 8am. My legs hurt and my eyes kept wondering over to the wine rack.
All in all, I'd say Mol is one lucky little lady. Great friends. Great friends' parents. and a very strong gum.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Friday, 19 February 2010
Saturday, 13 February 2010
ready for another yarn about laying babies..?
So the not very shaggy or doggy story continues.
Fast forward 3.5years and I find myself, after making vows to never ever EVER have sex ever again regardless of how much fine wine or how many stems of asparagus or gloopy male-fluid-like-oysters or romantic walks along exotic beaches Husband treated me to, (don't worry, I've never eaten an oyster...) I find myself unable to tie my shoelaces or cut my toenails because there is something IN THE WAY. Yes! You guessed it! Another heir to our North London Kingdom!
Pregnancy was all pretty fine: I was my usual unpleasant self (Husband and I had a spectacular argument one morning which ended with me actually unloading a whole bowl of Rice Crispies (soaked in milk) on his head); hating my body which was getting wider than it was tall, and the inability to turn over in bed without feeling as though I had a water-balloon with a whole cow in it stuck in my stomach sloshing around and sticking hooves in to my organs. Oh those were the days!
Such a joyous positive person I must have been for those 9months. Lucky Husband.
So, as we were nearing birth time, for some reason I came into contact with a new baby (I can't even remember whose it was) and spent about 10 minutes canoodling it. Trying to remember something about how to hold small people - shit, there goes the head, shit, there goes the head AGAIN (is the mother watching? shit, yes!), shit, its vommed on my shoulder (it was the height of summer, my shoulders were covered by the straps of a spaghetti vest - hmmm, must have been a pleasant sight: heavily pregnant woman wearing a skin tight vest).
Anyway. As the old wives tale goes, and as what happened in my story with Liz, the canoodling a new baby totally revved up my hormones and a mere 24hours later I found myself in the next chapter.
Lying in my bed, having just read a few pages of a very Sainsburys chick-lit-book (all my brain could cope with) and turning out my light, I felt my body tense up as I prepared to do a sneeze.
I sneezed. What a whoppa!
I felt marvellous! What a completely fantastic sneeze! My whole body felt like it'd been cleared of all the summer dust.
When suddenly - about 5 seconds after my roaringly successful sneeze - I felt another sensation. WET WET WET! (As marty pellow may sing as his wife goes into labour...)
My waters popped - the balloon with the cow in it had finally worn thin.
GUSH-O-RAMA?
It was like the niagra falls.
(I had to throw away the rug that most of 'it' - oh, gunk - fell to.)
I got a bit excited in a silly hysterical sort of way.
And then shouted for Husband who came to assess the situation in a rather 'this isn't quite what I had in mind for my night' sort of a way.
So blah blah blah - move forward a couple more hours as contractions developed - Granny Highbury installed into the house to babysit Mol who was in heavenly-deep-sleep - we're going to the hospital and I'm in the back of the car, looking out the boot window, holding on for dear life as the niagra falls carried on falling and Husband revved through a number of Red Lights - me howling the usual pretty phrases like 'fuck fuck fuck this fucking hurts why the fuckety fuck did we do this again? oooooooooooooooow. shitcuntwankshitcuntwank...'
Get to the hospital to be greeted (its 3am) by a Spanish Male Midwife. WHAT? A man to deliver my baby?
Oh well, fuck it! I had little choice.
I did some amazing visualisation taught by my fantastic yoga teacher "take yourself to a safe place you love going and breath deeply through the contractions..." she'd say, and I'd find myself in the sea in Devon.
And about 20minutes later Husband turned green and had to be half-carried out of the delivery room, suffering from heat-exhaustion (meanwhile I was about to have his baby...). So he was in disgrace, although at that point I couldn't give a flying-cow who was in the room as long as this baby was taken OUT NOW!
And whoosh.
Out she came. Very fast. The spanish male midwife was shouting at me "don't push don't push not yet" I was like "fuck off its coming out you stupid twat and where's my fuckwit husband anyway?" (remember that feeling? like a white-hot-breeze-block-coming-out-the-fandango?)
Midwives must really love their patients.
I always meant to write to the ward to say thank you for looking after Husband so well whilst I was puffing and panting and pretending to be in the cool Devon sea. I never did.
