It seems that the old blog and I just can’t break up so I moved back…Find me over at whenawomansfedup, my first blog which I’ve had for over 5 years. Yes, I’m still bemused by the fact that it’s over five years since I got up one morning and moaned about a bad date. A lot of things have changed since then!
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Another week has disappeared like sand through my fingers. I’ve given myself ‘maternity leave’ which has me on a ‘reduced schedule’ so instead of working full time (ish), I overall do about a couple of days a week. Thing is, between breastfeeding and house stuff, it’s difficult to stay focused so I’m a bit all over the place. I think in the quest to be superwoman that I’ve certainly made a rod for my own back as I’m one half baby products, one half relationship ‘expert’ so I have to sort out all the posts for Bambino Goodies, and then switch into ‘yes your boyfriend is a dipstick’ mode and write my words of wisdom on my relationship site, then I still have a few readers I coach each week, plus I’m doing a very slow re-edit on an ebook which is getting ready to go into print. And…breathe…
In between all this it’s the bambino’s 2nd birthday on Sunday and I need to do some baking plus I need to find her some suitable shoes to go with her dress, plus…oh shag it. There’s loads to do!
I had planned to do a dry run for the baking but ‘Uncle Titty’ (the bambino can’t pronounce ‘Richie’ properly..) came to visit so it seemed better to go to Costa and go shopping in between going to the dentist.
It was the first time I’d taken her there and I regretted it about a fraction of a second after we stepped into the room. The problem was she hadn’t had a nap because I had made the mistake in telling her that Uncle Titty was coming which caused her to shriek in delight and point blank refuse to get in her bed.
The appointment was 2.15 and by the time we got there, she’d turned into grumpy boots, and kept lying on the floor. We stepped into the room and I introduced her to the dentist and she hid behind my legs. He stepped towards her and she started roaring like a maniac! I was frickin’ mort-ti-fied! She could have at least had the decency to save it till he actually looked in her mouth.
I sat down in the chair with her and he tried to show her Winnie The Pooh to cheer her up and I hadn’t the heart to tell him that she probably has no clue who they are as we’ve been a Winnie free house. The wailing continued and I could hear Uncle Titty howling with laughter in the reception as he kept an eye on the baby who was actually behaving herself.
‘How old is she?’ the dentist asked. I explained that she was 2 on Sunday. ‘Yeah… she probably doesn’t need to come until she’s two and a half….’ Me suspects he just couldn’t wait to get her out of the room!
He made one last attempt and offered her a Winnie the Pooh sticker in exchange for opening her mouth. She refused to open her mouth, took the sticker, and then tried to nick his pen…
When we got back out to the reception, she started bawling because Uncle Titty wouldn’t give her my apple juice. An elderly guy started scowling at me so I quickly hustled everyone out before I got testy… I mean seriously - did he actually think I wanted my child to be shrieking like a banshee?
Of course it couldn’t end there. We all got in the lift and it refused to move so Uncle Titty said he’d carry her downstairs whilst I got the lift with the pushchair. I hadn’t noticed that she’d pressed the basement button, so of course I didn’t stop at the ground floor… I could hear him telling her as she started complaining that ‘It’s OK! Mummy is downstairs!’ and then arriving on the ground floor and her howling in rage. I couldn’t help laughing and when the doors finally opened on the ground floor, she wailed ‘mmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyy!’ really dramatically.
I have this feeling that all of the attention and the surprise element on Sunday will bring out some interesting behaviour on Sunday… Ah well! We’re having the festivities at my mums so we can pass the parcel of the stress in her direction…
Oh I could hear Uncle Titty singing to the baby earlier as he tried to rock her to sleep and it was familiar but I couldn’t identify it. ‘What are you singing?’ I asked as I watched her staring at him mesmerised. ‘Return of the Mack’. Hilarious!
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I should be doing something responsible like tidying or sleeping but I realised it had been a week since I’d updated.
Life is going by in a whirl of work, sleep, copious nappy changes, copious breastfeeds, explanations about why Charlie and Lola can’t be put on 24/7, explanations about why I don’t want the dining table to be redecorated with scribblings, acupuncture, projectile vomits, housework, a wedding (well a blessing) and other such crackness. Oh and two run-ins with loonies at my local Waitrose, plus a ’special friend’.
I don’t know what it is about me, but for some reason people try to skip ahead of me in the queue. I’m not paranoid enough to do an ‘Is it because I is black?’ moment (small town, hardly any black folk) as I think it’s more a question of I invariably happen to attract people who want to take the mick. This is a bit like when I was single and I invariably attracted men who were fruitloops…
The first episode involved a woman who seemed to think it was the long queues prime concern that she wanted to get the bus that was outside. She stood to the side of me instead of in the queue of about ten people so I deduced that she had no intentions of queuing and that she would instead attempt to push her way in. I pretended she didn’t exist but of course she chose to ignore this and my sleeping child in the sling and I felt her shadow over me just as the cashier was asking me to put my pin number in.
