Our little Mancub made his appearance…
He arrived early Friday morning at 39 weeks and 4 days, practically perfect in every way. Ian and I are soaking up the new baby glow so things are going to be a little quiet around here for the next week or so. I can hardly believe that we get to keep him. x
Once again I am watching Wimbledon from my sofa rather than Centre Court or even Henman Hill! But this year I do have a very good excuse and the privilege of watching every match, rather than surreptitiously checking the score at work… This year has an awesome set of semi finalists (did you see Tsonga’s ousting of miserable old Rodger!) and if I did get to see some of the action, I’d love to eat my strawberries in this little lot.
Red dress: Motel Gemma at AsosFlower crown: Gardens of WhimsyTurquoise sandals: TopshopSunglasses: Thierry Lasry at AsosPeacock locket: Verabel
Danielle of Sometimes Sweet is one of my favourite bloggers and yet again she has come up with something perfect – Journal Day. Based on an exercise from her days teaching English, she posts a prompt to journal about:Describe a “first” (first date, first lie, the first time you experienced something, first time in a particular setting, etc). Include as many details as possible to paint a picture.I used to keep a journal but I realised that the introspection was feeding my depression. I had to break the vicious spiral and focus on being present for my life. Now that I can look inward safely I’d love to start again, and Danielle’s prompts are a great place to start. Be sure to check out Danielle’s post and read her awesome blog (although I’m sure you already do!).
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I have always found it hard to pin down my first memory. I have many early recollections but how can I know which happened first? Grandpa smiling, sitting in the grass on a sunny day, eating off flowery yellow plates – they could have happened at any time. But I do have one definitive marker: the arrival of my sister Lizzi when I was three and a half. My first memory of my sister is not my very earliest but it stands out as the start of the most significant relationship of my childhood.
It was the health visitor’s visit and I was allowed to sit on the bed while she gave Lizzi a check up. Nowadays a community midwife makes house calls to new babies but back then we had the health visitor, a tiny lady with long black hair. I remember sitting at the head of the bed and the colours green and yellow. My parents’ bedroom wallpaper had a tiny pale green pattern and I think the duvet cover was yellow. Yellow and green fill my early memories – looking up at the apple tree, gender neutral baby clothes, our ancient green metal swing, satin edged waffle blankets. Everything was soft and hazy and I remember trying to be very quiet – maybe Mum had said that I could stay as long as I did not disturb the baby? Lizzi was further down the bed and all I could see was the top of her head and her little arms reaching out to Mum’s face. Her movements were soft and vague, she couldn’t quite reach or focus. She was making little baby noises and did not yet seem like a real child, more like a kitten that had appeared from nowhere and would grow into a little sister. Lizzi must have been really tiny because I remember seeing the giant clip on her umbilical cord. I sat there entranced while the health visitor checked Lizzi over and chatted to Mum. Around this time I was told not to call out if I had a nightmare because it would wake the baby. Big girls were brave and walked down the landing to Mum and Dad’s bedroom. I was terrified of the dark out on the landing but so proud to be a big sister. As I sat silently the bedroom felt like a bubble of baby comfort, cushioned against the main road outside the window. I was being a good big sister and Mum and Dad would never let anything bad happen. I assume that Lizzi’s arrival heralded sleepless nights, toddler tantrums and flung food but I don’t remember them. Only the soft, safe feeling of sitting on the yellow duvet. In my next memories Lizzi is a real little girl, chubby and mobile, gleefully hauling a toy twice her size or being rescued from tripping over the edge of the patio.
Dear Mancub,
I cannot get my head around the fact that you could be here in as little as two weeks. It seems like I have the same reaction every week but boy, it’s getting close! This last fortnight I have been trying to visualise the moment 30 minutes after your birth, to make it seem more real and achievable. I know that I can do this but it is still so surreal. We cannot wait to meet you and I well up when I think how loved you will be. I love our family and they are all so excited to meet you. I feel so lucky that I am able to do this with such support and with someone as amazing as your dad.
