Thank you all so much for the brilliant advice on our Bedding Issues!!  We had no idea that the “pram suit” we own is actually a “footed fleece sleeper”.  Well, blow me.  Heh.  So that is another thing to put on the To Do list – empty the box of clothes which are the next size up, and experiment with the pram suit footed fleece sleeper. Oh and buy another grobag.

Random Things That You Learn As A Parent:

1)  Only very few people use blankets for babies – everyone else uses giant babygros with fleece.

2) Nobody told us that you have to empty boxes of clothing like, every 3 weeks, and wash 40 new garments, categorise and part with another 40, and then umm, acquire or buy MORE, to put in the box at the top of the baby’s wardrobe, so that 3 weeks later you can do the whole thing all over again because your baby grows and grows and grows. Am I weird to find it stressful?!

Random Things That You Learn As A Homeworking Parent:

1) Trying to do the above clothing dance is near impossible, and you will end up with a huge pile of too-small clothes in one corner, a box of becoming-too-small clothes at the top of the wardrobe, and a child who is really a bit too big for many of the items he wears, however much you kid yourself otherwise.

Yes, we work from home.  I do full time, while vee gets to leave the house to work sometimes. We provide certain online services which usually have tight deadlines and short attention-requirements, which means we can usually BB-swap and shuffle quite well.  When vee leaves the house I either watch him sleep via a webcam while I work in the next room, or abandon any attempts to work, rescue our awake boy and do mummy type things.

It’s great for many reasons, but sometimes it leads to complete disarray. Like at the moment. For reasons too boring and complicated to explain, my desk is hidden beneath piles and piles of books and whatnot, and our office is a temporary home to too many random items which need permanence elsewhere in our house (or outside it, for that matter). Like a sofa bed, for example. And a huge blue screen with the main aim of annoying me by threatening to fall on top of our desks, or actually doing so.

And in my opinion, a cluttered workspace is a cluttered mind.

So in the next few days, we will be decluttering our home and clothing our baby. Oh, and working sometimes.

Fun.

Tomorrow, we will post about nursery.

xx jay

Ok, I know everyone is snowed under with trying to keep up their own NaBloPo tally and by reading everyone elses posts, let alone finding time to comment, but I have a dumb question for you all…

If your child is not swaddled and not in a grobag type thing, what kind of sheets/blankets do you use, when can you stop worrying about suffocation or strangulation with said sheets/blankets and how the hell do you keep the damned child under them, where it’s warm?

Until we’ve figured this one out, he’s back in the swaddle! It’s true you can’t do them too tight, right?

vee xxx

In a nutshell: BB has decided he has had enough of the swaddle.  However, in a display of Fickle which provided a terrifying glimpse of what he’ll be like as a teenager, he cannot sleep without it.

So we have brought out the grobags, resulting in BB having a grand total of 40 minutes’ nappage today; by which point he has usually had 3-4 hours’ worth.

Any sleepvice for baggy-eyed mummies and cranky teenage baby gratefully received!

xx jay

Yeah, ok, so we didn’t get a post up yesterday. Only a week in and we’re NaBloPoMo failures. I can live with that.

We DID manage to get BB to his very first Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night fireworks display though, despite shitty weather and Extreme Tiredness (ours, not his). Did he enjoy it? No, he slept through it!! Well, he slept through the display for kids, anyway. We whisked him off before the really loud ones got going and stopped on the hillside on the way home in the car and watched them from a safe-for-the-ears distance. He did wake up for those and got wide-eyed with awe before dropping off again on the drive back.

Today we’d having visitors over for Sunday lunch and birthday cake. I’m a great believer in extended birthdays!

More later (in the spirit of catching up).

vee xxx

Dear vee / mummy vee,

Today’s the day you were born, a long time ago
And we thought it’d be nice to write you a poem
To wish you a very happy birthday indeed
Does it matter that our poem isn’t very good?
No, we didn’t think it would.

Because you are nice and you’ll smile and say
“How lovely! Ha ha!” anyway,
So we wish you a very, very, very
Happy birthday!

