Betty at three

Betty is three today! Although the last year has passed by in a flash, she has changed and grown-up quite unbelievably. This time last year all Betty could (or would) say was ‘Da. Dadada. Daaaaa.’ etc. And although her little character was emerging and she was fully capable of making herself understood, she still very much had a baby-ness about her.

A year on, she now, rather scarily, often demonstrates teenager tendencies, like: banging on the bathroom door if someone is in there and shouting ‘GET OUT, I need a wee!’, and burying her head under the duvet when I am trying to get her out of bed in the mornings and mumbling ‘Noooo I need more sleep, go away’, or answering a question with ‘Yeah’ in such a way that you feel that all that’s missing is the gum.

A year ago it used to terrify me taking Betty to the shops with her on foot, but now she is a great little shopping companion. She will bring her little red shopping basket and carry it on her arm, as I do, and help me look for items in the shop and make (sometimes helpful) suggestions about what we should buy. Although at times it is rather nerve-racking when I turn round and she is wielding a bottle of wine in my direction and bellowing ‘YOUR WINE MUMMY!’ I grab the bottle, and as long as it is under a fiver and has a screw top, I put it in my basket and go with her choice.

Despite my best efforts in the last three years of dressing Betty in neutral colours and dungarees, she has become a real girlie girl. Her favourite colour is pink, and she loves to look pretty in dresses and hairclips. She always notices and comments if I am wearing a new or different item of clothing, and although she doesn’t say anything I can see the look of distaste on her little face when I come downstairs donning tracksuit bottoms and maternity top. She almost fell off her chair (she was flicking through Heat magazine at the time) when she saw me in a dress the other day.

She has well and truly left toddlerdom behind her. In the last year she has gained incredible negotiating and mediating skills - if I am giving Tom a hard time about not taking the recycling out, or leaving teabags in the sink, Betty immediately steps in and says: ‘Say sorry to Daddy, Mummy, say sorry now’; and she has become a real comedian (I particularly love her impressions of Tom).

Happy birthday, my darling, gorgeous girl. Enjoy your much anticipated special day with all your balloons, and your requested big pink heart birthday cake, and your presents, and your smoked salmon breakfast in bed…

Pumpkin overload

I thought it would be a nice idea to invite a couple of Betty's bestest buddies round for a little Halloween playdate. Something very low-key: a few sandwiches, and maybe some fairy cakes if I had time. With Betty's pumpkin costume at the ready, and still five days until Halloween, I felt there was nothing else to worry about, other than a quick dash to the shops to buy a bit of bread and cheese.

As the week progressed, so did the ideas. The recipe books came out, Google was consulted, and there followed several trips to different cook shops and supermarkets to track down things like pumpkin-shaped cookie cutters and orange food colouring.

I became so caught up in throwing the halloween party of the century that I forgot I was catering for just three children on a mere playdate. With 48 hours to go, I made the toffee apples and the pumpkin soup, and Betty and I made some decorations: pumpkins, witches, spiders, ghosts, 'welcome' signs, spooky bunting etc.

On the morning of Halloween, I got up at the crack of dawn and frantically began baking. Intricate spider fairy cakes were created, hand-shaped chocolate chip cookies were made, and gory finger sandwiches, and fruit kebabs. Pumpkins were gutted and carved, and several oranges were hollowed out to resemble mini pumpkins, to use as vessels for the green jelly; decorations were hung, pumkpin-themed balloons were inflated, the house was tidied, and last minute alterations to costumes were made. Standing back and looking at everything laid out in all its glory, I suddenly felt embarrassed at the efforts I had gone to. So I instructed Tom not to laugh at my casual reply of ‘not long at all, it was nothing’ if anyone asked how long it had all taken me.

At 3pm, me, Tom, Betty, Dolly and their two grandmothers (who had been drafted in at the last minute to help eat all the food) sat expectantly in the decked out room, awaiting the arrival of our guests. Both of them arrived right on time, also dressed as pumpkins. The three pumpkin pals quickly joined forces, and began gaily throwing breadsticks around, and generally trashing the room. Meanwhile I had collapsed in an exhausted heap on a chair in the corner of the room and was unable to muster up the energy to be all halloweeny. Tom desperately tried to think of ways to entertain the pumpkins and decided to do some apple bobbing. But he dislocated his neck whilst doing his demonstration and the pumpkins watched on, looking perplexed.

We played musical bumps, and then took the pumpkins trick or treating to our next door neighbours (each one was given a small plastic pumpkin receptacle to hold the treat). And again the children had a look of bafflement on their little faces, when sweets were willingly and freely handed out to them.

Then it was pretty much time to finish the playdate, so we quickly ate all the food, and I brought out the pumpkin soup in a big scooped out pumpkin.

The look

I feel that Dolly hasn’t been getting enough blog airtime so wanted to talk a little about how her character is developing, and how I find that the looks she gives me are a little unnerving.

People have always said about her: ‘She has that knowing look, she has been here before’. It was as if she had read all the books and thus knew exactly how to be a textbook baby. Unlike Betty, she has always conformed to what babies are supposed to do and like/dislike: gnawing on teethers, gazing up at musical mobiles, disapproving of dirty nappies, sticking to a routine etc.

Having said that, with this ‘knowledge’ that she seemingly has, I find myself subconsciously not treating her like a baby, and it somehow doesn’t seem appropriate to talk to her in baby gaga googoo language. I think this may be because when I have pulled funny faces and talked to her in silly voices in the past, she has made me feel like a complete idiot with her ‘what the hell are you doing that for, you look ridiculous’ look. She glares straight at me, with a deadpan expression, momentarily stops sucking on her thumb (but with thumb still in mouth), gives it a few seconds and then sighs, turns away and continues to suck on her thumb.

I also feel that although she is a model baby at the moment, she is just biding her time. She sits quietly observing Betty and puts up with being poked, and squeezed and yanked, but she has a definite look about her which tells me she is storing it all up and as soon as she is bigger and stronger she will give an unsuspecting Betty what for.

This morning, after she had had a good long breast feed, I then ate my toast in front of her. If looks could kill…

Squirreling

Every morning Betty goes downstairs and empties all her little pots, pans, plates and hundreds of pieces of play food (all of which come from different sets) into her toy pushchair and toy shopping trolley. Once she has done this, which takes her about two seconds, she doesn’t play with it all, she just leaves it and goes off and does something else, but if you dare try to put it away during the day she gets very cross.

Every evening before she goes to bed I get her to tidy it all away, but because of my slightly obsessive nature, she doesn’t quite do it to my standards, and so I end up spending ages putting everything back in their rightful little sets before I can sit down and relax.

Last night I decided that all the food items and pans etc were going to go into hiding for a while to save me some work. This morning Betty went downstairs and I heard her opening the cupboard that normally houses all the aforementioned items, and I waited for her to call out that they were missing. However, she was silent. Phew I thought, I have successfully solved the problem.

Later I went into the sitting room to find that in the absence of her food items she had loaded up the pushchair and trolley with ANYTHING she could lay her little mitts on; loo rolls, cellotape, books, the pepper grinder, my keys, hoover attachments, soap, puzzle pieces etc, thus creating even more work for me. I have to hand it to her, she will not be outsmarted, and is incredibly resourceful.

This evening I plan to hide the trolley and the pushchair.

Mini break

Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything, even the simplest of things, seems really hard? From organising a plumber to come and to sort out your kitchen sink which is blocked for the umpteenth time, to trying to scrape play dough off the sitting room carpet, to cooking dinner, to trying to get Dolly to do a poo.

Tom was in London quite a lot last week and when he came back he brought a cold with him. This then laid him up in bed all weekend, plus he passed it onto Betty and Dolly. So all week no-one has really slept very well, everyone has been a bit miserable, and I feel like I have been going flat out, for what feels like weeks, without a break.

So this morning, I packed Betty off to pre-school (which she now seems to be enjoying again) booked her in for the whole day instead of just the morning, and whilst Dolly napped, I got back into bed with a cup of tea and a BLT, watched The Wright Stuff and read Heat magazine. And I was in HEAVEN!!! In our current circumstances (ie having two small children) this lie-in equated to the same thing as a two week beach holiday in the Caribbean.

When Dolly woke at around 10.30am she joined me in bed for lots of cuddles and kisses, and we even stayed in bed whilst she ate her butternut squash brunch, and I ate my Twirl. She did look a little surprised about the whole thing but certainly wasn’t complaining, and we had a lovely cosy time.

At midday, Dolly yawned and rubbed her little eyes, so I popped her back into her cot and she went off to sleep, and I got back into bed. And that is exactly where I am now, typing this post on my laptop (time now 1.05pm) and I intend to stay here (with Dolly joining me again at some point) til 3.30pm when I have to pick Betty up from pre-school.

Where's Dolly gone?

Dolly is such a contented and happy baby, I sometimes forget that she is even in the room. Often when Betty is at nursery, Dolly will be quietly kicking around on her mat and she’ll suddenly let out a squeal, making me almost jump out of my skin.

Betty was the opposite. I couldn’t put her down for a second in the first few months without her yelling. So when friends used to air their concerns about worrying that one day they might accidentally leave their sleeping baby in the car seat under the table in Pizza Express, I couldn’t understand it at all. I used to think, how the hell can you forget a baby? But I too now have that same fear, that one day I will forget Dolly amidst the chaos. I have even had nightmares about it.

So when I was driving here, there and everywhere the other day, with Betty and Dolly in the back of the car, and Betty suddenly piped up with ‘where’s Dolly gone?’ I swear my heart stopped beating for a good few seconds.

(For the record: I hadn’t left Dolly anywhere, she was safely in her car seat and chewing on a big toy mouse that was hiding her face)

Moving out

Last night I put Dolly to sleep in Betty's room for the first time. She is now six months old and I always said that at this age, as hard as it might be, I would take the plunge and do it. When I went to bed I felt pangs of sadness, looking at her empty little crib next to our bed. I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. It seems only yesterday that I was ordering the crib and washing all the little sheets to go in it, in preparation for her arrival. But it seems such a long time ago that I had her sleeping on me all night, and although I was knackered, they were such magical times. And now she is on her first leg of independence, sharing a bedroom with her big sister.

A curious creature

We have turned a corner YIPPPPEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Ever since Betty's pooing marathon on Monday, she has rejected nappies and each and every time she needs to go, she discreetly takes herself off, does the business on the potty, and then tells me. She acts like she has been doing it for years. Unbelievable.

I just hope this post doesn't jinx it.

Potty saga, day 132

Ever since last week’s potty training episode, where I temporarily went insane, I saw the light and adopted a completely different attitude. I decided that I genuinely didn’t care that Betty was still in nappies, and that, for an easy life, I would leave it until after Christmas (lazy I know).

So yesterday morning my darling daughter and I arrived at pre-school, and feeling a little bit embarrassed, I announced that Betty was back in nappies (having announced last time we were there that she was never going to wear a nappy ever again) and they were not to make a thing of her going on the potty, they were to just say nothing and change her nappy if needs be.

However, when I went to pick Betty up, I was told that as soon as I had left, Betty had requested that her nappy be taken off, and they had dutifully done what the little lady had asked. She then told them each and every time when she needed to do a wee or a poo, and did so on the potty. Obviously Betty was unhappy with the service I had been providing, and realised that it was time to take matters into her own hands.

When we got home Betty asked for her white potty and trotted off into her playhouse with it. I could hear a bit of a kerfuffle going on in there so went to investigate. As I opened the door she said ‘I done a poo mummy!’ She knows that if she does a poo on the potty she gets a sweet. So off we went to the kitchen for her to collect her sweet. She ate her sweet and then asked for her pink potty. She pooed in the pink potty whilst I was cleaning out the white one. I gave her another sweet. She then asked for the white potty again. She pooed in the white potty whilst I cleaned out the pink one. I gave her another sweet. This happened two more times, no word of a lie. Admittedly the poos were getting smaller and smaller each time, but she managed to get five sweets out of me in the space of five minutes. When the whole poo episode finally ended, normally activities resumed.

Later in the afternoon I had lovingly prepared a pear puree for Dolly – her first taste of something other than breast milk, so rather a momentous occasion. Just as the first spoonful was going in, and I was feeling really quite emotional, Betty announced that she needed to do a wee. Needless to say, Dolly had to wait just a little bit longer, mouth gaping, whilst I dutifully sorted Betty out with her potty.

Perspective

The advice about potty training is always along the lines of: ‘Be patient. Do not show concern. Never tell your child off.’

Betty is fully capable of using a potty. A couple of days ago she effortlessly breezed through with a 100 per cent success rate. Yesterday she had four ‘accidents’, all of which happened seconds after I had asked her to sit on the potty, which she refused to do saying ‘there’s no wee coming’.

After the fourth time, bearing in mind I have stayed calm about all this for the last six months, I completely lost my patience. I felt I had been pushed to the absolute limit and I told her off, big time. I then put her back in a nappy, and went into another room and took some deep breaths.

Betty followed me into the other room and cheerfully said: ‘I want to put my shoes on and go outside’. ‘They have wee in them’ I snapped. ‘I want my pink Crocs then’ she said. I began hastily searching the house from top to bottom looking for her Crocs, which I had not seen for days. I barged into Tom’s office and almost in tears I said: ‘Have you seen Betty’s Crocs? Tom took one look at me and told me that he would take the afternoon off work so that I could have a break and go off on my own for a couple of hours. ‘Go and treat yourself, you deserve it - spend some money’ he said. I thanked him profusely, fed Dolly, and then he didn’t see me for dust.

As I drove into town I was feeling exasperated. Betty is an intelligent girl and she is nearly three years old (and apart from her big baggy bottom, is often mistaken for a four year old). She has proven that she can use a potty, so why oh why doesn’t she? People tell me: ‘She’s just not ready, leave it a few weeks and then go back to it’. I have done this time and time again, and am now seriously beginning to think that it we will never reach a point when she will be ready. I then began questioning my ability as a mother, and thought that I must have done something profoundly wrong to make Betty reject the whole thing so much.

As I wandered round the streets, speedily eating a Chocolate Orange, and feeling like a truly awful mum for being so horrible to Betty, I began to get things in perspective. OK, so Betty is not up for using a potty, and nothing will persuade her otherwise at the moment, but she is healthy and beautiful and funny and happy and bright and amazing with her little sister… so does the fact that Dolly will probably be out of nappies well before Betty really matter that much?

Home v pre-school

Tom and I have a busy time with Betty. We make butterfly cakes, we pick blackberries, we make blackberry jam, we pick tomatoes, we make tomato chutney, we go for walks, we collect leaves, we read stories, we play the piano, we dance, we sing, we count in French and Spanish, we paint, we get messy with glue and glitter, we play with stickle bricks, we build sandcastles in the sandpit, we have pretend tea parties, we play shops, we spot birds and rabbits, we watch TV, we fly kites, we paddle in streams, we make pizzas, we visit lots of little people, and lots of little people visit us, we laugh, we wave at aeroplanes, we make play dough, we pop popcorn, we sew seeds, we dig up potatoes, we water carrots, we make up stories, we do puzzles, we dress up, we take silly photos, we go to the playground, we swim, we pick flowers, we bounce on the bed, we eat yummy food, we throw stones in the river, we do chalk drawings on the garden path, we talk about the circus, we look for the moon and the stars….

So if my darling girl gets upset about going to pre-school, and is seemingly bored while she is there, should I take her out and keep her at home?

Betty spaghetti

I need the patience of a saint during mealtimes at the moment.

Blanked

We Buttons went into town the other day to do some shopping. Tom was salivating at the thought of all the food he was going to buy and Betty was excited about the ice-cream she was going to smear all over everything.

I told Tom and Betty to go on ahead because I needed to feed Dolly before I got her out of the car and into the pram. So off they happily went.

I fed Dolly, loaded her into her chariot, and struck out towards the centre of town. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea where Tom was headed and annoyingly I had his mobile in my bag. After fifteen minutes or so, I gave up trying to guess and was about to head back to the car, when I caught sight of a flash of bright pink through the window of a delicatessen. It was Betty’s pink bandanna, and sure enough, there she was, sitting in her pushchair facing towards me and eating her ice-cream. I waved frantically at her through the window and thought she might excitedly tell Tom (who was busy tasting cheese at the counter next to her) that Dolly and I were outside.

However, Betty remained expressionless and very coolly continued to eat her ice-cream, and stared straight through me, as if deliberately pretending that she had absolutely no idea who I was. This charade went on for several long moments before I decided to battle with the pram past all the disturbed-looking people in the shop to tell Tom that I had found them.

I can only assume that Betty was pretty annoyed that I had gate-crashed her little adventure with her dad as when I approached them, Tom was heavily engrossed in trying some salami and still hadn’t noticed me, but without even looking at me Betty quietly said: ‘Go back outside mummy’.

According to Betty...

Betty (during a cold): Oh dear, I have got baked beans up my nose mummy


We very rarely do any ironing and so when Tom got the ironing board out Betty said: You got a new canoe daddy?


Betty and her friend were on a seesaw together. Her friend said: Milk comes from cows. Betty replied: Apple juice comes from pigs


Tom was visibly stressed after a grueling day at work. Betty patted his back and said: It's ok sweetheart, you’re ok now?


Betty claimed she saw the tooth fairy flying through a cloud yesterday, and that night she looked under her pillow and genuinely confused she said: Where’s my coin?


I asked Betty what her daddy's name was, and she replied: James Blunt


I asked Betty what my name was and she replied: Jelly Baby


Betty to Dolly: Don't cry sweetheart, I am eating my lunch


Now when I tell Betty off she says: Are you happy mummy?


Betty was telling me that she doesn’t like tomatoes and lettuce. I told her that I love them. I then told her that I love her. She replied: But you can’t eat Betty on a plate mummy


Tom was holding Dolly this morning and Betty entered the room and said to him: Give Dolly to mummy, she is mummy's baby

Potty exemption

We have been trying to get Betty out of nappies for quite some time now. I feel that Tom and I have tried everything. And nothing works. It’s not that she doesn’t know what to do because every time we visit my grandmother she performs beautifully.

Every time I go to the loo she insists on coming with me (which is all good because I am hoping that this will encourage her) and she helpfully talks me through each step. Once I have finished she tells me that I am a good girl and that I can have a star on her potty chart.

Whenever Betty’s little chums come over to play and either use their potty in front of her or take themselves off to the loo, she tells them: ‘Well done, you are very clever’. She even keeps asking them if they need a wee and reminds them that they mustn’t wet themselves.

She has pretty little pants desperate to be worn, and she will often talk fondly about them being folded up neatly in her draw. But if you suggest that she actually wears them she very matter-of-factly says ‘No mummy’.

The little lady seems to think that she is exempt from this whole potty training malarkey.

For my mum

Tom bought a piano recently, having hankered after one ever since Betty was born. He was brought up with a piano, and is very modest, but can play amazingly well. I was also brought up with a piano in the house and tell everyone that I am a pianist (my late grandpa was after all), but I can actually only play Chopsticks very fast.

