Seek And You Shall Find

My Christmas shopping so far consists of:

• A ridiculous splurge on so-cheap-it'd-be-a-crime-not-to-buy-them presents for Anna at Costco.

• Lots of internet shopping where I fill my cart up with an entire family full of presents and then fail to complete the purchase at the last possible second due to financial guilt.

• An insane rush around World Market with a $10 off any purchase of $30 coupon (I spent $87 dollars, which wasn't quite how I'd planned it, damn you coupons). This World Market binge basically means that if you know me in real life then you will be getting a Chocolate Orange for Christmas, because I have always loved them and they were made until 2005 in York, but are now made in Slovakia which is a bit crap really, yet I still bought fifteen. Approximately. Damn you Slovak sweat-shops.
  

That's it. I have approximately eight presents for Anna (and I am not extravagant, just sleep-deprived and forgetful) and one (1) present for Lucy - even though it'll be her first birthday only two weeks after Christmas. One day she will read this and hate me, but honestly, her favourite thing right now is a bath and that is cheap, cheerful and hygienic if a little hard to wrap. She is too little to count presents, wears all of Anna's old clothes, plays with all of Anna's old toys, and quite frankly will have more fun with the wrapping paper, blah blah blah.

Anna on the other hand is getting a little more sophisticated when it comes to Christmas. Remember last year's heart-wrenchingly cute Christmas list? Well, this year she's got a bona fide list involving My Little Ponies, Barbies and various other pink plastic rubbish. In my mad dash round Costco I bought a violently pink barbie complete with bejeweled pink horse (shoot me) and some much more civilized Playmobil horse and stable play thing. Anna has pretty much never played with her Playmobil plane and airport, but I love Playmobil and will keep pushing it on her especially if it's almost 50% off.

Now, I managed my sprint around Costco child free (gasp). I patted myself on the back for securing two good, solid, cheap presents. Then it occurred to me that I had no idea where I was going to hide them. I thought about sticking them in the attic but couldn't remember where LK kept the step ladder. I thought about Marge Simpson hiding things in the salad crisper - the one place Homer would never look. Where was the one place Anna would never look? My closet under some clothes? Under the bed? Well apparently I was wrong on that score because she found the painfully pink princess and was gazing longingly at it when I walked in to the bedroom the other evening.

"Look what I found Momma!" she gasped, clearly thinking that if you just wish hard enough these things appear in the strangest of places.

I explained that it was for Christmas, that she would be getting it, just not right now and bizarrely, she was fine with that. A little too fine, which makes me think I should check my crap-old-clothes bottom drawer and make sure it's still re-hidden there.

I can't hide everything in my bottom drawer though, and thanks to some careless internet shopping at 3am recently there is more stuff on the way.

Where do you hide your Christmas presents for the kids? The attic? The trunk of the car? Knicker drawer? Salad crisper? Under the tree (brave, trusting souls). Help is needed.

A Plague Upon Your Home

Wow, nothing puts the idea of a third child on hold like the entire family falling ill. We've had runny noses, sore throats, diarrhea, diarrhea with blood, more blood than diarrhea and teething. All of which has meant that neither Anna nor Lucy has been capable of sleeping by themselves for more than an hour at a time in the last few days. I just looked at myself in the mirror and got a mug shot in return. A meth addict mug shot. I look done in.

I'm finally hopeful we're on the mend. Lucy took the brunt, poor thing. She started off with teething - her first top tooth, which meant two days of non stop unexplained mithering. I love her dearly, but the sound of an unhappy baby for days on end can bring you to your knees. It's a cruel fact that when they need you the most, when they're in pain and uncomfortable they are completely useless at communicating their needs. You feel like yelling what? WHAT?, when the Tylenol, the soothing, the back rubs, the bath, everything fails. 48 hours later you feel completely rotten as that tooth appears and their teary face screams "see, see what I was dealing with". Then as if to really rub it in she began sneezing, and shooting out foamy green poop. I really hope you're not eating dinner whilst reading this. Our 'experience' as parents allowed us to take the poop shoot in our stride. That sentence doesn't read right does it? Anyway, we were calm, we increased her fluids, checked her temperature, slapped the butt lotion on and took her to the beach; all the usual things.

All of sudden, what seemed like a run of the mill case of diarrhea (I'll have you know that I've written that word so often lately that for the first time in my life I can write it without having to spell check it first,...) transformed into blood-streaked poop foam and then mostly blood, every ten minutes. Things happen fast with small children, and you don't want to overreact but also you don't want to sleep on the job. We didn't know what to do. We were making dinner, it was cocktail hour.

