lola the wonder cat

Both our cats are ridiculously annoying.  They are loud and greedy and messy and disgusting, they destroy everything, they pillage and plunder, they cause so many grumpy moods amongst us.  Lola, in fact, is especially annoying with her constant moo-quacking, her ability to steal any food that is anywhere other than the fridge, and her extreme white hairiness that floats around in clumps and lands on every surface.  She drives us crazy.  Crazy!

But, oh, she is so lovely underneath it all.  She's such a snuggly and sociable cat (she ADORES me - isn't it nice how pets let you know just how they feel about you?) and puts up with so much "love" from Dulcie.  Here she is being decorated with Dulcie's extensive sticker collection...

...and allowing yet another hug.  Dulcie calls her Lilo Lill.  They are such a sweet pair.

Poppy, I should add, doesn't allow this sort of thing, but still gives Dulcie special treatment, by which I mean she doesn't spit at her like she does the rest of us!  Ha!  My new theory (not sure why it's taken me nearly nine years to come up with this) is that Poppy is blind and therefore edgy about sudden movements.  It's not her fault she's such a meanie, honest!

bonfire night and this night (fi-i-i-i-i-i-ight!)

Kaboom!  This year we took Dulcie to the fireworks on Glasgow Green, along with about 15,000 other people.  It was Dulcie's first real-life experience of fireworks and the first time I'd been to a big display in ages.  We saw some toddlers freaking out a bit, but Dulcie absolutely loved it, especially the noise.  The fireworks had a superhero theme, lots of TV and film theme tunes - Batman, Wonder Woman and the like.  It was fun.

We started our evening off with a fish tea in an old-school type cafe not far from Glasgow Green.  Central Cafe?  Well, it was an interesting experience, but the food wasn't great and I wish I hadn't seen the nook and miniature sink (barely visible under all the dirty plates) that counted for a kitchen...  Thinking Dulcie was finished, Graham polished off her food while she was in the toilet.  This did not go down well!  He tried to claim he'd left her some, but even Dulcie was perfectly aware that green slivers of chip did not count.  Lack of flavour and hygiene notwithstanding, it was fun and CRAZILY BUSY with firework types and the waitress was nice.  It did take about 20 minutes to persuade someone to stop making chips long enough to take our money, though! 

Here we are all cosy, just waiting for the fireworks to start.  Dulcie's massive cardigan and bodywarmer combo made her head look tiny!

And here's one of the three of us taken by a kindly passerby. Very blurry, but family photos are rare so I'll share it anyway.

The journey home was quite an experience.  15,000 people filtering out a few small gates was sardiney to say the least and Dulcie was ready for bed by this time so I had to carry her, totally unable to see where I was putting my feet.  Graham cycled home while Dulcie and I got the underground.  I had never seen it so busy.  It took us about 20 minutes to get through the turnstiles and then Dulcie promptly fell asleep on my knee as soon as we got on the train.  A nice lady had offered us her seat, thank goodness.

That night Dulcie had a dream that one of the fireworks popped on her trousers and this is the news she'll share with anyone who asks what the bonfire was like. 

I think I'll have to give Dulcie one of these talks!

Ah, it was a fun night and sometimes it's good to focus on the positive past and forget about the crappy present, like the fact that I felt heart-horrible again all day, only to get in from a ten-hour shift (three hours of which were spent trying to solve an IT problem) to find someone had left Dulcie's bedroom door open and the cats had got in and poop-bombed it for a second time, adding a massive pool of furball-riddled vomit for good measure.  The only new carpet we've ever had!  Why, cats?! Why?!  By the time I'd cleaned that up, Dulcie was late for bed and I was puffing and panting like a dodgy phone caller.  Then there was the small matter of getting her to sleep and her nursery stuff to be sorted for the morning...  I HATE FINISHING WORK AT 8PM!

