Oh right, I remember this thing!

It ain't fun if you don't get soaked

Hey kids. How've you been?

Beth is now nearly 17 months old. And SUPER CUTE, if I do say so myself:

New raincoat. I want one.

Beth finally outgrew these fabulous cords, and Grant is still in mourning

The Fairy Poopsmith

Lookin' fab

Language has been a two steps forward, one step backward thing. It's interesting to watch. She will master a word and then stop using it completely, viz BUMP, which entered her lexicon 2 months ago, then vanished without a trace, then has been slowly creeping back in over the last few days. So from memory, she can say mum, dad, dog, duck, what's that? (these last four sound the same to the uninitated), bump, cheese, keys (last two sound pretty much the same), Jake (guess the favourite cousin), and sometimes nana, and can make noises for monsters, tigers, elephants, snakes and donkeys.

She's now physically very dextrous, and can now run, sort-of stand on one leg, go up and down shallow steps without holding on to anything, throw a ball quite directionally, kick up to three times in a row for a dribble (already surpassing her mum!). She has been having a lovely time stomping around in puddles in her new raincoat and gumboots, which we got just in the nick of time because it has been freaking rainy in Sydney lately.

Grant takes her to swimming at Olympic Park on Tuesdays which she reportedly loves, Wednesday is her grandma hangout day (which she definitely loves, because she has the loveliest grandmothers in all the land), Thursdays we have finally found the local playgroup where she has a great time, and Friday is gymbaroo day, which she enjoys and which I think she is really getting quite a lot out of, even though we hardly ever do the homework, because we are rebels, y'all.

Otherwise it has been life as usual. Two words of advice: if you are fully breastfeeding your baby, you can eat whatever the hell you want and it will never touch your girlish thighs. Once you start to cut back on the feeds: not so much. Angie warned me but I didn't listen. More exercise or less cake are in my future, and possibly a pedometer revival. Grant is nagging me to do a 7km run in a few months but since I have not to date even run 2km I am not so sure. Speaking of which, Grant and his sister and possibly brother as well as our friend Ro are doing the City2Surf again per Grant's entry, so nag them to train if you happen to run into them.

We are heading back to Newcastle for the long weekend, and I hope everyone else has a similarly relaxing break planned!

Catalogue of 13 months

Beth is now nearly 14 months old. Amazing!

She weighed in at 11.2kg at our nurse visit last week, putting her at the 90th or 95th percentile depending on which charts you use. However, she's had a lot of pain from her teeth over the last week and has been off her tucker and hitting up the mummy buffet something fierce day and night, which has also seemed to add to the sack of potatoes factor as breastmilk is basically a high-carb protein shake (BEEFCAKE! BEEFCAKE!), and we weighed her at 11.5kg a few days after that. Don't know if the extra grams will stick though. She's 78cm, which is 95th or 97th percentile depending on the charts.

Beth has quite the sense of humour these days. Favourite jokes include hiding, stealing daddy's glasses and putting them on mummy, play-biting my chin and Grant's elbow, and any form of peekaboo, especially around the couch. Grant is excellent at ducking down behind it, around the side, and popping up where she least expects it.

She is an excellent climber. She can climb the climbing wall up to the play equipment in the park across the road most but not all times, and can now go down the slippery dip by herself (on her tummy, feet-first). She reliably turns around and goes down steps backwards, and can also do that off our bed, although she has had two mighty tumbles from failing to turn all the way around!

She finds flights of stairs great fun, so it's a lucky thing we don't have any :)

She adores the great outdoors. She can amuse herself for hours in the backyard, poking at dirt and clambering around, with the odd attempt to eat toxic oleander. We have been to various beaches on the Parramatta River lately and seems to get a real kick out of the mud.


And just like Daddy, she LOVES the rain.


The great thing is that our back verandah is so holey that one can experience the rain indoors!

She can't walk by herself yet. However, she can go quite a distance with us just holding one of her hands. She can squat and stand very well with her Donnelly calves, and Auntie Tara taught her a game of down (squat) - up that has really helped with her standing and that she thinks is hilarious.

Grant has been taking her to swimming lessons once a week, and I am told she has a great time, and is also twice the height of the other babies.

She's been having a lovely time with her grandmothers on Wednesdays. She is always very excited to see them. She has been a little sooky and clingy on the first days I have at home with her each week (Thursdays), and usually wants to nurse a lot on that day. However, I am choosing to think of this as a nice thing - as GrandEm says, there is no harm in having a favourite!

And other than that, the only thing I can think of about our lovely big girl is that she never met a peg she didn't like, but she prefers the red ones (and will rip them off the clothesline if it is in reach).

Birthday girl

And Grant managed to bend space and time to get her her birthday presents in time, so now she's the proud owner of a Tonka truck.


We had a nice play in the back yard with it today. I was trying to teach her the "lean on it like a walker" trick, but no dice. She does like pushing it around though.

