Rosie's latest developments (10 wks)

Feel quite guilty. Was just checking Izzy's earlier posts to compare notes and noted the sheer volume of content in contrast to Rosie's. Er. Understandable I suppose. Or maybe, Roz, you're just an easier baby to deal with.

Certainly these last weeks have settled into some sort of pattern quite quickly. I'm really quite enjoying my time off this time round, despite the lack of food outlets and museums to mooch around. This time I not only have several friends in the immediate neighbourhood who've just given birth or will soon, but there's Lucy and Jackie in London, and many many more back in Malaysia. I think I know 17 people who have had babies or are due this year. That's what being 32 does to you I guess. 

Anyway I feel inundated with babies, and the joy they will bring to their parents. Is good.

Was talking to Lucy, whose baby Felicity is now two weeks old, and she was in that daze you get for about the first six weeks - you know where everything is a bit unreal because you're so shattered from lack of sleep. And one thing she said 'we're not sure whether we're stimulating her too much' brought back memories.

I remember being ever so careful about ANYTHING Izzy was exposed to - TV, music, even loud speech. Poor Rosie, on the other hand, occasionally gets propped in front of the TV in the hope it will amuse her while I prep dinner or run to the loo. 

With Izzy I worried if Abba was too much for her. Rosie, on the other hand, laughs at her sister howling 'Rosie, posie, abso-dipsy-dozily!' at the top of her high-pitched voice, while capering madly. Izzy has also rather maddeningly taken to yowling 'EAT her, EAT her!' sometimes when Rosie cries. I have no idea why but it's really quite annoying.

I've been playing the Beatles reasonably loudly for Izzy in the car on the way to nursery (Izzy only got tinkly-pinkly music to start with) and Roz, this afternoon, quite happily smiled as I sang along to Hey Ya.

And does Rosie wake from sleep with nightmares because she was over-stimulated, as I was convinced Izzy sometimes did? Nope. It's always for only two things: a feed, or wind. Is she different? Or was it always just us?

Anyway one other thing to note today: Roz has been staring slightly perplexedly at her left fist all day. I've seen her contemplating it on three separate occasions. This follows her sucking her fingers, which began about a week and a half ago. I wonder if she's starting to realise that thing bopping the side of her head when she wakes agitated is her own hand. I've used it to bat the toys hanging from her play gym but she doesn't get it yet. 

O well. Suppose she'll make the connection eventually, just as Izzy has suddenly started drawing representationally (I love how, in all her pictures, Rosie is always in her carrier). That or we're raising a dyslexic fascist.

Izz had another nursery buddy, Martha, for a sleepover this week. For the greater part of the evening they played dressing up and were fairy queens, each with a crown, wand and wings. I was quite taken with how, when I asked if they were fairy princesses, they both looked at me scornfully and said no, queens. 

God, at least it's not empresses. Yet. 

Final result

Stir-fried with a halibut steak. Yum. If nothing else tonight's portion means I'll have recouped the cost of the seeds, which is my goal for the plot this year. Hard with the peas.

Aforementioned salad

With a side helping of jolly baby. Ate this with some leftover lamb tagine and couscous.

First harvest

Picked a handful of spicy salad and four pak choi plants today. Was going to wait till the weekend but the pak choi are really too close together anyway and the leaves look like they may go bitter soon. So I'll be having them for lunch. Think will fry some fish to go with the pak choi for dinner.

And slightly less decipherable

That's the coach that took them to the aquarium. The blue bits with dots are seats, the wavy pink line is 'the sea' at the aquarium, and the blue bit on the right is where you go to lie down if you're tired.

Bluebell time

We finally made it on a bluebell walk this year. Was astounded by Izzy's ability to walk a reasonable distance, up and down hills, without complaint or asking either Alex or me to carry her. The reason was obvious though - young Sam E was with us and he set the pace of the walk. Izzy gamely kept up, despite carrying a party bag from Lotty's birthday party this weekend the whole way through. More pictures on Facebook here.