All our love,

jay and bonus ball xxxx

Today, we hosted our local lesbian parents meet.

Yes, we voluntarily opened our clean and tidy house to maybe a dozen adults and their queerspawn. It’s the only time we’ve ever been on time for one of these gatherings and it was fun. Despite the mess.

See, now that last sentence makes me sound like some kind of neat-freak and truly, I’m not; neither of us are, but holy hell, I had no idea how much havoc a bunch of preschoolers could unleash within a confined space in such a short period of time! They got crumbs in places I’d have confidently said they couldn’t possibly reach. They spread more toys across the floor than I thought we even had. And practically every piece of left over food was unsalvageable because it had one or two teeny tiny bites out of it before being abandoned. Ah, but they were super cute and they had a great time and we got to chat to our friends and scoff whatever goodies the kids hadn’t got their hands on – what could be better. We’re totally up for doing it again soon.

Oh and as an extra bonus they all sang happy birthday to me and the kids helped me blow out my candles too, which was sweet. It’s not my birthday until tomorrow, but hey, any excuse for extra cake, right?

vee xxx

This NaBloPoMo thing is hard; my brain currently feels like a sponge, and while I have quite a few things I’d like to blog about (and another 20-odd days to blog about them! woo!), right now, all I want to do is sleep.

As I told someone the other day, I think the number one rule to being a parent is: Sleep As Much As Possible.

Sigh.

So, in the absence of energy, I suggest that anyone who’s seeking entertainment (here? surely not!) plays this game – one of my all time favourites.  As I would say to BB, it’s very, very good for ladies – and probably men too.

//mindless ramble censored//

Thank you and goodnight.

xx jay

Apparently, I’ve just been tasked to do the world’s quickest blog post, in order that I can get the washing up done before sitting down for some much needed telly time with my sweet wife. Naturally, as soon as I was set this task, my thoughts scattered to the four winds and I am now scratching around for something to post about. I suspect you’l be getting a lot more of that this month. With a bit of luck, you’ll all be too busy writing posts of your own for the NaMo challenge that you’ll never find the time to make it over here anyway.

With time so short, I’ll just share with you the fact that I am very grateful my child has no teeth yet. But dear, sweet Lord, he can gum hard. I swear he almost drew blood when feeding earlier. I live in fear.

Oh, and the people who came looking for advice about infants peeing all over the bed – I’m sorry, I only have experience of puke (see point 7). I don’t have anything to say about XXX boob pressing either, but I’m kind of intrigued.

vee xxx

It feels like Friday. No, not in that “hooray! it’s the weekend!” kind of way… more the “OMG I can’t believe it’s only Monday. I’m knackered already!” kind of way.

But it’s all good, I suppose. I’ve just come back from boxing (Yes. I box. I was coerced into it by another lesbian mummy, if you must know, and it’s great fun!) and am half watching a programme about fish, while vee is working in the kitchen.

Somehow, today the three of us managed to cram in visiting with vee’s parents, driving 100 miles home, working, walking the dog, boxing and – um – a spot of Christmas shopping. So that is why I am knackered already… the reason vee is working at nearly 10pm is because some of our clients are, ahem, rather demanding, and I’m totally demanding-client-ed out already.

This week we are hosting our lesbian parents group meet, too. I’m quite excited about that, though my main concern is what happens when the three year olds get bored of running from room to room and playing with the stuff on our hall table (because, for some reason, our humble hall table is of irresistible interest to all the three year olds who’ve been here)?  Yes, we have some colouring books, paper, pens and toys and stuff for them, but not a lot.

Any tips for quick entertainment fixes for under fives would be gratefully received! Preferably not involving paint, though.

We said we’d do NaBloPoMo. We didn’t say we’d make our blog unmissable reading.

xx jay

So yes, NaBloPoMo has started, and we haven’t got our badge up or anything like that.  We haven’t even done a proper blog post – this cannot possibly count – but this IS a post, so it counts for NaBloPoMo.

Um, yeah.

I would type more mindless meanderings but we are literally heading out of the door to go and see vee’s parents.

More tomorrow (!)

xx jay