Also today we passed a pleasant hour or so with a bucket and some bath toys on the lawn. Beth seems to splash a lot more if she's not in the water herself, or it seems like that, anyway. She managed to stand up by herself for a few seconds, too, but hasn't tried it again since. It was a nice day.

11 months

That's a smile, I swear

Beth is eleven months old. The astute will realise that that is 12 months - 1. In other words, HOLY CRAP. So many people told me in Beth's early weeks (aka nurse-a-thon 2008) that it went by so quickly. I thought they were just trying to say This Too Shall Pass but as it turns out they were just telling the truth. It seems like just yesterday that she smiled for the first time, that she was born (so happy and such a sad time for all of us, stuck in that hospital), that I was pregnant, that we were in England, that we were swanning about bits of Europe with her just a tiny passenger, not even a bump.

And at the same time, it feels like she has been with us forever. We are so proud of her. I should get her birth certificate framed or something because I am WAY more smug about that than the four testamurs now gracing the dining room.

Let's see, recent developments:

• Beth babbles "dada" specifically, to Grant. He may have lorded it over me about this for a while, but...
  
• Last weekend, she started babbling "mummum" and almost immediately started doing it specifically, to me. Now I will admit she doesn't do it as often as "dada" and really only does it when she wants something, but since she only previously made the "mum" noise while screaming, I'll take it.
• She can now pull up very quickly on just about any object, and has started to lean less. She's also started to cruise along things like her cot, but not very quickly.
• She has two new teeth (top outer middle).
• We have travelled every weekend for the past 3, and she still hates portacots, probably exacerbated by the teeth.
• She is always very excited to see her grandparents, and has now started leaning towards them from me for cuddles.
• She is getting way more interested in toys. She gave her Lamaze chime garden a real workout this afternoon, and monkey puppet continues to be a favourite, and she has been looking at her books in her bedroom periodically all day.
  
• Contemporaneously with the above, she is getting much better at entertaining herself, albeit not so much today as the teeth are making her a bit of a sooky pants.
• She's hovering around the 10kg mark, which since she was 9kg at 6 months isn't particularly impressive, but she is a freakishly tall 77cm or so.
• She has an array of smiles, from winsome to the above, which shows off all six chompers and is usually accompanied by a growl. Don't mess with Beth, peoples; she may bite (OK, she DOES bite, I have a mark still healing).
  

Off to Newcastle-Wingham-Newcastle this weekend. The Wingham Country Club is being temporarily renamed Wingham House of Donnellys for the occasion. Should be fun!

How have you been?

YOU!

Beth has three new tricks this week - getting onto her hands and knees, pulling up to kneeling, and POINTING LIKE THE EVIL MONKEY FROM "THE FAMILY GUY":

Beth shows off new skillz; Monsieur le Frog observes upside-down

I defy you not to explode at the cuteness.

Oh wait, there is actually a fourth developmental leap that has been around for a bit, as the "hamming it up for the camera" gene has now been activated: see above.

I had my first two-day week at work this week. It was a little easier actually to get work done, I must say, although I think we have a ways to go before I am as useful to my generous employer as I want to be. Beth was less angelic for Grant this week, though, and both evenings after work and for the days I have been with her, she has been frequently declaring her PASSIONATE LOVE FOR THE BOOB. Sometimes this kind of looks like when almost-weaned puppies ram their mother and cause her to fall over so they can feed. Still makes me feel all special, though :)

Back to wurk

Beth likes eggs, and lurves Daddy

So last week I returned to economically productive capacity in the formal sense, ie went into the office. And it was grand. There was cake. There was secretarial support of the first order. There were interesting matters and intellectual stimulation and grown-up conversation that did not centre around the feeding and care of Beth. AND I got to leave at 5pm, which I have never ever done before, and no-one questioned this. IT WAS AWESOME!

Beth stayed home with Grant and I have it on good authority, supported by Tara, that she had a lovely time. Adventures were had, I believe:

Grant, unlike me, can take Beth out of the house without packing for arctic expedition

Certainly she seemed very cheerful when I got home, before she saw me and started whingeing to nurse, then affixed herself for the next 2 hours or so. I must say that my return to work was about as stress-free as it could possibly have been - no childcare run or preparation of Beth required; all I had to do was get up, feed her, and leave. And of course after several weeks of silly buggers sleep habits, she slept beautifully for him (or slept "like someone else's baby" as he put it), between being sunny and cheerful and adventurous and fun. Grant said I couldn't have planned a better first day of full-time parenthood for him. He is now addicted and I may yet persuade him to stay home full-time while I go out and slay savage beasts to feed the family. Or actually, both of us working part-time will I think be wonderful, not to mention nice for sanity.

Grant sent me the following two pictures as "proof of life" while I was in the office. I defy anyone not to become all squooshy:

Oh yeah, I'm cute

Mum visited last week to knock the garden into shape, and it is now looking almost neat in some parts. She was visiting on Weds/Thurs, so Friday was my first day home alone with Beth last week, and until I locked us out of the house in the evening, we had a lovely time hanging out in the backyard. She only ate a healthy modicum of dirt, too.