Jabs

Both Izzy and Roz had their immunisations this morning. Izzy did ever so well. She was obviously a bit apprehensive about the whole thing despite being quite excited earlier on, when Alex and I promised bribes of sweets in return for good behaviour.

I forgot there were two jabs for her as well, not just one. But she merely bit her lip a little bit and clutched my hand with the first one. Was obviously a bit more worried about the second, because she'd experienced the bite of the first but just screwed up her face a bit and found, to her surprise, it was then over. Cheered up right after she was offered a choice of 'I've been very brave' stickers and jelly beans from a container we'd brought with us. I needn't have bothered actually, the nurse had one of chocolate buttons too.

Roz (what Izzy is now insisting we call her, not Rosie or Rozzie) looked surprised with the first jab then let out a pained and indignant yowl with the next, but didn't cry either. Quite proud of the little Spartans.

'I'm at the beach.'

Form and function

Suddenly Izzy's drawings have actually look like things. This is a rocket on the front of a card she made for us.

Inside the card

That's our car, me, Izzy and Daddy. And lots of kisses at the bottom.

This is all of us

The pink blobs from left to right are me, Izzy, Daddy and Rosie. You might even be able to make out our names from her embryonic writing. The stripy thing is our bed.

This is a dancer

With a crown, holding balloons and a rope on a cloud.

Conversation in the car or Why we have no discipline

'Izzy, when we get home you need to take a bath, alright?'

'No, no bath, mummy. I don't like baths.'

'I said that wrong. That wasn't a request, Izz. When we get home, you have to take a bath.'

'No mummy, I watch TV.'

'No, Izzy, you are taking a bath. First. Take a bath first then you can watch some TV.'

'OK mummy, I'll go home, watch some TV and have a sweet, then take a bath.'

(Containing spluttering) 'No. You take a bath first. Then you can watch TV and if you're good and eat all your dinner we'll talk about sweets.'

'No, no mummy, TV first, then a bath.'

'No, Izzy - I want you to take a bath first, OK? Bath.'

(Interrupting) 'Mummy, mummy, listen to me, OK? First I -'

'Izzy, there is no discussion! You are taking a bath!'

'But mummy, first I -'

'Izzy, the first thing you do is take a bath!'

'But mummy, listen, this is what I'm going to do...'

(Interrupting too) 'The bath better be first!'

'Mummy, caaalm dooown.'

At which point Alex burst out laughing. Then I did too. Fortunately the bath did come first in her plans.

At the aquarium

Shark

'Dancing' seahorses

Juice and a rest

Start of the weekend

Rosie's been entertained

We've both had a Saturday morning workout, dancing with (carrying) the girls to Abba

Izzy's all dolled up for a party

Reasons to garden

Saw three pheasants today around the allotment - the male was walking unabashedly away from our plot when I got there and, after I walked away to get a watering can, two females emerged from the undergrowth nearby looking very furtive trotting off in the opposite direction. Later, as I sat in the car feeding Rosie, I saw a very furry black cat walk by - possibly the feral cat rumoured to once have stalked our grounds attacking people? And all this was between nine and ten in the morning. I knew we had rich wildlife but didn't realise they were active this late in the day.

The incredible expanding baby

Aged 8 weeks

(This passport photo was taken at Jessops and is not the disaster that her sister's, taken at Snappy Snaps, was. Guess which store I'd recommend to other people looking for passport photos? Sadly the actual photo used in her passport is something else and not as nice as this.)

7 weeks

3 weeks old

2 weeks old

1 week old

Few hours out

Rare occasion

Both girls are currently asleep, following a slightly headachey half-hour earlier when they were both wailing at the same time. Rosie was wailing because she wanted to sleep but kept being woken by some noise or other, usually caused by her  big sister. Izzy then started howling when I took Rosie upstairs to see if she would sleep there, because she wanted to be downstairs but not alone. 

After letting both of them get some wailing out of their systems, I finally got Izzy in a bath and rocked Rosie to sleep, then put her on her tummy to sleep, sod the NHS sleep-on-your-back advice. She startles quite easily in her sleep then starts clawing the air and if she bops herself it annoys the heck out of her. On her front this doesn't happen.

