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friday..
well she's one. one and a day and i couldn't be happier. thanks to everyone who sent well wishes. i couldn't ask for more to be thankful for. hope you all had a nice thanksgiving. we're off up north for a family birthday extravaganza. see you on monday and before i go - here's the five.
1. Do you like to shop? Why or why not?
i do like to sleep - but maybe because doing much of it is such a fond but distant memory. i do like getting up and getting my day started early now - when i sleep until even 8 or so i feel like i've missed part of my day. weird.
2. What was the last thing you purchased?
a really cool book for mary catherine's birthday/christmas flight called 'my granny's purse'... it's got loads of stuff for her to explore, which will really come in handy on the plane in three weeks.
3. Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?
i prefer online shopping because i can do it whenever i want and don't have to go out to do it. meaning i can do it while mc's in bed. i do like to online shop at places with retail outlets so that if something doesn't fit i don't have to post it back - i can just go in and return in the store.
4. Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?
nope.
5. What was the last thing you regret purchasing?
the bumbo - it's a baby chair and i thought we were going to get loads of use out of it. but uh.. no we haven't. i know other people who have one and they really love it. we just don't have a use for it really. live and learn.
our trip to the GP yesterday revealed that mc has an ear infection. lovely. 'did you notice her pulling her ears?' 'has she not thrown up lately?' 'wasn't she screaming blue murder?' uh... no. kinda. no. man i felt like a bad parent knowing that she had this raging infection in her ear and i had no clue. none. nada. nice.
so onto antibiotics she went and hopefully after 5 days of her first ever course of amoxicillan she'll be better. he wants to check her over before we fly though - which makes sense.
last night she threw up. i'm not talking spit up. i'm talking HURL. so much that she choked on it and had to be given first aid. i grabbed her, flipped her over onto her tummy and gave her three good hard slaps on the back which dislodged the wad of throw up & phlegm caught in her throat. i am so thankful i went to a first aid course. it, literally, saved her life last night. and yes - she probably would've lived had i not done that but i was able to react quickly and do the right thing without even thinking about what to do. so - my advice for you today - is that you never know when you're going to need it... take a first aid course. it could save a life. even yours. in the uk ... in the usa.
another half day at work today - then i'm off tomorrow and friday. seems there's a little faerie princess named mary catherine who is turning one tomorrow. i'm weepy, excited and amazed all rolled up into one. and it's thanksgiving! bring on the turkey and sweet potatoes! if you live in the states - i insist that you sit in your pj and watch the macy's thanksgiving day parade and enjoy it for me. i always used to love waiting for santa to arrive at the end - that was always the beginning of my christmas season.
in case i don't make it to the computer tomorrow as i'm weeping with thankfulness for my daughter - have a very happy thanksgiving and remember to think of those less fortunate by doing something for charity this holiday season. whether it be packing a shoebox with basic items for a child that lives in poverty(usa), dropping a toy off at superdrug for a needy child(uk) or giving money to your favourite charity. please remember those who have very little to be thankful for.
okay - i'll get off my do-gooder soapbox.
my baby is sick. she was up again last night with a 39.6 degree fever. that's 103.3F. this is the second time in two weeks that she's had such a high fever. we gave her a dose of ibuprofen and a tepid bath to cool her down and eventually she settled down to sleep between us.
i'm tired of her being sick. i'm tired of having to worry about calling in to get time off from work to take care of her. i'm tired of feeling guilty because i'm taking time off work but then feeling even more guilty because i don't seem to be putting my child's health first. i'm tired of having a sick baby who can only lie there and whimper. i'm tired of being tired.
when a called in to her nursery to tell them that she wouldn't be in, he asked if anyone else was suffering from these high fevers and they said no but they did have two confirmed cases of chicken pox in the nursery. lovely. a's at home with her now and we're switching off at mid-day. we'll most likely do that again tomorrow and then i'm off thursday and friday. so i'm hoping that basically an entire week away from germ central will allow her to really get on the road to being well. i'd write more - but i'm too ... wait for it.. tired.
ah - what a good weekend. i'm only working three days this week - so today is, like, my wednesday! woohoo. thursday i'm taking off because it's miss mc's 1st birthday! i can't believe it's been a year. i mean - i can, but it's gone quickly and slowly all at the same time. i got quite weepy on saturday thinking of all we've been/done/seen this past year with her - and it's amazing. i never guessed it would have been so much hard work and so much fun. and i'm taking friday just because i can. we're going to ihsan's 1st birthday party which is going to be a teddy bear picnic. we're very excited.
thursday is also thanksgiving - not that it's 'done' here in the uk. but i'll be having a macy's parade in my head i'm sure. :) some pictures from this weekend - both taken at our usual after swimming lessons starbucks breakfast. as you can tell - we're getting her hooked early! also - she's very into talking on the phone .. well - actually, more like holding anything that's vaguely phone shaped up to her ear and repeatedly saying 'ah' into it. seems that we've all had it wrong and that when speaking properly on the telephone - ah - is actually the answer for everything.