Plus, I like the money.

The only downside of work was lactation-related. Our pumping facilities are a bit abysmal. As in, give that our offices are glass-fronted and therefore unsuitable for the modesty of a good corporate lawyer, I was offered two options for pumping, but #1 which used to be the "family room" for sick kids is now someone's office and also the kitchen for the whole floor, #2 is the sick room with a hidden power point and no desk space to work on while playing cow, and both are, of course, unlockable. This would have been OK if a "do not disturb" sign was efficacious, but I got walked in on in #1 despite do not disturb sign. On the other hand, I used to be shy about pumping despite not minding breastfeeding in public (of course, Beth DOES mind breastfeeding in public), but as I have now had to tell about a million people that I was pumping and have a million others either see me do it or see me dealing with the output, I am pretty well over that. Also, I can now pump while working, which is handy as I would otherwise have difficulty justifying 40 mins out of a shortened workday. But I might try to get a bigger table for the sick room.

In short: I am back. Not bigger and better than before, since I'm now effectively only working a weekend, but it's lovely just the same.

Crawling revisited

Also, Beth totally has the commando crawl down pat now. Proof:

The new place has a lot more space for her to crawl around in, so we expect to see the development of very buff crawling muscles indeed shortly.

Full circle

Househunt 2008 #2 is finished at last, and we finally have a new pad. We have christened it Narnia, not because it is magical or accessed via a wardrobe, but because of this:

Why yes, that is a lamp-post in the back yard, and no, we don't know why.

Less artistic lamp-post shot:

Jungle baby is coming to get you.

It happens to be across the road from our first Sydney house (or rather the McMansion that now stands where the Fifties Dreamhouse once stood). Which makes it quite cute when our lovely new neighbours welcome us to the 'hood. It also means we have come full circle through some of the world's great places - Concord West (Fifties Dreamhouse), Homebush (All Mod Cons Dreamhouse on Highway to Hell), Notting Hill (Pixieflat), Newcastle (Versatile Solutions for Modern Living Soulless Townhouse), and back to Concord West. We are pleased as punch to be back in the old stomping ground. There's a park across the road, and Bicentennial Park is 15 minutes' walk away. We can walk to Rhodes shopping centre in 30 mins or the Bakehouse Quarter in 15, the local shops (takeaways x 2, cafes x 3 and a decent corner shop), our chiro and the station are only two blocks away, Grant can ride to work in under 40 minutes, and I can train it in in about 35 from door to door barring Unforseen Public Transport Incidents. The location, in other words, is wonderful.

The new house - well, not quite wonderful. It has wooden floors for Beth to wee upon without fear of carpet damage, a yard for her to play in without getting third degree knee grazing unlike the previous courtyard (and she LOVES the backyard - see jungle baby shots above), a HILLS HOIST TO DRY NAPPIES ON IN TRUE AUSTRALIAN STYLE WOOHOO! (ETA: unfortunately not as good as I'd hoped, as it has a tree rammed through it so won't turn), a nonfunctional spa bath for ?, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. And it has bars on the windows, what with Concord West being a hotbed of crime. You have to watch out for those latte-sipping Concord teenagers with their polite manners, I tell you.

It does not have:
-a dishwasher (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)
-a remotely logical layout
-a reasonable rent, even after we haggled $20/week off, but that's Sydney for you, I guess
-any proximity whatsoever to my Novocastrian mother's group, alas.

It also clearly did not have previous tenants with any concept of house or garden maintenance, as the yard is overrun with weeds and the cupboards HAD MOUSE POO IN THEM, and the floors were v. grimy, but Jan and Paul, Industrial Cleaners par excellence as well as being very nice parents-in-law to have, came the other day and beat the place into shape. And now I find myself kind of getting to like the place. But not its lack of dishwasher, which is inexcusable. Good shower though.

The room that will be Robert's is still full of boxes, but don't tell him, OK?

Beth really wants to stress that she likes the yard:

Jungle baby is getting closer by the second...

We're missing things Novocastrian but really getting into the swing of the neighbourhood. Today we had yum cha with Vron and Fi at Rhodes, and Beth ate a fair few dumpling fragments. Then we went for a stroll around the strangely named Lake Belvedere in Bicentennial Park, and Beth looked at the duckies:

Beth points out that there is no birdy cuter than the teenaged duckling

And I am back in the office on Tuesday, without a single dry-cleaned suit, thanks to the ^%#! public holiday when I least expected it.

Now to get organised with this whole living-and-returning-to-work caper. Wish us luck. Separate post to follow with our farewell to Newcastle shots!

Where's the cheese?

Where's the cheese? (credit: PRC). Here's the cheese:


And after this, the cheese was all over the floor.