My mum’s middle name is Elise - my grandpa named her after Beethoven’s Fur Elise, so when she heard Tom playing this piece on our new piano she felt very emotional.

She was listening to Tom playing yesterday evening, and was even more touched when Betty walked into the room and specifically requested that Tom play Fur Elise. Betty then began dancing around the room singing ‘Fur Elise, Fur Elise’ while Tom played.

It was a very special moment for my mum, and a proud one for me.

Green fingers, not tomatoes

Betty led me by the hand to the greenhouse yesterday afternoon announcing that she had some tomatoes to pick.

She was disappointed to find that there were only two ripe tomatoes and so I helpfully suggested that it might be fun to pick a big green one and watch it turn red on the windowsill.

Betty was absolutely appalled at this suggestion and with a furrowed brow she promptly put me right: ‘You are very naughty in the greenhouse mummy. Daddy will tell you off. Tomatoes must be red NOT GREEN’ and then ushered me out of there and back to the house as quickly as she could.

And as if she needed to get all annoyances towards me off her chest, she then said: ‘And it’s not Tom, it’s DADDY’.

And the sun shone!

We have just spent a great week on a beautiful welsh headland, but we were completely unprepared for the freak fantastic weather that we had all week. I had only packed waterproofs, furry bear suits, fleece blankets, and woolly hats, none of which we needed. For the glorious days spent on the beach we could have done with, at the very least, some beach towels, and some un-knitted attire.

Betty delighted in building sandcastles, flying a ridiculous postage stamp-sized kite, and trying to catch the fish in the rock pools. She would run around saying ‘where are all the fishes mummy?’ I would say ‘look, there are hundreds just here!’ So she would scream loudly with excitement and go galumphing through the water towards them wielding her little pink net, and then wonder where they had gone. This cycle went on for half a day.

I was desperate to go in the sea but I felt it would have been disrespectful to Dolly to get my boobs covered in sea salt and sand in time for her next feed. So whilst Betty and Tom were jumping through waves I took the opportunity to do some power walking across the beach with Dolly in her pushchair. Although this felt relatively good at the time, that night I realised that as my feet had been pounding the sand, my sunglasses had been pounding my nose, and it looked and felt like I had been punched. My nose still really hurts and I think I may have to see my GP. ‘Injury by walking whilst wearing sunglasses doctor’.

We also went on lots of walks along the Pembrokeshire coastal path, and Betty’s eyes almost popped out of her head when she saw how many blackberries there were. I think Tom, who was carrying Betty on his back, began to get a little weary of having to pick every single blackberry in Betty’s view, give them to her, and then hear an: ‘Ut-oooh Daddy’s purple neck’ from behind. Betty has decided that she doesn’t like ANYTING apart from blackberries at the moment. Throughout the holiday she kept saying: ‘I don’t like the sea. I don’t like lighthouses. I don’t like you. I don’t like cheese. I like blackberries’.

One morning we took a walk down to a little cove which is supposed to be a haven for seals. And sure enough Tom spotted a baby seal lying on the beach. I edged towards him with my camera, expecting him to scurry back into the water, but he just lay there looking at me with big expectant eyes. With my maternal hormones still in overdrive, I felt that he was giving me the same look that Dolly gives me when she needs something. This was a very strange experience for me, because I am not an animal lover, in fact I normally hate them. But this Dolly-esque seal really got to me and I was genuinely upset because I thought that he was injured or had been abandoned by his mother.

Later that afternoon, after the seal incident, Betty and I went on an ‘Aquaphobia’ boat trip around Ramsey Island. Unbeknown to me at the time, of all the boat trips I could have taken her on this was probably the least suitable for a nearly three year old. But the lady in the ticket office gave me a desperate and very hard sell and even told me that the trip would be suitable for a baby ie. Dolly. Thankfully my mother’s intuition kicked in and I sent Tom off for a nice lunch with Dolly as his spectator, on dry land, whilst Betty and I boarded the boat.

The ‘boat’ was actually a pretty insubstantial dingy which had a very powerful engine and motorbike style seats to sit on. Life jackets were thrown our way by the skipper as the boat sped out of the harbour and did a few stunts to amuse the sunbathers on the beach. Betty spent the first half of the hour long trip staring at her feet in total silence. When I asked if she was ok, praying that she wasn’t going to be sick, she gave me a very clipped and brave little ‘yes’. Thankfully during the last half of the trip she had come to terms with being thrown this way and that, and excitedly started pointing out buoys and other boats. It seems Betty follows me in her disinterest of animals - when we saw a little cove with hundreds of baby seals all basking in the sun she was completely unimpressed and got back to pointing out a big red buoy instead. She showed mild interest in a porpoise jumping beside the boat but again quickly got back to her buoy spotting instead.

The trip turned out to be pretty exhilarating and fun but if I had taken Dolly on this boat I would probably have lynched the woman who sold us the tickets afterwards. I also realised that it was perfectly normal for a baby seal to be lying on a beach and would have looked like a complete mentalist townie if I had raised the alarm on the one we had seen that morning.

We only had one bad day where it was windy, rainy and grey all day long. By lunch time, after being cooped up in the small cottage all morning with Betty running riot, we were at the end of our tether. Betty must have overheard either me or Tom saying to the other that we needed a break from her, as she later announced that she needed a break from us!

Apart from that one awful day, we were so unbelievably lucky with the weather and we all had such a amazing time. However, now that we have found our dream destination, I always have to have something to worry about and am paranoid that the owners won’t want us to come back. Maybe because we didn’t do enough hoovering, or because we left pin holes in the window frames, or because we left 7 minutes after the designated departure time?

Tom says I am being silly and of course he is right. I hope.

No yummy mummy here

I am heavier now than I was just after Dolly was born, and so I have recently started trying really hard to lose weight. It was a comment from my dear friend Emily that finally did it when she told me I was looking a bit ‘roly poly’.

I began my mission by cutting back on my chocolate intake, but I found that cheese then became my weakness. Anyway, I am slowly sorting things out and last week managed to shift 4lbs. I rewarded myself with a new top, which I put on this morning and proudly marched into the kitchen where Betty and Tom were having breakfast.

Ever the observant little girl, Betty remarked on my new top and told me she liked it a lot. I then asked: ‘Do you think I look like a yummy mummy my darling?’ She replied with a resonant ‘NO’. And then she went on to say: ‘Yummy Betty. Yummy Daddy. Yummy Dolly. Yummy Granny. Yummy Peppa Pig. Yummy Mummy Pig. Yummy Maisy Mouse. Yummy Pocoyo. Yummy Tesco Man…‘

‘Yummy Mummy?’ I asked, trying to keep a straight face. ‘NO’ she said.

A mother's journey

You wake up one morning in your early thirties, after years of anticipation wondering when this day would arrive, and you have a warm glowing sensation inside. You feel exultant but terrified. This is the moment that you realise that both body and mind are completely ready to begin a whole new journey.

You buy the books on how to get pregnant, drastically change your diet, drink lots of water, walk up a mountain every day, and have lots of sex. And all the while you are slightly preoccupied with thoughts of whether or not conception has occurred. Then you get your period, and feel a tiny bit gutted.

The following month your period doesn’t come and you try really really hard not to get your hopes up. Thoughts about whether or not you are pregnant completely consume you, and you constantly feel like you have butterflies in your tummy. Then you pluck up the courage to confirm the pregnancy either way.

The doctor tells you that you are indeed pregnant. You are pregnant! This is without doubt the best and most surreal day of your life so far. You cry tears of joy for several days afterwards, and cannot quite believe it to be true. After the initial euphoria you feel scared. What if something goes wrong. What if you miscarry or the pregnancy turns out to be ectopic. Or the doctor is wrong. At the same time you are desperate to tell the world your news. It feels like you are harbouring the biggest secret ever.

As the weeks go by you watch in wonder as your baby bump gets bigger and bigger. You attend each antenatal check with anticipation, and the first time you hear your baby’s rapid little heart beat you are overcome with emotion – it is mind-blowing. You spend the duration of your pregnancy with a protective hand across your tummy, you try to imagine what your baby will look like, you talk and sing to her, and you feel huge excitement every time you get a little kick or a prod. You eagerly await her arrival, whilst eating nothing but crisp and dairylea sandwiches. You cannot wait to meet her.

You give birth to your baby and look at her for the first time, in total awe. You laugh and sob, and your heart is pumping so hard you think it’s going to explode. Your baby is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. She immediately looks for the breast and lies across you, skin to skin, for several hours. The bond between mother and baby is instant.

For the next few weeks you and your baby are inseparable. You spend your time feeding her and sleeping together with her curled up on your chest looking safe and as content as can be. It pains you to hand her over to well-meaning friends and relatives because you don’t want to be apart from her for more than a second.

The months go by and you and your baby get to know each other inside out. You know when she is hungry, tired, uncomfortable, annoyed, or in need of a change of scenery. You know every little mark and crease on her body. She knows your voice and your smell and rarely takes her eyes off you. She squeals with delight and gives you a big beaming smile every time you appear into view, and she gently paws you with her little fingers as she feeds. You and your baby share private and special moments whilst the rest of the world sleeps.

You spend every waking moment with her and so you see her first smile, first chuckle, first wave, first clap and first steps, her first everything. You sit up with her in the middle of the night cradling her because she is cutting a tooth, or because she has a cold. You are fiercely protective of her, and you feel hurt by the odd person who is insensitive and disrespectful of your role as her mother. You feed her, bath her, play with her, change her nappies and read and sing to her, and make important decisions for her. But most importantly you love her, more than anything else in the world. A pure, unconditional love between mother and child.

And then one day you realise that you love your baby more than she could ever love you, more than anyone could ever possibly love anyone, until, that is, she wakes up ready to begin a whole new journey of her own.

Growing up

Last night I told Betty off after she persistently refused to get undressed for her bath. I was tired and hungry, Betty was tired and pushing boundaries.

Having given her one last chance, I pulled the plug and let the water out of her bath and abolished her bedtime treat which is normally a sweetie of some sort.

I hastily put her pyjamas on and in my cross voice told her to get into bed immediately, which she did without hesitation. As I put the duvet over her she looked at me and said ‘I want a bath mummy’. I could see her little eyes welling up as she held back the tears –something I have never ever seen her do before. Usually she will either cry or whinge if she doesn’t get what she wants.

My heart felt like it was breaking. She suddenly seemed so grown up and vulnerable and self-aware, and not the toddler she has been up until now.

And when I thought my heart couldn’t be pulled anymore, still fighting back her tears she said: ‘I'm sorry I was naughty mummy. Can you get into bed with me?’

The Buttons do Butlins

Butlins very kindly invited us to the launch of their new Ocean hotel and spa in Bognor Regis, with a couple of nights’ accommodation thrown in too.

They put us up in the Premier Inn in Chichester the night before their launch at Bognor. We arrived after a torturous six hour journey. It took this long because Betty (who is usually a once a day-er) decided to poo all the way down the M4, the A34, the M3 and then the M27.

Tom, Betty, Dolly and I were all in the same rather small room which scared me slightly, but I reasoned with Tom that the experience would toughen us up and be character building.

Three of us had to share a bed (albeit a very large outsized one) whilst Dolly was given the choice of two cots. Betty and Dolly both slept really well but Tom and I did not. It turns out that Betty sleeps like a starfish and so we were both clinging onto each side of the bed for dear life all night long.

The following morning as we were getting dressed, the launch was mentioned on the TV news. I got very excited and texted friends and family saying: ‘The Butlins launch is on the national news, I’m gonna be on TV!’ At breakfast we tried to guess who were bloggers and who were real hotel guests (Single Parent Dad, was that you in the lift with me when baby Dolly was losing the plot?), then we left for the Ocean Hotel.

This £20million, 4 star hotel is pretty impressive: spacious, fun, colourful and clean (so much so that our house now seems embarrassingly filthy in comparison). One of the first things that you experience on entering the hotel are the musical lifts. Seventies disco heroes like ABBA and the Village People serenade you in thirty-second snatches between floors. Much to Tom’s embarrassment Betty would try to get him to dance with her every time we entered them, no matter who else was in there. She also loved chasing the fish on the interactive reception floor and the children’s area in the hotel restaurant, where she tried to get Tom to drink his manly pint of beer sitting in a toy car. Betty also devoured the breakfasts which is a pretty good endorsement as she’s not normally a breakfast person, and she had the staff running around after her, fetching her more orange juice and croissants.

The launch event was great, if surreal – lots of journalists in suits, and bloggers surrounded by children – and the entertainment was fantastic, although the human sized squawking seagulls scared the hell out of Betty.

In the evening, with both girls fast asleep in bed, and Tom babysitting (i.e. reading his book via the changing coloured lights in the bathroom) I went off in search of a glass of wine. I went for a little wander around the camp and saw some of the entertainment but couldn’t help wishing that my secret crush, Shane Ritchie, was still a Redcoat. By the time I got to the hotel bar I was so tired I could hardly put in my order: ‘Wine. White. House. Dry.’ I was also feeling very self-conscious as I still look about 7 months pregnant. The waitress whispered something to her manager which I can only assume was something like ‘Is she safe to serve?’ before handing over the glass of wine. I then went and sat on the terrace and watched the sun setting over Butlins, and looked at the campers in all their finery heading out for the evening’s entertainment and thought: ‘Is this what our holidays have come to? Sitting alone with a glass of wine, staring out at some empty fairground rides.'

However it was nice to be able to have a glass of wine and not have to think about driving home, and that night all four of us had the best night sleep we have had for months. I didn’t hear a peep out of Betty, Dolly and Tom for a solid 12 hours.

On the last day I had my complimentary spa experience where I met some of the other bloggers for the first time whilst freezing our tits off in the snow cave with next to nothing on in minus 16 degree temperatures or sweating like pigs in the steam room. It was quite a surreal setting for meeting ladies that I have only ever chatted to online before.

The hotel was fun, the service was great and it was a real treat to have a holiday paid for by someone else. Thank you Butlins.

Normality and loveliness

I feel things are ‘normal’ and running smoothly again in the Button household. We have emerged from the haze and have adjusted to having a new little baby in our midst, and are nicely in a new routine.

Dolly is so chilled out and will happily gurgle and kick around on her play-mat for hours. And although she is sleeping amazingly well at night, I do miss terribly the early weeks when she would sleep on my chest all night long, curled up and snug.

She is a real mummy’s girl, but also adores a doting Betty, and is slowly warming to Tom! Watching their relationships develop and the little interactions between big and little sister is like nothing else on earth.

I cannot believe how fast the time is going, she is almost 15 weeks old. I'm desperately trying to cling onto these lovely baby days for all they’re worth, as realistically I don’t think we will go for a third (although I am already making noises to Tom about it maybe not being such a bad idea to carry on procreating).

These are very special times.

Retort

The last few times that I have told Betty off for either lobbing her dinner across the kitchen or doing her tightrope act along the back of the sofa, she has looked at me for a good few seconds, and then with a furrowed brow and a concerned little voice has said: 'Oooh dear, mummy's tired - go to bed mummy'.

Artful Betty

Betty has shown remarkable artistic talent from a very early age, but it still comes as a surprise to see her creations.

The other day she sat down and, ‘at random’, dipped her brush into the paint and came up with these pictures. She sighed as I heaped praise on her.

Admission

Tom and I were sitting in the pub last night drinking our pints of bitter and eating cheese when Tom suddenly announced: ‘I feel I hardly know Dolly’. He then went on to admit to me in a very serious tone that when he was holding Dolly yesterday evening and looking at her, he felt genuinely concerned that if she were in a line-up with lots of other babies he probably wouldn’t be able to pick her out.

Guest post from Grandpa Button (Tom's dad)

I love the endless stream of images Elsie sends out that chart the growth of my grand-daughters.

I think it was the photograph in the garden that did it. Suddenly I was looking into the eyes of Tom, aged 2 months staring quizzically and unblinking. Older generations are always on the look-out for characteristic family features. I suppose it's part of the same human desire for self-creation that drives grandparents to cherish time with the next generation - unhurried time with no specific agenda. So when Dolly took 10 seconds just to give the camera a long assessing look, she also transported me back in time by a warp factor of about thirty years.

Embarrassing moment

We had a grueling few days last week. Betty has had hand, foot and mouth disease and has been very out of sorts and unwell with it. On Thursday however, she seemed to be over the worst and desperate to get out of the house (having not left it for days), I took Betty to the playground.

At the slide there was a little girl having a tantrum because she didn't want to leave, and as she was being carried past us by her fraught mum, Betty started mimicking the girl's cry loudly, in a very take-the-piss kind of way. It was really really embarrassing. That's when I knew that she was better.

My birthday

It was my 35th birthday yesterday, and we had a fantastic day.

My current tactic is to go out on day trips with very low expectations (ie. weather will be crap, children will cry and whinge etc) because that way I cannot be disappointed. Yesterday, however, was perfect. We went to a National Trust house and garden, and Betty, Dolly and Tom all behaved impeccably, and the weather was glorious. We had a delicious picnic, Betty delighted in the giant chess set (making up her own rules before abandoning it to go in pursuit of the playground) and Dolly either slept or watched on with her knowing (and slightly unnerving) stare.

The first three months

The differences between your first and your second baby …

• When baby no.1 only pooed once a week until she went onto solids, you stressed and agonised over it and wondered what on earth could be wrong. You made several trips to the doctor with your otherwise happy baby, and tried every laxative trick under the sun. When baby no.2 seems to have exactly the same digestive system as baby no.1, instead of freaking out, you are grateful that you only have to deal with one dirty nappy on a weekly basis.

• After the birth of your first baby you tried desperately to shed the excess weight and be a yummy mummy, but after baby no.2 arrived you have given up caring and are too stressed/knackered/busy to worry about the fact that you eat at least two big bars of Galaxy a day and are two stone heavier.

• Having gone through two and a half years with baby no.1, and come across many a competitive parent, you realise that it is not cool and is perhaps a little insensitive (if not bloody annoying) to shout from the rooftops about how your baby sleeps through the night/eats broccoli etc. Therefore, with the second baby you learn to keep schtum and play it down, specially when asked directly by parent friends who haven’t slept for seven years.

• When friends ask how you have managed to get both babies sleeping relatively well from a young age, where with baby no.1 you naively and gaily told them about the wonder that is Gina Ford, whist thrusting her book into their hands - this time you do not admit to even knowing who Gina Ford is, let alone the whole controlled crying regime.

• When the new baby grumbles/cries you often don’t even notice/hear it. Whereas if baby no.1 so much as made a whimper you thought she must be sickening for something and would race her off to the doctors.

• All the little baby-gros and vests that were kept sparkling white for the duration the first time round (ie. they were washed at 90 degrees and only with other whites), are now all sorts of different shades of grey/blue/pink.

• The video footage of baby no.1’s sleep highlights from the first three months goes on for an agonising hour. The video camera has not yet made it out of the cupboard this time round (battery needs charging or something).

• Where you spent hours dutifully winding baby no.1 after a feed, things become a little slack the second time round and you figure that your youngest can probably burp unaided if needs be.