 
more mutterings...
- Concert::Barnaked Ladies
- Sydney::Oz
- Shower::radio
- Patterns::knitting
- Market::pipe
- Chair::man
- London::grey
- Reception::1st grade
- Republican::democrat
- Cough::flu
tickle tickle
man - i so rock.. look up in the place where you type web addresses in your browser - see the little picture of me? yeah, that's right.. i made that! i made a favicon! my little nerdy heart goes thud. woohoohoo!!
as welcoming as a hot cup of cocoa - the friday five.
1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
i'd like to have gone through everything in our flat and tossed out another load of stuff we don't need. i hate doing it - but once i'm finished and i see the resulting bin bags waiting to go to the charity box/shop ... well it makes it worth it.
2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
my good friends from high school, ron fowler and jeff fortier. i'd also like to know where gretchen from camp danbee ended up and my college friends tomika clark and, of course, alexa mavromatis. she hates me. has for about 6 year now over a total misunderstanding and the crappy, crappy thing is that she's never allowed me to explain. so she doesn't know the truth. i'm sad and pissed off about it all rolled up into one. but whatever.
3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.
juggle, let things go a bit more, knit, flash and other geeky computery things.
4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
pay off my debt, pay off my parents' debt, put money away for mc's schooling, buy a house, live on two continents, buy something really silly and expensive...
5. List five things you do that help you relax.
play with mc, watch movies, sleep, read gossip magazines, listen to good music
sorry to be so distant
we awoke to a limping baby on tuesday morning... seems that the same virus that made her so sick last week settled in her hip joint - very strange! she wouldn't walk (with help) or stand on that leg and it really worried a and i. so off to the paediatric a&e we went and she's been home for the past two days on nurofen to minimize the swelling.
on the up side - we spent a lot of time with our friend patrick and his mom and that always makes us happy. so hey - what did i miss? anything going on out there that i need to know about? :)
i do love it when people make a stand... click here
anyway - yesterday was my 32nd birthday. so happy my birthday to everyone. :) i had a great day including a trip to the toddler gym for mary catherine with some good friends followed by a really nice dim sun lunch with the same friends. mary catherine likes those weird steamed bbq buns. she comes by it honestly. then out to dinner and a movie with andrew (babysitting courtesy of sarah - thank you sarah!) we saw love actually and it was pretty good. i happen to have a thing for alan rickman so i was happy. oh and colin firth too. gah - i'm such a girl.
so a lovely birthday indeed... we had a coffee at starbucks (you know, as you do) yesterday and i got mary catherine some milk for a bottle (she's on breast and cow's milk now - no formula!) and they gave it to me steamed with a head of froth i thought what the heck and gave it to her - she didn't seem to mind, finished the lot! an addict in the making, i think! A quick snap of my two favourite people...
more mutterings.. this time you play too!
- Plan B::there is no plan b
- Seattle::starbucks
- The lady wore::red
- Upsetting::tiring
- Tampon::pad
- Celebrity::which one?
- Baja::roll
- 64::69
- RGB::CMYK
- Milkshake::children's telly
mutterings..
- Leapfrog::leap pad
- Co-workers::distant
- Mustang::convertible
- Wafer::thin
- Nicotine::bad
- Fast food::bad
- Suffocate::pillow
- Myth::lie
- Lane::street
- Unexpected::instant
ahh - the five.
1. Using one adjective, describe your current living space.
compact. it's not too small - but it certainly isn't absolutely huge by any means. so it's compact. man i wish i had closets and more non-oddly shaped rooms. there's not one room in our flat that's square!
2. Using two adjectives, describe your current employer.
kind and distracted.
3. Using three adjectives, describe your favorite hobby/pasttime.
cute. smashing. hilarious. (my favourite pasttime is, of course, mary catherine)
4. Using four adjectives, describe your typical day.
long, tiring, hectic, stressful.