With much love, x
Weeks 36 and 37 have involved…Slowing Down. It has been hard for me to accept that I literally cannot do much and that’s ok. Both physically and mentally, I need to recognise the cues to just sit back and relax. It is horribly humbling to ask for help with basic tasks and I have felt extremely vulnerable recently. But I know that it is ok and as my yoga teacher says every week “All is well, all is going to be well.” That’s fast becoming my mantra.Getting Real.This past fortnight we have booked into the birth centre and attended some great NCT antenatal classes. Not only do I feel more prepared but having the practical side of things worked out at the birth centre has taken a weight of my mind – I finally know where I’ll be going! I cannot recommend the NCT classes enough – sure there’s a lot of information but having the basics of labour, pain relief and what to expect laid out for you has been priceless. Plus I have met some great people and feel so much more supported. I have since decided to have my mum with us at the birth centre and feel much more confident of having a positive birth experience. Now we just have to wait!
When it comes to films adapted from novel, I hate watching a film without giving the book a chance. It seems wrong somehow, like giving in to instant gratification and illiterate screen time. But I faltered with Lord Of The Rings. SF/fantasy is a mainstay of my bookshelf but I have simply never had the urge to take on LOTR and I can’t even blame its doorstop-worthy length. Perhaps it is simply the literary monolith that LOTR has become – too big and the object of too much diametrically opposed opinion. Plus I knew that I couldn’t feasibly plough through the lot before the first film came out…
Getting a Sony Reader for my birthday spurred me to finally tackle the behemoth – at least I wouldn’t have the volumes weighing down my bag or taking up space, right? I dutifully downloaded the lot and have plodded my way through The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers before taking a break. I set out to give LOTR a fair chance but I fear my imagination has been irrevocably coloured by Peter Jackson’s trilogy. I found myself impatient for the next scene and resentful at the characters’ dallying – why hurry on to Mordor when you can spend almost a week sitting about with Tom Bombadil? Perhaps it would have been different if I had never watched the movies but I suspect that Tolkien’s Homeric pacing is just not for me. It was disappointing to learn that Peter Jackson had to rewrite so many of the key moments in his trilogy – Tolkien manages to make the battle of Helm’s Deep feel like a dull skirmish and the Balrog of Morgoth unworthy of Gandalf’s fall. Perhaps it’s bad form to disparage something so many people hold dear, but at I’m sure Tolkien can take it, and at least I didn’t go so far as some… I am rewarding myself with Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, but despite my misgivings I shall be back to finish The Return Of The King – I owe LOTR that much at least!
The need to slow down really hit me yesterday. That might sound odd for a 9 1/2 month pregnant lady with an unstable pelvis, but I am enough of a cliché not to be able to see the bloody obvious… This morning blessed me with the perfect amount of sunshine and a blanket of lawn daisies and lavender . So I sat and read. And stuffed cloth nappies and ate lunch under our apple tree. Our garden may be small but it contains such jewels as these lawn flowers and darling fuchsia roses to lift the spirit. Sometimes just being outside just makes everything seem so much better, you know? So in the spirit of small pleasures, here’s to a laid back final fortnight of pregnancy (yep, just two and a half weeks left!)
For someone who loves to read, I have not been doing nearly enough of it lately. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a circumstantial reader. I rely on those perfect pockets of time created by bus journeys and waiting for people to meet you at the station. I seem to have lost the childhood art of sequestering myself in a comfy chair with a book and will linger in a favourite authors’ bibliography rather than discovering new writers. So in the spirit of expanding my literary horizons I shall be writing about my latest reads with (hopefully) regular Word Nerd posts. I can’t promise that I shan’t retreat into the familiarity of Truman Capote and China Miéville, but we shall see!