As you can see, Beth is mastering the pincer grasp quite nicely, and can "chew" in so far as anyone can chew with two teeth (actually, quite well - she can somehow bite off pieces of toast and apple - impressively sharp gums). However, still not really keen on solid foods except as objects to play with. Leaves, on the other hand, are quite tasty:

We keep trying, because we are stupid that way.

The important thing is that she is SUPER CUTE.

As you know, nothing pleases me so much as a pornographic trade mark dispute, and I got to play with a really neato case of same at work this week, and for a fancy client, to boot. Very entertaining from a legal perspective although quite freaky from any other perspective including basic aesthetics. Grant has been doing a lot more of the heavy lifting baby-wise preparatory to looking after Beth alone two days a week, so I've actually managed to do more than six hours of work this week without sacrificing Beth's every naptime to the cause, which is wonderful. There was a day where I only changed one nappy, even!

Grant engaged in heavy lifting, baby-wise; Beth engaged in daddy tom-tom drums

We're still househunting in Sydney - or rather, I have delegated the househunting in Sydney to those who are occasionally in Sydney - and it has been a bit depressing. Not much around, and all quite expensive. Still, something will show up in the nick of time like always, I should imagine. In the worst case scenario I can ramp up the hours working from home in the short term and potentially slightly delay returning to the office. Not for long though!

Striking while iron is hot

In my haste to recount the exciting part of the wedding last weekend (sleep!) I forgot to mention the other parts. Most importantly, Grant has long desired to dance with his daughter at a wedding. I should stress *a* wedding and not *her* wedding. Although I'm sure he wants to do that too. In any case, Beth was getting towards bedtime when the speeches were still in full swing last night, and then the bridal couple had their first waltz while Grant was in the back of the hall, putting Beth to sleep in her pram, or so I thought. But instead Beth and her daddy were doing this far far more fun thing:

Milestone #21374213, dancing at wedding using correct hand on shoulder posture: check

Nothing like starting out teary for a bridal waltz and then getting a dose of my two favourite humans being even more adorable than usual.

As you can see, Beth was having a lovely time, and in such circumstances we are finally learning to say to hell with the rigid bed clock and hello life is for living! Grant went on to make everyone in the room vote him Best Father of All Time by taking it out on the dance floor. The song following the bridal waltz was "A Little Ray of Sunshine," so I think the DJ was getting a bit misty-eyed too. Although possibly not, as Beth's awesome outfit contained no pink so everyone assumed she was a boy.

Jan got the above shot, and also forwarded us this very rare apple, namely the SHOT OF GRANT, LOZ AND BETH TOGETHER PROVING NONE ARE FIGMENTS OF THE OTHER'S IMAGINATION!


The shot also proves the following:
(a) Lee's awesome green jumper still fits Beth;
(b) Grant still looks sharp in a red tie;
(c) I was dressing for the wedding solely with regard to how easy it would be to breastfeed in the outfit rather than visual appeal. One has to have priorities, as you can see from Beth's chubby cheeks;
(d) Beth has my eyebrows;
(e) Yes, Grant still has dimples.

It was a wonderful night.

A retrospective: 6 months of Beth (Plan B)

Grant has been hassling me to do a proper blog entry, and I'm having quite the galloping writer's block, having written nothing other than shopping lists and legal advice since September last year. But our daughter, she is fabulous, and deserving of written acknowledgement on the momentous occasion of her six-month-aversary. So.

1. The advent of Beth


Beth didn't have quite the introduction to the world outside that we had hoped. Instead of being born in a nice birth centre and being caught by her daddy with Auntie Sue helping, followed by a lovely long snooze at home in bed with us to get to know each other, we spent most of a pretty gruelling 30 hour labour in a hospital ward with me chained to a bed with drips and foetal monitors, and when she was finally born she was whisked away to the NICU for 2.5 days. Not much fun for anyone, particularly as Grant and I had been awake for the aforementioned 30 hours and then got no more than 1.5 hours' sleep at a stretch so that I could do three hourly (and then two hourly, yuk!) feeds in the NICU.

So our "getting to know each other" stage had rather more cables, monitors, and doctors and nurses in attendance than anticipated, as well as a lot more being forced to leave Beth behind in a ward with strangers, and everyone was fairly shell-shocked for weeks afterwards. I think we both found it quite hard to put her down for a while there, and even after she was out of the NICU but in the maternity ward with us, we used to steal "secret cuddles" with her when she was supposed to be in her light bed for jaundice.


Beth was born tall but desperately skinny, likely because of the tummy bug from hell that landed me in hospital at 34 weeks. She didn't actually have a butt, just kind of a flat sheet of skin with a little starfish in the middle; I wish we had documentary evidence of this, because it was freaky, and if people could see it they would understand why watching Beth grow a butt still stands out as one of the greatest achievements of the first week or so of her life and one of which I am immensely proud, since *I* provided the butt fuel, after all.

2. Monkey stage

I remember really clearly Grant worrying when we had been home at Mum's for a couple of days that Beth was "all floppy." It took her that long to relax, I suppose, and I can't really blame her, because I think it took me longer!