So then I got to eat the second half of my dinner. Reward for coping was cold rhubarb and custard. Yum. But thank god the stewed rhubarb is now all done. I decided to buy some since it is one of these British things I keep reading about but have never tried. Stewed it in the oven in some foil with orange juice, ginger and marmalade then found neither Alex nor Izzy wanted any. And this was after I gave in to a Waitrose 'Buy one get one free' offer. So I've had a tub of rhubarb in the fridge the last week or so and have been slowly emptying it with a tub of posh store-bought custard. Nothing to complain about.

London with babes

Was surprisingly pain-free. Yesterday a colleague and I drove to London Aquarium because our first-borns went there on a nursery trip. We decided we wanted to go too but health and safety dictated we could not bring backward-facing car seats on the coach. Why, I have no idea since they are attached in a similar way to forward-facing car seats, which we all had to provide for the children on the coach. 

Anyway. The first-borns took no more notice of us - save for when Izzy got tired and demanded to be carried two-thirds of the way through the trip - than if we'd not gone, I think, but we had a gala time, as the traffic was clear, the babes behaved themselves, and there were no crowds at the aquarium! Hurrah!

As a precaution, I'd even booked priority access tickets - £2 more, what a joke. I went to the priority access counter, where the attendant had just turned to serve someone from the normal queue, since she had no other customers before. And before she could get to me, another attendant for non-sucker tickets had dealt with me. 

I'd forgotten how beautiful the South Bank is, especially in the bright sunlight of yesterday. Twenty-five degrees in April. I think I even got mildly sun-tanned sitting in the playground opposite the London Eye, feeding the babe while the children ran off the somnolence of the aquarium atmosphere.

We even managed to stop off at Oddono's on the way back. Jude dashed down for two cones while I kept a beady eye out for traffic wardens, and I managed to stuff mine down my face and take off again before her baby's curious coos turned to wails. Result! 

Similarly a trip into London last week to the High Commission turned out relatively painless from a traffic point of view. Westminster now allows you to pay for parking by mobile phone and you can - hallelujah - top up your payments up till the maximum time allowed. Feeding meters, in contrast, used to earn you a fine. They'll even text you, for a fee of course, to warn you when your time is running out. Of course they also earn an extra 20p per text you send to add time. 

But occasions when you have no idea how long something might take are rare I suppose. Unless you're at the Malaysian High Commission. I arrived just before 10.30, managed to get the three forms I needed in 15 minutes, then had to wait three hours to be able to hand them all in. 

The waiting room was crammed full of chairs and people and the heating was on full blast. I escaped that purgatory as soon as I finished the forms, having swiped numerous heads with my backpack to get to a table with a pen. Thank god I brought Rosie in the baby carrier and didn't attempt the pushchair (ruled out for lack of elevator). Then dashed to Chiswick for lunch with an old friend, before dashing back to pick up the documents. 

It tickled me to recognise all the same people at the counters that I'd had to deal with for Izzy's documents three years ago. The same makcik warned me not to get Rosie a British passport. She was also incredulous my husband had not come with me to look after the baby and repeatedly told me to sit and rest instead of jigging from foot to foot - had to explain I preferred standing to Rosie's crying. Am pretty sure I also had almost exactly thesame sort of conversations with her when I came with Izzy.

There have also been some changes. There's now a hole-in-the-wall 'cafe' selling food. Managed to buy a packet of nasi lemak for Alex before it all sold out and had some kuih dadar for a snack. That's Malaysian priorities for you.

Now that we don't live in London anymore, having lived there for more than 10 years is turning out quite handy. As I told Jude, I'm pretty confident driving round London because I'm quite sure I've walked down most of its roads. Definitely most of the roads in central London anyway, and then some.

False economy

This ruddy credit crunch atmosphere. It all started because I've taken to buying lots of things from Waitrose at reduced prices. The quality of food at Waitrose is such that I'm usually delighted to buy posh stuff that's had at least a third, if not more, of its price knocked off  because it's 'Best by' tomorrow. 

