Setting objectives

Looking at the babies of my friends, it's definitely clear that all of them develop at their own rates - some crawl early, some babble words, and one annoying child at the baby music class we go to was not only walking at 7 months, but could follow instructions to go and get herself an egg-shaped shaker and bring it back.  Show-off over-achiever.  Every time I see her, I'm surprised she hasn't yet got a job as an investment banker or corporate lawyer.

So, according to the great wisdom that is the Internet, at nine months old, the baby should be doing the following:

Gains weight at a slower rate - about 15 grams per day

Because I have nothing better to do than weigh the baby on a daily basis.  For fuck's sake.


Bowel and bladder become more regular

If by "more regular" you mean violent explosions requiring a complete change of clothes, yes, they're as regular as clockwork; i.e. whenever I've just put her in a special outfit and we're just about to leave the house.


Puts hands forward when the head is pointed to the ground to protect self from falling

Don't try this while Social Services are watching.


Is able to crawl

Nope.  But she can shuffle on her tummy like a sea slug.  Usually towards my shoes.  Before you suggest this is some type of inbuilt girly nascent shoe fetish, I would like to point out that said shoes are manky old Nike trainers, and the only reason she's shuffling towards them is to suck the laces.  So if that is her fetish, well, at least it's not a cliché.


Throws or shakes objects

Oh yes.  In fact, her favourite thing to throw is food.  Not any old piece of bread or bit of banana though.  Basically the distance she'll throw it is directly proportionally to the length of time I've spent preparing it.  Hence: rice cake straight out of the packet - not thrown.  Lovingly-prepared organic no-sugar carrot and banana muffins - 3 metres.  Potential future career as a shot-putter.


Understands the meaning of 'no'

Not sure on this one.  She recognises it.  Because it's what Mummy says whenever the little viper savages my nipples with one of her four teeth.  I hesitate to say she understands the meaning of it, because whenever I say it, she looks at me and laughs.  So she either doesn't understand, or is a sadist.  It's hard to know.  Though she also laughs when she hits me over the head with the Sky remote, so perhaps I should be leaning towards the latter.

I had a really lovely moment last week where I thought she was trying to kiss me.  I held her close in a cuddle... and she took the opportunity to clamp down on my neck.

She does, however, understand the meaning of the word "cat".  I can ask her where the cat is, and her little neck snaps round to try and spot Monty Cat.  She loves Monty Cat.  She wants nothing more than to bury her face in the cat's fur (and probably give him a good bite whilst she's there).  Monty Cat is not convinced about her.  He likes (very much) the fact that she throws food, but would generally prefer to keep out of her sticky little grasp.

All in all, she's doing OK.  I think we'll keep her for now.

Inventive parenting

Every so often as a parent, the fog of tiredness briefly lifts and the sunshine of genius shines through as your sleep-deprived brain suddenly spews out an idea of sheer brilliance that will change parenting as we know it forever.

Unfortunately, because at that particular moment (and at most particular moments) you happen to be up to your elbows in another human being's faecal matter / vomit / your own tit juice, it's not always that convenient to grab a pen and write it down.  And because you're so sleep deprived, and generally busy disposing of faecal matter / vomit / tit juice, the world moves on and you forget it.

Hence I strongly believe there are literally thousands of brilliant inventions thought up by women in the early hours of the morning, whilst being milked by their offspring.  I have thought of at least twenty, approximately eighteen of which were forgotten immediately.  Some of them were immensely practical and could be put into production tomorrow.  Some relied on technology that has not yet been invented.  Here are those I could remember.

1.  Did you always vow you would never be one of those parents who sniffs your child's bum to see if they need changing?  Me too.  Did you then realise that short of trying the "golden finger" in the nappy, there's actually no other way to know?  Basically you are so used to the smell of poo, that you now need it approximately 3cm from your nose to sense it.  You do this without shame in restaurants, at friends' houses and whilst you're eating your dinner.  Don't worry!  I have a solution!  INVENTION: A handy text message to let you know when it's time to crack open the wet wipes.  Or a Tweet, or an email.  I'm not picky.  Admittedly I have no idea how this would actually work, technologically speaking, but wouldn't it be brilliant?  Come on, scientists, pull your (golden) finger out.


2.  Babygros.  Try doing them up on the right poppers at 3 in the morning, when you've had no sleep since last August.  Feel the frustration of having one popper left over.  And having to un-pop and start all over again.  And then doing it wrong again.  And again.  All the time your offspring screams and wiggles like an octopus stuck in a lampshade.  This invention is immensely easy to do.  INVENTION: Colour-coded poppers.  Each babygro has three different coloured poppers (i.e. red, green, blue, red, green, blue, repeat as necessary) which have a correspondingly-coloured bit to pop it in to.  Think of the video / audio colour-coded ports and leads on the back of a PC.  Easy.  Do it.


3.  As I can't remember any others (which were of course, all as brilliant as the two above)... INVENTION: Nappy notepad.  Each nappy comes with a space on the back to scrawl down your brilliant ideas whilst you're taking care of the baby's needs.  The downside is that in the morning, your notes will undoubtedly read, "Cheese - why underneath?  Maybe umbrella."  And you will have no idea at all what it means.  But you can still collect them all and perhaps turn them into some sort of avant-garde free verse.

I am happy to accept royalties for any or all of these ideas when they are put into production.  Thank you.

Ladies who lunch

So it's been a good month.  And a good month since I last Plogged.  The thing about having a baby is you're constantly kept on your toes.  As soon as you become competent at - say - breastfeeding, the baby's sleeping goes to shit.  As soon as you sort out the sleeping, the nappies start leaking everywhere.  As soon as you've got the nappies under control, the sleeping is shit again.

But having said that, generally, without wishing to tempt fate too much, I think we're winning.  I've even started something of a social life again.  When I say social life, I mean inviting select people over for lunch.  And when I say lunch, I mean something I can put from a salad bag onto a plate and expect hearty congratulations for.