• Where with baby no.1 you did everything in your power to make sure that she reached every milestone (ie. holding/following an object, rolling over etc.) at the correct age (according to your baby book), this time you have absolutely no idea/can’t remember when they are supposed to be doing what, nor do you care or have time to fixate about it.

• With baby no.1 the first three months felt like three years. With baby no.2 three months feels like three seconds.

Noise control

We mothers tiptoe around our babies when they are asleep so as not to wake them up. During the evenings, I won't let anyone flush the loo, watch TV, talk too loudly or wash up. I have also unplugged the phone on occasion, even though it's totally out of Betty and Dolly's earshot.

Last night our smoke alarm went off, ringing continuously for about 10 seconds. It's practically next to Dolly's head, and she didn't even flinch, let alone wake up.

Help!

I would like to buy Betty some new dvds for the occasions when I desperately need her to be entertained while I get on with cooking dinner etc etc. Has anyone got some good ideas on what a nearly three year old would love?

Lookalike

With both girls asleep in bed, I slumped on the sofa this evening with two bars of chocolate, having had an EXHAUSTING day (so much so that I went into meltdown at about 4pm and threw both my little darlings at Tom and went and sat in the car, took some deep breaths and ate marshmallows for 10 minutes).

Anyway Eastenders came on and there I was happily watching it, when Phil Mitchell appeared on my screen - but staring back at me was my beautiful, precious and innocent baby Dolly - the resemblance was uncanny, in my sleep deprived head.

I am off to bed.

Breastfeeding tips

Below are some tips I wrote out for a friend of mine when Betty was about one. You would think I might have learned from some of these experiences. However, in the last couple of months I have often donned t-shirts with at least one (if not two) wet patches on the front, have had breastpads wriggling their way up and out of my top at the most inopportune moments, and have had milk spraying out across the room in front a very bemused Betty and an embarrassed neighbour. However, that dreaded bloody breastpump is still safely packed away at the back of a cupboard somewhere, probably housing some mice.

***

• Always wear breast-pads in public, no matter what. The day you go commando and pop out to the shop to buy a loaf of bread, will be the day that you will happily be chatting away to the shop assistant about the marvels of parenthood when just the mere mention of your darling baby will cause two very large wet patches to appear through your t-shirt.

• When wearing your breast-pads, make sure they are inserted securely, avoiding them falling from your person at any given moment. Also ensure that if you take them out of your bra to feed, that you don’t forget to put them back in, and then realise half way down the street that you have left them on the arm of the sofa in Starbucks.

• Don’t go to the bother of putting together the millions of intricate and unfathomable pieces that make up a breast pump, then expressing the milk, dismantling the breast pump to wash and sterilise it, only to do it all over again a few hours later, if you are never actually going to use the aforementioned milk.

• If your baby bites down on your nipple with a new tooth whilst feeding and then looks up at you and smiles, make it known that this kind of behaviour is totally unacceptable, and do everything in your power to make sure that this never ever happens again.

• If a fellow mother at your baby yoga class offers to breastfeed your crying baby for you, allowing you five minutes to do your saluting the sun sequence, politely grab your baby and get the hell out of there. Don’t ever return.

• When your well-meaning midwife tells you that within weeks you will be so confident that you will be able to feed your baby at the same time as answering the door to the postman without him noticing, don’t believe her.

• If your baby is a noisy or erratic feeder try to avoid getting your boobs out in a public place such as a café or bus stop.

• Likewise, if your boobs tend to resemble over-inflated footballs just before a feed, avoid feeding in public, as you may end up showering anyone within a one-metre radius.

• One day you will shove your boobs in your baby’s face and she may sigh, roll her eyes and push you away while depositing some pureed carrot on your nipple. This is when you should probably start to think about weaning.

Back to it

I didn’t even know what a blog was until I heard a lady being interviewed on Radio Two, shortly after Betty was born, and she mentioned that her blog had a huge fan base. Annoyingly, I can't remember who she was or what her blog was about. But I liked the idea of having 'fans' and so I asked Tom if anyone could blog, or if you had to be a popstar or something. He said: ‘My darling, if it is a blog you want, it is a blog you shall have’. And so he set one up for me.

I decided to write about being a first-time mum, and all the experiences you have (the joys, the challenges, the angst, the surreal and the sublime) with a new baby. Plus I wanted to be able to have something to show Betty when she grows up. Whenever I asked my own mum what I got up to when I was a baby she frustratingly kept saying: ‘I honestly can’t remember’. So I began merrily typing away about puréeing pears, dream-feeding, and baby yoga.

After several months of writing my blog, I discovered that there was a whole blogging community of mums and dads out there, reading what I had written and offering support, empathy and reassurances on Betty’s latest antics. I was suddenly meeting parents (in a virtual sense) all over the world who were either going through or had been through exactly the same things - being sneered at by judgmental parents who would never do that with their darlings, panicking as their child licked the toilet seat, obsessing over the consistency of baby poo, fretting for months in advance over the planning of a first birthday party, or facing some sudden reminder of their old, pre-parenthood life and realising that the world has changed completely.

Obviously I kept in touch with real-life friends too and didn’t become some kind of weird cyberspace recluse. However, having this great support network, combined with my love of writing, made those early months - which can potentially be very isolating and hard – stimulating and sociable (often without even having to leave the house).

Since my second daughter Dolly was born a few months ago, my blogging has become a little scant, but I am now determined to write more (there are so many precious moments happening every day after all) and start catching up with all my favourite mummy blogs again - I have really really missed it.

My ideal life...

One grey February day in 2003, whilst sitting at my computer in a dreary office in West London, I stared out of the window onto the congested and polluted A40 flyover. The only things to be heard were the incessant ringing of office phones and bored voices answering them, and the pneumatic drills and diggers on the road-works outside. Feeling knackered and uninspired about the impending budget meeting with the accounts department later that afternoon, the only thing I could do was to immerse myself in a fantasy. So I set about writing the following piece about my ideal life in the countryside. At the time, the following scenario seemed like a very distant and unobtainable dream…

***

As I stand at the kitchen sink washing up last night’s dinner plates, I gaze through the fat, colourful tulips sitting in a vase and out of the big oak framed window in front of me. I see spring lambs in the apple orchard, skipping amongst the buttercups and daisies, and a couple of cows peacefully grazing in the bright, warm sunshine. A bumblebee lazily buzzes round my head and I playfully shoo it away, covering myself with soap suds. I look at the remains of the food on the dinner plates and remember the exquisite tastes of our supper the night before which we ate as a family in the garden – a delicious salad of mozzarella, avocado, parma ham, pesto, rocket and lashing of extra virgin olive oil, with homemade crusty bread that I had baked that morning. The windchime hanging above my head makes a little jingle as a light, honeysuckle-scented breeze comes threw the open window.

It is 7.30am and I think about the day ahead of me. After breakfast, the first thing I will do is go out into the garden with my husband and our children to collect the chicken eggs. We will feed the birds, milk the cows and probably have a chat with old farmer Jones. We will then walk around the orchard collecting any rosy apples that may have ripened and fallen to the ground. Then, laden with fresh milk, eggs, juicy apples and some freshly picked flowers, we will head for my little shop which is situated at the end of the garden. I sell everything from fresh homemade bread, to little watercolours of the local scenery, to fishing flies. I decide that later on that afternoon, before I pick the children up from school, I will go for a sail around the nearby lake, followed by a swim with the dolphins.

During the summer months my afternoons vary from day to day. I either go sailing and swimming, bareback horse riding across the mountains behind our cottage, sit by the river and paint, go for long walks, sunbathe, or have lazy picnics with the animals. In winter this changes slightly – I enjoy building snowmen, sledging, making sculptures out of ice, eating the snow and playing with the polar bears who live in a cave in the mountains. My husband, who works from home, is often able to join me in my leisure activities.

Our cottage is warm and cosy with a big open fire in the sitting room where we often sit and read poetry to one another, and laugh and sing and play musical instruments. We have a dining room with a huge oak table in the middle. We often have dinner parties with our friends from London when they come to visit - we have such a jolly old time, sipping wine, eating fine food and laughing about those silly old polar bears in their cave in the mountains. And after dinner we retire to the sitting room where we all sit on sheepskin rugs by the fire and toast marshmallows and play Snakes and Ladders.

I finish the washing-up, take my Marigolds off, call the children, and then head for the garden skipping with joy, to begin the day…

***

Although our new life does not involve polar bears or dolphins, it does involve all things country - vegetable patches, hens, rolling hills, and mouse invasions.

Redemption

The courier who wanted to marry me, just came to the door again with yet another parcel. This time the Button household was a picture of domestic bliss. Betty was sitting quietly at the kitchen table playing with her play dough, Dolly was kicking and gurgling on her play mat, and I was actually looking half decent and not donning my usual baggy tracksuit and slippers that I wear around the house.

Too quiet

Last night while Betty was out at her grandma’s 60th birthday barn dance, do-si-do-ing and promenading with gusto and rhythm til the early hours, I was tucked up in bed with a chamomile tea and a Snickers. Instead of gallivanting half way across the country on a scorching hot weekend from one social event to the next, I had decided to stay at home with Dolly to relax and take it easy, without my tornado of a toddler charging around the place. And I was really looking forward to the peace and quiet.

However when I waved the very excited Tom and Betty off in the morning, I had a huge lump in my throat. It was the first night I had spent at home without Betty being there since she was born, and it felt really odd. Although it was lovely to be able to spend some quality time with Dolly, by lunchtime I really really missed Betty. Dolly was behaving differently and I can only assume that she was also missing her big sister. We were both, dare I say it, bored, without Betty’s constant chatter and entertainment and frolics.

I had so much time to sit about and think, I suddenly found myself obsessing over whether Dolly’s nails were short enough, whether she was doing adequate poos, if she was feeding enough, and sleeping too much etc. Normally I wouldn’t have time to worry about these non-existent concerns. This was a stark reminder of what a neurotic mother I was with Betty when she was a baby, and it was exhausting. A friend asked me earlier whether it was hard going from one to two children and I can now honestly say I find it much easier with two.

Anyway Tom and Betty have one more lunch date with grandparents and aunts and uncles before they head home today. I cannot wait to see them.

Wrong-footed

Yesterday Betty had a nasty fall and badly bruised and cut her knee. Worryingly she claimed that she couldn’t walk.

After quite some time and a packet of chocolate buttons she calmed down and went to sleep. However, she continued to claim that she couldn’t walk this morning, so I told Tom that he must rush her to A&E.

He dutifully carried an ailing Betty out to the car, drove her off to the hospital, and carried her into the waiting area, only for her to make a miraculous recovery when she spotted the playhouse in the children’s section. Tom was promptly informed that it was nothing more than a grazed knee and was sent home with a bottle of Calpol. Apparently just before they left, Betty did a very theatrical limp for the doctor (on the leg that hadn’t been injured).

Bouncing baby

Yesterday afternoon I needed to send some emails so I set Betty up with a puzzle, and put Dolly in the bouncing chair.

I sat down at my computer and began typing. When I turned back towards Dolly just moments later, Betty was vigorously bouncing her, almost catapulting her right out of the chair, and nearly giving me a heart attack. But both Betty and Dolly were looking straight at me and grinning from ear to ear.

Lucky escape

When I was fourteen there was a boy in the year above me at school who had a bit of a thing for me. He would phone my house and then nervously hang up. He would hide little notes in my school bag. And he would ask his friends to ask me if I would sit next to him on the school bus. I even heard a rumour that he wanted to marry me. All of which I cruelly ignored.

Twenty years later, having not seen him since I left school, our paths crossed again. A few months ago when I was heavily pregnant, the doorbell rang early one morning. I ran downstairs wearing a hideously frumpy nightie which came to just above the knees (it is the only thing that would fit). I had unshaven legs, fat ankles, huge bump and nipples brazenly protruding, greasy unbrushed hair and no make-up on.

I swung open the front door and there he was, standing there in a courier’s uniform and holding out a large package for me. I have no idea who was more embarrassed. I quickly clung to the hope that he wouldn’t recognise me, but this hope was shattered when he handed me his handheld computer with my name emblazoned across it, for me to sign for the package. I didn’t know whether I should make a joke of it and comment on how unattractive I was looking or whether I should just say nothing and shut the door as quickly as possible. I did the latter. I imagined he would be down the pub later with his mates having a right old laugh at my expense and telling them of what a bloody lucky escape he had had.

Having got over this mild humiliation, the doorbell rang early again yesterday morning. Betty was crying because I wouldn’t give her ice-cream for breakfast and Dolly was crying because I had put her down to make Betty’s breakfast. I answered the door and there he was again, nervously smirking, and holding out another large parcel. I wasn’t sure whether to make a joke of the bedlam going on behind me. But again I said nothing, and I quickly signed for the parcel. This time, he managed a very chirpy: ‘Thanks then’ and I promptly slammed the door.

I got straight on the phone to my friend in Kent who I hold entirely responsible for these encounters and told her that the next large parcel she sends me (she has been returning baby items such as moses baskets, baby swings etc, that I had leant to her when she had her baby last year), can she please please please use a different courier service.

Betty at Hay

Now that Dolly is coming out of that newborn phase of sleeping for hours on end I do not have any time to do ANYTHING other than the absolute essentials, let alone blog. And there is so much I want to write about!

Instead I have attached a picture of Betty at Hay Festival, bearing an uncanny resemblance to her dad, clutching her bag with her new book purchases.

A job well done

Last night Tom put Betty to bed while I put Dolly to bed.

We both happened to finish at the same time and met each other on the landing. We were euphorically giving each other a high-five when suddenly screams and cries started up from both bedrooms simultaneously. Tom looked at me, paused, and said: ‘Well that’s the girls sorted then’.

Extreme nappy change (by Tom)

Betty’s had her nappy changed in some diverse places – on the grassy verge of a seaside car park, in a café with toilet roll (I will never moan about wet wipes again), on the main street of fashionable Deauville, France – but today was a real humdinger. Betty took it very well, considering.

I’m very slowly gathering materials for a home-made chicken coop. So far I have a roll of chicken wire, and a bag of Betty’s hair to terrify the local foxes (see earlier post Hair Abuse). Today I felt ready to go to the next level so I took Betty off to a reclamation centre in search of some cheap bits of timber. The rain was falling hard as we arrived. For a time all was well, I started to look for some wood, and Betty was ecstatic about all the random items: phone boxes, stained glass windows, barrels, giant stone balls…in fact I think the excitement might just have triggered the long-overdue bowel movement that she loudly announced to me from halfway down the bath aisle.

Resisting the urge to ignore it, I scooped the little lady up and asked the warehouse owner if there was a toilet. He led me outside and pointed to a blank door. There was some confusion as I thanked him and headed off in the opposite direction (to get Betty a spare nappy etc. – but it was too wet to explain). When I got back, the blank door had been opened. It had been a peculiar exchange, but I had no time to work it out: Betty’s nappy needed urgent attention.

Inside was a concrete-floored bunker. There was no lightbulb. Two doors led off to the usual places: a third door was locked and could have been guarding absolutely anything. I tried shutting the outer door, as a token nod towards Betty’s dignity, but the ensuing darkness was total. I opened the door again and searched the bunker for inspiration. There was a small anvil on the floor. Even a small anvil is almost unmoveable without machinery. With Betty’s help, I dragged it across the floor and propped open the door, effecting a compromise between having enough light to see by, and not letting Betty get drenched by the now-horizontal icy rain.

Working quickly now, in case the other customer was suddenly caught short, I threw my coat onto the muddy floor and lay my alarmed but stoical daughter on top. I set to work with my back to the door in an attempt to keep the worst of the storm off Betty. The nappy change itself was mercifully straightforward, though there was no bin, and I was too embarrassed to talk to the man again, so I threw the old nappy into my rucksack and ran with Betty back to the shelter of the crazy warehouse.

Transition

Tom has gone back to work so I am now going it alone with the two little ladies. There are several goals I have to reach each day for things to go relatively smoothly, namely not letting anyone starve.

If I have managed to get milk into Dolly whilst keeping Betty happy and entertained, and lunch into Betty without Dolly losing the plot, that is a real accomplishment and I feel a real sense of achievement.

I was particularly pleased with myself yesterday when I managed to make yellow play dough for Betty, whilst breastfeeding, singing nursery rhymes, and trying to locate Betty’s felt tip pen lids that she was adamant she must have in order to stop nagging me.

One of the biggest things I have noticed since Dolly was born is that Betty is a very big girl and is doing near-on adult poos and therefore seems way too old to be wearing nappies and lying on a changing mat with her legs in the air being held in a vice like grip etc. Therefore, much to Tom’s astonishment, I have decided that this is the time to embark on the whole potty training thing. This has so far involved me taking Betty’s nappy off for a couple of afternoons here and there and telling her that if she manages to do her business in the potty I will give her a big piece of chocolate. However, on both afternoons, much to Betty’s annoyance (and my frustration) she hasn’t needed to do either a wee or a poo during the whole nappy-free time.

The funniest thing that Betty has started doing since her new sister arrived is that when I am feeding Dolly she has started mimicking me by ‘breastfeeding’ her duck comforter (whilst making slurping noises) and then winding him.

Going from one to two is a bit of a shock to the system when you are the only adult in the house and both girls are refusing to have their nap, or insisting on crying at the same time. But it is truly amazing watching Betty mothering Dolly and running to her aid when she cries, gently stroking her head, rocking her chair and asking her if she would like some raisins to make her feel better.

Trauma and elation

I have never been able to bring myself to write about Betty’s birth. It was a traumatic experience and involved three days of crippling contractions every ten minutes, a posterior positioned baby, induction, Pethidine, a dangerously high heart-rate, an emergency ventouse delivery, haemorrhaging, an episiotomy and severe tearing, an evil witch of a midwife, and then a very unsettled baby who wasn’t interested in feeding for several days afterwards.

I don’t mind admitting that in the lead up to Dolly’s birth I was absolutely terrified. I felt I had failed as a woman at the whole giving birth thing the first time round and felt sure the same would happen again.

However, it was a very different story with my second attempt. The labour lasted one and half hours start to finish. And apart from the overwhelming fear of giving birth in the car on the way to the hospital, once I was safely within the confines of the hospital, the next 45 minutes were both very intense and euphoric. I felt no pain, just total elation that my body was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing (albeit very quickly). It was so amazing to give birth to my baby completely naturally with no help from anyone else. And out Dolly came, happily and effortlessly, looked for the breast straight away, and then eagerly fed for the next two hours.

After this incredible experience, I felt, and still feel, that I can take on the world, and I have finally been able to put my first birth experience to bed.

New arrival!

Our perfect little baby arrived on Wednesday 22nd April at 9.30pm after a very speedy one and a half hour labour. One minute Tom and I were putting Betty to bed and dancing around her bedroom with her, the next minute I had one almighty contraction and we were making a mad dash to the hospital, arriving with just 45 minutes to spare before our impatient new daughter hurtled out.

Tom was amused by the fact that even though I was heavily in the throes of labour during the very hairy 30 minute car journey to the hospital I still managed to do my usual back-seat driving, telling him he was too close to the car in front, and to watch out for the cyclist.