Well, you know what?  Now that I've written that, I'm feeling like kind of a superwoman.  I worked all day, sorted out a very tricky IT problem, dealt with cat excretions efficiently, read Dulcie's bedtime stories in a loving manner, made her a healthy lunch (home-made soup, people!) AND sat down to blog.  Yep, I'm amazing.  Some days muddling through IS amazing.  And I've got a toddler-free day off tomorrow to recover/achieve yet more :)

Go, me...  Yawn...

where we've been

That was an uncharacteristically long blogging gap for me, by 2014 standards anyway.  We've been busy hanging out with my parents/Dulcie's grandparents.  First of all they were staying with us to do a spot of house-hunting.  (Don't know if I've mentioned they're planning on moving closer to us?  Yay!  Amazing what the lure of one super-cute girl will do to a grandparent...)  After that, Dulcie and I went up to stay with them in Elgin for a bit.  I was meant to be clearing out what remains of my stuff in preparation for their move, but that didn't really happen.  We were far too busy doing nice things and going on outings.

 The beach at Lossiemouth was FREEZING but good fun.  Dulcie met a friendly baby and was sat on by a friendly pug.  Sandcastles were built and instantly destroyed, ad nauseum.  Rock pools (well, puddles) were searched and treasure found - a shiny 10p piece that looked surprisingly similar to the one that went missing from my pocket at around the same time.

Dulcie LOVED having the garden to play in.  Here she is digging for wriggly worms with my dad.  She'd been going on about wriggly worms for weeks prior to this (she made an imaginary compost heap from a cardboard box following an inspirational episode of Peppa Pig) but seems to have gone quiet on the subject since getting up close and personal with the real deal!  She was rarely without her spade, watering can and plastic secateurs over the week.

 Here, she's shouting "Yee ha!"  She did this so much (always waving a plastic golf club round her head while she did) that the ladybird came to be known as Yee Ha.  Yee ha!

 And here she is sitting in a fancy dining chair eating porridge and generally looking like Goldilocks... minus the locks.  It's much easier to get a nice photo of Dulcie when she's in a nice house as opposed to our dung heap.  Everything was much calmer too, even when Dulcie was afflicted by a giant new tooth and screamed for about two days.

Will we ever be sorted?  Work continues behind the scenes (Graham has been snatching spare half hours to strip wallpaper and I am to phone the gas man today) but I'm perilously close to doing a TMI photographic post so you can all see what we're living amongst.  The cats, Puky and Hairy, are not helping matters in the least.  If Graham and I were married, I think he'd be using the threat of divorce as a bargaining tool to get rid of them.  As it is, he's powerless!  Ha!  (If he liked it then he should have put a ring on it etc.)  Anyway, back to the original subject...

Too cute!

As well as all these activities, we went charity shopping a couple of times (Dulcie got a few bits and bobs and I got an amazing vintage baby item for my friend's forthcoming offspring, but I can't share it until the baby is born for fear of ruining surprises), had giant pancakes at Baxters and visited the GIANT rabbits who live in the nearby garden centre.  Everything is bigger up north!  Ha!  Honestly, these rabbits were huge, easily as big as Dulcie, and were dragging their handlers around at the end of their leads.  Dulcie managed to get a quick cuddle with one of them, to her great delight.

Anyway, we're back now and I have a few blog posts lined up in my head, I'm just struggling to find my old rhythm and can't quite remember how I got things done while looking after Dulcie on my own.  I'll be back on top of (er, underneath) things soon!

snack station

I love the way Dulcie is becoming her own little independent person these days.  She always does things her own way, sometimes quietly and sometimes with a determined digging in of heels and a, "No, Mummy!" or (more likely) a, "No, Daddy!"

Some of her steps into independence are tiny but (I think) significant, like the way she uses her surroundings now.  Yesterday I gave her a snack and she immediately scuttled off with it.  I found her, quite contented, having made a wee seat for herself out of this cardboard box (full of glitter, unbeknownst to her) that has been sitting in the hall.