Still, that's much better than the early days of being pinned to a sofa by a sleepy bundle of milk and poo.

This week, my friend Teresa came over for lunch.  Teresa has asked to be in the Plog several times and I have never yet indulged her.  I like to be spiteful.  But we had such a nice afternoon together that I feel I ought to Plog a little.

Teresa was my line manager many moons ago.  My job involved editing and proof-reading an industry magazine, and Teresa and I bonded over compound adjectival hyphenation, and whether or not to use an Oxford comma.  (See what I did there?)  Lynne Truss' Eats Shoots and Leaves remained our go-to guide to arbitrate any outstanding grammatical disputes.

It was a great team to work in; I remember laughing a lot.  One of my favourite parts of the job was producing regional newsletters for various areas of the country.  Each week Teresa and I would deliver project updates on each newsletter, using a suitably regional accent.  I pretty much perfected my Liverpool accent whilst working on the North West newsletter, and "Eeeh, blood and sand" became the preferred oath of choice after working with a tricky stakeholder in the North East.

I might reinstate it actually.  Blood and sand!  The baby's woken up.  Blood and sand!  (Make sure to get a good flat "oud" sound on "blood").

That is all.  Leave me alone.

Clothing allowance

I've been getting increasingly angry at little things recently.  Partly because I'm beginning to move out of the fog of, "Oh Jesus Christ, I've got a baby" and am actually able to look at other things in the world.  Partly, I think, I get angry at the little things because these days, that's what my life is made of.  So whilst in the past I might have to deal with a knob-badger at work, nowadays my ire is reserved for Postman Pat or - in this case a report on the BBC.

The article itself is very interesting, and is here if you wish to read it.  Essentially it's about how difficult it is to get by on benefits.  The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (known for work on poverty) has done a survey, and listed the necessary clothes every man and woman needs to own as a bare minimum.  The below is taken directly from the article.  Italics are mine.

"items its panel considered necessary for the average man were 10 pairs of boxer shorts, 10 pairs of socks, five pairs of jeans, two pairs of trousers, two suits, 26 shirts of various types, two pairs of smart shoes and two pairs of trainers.

"For women, the list includes 10 pairs of knickers, three bras, four pairs of tights, 10 T-shirts, two jumpers, two pairs of jeans, four pairs of trousers, four skirts, two formal dresses, two summer dresses, and two pairs of heels, one of flats and one of trainers."

Two things rub me up the wrong way here.  Firstly, why do men get socks and women don't?  What the hell are we supposed to wear with our trainers?  Oh, thank you Male Rulers for allowing us trainers, by the way.  I should probably thank you for allowing us trousers while we're at it.  Seriously?  No socks for women?

The main thing that irritates me though, is whilst a woman has to get by wearing four pairs of trousers (without socks) and some t-shirts, men get 26 shirts.  TWENTY-SIX!  And women get a few t-shirts and a couple of jumpers?  No shirts for women?  Or blouses?  Or even tops?  Just t-shirts and two jumpers.  Well, I'm going to be honest, I'm not going to manage to get a job very easily turning up for interview in my summer dress and / or t-shirt, and no socks.  No wonder these people are in poverty!

And is it me, or is 26 shirts actually a bit excessive?  Let's assume said man needs shirts for work (because I think we've seen it's already implied that the little lady stays at home in one of her two pairs of heels and cooks dinner).  There are five days in a week.  I reckon the absolute most work shirts a man is going to need is seven.  Ten at a push.  And OK, let's say a choice of five casual shirts for the weekend.  Which I think is generous, seeing as we're talking about poverty here.  That's a generous total of 15 shirts.  Where on earth did 26 come from?  I don't think TheBloke (TM) and I have that many shirts between us.  Plus most of ours are covered in baby vom.

Clearly we are a striking example of poverty.  Please send cash.  Usual address.

Post-traumatic stress

DO NOT get me started about the latest episode of Postman Pat.

Yes, I know I've already done one post entirely dedicated to our friend at the Royal Mail, but really he's taking the biscuit this time.

Some kindly soul at Greendale Station commissioned quite an expensive-looking stained glass window for the platform.  A "famous artist" duly produced something quite modern called "Study in Motion" or something similar.  Pat (and Ben, whom I'm going off big-time, I can tell you), clearly thought it was arty wank.

So, long story short, Pat takes the stained glass window to the station, where Ajay (the station master) and he try and fit it.  Hang on a second.  Hang on.  Pat is now trying to install a stained glass window?  Literally two days after the church bell fiasco?  Have you ever, ever ordered flatpack furniture and had the courier offer to put it together for you?  No.  Let alone a fucking WINDOW.  Leave it alone, Pat, it's NOT YOUR JOB.  Besides which, I always thought "Ajay" was pronounced "Ay-jay", but according to Pat, it's "Ad-jay".  I'm not sure, but I think this could be Pat's covert racism coming out.  "Oh, I can't pronounce your funny name, so I'm just going to say it the way that sounds right to me."

Anyway, someone's fucked up because the window doesn't fit and it's too heavy for Pat and Ajay to lift by themselves.  The right response from Pat at this time would be, "Fuck it, I've delivered your sodding window and I've done my job."  And he and Jess the cat would leave the window with Ajay, after making him sign on one of those ridiculous pads with the plastic pencil, and go home for a cup of tea and a wank.

But no, not meddling Pat.  He knows someone who knows someone.  In this case, it's poor Ted again, who is asked to cut the window to size.  Wait a minute.  Someone (not Pat) has paid an artist to produce this, and Pat has decided unilaterally to let the local odd-job man loose on it with a bolt-cutter.  Surprise, surprise, Ted fucks it up and cracks the window.  Not before - I hasten to add - Pat breaks out the helicopter again to try and install it - crack and all - into the platform window.