‘Oh…oh…oh no! My bus is outside…my bus…oh no it’s going…oh…’
The cashier did her best to hide her irritation and told her to join the queue. The woman ignored this and was now practically up my backside and that was when I snapped.
‘Do you and I share a bank account? You shouldn’t be standing over me whilst I’m putting my pin in!’
‘The bus is outside. Do you mind if I just pay quickly?’ she wheedled, totally ignoring what I’d said as other customers started grumbling about her.
‘Actually I do mind…You’d have thought that would have been clear by now…’
I thought one incident would be enough, but as I reached into the pushchair basket to take out my reusable shopping bag a couple of days ago, a woman that had a serious whiff of booze and a couple of cans for her next session in her hands just strode in front of me. I did a double take and decided there and then she wasn’t getting away with it.
“You just jumped in front of me!’ I said outraged.
She turned around and shifted uncomfortably. ‘I thought you was busy…you know when you were looking in your pushchair’ she said, as if this was a suitable explanation.
‘I was getting out my shopping bag’ - note that this took me about ten seconds and someone else was paying for their shopping - I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait a few more minutes for your cans!’ I said pointedly. Ha!
Of course sods law had it that I saw my local weirdo ‘Following Tom’ (I can’t call him a Peeping Tom…yet..’ on the way home. You can get the full lowdown on him here on my ‘old blog‘, but basically I caught him following me one day and he tried to hide rather pathetically behind a pillar outside the supermarket. The next time I saw him, he panicked and nearly got himself run over as he narrowly missed being hit by oncoming traffic, and each time I see him, he does something bonkers. This time, he dashed off in alarm and ran off in the opposite direction like a man possessed and it suddenly occurred to me that people might think I was the one being the weirdo. Sigh…
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It looks like our household is reaching the end of a very short era as we need to ‘let go of’ (yeah, yeah, I mean ’sack’) our cleaner. It is with great regret, not least because I clearly have no desire to clean my own home and I now have to start looking for another cleaner. It took us eighteen frigging months to get this one because I happen to live somewhere where they think it’s normal to charge upwards of £15 an hour! As I explained to the last company, unless they’re planning to lick every inch of my house, that’s just too much!
We’re a bit unfortunate with cleaners. The last one we had, which was nearly three years ago, was a p*sshead. She’d cancel on us as well and wouldn’t even bother to pretend she had an illness - she’d tell us she was dying of a hangover. When she did turn up she brought her kid with her, which I only found out about because I was on a sicky from work one day…
Our current cleaner loves sending me a text message about an hour or two before I’m expecting her, telling me she can’t make it. Today’s message was even signed with kisses - forget the kisses - just get your bum over here and clean the house.
Thing is, when she does come and clean, we then have to live in fear of her breaking something. She broke a beautiful, glass bowl which the boyf brought from Copenhagen within about thirty minutes of getting her the first time she cleaned. The second time, she broke my bottle of Dr Hauschka toner which is about £14 to replace. We had a reprieve the next time, and then on the following visit, she yanked out all of the cables behind the boyf’s bedside table, causing his 320gb harddrive to have some sort of failure that required it to be sent off to be repaired… The boyf went ballistic and only for the fact that I was literally due to have the baby did we not sack her then. What’s so bizarre about the latter incident is that she’s doing a course in IT…
I know sh*t happens and all that jazz, but I need someone who 1) cleans properly without cutting corners, 2) can manage not to break something on the great majority of her visits, and 3) turns up most of the time and gives me decent notice when she can’t.
Somehow I’ve never had to sack someone before and even though I’m not exactly the shy, retiring type, I cringe at having to tell her and ask back for the key. Much like when you’re afraid to complain in restaurants in case they spit in your food, my overactive imagination has me panicking. What if she sells my key on the black market? What if she cries? What if she wants a big discussion? OK, maybe I’m being dramatic…
What if she thinks I’m a bitch? Well actually, if I was a bitch, I’d have deducted the cost of her breakages out of her wages which would have pretty much cleaned her out…
But I digress…
I reckon the wussy way out is the best way. Blame the credit crunch and claim I can’t afford it. What’s a recession for if you can’t blame it for a few things… I’m pleading poverty - I had better make sure all of my shopping deliveries are hidden when she returns the key…
Ah…I am alive and well after five days of me and the girls time which included the boyf being away for a couple of nights on a stag do. I can’t say I wasn’t slightly relieved to see the bambino practically sprinting out the door this morning to go with the childminder to hang with her buddies!