 Lola is never far away when food is a possibility, but Dulcie is more than capable of defending her bounty!  They have a funny little relationship, these two, Dulcie ("Come here, Lola!"/"Go away, Lola!") being at once bossy and affectionate, Lola trying to keep her distance but knowing that Dulcie is the most likely source of food in the house.  This morning, while I was hoping that Dulcie was going to snooze on long enough for me to have a cup of tea, Lola broke into the bedroom, jumped up on the bed and woke Dulcie up.  Dulcie was unfazed, responding with, "Where's Mummy gone?  Miaow!"  A regular mini Dolittle...maybe.  In all honesty, she is becoming something of a master conversationalist these days, which I love :)

Snacks + (relative) autonomy = happiness.  One of life's simpler equations.

Incidentally, I think I'm going to have to stop using the "baby" label for posts about Dulcie as she gets quite cross if anyone makes the mistake of referring to her as a baby these days.  "Dulcie is a girl!" has become one of her catchphrases.  She'd be furious if she discovered my lazily inaccurate blog-post labelling...

human cat-ipede

This is a fairly typical winter position for our cats.  It reminded me of that gruesome film The Human Centipede, hence this post's title.  I suppose "the feline centipede" would have been more accurate...but less entertaining.

I never blog about the cats any more really.  In real life, they are probably almost as neglected as they are on the blog.

This is Poppy, a strange little creature, the runt of her litter, scared yet intimidating, loves being stroked but will attack when approached from certain angles.  She keeps herself to herself a lot of the time and certainly doesn't cause as many problems as her infuriating sister, Lola, apart from the CONSTANT PUKING.  Although she has always been quick to lash out, she has never been anything less than patient with Dulcie.  When she's up for attention, she has a hearty purr.  She likes to nestle between Graham and I on the sofa when she's not lying on the radiator.  Graham and Lola get to experience her comedy hisses and tuna breath quite regularly.

Lola, meanwhile, is a big daft furball, very demanding, constantly miaowing, exceptionally greedy.  She's all claws and white hair (hair, hair, hair!) which make our carpets, furniture and clothes look constantly shabby.  She's annoying to the max at times, but actually the sweetest natured cat you could ever meet.  Dulcie loves to cuddle her and I'm confident Lola would put up with pretty much any treatment.  She's never drawn her claws in anger once, not even when under serious attack from her sister.  And all that hair means she is beyond soft and simultaneously the best and worst cat for snuggling with.

Our cats are indoor cats who haven't left the house in the almost eight years they've been alive.  I've tried to persuade them to go out, but they're not up for it.  Lola got as far as the windowsill, Poppy never even got close.  Maybe this summer I'll manage to persuade them... if the neighbour's aggressive tom cat can tolerate it and keep his distance.  I'm sure the cats' annoying habits would be somewhat diluted if they weren't constantly under our feet and they might enjoy the great outdoors too.  Couple of scaredy cats.

I often think how much easier our lives would be without the cats (Graham too - he threatens to get rid of them every other day!) and sometimes it feels like they don't bring much to the table.  Then, a few months ago, there was talk that I might have to get rid of them, which left me feeling heart-broken, kind of ironic when you consider it was my actually broken heart that was behind their potential eviction!  They've evaded the chop for now, but I know that might still be on the cards some day.  I hope not.  I do love the little blighters and I'd hate Dulcie to grow up with no pets as well as no siblings.  Effing heart :(

my kind of business meeting

On Sunday we headed down to the Children's Wood where all sorts was happening.  As well as cakes, music and handmade goodies, Katy and Jo from Mimi & Will had a stall, drumming up business for all their fab T-shirts.  It was the first time I'd seen my T-shirt in the flesh and I was so chuffed with how it looked.  All the designs looked great actually, but my wee number was definitely holding its own among all the REAL talent!

Katy had very kindly saved me a cupcake with my design on it.  I was going to photograph it before letting Dulcie eat it as a post-nursery snack, but...