At this point, Pat - again on whose authority I don't know - decides that it would be nicer to use the local school's crappy picture of a village than the artist's commissioned piece.  Cockweasel.  Luckily, it happens to be exactly the right size!  What a coincidence! So Ted (who's a bit shit but I think Pat is secretly a bit in love with him) makes some special glass and puts up the children's collage instead of a window.

No-one mentions who paid for the window in the first place, or the artist's disappointment at having their Study in Motion replaced by some cock-twaddle from 10 year-olds entitled "Our Village".  Cunts.

Pat-chy

In the last couple of weeks or so, the baby has become much more aware of the television.  Previously I might have it on in the background, half-watching repeats of ER or the news.  Not repeats of the news.  That would be pointless.  You know what I mean.  But recently, the baby has definitely been noticing and responding more to the television.  Which means, during the 30 minutes each day I'm clearing the kitchen or putting laundry on, I do occasionally plonk her in front of CBeebies.

And, my, haven't things changed since my day?  I'm not even going to write about In The Night Garden, her favourite, at the moment, as it's so intense, I think it will take at least one whole post.  There are all sorts of CGI programmes, including a really disturbing thing called dirtgirlworld which I think is to do with caterpillars or some shit.  Basically nine out of 10 children's programmes are to do with ecology, gardening, farming, that sort of thing.  The sort of stuff that's really useful growing up in the suburbs of London.

So I was delighted to see a relic from my childhood has still made it to television.  Good old Postman Pat is still going strong.  And he's even got a new series called Postman Pat - Special Delivery Service.  As far as I can tell, this is exactly the same as regular Postman Pat, except a quite good looking guy called Ben (is it wrong to fancy a stop-motion model?) phones Pat on his mobile (I know!), tells him it's special delivery, and Pat puts on a badge.

But whilst I may remember Pat fondly from my youth, there have been some significant changes in his life, and not just the acquisition of a mobile phone.

Firstly, Pat is married!  The line in the song, "Pat thinks he's a really happy man" always bothered me.  It was the "thinks", I reckon.  As if he wasn't a really happy man, but he's convinced himself he is.  Still, now he has a wife, and a child, so has clearly got some.  Which might go some way to increase his happiness.  He also still has Jess the cat.  This seems somewhat unlikely as his child is at least 10 and even if Jess was a kitten in 1981, she'd be 32 by now.  Which is middle-aged in human years.  I suspect there may have been more than one "Jess", after the first Jess "went to live on a farm".  Or indeed, as the rhyme from my childhood went, "Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat ran over his cat".

Secondly, Pat only flies a fucking HELICOPTER.  In addition to his Range Rover, regular van, forklift truck and motorbike.  Pat must have spent the last thirty years taking tests and applying for licences.  More worrying is that Jess sits at the front of the helicopter wearing goggles.  I don't think this is safe.

Thirdly, Greendale remains the centre for localised natural disasters.  As far as I can tell, it's the only place in the world that regularly suffers from hurricanes, flooding, severe snow storms and OH MY GOD, Mrs Goggins is still alive.

Fourthly, I'm not sure Pat is using his new responsibilities correctly.  Case in point; the church needed a new bell delivering.  The Hindu family in Greendale seemed disproportionately politically-correctly excited about this.  A tree blew down (hurricane) and blocked Pat's special delivery from getting there.  Good old Ted used his farm vehicle to help Pat out (why Pat didn't take the aforementioned Range Rover in the first place, I don't know).

So the bell gets to the church safely and on time (no thanks to Pat and his piss-poor planning), but - SHOCK - the crane can't get there because of the tree that's blocking the road.  Did the vicar really think it would be a good idea to actually install the bell at the opening ceremony?  Surely that could have been taken care of ahead of time.  Who wants to watch a bell being installed?  No-one.  Not even the politically-correct Hindus.

Anyway, Pat to the rescue again, and Ted takes him back to HQ where he picks up the helicopter (yes the HELICOPTER) and uses it to fit the church bell.  Firstly, is Pat trained in campanology (it wouldn't surprise me with all the other shit he's been up to recently)?  But more importantly, a helicopter, Pat?  Really?  Ignoring the fact that you're not getting paid for this little excursion and each helicopter flight costs a few hundred pounds (who's going to pay for that, Pat?  The taxpayer?), the main reason the crane couldn't get there was the hurricane.  Do you remember the hurricane, Pat?  It happened three minutes ago.  And now you're flying a helicopter dangerously close to a building.  This could be Greendale's 9/11.

Theme tune's still catchy though.  Om pom pom, Om pom pom etc. etc.

Resolution revolution

As a pre-parent, there are numerous things you decide you will or won't do once you've got the actual sprog.

These include:

Planned

- Weekly visits to the library, where ideally a kind-faced librarian will read stories engagingly to your offspring.

Actual

- Went to the library once; waited 40 minutes for a stressed librarian to tell me that she was just too busy to register the baby for a library card.  Pointed us towards children's library.  Hatchet-faced children's librarian didn't speak any English.  Baby did a massive stinky poo as we went past Biographies.  Asked about story time, and was told that only "at risk" children referred by Social Services were welcome to hear about just how hungry that caterpillar was.


Planned

- Cooking together in the kitchen to prepare a sumptuous feast for the whole family.

Actual

- Baby can't actually contribute to cooking process.  This is because she is stubborn.  And six months old.  Baby bangs wooden spoon up and down on highchair and does a massive stinky poo whilst I swear at the rice which is now sticking blackly to the bottom of the pan.  We order Dominos.  Again.


Planned

- No dummies.  Baby will learn to self-sooth.

Actual

- Baby given dummy on day two at the hospital.  Coincidentally the same day as the drugs which had made her sleepy started to wear off.  To give us some credit, we did take it away again.  Four months later.


Planned

- No thumb-sucking.

Actual

- Extreme gratitude that baby has started thumb-sucking; it's the only thing that stops her crying now that we've taken the dummy away.


Planned

- Quality time interaction for every moment she is awake.

