start 'em young

On Wednesday Graham and I attempted our first post-baby full-day charity shopping extravaganza and it was very successful.  Dulcie hardly cried all day, we managed to get the pram in all our favourite shops and all three of us found something to buy.  Dulcie spotted this pink stripy romper suit from her pram and was very excited when I held it up for her to get a proper look at it.  It's newborn size so will probably (hopefully!) not fit her for long, but at 99p we couldn't very well leave it behind.  As you can see, she is very pleased with her first ever charity shop purchase.  I predict great things for this girl!  I will share my finds some other time.

chortle!

Hee hee!  I love seeing childishly rude non-permanent graffiti.  This drawing was part of a larger collection of chalk cocks (it's not rude if it rhymes!) seen in Queens Park yesterday, but the caption set this one apart and had me giggling.

omg! she likes it!

Dulcie's nearly 9lbs now and is big enough to wear her crocheted cardigans at last.  Hooray!  We all love her in this mustard one.  I think this is the first photo of Dulcie in a handmade cardigan where she is not screaming.  At last she likes something I made for her!  How ironic that it's been too hot for chunky cardigans the last few days...

It's been so nice to have Graham around this sunny week.  The three of us have been making the most of the weather and I've got lots of photos to share from our outings.  Soon, soon, soon.

lakes and cakes (or lochs and... never mind!)

We picnicked in Balloch on Friday and stumbled across this amazing bakery called Cottonrake on the way to the train station.  Apparently they have been open for 18 months, so I'm not sure how we had failed to notice them before.  They have the most delicious-looking window ever, full of pies and cakes.

Graham went in and got us a couple of cakes while I stayed outside with Dulcie and took this photo of the lady taking our goodies out of the window display.

Balloch was just what the doctor ordered.  I had been craving a stroll by some scenic water for a while.

I saw these unusual plants in a swampy bit as we walked through the woods.  We had a lovely picnic overlooking Loch Lomond and then wandered through the woods a bit more and back into the town.

What do you do when your neighbour copies you and names their house the same thing as yours?  You might need to make the picture bigger if you want to find out.

We saved our humungous cakes from the bakery until late afternoon when we sat outside a pub and ate them with a cup of coffee and cream.  Mmmm!  Excuse the baby attached to my boob.  I really do forget she's even there these days, although sometimes when she is feeding in public she has the annoying habit of stopping for a nosy and leaving me "hanging out" for all and sundry to see as she cranes her neck around.  As my friend said the other day, "There's breast-feeding in public and then there's sitting in the park with your boobs out."  I think they've probably been seen by most Glaswegians by now.

girl crush

I have such a crush on the owner of these swanky new lashes.  Yum yum.  Yup, Dulcie's eyelashes suddenly turned from stubby and blonde to long and dark, so we can remove extortionate future mascara bills from our list of worries.

In other baby-development news, she has started sucking her thumb.  It's ridiculously cute, but are we supposed to discourage it, do you know?

Graham is about to take her out in the pram and give me an hour in the house alone.  So many things I'm itching to do with two free hands!  Where to begin?

dulcie's cultural education

 Making sure your child receives sufficient cultural stimuli is a serious job.  Here's Dulcie being all cultured and whatnot at the People's Palace last weekend.  She is nothing if not sophisticated, as you can see.

She really does seem to enjoy outings but doesn't mind where we go if I'm honest.  Yesterday our daily outing was to the neonatal hospital (her old home!) for a check-up and even that kept her entertained for the best part of the afternoon.  She stared at a packet of surgical gloves for a good ten minutes quite happily.  On the way home the unexpected sunshininess lifted her spirits (like it seemed to do for everyone in the west end - the park was mobbed with happy people, dogs and ukuleles) and I managed to get some half-decent photos for once.

As of today, Graham has six glorious days off work and we have lots of daytrips etc. planned.  Rural locations, seaside towns, picnic tables and charity shops here we come!  Hooray!

when i'm (watching someone else) cleaning windows

Last weekend Graham cleaned our windows.  They hadn't been cleaned in at least a year (due to the enormous extendable pole being held hostage by one of Graham's friends) and were apparently much dirtier than I had realised.  Everything in the flat looks a different colour thanks to ten times as much daylight getting in, and I feel like a heavy, dark cloud has been lifted from my shoulders.  Nice work, Graham!  Apparently it is my job to clean the insides.  Hmm, there are many things I'm prepared to attempt with a baby in one hand (like laboriously typing this blog post) but climbing a ladder is not one of them!