A whirlwind of demands, destruction, diva tendencies, and delightfulness, I knew she’d kept me on my toes when I could barely stay awake at 4pm when we were at the boyf’s mum, Glamourous Grandma yesterday.
The key thing I have learned from the last few days is that patience is key (no sh*t Sherlock), but also that when you have another child, you have to be careful not to suddenly expect your other baby to be miraculously more sensible, just because you need them to be. The bambino thinks she’s been helpful when she tries to put her toy dog in the moses basket with her sister, boisterous and funny when she charges at me whilst I’m breastfeeding, and being an average 23 month old when she wants to empty out all of the toys and books in her path and wreak havoc in each room.
On Saturday afternoon, whilst waiting for my mum (Glamourous Nana) and my little bro to turn up, I decided to quickly assemble the bambino’s new table from Ikea in the spare room/office/soon to be also playroom. Feeling quite chuffed with myself when three of the legs were firmly in place, I was just about managing to keep my patience as the bambino charged around the bedroom looking for trouble. I looked away for about two seconds and then let out a howl of frustration as she snatched up the little plastic bag with the last washer and nut, swung it around like a stripper with a thong, and giggled as they flew out of the bag.
Forty five minutes later with the washer recovered and the litle bro and I failing to locate the nut after combing each surface, we admitted defeat and left the 3 legged table behind with me muttering about having to go to the hardware store. The bambino, knowing that she’d been naughty, was sheepish for a few minutes, sucking up and saying ‘Sorry mummy! Sorry mummy!…Sorry mommom!’, melting me instantly.
On Sunday, I went around the bedrooms emptying the wastebins and just as the last bits of the one from the spare room were going in, I spotted the nut right there at the bottom, twinkling at me. The bambino’s a clever thing for having such great aim…
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Well it’s taken me a bit longer than expected to return but I have a good excuse - I’ve been having a baby. My second daughter was born a couple of weeks ago by c-section and since then I’ve been immersed in sleeping, breastfeeding, too many bloody nappies, toddler hissy fits, newborn diva fits, and basically getting my ass kicked by life. I knew I was going to come back to the blog this week because the boyf went back to work on Tuesday so it felt apt to start writing as I embark on this new chapter in my life.
Of course my days just haven’t gone according to plan - have you noticed when you have a baby, people just love turning up unexpectedly? Next thing you know, best laid plans go out the frickin’ door! My mum and little brother turned up on the first day and I think she was a bit put out that I wasn’t cooking dinner for them (er HELLLLLLLOOOOOO!) even though I’d 1) had no idea they were coming, 2) they said they were “popping in” - they arrived mid afternoon but didn’t actually leave till after Eastenders, and 3) I’m supposed to be taking it bloody easy!
The thing is, I’m starting to realise that although people are well meaning, it’s a load of bollox when people say ‘take it easy’ when you’ve had a c-section and are juggling two children. Like I don’t want to lie in bed chilling out all day but the reality is that life goes on, partners go back to work, and you have to do many of the things you usually do…whilst wincing from the odd jabbing pain around the wound and juggling a newborn and toddler.
Today was my first full day of having them both home with me with no visitors. I’ve just about survived it but I am exhausted and to add to it all, the boyf had to go away this evening for one of his best mate’s stag do’s and isn’t back until Sunday morning. By the time he came home this evening, I was seriously frazzled as I’d done one bathtime after another and my eldest (the bambino) had a complete meltdown because I washed her enormous fro! I keep telling the boyf that one day he’s going to come home and she’ll be bald!
Tags: exhaustion · multiple parenting · routine1 Comment
For months I’ve been thinking about returning to personal blogging again and have ummed and aahed over it. Should I start afresh? Should I go back to where I started? If you’re reading this then you’ve guessed that I went for the former option.
Who am I? Yes of course a bit of background is needed. I’m Natalie (also known as NML) and have been blogging for almost five years and actually now blog for a living. It all started with my original personal blog Tired of Men which documented the last of my single years, bad taste in men, my crackerjack family’s antics, my struggle and eventual recovery from a debilitating disease, and eventually finding love and becoming a mum.
In the meantime, as I gathered a following, I started Baggage Reclaim in 2005 as an antithesis to the atypical women’s sites and magazines that dispense homogenous advice about how to win men that don’t want to be won. When I became a mum in May 2007, I started Bambino Goodies because I was petrified of being immersed in a sea of bad taste baby gear and parenting products, and by January 2008 I made the decision to go it alone whilst on maternity leave - it helped that the company I’d worked at for almost 5 years handled my maternity leave appallingly.