Actual

- Three minutes of quality time nursery rhymes before she starts screaming.  And does a massive stinky poo.


Planned

- No television.  Or, perhaps some carefully selected documentaries about environmental impact on tribes in South America.

Actual

- Thank God for CBeebies.  More to follow.

Doctoring the truth

So, we're beginning to wean the baby.  This means introducing solid foods.  Because I am essentially lazy, we decided to do something called Baby-Led Weaning.  Some consider this a hippy approach as the idea is you let the baby decide when to wean, you don't purée anything and the baby eats what you eat (watching, of course, salt content and / or omitting the glass of vodka from their diet.  Depending on how they're sleeping).

We didn't make a conscious decision, per se, to go down this route, but after being bored stupid of her grizzling at yet another restaurant in South Africa, I handed her a piece of (gasp) white toast to shut her up, for her to play with.  I was a bit surprised when she actually ate it.  Once this had happened, there seemed little point in going back to purée.

So far she has managed bananas, pears, apples, toast (with and without Philadelphia), cheese, roast potatoes, green beans, grapes, carrots, pasta bolognese chicken, prawns and - brilliantly - spicy jambalaya.

Every so often I have a fit of, "Bollocks, I bet I've done something stupid," and drive myself mental Googling, "safe for 6 month old to have grapes?"

Today I was searching for a recipe to make some breadsticks and stumbled across this website.

The website, in careful bold lettering instructs you: REMEMBER: Always consult your child's doctor before introducing new foods.

Really?  Really?

"Hello, doctor's surgery, how can I help you?"  (This would never happen.  The receptionists are so rude, they're more likely to swear at me and "accidentally" cut me off than ask how they can help.)

"Hi, I'd like to make an appointment for as soon as possible please.  My daughter would like to try some banana and I need to know if that's OK.  Oh, also, could you make an appointment for the day after, because I was planning mashed potato?  And the day after that, as we're going to have some pasta."

Does anyone actually do this?  And how long before their doctor blacklists them?

Flight of fancy

I think I'm just going to have to give into it.  I tried - desperately tried - to be a blogger who didn't talk exclusively about their baby.  Who still managed to have other facets to their life and to talk about them engagingly.  Unfortunately I don't.  Well, obviously I do.  I have friends and I do get the occasional moment to myself - but the meetings with friends tend to be centred around the baby, and the moments to myself tend to be an opportunity to read up on Baby-Led Weaning, or to Google ridiculous questions like, "Why do my baby's legs make a clicking noise?"

So, here I am, officially giving up.  Not blogging - though I doubt I'll ever return to my every-couple-of-days blogging.  But giving up trying to talk about anything other than my life as a mother.

So... recently we went to visit TheBloke(TM)'s family in South Africa.  This was very exciting, as it was the baby's first opportunity to meet her Granny and aunts, uncles and cousin.

"Don't worry," everyone told me.  "You've booked a night flight.  Babies go straight to sleep on flights."

These people are now known as Big Fat Liars.

Here is roughly what our schedule looked like.

5.30  p.m. Arrive at airport bang on time, unpack more stuff from car than I had when I left home for the first time.

6.00 p.m. Check in.  Go through security and take 90% of stuff out of our carefully-packed hand luggage (iPad, phones, Kindles) and take baby out of buggy.  Desperately try and cram everything back in.  It won't go.  Consider sacrificing a) baby or b) beloved Toby Bear.

7.00  p.m. Stick to our routine - a feed for the baby, some chill out time and a meal.  Baby is massively overstimulated by the airport and the waitresses make so much of a fuss of her, there is no chance of her sleeping before - say - next Tuesday.

9.00  p.m. Two minutes away from boarding.  The airline announces that families with young children may board. Baby takes this opportunity to do a massive stinky poo.  Try to change baby in departure lounge.  There are no bins.  Hand dirty nappy to airport staff and ask them to dispose of it.

9.30  p.m. Take-off.  I feed the baby to stop her little ears from hurting.  She falls asleep on me.  Little do I know that these five minutes of sleep are the only five minutes she will take for THE REST OF ETERNITY.

10.00  p.m. Air stewards helpfully bring out bassinet for the baby.  It is at the perfect height that a) TheBloke (TM) and I cannot see into it whilst we're seated and b) every passer-by who goes to the toilet looks in and coos at her.  Meaning she continues to fail to sleep.  She cries a lot.  I have become the person I don't want to sit next to on the plane.

10.30 p.m.-9 a.m.  Baby cries intermittently.  Then does a massive poo.  Again.  Finally she falls asleep.  I notice her arms are really puffy and panic a little bit.  We shove some Calpol down her little fat neck, with the belief that trying something is better than nothing.  Her wrists really are worryingly fat.

9 a.m.  Land at Johannesburg.  Try to find a) an internet connect to Google "baby swollen fat arms air travel" and b) change her outfit as the last poo was a leaky one.  No joy on the internet.  And no joy really with leaky poo.  It's hard to find joy in a leaky poo.

12 noon  Having failed to find an internet connection, we depart for Port Elizabeth.  Baby cries.  Again.

3 p.m.  Come in to land at Port Elizabeth.  I feed the baby to help her little ears.  I am exhausted, and fall asleep for the first time in about 36 hours.  Baby also falls asleep.  TheBloke (TM) wakes me to tell me that I've been asleep for the last fifteen minutes with my mouth wide open and one tit out.  People are now stopping on the way to the bathroom and not looking at the baby.

3.30 p.m.  We arrive.  And it's all worth it.  But please, please someone invent the teleport before our next visit.

4.30 p.m.  Have an internet connection and access to old photos.  Notice baby's wrists have always been ridiculously fat.  Pass out.

I'm a mug

As I believe it has been established on the Plog before, Mrs Nunn is quite, quite mad.  This insanity extends to believing in horoscopes.  I think she partially does this just to wind me up; as a rational human being, I refuse to believe in anything that can't be proved.  Mrs Nunn insists it can be proved.  But Mrs Nunn is - as I believe I mentioned already - quite, quite mad.