So two weeks ago I bought a lemon drizzle cake from their cream cakes section for £1.19 (from £2.39). And it was a delight - light, fluffy cake and whipped cream and good tangy drizzle icing and curd in the middle. It was so good I decided to get some more. But then that particular dessert remained unavailable for the next two visits so, desperate for a zingy lemon hit, I bought some lemon shortbread instead. But that was a palid disappointment.

With the half-empty carton still on our dining table I decided I would stop buying inferior store goods and start making my own. Especially since some beautifully buttery shortbread the children made at a special nursery tea last month made me decide that if they could, so could I. 

Except I have a surfeit of ingredients for chocolate brownies because Mom forgot to bring back the cocoa powder we bought while she was here. So I made a tray of chocolate brownies. Then, in another fit of  what-are-these-English-people-on-about (mainly Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) I decided to make peppermint creams with Izzy as well. 

Am quite pleased with my take on the peppermint creams - instead of lemon juice I put in lime juice and grated the lime rind into it for very pleasingly pale green-speckled-surprise-it's-also-lime-not-just-mint mints. Next time I might experiment with adding rum. But the recipe - using one egg white as base - produced way too many mints, given how tooth-judderingly sweet they are.

So in an effort to extend the activity and not waste the mints because I had decided we could eat half of them before becoming sick, I decided to dip them in dark chocolate and roll them in cocoa powder. Izzy lost interest after the sixth mint of course. But I persevered. So now I have two jam jars full of rather good chocolate-covered peppermint creams. They are not aesthetically pleasing but the hit of bitter cocoa powder - I gave each a thick coating - works really nicely with the sugar. 

But now I have all these sugared goods to eat! 

And I've lost the lime edge in all that cocoa. And am curious as to whether adding more rind would work with the cocoa. 

No wonder housewives get desperate.

Been gardening today

The peas and pak choi and spicy salads are coming up nicely and the beetroot has started to sprout. Stopped weeding when I realised I wasn't sure if I was pulling up the garlic chives. Found two sprouting potatoes from last year too. If all goes well this year maybe will try for asparagus next year.

Birdy birdy tweet tweet

Rosie loves the quite natural bird calls her play gym toy makes. It's the only toy that makes her smile at the moment.

Manja bunnies

Izzy kazoos

Hamming it up at Odds Farm Park

We finally spent the vouchers Alex got for baby

Izzy did well with a scooter.

And the least annoying princess dress-up set I could see

Reasons to have children

'Izzy's been playing quite a funny game today,' Becky told me, when I arrived at the nursery.

'Oh god, she's not going round snapping your bra straps again, is she?'

'No, no,' Becky said.

Izzy had instead been urging her nursery mates to pick up two hula hoops each and hold them in front of their chests. 'These are our special protective bras,' she said. 'You have to have them in front of your boobs to protect them.' She couldn't convince all her friends to do it. Young Tara correctly said she didn't need a bra. But Izzy herself walked round with the hoops for a good part of one playtime at least.

I have no idea if this stemmed from the time Izzy was watching me feed Rosie, and Rosie, having finished, grabbed my chest with untrimmed nails, making me yelp 'Yow, Rosie, yow!' Izzy howled with laughter and unsympathetically urged her to repeat the act. 'Say "yow, Rosie, yow, mummy, say it again!"' 

I dread to think what the nursery girls don't repeat to us.

'The most alert six-week-old I've seen for a while.'

So sayeth our GP at baby's routine check.

Building sandcastles

Not totally sleep-deprived

Rosie is now 10 lbs - er about 4.68 kg if I recall correctly. So still putting on about 300 g a week, and steadily moving up the curve of the 25th percentile. At the rate she's going she'll break into the 50th next week or the week after. Hmm maybe I don't feel so bad about all the peanut butter sandwiches I'm eating after all.