Somewhat ironically given the NICU's paranoia about blood sugar and reasonably constant attempts to make us put her on formula, Beth lost all of 23gm of her 3068gm birthweight in the first 4 days of life and by the end of her first week had put on 300gm. For the uninitiated, 10% weight loss in the first week is normal; Beth gained that much, purely through the power of the boob. Normal weight gain is 140-250gm/wk; until she was 12 weeks old, Beth never gained less than 300gm/wk. She went from the 25th percentile for weight at birth to the top by 12 weeks, and now is hovering at the top of the charts for weight, height, and giant skull! So she grew that butt pretty quickly.


Beth spent a lot of her newborn "monkey stage" snoozing on chests (preferably daddy's chest) or in slings while we resumed our busy cafe lifestyle.


And lots and lots of time nursing and cuddling, and not a great deal of time alone in bed - well, she had done plenty of that in the NICU. I barely remember most of this stage to be honest. I was too busy clutching Beth, nursing all the live long day, and being a hormonal wreck. Looking back over the photos, she was a whole different creature. It was really quite a challenge getting to know someone who doesn't do much other than tell you when you're not acting up to spec, and since we were falling over ourselves to satisfy her every need and since (shockingly) she is a pretty easy going kiddo, she was barely even crying.

And then she started smiling and it was a whole new ball game, otherwise known as mummy and daddy three-ring-circus of "oh go on, SMILE!" (later repeated to this day to make her laugh, because we are suckers for her laugh).


3. Oh God, real baby time

While I was a wreck, the newborn monkey stage wasn't really that difficult. She used to only wake up once a night, and at 9 weeks old I scoffed at a speaker at my mother's group talking about sleep deprivation, because *I* used to sleep from 11 to 8 or so with only one waking, and clearly all these sleep deprived people were just incompetent parents. HAH.

The next day, I caught the train to Sydney with her for the second time. The first time had been a breeze really; the second time she puked all over me, blew out a nappy on a crowded train so I had to change her ON THE SEAT, cried and cried and refused to feed, and then when we arrived at Vron's, screamed her head off for half an hour until Grant put her in the sling to knock her out. And then the dreaded breast refusal stage started. She went from feeding for an hour at a time, thus consuming my entire day, to refusing to feed other than in short snatches and LYING DOWN IN THE BEDROOM, thus consuming my entire day and breaking my spirit into itty bitty pieces, for SIX WEEKS. This also meant that she went from waking once a night to waking every 2 hours to catch up on missed feeds, thus turning me into Zombie Mummy. It was rather hard to get any medical professionals to pay attention, though, as despite plummeting weight gains she was still cruising at the top of the weight charts.

Did I mention we also moved house at this time? Yeah, we did. Because we are just that kind of crazy.

But in between all of these shenanigans she was a smiling, lovely baby; it's just that for everything from 9 weeks to about 5 months I was too sleep-deprived and worried about her feeding to appreciate too much of it. You may notice there aren't so many photos of this particular stage.

Her favourite toy from about 8 weeks to 4 months was the Ladybird Nightmare floormat/playgym.


It took her a while to coordinate the grabbing and bashing thereof, but she pretty soon got the hang of it and by 3 months Mr Froggy was being beaten up at regular intervals. At 3.5 months Beth repeatedly rolled from her front to her back, but after doing three sets of rolls on two separate occasions, apparently she forgot how for another month or so, or maybe just didn't see the need, because she is very much a tummy baby and why on earth would one want to roll onto one's back when the REAL action is in rolling to one's tummy?

The harder, ab-requiring back to tummy roll was accomplished at 4.5 months. I credit our chiro for this, as until we started going to her when Beth was about four months old, Beth really didn't move her legs much at all - she was apparently pretty locked up in the lumbar spine, probably as a result of her not-so-easy entrance into the world. It's a funny thing to see a chiro adjusting a baby, as most of it involves what looks like modified cuddles and swings. Until very recently, Beth loved this, but lately there has been Neck Work which she has not been too fond of. In any case, since she managed this feat, Beth has happily stayed on her belly in a yogaesque cobra pose for ages and ages at a time, and how it isn't destroying her neck I do not know, because mine gets sort of achy just watching her.


At 5 months she remembered how to roll tummy-to-back and now she does it kind of like a synchronised swimmer, putting her arm back and over quite gracefully. She likes rolling forward and back, but only does it in opposite directions, so rolls on the spot. LUCKY FOR MUMMY AND DADDY, because if she works out how to string two rolls together and cross the floor, the game is up, as we are very much not yet childproofed in these parts. She's also very cleverly worked out how to use a front and back roll to spin around on the spot. Now she has modified her technique to a less wasteful roll-only-to-side approach, and has started walking her hands around a bit. It's amazing how much she can figure out even in only a few days

New favourite toys are her books (esp. "That's Not My Teddy" - mmm, furry, and hilarious, especially when Grant reads it as "That's Not My Daddy - HIS EARS ARE NOT FURRY ENOUGH!"), her Selecta wooden rattle and teething ring, and the best toy of all, her Chime Garden, which I bought on a whim at the DJs sale and which has since amused not only Beth 24/7 but also a friend's five year old! And according to said friend, it plays Schumann, so it's educational, too!