Betty is absolutely fascinated by her new sister and has been very attentive and kind towards her. The first thing Betty asks for when she wakes up is to see her. She has been helping me to change her nappy, and has been gently rocking her, giving her lots of toys to play with (including her beloved duck comforter), and has been covering her tiny baby-gro with animal stickers.

I think Betty had grown weary of me and Tom and is delighted to have someone new in the house.

We are all very very happy.

Hair abuse

Betty was in desperate need of a haircut and so armed with some heavy chocolate bribes I decided to take on the challenge myself.

These days, if there is a promise of chocolate I can get Betty to do just about anything. And sure enough my little treasure sat there as good as gold as I hacked away at her impossibly thick mop.

Tom entered the room half way through the cut and with a glint in his eye he asked if I could save all the hair for him. I was touched at his thoughtfulness and sentimentality towards his daughter and so when I had finished I lovingly collected all the cut-off hair and carefully placed it in a pretty little box for him.

Later I asked him what he was going to do with the hair and barely being able to contain his excitement he said: ‘I’m going to put it into an old sock, tie it up, and then hang it from the chicken coop door… I read somewhere that the human scent will deter the foxes.’

Unknown territory

Having already had a baby, I might be forgiven for thinking that giving birth to and rearing a second child will be a lot easier, as I have done it all before. While elements of this may be true I have been told that with a new little individual comes a whole load of new and very different challenges. And I now see that the same can be said for different pregnancies too.

Betty was born just after 37 weeks. Therefore I naively assumed that new baby Button would follow suit and also come along at 37 weeks. Taking matters and nature into my own hands I have spent the last few months merrily and stupidly telling anyone who asks that we are expecting the baby to arrive around 1st April (at 37 weeks). This has meant that over the last couple weeks we have been inundated with texts and phone-calls wondering where our baby is and if we have accidentally omitted to tell people of the birth.

I am now 39 weeks pregnant and so have already entered unknown territory even before the baby has actually been born. I have never been this pregnant before. I never knew what it was like to go to bed each night feeling terrified, excited, anxious and on tenterhooks wondering if ‘tonight will be the night our lives will change forever’. I never had this time to start questioning whether or not I was actually ready for the imminent birth, or whether I would cope with another baby, or if the house could be tidied and cleaned a little more etc etc.

I did have a weeks’ reprieve from these thoughts however. About a week ago Betty caught Slapped Cheek from nursery and then brought it home and gave it to me. It has been a pretty torturous week of Betty being unwell and out of sorts, Tom being run ragged trying to meet important work deadlines whilst looking after us all, and me being bedridden and too ill to even remember about the whole pregnancy thing.

Betty and I are now feeling much better, which is a MASSIVE relief. I am not sure what the new baby would have made of entering such a dysfunctional and sickly household as it was last week, and I certainly don’t know how we would have coped with adequately welcoming a new baby into our lives.

So anyway, I am now once more having all the thoughts (tenfold) I had prior to the whole Slapped Cheek episode, and am wondering if tonight will be the night…

Pregnancy diet

I had a gestational diabetes scare and my midwife made me completely change my diet.

Remote parenting

When Betty was a few weeks old we decided that, although she was pretty good at making herself heard, we needed a baby monitor.

I remember reading the instructions. The description for the ‘Talk’ facility said something like: ‘Press and hold this button on the parent unit and speak into it to be heard by your baby’. And then it went on to say: ‘WARNING - THIS BUTTON SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROPER PARENTING’.

In the early days I only ever dared use this button once. Betty was grumbling in her cot one night and so I pressed the ‘Talk’ button and began singing to her sweetly in the hope of making her drift off to sleep. However, it had the opposite effect. She went berserk and screamed blue murder until I appeared in person to pacify her. Since then the button has been strictly off-limits.

Last week Tom had a nasty cold and so I made him sleep downstairs for a few days. One night Betty woke up at about 3am and in a whiney little voice began saying ‘No Postman Pat. No Postman Pat’ over and over and over again. Normally I would have asked Tom to go and sort out her disagreement with Pat, but since he wasn’t there I needed to deal with the situation myself. I was feeling huge and uncomfortable and unable to move easily and hoist myself out of bed, so in desperation I turned to the ‘Talk’ facility for the first time in over two years and gently said: ‘Betty my darling it’s time to go back to sleep now, we can talk about Postman Pat in the morning if you like, but right now it’s time to go to sleep’. Lo and behold, I didn’t hear another peep out of her until morning.

I have used this method successfully in the middle of the night a couple of times since. If the monitor company thinks I’m not a proper parent, I’m willing to live with that.

Stomach snub

I have been thinking/worrying a lot about the effects the new baby will have on Betty, but also how lovely it will be for her to have a younger sibling to play with, or torment in the case of me and my poor younger brother.

Some of the incidents that spring to mind…

• When I was nine years old my dad said he'd give me £50 if I ate a worm. I ate the worm and got my £50, but my mum (who was pretty annoyed with my dad for encouraging me to do such a stupid thing) made me split the money with my younger brother. I was livid and thought it only fair to force him into eating a worm to earn his half.
• During the school holidays (shortly after the worm incident) I locked my brother in a cupboard for three hours while my mum was at work. Just before she was due to come home I let him out again. He cried and wailed and told mum what I had done but I convinced her that he was making it up.
• I used to pick flowers out of peoples’ gardens, and then hand them to my brother and tell him to go and knock on the door and try to sell them to the owner.
• And I would often suck the chocolate off Maltesers and then hide them all over our house. When my brother came across them and asked me what they were I would scare the life out of him and tell him that it was alien poo.

I keep hearing from friends and from celebrity mums in Heat magazine that when pregnant with the second child, the older sibling affectionately strokes and kisses their mummy’s tummy, talks or sings to the unborn baby, or tries to look at it through mummy’s belly button.

Betty has shown absolutely no interest in my expanding stomach. When I dare mention to her that there is a baby in there, she gives me a filthy look, turns her back on me, and starts singing ‘The wheels on the bus…’ very loudly.

This could mean that either she thinks I am completely deluded for talking about such absurdities (especially as she regularly witnesses me downing entire Chocolate Oranges, and often refers to me as ‘Daddy Pig’), or she knows full well what is going on and doesn’t want to think ab0ut the fact that she soon has to share her home and parents with another little Button.

Domestic bore

A single friend came over for supper last night. When it was time for her to leave, she pointed out (in a nice way) that I had made the following statements/admissions throughout the evening:

• Economy 7 does have its plus points you know
• Tescos online shopping has changed my life
• Windolene doesn’t work on our windows
• I am so excited about finding the ‘timer delay’ button on our washing machine
• By planning our weekly menu I have seriously slashed our grocery bills
• There are lots of great offers on baby products at the moment
• Our milk consumption has reached astronomical proportions
• I have yet to work out how to use bleach correctly
• Every little helps

Great granddad

During visits to my grandparents’ house, my granddad would joke with me and say: ‘Hasn’t Betty learnt to speak yet?’ or ‘Is she thick?’ and he would openly mock the name ‘Betty’. Whenever Betty left a trail of biscuit crumbs along their sitting room floor it made him grimace. He’d tell her off for sticking her head in the washing machine, or for pulling the window blinds too hard, and he had to leave the room when Betty’s excitable squeals caused interference on his hearing aid. (Betty would then go off in hot pursuit, barge into his bedroom and cheerfully say: ‘HELLLOOO’ and he would grumpily grunt something back at her.)

But all this was just the surface. When we visited their house, my granddad always came to the door to greet us, gave both Betty and me a big kiss, and then took Betty by the hand and guided her carefully up the steps, chatting affectionately to her as they went. And although at 94 years old he was frail and achy, he mustered up all his energy to pick her up and sit her on his lap, and happily let her feed him half-eaten soggy crisps. When Betty trotted into the garden he’d follow her and coax his old dog out of her kennel so that Betty could say hello to her. And I often caught him looking at Betty with genuine warmth and love. He and my grandma were Betty’s very first visitors in hospital when she was just a day old. I’ll always remember them peering into her crib and seeing her for the first time, and both looking like they were going to cry.

One time, when he and I were watching Betty racing around the room, he started reminiscing about the moment he found out that I had been born. He was on a fishing holiday in Scotland with my grandma and they were woken in the early hours by the landlady of the B&B, who brought them a cup of tea with the news.

When I was little, he and my grandma used to come to my birthday parties. Thirty years later they came to Betty’s first birthday party. My granddad was even apologetic when they had to leave early because it had started snowing heavily.

Up until recently this funny and caring man was healthy and active, walking his dog, driving into town, and even going fishing. Last week he passed away in his sleep, having been taken ill just a week before. I’m dreading the moment when we walk into my grandparents’ house and Betty asks where he is.

Don't let it snow

The snow has been great fun and Betty started off on the whole thing with huge enthusiasm, with every other word being ‘no’ (That’s snow to you and me. It took me a whole day to work that out – I thought she was just being negative and difficult).

However, the snow meant that we were housebound for most of last week and both Betty and I started going a bit stir crazy, and really started getting on each others nerves. There is only so much painting, fairy cake making, sledging and ‘let’s pretend mummy is having another baby’ games a little girl can tolerate.

Saturday was the first time we had been able to venture out since last weekend, and so Tom very kindly offered to take us out for breakfast at the local farm shop. Betty had obviously been cooped up for far too long, but wasn’t that impressed about the ‘going out for breakfast’ plan (specially as she had already had her breakfast), and so it seems that she went all out to provide as much of her own entertainment as possible.

Whilst we queued for our breakfast with our trays, she excitedly pointed at the (rather manly) lady at the till and very loudly shouted: ‘MAN! MAN! MAN!’ I swear Betty knew what she was doing. She never normally feels the need to point at someone and inform them of their gender.

We sat down and started heartily tucking into our huge fry-up. Betty promptly began carefully placing every baked bean on her plate into her ketchup and then pretended to get upset by saying: ‘BEAN BEAN. UTT-OH. OH NOOO’ and would only calm down once Tom had fished out each individual bean and placed them on her toast. Once she had tired of this charade, she began hiding particular crayons either behind her or under her, and then doing the faux-upset thing again by saying: ‘PINK BLUE UTT-OH. OH NOOO’ and would only quieten down once Tom had located the pink and the blue crayon, and so on.

Betty proceeded to do a very elaborate poo accompanied by all the grunting and then turned to the teenage boy on the next table (who was sitting with his parents and minding his own business) and said: ‘POO. POO’ whilst purposely nodding her head at him.

We hastily finished our breakfast and just as Tom and I were feeling openly relieved that we were about to get the hell out of there, a waitress came over to clear away our plates, and Betty pointed right at her and excitedly squealed: ‘MUMMY! MUMMY!’

Please don’t let it snow this week.

New Button denial

Last weekend I was busy. I decided that as we now have approximately two months to go, it was time to try to start mentally preparing by giving myself a jolt, forcing myself to believe that there is another baby on the way.

I dug out all of Betty’s tiny baby clothes and began sorting them into piles by age. I bagged them all up (while Betty busied herself mixing up my piles) and labelled each bag carefully: ‘Newborn’ ‘0-3 months’ ‘3-6 months’ etc, and placed the newborn pile in the laundry basket. I ordered a new gliding crib, which I (perhaps naively) think is the answer to a crying baby in the middle of the night and wish I’d had one for Betty. I bought a hammock style baby-sling in a lovely vibrant red, which I strutted round the house in for a bit, and flicked through the baby names book I found in a cupboard. I began knitting a stripy hat, and I bought a Sudoku book (which is something I became obsessed with during my pregnancy with Betty).

However, by Sunday evening I felt like a fraudster and a fantasist. Rather than feeling like an expectant mum it was like I was playing one of Betty’s baby role-play games and sorting everything out for a new doll. Even though I am regularly getting some pretty hefty kicks in the stomach, I am usually so busy with Betty that I do not take much notice and subconsciously put it down to indigestion problems or something.

Even though I feel so unbelievably broody, and excited about the new baby, I can’t seem to believe that it is true for the majority of the time. It is only at night when I go to bed and all is tranquil and silent in the Button household (after I have scoffed a bar of Galaxy, tried to conquer yet another Sudoku puzzle and knitted a few rows), I drink a glass of cold water very fast (to wake the baby up) and then lie back with my hands on my stomach and have those special moments with my new baby.

Hen horror

I had to wake Tom in the middle of the night because I really freaked myself out and began questioning my sanity.

I had a dream that our new baby had been born and was just minutes old, and there were two mangy hens running around in our kitchen which my mum had just rescued from a battery farm.

Tom, my mum and I were trying to catch them so that I could breastfeed them. We chased them round the table and then they ran outside into the mud and rain. I was despairing. I had never breastfed a hen before and not only am I scared of them at the best of times, I was terrified that during the breastfeed they would flap their wings in my face, make me muddy, peck me, or pass on some horrible germs to my precious baby.

Just before I woke up, thankfully it suddenly occurred to me, why do I need to breastfeed these pesky hens anyway? And with that I picked up my beautiful baby and shut the door on the hens. THE RELIEF.

Shell shock

When I go shopping with Betty I normally keep her safely strapped in the pushchair for the duration. If she accompanies me by foot she is wayward and self-propelling, and it takes an age to get anything done. The last time I allowed her out of her pushchair she became obsessed with Abbey building society. It took several minutes to remove Betty from the queue for the mortgage adviser.

Yesterday afternoon we all went into town together. Tom announced that it wasn’t fair to keep Betty restrained in her pushchair when all she wanted to do was walk around with us. I tried to warn Tom but his mind was made up, and so I told him that if Betty was on the loose then she was his sole responsibility. Tom mumbled something about freedom and justice, unleashed our growling daughter, and then ran after her as she headed in the direction of the cathedral. I shouted down the street at a rapidly-disappearing Tom to let him know that I would be checking out the maternity range in Hennes and he should come and find me in an hour or so.

Twenty-two minutes later, from somewhere near the scarves and handbags, there was a very familiar-sounding commotion. ‘I said an hour,’ I told Tom. ‘Go and have another look around.’ In no mood for my excellent sense of humour, Tom quickly tried to give me an overview of what had happened while rummaging desperately in my bag for some snacks. Betty was being far too loud for Tom to make himself understood but the gist of it was, Tom was not going to be able to spend the next thirty-eight minutes with Betty at large.

I then announced that we must all go to the Early Learning Centre. So off we went, albeit slowly, and on arrival Betty was over the moon to find a toy shopping trolley. She spent 15 minutes pushing it around the shop and collecting everything off the shelves and placing it in the trolley. When it was time to leave I jokingly said to the shop assistant: ‘Expect a tantrum from my daughter when we try to leave the shop’. We both laughed light-heartedly, me because by ‘tantrum’ I meant a few crocodile tears which would quickly be forgotten once outside the shop and out of view of the trolley.

We left the shop and Betty had the MOTHER OF ALL TANTRUMS. I had never seen my sweet daughter behave in such a way. Tom picked her up around the ribs like she was some kind of giant insect, her arms and legs scrabbling wildly. But Betty was not to be so easily removed from her beloved trolley. Every few minutes she wriggled free of Tom’s grip and headed in a straight line back to the Early Learning Centre. Even at a distance of a couple of hundred metres, and around several bends, our homing pigeon Betty still headed back in the right direction. Then she started sitting down. That may not sound so bad but she sat with unbelievable determination. She is barely two stone in weight, but she somehow made herself as dense as a neutron star. Tom tried to move her along but nothing would shift her. He just had to wait for her to change position long enough to be able to grab her, then she would wrench herself free from his grip and the whole thing would start over again.

All the while, I was walking safely on the other side of the street, smiling sweetly and pretending that I wasn’t with them. Eventually I did go to Tom’s rescue and together we crammed our 45-degree-angle ramrod of a two-year-old girl back into her pushchair, threw her some snacks and jogged back to the car, trying to ignore the shouts of protest from below.

Poor Tom is still in shock. At supper-time last night he even announced that he wasn’t hungry. Betty’s first proper, full-on strop: I thanked god that it hadn’t happened without Tom being there, as I genuinely don’t think I would have had the physical or mental strength to deal with it.

Daddy Button

Betty is absolutely obsessed with Peppa Pig. The last thing she says as she is dropping off to sleep is ‘E’pig E’pig pleeeeeeease’ and that’s the first thing we hear when she wakes up.

Young Betty is heavily influenced by Peppa, which sometimes works to our advantage and sometimes not. Where Betty is now happy to clean her teeth and go skipping and dancing to the dentist, she has also started throwing cups of water over Tom, blowing bubbles into her drink instead of drinking it, demanding chocolate cake, jumping in muddy puddles on the way to nursery and lying on the ground (often in mud) laughing and kicking, and patting the spot next to her urging us to do the same. Those pigs have a lot to answer for.

I think I know one of the reasons why Betty is so keen on the Pig family. Daddy Pig bears an uncanny resemblance to Tom. Tom is a highly intelligent, gifted and wonderful man, but like Daddy Pig, lacks any kind of commonsense or practical skills. Quite often, sharp little Betty will react in much the same way when Daddy Pig does something daft as she does when Tom is about to do something equally as daft, with her concerned: ‘Ut-Ooohhh’. Maybe it is a dad thing.

Betty was here

Sometimes when Betty is playing downstairs with her granny or her dad, I sneak into her bedroom and sit in the silence for a while.

Betty’s room is full of her personality. Her sweet, unique scent drifts up from her clothes and toys, better than any perfume, the most reassuring smell I’ve ever known.

Everything around me is proof of her perfect existence, and it all tells a little story that only she can understand. The five blocks neatly piled on top of one another underneath her cot. Her toy bus with two half-eaten biscuits, a clothes peg and some tomatoes as passengers. A little collection of stones and berries, carefully placed in a small tin bucket on the radiator. The drawings on the wall which she has somehow managed to create using coloured wooden blocks. Her beloved duck, wrapped in a nappy and lying on her changing mat.

All these things that say: ‘Betty was here’ make the top of my chest pull and tighten, and the blood rush to my head. I could never have imagined a love this overpowering and intense before her arrival in the Button household.

I wonder how I could possibly love another child as much as I love Betty. Even though I know that of course the new baby Button will be equally adored, I find it hard to imagine right now.

Country girl

I took Betty for a walk down to the river by our house yesterday afternoon. I have never done this before without Tom, because I am terrified of any cow or sheep that might be in the field which leads to the river. The sound of rustling in the hedgerow gives me palpitations.

As Betty strode on ahead of me down the lane, happily wading through brambles and sheep shit like a trooper, I pathetically dodged all obstacles and kept a fearful watch out for the next door neighbour's dog, who has scared the life out of me on numerous occasions by barking and running around a few fields away.

Betty charged off down the steep hill towards the river and I tried to keep up with her with my heavy six-month-pregnant waddle, and called after her: 'Please don't tread in any more poo my darling'. All the time I kept thinking: 'Please please don't let that dog clock us, and please please don't let Betty ask me to carry her back up the hill'. I was a bag of nerves. The things I selflessly put myself through for my daughter’s enjoyment…

Sure enough, we reached the river and after Betty had pointed and said 'sea' a few times, she held her arms out for me to pick her up and said: 'Home. Home'. My heart sank. I realised it was going to be a long and tiring journey home. Perhaps we would never make it. I couldn't possibly have carried her for more than a few metres up a near vertical hill, in my wellies (which aren’t actually mine and are two sizes too big), with her balancing off my bump. Tom would have to come and rescue us.