5. Using five adjectives, describe your ideal life.
the. one. i. have. now. (not adjectives by the way, i know.. i know)
geek.
for those of you who've never seen kmom's plus size pregnancy website .. you should check it out sometime. it's really really awesome and got me through my pregnancy with minimal fear and mega-fistfuls of knowledge. for fun (this is the geeky part) i've offered to redesign it. here's what i've come up with. and yes, that's beautiful aimee on the cover shot.
i'd love to hear opinions on it.
new blog theme
can you tell i'm in a festive holiday mood? blue christmas, for sure. or is it because i finally got my hands on SSX3 and gave it a thorough going-over last night? SSX3 is, without a doubt, the coolest freaking video game i've ever played. like, ever. seriously, i mean it.
well - after yesterday's gastrointestinal adventure with mary catherine and some different formula, we switched over to the big M-O-O last night. shock horror, i've turned my baby on to cow's milk 3 weeks early. oh well. :) she seemed fine with it. she did, however, wake up at 430 this morning and by 515 was a whimpering mess. at first i thought it might be tummy weirdness from the cow's milk, but kinda thought that it would've struck her before 515? i gave her some calgel for teething and that seemed to calm her down for a few minutes, so after a clean nappy i gave her some baby nurofen (like advil) and after about 5 more minutes she went right to sleep and woke up 25 minutes later all smiles. what'tha?! seriously - we went from planning who was going to be home with her today to getting ready for work/nursery in 30 minutes. so weird.
more later... but hey look at this - my blog is:
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this weekend
we had a great time this weekend... it's been nice not going to the mall for the past fortnight, as it's already crazy busy for christmas. i don't dig crowds. they're not my scene, man.
saturday we went to patrick, lottie and katie's joint 1st birthday party and had a really good time. mary catherine does enjoy every chance she gets to eat sugar and was so kind and giving this time that she even shared some with me! truth be told, she liked sharing her cake icing more with me than eating it herself. the child is giving, what can i say? she was so tired after such a wing ding that she was in bed for the night at 530!
 
she also got to ride on katie's new tricycle and really enjoyed it - she also rode one like this at the one o'clock club on friday. and she also played on her piano with her good friend patrick. a duet!
 
yesterday we went to lunch at carluccio's, which is fast becoming one of our favourite places to eat on the weekend. we went with mc's friend olivia and her parents and had a really nice relaxing day at canary wharf. mary catherine and olivia had good fun eating spaghetti (with their hands, the way it was meant to be eaten) and cheerios.
 
so all in all - as you can see - a very good weekend. hopefully this week will follow suit. i love having every other friday off - i can't tell you how much it recharges my batteries and really makes me feel like i'm getting to be around mary catherine while she grows up. i know that may sound a bit weird - but when she's in someone else's care 10 hours a day, sometimes you sorta feel like you're not the only one raising your child... my fridays off allow me to really connect with her - and just have a few cuddles and laughs that i have really come to rely on.
my birthday is this sunday... i'll be 32. that sounds very old to me but i'm okay with it. 31 was hard last year as i was very pregnant and not really feeling all that well as well as being on the cusp of a life altering event like having a baby, well - it was hard to handle. but 32 - well .. bring it on, really. my mother's already told me that 'motherhood has aged me' so i don't have that much more to lose, really. what's another wrinkle? okay.. okay.. i admit it, i've been feeling really old lately. so there. whatever. i'm the luckiest woman alive, i have an amazing husband and a daughter who is so precious to me that it's almost shocking to me how much i love her. so who gives a flying eff about turning older? not me. no really, i mean that. honest. i do.
stolen from aimee
man i so ROCK!! do it and tell me how you did.. man, that is my decade!!
he's still up there..
Held to ransom
"Action has to be taken to allow Londoners to move around the city and not be held to ransom by one individual," he said. [Mayor Ken] Livingstone said the protest, part of a continuing campaign by Fathers 4 Justice, did nothing to help Mr Chick's cause. He added that Mr Chick, was "amply demonstrating why some men should not have access to their own children". He is a man who is putting his own life at risk, police officers at risk, other Londoners who may be passing along the road at risk," he said.
so it seems Mr Chick is still up on that crane ... and now that the roads are open, no one will really mind. that's sad to me - but i could just be emotional/hormonal.
speaking of hormones.. not sure if i've mentioned, but mary catherine and i have cut back to just nursing in the mornings and evenings. it's going very well and i've hung up the horns! i'm no longer pumping at work and while a weird part of me misses it, the realistic part of me sure doesn't miss it at all! i pumped at work for 28 weeks, twice a day.. or roughly 280 times. it's so weird having to deal with formula and the like this late in the game. at the beginning, i was terrified every time we go out that i'm going to forget to bring a bottle with us, until i remembered that i do still have milk and then i relaxed. funny that.
we're not with formula for long, i'm happy to report that mary catherine had her first sippy cup of whole cow's milk and she did well with it! that's the way i always wanted things to be - from mommy to moo. 3 weeks from tomorrow mary catherine turns one... a whole lot of her friends are turning one this week.. so happy 1st birthdays to angus, lottie, oscar, leo, olivia, eleanor, patrick and katie! here's a pic of the group when they were little little. more later.