Our baby is five months old today.  Happy birthday, baby.  Whenever I mention something she's done (woken up every half hour through the night, for example), Mrs Nunn will delight in saying something like, "Well, that's because she's a Virgo."  No.  It's not because she's a Virgo.  It's because she's a sodding baby.

Anyway - for a joke (I hope) Mrs Nunn bought me a mug for Christmas with typical characteristics of Librans (my star sign) emblazoned on the side.

It brought to mind an experiment Derren Brown did a few years ago where he told participants he was giving them a personalised horoscope, wrote the same old guff for all twenty of them, and all twenty of them couldn't believe how accurate it was.  It's quite easy generally to make sweeping statements that most of the population can relate to.  From memory, it was stuff like, "you'd like to write a novel", "you put a brave face on things, but feel things more deeply than you let on" and similar gobshite.  Stuff most of us believe about ourselves on some level.

Bearing this in mind, and how easy it should be to appeal to the general populous, the Libran mug Mrs Nunn purchased for me somehow manages to capture the absolute opposite of my character.  Which is quite a feat.

According to the mug I am:

• Charming (am I bollocks)
• Diplomatic (the very evidence of this blog suggests otherwise)
• Intelligent (which I just typed "ubyelligent" because I had fingers over the wrong keys)
• Thoughtful (uhuh)
• Sociable (my ideal evening is being in the bath with a book, not having to talk to anyone at all ever)
• Sentimental (nope)
• Flirty (fuck off)
• Optimistic (I'd like to be, but I don't think it would work out)

So, good work, mug company.  Or horoscope company.  Or more likely, some overworked temp called Lizzie typing out one load of shit after another.

A bit like me.  Perhaps she's a Libran too.

House of cards

Maths has never been my strong suit.  Since leaving school, I've not yet found a situation where I've needed to calculate the third side of a right-angled triangle, or the circumference of a circle, much less use simultaneous quadratic equations to... well, God knows what actually.  Simultaneous quadratic equations may actually be the world's least useful things.

Apart from Thames Water customer services, obviously.

In Real Life, I have probably only ever used the following maths:

• Addition
• Subtraction
• Percentages

Most, if not all of which was taught prior to age 11.  So there we go.  Secondary school maths completely irrelevant.

Anyway, because we lead exciting and glamorous lives, one of TheBloke (TM)'s and my favourite pastimes is to play simultaneous games of Freecell.

For those of you who don't know what Freecell is... well never mind.  It's basically a kind of card game.  A bit like Patience.

The version we use allows you to input a game number between 1 and 1,000,000.  If we both enter the same number, we can effectively play against each other, and see who finishes first.  Not that I am competitive.

If you don't enter a number, the computer will randomly generate a game for you.

Earlier this week, TheBloke (TM) shouted out the number of the game his computer had randomly generated for him, and I went to select my game... only to notice that my computer had by itself selected the exact same game!

Freaky.  Time to play the lottery?

Anyway, maths bods - help me out.  My failure to pay attention in class in maths means I can't quite work out the statistics.  What are the chances of us getting the exact same game?

Is it one in a million (i.e. it's exactly as likely I will get - for example - game 2233 as it is that TheBloke (TM) does), or is it one in a million to the power of a million?

Either way, I think this all goes to prove that my life is empty.  Send chocolate.

Benefiting the system

For the first time really in my life, I feel I'm actually getting some benefit from the income tax I've been paying for years.  Prior to this year, you could put my income tax use across my entire lifetime down to:

• A primary school education
• Library use
• Occasional doctors and dentists appointments

Yet suddenly, having a baby, I'm getting loads of stuff for free - the birth (including about 10 epidural shots at £250 a time), free prescriptions and brilliantly our local council runs some fantastic free classes for babies, including breastfeeding support, baby massage, and an excellent music class.  (Though I guess council stuff is probably paid for by council tax rather than income tax, but you get what I mean.)

Up until having a baby, I really resented how over a third of my salary would disappear - seemingly for nothing each month.  And I can still understand how galling it is for those who continually pay into the system without getting much back from it.

Being home a lot of the time with a breastfeeding baby gives me the opportunity to watch a lot of shit TV.  And of course, the shit adverts that come with it.  Mostly they're debt / accident related, but there are also a lot of charity appeals.  "£2 per month could provide clean water for a village / £5 per month could stop a puppy going blind" and so on.  Some of them even let you sponsor an individual who will write you regular letters to keep you informed of their progress.

This gave me a genius idea.  Instead of us all paying money into a massive pot, along with its associated wastefulness and administrative costs, and handing out unemployment and family benefits each month, instead each higher rate or regular tax payer should be allocated a Chav Scum family.  Of course we won't call them Chav Scum; we'll use a politically correct term.

Instead of the money going into a massive pot and handed out as benefits, you will have a direct relationship with your Chav Scum (working title) family.  They will have to write to you and let you know what they've spent their money on this week, and whether little Chardonnay's child benefit was spent on Bacon Frazzles and BNP membership or a Baby Einstein DVD. 

Even better, the tax payer could be in charge of ordering their Chav Scum (working title) recipients' groceries from Tesco.  So, no cigarettes or bottles of WKD, but some organic vegetables and brown rice.  And the recipients would have to write monthly to say thank you, ideally with some photos of them enjoying the spoils.

"Wow, Laura," you might say.  "That's a bit right wing.  What about you?  The taxpayer probably spent a good £10k on your pregnancy and labour, let alone your maternity leave and child services."  Fair point.  I would be happy to share photos of my offspring and our activities with a donor who was paying several hundred pounds (or more) a month to keep us in Super Dry nappies.

I really think this could work.  Or at the very least, drive more people back to work.

Nursery Nonsense: part two

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town
Upstairs and downstairs, in his nightgown.
Tapping at the windows, crying through the lock
Are all the children in their beds, it's past eight o'clock?