...we got in on Monday afternoon to find this scene!  This is just the sort of thing that always happens when we leave the cats unattended for more than a moment.  The effing blighters had even eaten the transfer with my design on it!  So no photos for the blog and no cake for Dulcie :(

 I'm not sure Lola was the culprit, despite being caught fleeing the scene.  Poppy, the prime suspect, was suspiciously contented in bed all afternoon.  Hmmm...

Edited to add:  Mimi & Will have a special early-bird offer running at the moment, so you can get any one T-shirt for the special reduced price of £15.  You'll need to be quick, though, as there are only a handful left!  You don't even need to decide which design you want just yet, so if you're torn between two (or three!) you can order now, bag a bargain and make your decision later.

day in the life - monday 24th june 2013

7.30am - My alarm goes off and I get up and shower and dress.  Dulcie sleeps on in our bed.

7.50am - The cats are yowling for breakfast, but when I go to the cupboard, I realise there is no cat food left.  Looks like I will have to go to the corner shop for emergency supplies.

7.55am - Dulcie gets up, so the cats will have to wait.  I make her some rice crispies with raisins and bananas, a change from her usual porridge.

(This is what Dulcie does these days when we ask her to smile.)

8.05am - I head out for cat food.  Graham (who is sitting in a towel eating breakfast) requests that I hurry up. This is not well received!

8.20am - Cat food purchased and cats fed, I finally get to make my own breakfast.  I do this in a hurry, knowing I will need to eat fast to finish it before Dulcie starts wanting to escape her high chair.  This is toast and honey with a vitamin drink and a cup of tea in my favourite Moomin mug.  This is too much liquid (don't tell my consultant!) but in the end I don't manage to drink the tea, so it really doesn't matter.

I also take my morning tablets.

8.30am - This is a fairly typical level of mess post-eating for Dulcie.  You can see why I'm thinking we'll have to go with oil cloth for these seats...  I clear up the breakfast things and she runs around in her nappy, happy to be reunited with all her toys, until I have swept the floor etc.

9.00am - I've managed to get Dulcie dressed without too much fighting (for once) so she has a play with the toy mound behind the sofa and actually lets me check my emails and read a couple of blogs.  I see something on Nikki McWilliams' blog that I think would make a perfect present for someone I know and, in an uncharacteristic fit of organisation, I seek it out and order it, planning to keep it for their birthday/Christmas.

10.10am - Dulcie and I head out to Bounce and Rhyme at the local library, taking a minor detour via the charity shop to drop off a couple of bags of donations.

11.00am - Singing over, Dulcie reads a few books on the groovy library carpet before we head across the road to the supermarket.  I'm not organised enough to do a weekly shop today (as I have done for the last few Mondays) but I manage not to go too wild and just buy a few healthy bits for today's lunch and dinner.  Oh, actually, I went round a few charity shops too, but didn't find anything worth photogrpahing let alone buying.  I'm getting better at resisting these days!

11.45am - On the way home, we meet this friendly ginger cat, much to Dulcie's delight.  Other way, Dulcie!

We stay and stroke him for a while and he rubs his head on Dulcie's shoes a lot before we head home.

11.55am - We share a healthy snack of strawberries.  I'm a take-them-or-leave-them type when it comes to strawberries usually, but this year they are freakin' delicious!  Dulcie absolutely adores strawberries at the moment, so she polishes off most of this bowl before I manage to put my camera away.  I prepare another bowl, but she eats the majority of that one too.

1.00pm - After reading about a gazillion picture books, it's time for lunch.  Dulcie has hedgehog (my own "creation" of houmous with breadsticks and vegetables stuck in it) while I have tasty pitta breads stuffed with houmous and beetroot and salad.

 

1.45pm - Dulcie wants to draw.  I know this because she tells me.  "Daw!"

Dulcie's idea of drawing is to tell me to draw something, which she then scribbles over.  She used to always ask me to draw dogs, but these days it is always either "Daddy" or "apple" with just the occasional "doggie" for good measure.  I find this orange picture, which she insists is me.  I guess Graham must have created this flattering portrait for her at the weekend...

2.05pm - While playing with her toys, Dulcie discovers that she can operate this one with her bottom.  This keeps her entertained for a fair while.

