Jo’s tagged me to share 5 things you don’t know about me – though I have no idea when she did so as her posts, bizarrely, are timed but not dated (yes, I am aware that there are other people out there who have tagged me and been completely ignored: I’m thinking. Sort of). It kind of depends who “you” is (are?) as most people reading this, I believe, know me in real life (or at least via MSN or email) as well. Hey ho:

1. I am about to become an aunty for the second time (and I know if it’s a niece or a nephew even though my sister will swear blind she didn’t find out and I just shrug and say “if she does, she’s not telling”. Hee hee!). I love being an aunty.

2. I was a girl guide for far longer than is seemly or socially acceptable, ie not just brownies but guides and rangers and even a brief stint as a leader. I can tie knots.

3. My hair is falling out. It didn’t do that after M was born (or perhaps I didn’t notice because in those days it was short and – halcyon days – had some semblance of a style).

4. I have a hankering to sail and absolutely no idea why I didn’t learn when I was at university. Love boats. Married a man who is sick on a pier.

5. Tamsin’s birth story, as promised.

Edited to add: Just realised I didn’t tag anyone else to do it. So I choose Mia, Katy, Ally (because surely she has shared it all), Karen (who I know will hate it and refuse to play) and the other Lisa.

It’s about time I wrote Tamsin’s birth story.
I’d had Braxton-Hicks contractions every night for a week, varying from strong and regular but not painful to painful but irregular. So Sunday night, getting what felt like indigestion pains every half hour or so, I didn’t think anything of it – I was only 41 weeks pregnant and fully expected to go at least another week. Went up to bed as normal and fell asleep as the pains stopped. Only to wake up at 4.30 with what I thought was trapped wind (it really took me ages to realise I was in labour this time. “You’ll know” everybody says – I must be very dense indeed.)

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Tamsin is having a growth spurt (right on target for getting into size 3-6 month outfits) so today has gone feed-poo-feed-poo-feed-poo-sleep. And repeat. Meaning my day has gone feed-change-feed-change-feed-run about screeching and tearing out hair trying to wash nappies and provide food and entertainment for Maggie. Very hard going when single mumming again (he’s back tonight, hooray). I haven’t even managed to get out in the lovely sunshine despite good intentions and hopes. Although naturally I have been online (I can type one-handed while feeding a baby. No worries.)

Actually we did just knock up some blueberry and coconut muffins earlier. Ahem (buffs nails, looks modest yet smug). Pretty tasty and super-easy. Crumbs, bowls and spatulas (etc) everywhere still with little prospect of getting them tidied away in the near future, and tomorrow is Super Stress Morning (TM) as we try to get to swimming on time. Bring on the blizzards I say.  

 

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.

There’s snow on the hills and sun in the sky: this is more like it! Last week’s winds saw our shed door give up the ghost - it had been held up with string for some time so I can’t claim to be that surprised, but it means I have to get “a man” in (who, and where from, I have no idea). I wonder if I could find a multi-functional one who would mow what we laughingly refer to as “the lawn” too? A sheep might be a better solution but next-door’s dogs are irritatingly barky enough without encouraging it further. (M had just about come to terms with the yappy westies on the left and the pathetically whining and really old yorkshire terriers on the right, when one died to be replaced with a properly barking labrador. My poor girl is frightened to go in the garden. Jura, on the other hand, has a lovely time flaunting herself just out of reach!)

We at last have a new cleaner who I think is going to be a bit of a find: she’s very bright and personable and extremely efficient. And she claims to dislike cleaning, which I find strangely reassuring. The house doesn’t know what hit it and she managed it all whilst teaching M to count to five in Welsh (“un, dai, tre, pedwar, PUMP!” she goes). It’s Polish next week: like all good Guardian-reading households these days we have a Polish cleaner (or rather, our cleaner has a Polish assistant). Two cleaners! I feel very spoilt.

I spent much of the weekend waiting for the elusive combination of sleeping-Tamsin and not-actually-raining/dark that would have allowed me to go and dig another square foot or so of allotment. Never happened. My seed potatoes are all chitting in trays in the spare bedroom now so I have some pressure on. It is all very exciting (yes really).