I decided that unexplained rectal bleeding - try googling that and concluding your child will live - merited an after-hours doctor phone call. He basically said 'there's a lot of it about, slap some cream on her butt and keep her hydrated'. I felt such a fool. To make matters worse, Lucy was fine in between bouts of agonizing foam pooping and I was still reeling from getting 6 out of 10 on this 'when should you take your baby to the doctor quiz'. We concluded she was either:

a) suffering from an irritated bowel/rectum due to fighting a virus
b) had a urinary tract infection
c) had a bowel obstruction and was going to explode in a matter of minutes
d) all of the above

I think it was a). She seems brighter this afternoon. Poop-watch '09 shows a dwindling of foam and less BRIGHT! RED! BLOOD! Plus she's happily chewing on a barbie. This parenting lark is hard work.

I only want to hear comments from people who scored worse than me on the baby to the doctor quiz. Unless you're my childminder of course.

The Tailings

Lucy is approaching 6 months old and I am a husk.

The other day LK described it perfectly. He said 'you've been strip-mined'. I've got a beast of a beautiful blonde, rosy-cheeked daughter and I've been left with the tailings. I'm not really complaining, although quite frankly no-one really prepares you for the post-partum period. How many people prior to having children know about your hair falling out a few months after delivery? I have long hair and *oh Lord* our shower is starting to look like a College dorm room. The hair! It's taking over the house. Gossamer strands glinting accusingly from every surface. I am not looking forward to returning to my pre-pregnancy eight strands of limp blonde hair. It has been quite refreshing to have a ponytail wider than my middle finger. Then there's that awful growing back in stage where you have spiky re-growth protruding from your temples like antannae. Good times.

I'm still nursing the beast. I've no idea how she has managed to attain such a size (97th percentile for height) while I'm still exclusively nursing yet still managing to carry around some pregnancy bulge. Looking at the size of her you'd think I'd be down to 100lbs by now. Except while I'm obviously losing weight by breast-feeding I seem to be more than making up for it with my voracious appetite. Lucy woke me up at 5am to feed and for the last hour all I've been thinking about is a full English breakfast. Cereal be damned. I'm talking bacon, sausages, eggs cooked in bacon fat, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans and fried eggy bread on the side. Hmm. No wonder Lucy looks like she's just eaten all the other babies in the nursery.

We are flying back home for a visit in a couple of weeks and I am not looking forward to presenting my work-in-progress physique. I shall just have to wear a selection of outlandish scarves that draw the eye away from the post-partum carnage. Not sure if that'll be quite so effective in the swimming pool but we shall see. I will admit that I went to the Old Navy $5 swim sale yesterday in an attempt to find a bikini to winch in these giant mammaries. That 10 minutes with two small children, a brightly lit changing room and cheap garish fabrics will require a lifetime of therapy. Damn you self-esteem. Honestly though, what was I thinking? Must have been a low blood-sugar moment, or subconcious self-hatred. Needless to say I did not buy anything - and the moment when Anna announced to the entire fitting room that 'your boobies are too squashed Mommy' was a particular favourite.

Must go. Lucy has just been sick on my hair.

My life is great.

Lucy

Lucy turned three months old this week and I went back to work.

There's no point dwelling on how awful it is to be away from her. It is what it is. It's like when people ask how you manage to get out of the door in the morning with two small children. You just do it because there's no alternative. Having said that, picking her up at the end of the day is like Christmas, and I am so happy that my friend Jen is able to look after her right now so I can't really complain even if I wanted to. Even though she's still so tiny, and still breastfeeding, and probably still needs her Mum, and in any other country this would be considered unnatural, and, good Lord stop it.

So no, not quite over the separation thing yet.

Rather than talk about the sadness, I'll choose to write about the good stuff. I'm aware that I haven't written much about Lucy. Quite frankly, it's a little hard to when Anna tosses 3 year-old gem after gem your way, each one better than the last (this morning she said "*sigh* the chuffing gardeners have left the sprinklers on again"), where she got that from I have no idea.

Lucy is lovely. I'm completely head over heels. She has two types of smile, a tentative half-smile and an explosive grin so large it takes over her entire body so she flails her arms and legs with the joy of it.

I loved my maternity leave, particularly the three days a week when Anna was in school and I could devote all my time to blogging, er, I mean bonding. With Anna I felt so pressured to educate my tiny fleshy blob. I would dangle plastic keys in front of her and recite 'this is a RED key, this is a BLUE key, this is a YELLOW key' while she quietly emptied her bowels. This time I embraced Lucy's pupae stage. We snuggled. I sniffed her head and nibbled her toes. I blew bubbles at her and tried to remember not to balance my cup of tea on her head whilst engrossed in 30 Rock. This time round there was no moving house, no anxiety about dealing with an infant, no horrendous rending of flesh during the birth, no living in a partially renovated apartment with open sewer lines and piles of boxes everywhere. This time seemed like a piece of cake and I loved every minute of it. Our time together was a gift. Thanks Mum and Dad.