I tried to distract her from wanting to be carried by pointing out some swans and taking a few faux-joyous photos of ourselves, before challenging her to a race up to the gate halfway up the hill. Thankfully, despite her little legs obviously being very tired, she rose to the challenge, and off she charged. She reached the gate a good thirty seconds before me and when she turned to see where on earth I was, she gave me a concerned, pitiful look, as I puffed and panted my way towards her.

After a few more race challenges and some serious chocolate bribery (I promised her my entire secret stash) we finally made it home again. I recounted our nerve-jangling expedition to Tom who was totally unsympathetic and seriously questioned my claim to have been brought up in the countryside. I had a strop and told him we were moving back to London. Tom gently suggested that I go and have a lie down with a bar of chocolate.

Sunday roast

Our friends Stuart, Charlotte and their toddler Bernie came round on Sunday for lunch. While Tom and Stuart were outside being all manly in sub-zero temperatures, chopping wood and digging up frozen parsnips, I cooked the roast. I tried to really go to town on it and whip up a feast à la Jamie Oliver. This was to make up for the last time they came over for a roast, when it took us two hours to serve up a watery chilli con carne with half the ingredients omitted and partially cooked rice.

I was busy making the mint sauce and swooning over Jamie’s alluring terminology when Tom entered the kitchen, chest puffed out, and proudly wielding some outsized parsnips caked in mud. ‘I think I can safely say that with that crop I have out there, I have managed to completely slash our parsnip bill this year my darling’ he said, before placing them on my clean work surface and practically skipping out of the kitchen.

After a few last minute tantrums over the gravy and undercooked parsnips, we eventually all sat down to eat. Betty spent the entire lunch being very loyal and saying ‘yum yum’ after every mouthful. She was being such a little treasure that I even managed to put on a brave face when she swiped the last piece of Yorkshire pudding from my plate (the bit that I was saving til last), and before eating it she held it up, looked at me and forcefully said ‘Betty’s? Betty’s?’ Once she had finished theatrically devouring it she then looked for other forms of entertainment. She began taking the peas, one by one, from my plate and dropping them onto the floor and every so often would hold up her little forefinger and say: ‘One more?’ After the fifth ‘one more’ I told her not to put anymore of my lunch in her mouth or on the floor and that it was very naughty. To which she promptly said ‘one more?’ picked up a pea and dropped it onto the floor. She then smirked at little Bernie and they both had hysterics. This was new. I was the butt of their joke. She was laughing at me with her little friend.

Some time after lunch Tom announced that he was going to make some flapjacks (his latest fad) for pudding, and although our guests were trying to leave at this point he assured them that they would be ready in 30 minutes and that they really would be worth staying for. They politely obliged, and while Tom got baking and I washed up, Betty saw it as her responsibility to keep our guests entertained. She began singing with impressive vigour and expression, using a tool from her doctor’s kit as a microphone, whilst swirling dramatically round the room. I had never seen such a performance from Betty and could only attribute it to her watching too much of The X Factor. She then disappeared for a few minutes and came back dragging Tom’s two guitars behind her. She handed one to Stuart and one to Charlotte before resuming her performance and urging them to join in with her.

One hour and 40 minutes later, Tom appeared with his flapjacks, and Betty, who hadn’t stopped for the duration, looked visibly relieved, as did everyone else. ‘Sorry they took so long’ he said nervously, ‘I ran out of oats and so had to use Ready Brek instead, and then they wouldn’t set, and then I put them outside in the garden for half an hour to harden…’

A french affair

Betty has been a slower than average talker but while we were on holiday in France during late summer, the French accent/language must have ignited something inside her because she finally began showing an interest in speaking – albeit French words. However once back on British soil she lost her enthusiasm once more and stopped trying to speak.

Just after Betty’s second birthday two months ago, we received an appointment card from the NHS stating that her two-year check-up with the health visitor was the following week. Knowing that they would want to know about her speech development, and not wanting her to be branded a dunce by the health authorities, I went armed with a list of all the words that Betty has ever said, French and English. Tom accused me of adding extra words to the list just to pad it out. I accused Tom of being a neglectful father and not listening to his daughter properly.

The appointment went well and the health visitor told me nothing that I didn’t already know – that Betty was obviously a very bright (I, of course, secretly think genius) child with an ‘intriguing’ multilingual interest (which I think she said just to humour me), and that there were no concerns with her speech development. While we were there she also measured Betty’s height and weight and told me that she was going to be a very tall and slim young lady. With a dead-straight expression I replied: ‘Just like her mother then’. Of course I was joking (I am very short with legs like a traffic warden’s). I was just trying to make the health visitor laugh but she didn’t know how to react and looked highly embarrassed and started speaking quickly and loudly about the bookstart club.

Betty is now repeating absolutely everything we say. It seems though, that being in France really did do something to her because even now she speaks with a distinct French accent (often dropping her ‘H’s’ for words such as house, hands, and hot), and has a real weakness for pain au chocolats.

Chocolate

I have been a pregnant hormonal and irrational cow with a serious chocolate addiction for the last couple of days, and poor Tom has been bearing the brunt.

Yesterday Tom popped into town at lunchtime to have a break from work and more importantly to buy me a Crunchie (having cruelly refused to buy me a Chocolate Orange because he is worried about my abnormal and vast consumption of them lately, where to his horror, I practically swallow them whole). He returned 10 minutes later empty handed, having gone into town and realised on arrival that he had forgotten his wallet. He said it wouldn’t be good for the environment to drive back into town again, which is a 10 mile round trip, just for a Crunchie, and offered me a chocolate coin instead. I was mildly insulted by this gesture but managed to comfort myself with a Snickers that I had hidden in the cupboard.

Later that evening Tom went back into town to buy us some fish and chips for dinner and to buy me a Chocolate Orange to make up for him not buying me a Crunchie earlier in the day. He returned with the fish and chips, and he also managed to remember to go to the pub for a quick pint, BUT FORGOT MY CHOCOLATE - AGAIN. I had a massive strop, told him that he was unsympathetic to my needs, and selfish, and stormed off to bed with just a bag of chocolate coins and a hot chocolate to pacify myself.

When Tom came to bed he told me that I had over-reacted about the Chocolate Orange and that I needed to calm down. I sulkily told him to be quiet because I was trying to watch Big Brother.

At 11.30pm, Betty, somehow sensing an atmosphere between us from her nursery, decided to wake up and come to the aid of her poor daddy and rescue him from her horrible mummy. She came into our bedroom and merrily bounced around on our bed, singing and laughing, and demanding that we kiss her soggy smelly duck at regular intervals. This charade went on til 4am, during which time she refused to be put back in her own bed and refused to go to sleep in our bed.

This morning I am absolutely shattered, but have managed to forgive Tom for forgetting the Chocolate Orange, and have apologised profusely. After her surge of energy during the night, I thought Betty seemed remarkably chirpy this morning. However it has just become abundantly clear that she has rapidly deteriorated in the last 10 minutes and is very on edge and tired – she has just burst into floods of tears because she tried to bite into a wooden fried egg at the same time as In The Night Garden finished – all too much for the little lady, so I am carting her off to bed so that we can both have a nap.

Betty ahoy

At the weekend, Betty and I were having a look around the Farmer's market in the middle of town whilst Tom scuttled off to some pretentious bookshop he loves. I was feeling proud to be with my daughter, walking around hand in hand in a relaxed manner, with none of the usual forceful ushering into Abbey Building Society or the cathedral.

Betty was doing some olive tasting at a stall when she clocked a merry-go-round and dragged me towards it squealing ‘Boat Boat Betty’. She has never been on one of these children’s rides before and I was nervous about letting her go on, for fear that she would get bored half way round and carry out some precarious acrobatics to launch herself off the ride. However, she was so eager, I decided to give it a go, so I paid the money and placed her in the boat. She confidently took the wheel and then patted the seat next to her and said ‘Mummy’. I loved her for thinking that I could feasibly fit into the miniature seat, and before I had a chance to try to explain to her that I was probably 25 times too big, the ride started and she was off. And it was a moment I would’ve frozen forever if I could have. I have never ever seen such a look of absolute euphoria on Betty’s little face. Judging by her expression it was the best thing that had ever happened to her by far. I only wished Tom would hurry up in his musty bookshop and come and witness it too.

The ride stopped and the look of disappointment on Betty’s face was almost unbearable. I tried to lift her out of the boat but she clung onto the steering wheel with her vice-like grip. Using the same tactic I employ when I am trying to get her to leave nursery, I discreetly whispered into her ear that if she came with me I would give her a treat. The talk of treats distracted her long enough for me to get her out of the boat and into the Woolworths across the road, for me (I am ashamed to admit) to say one final goodbye. Once safely inside the shop, I produced a chocolate coin - something I have in infinite supply - and handed it to Betty. But Betty refused the chocolate and looked me straight in the eyes with real sincerity, trying to bravely fight back the tears, and said ‘Boat. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease. Pleeeeeease.’ (very clever persuasive tactics she has learnt from the Little Princess cartoon).

Knowing that he would probably find me mournfully lurking in Woolies somewhere, Tom appeared at this point, sheepishly clutching some dull new book. Betty promptly began directing her pleading at him instead, while I went off to have one last go on the pick ‘n’ mix.

Bring us some figgy pudding...

For the first time in years I am gutted that Christmas is over. Celebrating with a two year old has brought back the magic of my own childhood Christmases. To cheer myself up I have been insisting that we all eat elaborate breakfasts every morning, mainly consisting of Christmas pudding, chocolate truffles and smoked salmon. Tom and Betty are being very patient.

Although Betty is still perhaps too young to fully appreciate and understand the magic, there were still many things that made this Christmas unique and special. She got excited and squealed ‘DADDY!’ every time we drove past the huge blow-up Santa outside the local garden centre. Whenever anyone phoned, instead of saying ‘Merry Christmas’, she would shout ‘Christmas tree’ at the telephone. She perfected ‘Away in a Manger’ and heartily sang it as she ate her chocolate from the advent calendar (which is sorely missed - we have since had a few chocolate-related tantrums, where through her tears she calls for the aid of her uncle, who is currently her favourite person ever).

When we took Betty to see Santa, she coyly flirted with the 15 year old spotty teenager dressed up as an elf who handed her a jelly baby and balloon and then ushered her into Santa’s grotto. In the grotto, whilst Santa said: ‘Hello my friend, are you hoping to receive lots of lovely crayons for Christmas?’ in a fake deep and husky voice, Betty just sighed and kept a safe distance, only moving in closer to humour him and take her present. She then did a quick about-turn before going off in pursuit of the elf.

Christmas day itself was lovely - at least, once all the toys I had lovingly bought and made for my darling daughter had been removed from sight. Betty was immediately put off her stocking when she spotted the head of the soft toy I had made for her sticking out of the top. She was also a little confused when it transpired that there had been a complete breakdown in communication between family members over presents, and she received three wooden toy ovens… one from me, one from her granddad, and one from her uncle. I had also bought Betty a very expensive life-sized crying/giggling/wetting/eating/ sleeping baby doll, which Tom told me that under no circumstances was I allowed to give to her. It automatically cried whenever there was a noise, and could only be silenced if someone sang to it. Tom was worried that Betty would have to get up in the middle of the night to get the ‘monstrous thing’ back to sleep. I ignored Tom’s pleas to give the doll to the child of someone we didn’t like very much, and on Christmas morning I left it sitting in the mini-pushchair belonging to her existing doll, Cupcake. Betty calmly but promptly removed the imposter and placed Cupcake back in her rightful place. Tom and Betty did a high-five while I sang to the doll to stop her crying (all good practice for a few months down the line).

Perhaps the high point for me was the Christmas pudding. For years I have been the only person in my whole family to actually enjoy the bloody things, so I was delighted when Betty helped me polish off a pudding meant for four people. That girl makes me so proud.

Betty goes large

I am very excited to announce that I have been offered a book deal, based on the material on this blog.

Publication of my book is planned for summer 2009.

Look who's talking

I took Betty to an activity morning earlier today, where they had a singing and dancing session, lots of unusual toys and instruments, and various things to jump on and climb through.

Betty spent most of the morning chasing the boys (ignoring the girls) and giving them big snotty kisses on the lips. I spent most of the morning being grilled by a scary mother (SM), who I had previously met at Betty’s swimming classes last year. She was asking me how many words Betty can say and whether or not she is putting words together yet. I explained to SM that Betty says ‘Da Da’ quite a lot, and apart from teasing us with the odd one-offs such as ‘tractor, fish, windmill, melon, biscuit, goodbye’ etc, that is about as far as things have got. I told her that I wasn’t worried, and that Betty has her own mind and would speak when she is good and ready and not when we tell her to.

SM went on to tell me that her ‘little prince’ can say almost anything, and in two languages what’s more, and is now putting 3 or 4 words together. She told me that this was almost certainly because she had religiously read books to her child daily ever since he was born, and also that she ‘takes the time’ to talk to him regularly. She then gave me a sympathetic look, shook her head and tutted. I wasn’t sure if she was tutting at me for being a bad mother for not reading or talking to my daughter (which, just for the record, I do, and always have done, ALL THE TIME), or at Betty for not being as advanced as SM’s little multi-lingual genius.

My great aunt regularly asks me whether or not I am actively teaching Betty to talk. And when Betty and I are in her company, she takes matters into her own hands and will spend hours with Betty saying loudly and clearly: ‘This is a BALL BALL BALL. This is a CAT CAT CAT.’ Betty reacts in much the same way as she does with me and Tom, and raises her eyebrows, sighs, and demands to be let into the fridge so that she can play with some tomatoes.

Having desperately tried, but failed, to join in Betty’s game of kicking three balls simultaneously around the room, I noticed that SM was still hot my heels, and was coming at me with a conversation about potty training. I informed her that Betty is not potty-trained, but does enjoy sitting the doorstop on the potty and making a ‘psshhh’ing sound. SM looked disturbed at this, and then told me in great detail about how she had taken a week off work to potty train her 20 month old child. ‘Admittedly it was chaos’ she said, ‘there was poo and wee all over the house for the first 3 days, and then I gave up.’ She told me that she plans to take another week off work in September and try it all again.

There was a scary look in her eyes, and so I left her with her potty thoughts, and went off to join Betty for a hand-clapping session.

Singing in the rain

On Sunday it was my turn for a lie-in. And while Tom was getting it in the neck from Betty downstairs because he had offered her the wrong spoon to eat her porridge with, I was enjoying a peaceful Chocolate Orange breakfast in bed, and trying to decide on a plan for the day.

Half an hour later, Betty was armed with her bucket and spade, Tom with his book, and I with my four beach bags, and we optimistically headed for the seaside. I insisted that we cheerfully sing ‘oh I do like to be beside the seaside’ all the way there, whilst the rain thrashed down, and Betty threw raisins at the back of my head, laughed, and then got upset because I wouldn’t pick them up and give them back to her.

After a two-hour journey, we arrived starving and grumpy. We sought out some fish and chips, and being intent on doing the traditional British thing, I insisted we eat them on the beach. We huddled together behind the beach wall to shelter from the wind and rain and tried to eat them as quickly as possible, while being assaulted by seagulls. Betty excitedly squealed ‘BIR BIR BIR,’ whenever one swooped, whilst I completely freaked out and screamed: ‘They’re going to get us.’ I have a serious seagull phobia.

Meanwhile, Tom was hurriedly trying to eat his huge haddock which I had already given him a hard time about spending our last five quid on – there were no cash-points around and I had wanted to buy Betty something, anything, from the tacky beach shop. All the while I was trying to take photos of us all eating our chips together. I had a go at Tom for pulling an ugly face in every single photo. “I’m trying to eat my bloody haddock,” he hollered back, and with that he ordered me and Betty down to the sea so that he could finish his fish in peace.

It was Betty’s first proper paddle in the sea. I rolled her little dungarees up, put her down onto the sand and off she charged into the water. I was so caught up with taking photos of her that I wasn’t being very attentive and before I knew it she had decided to sit down, but seemingly not bothered by the freezing cold temperature, she was having a wonderful time splashing around. She then got up, and with her giant water-bomb of a nappy causing no apparent hindrance, she started running through the water, giggling and squealing. It was a truly magical scene – just like in the films.

Then Tom rocked up and I tried to get him to take photos of Betty and me holding hands and skipping through the waves, but he seemed more interested in taking photos of a jellyfish. So I grabbed the camera, balanced it on a rock, put it on self-timer and then chased Betty across the beach, hoping that we would be in the shot when the camera went off. Tom was half out of shot in the background, slightly embarrassed, prodding the jellyfish with a stick. I retrieved the camera to have a look at the photo and although both Betty and I were in the shot I was dismayed to see a fat haggard-looking dollop (me) running in a very ungainly manner. These days I am genuinely shocked when I look at photos of myself. I seem to be suffering from a serious case of delusion. 


After an hour of these beach frolics, I felt that it was only fair that Betty be relieved from her wet clothes and the three gallons of sea water she was carrying around in her nappy, and so we headed back to the car to sort her out. I was pretty annoyed with myself to find that in the four large beach bags that I had brought with us, I hadn’t put in a sensible spare change of clothes for Betty, or a spare nappy – only a pretty little summer dress, optimistically packed. But I remembered Betty’s nappy bag, which is normally wedged under the passenger seat and hasn’t seen the light of day for at least six months as Betty only ever poos in the comfort of her own home.

I found the bag and the only clothing I could find within was a t-shirt which had something intensely annoying like ‘Princess in training’ emblazoned across it, a pair of dodgy tan-coloured leggings and a badly knitted homemade cardigan, all of which had been shoved into this bag because I never thought we’d ever need to use them, and were now at least two sizes too small.

After cramming Betty into every item of clothing we could possibly find, including the dress, and squeezing her 20 month old bottom into a fusty size two nappy, we were ready to hit the windy cold streets of the bleak Welsh seaside town. As we walked along, with Betty in her pushchair, seemingly in fancy dress, loudly humming the theme tune to ‘In The Night Garden’ and waving a multi-coloured windmill that I had managed to buy for her from a £1 shop, Tom coolly remarked that he felt as if he was part of a carnival display.

Less than fifteen minutes later, we were back in the car and heading for home.

One down, four to go...

Tom has gone on a jolly to Abu Dhabi. He left yesterday morning, and whilst it is nice not having to nag him about being too noisy, untidy and smelly, both Betty and I are missing him.

Betty has been looking for him everywhere. I tried to explain to her that he has gone on a five-day piss-up with all his uni mates with the excuse of a friend’s wedding, and that he would not be found under his pillow or in his sock drawer. She gave me a very firm, slightly scary look, sighed and then said: ‘Da. Da. Da.’ Each ‘Da’ grew louder and shriller. Where ‘Da’ normally means anything and everything, I think that in this case the meaning was pretty clear.

