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.’

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 kindly 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.

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. 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.

Curry fantasy

I was a little perplexed this morning when I went into Betty's room, as it smelt just like our room does the morning after Tom has been on the curry and beer.

When I picked Betty out of her cot, she let out her mandatory, very energetic, morning greeting, and I was almost knocked down by her rather unpleasant, garlic breath. It felt far too grown-up and horrible to be the breath of a one year old, and I just couldn’t think where it might have come from.

We have had our suspicions that Betty is a woodland creature (she closely resembled one when she was a few weeks old) and that at night she sneaks off to the woods behind our house and plays with the squirrels and rabbits. Perhaps last night was ‘curry night’ in the woods?

I felt happy and satisfied with this explanation of magical fantasy - I love the idea of Betty playing and eating with her woodland friends. However, when I mentioned the whole garlic/wood thing to Tom, he ruined it all and told me that it was him that had been feeding her garlic yesterday, not her furry friends.

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.

Who ate all the tarts?

Betty thoroughly enjoyed her birthday knees-up on Sunday. She spent most of the time high-speed crawling around the room sneakily swiping jam tarts and fairy cakes from everyone's plates and shoveling them into her mouth like she hadn't eaten for a year. As well as stealing cakes, she also plucked a dummy right out of the mouth of a sleeping baby, which she callously discarded when she realised it wasn't edible.

Betty delighted in the big pink and red balloons, and the wrapping paper, and the candle on top of her birthday cake, and playing pass-the-parcel, and all the attention. She was very graceful and didn't mind the other babies playing with all her toys and trashing her playroom. She even turned a blind eye when a couple of pieces of her building blocks fell out of a toddler's pocket as he was picked up by his mum to leave. The mother looked mortified; the toddler looked gutted.

We had a champagne toast after we sung Happy Birthday, but unfortunately (or fortunately for me and Tom) everyone was either driving, teetotal, or underage, so after everyone had left, we went round knocking back all the untouched glasses of champers scattered around the room. My great aunt, our only remaining guest, watched on and gave me a pitiful look.

Everyone seemed to have a jolly old time though, and several mums were very complimentary. One mum even openly admitted that she was going to copy some of my ideas for her son’s impending first birthday. I looked at her modestly and said: ‘I’ve never had to organise a children’s party before, and had no idea what I was doing, do you really think it was OK?

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.