Izzy continues in her merry ways to be a good cheche and generally boisterous tot and I feel very bad sometimes hissing at her to not rock the baby, or to stop jumping up and down on the floor or going right up against Rosie's face and yelping excitedly, 'Rosie! It's cheche!' 

I've tried demonstrating to her that it's very disconcerting to have anyone push their face right up against yours and speak into your ear and I think she's slowly getting the message. Occasionally she'll talk to Rosie from a foot away rather than bellowing in her face, while both hands force Rosie to look at her.

She's got a little nonsense song that she belts out with a lot of giggling at the end: 'Rosie, posie, [sounds like] dipso diply dozy.' 

One evening I came out of the kitchen after a sudden shout from Rosie to find Izzy excitedly bending Rosie's fourth finger a little too far backward for comfort. 'Look, mummy! She can do Ruby Ring!' 

Izzy is currently trying to work out how to stick just her fourth finger in the air for that finger-action nursery rhyme: 'Ruby Ring, Ruby Ring, where are you? Here I am, here I am, how do you do'. She finds it very trying that she can only do Toby Tall, and not Ruby Ring. 

Another time I came out after the baby began crying and then went a bit softer. Izzy had put a pillow on top of her sister because apparently the noise was preventing her from hearing her TV show properly. At least she looked quite guilty when she saw me. 

I wasn't sure how heavy to go with explaining why she should never EVER put things on top of Rosie's head -  how to explain death to a three-year-old and is it worth it at this point? Would she understand? Would it worry her? So in the end left it at the quite-severe-threat level. The same tone of voice I've used for not playing with the car door handle or jumping down the stairs, two at a time. I suppose I'll just have to ensure dinner is 90% done before getting her from nursery.

I do feel a bit bad sometimes having to curb what is just her normal behaviour and excitement over the baby. But she's still proclaiming whole-hearted love for the baby and both her parents so it can't be that bad. 

Actually, if anything, this last month and the inevitability of me being tied to the baby has meant that Izzy has drawn a lot closer to Alex. Because he's now the one overseeing her going to bed, from the washing-up to the horseplay and bedtime stories. So she's begun going to him more as first port of call for requests sometimes (eg 'I need the loo, daddy!' - hallelujah!). And quite frequently when I turn down a request she goes straight to him to repeat it rather than badger me (eg 'Daddy, you need to wake up!' - double hallelujah!).

And she's just doing more things independently, like choosing the clothes to wear to nursery, or using the toilet. Aside from my obvious pleasure at seeing her develop, it's really quite nice to see her and Alex playing together. 

A few weeks ago he was surfing the net and she came over to ask if she could play her computer games. He distracted her with a YouTube video of a dog that begins running in its sleep, and then runs head-first into a wall.The howls of laughter from the two of them were a bit worrying - they watched it six times and were laughing as hard the sixth time - but rather heart-warming.

And Izzy's current favourite pastime? Apparently it's collecting stones. Joy. Every evening she'll deposit about three or four on the dining table from her various pockets and the last time I took her jacket to the washing machine three fell out. Two were the size of dried apricots. 

Two or three times when I've arrived to pick her up from nursery she's been in tears because she's lost one. One evening she made me promise to take her back to a pub car park so she could find another 'egg stone'. I hear geologists are going to be in hot demand. You can only hope.

It's very cute

But I just want people to know it's not always me tying her hair up.

This is us in the queue

And this is the queue to get into the park.

Crazy or what? Unfortunately we told Izzy she could go to Kensington Park so here we are. Wonder how long it will take to get in.

Rosie in the fresh air

I've been doing a little planting on our allotment plot with Rosie in her pushchair since the weather was pretty good this week.

Still kissing her sister

Boo!

Izzy and Felix under their favourite tree

Drawing progress

Was reasonably astounded that Izzy was able to draw that figure of Fizz in the upper right. The rest of the figures in this picture are potato men us - one of the first few figure drawings she made months ago.

Glee

Izzy on discovering that her little present from Elaine was mini chocolate eggs. So many people have been really kind and given her little gifts on top of presents for Rosie.

Sleeping beauties