Anyway, at about 5am, a grey-screaming-mucas-covered-Liz arrived safe and sound and me and Husband shed a few tears (oh god, another 3 years of hell to come) whilst the Spanish Male Midwife tended to my nether-regions' administration.
And voila, Liz. Snuggly. Warm. Pain-over. kiss-able. Snuffly. And ah, that overwhelming sense of yummyness all over again.
Aren't we lucky?
And 3.5years later...
(ha ha ha! Joke!)
Friday, 5 February 2010
cross your legs?
Cast your mind back, mothers... Remember those post-natal moments? I've been thinking about them today because a friend has just gone through the pains of baking a baby and giving birth to the little person on Wednesday night.
Its dreadful but i actually can't remember what day of the week either of my loafs of baby were born: i know that it wasn't the weekend (because I wasn't out clubbing at the time).
Both births were at silly times like 8.32pm (Mol) which meant that Husband was unkindly evicted from the hospital within an hour of seeing his first child and experiencing screaming trauma for 14hours; and 4.30am(Liz) as the watery sun was coming up through the wet august clouds over Hackney - which meant that i'd just spent the night huffing and puffing and blowing down the Homerton with my deep-throated-animal-like-curses.
I was put in mind of my own experiences, when i was texted on thursday morning by the husband of this lovely friend, declaring that the little bundle of wonder had been released from the dark warmth of his mum into the cold light of UCH. And it's quite nice to recall those special first moments.
Both very different, each labour, each birth, each post-natal-moment.
With Mol I'd been brain-washed by the NCT that any form of intervention excepting the rubbing of my back by Husband, was forbidden and WEAK and would have implications for the well-being of my (our) baby.
So, when Location Location Location (starring gorgeous friends who uprooted from Stokey N16 to the balmy shores of Loch Long courtesy of Phil & Kirsty) credits started to roll, and Braxton Hicks became a fixed and far more painful entity, I was all gung-ho, ha! we'll beat this thing! Lets-stay-at-home - we'll call the midwife, have a bath, walk around a bit, lets stay up all night getting utterly exhausted... But then I realised it was all getting a bit more excrutiatingly painful, so we stumbled off to the Homerton (highest rate of knife crimes in the whole world: if we're doing urban in 2003, lets do it right, yeah?). I think it was a god-awful time of day (like 5am - no-mans-land), and we didn't have any supplies other than Husband thoughtfully bought Harry Potter for himself, and planted himself in the corner of the Natural Birthing Suite, occasionally offering a rub or a hand-hold... That day was endless. ENDLESS. PAINFUL. (No, no, please, no painkillers, it'll ruin my baby, my sacred birth right to endure pain! Taken from me! no, no no!) And then after two hours of sodding painful pushing and vein-popping-heaving, and an Irish midwife at the end of her shift who was really quite bored, Mol finally appeared. And then came the uggy bits. And then true NHS post-natal-charm: not a big yummy squishy slightly gunky hug with baby, but instead the most painful stitching to repair the parts relieved of their natural beauty due to the gigantic baby passing by... Oh. My. Fucking. God. And I thought that the birth was painful, as some viscious tired nurse poked round my regions with a needle as long as a giraffes neck.
But once all that admin was out the way there was a brief moment of - pause -; - breath -; look, here's your baby; nuzzle and cuddle and look on in total dis-belief. And then the hospital chucked husband out and I was wheeled up to a ward, hidden behind a grey curtain and left to my own devices. Never having seen a baby before in my life, my precious moment of love was slightly diminished as I realised I didn't have a bloody clue what to do and I couldn't even get out of bed to have a pee or wash my really overdue-a-wash body.
I'm wondering at what point the love-hormones kicked in? Was it pre-birth? (not for me - I was in denial until I was heaving around my living room sounding like a prehistoric creature from a muddy puddle.) Was it during birth (the anticipation building up with each ridiculous contraction)? NO WAY! So, for me, it must have been post-natal. And actually, I can pinpoint the exact minute my love hormones kicked in with Mol: it was when she was put in her oversized stripy babygrow and button hat (we didn't realise there was a fashion for cute First Outfits) and handed to me, fresh as new life itself, and she started sucking, unaware at how easy she'd made this first terror of post natal care for me, on my very unprepared boob. Her fuzzy coloured eyes tight shut, no idea where she was, not a care other than milk and warmth body to body. At that point the past 24hours and extremely horrid terror and pain were catalogued into another section of my brain (but totally not forgotten!).