4. In which Mummy finally cracks and some sleep is had

The fact is, though, that sleepwise we had a pretty hard slog from when Beth was about 3 months old on. She rarely napped for longer than 45 minutes, required me to feed her to sleep or one of us to carry her in a sling to sleep, and would often not sleep for much longer than it took to get her to sleep to begin with. She was waking at least 3 times a night for feeds, usually didn't go longer than two hours between feeds, and Grant had to take her in the mornings so that I could sleep in just to survive.

We finally admitted that WE NEEDED HELP and hired the local sleep guru, sleepandsettle.com.au. I was sure this would lead to nonstop screaming and even less sleep, but in fact within a few hours of Natalie's visit, and without much pain at all, Beth was self-settling, sleeping for minimum three-four hour stretches at night (and often 6 or 7 hours, woohoo!), wakes twice a night on a BAD night, and would let Grant put her down to bed. Considering that before this it had routinely taken 40mins-2 hours to get Beth to sleep, this was freaking incredible, and made all the better by the fact that I had had such low expectations to start with.

Now we have a lot more energy to play with Beth, and she has a lot more fun, and seems to be rocketing through her milestones much faster than when she spent most of her time tired or with me trying to put her to sleep. While she was always a pretty cheerful chicken, she's now a lot calmer, to the point where we went from blaming everything on teething a month ago to not actually noticing when she cut her first tooth, even though in hindsight that did explain two mysterious short screaming fits and some rather unusual (for now - used to be standard) short night sleeps. I really enjoy her so much more now, and I think she's sort of reflecting that.

I also get to do really exciting things like GO RIDING ON MY BIKE! I haven't been riding since April last year, but it turns out that riding a bike is like riding a bike.

So I can say as Beth reaches her mighty milestone of six months: this parenthood caper is all kinds of cool. Our daughter is glorious, and every day more and more her own person, but more importantly, she cracks me up.

5. Summary

Amelie-style, things Beth likes: daddy jungle gym; mummy jungle gym; boob if on her terms; Chime Garden; watching the trees in the wind; rolling around, particularly now we have some end-of-roll lino for her to skid around on (super high quality, apparently); sit-ups; nappy-off time (aka "vejayjay time"); bathtime; daddy's silly songs; chewing things, esp if wooden or a spoon; attacking catalogues.

Things Beth isn't so sure about, but thinks she could grow to like: pureed sweet potato.

Dislikes: not so keen on ointment applied to the face, the five minutes before bed, or people other than mummy or daddy cuddling her, although usually prepared to relax about it after a while. Other than that, she's good with just about everything.

We adore, adore, adore our baby girl. It seems impossible that it has only been six months, and equally impossible that she has not always been here.

So that's where we're at. How have you guys been?

Update

Roman amphitheatre, St Albans (aka Verulamium)

The public (well OK Robert) demands an update and we shall provide.

First I must note that we are actually having a decent thunderstorm here. Just like home!

Last weekend we spent Saturday (a) at Bayswater dim sum (per usual ritual) and then (b) at Hyde Park at the start of the Tour de France.

It was pretty cool in the sense of being sweltering hot. I managed to see the top of some helmets as they whizzed past and quite a lot of police escorts and assorted support vehicles. The organisers had chosen to couple a particularly disorganised cabling arrangement with this attractive liability-limiting sign:

Which was itself a trip hazard as people were staring at it in puzzlement while staggering over the cables.

On Sunday we decided to get our moderately lazy tourist asses into gear and went to St Albans. In its current incarnation, it's a moderately pretty satellite/commuter town for London. Two thousand years ago, it had a rather grander life as Verulamium, the third largest city in Roman Britain and the one place in the UK you can still see a ruined Roman amphitheatre (above, in all its glory). There are also some ruins of the original city walls, which were built after Boudicca smashed and burned the joint (and Londinium) in the first century AD or thereabouts. After the Romans pulled out, the locals deconstructed the joint for use in their own buildings, hence the fact that most of the older St Albans places are made of flint. It's quite a look actually.


It's polite to refer to this as recycling rather than sacking, and it's nice to know that our ancestors were as environmentally conscious and/or lazy at getting their own damned building materials as this outfit.

The Roman overlords of the town in its heyday clearly had a bit of cash to spend. See rather spiffy mosaic with underfloor heating:


St Albans also has a very classy street market and a belfry constructed around the fifteenth century. Clearly people were both shorter and skinnier then; the stairway up is so narrow that even I had to twist to pass and Grant was basically going up backwards. Possibly a preview of what Plan B is going to be experiencing come January.

