And no longer a newborn blob but a fully fledged baby who can swipe at toys and everything*. She even watched the rugby with Daddy at the weekend while Maggie and I went to the allotment, which was absolutely glorious: cold, crisp blue skies, birds singing, completely peaceful. Until M realised that if she shouted “hooray” really really loudly she got a great echo from the walls. Sorry, all the rest of the plot-holders who were having a silent Sunday afternoon.

*Everything = eat, sleep, stare about and fill nappies. Not much else.

Is it bedtime yet? I’ve been up (on and off) since 4.30 this morning and it’s been a really long day. 4.30: Maggie, scream scream there’s a bug. 5.05: Cameron’s alarm. 5.20: Cameron out of shower and “creeping” about. 5.30: Cameron leaves. 5.45: Maggie I need my skittles (scream scream). 5.50: feed Tamsin. 6.00: Maggie comes in to get warm. 6.15: Maggie wriggling, kicking with icy feet, complaining about Jura being in the bed, taken back to her own bed with a drink of water and a prayer. Blessed sleep. 7.40: leap out of bed for a hasty shower before the Ocado delivery turns up at 8 – doorbell out of order so imperative to be downstairs.

At least M got to nursery on time for once, and we both had a proper breakfast. And we spent an hour at the allotment, getting another few square foot dug: I am considering advertising for a odd-job man to come and dig/clear for me so I can just do the fun planting and harvesting stuff. Or is that against the spirit of the thing? Spent a jolly 10 minutes playing hunt-the-compost-bin after the recent storms – but quite glad I don’t have the next plot over where a 100-year-old brick wall was blown over onto the greenhouse.

Back from a long weekend at mum and dad’s: Cameron mostly worked while I dashed about visiting people. Megan is now walking and a proper little girl rather than a baby, although not quite up to playing with Maggie (nice to see her mum and dad too). I have seen Mia twice in the (ahem) years since we left school but, once we’d found her flat – a mere half-hour late due to my conviction that she lived at number 27 rather than 72: of course I hadn’t taken the bit of paper with address and phone number on, and the helpful chap in number 25 also thought she lived at 27 so I spent a good while insistently pushing the doorbell and refusing to accept there was nobody in – we had a very lovely morning catching up. Last on the schedule was Karen, which was an odd mix of meeting for the first time and catching up: despite never actually having met, or even spoken, before, we’ve been reading reciprocal websites and exchanging comments and emails for over 5 years and chatting almost daily for the past couple. Mum and dad really struggled to get to grips with that one but it’s just penpals for the digital age. Does anybody have a penpal these days?

Journey back a bit of a nightmare with a very contrary madam in the back alternating between whining and being generally irritating and amusing herself by pulling shoes and socks off in order to lick her feet and make footprints on the window. Yuk. And then threw a proper lie-on-the-floor-and-kick tantrum at the service station; count those disapproving looks from all the hypothetical super-parents (my child would never behave like that). 

Today, a heady mix of unpacking and sorting, bill-paying and laundry. Grey grey gloomy and grey here so we are probably best indoors anyway.

I seem to be blessed with a windy baby this time around (M hardly ever burped and was never sick). Rather than going straight for the infacol in the modern manner, I am tweaking my diet to see if it makes any difference: first on the hit list is sugar because I have been eating loads since she was born (OK, OK, and before) and So-san, my Japanese midwife, was always very down on sugar. Tired, hormonal, naturally sweet-toothed…then Christmas came with its usual cake-and-sweety bounty and I reckon I’m nearly up at 1930s levels (according to a recent thread on Downsizer, the average sugar consumption of the poor working class in the North in the 1930s was something like 3 lb per week. Wow.)

I managed 30 hours and then the 4pm Hunger (familiar to all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers) struck. Two digestives, two bits of Christmas cake and four pieces of chocolate-covered ginger in about 5 minutes flat. And then, as I was off the wagon anyway, half a packet of jaffa cakes in the space between University Challenge and what would have been Waking the Dead if Maggie hadn’t woken up screaming, causing me to spend the rest of the evening on the phone to NHS direct. I’m not generally a neurotic mum but the screaming was quite out of character and she was complaining of a pain in the lower right-hand side of her tummy*.

Anyway, that was really a bit pathetic so I’m trying again. It’s not just about uncomfy Tamsin now – although she isn’t a very happy bunny today – but about my inability to resist chocolate. It is evil and it calls to me. Only today is proving quite hard enough to get through: I’ll see you the aforementioned screaming and raise you last night’s storm battering our windows, which are the village’s first line of defense against the winds that race across the Dee floodplains from the Welsh Hills, and a tax return. I’ve succumbed to a(nother) jaffa cake and, sadly, a horribly pinkly sweet fairy cake. But I am trying, and when the Ocado chap turns up in the next hour with lots of lovely savoury treats I should find it somewhat easier.

Incidentally, when did jaffa cakes become a health food? The packet is plastered with information about how they have only 1 g of fat but “lots of energy” (ie calories, no?) so are recommended by nutritionists.

*She’s fine.