Cameron is now in Mallorca. “For a meeting”, he says (“oh yeah”, I say). Alright for some, and irritatingly increasing his tally in our ongoing competition to visit the most countries as neither of us had previously visited Spain. He is head and shoulders ahead anyway, although that is helped by his insistence on counting the Vatican separately from Italy (tosh).

I spent most of yesterday evening watching The Baby Borrowers (Cameron is away): three episodes back to back. Anyone seen it? Five fairly innocuous yet extremely clueless teenage couples were moved into their own homes, then given a baby for a weekend, then a toddler, then they will have pre-teens, teens, then some elderly people to care for. I was amazed by how utterly useless most of the girls were - I’m sure I wasn’t quite that self-obsessed even at 16 – but even more amazed by how good the boys were, even the chap who kept harping on about being a “non-verbal communicator” (what does he do, send thought waves?). Most of my amazement was saved for the babies’ real parents: who in their right mind would hand over their baby for 3 days (now a toddler I can understand)? Wouldn’t they miss them? The babies seemed to take it all in their stride and weren’t obviously teary but the poor little things were in a strange house with strange people, with just a few familiar toys to make them feel at home. It just doesn’t seem very kind.

One of the couples has hardly appeared, which presumably means they have taken it all in their stride, but the others have been shown in all their glory. (It probably says more about me than them that I was surprised their parents let them appear: there is no way my mum would have let me move into a house with – gasp – a boy at that age! And also surprised by all the swearing given that they know they will appear on telly and that the children were listening. I am just terribly middle class and old-fashioned, I know.) I especially enjoyed the girl who went and spent 2 hours removing her hair extensions rather than going home where her boyfriend had been house-husbanding all day; she then had a huge hissy fit and stomped out when he asked her to make him a coffee. I can’t see that one lasting though to be fair he did do that annoying “mummy” thing of thinking he and only he knew how to look after the baby. Red-faced, I recognised myself a little.

Too wet to go out again. Never mind the fact that I waited in until 2.30 for a building regs chap (expected between 10.30 and 1, naturally) who, when he did arrive, wondered why I thought I needed a certificate for the wood-burning stove* and explained he couldn’t do anything about it as I hadn’t installed it and didn’t have the instructions for him to check. Is this what building regulations approval entails – them checking I have correctly read some instructions? £60. A bargain.

Have done basically nothing all day apart from fritter away time online and scoff sweeties – sugar avoidance is not going at all well. And now I have a bad case of cabin fever but getting out with two children is such a flurry of shoes and hats and coats and have-you-had-a-wee that is hardly seems worth it without good reason.

*Because our solicitor said so.

  

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Today was our first functional visit to the new allotment. We popped up last year to drop off the compost bins and lay carpet (to suppress the weeds, not from some sort of wacko Hyacinth Bucket need to make it tidy) then abandoned it to rain and childbirth. Now, with a new year, we are ready to go!

After picking M up from nursery we had a wander up there, just to see what sort of state it was in: had the carpet worked (yes, rather nicely) and was the mud ludicrous, today being only the second dry day in living memory (not too bad). Chatted to the old boy on the next plot – I can see the chatting is going to be an issue – then came home, packed up some tools and wellies, and went back for an hour’s digging. I managed about a square metre (it is very heavy clay) so it is going to be a long job, but the girls were great. Tamsin slept in her car seat in the middle of the carpet (then woke up and cried so we came home). Maggie dug a medium-sized hole, put on her gardening gloves to try to pull up some weeds, lay about on the carpet under a blanket with her wellies and socks off, then ate cake – I am good at packing for afternoons out – until it was hometime.

Now I ache. That’s the first real physical exertion I’ve made since…well, since labour! And people allowed me weeks to recover from that. Am pleasantly sleepy from all the fresh air (and Cameron has gone to London so if I want to go to bed at 9, I can*).

*Not that I am suggesting he would prevent me if he was here – but I’d feel a bit mean and unsociable.