Was this the weirdest day of my life? Absolutely.
After all that pain, so much total adoration.
It was also the best day. And also the worst.
Is it a wonder that mums are totally mad?
(if you're interested I'll recall my little Liz's entry into the big bad world, another day... - I bet you CAN'T wait!)
Its dreadful but i actually can't remember what day of the week either of my loafs of baby were born: i know that it wasn't the weekend (because I wasn't out clubbing at the time).
Both births were at silly times like 8.32pm (Mol) which meant that Husband was unkindly evicted from the hospital within an hour of seeing his first child and experiencing screaming trauma for 14hours; and 4.30am(Liz) as the watery sun was coming up through the wet august clouds over Hackney - which meant that i'd just spent the night huffing and puffing and blowing down the Homerton with my deep-throated-animal-like-curses.
I was put in mind of my own experiences, when i was texted on thursday morning by the husband of this lovely friend, declaring that the little bundle of wonder had been released from the dark warmth of his mum into the cold light of UCH. And it's quite nice to recall those special first moments.
Both very different, each labour, each birth, each post-natal-moment.
With Mol I'd been brain-washed by the NCT that any form of intervention excepting the rubbing of my back by Husband, was forbidden and WEAK and would have implications for the well-being of my (our) baby.
So, when Location Location Location (starring gorgeous friends who uprooted from Stokey N16 to the balmy shores of Loch Long courtesy of Phil & Kirsty) credits started to roll, and Braxton Hicks became a fixed and far more painful entity, I was all gung-ho, ha! we'll beat this thing! Lets-stay-at-home - we'll call the midwife, have a bath, walk around a bit, lets stay up all night getting utterly exhausted... But then I realised it was all getting a bit more excrutiatingly painful, so we stumbled off to the Homerton (highest rate of knife crimes in the whole world: if we're doing urban in 2003, lets do it right, yeah?). I think it was a god-awful time of day (like 5am - no-mans-land), and we didn't have any supplies other than Husband thoughtfully bought Harry Potter for himself, and planted himself in the corner of the Natural Birthing Suite, occasionally offering a rub or a hand-hold... That day was endless. ENDLESS. PAINFUL. (No, no, please, no painkillers, it'll ruin my baby, my sacred birth right to endure pain! Taken from me! no, no no!) And then after two hours of sodding painful pushing and vein-popping-heaving, and an Irish midwife at the end of her shift who was really quite bored, Mol finally appeared. And then came the uggy bits. And then true NHS post-natal-charm: not a big yummy squishy slightly gunky hug with baby, but instead the most painful stitching to repair the parts relieved of their natural beauty due to the gigantic baby passing by... Oh. My. Fucking. God. And I thought that the birth was painful, as some viscious tired nurse poked round my regions with a needle as long as a giraffes neck.
But once all that admin was out the way there was a brief moment of - pause -; - breath -; look, here's your baby; nuzzle and cuddle and look on in total dis-belief. And then the hospital chucked husband out and I was wheeled up to a ward, hidden behind a grey curtain and left to my own devices. Never having seen a baby before in my life, my precious moment of love was slightly diminished as I realised I didn't have a bloody clue what to do and I couldn't even get out of bed to have a pee or wash my really overdue-a-wash body.
I'm wondering at what point the love-hormones kicked in? Was it pre-birth? (not for me - I was in denial until I was heaving around my living room sounding like a prehistoric creature from a muddy puddle.) Was it during birth (the anticipation building up with each ridiculous contraction)? NO WAY! So, for me, it must have been post-natal. And actually, I can pinpoint the exact minute my love hormones kicked in with Mol: it was when she was put in her oversized stripy babygrow and button hat (we didn't realise there was a fashion for cute First Outfits) and handed to me, fresh as new life itself, and she started sucking, unaware at how easy she'd made this first terror of post natal care for me, on my very unprepared boob. Her fuzzy coloured eyes tight shut, no idea where she was, not a care other than milk and warmth body to body. At that point the past 24hours and extremely horrid terror and pain were catalogued into another section of my brain (but totally not forgotten!).