2.15pm - We set off for the park.  When we arrive, Dulcie heads straight for the tunnel where she was attacked just a few days previously.  As you can see from this smiling face, she is not bearing any obvious mental scars from the incident.

As well as the tunnel, she spends lots of time playing on the swings, the slide and pretty much everything really.  There is a nursery outing in the park and I end up having to push almost all of them on the roundabout at once.  Dulcie makes lots of friends by shouting "Wheee!" whenever they go down the slide.  We stay at the park for most of the afternoon, until it is completely swamped by small school children who are a bit rough for Dulcie's taste.  Well, some of them are.  One group of girls gathers round to coo over Dulcie and tell me how cute she is.  This goes down very well with Dulcie, who adopts her best coy pose.

4.00pm - Before we head home, we buy an ice cream from the van in the park and share it.  Delicious.  Luckily for me, Dulcie is better at sharing ice cream than she is at sharing strawberries.

4.30pm - Back home, we read more books (and more books and more books) and play with some more toys.  I start getting dinner ready (we're having baked potato and salad tonight) and try to tidy up so Graham won't have so much to do later, just in case Dulcie decides to be a bed-refuser.

6.00pm - Graham gets in from work and we all have dinner together.

6.25pm - I grab a few things and run out the door to work.  The underground takes ages to arrive and I can't get a seat when it does.  I still manage to read a bit of my Alexander McCall Smith book, though.

7.00pm - I arrive at work just in the nick of time and have my annual appraisal, which is OK.  A few things make me pretty mad, but I bite my tongue.  My manager is lovely and would sort things out, I'm sure, but I don't want them to end up being turned into yet more appraisal objectives for me, so I figure for my own sake that I should just smile and nod as much as possible.

8.00pm - Despite not having done any work yet, I take my break early so that I can catch up with my friend Susan in the kitchen.

8.40pm - I write up my appraisal notes and then do some subtitling at last.  It's not too hard a night really.  I do a few proofs and then get lumbered with some motor racing, but it turns out not to be too bad as my part has a really long musical interlude that requires no subtitles.  Score!  I also have to do the weather, but this passes without major incident.

12.00 midnight - My taxi arrives and takes me home where I have a quick mini whisky with Graham before crawling into bed.  Yawn!

And so ends a fairly typical Monday really.  Well, we don't normally have ice cream, but other than that...  I'm not sure who else has taken part in Day In The Life this month, but there's at least one here and one here (with added puppy).

Patch

My mum and dad's cat had to be put to sleep last night.  Poor old Patch.  When I say "old" I really do mean old!  We're not entirely sure of Patch's exact age, but I think he was around 22.  For around 20 of those years he was missing a leg too.

Patch was actually our neighbours' cat, but he adopted us in the mid nineties when his owners got a second cat that he didn't approve of, even though there was already another cat in our house too.  He spent so much time in my mum and dad's house that when his owners moved away a few years back, they thought it would be best if Patch just moved in with my parents officially, so he did.  This was meant to be a temporary arrangement, something my mum brought up regularly even though she was very obviously delighted to have him around.  Years later, we never heard a word from his original owners so he became a permanent fixture.

Patch never used to be so much of a people cat, but he got more and more affectionate as he got older.  In his later years, he loved sitting on my mum's lap or being stroked by the fire.  He lost his front leg after he was hit by a car while out hunting, but he never let it stop him from doing anything he wanted. We even saw him hauling a rabbit he'd caught over our garden wall shortly after he'd recovered from the operation.

Apart from the missing leg, Patch's other distinguishing feature was a small nick out of one of his ears.  I'm sure he liked to tell the other cats in the 'hood that he got this during a cat fight, but I happen to know he nicked it on a rose thorn while sunbathing outside my bedroom window when I was about 15.