Great.  A nursery rhyme about the local paedophile.  Potentially one with OCD who seems to care about the neighbours' children's bedtimes.  An OCD paedophile rhyme.  Who might also be a flasher.  Fantastic.

Happy New Year.

Nursery Nonsense: part one

OK, I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but the pickings are just too rich.  Here we go - nursery rhymes - what the fuck?

I find myself mindlessly singing them to the baby, out of a sense that children should know nursery rhymes, and one I started with was Hey Diddle Diddle.

To refresh the memories of anyone who hasn't recently had a child:

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle.
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such fun
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Now the baby is fourteen weeks old.  She knows practically nothing.  She can't tie her shoelaces, hasn't got a job, and hasn't even realised that the baby in the mirror is her.  Silly baby.  It's not her fault, of course, and it's our job as parents to fill her empty little head full of useful knowledge.  How to read a bus timetable.  How to calculate compound interest.  Why it's important that you follow the Shakespearean rhyme scheme when writing your own sonnets.  The important things in life.

Bearing this in mind, you would think that nursery rhymes would lend themselves to helping children understand the world around them, to cope with this strange and unfamiliar world.  But no.  What we learn from the above is:

- Cats can play the violin.  Now the baby may actually have an idea of what a cat is.  Because of Monty Cat.  But he doesn't play the violin.  Although I have frequently threatened to turn him into violin strings on several occasions.

- Cows can jump.  She has no concept of what a cow is.  But the one thing she will be sure of when she meets one is that they can jump.  And also that the moon is close enough for a cow to jump over.  Astro Cow.

- Dogs have a sense of humour - and a slightly odd one at that.  They find cats playing the violin and cows jumping over the moon bloody hilarious.  Oh, also, she has no concept of what a dog is.  Other than the fact that they laugh.

- Dishes and spoons - this is probably the most disturbing.  Not so much the - some would say - unnatural match (shouldn't a spoon run away with another spoon?  Or does that make me homophobic?  Or just wanting species-specific relations?  It's a complicated moral tangle); it's more the fact that the baby sees dishes and spoons every day.  And we put them in the dishwasher.  This must seem to her like abject cruelty.  Essentially the plot to Romeo and Juliet is happening every day in front of her little baby eyes, as the two lovers are systematically drowned by Mummy and Daddy.  Oh, also she's learned that crockery can elope.

All useful things for her later life, I'm sure you'll agree.  Perhaps I'll stick to singing her bus timetables in the future.

Baby steps

So it's been forever since I've Plogged.  I have been racking my brains for a suitable subject, but the sad truth is that once you have a baby, there is nothing else to talk about.  This is because every waking moment and quite a lot of the sleeping ones are spent looking after a baby.  It doesn't leave much time for experiencing non-baby things.  So whilst I could Plog loquaciously about breastfeeding cafes, nursery rhymes, various nappy brands (and nappy contents), I do try to remember that my core readership probably doesn't give a stuff about any of that.  So I should try and find a separate topic.  Something not related to babies.  And hence lies the problem.  Because, as referenced previously, there is currently very little in my life which isn't related to the baby.

So forgive me, if you will, for sharing this slightly baby-related Plog.  Our baby does not like to sit down.  She likes to be on the move.  This would be great if she was actually able to do any of this stuff for herself.  Sadly, we, her willing servants seem to need to step in.  Her favourite way of being ported around the house is with this baby carrier.

Now, whilst I look relatively confident here, what with the baby, the carrier and all, those of you who know me well or have followed the Plog for a while, will know my total inability to follow any kind of three-dimensional instruction or drawing.  So whilst TheBloke (TM), can heft this thing onto his shoulders and plug the baby in in about three seconds, it takes me about half an hour to work out how to put it on, and another fifteen minutes to be sure the baby isn't in upside down.

So I spend a lot of time referring to the instructions.  And often, as I'm holding the item upside down, the instruction label is also upside down.

And this - dear Ploggers - is when I realised that the baby carrier instructions are essentially pornographic.

They appear to be instructions for putting a condom on.  Too little, too late.

Losing the plot

For many years, I've wanted to write a book.  Ever since I was a teenager, I've fancied myself as something of a writer... albeit I'm too lazy to actually follow through with any type of plot or long term endeavour.  There's always an excuse - a busy day job, moving house, upcoming holiday, baby.  There's always something.

I did naively hope that maternity leave would provide me with the space and time to undertake some sort of writing endeavour.  In actuality, even the simplest blog post means I have to type like this.


Having said that though, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm sitting on a bestseller, without the need for all that sticky, tricky plot, character development and actual writing malarkey.

Baby books.  This is definitely the way forward.  Keen to foster in our child my love of literature, I went out and bought her the most highly recommended baby book for her age group.  It's called Pets and has four and a half stars out of five on Amazon. It cost about £4.00, so a bit cheaper than most adult books, but still, if I sold several million of them at this price, I reckon I'd still do OK.

So, why do I think I could write one of these books?  Well, here is every page of Pets.  SPOILER ALERT!

So, in case you needed a recap, that was: front cover (mirror), Dog, Rabbit, Cat, the end.  Seriously?  Seriously?  Even if you were using this book to teach animal noises, the author kind of throws you a curve ball there with Rabbit.  What a load of old tosh.

And how easy to write yourself?  So, here is my new children's book.  It's called Pets 2 and is twice as long as the original.

Guinea Pig.  Goldfish.  Hamster.  Gerbil.  Pony.  Mouse.  (Insert crap drawings and a few spots and stripes).

Piece of piss.  Can I get an advance please, Mr Publisher?  I reckon we can sell it for at least £8 as it's so much longer than the original.

Box clever

I don't like to turn up to people's houses empty-handed, and, due to visit a friend, I had duly gone out and bought a little something in the shape of a box of Thorntons chocolates.

