The Twenty-Ninth Month

March
5th
I hear you singing the whole of the Hokey Cokey when you are playing (after only having heard it twice to my recollection). You have made a ‘housie’ where the bedsheet has been hanging out to dry over the drying rack – your coloured wool is interwoven between the rungs and you have installed the small wooden high chair inside where you feed Lamby and Big Bear their breakfast or supper (which is apparently muesli,ham and grapes!).

Your memory always surprises me. Yesterday during nappy changing with Papa you began singing your version of -

Now we are bouncing like a ball
you didn’t know I could fly so high etc
which you heard once at Lucy Time music group, and once on a CD a few weeks ago. We have sung it once or twice but not for a long time.

The other day at Grandpa’s you spoke to Grandma on the phone (she was away, and told you she was staying in Cambridge). When G’pa asked you where G’ma was you answered “Oxford.” How did you come to connect those two cities? G’pa was amused. When you play journeys, or any game where I might ask you where you are going, you often answer either Bristol, Oxford or Mexico (tho’ Liverpool was favourite round new year, when we’d recently visited Papa’s family there. Mexico is from one of your storybooks (Off we go to Mexico).


15th
Now getting up at 6.30am to write this. I seem naturally to wake around 5 or 6 and still feel tired but decided this is the only time I am going to get to be creative so have to make the most of it. Life is overflowing with activity and sadly keeping up with writing this does not seem to be a priority. S ometimes I think I cannot juggle anymore the many things I do: singing, keeping the scrapbook of our holidays/weekends/now out Waldorf doll-making once a week with a few other women/ crocheting a pair of slippers for your Papa ‘s birthday. And all this around cooking meals, constant tidying and your various activities (plus all the admin to keep our house/finances and social life running). Not forgetting the emails/the internet which have a habit of creeping into all times of the day and eating horribly into precious spare time. The 2 or so hours you sleep each afternoon are no longer enough for me to do everything I need to do in.

Still I know that really my life is less pressured than mother’s who work – as I am not dashing to drop you off somewhere every day and cooking meals after you have gone to bed for the following day, as some of my friends do. I am always trying to find better ways of organizing my time so that I spend less time in the kitchen and evenings run more smoothly. Sometimes I manage to cook a soup or simple meal immediately after breakfast. That way we can eat early and you can go to bed earlier. Generally I seem to pack too much into a day and often don’t begin cooking till 5 or 6 which means you are not in bed til 8.30, then I wonder why I have no energy left for anything in the evening.

Your Papa was 60 on March 7th. No one, including me, can believe it, and having you certainly keeps him young (as does his paragliding). We had a big Ceilidh and lots of friends doing ‘turns’. Dancing and partying with old friends is wonderfully life-affirming. I did my party-piece and sang Marlene Dietrich ‘s Falling in Love again in front of a mike, the thought of which had given me a surplus of nervous energy for 3 weeks previously (also waking up in a panic at 5am). I spent one evening last week rehearsing with Jason, the accordionist. It was very inspiring and I felt I’d suddenly connected with a part of myself I haven’t known before – and something which is completely independent of being a mother. It was a real pleasure and I felt for the first time in ages that if I didn’t have any more children life really would be OK.

Finally we have sunshine and a taste of spring. You and I have been in the garden – you playing with water endlessly and digging soil while I sit on the bench and read about growing vegetables (it may not get beyond the book stage.)

It reminds me of last summer when we would go outside after you had woken from your nap and I would give you a little bowl of berries to eat. I loved those times in the garden when we would sit together on the bench. I think of that summer after you were 18 months as a really special time, when I was aware of you changing from a baby into a little independent person and we became companions. You liked to sit next to me and we were just together. I am looking forward to being outside more again in your new two and half year stage. It is much more challenging because you often assert your independence and want to do things in your own time and at your own pace. This means you sometimes don’t want to get dressed in the morning, that you loathe having your nappy changed or don’t want to have a nap. It can be very trying and sometime I feel ‘oh let’s not bother leaving the house today’ because I can’t persuade you to go – or to get in your car seat. It’s emotionally draining and I can easily lose my patience. I hope I don’t shout at you to much – you always say ‘ Mummy don’t shout’ in a very pitiful voice, and I know how completely futile it is, because it doesn’t actually achieve anything apart from me letting off steam.

Nappy changing – is so hard work because even when I finally get you to lie down and stay still you will cry out ‘ ow, don’t touch my leg’ and kick your legs, even though I’m trying my best to be really sensitive.

Earlier this week you were a bit under the weather with conjunctivitis and a night fever. The following day you were tired and had undergone a personality change. Suddenly you were amazingly compliant. You had lost your feistiness and answered yes to everything in a meek sparrow-like voice. Are you tired, “yes” came the answer, when you usually protest and say “I’m not tired”.


March 19th Monday
We had a lovely weekend. Very outdoors and physical for me, which is just what I need at the moment. I cycled to a yoga class on Saturday morning and met P & T in town afterwards.

A trip to Bristol’s Wildwalk on the bicycles. You love traveling on the seat at the front of your Papa’s bicycle, and are always excited about the prospect, even as we are getting the your helmet out of the cupboard. When we first got you a seat last summer, you wanted to wear the helmet in the house all the time.

After our Wildwalk trip we cycled across to Queen’s Square and ate in the lovely seafood restaurant , Loch Fyne. It was about 2.30, and you picked at a fishcake and then started keeling over, you were so tired. You fell asleep in Papa’s arms, and we had to lay you down on floor to sleep for an hour as we didn’t have the pushchair. On Sunday we cycled up the bike track to Fishponds park where you played on the playground. That morning you managed to get Papa’s stationary bike to fall on top of you in our hallway, and then later fell backwards, suspended from a ladder on a climbing frame. Though as you were still wearing a helmet, there was no damage.

Coming home, as we crossed the threshold, you began crying about something or other and became very attached to keeping your coat and gloves on. It was 12.30 and you had been awake since 6am, I realized you were falling apart with tiredness, and you didn’t know what to do with yourself – except cry. I took you upstairs and managed to prize your coat and gloves off against much protest, and held you in my arms for a few minutes till you dropped off to sleep. Later I went out and had a swim with Grandma.

21st
Found you asleep at 11.30pm in your Elvis mode. Arms splayed out, zip of sleepsuit unzipped to your belly button. When you were about 8 months and slept in a white sleepsuit, P used to call you Elvis. And Elaine called you baby Jesus.

28th Thurs
Yesterday you came into our room at 6.45am and announced “I did have a good nights sleep.” Occasionally you wake at 5ish in a dream state and are calling out odd things: today it was ‘Put the music on Mummy!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Wash my hands. You cry a bit and then go back to sleep.

What you are into:

Still making farmers houses with blocks, animals and anything that comes to hand

Getting into the large cardboard box house and asking us to close the door – you only just fit in. You have been painting and drawing on it.

Your drawings are now circles/loose spirals. Sometimes you tell us what they are. “I did draw a cow.”

You like collecting up your toys, carrying round in a small shopping bag, then tipping them out somewhere else. “I’m am making a mess !” you announce proudly.

Asking “I want music on” when we are driving in the car, and I am listening to Radio 4 in the addictive and pointless way I do. “What’s this song called ?”, you ask repeatedly when I listen again and again to the same songs I am learning for choir.

“Why” – you might ask me about 15 times, till I can answer you no longer.