He was a really lovely old cat, adventurous in his youth and homely in his twilight years as all good cats should be.  I know my poor mum will miss him terribly, but I'm glad Dulcie got to meet him before he went.

unlikely allies

 A strange thing has happened over the last few days.  Poppy, the world's grumpiest cat, a hisser and a spitter, has decided that she and Dulcie could be friends.  Here they are having a good snuggle up this afternoon.  Dulcie was loving it, Poppy was tolerating it.  We were watching with bated breath, ready to detach cat claws from baby flesh at a moment's notice!

"Tolerating" is definitely the right word to describe Poppy's general attitude towards Dulcie's rather grabby brand of cat stroking, but I have actually heard her purring once or twice.

I wonder how long it will be before Dulcie discovers that cats have claws.  I'm sure it's inevitable, but in the meantime I'm just enjoying this rather bizarre new relationship.  I never thought Poppy would be so accepting of having a baby in her life/space.  Lola (the world's most friendly and least violent cat ever) put up with hair pulling for a while, but now scarpers every time Dulcie comes near her.  Unfortunately for Lola, Dulcie is quite determined to catch her.  If someone holds both Dulcie's hands she can move her feet in a walking fashion.  Ordinarily it takes a good ten seconds for her to co-ordinate each and every step (the concentration!) but when she sees Lola, she sprints across the room so fast her feet are a blur.  Fortunately for Lola, Dulcie has not quite mastered the art of changing direction, so the cat can usually escape in the same way you or I would try to escape a crocodile.

p.s. We have not gone crazy and bought white furniture, we have just put the covers in the wash :)

food fights, food peace

Bah, I had high hopes for this post, thinking it was going to be a concisely worded minefield of invaluable advice for weaners (har har har!) the world over.  Sadly, it's taken me well over two weeks to write it thanks to Dulcie being unsettled in the evening (blogging time) and all through the night (brain recharging time) of late, so I kind of lost my thread and my mojo along the way.  But I had invested too much to give up, so I just crammed in, list style, what I could remember of what I planned to say.  I should also add that I am no expert in weaning babies (or babies in general) but I have been feeling like I've been on a mighty steep learning curve lately and I wanted to share what I have discovered since it's really the first time I have felt like I've had any baby know-how to share - rather a nice feeling, hark at me!  Hopefully it will help somebody some day, even if all they get from it is an idea of what pasta shapes are easiest for a baby to hold...

Feeding a baby can be hard work.  Aside from the mess (not that the mess should be underestimated - jeez!) there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day.  Dulcie has no sooner finished breakfast and had some milk than it seems to be time to make a start on her lunch.  When she was tiny and new to the eating game, she was quite happy to eat smooth purees from a spoon, but as we tried to introduce a bit more texture and variety into her diet, she decided that spoon feeding was not for her.  In some ways I was quite happy about this.  I had really wanted to do baby-led weaning with her, but because premature babies are weaned at such a young age/tiny size, it just wasn't feasible.  Now it seems that she wants to feed herself quite independently anyway.  Great!  The downside of this was that I really had no idea WHAT to feed her.  Pureed fruit and veg was easy to make and freeze in batches, but making a variety of food that she can pick up and feed herself takes a bit more effort and imagination.  Dulcie would quite happily eat toast for every meal, I think, but I am really keen for her to eat as varied a menu as possible before she gets set in her ways.  In the picture at the top of this post, taken a few weeks ago, she's eating a makeshift fish cake (the previous night's leftover baked potato with cheese and beetroot mixed up with the insides of two fish fingers and some plain flour then fried) served with a pea puree.  The fish cakes went down very well with Dulcie, who gobbled them all up.  Success!

But no sooner had I finished patting myself on the back, I was left wondering what I could make for her next meal a few hours later.  You can see Dulcie was wondering too!