Now, this sounds a small thing - and indeed it was - but it involved packaging a baby into a buggy, braving a gale-force storm (OK, a bit of wind and drizzle, and actually I took the car) and manoeuvring said buggy round the aisles of a shop.  The chocolates were purchased, and it was ticked off of my list of things to do.

Fast forward two hours.  I am upstairs with the baby, playing, "Who's that in the mirror?  It's you in the mirror!  And Mummy in the mirror!"  (Literally minutes of fun; if anyone is interested in making a motion picture, I'd be willing to sell the rights.)  I don't hear TheBloke (TM) come home from work.  That is until he shouts up the stairs, "Daddy's home!"

"Thank fuck," I think.  For the baby has just filled her nappy, and this way I can pretend it's on his watch.

We go downstairs.  I enter the kitchen.  TheBloke (TM) has opened the aforementioned box of chocolates, and is chomping his way through the most delicious ones.

"Nooo!" I say.  "They're a present!  For a friend!"

"It's not my fault!" TheBloke (TM) said, conviction strong in his voice.  "You left me unsupervised.  Around chocolates.  It's your fault.  You should apologise.  What did you expect me to do?  Not eat the chocolates?"

He graciously accepted my apology.

Cry for help

It's the middle of the afternoon.  I've no idea what I've done wrong, but it's something, and it's something bad, because I'm being screamed at.  No amount of apologising and pacifying works.  I am screamed at repeatedly.  Then the hair pulling starts.  Fistfuls of my hair are torn at, and the screaming continues.

Finally it quietens down.  We have a nice moment.  We forgive each other.  But I walk around on eggshells, terrified I'm going to do something again to start the violence.  I needn't bother.  It makes no difference.  I've caused the anger again.  The screaming starts.  Right up close, right in my face.  No hair pulling this time, but sharp nails are raked down my face.  I bleed.  It's my own fault, I tell myself, I caused this.  I am punched in the tits.

I say the right things, forgive, pretend that it's OK and it won't happen again.  It was just a bad moment.  We're over the worst.

Then she simultaneously vomits on me and fills her nappy.

I am in an abusive relationship with my baby.

But because she's quite cute, I keep forgiving her.  And I'll get my own back when I'm an OAP and need my nappy changing.

Santa sacked

A dilemma...

As atheists, we have no intention of telling our daughter there is a God, watching her all day, every day and judging her behaviour to be black or white, bad or good.  She won't be Christened, and whilst we hope to raise her to be tolerant of other people's cultures, I would also like to encourage in her a scepticism and a reliance on experience, on science, on facts, on provable hypotheses.

How does Santa fit into this?

On one hand, it seems harmless enough - a way of injecting magic into Christmas.  I was told of Santa as a child - and whilst by the time I was 5 or 6, I think I'd stopped believing - I don't think it did me any long-term harm.  Even after I'd ceased to truly believe, I still enjoyed putting out a mince pie and whiskey for Santa, and some milk for Rudolph, and seeing how they'd disappeared in the morning.

On the other hand - it sounds fairly damaging.  "An obese man you've never met before will come into your bedroom.  We've given him some whiskey so he might be drunk.  You'll be asleep, so you won't see him... probably.  It doesn't matter that we don't have a chimney.  He can get into any house."  I remember my two year-old brother being terrified of Santa, and healthily so.

And the things we're asking children to believe; that he's able to visit every house in the world in one night, that he flies, that he makes the presents with his elves - how does this tally with the scientific scepticism that we'd like to instil in our child?  Doesn't Santa get sick of mince pies in every single house?  Why does he need so many mince pies?  When does he go to the toilet?  How does Rudolph get in to drink his milk / eat his carrot (delete as per your family tradition)?  How is this present from Grandma, if Santa's elves make the presents and Santa delivers them?  Isn't that kind of adding an unnecessary step into the process?

Assuming Santa's magic means he can "freeze frame" the night to deliver all of the presents (which miraculously fit all in one sleigh), isn't it mind-numbingly tedious for him to visit every house in the world leaving presents over, and over?  It's certain this this repetitive action (not to mention the exclusive diet of mince pies and whiskey) would send someone insane.  Let alone having to do it every year.

It's not just about lying to the child (I'm sure we'll lie to her hundreds of times over the next 18 years: "Broccoli is yummy", "Crusts make your hair curly", "Monty Cat went to live on a farm"), but about challenging her to think through the logic.

Additionally, the whole myth has Christian overtones I'm not that happy with.  Santa watches over us all and judges whether you get a reward - encouraging children to behave well for a reward, rather than because it's the right thing to do.  He performs miracles.  We don't encourage children to think about whether he really does visit the whole world in one night - what about the non-Christian countries?  What about the time difference?

The final argument I hear for perpetuating the Santa myth is, "It'll spoil it for the other children."  Part of me kind of gets that - it ties in with respecting other people's cultures.  But for me - I'm not sure it's a good enough reason.  We don't believe in God, and there's no way we'd pretend we did in case we "spoiled it for others".

Aged five I remember saying to my primary school teacher, "My mum says there's no such thing as the tooth fairy."  In actual fact, she'd done no such thing.  She had - actually - painstakingly written a letter to me from the Tooth Fairy in teeny tiny handwriting.  But I was still sceptical.  And my scepticism was vindicated when my teacher replied, "Shh, don't spoil it for the other children."

You'll probably be asking, well, why do we celebrate Christmas at all - as atheists, we don't celebrate Eid or Divali or Hanukkah.  For me at least, it's about being with family - an excuse for some time off work to all get together.  I can't put it better than Tim Minchin does.

Does that tradition need to include Santa?  I'm not sure.  Thoughts welcomed!

One step Ford, two steps back

It has been an age since I have Plogged, for which I can only apologise.  I have spent the last six weeks mostly scrubbing poo out of various surfaces and trying to remember the non-rude version of nursery rhymes.  And advising the baby that when Jack mends his head with vinegar and brown paper, that isn't actually the official NHS advice; really he should go to the local walk-in centre or A&E, as he could have a subcranial haematoma  or at the very least, a concussion and might need an MRI scan.