St Albans' belfry; observe (a) short doorway and (b) yokel buck-tooth grin and (c) t-shirt, which has now completely given up all hope of covering bump.

Anyway, the belfry managed to combine my fear of heights with my mild claustrophobia very satisfactorily indeed. Good view from the top, too. It used to be a part of a sort of proto-telegraph with signals transferred from the roof to other towers miles away.

St Albans' other jewel is the cathedral, largely made of flint as you might expect. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger church.

The inside was clearly decorated over several different historical periods with a whole lot of available cash and was just beautiful. Very worth a look, especially given that it's a mere hour by train from our flat. Once again, the esteemed guide 25 Best Day Trips from London proves itself to be made of solid gold!

Last week was the usual work/pretend to study deal. Grant made a couple of really nice dinners on the nights I was working, with organic chicken and sustainable organic cod no less.

This weekend we have been hanging around at home mostly. On Friday, Grant's old mountain biking buddy Tyler was in town, and we went out for dinner and to the pub - Prince of Wales, aka Prince of Pubs, natch. This was wonderful actually, as we hadn't been to either the Mexican restaurant or the PoW since the smoking ban came in. The Mexican now not only provides tasty food but also 99% less worries that every breath one takes is damaging one's on-board embryo, and somewhat ironically the beer garden of the PoW has become a smoke-ridden crowded hellhole while the formerly smoky indoors is now a mostly-empty smoke free paradise.

Saturday being yesterday we went into town for TROLLEY DIM SUM!!! (a concept poorly understood in this country but obviously the standard means of offering yum cha in Oz) in Chinatown. It was OK, and nice to see the trolleys like home, but nowhere near as good as Marigold or the other Sydney joints and nowhere near as good as the ordered dim sum at Bayswater, so I guess we should stick with what we know. Then we went a hunting digital TV tuner cards in Tottenham Court Road, then shopping in Oxford Street, unfortunately in the middle of Summer sales. WHOOPS. Grant picked up some jogging shorts (he has started walking/jogging the days he doesn't ride to work) and I gave into necessity and dropped 47 quid on lycra everything. I'm now much more comfortable and have two whole pairs of pants I can wear, and possibly as many as four shirts that don't show overhanging gut! The humorous thing is that when I wear "normal" clothes it isn't obvious that I'm pregnant (just look chunky); when I wear skin tight maternity lycra people offer me fruit juice instead of alcohol and ask solicitous questions about my health. Answer: fine, can I have a beer?

While I am on the subject, boo to Mothercare for selling me jeans previously that appear to lack a basic appreciation for the shape of a pregnant body, specifically it being wider in the middle than at the top and bottom, and of gravity, specifically that clothing will aim for the smallest point and stick there. ONE CANNOT DESIGN JEANS THAT GO AROUND THE BIGGEST POINT OF THE BELLY AND EXPECT A SKINNY ELASTIC TO HOLD THEM UP, MOTHERCARE! Result: elastic cutting person in half through uterus AND pants falling down; quite a double act for a company that specialises in maternity wear. Advice to purveyors of clothing for bumps: one must either go under or over the bump if all one is relying on is a piece of hat elastic. Advice to everyone else: H&M sells decent cheapass lycra for your bump, provided you don't mind a little exploitation of Eastern European/South-East Asian labour.

Last night Bin and Claire were in our neck of the woods visiting a friend, so we all met up in the evening and headed to the Moroccan restaurant in Goldborne Rd, highly recommended as always and damn cheap really. You can stuff yourself with two courses of really decent food for 10 quid; not always true of the W11 postcode.

Aunt Franny is visiting next week, and then Mum is coming in early August. After that we have Grant's parents in early Sept for almost a whole month. Busy. Times. Ahead. It will be so great to see everyone, and show them around our temporary home, though.

Island/Iceland

Hallgrimska, Reykjavik, 12:30am

Over the weekend we had a lovely trip to Iceland. A proper trip, even, namely on of the three or four in my entire life for which I've had to pay for accomodation (what the hell are family and friends for anyway?).

We landed just before midnight on Friday at Keflavik, and from there it was a 40 minute bus ride to Reykjavik ("smoky bay"). As a result, we got to see the sun set. After midnight. And it didn't go all the way down; it just sort of sulked over the horizon. This photo of the main cathedral, Hallgrimska, was taken just as we were walking to our guesthouse, pushing 1am. FREAKY. The sun came back up again a little after 3am which wouldn't have been a problem, except that we had no blinds in our room. Funny how quickly you get used to it though.

I must say I did a kickass job of picking the guesthouse. It was opposite a strip joint and two pubs, two blocks back from the harbour and one from the main shopping strip, and our apartment had a jacuzzi, dishwasher, and washing and drying machines, making the place as a whole roughly 98% more attractive, convenient and awesome than the pixieflat. I miss you guesthouse apartment! Oh, but since Reykjavik's water is geothermally heated, things got a little sulfurous when showering/washing up/having any contact whatsoever with hot water. This I do not miss.