Weaning is messy.  Live with it.
Weaning by spoon is messy enough.  Letting your baby feed herself means that mess times about one gazillion.  Don't feed your baby over a carpet.  I guess you could have worked that one out for yourself!  I know some people put newspaper under the high chair.  I don't bother with that (aren't most kitchen floors wipeable?) but I do like to double bib.  You can see from the pictures above that Dulcie has a muslin square tied around her under her not insubstantial bib.  I roll up her sleeves, tie the muslin round her neck and then tuck the ends of the muslin into her sleeves so she is totally covered.  She usually ends up with food smeared well past the elbow line and you'd be amazed how hard it is to remove regular old vegetable stains from clothes.  Dulcie hates (hates!) having her hands and face wiped once she's finished eating, but I find that if I get the worst of it off before lifting her out of the chair, she's much more amenable to a proper scrub once she's lying down.  I've no idea why that is.  Oh yeah, and I try to check nostrils after feeding too because about half a meal's worth of food can find its way up there.

Eggs are your friends.
Eggs were not something I'd always have in the house before, but they are now.  There are so many quick and easy last-minute baby meals that you can make with an egg and whatever else is lying around.  Dulcie's favourite way to eat eggs is as a one-egg omelette.  Sometimes she has it plain, sometimes with a bit of grated cheese (I'll try to give her some sort of vegetable alongside these) and sometimes she has it mixed up with a bit of pureed vegetable from the freezer.  I've usually got little pots of herby tomato and vegetable sauce (useful for making pizza) on the go, so I just mix that up with the beaten egg before frying.  Eggs are also useful for binding things like fish cakes before frying, or for making fritters with a bit of milk and flour and the ubiquitous tinned sweetcorn.  French toast has been another eggy success, whether plain, herby or cooked with cinnamon and topped with stewed pears and cream cheese, which brings me nicely onto...

Bread is invaluable.
I mentioned above how much Dulcie likes toast and you can spread almost anything on it - unsalted butter, cream cheese, pureed vegetables...  I used to faff about with toast, cutting all the crusts off and slicing it into little fingers.  I soon realised that Dulcie (even without a single tooth in her head) could munch crusts down no bother. I still cut it into fingers (or squares or triangles) though because then if she accidentally drops a piece on the floor, she'll still have plenty more toast to go rather than losing the whole slice in one go.  Incidentally, I also give her just a couple of fingers at a time for the same reason.  If I put the entire chopped-up slice in front of her, she'll sometimes sweep the whole lot off her tray in one go and wind up toastless.  When I'm feeling really lazy or stressed/busy (like when I'm trying to prepare dinner while Dulcie eats her lunch) I will sometimes just fling a dry slice of bread at Dulcie and, to be honest, she seems just as happy with that as she is with toasty fingers dripping in lovely butter.  Dry bread is also very useful for mopping up excess sauce at the end of a meal.  Recently I've also been using ordinary sliced bread to make a super-quick lunchtime pizza - toast one side under the grill, flip it over and spread with herby tomato and vegetable sauce from the freezer, blob on a few bits of mozarella and grill lightly before cutting into fingers.  Dulcie LOVES this meal, it takes about one minute to prepare and has vegetables, carbohydrates, fibre, calcium and fat.  She needs no help or encouragement to eat it on her own, leaving me free to eat my own lunch or potter about the kitchen.

Sometimes simple is sexy.
Well, maybe not sexy exactly, but often Dulcie will be more enthusiastic about things the more basic they are.  She's really not keen on eating anything I prepare for her with broccoli in it, but give her a couple of boiled/steamed broccoli florets in their unadulterated state and she'll chomp away quite happily.  One of her favourite delicacies of this last week has been sweetcorn straight from the tin.  I'll chuck a handful down in front of her and it keeps her entertained for ages.  I'm also entertained watching her chasing the kernels about and using all ten fingers to get just one in her mouth.  I know from her nappies the following day that she's succeeding in getting plenty in there in the end!