The cats were very much entertained by the strange fluffy creature slipping and sliding over the glass, or one of them was.  Poor Poppy was more terrified than entertained!

 Today I was looking out this window and saw that part of the window's "edging" (between the actual window frame and the stone wall) had been dislodged by the cleaning process and was lying on the windowsill.  It is made of what looks to be very ancient newspaper, folded up, wedged in the gap and painted black on the edge that would be visible.  No wonder our windows are so draughty!  I will try to retrieve the piece of paper (watch this space - opening the heavy window is another thing I can't do with a baby in one hand) and determine just how long ago this makeshift fix was carried out.   I bet whoever did it never expected it to last until 2012!  This sort of thing is what is so great and also not-so-great about living in an old tenement flat.

[UPDATE: The newspaper was the Glasgow Herald from 1950.  1950!  I tried to unfurl it to read it but it was too crispy and fragile, hardly surprising after over 60 years protecting our flat from the Glaswegian elements!  I did see an advert for a treatment for baldness peeking out.  I guess the product didn't really work or surely there would be no baldy heads by now.]

mothers cubed

This week my granny came to visit us so she could meet Dulcie.  My granny lives on the island of Islay and will be 80 later this year.  She doesn't like to leave Islay these days if she can help it, but Dulcie proved too much of a temptation so my mum went to Islay to collect her.  Here we are, four generations of ladies - Dulcie, her mum, her granny and her great-granny a.k.a. the Cailleach.  After visiting us, my mum persuaded my granny to go and stay with her in Elgin for a few days.  They travelled from Glasgow to Elgin by train, the first time my granny had been on a train since before she was married over 60 years ago.  Now we're hoping she might go and visit my sister in France for her 80th birthday.  My mum has a passport application form for her.

Hope any mums/sons/daughters reading this are having a lovely Mother's Day.  I think we're going to take some sandwiches to the park to enjoy the blue skies for a while.

:)

 Dulcie has definitely mastered the art of smiling over the last week or two.  Hooray!

Her most smiley times of day are 1) when I lean over her cot first thing in the morning; 2) when her dad gets in from work, or really whenever her dad is anywhere near her; 3) when she thinks no-one is looking; 4) when I lean over her cot last thing at night.  Her least smiley times of day are whenever I try to meet up with a friend and she grumbles and shouts so much that conversation is impossible.  I have had a fairly sociable week despite her sabotage attempts, but this afternoon it is just the two of us and there is not much smiling going on at all.  Someone is mistaking tiredness for hunger and has been feeding almost constantly for the last five hours.  Sigh...  I think we'll head to the park with a book and a sandwich for a bit of sweet relief.

spring may be springing...

... but I've just created this treasury of cosy cushions over on etsy.  Ah, it's amazing what you can do with one hand when you have a baby in the other!

mellow yellow

Just in case you haven't seen enough babies or cardigans round these parts (ha!) here's a few snaps of Dulcie in some amazing hand-knits from this weekend.  This hat and cardigan were a present from my friend Bernadette.  After years of failed attempts at learning to knit (she's left-handed - that's her excuse and she's sticking to it!) she thought outside the box and commissioned a knitty friend to make these instead.

How gorgeous? (No, I don't mean me!)  I especially love the hat, which makes Dulcie look like a little wartime baby.

And here is the obligatory crying in hand-knitting shot, but she's worn this hat and cardigan four days in a row without being sick on them (miracle!) so I can tell she loves them really.

Dulcie had her second round of immunisations today.  She was doing her best smile as the needles went in, poor thing.  Much red-faced screaming followed.  She has been curled up in a little ball asleep on my chest ever since we got home.  Bless her.

buttons at long bleedin' last

My mum's been visiting the last couple of days.  We were too busy having a nice time (going to the cinema, out for lunch, snuggling up with babies) for me to get many of my planned jobs done, but I did manage to find and attach buttons on all the cardigans I had made for Dulcie when she was still just Beyonce-Buble to us.  They're all still a bit big for her, but only just, so it's good that the buttons will be ready when she is.