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I picked up A Visit From The Goon Squad rather uncharacteristically after a Guardian.co.uk review stuck in my head. Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer-winning Goon Squad hovers between a novel and short story collection. It consists of thirteen interwoven chapters, each featuring characters whose narratives are curiously linked. Egan plays beautifully with the sense of time and identity. The stories weave in an out of each other in a dreamy, disconcerting fashion. Sometimes you aren’t sure exactly whose story it is or what the time period is, but the narratives are so hypnotic that I never felt anything less that pulled in. The central voices are Bennie Salazar, a music exec, and his one-time assistant Sasha. I found Sasha’s story the most compelling and it is her journey that you get the most sense of – from teen runaway to kleptomaniac thirty-something to a melancholic but loving family in the desert. Egan manages the perfect balance of disconnection and compelling emotion, drawing her characters evocatively with admirable economy. Perhaps the biggest demonstration of her talent is the final chapter, incredibly moving despite presented as a series of Venn diagrams and PowerPoint presentations by Sasha’s twelve year old daughter. I was completely immersed in Egan’s cinematic, somnambulist novel and I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a truly innovative and satisfying read.
Isn’t this bird cage from EarthSeaWarrior wonderful? If a) I wasn’t saving for baby things and b) it hadn’t sold, I might have to find a home for it… Love the way the air plants look like tentacles trying to get free. Be sure to check out the other wild treats in EarthSeaWarrior’s Etsy shop.
Being a worryingly proficient procrastinator, I have safeguarded myself against daytime TV with To Do Lists and the like. Not anymore… afternoons are disappearing into my knitting project. But I shall nobly ‘let go’ and tell myself to relax – time spent knitting for a baby is time well spent! My most loved childhood toy is a rabbit knitted by my Grandma. As you can see, Rabbit is a little worse for wear and inexplicably has legwarmers, a skirt, 3 buttons and no shirt. But she went everywhere with me and is the one toy that has moved house with me. Due to Grandma’s clever my confusing knitting construction, I’m basing Mancub’s rabbit on the Halloween Witch Doll pattern from the Purl Bee. It’s only included a moderate amount of swearing…
This is one of my favourite photos of me and my Grandma – mostly because of her smile, (Grandma often looked stern in photos) but also because of her knitting. I think Grandma knitted my whole outfit – plus her cardigan, the Snow White doll and the 2 dwarves. Along with the rabbits and Snow White, the toys that my sister and I treasured most were a case of Barbie clothes made by Grandma for our mum and auntie as girls. They are still so beautiful, with tiny stitches and 1960s styles that far outstripped the day-glo Barbie offerings we bought at Woolworths. My favourite was the orange felt swing coat straight out of Breakfast At Tiffany’s. We took the Barbie clothes for granted but I am in awe of my Grandma’s skill and patience – which will keep me humble when I get to the new rabbit’s shoulder shaping …
Dear Mancub,
What a difference a week makes… This week it feels like you are the source of nothing but good baby vibes. Being away from the stress and enforced-sitting-down of work has done the world of good and I feel like I can just focus on getting ready for your arrival. You have been moving around a LOT this week, it’s like you have suddenly woken up and want to get comfy before the big day. It is just under a month until you are due and it really feels like the home stretch. I find myself thinking about my own childhood a lot and all the stories my grandparents told me about growing up in Wales and India. I can’t wait to share them with you too. With much love, x
Week 35 has involved…Tiny Laundry. I never realised how satisfying it would be to get all those tiny clothes ready. I also dyed one lot of green and one lot of purple baby things – I like to think of the Mancub surrounded by colour. Being Grateful For Small Mercies. My SPD has plateaued and I can just about manage a (very) short walk around the park or pottering about without that delightful my pelvis is separating sensation. Toy Knitting. My goal of knitting for the Mancub has fallen by the wayside but, no longer! My yarn arrived yesterday and I have a very special project in mind, inspired by my favourite handknit rabbit.