The family that eats together... eats! (But when do they cook?)
I used to feed Dulcie her evening meal at about 5pm and then try to have something ready for Graham and I when he got in from work at about 6.  Now that Dulcie can feed herself, it means we can all eat together.  It took a little while to break Dulcie's routine, but with a wee extra milk feed in the afternoon (she still drinks A LOT of milk most days) she can easily hold out until 6 to eat with us.  Since we've all started dining together, I have been trying to feed her the same as us whenever possible.  It takes a bit of forward planning, but I've realised that if you cut out the salt, a lot of what we already ate was fine for her anyway.  She's been enjoying pasta bakes, curry with rice, baked potato and salad...  There are lots of benefits to us eating together, but the main one for me is that Graham and I now get to eat without the distraction of a screaming baby who needs attention.  Late afternoon is a bit of a tired and grumpy time for Dulcie but now there's no more watching your food go cold while you try to cheer her up as 99% of the time she is very happy while eating.  The downside to eating together is that I used to prepare the grown-ups' food while Dulcie was entertained by eating hers.  Now I have to entertain Dulcie while I prepare dinner (rather than when I eat dinner) which is not always easy if she's feeling a bit needy.  I'll often try to make dinner in stages throughout the day, but then it can feel like it's taking over your life a bit.  If anyone has any tips on cooking with a baby around, I'd be glad to hear them.

Finger food doesn't have to be in fingers, but sometimes it helps.
It was really quite a revelation to me that finger food didn't have to be remotely finger shaped.  It may be messy and take a bit longer, but Dulcie is perfectly capable of eating the most tiny morsels with her bare hands.  I mentioned sweetcorn already and then there's peas too.  She'll also pick up and eat food like risotto or curry and rice (albeit mixed up so it's a bit more sticky).  There are some foods, however, that are much easier to manage if they are vaguely finger shaped.  One example of this is pasta.  Dulcie loses interest in the special baby pasta (teeny-tiny shells) but can hold onto and munch the long grown-up varieties.  The absolute best pasta shape for her is fusilli, the spiral-shaped one, as it gives her something to grip onto and stops it slipping out of her fingers so much.  This discovery was a great breakthrough for me as pasta is obviously very versatile and easy to prepare so it's great that we've been able to add it to Dulcie's independent-feeding menu.

When you run out of ideas, consult a recipe (or a friend) or two.
It's been very useful to have a sister who is currently weaning a baby too and who has gone through it before.  She has lots of ideas for quick and easy meals when I run out of inspiration.  Did you know if you mix three tablespoons of porridge oats with three tablespoons of milk and microwave it for two minutes you will get a solid(ish) substance that you can cut into slices and give to a baby for breakfast?  She also bought me a really good recipe book (where that porridge idea came from actually) full of quick fixes and tasty things you can cook for everyone in the household, not just the baby.  There's loads in there that I fancy making and we've already had great success with the cheesy lentil wedges (click on the link for the recipe).



If you've made it to the end of that, you deserve a little reward in the form of another of my classic home movies.  Ha!  I realise I run the risk of getting a reputation as someone who shoots and shares the world's most pointless unedited mini movies, but I can live with that.  Moving images in a blog post?!  It's sheer magic, man!  Dulcie's self-feeding skills have progressed somewhat since this was filmed, but I think you do get an idea of how relaxed and contented she is while eating.  One day this week while having lunch (bread-slice pizza and sweetcorn straight from the can) she sat in her high chair for over an hour, perfectly content all the while.  I was able to tidy up the kitchen while she fed herself.  It seems like food is one of the highlights of her day at the moment.  Long may it continue!

Holy guacamole, I am never writing an informative blog post again.  (Could you call this informative?!)  This has honestly nearly broken me.  Well, this combined with Dulcie making life in general really, really hard.  How ironic to spend weeks writing a blog post about raising babies while I'm pulling my hair out and not having a clue what to do with my own pesky infant behind the scenes.  My mum is coming to give me a week's respite/assistance as of tomorrow and I can not wait.  I just need to find a way to make it through tonight without totally losing it in the meantime.  That may not sound like much, but I feel my sanity is on a knife edge.  Nothing a good night's sleep wouldn't fix, I'm sure, but that is one thing I am certain not to be getting.  Better go and rescue Graham and his eardrums from the screaming.  Wish me luck :(

every time I try to get comfy...

... something like this happens.