Lucy and I took long walks all over town in an effort to rid myself of the eleventy billion pounds I seemed to retain after her birth. I enjoyed the sunshine and she would sleep in the stroller or wake up and quietly watch the world go by. People would dash over to say hello and look at the baby and Lucy would respond with a spit bubble or a fart, however the mood struck her. I only ever had to stop once because she was crying, and even then after a quick boobing she soon shut up. She is such a brilliant walking companion. Anna would scream after about 10 minutes (fair play to her, she was probably hungry, wet, tired or upside down - I hadn't exactly perfected my parenting skills at that point), and later on Anna would not. stop. talking., asking why Santa Barbara didn't have any monkeys, or whose mailbox is that Momma? and whose mailbox is that Momma? and whose mailbox is that Momma? Lucy just smiles and I turn up my iPod to maximum volume and continue my Motown shuffle up to the Mission.

She is already so tall and strong. In the 97th percentile for height, but only the 50th percentile for head circumference which would lead me to believe California's in for another leggy dumb blonde. Except she looks smart, and by that I don't mean she's pig ugly. She is so alert, constantly watching. With the peculiar tufts either side of her head and her unblinking eyes she reminds me of a little short-eared owl. In a pink onesie. And that's another thing. With Anna we chose not to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Consequently all but two or three of her first six months of outfits were gender neutral. Ducks or frogs. I sometimes wonder if Anna's princess obsession is a bizarre reaction to too many yellow baby-gros. Lucy on the other hand, there is not a hue of pink unrepresented in her wardrobe. She has some white clothes, but they will be turning pink soon as I'm pretty rubbish at laundry. I wonder if she'll grow up to be a tomboy as a result. She reserves her biggest smiles and limb-flailings for bathtime and I caught LK whispering in her ear the other day 'are you going to be my surfer?' (when Anna gets her face wet she screams 'I NEED THE BIG TOWEL').

Lucy is lovely and we are lucky. Yes she finds sleeping a bore, farts like a Yorkshireman and likes to puke on my work clothes, but we're counting our blessings. Which is why this quote made me laugh:

From 'Things I Learned About My Dad (In Therapy)' a brilliant book of blogger essays edited by the inimitable Dooce, and given to me by my friend Fussy who authored one of the chapters.

"No-one ever says, "My first baby was an angel, and the second one was even better!"
Kevin Guilfoile

That made me laugh out loud, and then cross my fingers, because baby you seem too good to be true.

Love, Mum

Nicknames

Nicknames and how they evolve can be fascinating. Or maybe I'm just casting around for things to write about in a brief fifteen minute respite when Lucy is asleep and the rest of my family are out entertaining Anna.

Either way, what would my skinny-legged youngest daughter:




















Have in common with this:






















Well, the nickname Lucky was obviously never going to fly. We simply couldn't do that to her, for the same reason we didn't christen her 'Chastity'. Life was bound to turn round and bite her on the bum with a nickname like Lucky.

When it comes to nicknames, I always defer to LK. He is a genius, and within days of her birth Anna was called:

Rosie
The Doodle
Pinky Pinkerton
Tufty Wingspan McFlail, to name but a few.

With baited breath we waited for Lucy's moniker to evolve. Not factoring in Anna's input of course.

Lucy is beautiful (OK, I'll admit to being a tad biased). Both of my daughters had perfect newborn heads, none of that weird birth-canal induced cone-heading for them, no, they would rather take out my perineum than graze their delicate melons apparently. A fact backed up my OB nurse who took one look at a 2 day old Lucy and said 'now that's a C-section head if ever I saw one'. No, that is a delivery the speed of a Formula 1 pit-stop. No time for head squashing, Lucy was launched in to the world as if from a sling-shot (and I always wondered why the delivery docs wore those splatter-guard visors - now I know).

Unlike her perfect noggin, Lucy's eyes still have a little developing to do. Her right eye is more often than not closed, caused apparently by a weak eyelid muscle that should perk up in the next few weeks. In the meantime when awake she is constantly winking suggestively, as if to say 'let's check out that rack Lady, come on, whip out the girls'. Or not. Maybe the lack of sleep is getting to me.

Either way, LK took one look at her unbalanced eyelids and christened her 'popeye'. It is hard to keep a straight face when he creeps up behind you whilst you're nursing your beloved, gorgeous spawn and whispers 'ack, ack, ack'.















Now I am not hormonal enough to be offended by this moniker. I am bizarrely able to admit that she is both staggeringly beautiful and looks rather like Vladimir Putin, in a pale and delicate-featured kind of way. Not that Putin is always described as an angelic infant, but who's to say he wouldn't be cute if covered in enough pink layette?

What I will object to is Anna's pronunciation of Popeye - she thought the nickname was hilarious, but couldn't quite say it, which is how my dear Lucy is now called 'pot pie'.

I'd heard sisters were cruel, I just didn't think it would start this early.

Sorry pot-pie.