In an attempt to keep Betty on side, I have been trying to keep her as active as possible so that she doesn’t have too long to contemplate Tom’s absence. If she were to decide that she is actually pretty annoyed about it, the next few days will be hell for me.

Yesterday morning, I cleaned the car, inside and out, whilst Betty joyfully bounced around on the seats and tried to drive the car away. She enjoyed it so much that I made a note to myself that playing in the car on the driveway will become a regular activity. Whilst cleaning, I found a half eaten chocolate digestive in the glove compartment, which I then flung over the hedge, only to be met with a: ‘Mmm thank you very much’ from the farmer on the other side. I was very embarrassed and tried to pretend that I wasn’t there, and that Betty had thrown it.

We had a painting session mid-morning, sort of. Despite the fact that when I asked Betty if she wanted to do some painting she said a resounding ‘YES’, she refused to do any painting whatsoever. This was after I had set it all up, squeezed all the paints out onto plates, wrapped her up in tea-towels, and laid newspaper everywhere. I then tried to use all the paint up myself by doing my own handprints and painting about 13 different pictures. Meanwhile, Betty didn’t want to get her hands dirty at all and so she reorganised the unused paint-brushes, and sighed a lot.

Early afternoon came, and we decorated her new playhouse in the garden. In doing so I happily discovered that Betty is just as happy with a framed photo of her beloved duck comforter (which I had hung on the wall) as she is with the real thing. This takes the pressure off me slightly as the real thing is on its last legs and I have been having sleepless nights about it recently. Once the house was decorated we then hosted a play-date in it for two of Betty’s lovely friends, Daniel and Molly, in the afternoon. They all had a great time pouring each other cups of tea and dismantling my arrangements. I was then out there at 11pm last night with the hoover and an extension lead, knowing full well that I wouldn’t sleep easy knowing that there were crisp and biscuit crumbs littering the carpeted floor.

Throughout the day we also managed to fit in a trip to the garage to see a man about a spark plug, read what felt like 300 books, and baked some fairy cakes. By 6.00pm Betty was practically begging me to put her to bed and when I tried to sing her usual bedtime song, she shook her head crossly and forcefully said: ‘Da. Da. Da,’ which in this case I think meant: ‘Please put me in my cot now and go away.’

I don’t sleep very well when Tom’s not here. Last night I just lay there, feeling petrified. All sorts of things were going through my mind… fires, burglars, murderers, mice in the playhouse, Betty waking up during a power-cut and me not being able to find her, me getting food poisoning and not being able to look after her. I finally fell asleep at 3am, whilst trying to plan back-to-back activities for Betty today, and having just received a text from Tom saying that he had arrived safely in Abu Dhabi.

Forbidden fruit

I went off to have supper with my mum last night, and so handed over Betty’s bed-time duties to Tom. When I left the house, Tom was busy poring over a pile of cookery books and concocting a gourmet meal for one, and Betty was busy chatting to some snails in the garden and trying to feed them sand.

I arrived home at about 10pm, and went into the kitchen, where Tom was despondently tucking into beans and toast. He looked sheepish, and frazzled, and said in very nervous and hushed tones, that it wasn’t the smoothest bed-time he had ever done – and that in fact it was ‘a bit of an ordeal’.

Apparently, Betty had taken a fistful of snails and red berries into the bath with her. Being the neurotic woman that I am, I have forbidden Betty from playing with these berries, for fear of them being poisonous, and both Tom and Betty know the rules. After much wrestling, Tom thought he had managed to get every piece of incriminating evidence from her - until he caught her quickly popping into her mouth a rogue berry, which, he later argued, ‘must have been hidden in the folds of her hand’. Tom then tried to show Betty who was boss and asked that she remove it from her mouth immediately and hand it over. And with that, Betty did a very elaborate cartoon swallow (just to labour the point that she rules), and then smirked triumphantly at Tom.

Not knowing for certain whether these berries were poisonous (although he was 99.9% sure they weren’t), and more importantly, not wanting to endure my wrath when I would inevitably find the berry in Betty’s poo the following morning, Tom panicked. He scooped a somewhat astonished Betty out of the bath, and charged downstairs to phone our landlord.
‘Betty was having her bath and swallowed a red berry from that tree in our garden – is it poisonous?’ Tom yelled down the phone at the landlord’s somewhat taken aback teenage son. The son then relayed what Tom had said to his mum and dad and Tom imagined that he could then hear the whole family laughing at him in the background. ‘Oh dear, is Elsie out this evening, Tom?” the landlord said. He then assured Tom that the berries were not poisonous, that in fact they were probably quite nutritious, and then enquired as to what Betty was doing with the berries in her bath. Tom was holding a naked, dripping wet, squealing-with-laughter, Betty, who was hitting him on the head with a plastic octopus, and so he abruptly thanked the landlord, put the phone down and rushed Betty back up to her bath.

At that point, it seems that Betty had grown tired of these shenanigans and once she was plonked back in the now-lukewarm bath she completely lost the plot. After angrily throwing a jug of water, a flannel and the plastic octopus at Tom, she then tried to precariously climb out, whilst demanding that he hand over the little pile of berries that he had left on the side. Being a glutton for punishment, and really not thinking very straight, he handed them over on the understanding that she play with them for five minutes before bed, and not eat them.

Tom and Betty then spent the next few hours locked in a battle of the berries, and when I returned home, Betty had only just gone to sleep. As a consequence of the little lady’s monkey business, Tom was eating beans on toast, instead of the elaborate salmon concoction that he had planned. He wasn’t consoled by the fact that I had had a very relaxing evening with my mum.

Café Betty

It started with a toy microwave oven (or fan oven as I prefer to call it), which I found at a car-boot sale a few weeks ago. At first, Betty was a little confused about what it was, having never seen one before (ahem), but now she is pretty au fait with its workings, and loves the thing.

I decided that a lone toy microwave sitting on a shelf in the kitchen, looked a little trashy, and didn’t help the organic and wholesome illusion I was trying to create. I have therefore slowly been adding to the shelf, the odd empty organic muesli box here, a slice of plastic chorizo there, to disguise it, and to create more fun for Betty of course. Betty, however, seems pretty insistent on just microwaving stones from the garden at the moment, and once they have been pretend-zapped, they then invariably end up in the washing machine and go through an unwitting wash cycle (perhaps her attempt to out-do Makka Pakka), which then leads to the electrician being called out.

Because of my slightly obsessive nature, Betty now has her own fully functional, fully equipped café in our kitchen, with the microwave being centre stage. At some point yesterday I got the idea in my head, which escalated and got totally out of control, and so I got my mum to come over and play with Betty whilst I spent three hours creating a masterpiece.

I had to rearrange our kitchen furniture, remove all of Tom’s cookery books (luckily there was enough space for mine to stay), and donate a lot of our own kitchen utensils and pans in order to accommodate and kit out Betty’s new establishment. I set the main part of the café up on the windowsill, which is quite large and (almost) the right height for Betty. I nailed a little blackboard to one side of the window with ‘Today’s Specials’ and on the other side I put a personalised café sign, together with various pictures of food that the café sells.

I hung a little apron on a hook next to the chopping board with a courgette on it, and placed some asparagus in a saucepan on a pretend hob I had painted. I made some bunting to go across the window, and got Tom to make some fitted shelving to run along the back of the window.

I was so unbelievably thrilled with my creation and couldn’t wait to unveil it to the proprietor, Betty Button. Betty was also pretty delighted when presented with my handiwork. Not so much for the fact that she had her very own café, but because half the kitchen, that was previously out of reach and mostly forbidden, was suddenly there on a plate for her. And she had a great time.

In fact, she has got so into the whole thing, she has opened branches of her café all over the house. And no sooner have I collected everything up when her back is turned, and put it back to where it should be, all neatly arranged, she is back again to dismantle it. I console myself with the fact that when she goes to bed I can play with it and do it my way.

Last night, as Tom and I were watching Big Brother, I murmured something to him about having to get a little cookery book to go in Betty’s café. Tom turned to me, with a very serious, and slightly perturbed looked on his face, and said: ‘Betty’s café? or Elsie’s café?’ Then, just as he was drifting off to sleep, he dreamily said: ‘I hope Betty is going to start serving lattes soon.’

Mummy PR

This morning I got a bit overexcited and casually sent out a text to everyone I know with children saying: ‘Sun just popped out from behind cloud, fancy coming over to play in Betty’s paddling pool this afternoon?’ I thought it would be great if even two of them replied, let alone came along at such short notice. Within ten minutes I had had seven replies all saying ‘yes’. I was thrown into a panic – that many children almost constitutes a party (in my book), as opposed to a couple of friends just coming round for a cuppa, whilst their little treasures trash the house, and I pretend not to care.

I charged into Tom’s office (he works from home) where he was busy writing some speech for the Chief Exec of an international mining company or something, and plonked Betty down. I told him that this was an emergency, and he had to look after her whilst I raced off into town for an hour or so. I explained about the accidental pool party and that I had to buy some important provisions, including some food and drink, and a paddling pool. I then shot out of the front door, leaving Betty gleefully spinning around on Tom’s office chair, and Tom with his head in his hands.

When I returned from my errands, which turned out to be more elaborate than I had planned, Tom and Betty were outside on the vegetable patch, Tom weeding, and Betty pulling up all the little seedlings that Tom had lovingly cultivated over the last couple of months. It was a touching and wholesome sight, and so I asked Tom if he could keep this little gardening session with Betty going until 3pm when my friends would be arriving, and could witness it. Tom said that with current work deadlines looming unfortunately he couldn’t accommodate my suggestion, and so I let him get back to work on his speech, whilst Betty and I got to work on the garden shed.

We got out the hammock, swing, parasols, sandpit, various ride-on toys, some balls etc, whilst shoving the slug pellets, dead birds, and festering BBQ (with the remains of last week’s dinner still on it) right to the back of the shed. We strategically placed the chosen items all around the garden in an attempt to create an illusion of an idyllic family setting. I quickly whipped up a few sandcastles in the pit, put Betty’s watering can next to the tomato plants, and placed an opened book on the hammock. I scattered some crayons on the rug, next to a piece of paper on which I had quickly drawn some labelled pictures of home-grown vegetables. Then I placed Cupcake (Betty’s doll) under the shade of the apple tree with a hastily-made daisy-chain slung around her neck.

At this point, Tom appeared in the doorway, clutching a coffee and looking bemused, and said that all this fuss (‘charade’ I think was the word he used) looked suspiciously like PR. I agreed with his assessment, and then disappeared off to pick some wild flowers.

Finally I blew the paddling pool up, but I was very quickly mortified to discover that it was the smallest paddling pool I had ever seen in my life. No wonder it was only £2.49. I reluctantly filled it up with water, which took all of three seconds, and wondered how on earth I was going to explain to eight hot children, who couldn’t yet talk, that they would have to form an orderly queue and go in one at a time.

Everyone arrived and the mums started talking breastfeeding, sleep routines, and toilet habits. At my insistence the discussion did eventually move on to The Apprentice, and Big Brother. Meanwhile the children had a pile-up in the pool, and I desperately tried to calm them with some demonstrative toddler teaching: ‘This is a RED BALL’, ‘This is a BOAT’.

Next, the Button PR machine went into over-drive. ‘I just haven’t had time to go to the shops, but will go and have a look at what is kicking around in the fridge,’ I said, in reply to a question that hadn’t been asked. Two minutes later I emerged with a huge bowl of fresh strawberries, a couple of bottles of chilled sparkling wine, some home-made ice-lollies, and some organic flapjacks.

Whilst I pretended to disagree with all the praise about what a wonderfully proactive and organic mummy I was, Betty shot me some very nerve-jangling looks, as if to say: ‘I’ve got your card marked woman, just you wait until I can talk’.

Trial run

Tom and I are avid campers and we have been desperate to take Betty camping. However I do have genuine concerns about this. Campsites are generally lovely, but their shower-blocks generally are not – they are pretty grim - with other people’s hair and bodily fluids caked all over the floors and walls. I have been having all sorts of unsavory visions of taking Betty for a shower after a lovely sunny sandy day on the beach. I have been worrying about whether or not she would stand still for me whilst I wash her, or whether she would scream and yell and demand that she sit down in the ‘dirt’ and start playing with other people’s dirty hair-bands and grimy cracked bars of old soap.

In addition to this, I have agonized over the sleeping arrangements. Do we put her in the same compartment as us? This would be a real squeeze, and if she sees us, or more to the point, if she hears Tom snoring, she will refuse to sleep. I have tried to imagine what I would do with an angry and loud Betty, in the middle of the night, in the confines of a busy campsite. Or do we put her in a separate compartment (which would be a good 10 metres away from our compartment)? In this case I would lie awake all night worrying that someone might come and snatch her.

When my dad suggested us doing a trial-run and pitching our tent in the garden of his holiday cottage in the welsh mountains, I was thrilled and totally up for it. The cottage does not have any creature comforts such as running water or electricity, and so it was almost like proper camping. In fact, our tent is probably bigger, with more mod cons, than the cottage. This ridiculous-sized tent was purchased to accommodate Queen Betty and all her luggage – and is exactly the type I used to sneer at in campsites, pre-Betty. In fact, I am ashamed to admit that in the past, I may even have referred to big tent owners as ‘chavs’.

Tom did a grand job of pitching the tent, with the help of our darling girl, who sat in the middle of the un-erected tent, refusing to let go of all the pegs, and doing a mighty job of tangling up the guy ropes. All the while, I watched on, basking in the sun, sipping cider and telling Tom how I might do it better. It has to be said, the usually unfazed Tom was a little bit prickly and short-tempered by the time the tent was finally up.

Unfortunately, at this point, it had already gone way past Betty’s bedtime. In an attempt to try to keep some sense of normal routine, I boiled a kettle of stream water and poured it into a saucepan, dipped Betty’s hands and feet into it, and explained to her that this was her bath-time. She humoured me, and went along with it, but I could tell that she wasn’t impressed.
We then put her to bed in the west-wing of the tent, where she giggled raucously for about 20 minutes, whilst punching the sides of the tent, and then went off to sleep, and stayed asleep for the next 12 hours. As did Tom.

I, however, lay awake all night, freezing cold (as I had selflessly given Betty all the available blankets), and was terrified that our daughter might wake at any moment. I wondered what I would do with her in the pitch black, with no torch, and only oil lamps in the cottage which I didn’t know how to ignite. I also had grave concerns that a wolf or a bear might come along, if I did dare to drop-off, and savage us all.

Child genius

Before Betty came along I used to get really fed up with listening to parents droning on and on about how advanced their children were for their age. I would endure endless, boring, and frankly unimpressive stories about what their little poppets had been up to. It used to make me laugh, as every parent seemed to do it. ‘Gosh,’ I used to say to them. ‘We really do live in a world full of child geniuses.’

When it comes to my little Betty, though, it really is a different story. She, of course, is unbelievably clever beyond her years. Below is a picture that she has just drawn to demonstrate this.



She did this completely on her own, with absolutely no guidance from me. The colours, the composition, perspective, texture and tone: all were her own inspiration. The deep reds, oranges and yellows used in this drawing create a very warm and loving atmosphere. In the middle of this wondrous backdrop, a black sculpture sits predominantly in the picture signifying, I would argue, her understanding of the world today. The ¬[p0 b’ [sorry, Betty just typed that with her foot] sculpture is positioned close to the picture plane, allowing the viewer to almost experience that understanding; the intense and jumbled background combines with the sculpture’s proximity to the picture plane, to create tangible depth in the picture. The tonal range is wide, with a strong contrast between the dark sculpture and the warm background.

To sum up – although such a summary is clearly an impertinence when dealing with art of this order of sT40ub [sorry again, Betty just commandeered the keyboard with her toy traffic light] …order of subtlety, I was saying – it is abundantly clear that the piece not only challenges established notions of representative art; what we are dealing with seems to me nothing short of a revolution in form and style. Various private collectors have contacted me with a view to purchase. Needless to say, the work is not for sale.

In your Clarks, get set, go!

I took Betty into town last Thursday to buy her first shoes. We breezed into Clarks and I proudly announced to the sales assistant (who looked about 12) that my very clever daughter was now walking, half expecting some kind of applause. The 12 year old (who was only slightly bigger than Betty) didn’t applaud, but merely asked me to put Betty on my lap so that she could measure her feet. ‘Ha ha,’ I thought, ‘You say it like this measuring lark is going to be a doddle’. Sure enough, Betty curled her little foot up into a very impressive ball, making it impossible to do anything with it.

This charade went on for about five minutes, and in this time Betty managed to ruffle up the 12 year old’s hair, chew on a nearby flashing trainer, and fling the measuring machine over her head. Eventually, and just before I was about to give up and go home, my darling daughter gave in and let us get the measurements.

With feet measured, we then went on to discuss whether proper shoes would be appropriate or whether Betty should start with cruising shoes. I insisted that she was ready for proper shoes and so we put them on her to see how she fared. Betty refused to stand up in them and just went crawling off around the shop, leaving a whole array of display shoes in her wake, and a horrified sales assistant who kept muttering through gritted teeth: “She’ll scuff them. She’ll scuff them…”

The assistant then looked at me as though I was deluded and had made the whole ‘walking’ thing up, and said: ‘I think perhaps your daughter should start with cruising shoes.’ I reluctantly gave in, feeling a bit irritated by her teenage smugness. No sooner had this exchange taken place, Betty took matters into her own hands, and being there for her mum when it counts, she jumped to her feet, shoes still on, and literally started running confidently round and round the shop, with me excitedly running behind her, trying to avoid the flying footwear, and saying: ‘You’re such a good girl!’ while she dismantled the shop.

I bought the shoes, then I strapped on her reigns an let her walk out into the big wide world – the high street – for the very first time. This was a truly memorable moment, watching my baby’s face light up as this whole new world opened up before her. She tottered along, looking all around her, and her main focus wasn’t all the shops with their brightly coloured window displays and their inviting open doors, but all the MacDonald’s burger wrappers, cigarette butts, and bird shit that littered the pavement.

When I had grown weary of grabbing these unsavoury items out of Betty’s little mitts before she could shovel them into her mouth, and when Betty’s little legs were obviously getting tired and becoming wobbly (making her closely resemble a puppet on a string), I swooped her up and tried to put her into her pushchair. Full-blown screaming and kicking ensued, until I gave in, when I realised Betty was stronger than me both in mind and in bodily strength, and I let her walk again, all the way back to the car, with me trying to control a litter-eating, drunken Betty and steer an awkward pushchair at the same time.

The war of the ducks

As I watch Betty and her duck get closer by the day, I become increasingly panicked. She loves that duck, and I actually do believe that if she had to choose between me and that duck, the duck would win hands down. Tom against the duck would be a harder one to predict. However, I’m not sure how much more constant chewing and sucking a duck can withstand, and I fear that his demise may be imminent.