so the guy up the crane is still there... turns out he's up there protesting fathers' access rights. you can read more about it here. i'm conflicted by the whole thing. on one hand, i'm annoyed that they've had to cordon off the entire area which directly affects my commute. on the other hand, i'm terribly saddened about it. i feel very sorry for him, that he was so desperate to see his child that he felt this was the only way to make a difference. yet - i'm happy that he's at least trying to make a difference. so many people complain about things and then never do anything to make things different.
there are people in my workplace who have a beef with this and that - yet never make a peep about how certain events or decisions affect their lives/workplace. i think it's a very english thing to not complain about things. i know that when i've been out with andrew's sister and her boyfriend to dinner (okay, i know this is a bit different than making a political statement) and her food arrived incorrectly she just ate it anyway because she didn't want to complain. so i guess my big beef with people is that if you don't like something, don't just sit and whine about how terrible/inconvienent/annoying things are -- get off your ass and do something about it!
the man up the crane is being backed by fathers4justice - their website is here. and while we're here, here are some other causes that i deem worthy. crisis amnesty international tommy's national childbirth trust ... oh and a lot of these charities sponsor charity christmas cards - why not support something this holiday season?
okay, okay - i'll get off my soap box.. here are two pictures from this weekend. one is a picture from our trip to the toddler gym and the other is from yesterday. mary catherine is officially in panda bear's room at nursery so her mother and nana put her in her panda dress to mark the event. i normally toss out the headband 'brain squeezers' that come with 'girl' outfits - but i put this one on her as a joke, took the picture and the camera battery died. it's kind of grown on me - nice to see her looking like a girl!
my gosh my horoscope sounds dark today!
"It's important to assert yourself with people who get malicious pleasure from cutting you down. Although you dislike displaying your emotions in public, this may be necessary today. You've got to stand up for yourself, or this abuse will continue. Resist the urge to hurt the guilty parties with some underhanded scheme. An open confrontation is the best way to intimate your enemies. You'll be surprised how many onlookers cheer once you fight back."
12:24 update:
whoa - right now i have just been hit with the biggest wave of what i can only term as ache to be with mary catherine.. that's weird. i have this horrible empty feeling in my chest and i just want to leave work and go get her. today it is really bothering me that i am forced to spend 11 hours away from her every day. gah - make it stop, please. it hurts.
there has been an incident at tower bridge since last friday - and it's caused traffic and ME to snarl. we sat in bumper to bumper traffic for over an hour and a half today trying to get in to work/nursery. what a crappy start to a monday.
and - since i was late .. i decided to try coffee republic's mocha as it was on the quickest route to my building. it's okay - but i like the bitter twinge of a starbucks mocha better. i am a big time dark chocolate fan - so that's probably why.
weekend was great - went to Toddler's World yesterday with friends and MC was shell shocked when we entered. imagine a big room full of poofy things to jump on/over/under and at least 50 children and their parents attacking everything! we found a quiet-ish (okay it wasn't really quiet, it was just less manic) piece of floor and let the babies take it all in. mc was super clingy for about 10 minutes and then decided that a place where she could crawl wherever was a a good thing and off she went! we had an excellent time getting her to crawl through big tunnels and walk (with help, of course) along a balance beam. she really loved it when andrew flipped her upside down for her dismount. i know i'm a s'mother - but now i think i'll have to look into gymnastics for her as well! so let's see - so far that's french lessons (i really have looked into those!) ballet, tap, gymnastics and violin. what am i missing? oh - right.. baton! :) next think you know i'll be dressing her up as a UGA cheerleader at 4 and entering her into beauty contests. hmm - wonder if i've missed the deadline for little miz london? i am, of course, kidding.
ahh... monday. what else can i update you on.. work is fine, still waiting to hear on a few things - only been 5 weeks, i'm growing a tad impatient. i'm taking mc's birthday and day after off on thanksgiving.. oh and we're having a proper american thanksgiving dinner with another american/british couple and their adorable baby! bring on the turkey, sweet potatoes and stuffing! if anyone wants to send me a packet of jiffy cornbread mix for some proper dressing i'd be willing to pay you for your time! gah - look at me, begging for cornmeal. nice one.
the weekend after turkey/MC day we're going up to my sister in laws house in wakefield - the whole family will be there to help mc celebrate her glorious 1st birthday. it'll be really nice to see everyone again - haven't seen the whole family together in a really long time. and then two weeks after that we hit the skies to go to atlanta for a nice long visit. i so can't wait. it's just about all i can think of in my spare time. there's just something about being 'home' that is super wonderful and comforting. i can't wait to play with mc in my parents huge living room and watch them interact with her... anyway - more on that later. work beckons.
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