A mother's journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing up

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

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

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

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

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

The Buttons do Butlins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Normality and loveliness

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

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

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

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

These are very special times.

Retort

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

Artful Betty

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

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

Admission

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

Guest post from Grandpa Button (Tom's dad)

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

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

Embarrassing moment

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

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

My birthday

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

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

The first three months

The differences between your first and your second baby …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Noise control

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

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

Help!

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

Lookalike

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

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

I am off to bed.

Breastfeeding tips

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to it

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

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

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

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

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

My ideal life...

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Redemption

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

Too quiet

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

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

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

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

Wrong-footed

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

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

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

Bouncing baby

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

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

Lucky escape

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

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

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

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

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

Betty at Hay

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

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

A job well done

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

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

Extreme nappy change (by Tom)

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

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

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

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

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

Transition

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

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

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

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

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

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

New arrival!

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

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

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

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

We are all very very happy.

Hair abuse

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

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

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

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

Unknown territory

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pregnancy diet

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

Remote parenting

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

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

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

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

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

Stomach snub

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

Some of the incidents that spring to mind…

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

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

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

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

Domestic bore

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

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

Great granddad

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

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

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

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

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

Don't let it snow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please don’t let it snow this week.

New Button denial

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

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

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

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

Hen horror

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

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

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

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

Shell shock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daddy Button

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

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

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

Betty was here

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

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

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

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

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

Country girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday roast

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

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

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

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

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

A french affair

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

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

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

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

Chocolate

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betty ahoy

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

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

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

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

Bring us some figgy pudding...

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

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

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

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

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

Betty goes large

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

Publication of my book is planned for summer 2009.

Look who's talking

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

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

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

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

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

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

Singing in the rain

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

One down, four to go...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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