One of the most difficult things to deal with, as any new parent will attest, is the sudden, irrevocable lack of sleep.  Imagine having a hangover.  Then imagine that you go out drinking again the same night.  Repeat.  Infinitely.  Around week three, I caught myself thinking, "Never mind, I'll catch up on sleep at the weekend." No.  There is no catching up.  Not ever, ever again.

So in the fog of this desperation, a shining light presents itself.  Anyone who's been a new parent in the last five years is surely aware of Gina Ford.  She advocates a strict baby-schedule... the payoff of which is apparently that a five-week old baby will (Holy Grail) sleep through the night!  So we try it.

This is how it worked for us.

DAY ONE

7 a.m.

GINA SAYS "Baby should be awake, nappy changed and feeding no later than 7 a.m."

LAURA DOES Crawl out of bed at 7, after two hours' sleep, determined that today will be the day we turn it all around.  Change baby.  Try to feed baby.  Baby is fast asleep.  Try to wake baby by gently stroking the back of her neck.  Try gentle bouncing.  Try more vigorous bouncing.  Try something which is borderline shaking.  Give up.  Go back to sleep.


7.30 a.m.

GINA SAYS "Try to have some cereal, toast and a drink whilst baby has a kick on his playmat."

LAURA DOES Grab a handful of Thorntons chocolates and two sips of water.  Realise baby doesn't have a playmat.  Order playmat on Amazon, feeling guilty for neglecting child.  Stupid baby still asleep.


8.30 a.m.

GINA SAYS "Baby should start to get a bit sleepy by this time.  Check the draw sheet and start winding down."

LAURA DOES Wonder what the hell a draw sheet is.  Mean to Google it, but baby wakes up and starts bawling.  Feed baby.


10 a.m.

GINA SAYS "Baby must be fully awake by now.  Drink a large glass of water."

LAURA DOES Baby has finally stopped screaming post-feed, and is beginning to drift to sleep.  Try to wake her (see earlier methods).  Give up.  Boil kettle for cup of tea.  Never actually get round to making it.


10.30 a.m.

GINA SAYS "Lay baby on his playmat to have a good kick around."

LAURA DOES Continue to try to wake up sleeping baby.  Pull her ears a bit.  She smiles in her sleep.


11.15 a.m.

GINA SAYS "Baby needs to be in bed no later than 11.30 a.m.  Baby should sleep for two and a half hours."

LAURA DOES Baby is now fully awake and needs feeding again.  This is punctuated with screaming, three nappy changes (including a sneaky one where she waits until I've taken the nappy off and then poos in a massive arc, hitting the lovely giraffe decal we have on her bedroom wall.  Gina doesn't mention the best way of getting poos off a wall without ruining a giraffe decal).


2 p.m.

GINA SAYS "Baby must be awake and feeding, regardless of how long they have slept."

LAURA DOES Wonder if it counts if the baby hasn't slept at all, and has been feeding on and off for the last two hours.  Notices Gina advocates another "good kick" on the playmat.  At no point has Gina mentioned holding or cuddling the child.  Begin to wonder if Gina has ever actually seen a baby.


5 p.m.

GINA SAYS "Baby should not sleep after 5 p.m. if you want them to sleep at 7 p.m."

LAURA DOES Baby falls fast asleep.  Cannot be woken.  Try making her dance to Bohemian Rhapsody. This doesn't work, but makes a super-cute Facebook video.


5.45 p.m.

GINA SAYS "Give baby a good kick around without their nappy"

LAURA DOES Not a chance I'm being fooled this time.  Last time ended in scrubbing poo out of the nursery carpet and my jeans.  Baby starts screaming.  Work out how many minutes it is until TheBloke (TM) gets home.  Get halfway through calculation and realise I haven't yet had lunch.  Or that cup of tea.  Also am still wearing pyjamas because Gina didn't tell me I could have a shower, or go to the toilet.  Luckily I don't need to go to the toilet because I haven't yet had a drink.


7 p.m.

GINA SAYS "When baby is drowsy, settle in bed, fully swaddled"

LAURA DOES TheBloke (TM) is home.  Put him in charge of baby.  She hates being swaddled.  Screaming ensues.  Most of it from the baby.  Baby fully awake and wants to play with Daddy.  Laura makes dinner whilst Daddy plays with baby.  Baby falls asleep.


8 p.m.

GINA SAYS "It's important you have a really good meal."

LAURA DOES Open mouth to take first bite.  Baby starts screaming.  This is the case every time we try to have food.  We now only eat meals that can be eaten one-handed, and pass the baby to each other every six mouthfuls.  Baby finally falls into deep sleep.


10 p.m.

GINA SAYS "Turn up the lights fully to wake the baby for a proper feed."

LAURA DOES Turn all the lights on.  Baby remains asleep.  Undress baby, as per Gina's suggestion, to wake her.  Baby remains asleep.  Try to feed baby.  Baby is too asleep to feed.  Try neck stroking, bouncing and borderline shaking.  Baby wakes up and feeds.  Re-dress baby.  Baby now wide awake, wants to play and screams every time we try and put her in her Moses basket.  This continues until midnight when I relent and allow her to fall asleep on my stomach.  At which point she does a massive leaky shit, and we have to change both our outfits again.  Luckily, I'm still in yesterday's pyjamas.

1 a.m., 3.30 a.m., 5 a.m., 6.30 a.m Repeat feeding / shitting / changing scenario.  I run out of clean pyjamas.


DAY TWO

7 a.m

GINA SAYS "Baby should be awake, nappy changed and feeding no later than 7 a.m."

LAURA DOES Baby is miraculously asleep.  Ignore alarm.  Ignore shit on pyjamas.  Ignore two-day old vomit in hair.  Ignore Fucking Gina Fucking Ford and go back to sleep.