For the last month I have been logging onto eBay every day and scouring the site for look-a-like ducks. Tom says that this shows that I don’t have enough to do with my time. Tom doesn’t realise the seriousness of the situation. Even the postman is in the know, and each time he knocks on the door, clutching a parcel and needing a signature, he chuckles and says: ‘Another duck for the little ‘un then?’ And each time, I laugh nervously, then hurriedly open the package, before the postman has even made it to the garden gate. I either laugh or cry, depending on what mood I’m in, at the horror of ducks that I see before me. Our house is now full of random, singing, dancing, talking, quacking, wiggling duck nightmares, none of which compare in any way to the original.

I have been on the phone to the H&M (which is where the duck was naively purchased) customer services in Sweden several times, spouting off duck product codes to them and pleading with them to start making them again, or demanding that they search their warehouse for a leftover rogue duck that may have escaped before making it to the shop floor. I have even thought about asking them to put up posters in their shop window saying ‘Have you seen this duck? - if so please contact … etc’. The best that Hennes could offer was a dog made from the same material, and of a similar weight. In desperation I bought this stuffed puppy, held it in front of Betty and made quacking noises. Betty remained unmoved, though perhaps slightly angry.

In a last ditch attempt to keep my daughter sweet, and myself sane, I decided to try to make a copy of the duck myself. I spent hours sourcing materials that closely matched, and then got to work on my sewing machine. After about five attempts and some odd-looking fleecy matter, I finally managed to produce something that loosely resembled the real thing.

The following morning I casually left the fake on the window sill to see how Betty would react. At first glance, and from a distance, she got very excited and I think was tricked into thinking that it was the real thing. When I handed it to her saying: ‘Look, it’s your duck,’ she inspected it for about half a second and then callously threw it as far away from her as possible. And as if that wasn’t enough, she then proceeded to run her Wheely Bug backwards and forwards over it.

Duck hit

Throughout my pregnancy I pranced around the place saying: ‘Look at me, I’m pregnant, aren’t I clever, look at my bump, isn’t it great’. I enjoyed every single second of it, and felt very special and unique.

I loved all aspects of it; getting excited about my first bout of morning sickness and telling everyone at work, kidding myself into thinking I had cravings for peaches, following every development from week five (a prawn) to week 16 (a grapefruit) to week 37 (a baby), hearing the fast little heartbeat at antenatal appointments, having to get a whole new wardrobe, feeling the baby kicking and somersaulting, and buying all the baby equipment and ticking items off on my carefully devised Excel spreadsheet as I went. During the whole nine months, I don’t think it ever really dawned on me that at the end of the ever-expanding bump and uncontrollable hype (from me), there would be an actual baby. A real-life Betty Button.

When I was about six months pregnant, Tom and I went to stay with friends in London, and as soon as we arrived I headed straight for H&M, as I knew from several pre-pregnancy day-dream wanderings around the department (feeling very self-conscious with my flat stomach and small boobs) that they had a brilliant maternity section. Whilst there, I wandered over into the baby section, and spent ages trying to decide on a soft toy to go in our baby’s cot. To this day, buying the said duck is a moment I remember vividly. I felt odd and silly about it, like I was completely deluded for even contemplating buying a toy for my bump. What would a bump want with a toy duck? Buying the cuddly toy felt far more personal, and a much bigger deal than buying something practical like a cot or nipple cream.

A year and a half later, this duck is looking very bedraggled, but is Betty’s most treasured possession. Amongst her many cuddly toys, she has singled out the duck as her comforter and friend. She cannot go to sleep without sucking on its now very grey wings and squishing the smelly damp thing into her face. If it has been washed, I have to give it back to her wet. She drags it around with her and won’t put it down for a second. If she does put it down, she keeps one beady little eye on it at all times.

Almost every time I look at Betty and her duck together, so smitten, it reminds me of all those strange feelings I had that day standing in H&M, not really having any idea what I was doing, and not realising how real everything actually was. I can now appreciate that buying a toy duck for my baby-to-be was a pretty logical thing to do.

It’s just a shame she doesn’t feel the same way about her very expensive, four foot wide, rainbow coloured, all singing, all dancing, inflatable lion.

Christmas cheer

Becoming a mum has brought out the earthy, wholesome person in me, which I didn’t know existed until now. I never cared much for roasting chestnuts; or making nativity scenes and wreaths with materials only found in the wood; or making my own mince pies and mulled wine; or making homemade soft toys and Nigella’s ‘euphoric’ chutney as presents for everyone; or buying a traditional chocolate-less advent calendar from Oxfam; or learning the grown-up version of We Three Kings; or making fairy-light chandeliers out of two circular knicker driers.

This year, however, I have become the ultimate, obsessive, and slightly manic earth-mother extraordinaire, or so I would like to think. As well as doing all of the above, and more, I plan to march Betty and Tom off to church on Christmas morning, with Betty donning her little elf outfit, which I made for her to wear for the front of our Christmas card this year.

Perhaps I am over-compensating, as last Christmas went by in such a blur because Betty was only five weeks old, hence I was knackered and busy coming to terms with all the emotional and physical challenges that a new baby throws at you. And Betty was busy still feeling annoyed about being born, and having no qualms in telling us so. On top of this, I was also trying to reconcile myself with the fact that it was Christmas and I couldn’t even get pissed on rancid drinks such as Baileys and Sherry and smoke my uncle’s cigars, make a complete tit of myself, and pass out before I’d even got to watch Eastenders.

In my mind, this is Betty’s first proper Christmas, and now that she is a delightful, non-crying, solid food-eating, gorgeous little girl, I am going all out to make it the best, most homely, and jolliest Christmas ever. It will be such a joy for us to have a Betty sitting at the table with us, providing all the entertainment, and devouring her Christmas lunch whole-heartedly. And sharing in all the Christmas cheer over the festive period – the presents, the long walks up mountains, the much anticipated arrival of all grannies and grandpas, my sherry-induced purple face, the obligatory viewing of Mary Poppins (accompanied by my slurred rendition of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, sung backwards), the Eastenders Christmas special, Trivial Pursuits (which inevitably always ends in my tears), all of which leads to the demise of any earth-motherness. Betty will marvel in it all, and Tom will be nowhere to be found, probably cowering in some dark corner hugging a whisky bottle.

Toilet taunt

Betty has recently been allowed to explore new territory, namely, the bathroom. I would never allow her into the bathroom before (apart from when she was safely contained by the bath) as I didn't want her sniffing around the loo brush, nappy bin, loo, and putting them all in her eager and inquisitive little mouth, or playing with the contents like she inevitably would.

Due to a bad bout of PMT, which quite often turns me into a cleanliness-crazed mentalist (amongst other, less savoury things), I blitzed the upstairs bathroom, through and through, with every cleaning product I could lay my hands on in Sainsbury’s. I removed the loo brush and holder, bought a Betty-proof nappy bin, and scrubbed the loo until it gleamed and smelt of roses. I then instructed Tom to only ever use the downstairs loo, as this one was now out-of-bounds (to him anyway).

Usually, whilst I am getting Betty’s bath ready, Tom plays with her in her bedroom, and gets her undressed and ready for the bath. However, Tom was in London for meetings the other night, and so, whilst the bath was running, I left the bathroom door open to see what Betty would do. She has been champing at the bit for months, trying to get into the bathroom, and spotted her chance immediately. She was off like a whippet to investigate this whole new, pretty horrible, world of lime-coloured, albeit clean, porcelain fixtures.

My goodness me, the wait was certainly worth it. Betty marvelled at her reflection in the full-length mirror, excitedly waving, pointing and chatting at herself. She then started to try to pull her reflection’s hair, which is when I knew it was time to show her other points of interest, before she ended up in a punch-up with herself. She then stood at the side of the bath, and watched in awe as the bath filled up, and delighted in putting her hands under the running tap. It was magical to watch.

Aside from appearing to Betty to be a great (perhaps even greater than her dad for once) mum for letting her into the bathroom, I had an ulterior motive – to start, probably very naively and prematurely, getting her acquainted with Mr Shanks. I have this notion (again, probably naively) that Betty will be an absolute dream to potty train. I base this on the fact that when she does a poo in her nappy, she often crawls off under the table in the sitting room to do it – a bit like a cat – very neat and tidy.

She began her acquaintance with the loo by licking the lid, all the way around, and even though I was 100% sure that it was probably now cleaner than the tray of her highchair, I couldn’t handle it, and my greater-than-daddy-ness rapidly disappeared when I promptly removed her from the bathroom, and shut the door tightly.

Necklace charade

Now that I am not breastfeeding, and am now the un-proud owner of a pair of fried eggs, I very rarely get a chance to cuddle Betty anymore - though not for want of trying. When I am carrying her from the car to the house, or from the highchair to the floor, I try to prolong it for as long as possible, but she just gets impatient and starts growling and trying to catapult herself out of my desperate cuddling arms.

I have observed over the last few months that, like most babies, she is obsessed with items of jewellery. If a friend comes round wearing a necklace, it is the first thing Betty notices. She will sit there quietly, like butter wouldn’t melt, observing and eyeing up her prey, and then she will sidle up to whoever it is (it doesn’t matter who, it could be a necklace-wearing monster for all she cares) and pretend that she is being affectionate by appearing to give them a cuddle. That person then goes all gooey and cooey over my devious daughter, at which point, Betty goes in for the kill - the necklace. I have watched her carry out this act time and time again.

So, armed with this knowledge, and so intense was my longing to have a nice long cuddle with my darling daughter, I devised a cunning plan - an act of deception.

I never normally wear necklaces, but I still have quite an impressive collection of dodgy 80’s classics from my former life, and so decided to start wearing a different necklace each day. The first two days were relatively successful and went something like this:

I would put on my necklace of choice first thing in the morning, woo Tom with it, and then march merrily into Betty's room. She wouldn’t immediately spot the necklace and so I would say: ‘Look sweetheart, Mummy is wearing a pretty necklace today, doesn’t she look lovely?’ Betty would eye the necklace suspiciously with a look of distaste on her little face, but eventually would hold up her arms. I would pick her up and she would semi-enthusiastically go for the necklace. I would give her a pretend telling off and say: ‘No Betty, you're not allowed to play with mummy's necklace.’ (The mind games I put the poor girl through…) I would then get a lovely long(ish) cuddle, whilst she played with the necklace, slobbered all over my neck, and tried to strangle me.

By the third morning, Betty had outsmarted me and was not interested in the whole necklace charade whatsoever. I was very disappointed, not only because I wasn't getting the cuddles, but I still had at least five more necklace shockers to unleash on her, and was actually secretly quite enjoying wearing them.

Party preps

How many sleepless nights, panic attacks and hot sweats can a party for a one-year-old cause? Hundreds, if you are ridiculous like me. Tom tells me I need to get a grip. I tell him he is treading on very dangerous territory and if he doesn’t shut up he can organise the bloody party himself. With a baffled look, Tom says: ‘OK, how hard can it be?’

The last time I felt like this was when I was organising our wedding - writing guests lists, designing invites, going on diets, deciding on menus and music, buying pretty dresses, presents, balloons etc. I admit that comparing the organisation of a wedding to that of a first birthday party does seem a little over the top – and as Tom says, maybe I have got things slightly out of perspective.

I have been imagining that Betty and her one year old friends are going to get upset if they don’t like the prizes they are given. Tom gives me a reality check and says they will only be interested in eating the wrapping paper and pulling each other’s hair, and won’t give two hoots about the toys… ‘As lovely as they are,’ he adds.

I bought a pack of modelling balloons, and then phoned Betty’s godfather and asked if he would be the children’s entertainer for the day. He told me that he had never attempted making poodles and dinosaurs out of balloons before and was a little worried about it. I reassured him by saying that there were some instructions on the packet and that if he arrived early he could practice beforehand. Tom pointed out that as Betty and her friends are all fairly young, it wouldn’t really matter if they were given the balloons unmodelled, or even uninflated.

I am using the wedding cake stand that Tom and I made for our wedding, and plan to have different types of cake on each layer – chocolate cornflake cakes, jam tarts, flapjacks, fairy cakes, brownies, butter biscuit hearts, and I have recruited all members of my family and friends to make them, as of course, everything must be homemade. Having said that, I did buy a little Smarties chocolate cake that fits neatly on the top layer. The other night, after a couple of glasses of wine, it looked very tempting perched there on top of the stand, and I threatened to eat it, but Tom put me on a guilt trip and told me that this was the start of a slippery slope. At that point, thankfully unknown to Tom, I had already eaten a giant bag of Dolly Mixtures that were supposed to have gone on top of the fairy cakes.

I am lucky that Tom brings me back down to earth every so often. He keeps reminding me that if I am this worried about Betty’s first birthday party, what am I going to be like in the lead up to subsequent parties when she is old enough to start bossing me around and having tantrums if I don’t get the colour of the icing on her cake quite right, or she doesn’t like the outfit I am wearing, or she demands that I lose weight?

Betty’s party is one week away, and I think that everything is in order. I have made a big banner fashioned out of an old sheet which says ‘Happy Birthday Betty’, and instead of the dreaded party bags, I have made personalized gingerbread hearts, which I will hang from branches. I have also tried to make our house look a little tidier. I asked Tom if he would mind if I started decorating the house with balloons and banners. Tom said that would be weird and he didn’t think he could live in a child’s party for an entire week.

Beached Betty

Betty, Tom and I have recently spent a week in Tenby. On the afternoon that we arrived, I excitedly threw Betty into the pushchair and went charging down to the beach, whilst Tom was finding somewhere to park the car. I practically ran down the concrete slip-way leading to the beach, building up momentum as I went, and went whizzing off across the sand towards the sea, Betty squawking like a baby dinosaur all the way.

We got to the water's edge and watched the waves, and I pointed out Caldey Island, and told Betty how it was a very special place to me, as, coming from a Catholic family, it is where we used to stay as guests of the monks every Easter. I am in no way Catholic, but I did have great aunts/uncles who were nuns and monks. I went into a dreamy daze, and felt myself relaxing, breathing in the sea air, and feeling nostalgic and safe. Betty humoured me for a while, and smiled at the waves, and Caldey Island, but pretty soon she started sighing and giving me that ‘I’m bored with this malarkey’ look. So I turned the pushchair round and started heading back towards the café, which was on the edge of the beach.

Once we had gone across the hard wet sand and reached the dry sand we got stuck, and still had a good 25 metres to go. I frantically pushed, but the wheels just dug into the sand further and further. It wouldn't have been so bad, but there were lots of people watching me, who had also witnessed me thoughtlessly running onto the sand in the first place. I pushed, and struggled, and puffed, and sweated, and all with a false grin on my face so that people might be fooled into thinking that I was enjoying myself, and that I wasn't really stuck at all.

Betty started to fret, so I gave her a breadstick to try and keep her happy until we made it off the sand. Betty wolfed it down in record time, just leaving a tiny crumb that she decided she wanted to play with. Of course, she kept dropping this bloody crumb and each time, unless I found it really quickly in amongst her chewed holey blanket (that I had lovingly knitted for her when I was pregnant), she would have a massive tantrum. She kept this going for a good few minutes, but then unfortunately she decided to eat the crumb, and then got very upset because it was no longer there to play with.

At that moment, a big hairy tattooed bloke approached me and asked me if I needed help getting off the beach. For some weird, stupid reason I refused his help and told him I was fine. He gave me a slightly amused look and then walked away and sat back down next to his family, and they all continued to stare at me. I gave them a big smile and wave, and at the same time I noticed that they had a toddler sitting in the sand, drinking, what looked remarkably like tea from a bottle.

I bent down next to Betty and pretended to point out some seagulls to her, biding my time, and trying to work out a way out of this embarrassing situation, whilst at the same time trying to get over the whole 'toddler drinking tea' thing. I discreetly got my mobile out and tried phoning Tom, with the intention of telling him to get down here right away and rescue us, but his phone was turned off. I started to blame him for the whole situation.

Eventually I figured out that I should pull the pushchair backwards. This was slow work but eventually I got us off the sand, to the applause of the ‘tea’ family, and made it to the café. I was too stressed out to actually go into the café though, and instead I ran back to the holiday cottage, through the streets of Tenby, with an angry Betty, who had still not forgotten about her beloved crumb.

Checkout chat-up

I was at the checkout in the supermarket with my weekly shop, throwing stuff into bags, and being a bit grumpy. The checkout boy was trying to chat to me throughout. “So, how are you doing today sweetheart?” he said. Feeling a bit flustered about being called ‘sweetheart’ by a boy less than half my age, I replied: ‘Fine’, while I clumsily tried to open another carrier bag. ‘Here, let me help you out with that darling,’ he said. While he was opening the bag for me, he then said: ‘So what are you up to tonight then sweetheart? Are you going down Night-Owls?’ This is a local nightclub for the under 18s. ‘My god, does this boy think I am the same age as him, or is he taking the piss?’ I thought. I could feel my face burning - I have no idea why, normally I can hold my own with teenagers. I think I was a little taken aback that I was seemingly being chatted up by a spotty faced, gangly boy, something I haven’t experienced for years. It certainly felt very odd, as I now have a Betty, and am a mum, and do mumsy things, and certainly don’t go to bloody Night-Owls.

I ignored his question and carried on packing, although at this point I was hastily throwing it all straight into the trolley. But the boy wasn’t giving up and asked me again: ‘What are you up to tonight?’

And so without taking any pauses whatsoever, I blurted: ‘I am cooking a huge roast chicken with all the trimmings and we are going to eat it at 5pm so that our baby daughter can join us and we can all eat together which will be the first time and so it is a very special occasion and it is a very significant step because she will be eating what we are eating which means she is growing up which is sad but also happy and she is such a wonderful baby and she is nine months old and I am a mum and I am married and I am 33 years old and we are all looking forward to our big roast chicken.’

The boy stared at me for a second, and then held up a pack of two tiny organic chicken breasts that he happened to be scanning at that moment, and said: ‘What? A huge roast chicken with this?’ Hats off, he was still persisting, even after that mental barrage of information I just gave him. ‘No, I have a whole chicken at home, actually,” I said. I could tell he didn’t believe me though, and he just smirked.

It was all true though. I did have a big chicken at home. We invited my mum and my brother round to share in the excitement of this special occasion, and we all ate together with Betty. We had champagne with our meal, to celebrate our little baby growing up, and me seemingly still looking like a 16 year old.

Bingo wing waves

Betty’s uncle was making aeroplane noises and flying her spoon through the air when he was feeding her the other day, and she got very angry and upset about it. In an attempt to cheer her up again, he started waving at her. To the amazement of Tom and me, she waved back at him. This was Betty’s very first wave. She then just waved and waved, and didn’t stop waving all day long. She waved at her daddy, at her toys, at the window, at the floor, at her toast, at the postman, she even managed a little wave at her toy penguin, whilst screaming in teething pain, in the middle of the night. This almost broke my heart - what a trooper.

When I wave at my darling daughter, instead of waving back at me, she becomes transfixed with my ‘bingo wing’ underarm flab wobbling around. She just stares at it, perplexed. Obviously the underside of my arm flapping around must be far more eye-catching than my hand manically moving around in front of her face.