Was this the weirdest day of my life? Absolutely.
After all that pain, so much total adoration.
It was also the best day. And also the worst.
Is it a wonder that mums are totally mad?
(if you're interested I'll recall my little Liz's entry into the big bad world, another day... - I bet you CAN'T wait!)
Monday, 1 February 2010
end of Jan
hello!
its the 1st of Feb. Not only is the 1st Feb a significant friends' birthday (happy birthday P - although I know you never read my rubbish... but happy birthday anyway!) but today is the day that I can glance up at my overly-fluorescent and proudly shining halo and then pat myself on the back and then say well done mothers-ruin, you've done yourself well. I have now officially done 31 days booze & cheese free. A couple of mental wobbles here, a couple of close-to-fingers-temptations there, but still, my body (livers & kidneys in particular) is a temple at which I can worship, for today at least.
I'm actually feeling a strange sense of loss that my self-imposed-embargo has been lifted. I've enjoyed testing myself. I've enjoyed seeing the beer on the shelves at the shops and just wafting pass, thinking smugly to myself, I have no need, I am free of all that. I've enjoyed, even, going out with friends, and watching them chucking back the bubbles or absinthe (I move in those sorts of circles, sweety), getting merry, being a bit wibbly drunken incoherent, whilst I remain quietly smugly not drunken and waking happily in the morning with a clean head and breath not like a dogs arse.
I've enjoyed getting home at night after seeing said wibbly incoherents and going into my girls' rooms and kissing them goodnight (I do this every single night of the year, unless they're at a granny's house...I have to kiss them goodnight. I wonder in how many years I'll stop creeping into their rooms to kiss them goodnight when they're asleep?) and not falling over as I lean down or breathing stale wine fumes over their flawless skin. Its a good feeling. There is something a wee bit skanky about stumbling up the stairs into Liz or Mols' room and breathing wine fumes all over them while they obliviously dream of fairies and sweets and building sandcastles.
So. I feel a bit sort of anti-climaxy that its over. Maybe I should set myself another challenge?
So. For tonights supper menu: grilled haloumi followed by macaroni cheese followed by cheesecake followed by a round of cambazola all washed down with a couple of bottles of claret.
its the 1st of Feb. Not only is the 1st Feb a significant friends' birthday (happy birthday P - although I know you never read my rubbish... but happy birthday anyway!) but today is the day that I can glance up at my overly-fluorescent and proudly shining halo and then pat myself on the back and then say well done mothers-ruin, you've done yourself well. I have now officially done 31 days booze & cheese free. A couple of mental wobbles here, a couple of close-to-fingers-temptations there, but still, my body (livers & kidneys in particular) is a temple at which I can worship, for today at least.
I'm actually feeling a strange sense of loss that my self-imposed-embargo has been lifted. I've enjoyed testing myself. I've enjoyed seeing the beer on the shelves at the shops and just wafting pass, thinking smugly to myself, I have no need, I am free of all that. I've enjoyed, even, going out with friends, and watching them chucking back the bubbles or absinthe (I move in those sorts of circles, sweety), getting merry, being a bit wibbly drunken incoherent, whilst I remain quietly smugly not drunken and waking happily in the morning with a clean head and breath not like a dogs arse.
I've enjoyed getting home at night after seeing said wibbly incoherents and going into my girls' rooms and kissing them goodnight (I do this every single night of the year, unless they're at a granny's house...I have to kiss them goodnight. I wonder in how many years I'll stop creeping into their rooms to kiss them goodnight when they're asleep?) and not falling over as I lean down or breathing stale wine fumes over their flawless skin. Its a good feeling. There is something a wee bit skanky about stumbling up the stairs into Liz or Mols' room and breathing wine fumes all over them while they obliviously dream of fairies and sweets and building sandcastles.
So. I feel a bit sort of anti-climaxy that its over. Maybe I should set myself another challenge?
So. For tonights supper menu: grilled haloumi followed by macaroni cheese followed by cheesecake followed by a round of cambazola all washed down with a couple of bottles of claret.
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