On Saturday we had a wander around Reykjavik, which at 300,000 barely counts as a city by back-home standards. It is really quite pretty; all the old houses are made out of corrugated iron, but with elaborate wooden trims. Note to self: bring true gospel of tarting up tin shacks home. The main shopping strip is nice but quite tourist-directed (albeit blessedly without any of the major European/American chains) and really pushing Icelandic lopi jumpers. These are a little too simple for me to spend 80 euro on, given I could make one with my eyes closed for about a quarter of that, but they were interesting to eyeball anyway. I did actually pick up two balls of thin icelandic wool for about 1/5 of what I've seen anything sold in UK, land of "we pretend we don't have sheep so as to force up the prices." Icelandic wool is tough as an old boot, and I imagine would outwear merino by several hundred years. Might be a little rough on the hands, but we'll see!

During our wander, Grant made a new friend at the sculpture garden near Hallgrimska. Then we headed up the tower of the church itself, which is one of the high points of the city. It was great except that (a) I'm terrified of heights and (b) we went up there just before 3pm without realising what happens in a bell tower on the hour. BELL MAKE BIG NOISE.

Later, we went out on a boat for a whale/puffin-watching adventure, which did indeed include sightings of puffins on Puffin Island (shooting fish in a barrel, as that's where the puffins live at this time of year) but only dolphins, no whales around. Unfortunately dolphins appeared to satisfy there "get a cetacean sighting or get another trip free," or so I gathered from the tour guide's repeated discussion of the dolphins several hours after we had last seen them. The dolphins were, in fact, pretty cool - not like bottlenoses at all.

Later, in commemoration of the puffin sighting, my companions ate a puffin. I demurred.

On Sunday we rented a car to better experience the joys of Iceland. It came with a CD to replace those pesky human tour guides. Once we worked out the suggested route out of town it was quite good. The route was the golden circle, which covers Geysir (the Big One after which all geysers are named), Gulfoss (honking waterfall) and a park called Thingvellir (actually it isn't "Th" it's an icelandic character, the same as for the start of Thor's name, but let's not overtax blogger) where the Icelanders formed the first European parliament.

First stop was a nice lava field:

The dirt is quite black; the green stuff is really thing moss, not grass. Quite an alien landscape. At the instructions of our tour guide CD, we then visited this volcanic crater:

Oo er. We of course had to walk down into it; Grant and Rohan then raced each other back up, because they are both youngest children. And people make fun of my only child status. AT LEAST I WASN'T SCARRED FOR LIFE, people.

OK, next stop. Does my public want geysers? I am going to assume the answer is yes.

This isn't Geysir, which is unpredictable and in fact stopped erupting for a few decades before the 2000 earthquake jogged it back into life. It didn't go up while we were there. This is Geysir's little brother, which kindly shows off every 5 minutes or so. And is pretty blinkiy impressive. Of course, this entire area was rank with sulfur. Probably one of the few places on earth one can fart with impunity.

And this beauty is Gulfoss, a really, really big waterfall.

The first drop is about 11m and the second around 20-30 I think. Water flow is 100 cubic metres per second, so of course they wanted to dam it in the early 1900s. Fortunately, reason prevailed. This things puts out an amazing amount of water vapour. Grant and Rohan then spent some time standing on the edge, etc (Iceland has the same hatred of public safety as the UK, and even better, it's got a lot more dangerous things to refuse to protect people from) - see above re: youngest children.

And on to Thingvellir.

Thingvellir is at the rift between the American and Eurasian continental plates, which are moving apart at a rate of 2cm per year and being nicely infilled with LIQUID HOT MAGMA, which we are sort of standing on in this shot. Behind us is one of the continental walls; I think the edge of the American plate. We are also near the supposed site of the Law Rock, where in the early days of the Icelandic parliament, which was pre-script (backward Vikings), the Law Speaker would recite all the laws then in force. Sounds like a fun job, doesn't it?

On Monday we actually got proper sunshine, but were so wiped out from the adventures of the day before that we mostly mosied about the apartment. We went up in the Perlan for another 360 degree of Reykjavik and a visit to a most peculiar saga museum of Icelandic history (sort of history museum crossed with Madame Tussaud's) and had a wander about the harbour, but that was about it.

Tuesday was our last day, and was spent at Iceland's premier tourist trap, the Blue Lagoon hot bathing springs:

I'm cheating - this is outside the Blue Lagoon, but it's also the only part that is blue so we'll go with it. The hot springs are 37-39 degrees, like a toasty warm bath, and very salty, therefore conducive to a nice float. They also have a nice fake waterfall that will hammer your back and shoulders into submission for you, but which is not, I should add, of quite the same magnitude as Gulfoss. It was tremendously relaxing and exactly the best way to end a lovely holiday. PITY WE THEN HAD TO CATCH A PLANE.

And then we came home sweet home.

In short, visit Iceland!