My nine-month old baby has given me a complex. I have now started daily arm exercises using baked bean tins, in an attempt to tone up, and get Betty waving back at me.

Breastpad farce

Tom’s friend popped over yesterday to tell us he is going to France for two weeks and would we keep an eye on his house and feed the cats. I was standing in the garden, happily chatting to him, and pretending I knew where Marseille was, when I happened to look down and there at my feet, lay a large bright white disc-shaped object. OH MY GOD - a breastpad, MY breastpad, which had obviously just fallen from ME. I didn't know what to do. I tried to keep him looking straight at me by talking about whatever came into my head, so that he wouldn't look down.

It worked for a while, although, by the look on his face, you would have thought I was reciting a train timetable backwards to him. His attention then waned and then the inevitable happened... he looked down, and clocked the breastpad. We both stared at it in silence for a while, and then he picked it up and handed it back to me! I took it, scrunched it up and put it into my pocket. At least I didn't try to put it back in my bra I suppose.

Later, still feeling mortified, Tom tried to make me feel better. He said: ‘Don't worry I doubt he even knew what it was... he probably thought it was a circular tissue or something.’ ‘Really?’ I said, hopefully. Then Tom started laughing uncontrollably and said it was the funniest thing he'd heard for a long time. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and so I quickly drank a pint of cider, whilst Tom went off to phone his friend.

Anniversary antics

It was our second wedding anniversary on Monday. I got a little cross with Tom because he couldn't remember whether we had been married for two or three years. I secretly couldn't remember either. To celebrate, we went to our favourite restaurant about 15 miles away, last Saturday night. It is the furthest we had travelled away from home without Betty since she was born.

We arrived at the restaurant and were taken to our table, where I tried to explain to the Polish waitress that my mobile phone didn't have a signal and if the restaurant phone rang it might be my mum wanting to speak to me about my daughter who is teething and might wake up needing me. The waitress smiled and said 'Of course' and walked off. The next thing I knew the waitress had come back with an extra chair for my mum and some toothpicks. I was too hungry to get into it further and so I just thanked her and asked for a large glass of wine. Tom laughed and told me that it would teach me to relax a bit.

We enjoyed our food, although, my scallops on a bed of sweet potato puree was little disturbing, as I have spent the last couple of months up to my ears in sweet potato purée.

During our meal I got a bit excitable and accidentally got really pissed. I was really enjoying myself and behaving in a very juvenile manner to wind Tom up, just like the old days. I was saying things like 'Oh my god, did you really go to school with Prince William?' really loudly. Tom laughed, and then cried at the incredibleness of the pork belly he was eating. Emotions were running high for both of us - it was a very poignant evening, in lots of ways.

I went to the loo and on my way there I saw a group of teenagers through the window having a cigarette outside. On my way back from the loo I made my way outside, walked up to the teenagers and asked if I could join them for a bit. I told them that I had a beautiful baby, and that I was a bit drunk. They didn't reply and just stood there looking awkward and swigging from a cider bottle. Eventually the girl handed me a cigarette, and feeling rebellious I took a drag. We then stood there in silence, me feeling completely sick from the tobacco, and them still swigging cider. To break the silence, I asked them if I could tell them a joke, but they continued to ignore me. I skulked back inside, feeling very silly. I'd forgotten for a moment that I wasn't actually a teenager myself anymore. The poor kids must have been really freaked out by a fat, thirty-something, very uncool, joke-telling woman approaching them on a Saturday night.

When I returned to the table, Tom was being quizzed by the Polish waitress about why my mum hadn’t turned up. Tom said ‘At home with baby’ and did the rocking baby motion with his arms. The woman looked utterly confused.

We finished our meal with a mountain of Welsh cheeses, and chocolate puddings, which we ate next to the big open log fire, holding hands, and talking about the amazingness of Betty Button.

Fish chowder trickery

I have been whipping up all sorts of culinary delights for Betty recently. Amongst other things, Betty has dined on chicken casserole, beef stew, and fish with carrot and orange, in the last week. And for these recipes I have been sourcing the best possible ingredients for my precious darling daughter. I have visited the local butcher to purchase one small organic chicken fillet, the fishmonger to purchase one small fillet of cod, and the greengrocer to purchase one small organic apple. I think I have built up quite a reputation in the local town in the last few days. Not only because of my miniature purchases but also my fussiness - each shop assistant has suffered a grilling from me about where exactly their produce has come from and how the chicken/fish/apple tree was treated. A recent cashflow crisis has meant that while Betty has been dining on fresh, seasonal, organic food, Tom and I have been dining on pot noodles.

Yesterday while I was feeding Betty her fish, carrot and orange purée, it was so delicious, I found myself feeding myself every other spoonful – one for me, one for Betty. It started off as a game to encourage Betty to eat it. However, Betty didn’t need any encouragement to eat it. I was just being a mean, selfish mummy and depriving my baby of her daily nutritional requirements, for my own enjoyment. About half way through, poor Betty dared to look away for one moment and I said: ‘Oop have you had enough sweetheart?’ before quickly shovelling the rest into my gob. When Betty realised that there was no more food she burst into tears. She, unsurprisingly, was still hungry. So I had to very quickly whip up something else to fill the hole.

Later on, as there was a little bit of cod left over in the fridge, I decided to make an ‘adult’ version (by adding salt) of this baby purée and serve it up for mine and Tom’s supper. I had to slightly improvise and use marmalade instead of an orange, but I felt very chuffed with myself for my creativity. When it was ready, Tom came to the table and asked what it was. I couldn’t really tell him that it was a baby purée and so I told him it was ‘fish chowder’. He said it looked delicious and started tucking in. He commented that it tasted ‘very fruity’. I proudly told him it was marmalade. He took about two more spoonfuls and then politely told me that he just couldn’t eat it, and that it wasn’t one of my ‘finer kitchen moments’ and would I mind if he made himself a bacon sandwich instead. I defensively told him that Betty had loved it earlier. He then said: ‘Have you just tried to feed me baby purée?’ I proudly said ‘yes’.

Later, when I was talking to my mum on the phone, I mentioned that I had made the fish, carrot and orange purée for me and Tom, because I thought it was delicious and also because there had been a spare bit of cod left in the fridge. She patiently explained to me that Betty should be starting to eat what we eat, and not the other way round.

Rose Scepticism

Today my homeopath, Romy, came to our house to give Betty a consultation (via me) to assess what she could prescribe for her almost non-existent bowel movements. Well, I say ‘my’ homeopath – Romy is a wonderful, lovely lady, who lives in a castle, who I visited once, about 18 months ago, to ask her if she could prepare my womb for conception. Romy said that this wouldn’t be a problem, gave me a ‘secret’ pill, refusing to tell me what it was, and then sent me on my way.

Six weeks later I was pregnant. At the time, I phoned her to give her the good news, and she heavily congratulated HERSELF, and took ALL the credit. Anyway, I decided that this lady must be good, and so I have turned to her in desperation, in the hope that she will cure Betty’s constipation - who, by the way, has broken her 6 day record and managed to hang on for 7 days with her latest poo – filling four nappies in very quick succession, when she finally did go.

Romy was fascinated with Betty. She told Tom and me that Betty has a very old soul and is wise beyond her months. She then pondered for a while about what Betty may have been in her previous life. ‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you my darling?’ she said to Betty. Betty smiled back at her. This totally freaked me out and so I hauled Tom into the kitchen, out of earshot, and said: ‘Oh my god, Betty has been here before, she smiled knowingly at Romy, they understand each other, Betty is only 7 months old, what shall we do?’ Tom suggested that I pull myself together, stop being so bloody weird, and that we both go back outside, drink our tea, and discuss Betty’s constipation with Romy, like adults.

The consultation lasted about an hour. However, I am not sure how convinced I was by it, or Romy, for that matter, as sweet and lovely as she is. At one point, Tom took Betty for a walk around the garden, picked a rose head, and then came back to the table and let Betty play with it. Betty started picking off the petals and putting them in her mouth. ‘TOM’ I said through gritted teeth ‘she’s eating the bloody flower’. To which Romy dreamily said ‘oh let her eat the rose, you never know, it might even cure her constipation’. I manically started trying to pull the petals out of Betty’s mouth, who was devouring them whole-heartedly. ‘She might choke,’ I said, with a bit of a neurotic mother edgeness to my voice.

Great, so the homeopath is making up treatments as she goes along. Just because my husband decides to give my daughter a rose to play with, and my daughter decides she likes the taste of it, the homeopath decides that hey-presto! this will cure her constipation, and then charges us £35 for her troubles! ‘Are you not going to give Betty a proper homeopathic remedy then?’ I ask her. ‘Nope,’ she says. ‘The rose ought to do the trick.’ And off she scoots, leaving me open-mouthed, and Tom having hysterics behind the rose bush.

Mummy Monster

I have only just discovered that there is real competitiveness and judgment amongst mums, about what your baby’s name is, how your baby sleeps, eats, crawls, walks, poos, looks, interacts etc. I have spent the last 6 months in a blissful little bubble of naïveté. Ever since this bubble burst, and I have realised that everything I say about Betty, there are often judgments or comparisons being made, I have become hyper-sensitive to it, and haven’t been able to relax when talking to other parents I have never met before. I have been too scared to engage in any kind of conversation which is even remotely baby-related, for fear of appearing smug, or defensive.

This fear started after a liaison I had with another mother at the village hall playgroup last Wednesday, which almost pushed me over the edge and made me want to runs for the hills…

Betty and I enter the village hall at 9.15am. Betty is wearing her little khaki combat trousers and a red and white striped top. We go and sit next to a lady who introduces herself as Sandra, and her eight-month-old baby Jade. First off, Sandra asks me what my baby is called. I tell her that her name is Betty. ‘BETTY’ she bellows in total shock. She then thinks for a few seconds (she obviously can’t bring herself to lie and say that she likes the name) and says: ‘Well as long as YOU like the name that’s all that matters.’ I feel like telling her that Trevor (worst driver in the world) almost got clobbered by my husband a few weeks ago for handing him an article from the Daily Mail showing the top 20 baby names of 2006 and said: ‘Here is some idea of what you SHOULD have called your daughter’. My husband was extremely offended, not only because he can’t stand the Daily Mail, but also because surely a name in the top 20 baby names of 2006 is a reason NOT to name your baby one of them. Instead I tell Sandra that Jade is now a very ‘popular’ name and that she won’t have any problems finding door plaques, mugs, pens, toothbrushes etc with her name on them. She looks chuffed about this and then gives Betty a sympathetic look, as if to say ‘poor little you’.

Sandra then goes on to ask me if I’d considered the bullying and picking-on that Betty will endure when she starts school because of her ‘unusual’ name, and have I prepared myself for the fact that Betty will end up hating me for giving her this name. To which I just smile, and tell her that I certainly hoped that Betty wouldn’t get picked on at school (by Jade probably), and that if she hates her name that much she could change it. I feel like telling her that we hoped to raise Betty in such a way that she will become a very creative, open-minded, and imaginative little girl who will hopefully love us for giving her an interesting and pretty name. But I keep my mouth shut.

Sandra then starts eyeing Betty’s outfit. She asks me why ‘my baby’ (she can’t even bring herself to say ‘Betty’) isn’t wearing any shoes. I tell her that I don’t see the point as she is only 6 months old and can’t walk yet. I notice that Jade’s little podgy feet have been squeezed into some really uncomfortable-looking shiny red shoes and lacey pink socks. ‘They’re pretty little socks,’ I say to Jade. I am lying. Sandra then asks me why I have dressed Betty like a boy. I tell her that I didn’t realise I had. She says: ‘My advice is: always go for pink, then there is no mistaking that she is a girl’. I tell her that I would bear this in mind. I feel like telling her that if I’d wanted her advice I would have asked for it, and that I wouldn’t take advice off someone who dresses their baby like a bloody doll anyway. The conversation about baby clothes goes on and on. Sandra is appalled that I buy some of Betty’s clothes from supermarkets and car boot sales, and that they don’t all come from Mothercare. For my own amusement I ask her when she is getting Jade’s ears pierced. To which she proudly lifts up the pink furry flaps of Jade’s hat to reveal two little gold studs.

It is now 9.30am. I have just had 15 minutes of torture. In this time Sandra has also managed to fit in remarks about how Betty is not able to sit on her own yet, how Betty doesn’t smile much (Betty smiles all the time, just not at idiotic women), and how it would be better to start giving her formula instead of breastfeeding her now that she is six months. I am desperately trying to work out a polite way to get the hell out of there. Thinking on my feet (which I’m not very good at) I tell her that I am actually feeling quite tired (tired with her), and that I am going to go home. Sandra gives me a sympathetic look and says: ‘Ahh, the little ‘un not sleeping through the night yet?’

At this point I am worried that I am about to have a massive freak-out in the middle of the hall. I feel like saying: ‘Yes, Betty does sleep through the night actually, and has done for months, and no I don’t put holes into my baby’s ears and cause her unnecessary pain, and I would never buy one of those awful cheap plastic personalised door plaques (even if the name ‘Betty’ was on every single god damn one), and pink fluff… yuk yuk yuk, and plonking your 8 month old baby in front of those weird teletubbie characters for hours on end wrong wrong wrong, and yes I do still breastfeed my baby instead of giving her some disgusting artificial animal milk - surely HUMAN milk is best for a HUMAN baby, and Sainsbury do some very cute little baby clothes, without those ridiculous glittery slogans plastered all over them and that in fact most of Betty’s clothes come from Gap and H&M, and no Betty can’t sit up completely on her own yet, but she can feed herself with a spoon, which in my book is pretty advanced... BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH…’

But I just smile, and as calmly as I can, walk out of the hall, with my nervous waddling walk. Later, fuming, I realise that Sandra not only made me snap, but she has turned me into the most evil, judgmental and competitive mother EVER!

Surgery Pest

I went to see my long-suffering GP again today, who I am sure thinks I am slightly unhinged. I don’t know what pregnancy/birth/baby has done to me, but before any of this, I never ever saw a doctor, about anything. However, since then, I have frequented the surgery more times than I care to remember.

My relationship with the staff at the surgery (which includes GPs, midwives, nurses, receptionists, even other patients) began on the happiest day of my life, 31st March 2006.

I was standing in my classroom, during an open-day, chatting to a heavily pregnant parent about how broody I was feeling, when suddenly I went weak in the legs and felt dizzy. That was the moment, whilst the parent was telling me not to rush into it and enjoy being married, that I knew. I phoned Tom, and said: ‘I think we’ve bloody well done it, I think I’m pregnant!’ To which Tom replied: ‘I think you are too, in fact I knew from the moment of conception when you woke me up in the middle of the night and told me that you could see little animals in our bedroom dancing in the moonlight.’ He said he thought that was unusual behaviour, even for me, and realised something must be happening to me. I decided we would make an appointment with my GP the following morning, so that he could confirm whether we were right or not. I was too scared to pee on a stick in my own bathroom. For a reason I can’t really understand or explain, I needed to see a doctor.

The following morning, we arrived at the surgery half an hour early. Tom and I sat in the waiting room in silence, after I had barked at him and told him to shut up after he asked me why I hadn’t just peed on a stick. Eventually the doctor called me in. I asked Tom to stay in the waiting room because I was still feeling annoyed with him. I sat down opposite the doctor and started crying. ‘I think I might be pregnant,’ I wailed. He gave me a sympathetic look and said something like: ‘Oh dear, what makes you think that?’ ‘I am two days late and I saw dancing animals in my bedroom two weeks ago.’ He looked bemused and told me that I shouldn’t start fretting just yet. I quickly put him right and told him that it would be the most amazing thing in the world if I were pregnant. So he did a test and we sat there in silence for what seemed like hours waiting for the result. He eventually picked up the stick, examined it for a ridiculously long time, looked somewhat surprised, and gave me the best words I had ever heard: ‘Well...it is positive’. I started crying again, ran out into the waiting room, grabbed Tom, unable to speak, and hauled him into doctor’s consultation room. After a brief talk we left the surgery armed with leaflets, not before the doctor shook Tom by the hand and said: ‘Well done son’. This is the day that my beautiful relationship with the surgery started. I was four weeks pregnant.

From then on, I found myself at the surgery, probably fortnightly, bending some medical professional’s ear with all sorts of ridiculous, sometimes imaginary ailments… bump is too small; bump is too big; bump is wrong shape; bump not moving enough; Tom can’t hear baby heartbeat through toilet roll tube; I accidentally ate a prawn etc.

And there I was today, at the surgery, waiting for my appointment. Actually it was Betty’s appointment but I decided she didn’t need to be there so left her at home with Tom. The doctor came out and called for Betty. I jumped up and said ‘I’m not Betty, but I am here to discuss Betty.’ To which he cracked half a smile and ushered me in. He then listened patiently while I talked urgently about Betty’s constipation. He wearily informed me that there was nothing he could do without her actually being there, and kindly suggested that next time I should bring her along too. I agreed, and then asked him if he’d mind quickly looking at a blister on my foot.

When I got home I mentioned to Tom that the doctor was looking very tired and pale. Tom asked me how he had seemed before my appointment. I laughed, but Tom was looking serious.

Pear Palaver

I decided to try giving Betty puréed pear for breakfast today, instead of baby rice. The main reason for this decision, apart from wanting to make Betty’s food experience a little more exciting, is that Betty hasn't done a poo for 5 days, and so I thought that pear might help things along a bit. Betty's poos have been the bane of my life ever since she was born and I have probably spent about 50% of my entire wakeful time, thinking and worrying about them, and the other 50% talking about them.

Tom, Betty and I all went down to the kitchen at about 8.30am for a pear breakfast. It was the first time I had ever made a baby fruit purée but didn't think it should take longer than 10 minutes to whip up and feed my hungry and eager girl.

First of all I decided I had to disinfect the chopping board because I had read somewhere that wooden chopping boards have more bacteria on them than toilet seats. Then I had to fill and boil the kettle so that I was able to then immerse the chopping knife in boiling water to try to sterilise it. I then had to fill and boil the kettle again so that I could use the water to wash the vegetable steamer, which lives in a cupboard with some mice. I then filled and boiled the kettle again so that I could pour the water into the food mixer (which also lives in a cupboard with some mice). I then had to wash and peel two pears - I was just going to do one, but Tom said he couldn't bear to see me go to all this trouble just for one pear.

After chopping, steaming and puréeing the pears we were almost there. I spooned out some of the purée into Betty's bowl (which had just been sterilised by boiling water from the kettle) and placed it on the table. Then all three of us, all close to tears at this point, just sat silently and watched the tablespoon of pear in Betty's bowl, for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for it to cool down enough for Betty to eat it. I then had an awful feeling that Betty might reject the pear, but thankfully she didn’t, and in fact she absolutely loved it. The pear also had the desired effect, and Betty did a huge poo at 11am!

Who would have thought that preparing a pear puree (which only consists of pear) could turn into such a palaver? I swear I could have cooked a three-course gourmet restaurant-standard meal in the same time. As for making homemade purées every day (something I vowed to do as I pranced around being pregnant)… I have heard that the Hipp organic baby food from Sainsbury’s is very very good…