birdsong

wedding party in prospect park, a photo by annwood on Flickr.

I am sitting in our living room listening to birds twittering through the baby monitor. It's very pleasant. I've noticed the birdsong reappearing just this week when I've been up feeding Dulcie in the wee small hours. It makes me excited about the onset of spring.

After a few weeks of hard work and psychological wrangling (i.e. getting to know what our baby means/wants when she is grunting or shouting and then giving it to her) Dulcie has become a champion sleeper. I feel like a different person these days, getting what was a whole week's worth of zzzzz in one continuous block every night. Last night Dulcie went to bed at 11pm and got up at 4 and 7.30. I think she might not be far off sleeping through the night, which would be amazing. Things are so different from how they were a few weeks ago and I am chalking this up as a parenting success. Yay!

I hope I didn't just jinx things by blogging about it...

smiling

This book about faces is Dulcie's favourite thing in the world right now.  She can look at it quite happily for ages and enjoys stroking the crinkly pages.  This weekend she used the mirror on the front cover to practise her newest trick - smiling.

 

Success!  Well, sort of.  She's actually been smiling quite a bit but this is the closest I've come to capturing it on camera so far.

Doesn't she look like James Dean in this outfit?  All she needs is a packet of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of her T-shirt.  I'm loving her tiny jeans.  They're jeggings really (tiny jeggings! hee!) but they are still a little on the large side for her.  Every time she has her nappy changed by her dad she comes back with teeny-tiny turn-ups to match his.

Hmmm, I really don't want this place to turn into a baby blog, but I spend 100% of my time with this little lady now, so it's baby or nothing, I'm afraid.  It won't be like this for ever!  (Will it?)  My mum is coming to visit this week, I think, so I might utilise her babysitting skills to try and find the time to dig out some easy craft projects.  I am itching to make something (anything!) but all my supplies are buried in disorganised piles that I can't get to in the time it takes Dulcie to realise I'm not holding her and start screaming.  Talking of which...

something fishy

Fortune Fish, a photo by Mykl Roventine on Flickr.

Last night I ate two thirds of a fishcake, the first dead animal I have consumed in over 20 years. I have been psyching myself up to try eating meat and fish for a few years now as I'd like to be able to eat them occasionally to make life easier, although I'd still plan on being 99% vegetarian as vegetarianism is just right for me and sits best with my view of the world etc. I think having Dulcie has given me that little extra push to stop just thinking about it and start changing my ways. Not having eaten meat for so long has given me kind of a phobia of it and I'd like to be OK with eating it by the time Dulcie might be able to pick up on these things. We don't intend to bring her up as a vegetarian. I was quite surprised how easily I ate the fishcake last night and was giving myself a little pat on the back and feeling very pleased with myself. I thought about it a bit too much halfway through and couldn't finish it, but it was a very successful first attempt. A few hours after eating it, though, I started to sense the death in my belly and have felt quite ill ever since. Today I am still struggling and kind of wish I hadn't eaten it. There's dead flesh inside me. Shudder! Might be a while before I take the next step.

she loves it really!

This is kind of old news now, but my new niece is no longer a nameless wonder.  She's called Lexie Elspeth.  Aw!  Here's Dulcie modelling the cardigan I crocheted for her.  It had turned out a good bit smaller than the other two I made (different wool, I guess) so I tried it on Dulcie just to make sure it would fit.  I think it will fit Lexie, who is just a little bit bigger than Dulcie really, but probably not for long, so we posted it off to her quick stylee even though I wanted to keep it as soon as I had seen it on.  How cute?!  As you can see, Dulcie didn't look too impressed, but she cries all the time (all... the... time...) so I'm sure she loved it really, despite the screams that might suggest otherwise.  And she might have been crying because I was making her wear her emergency MC Hammer pants.  You can't touch this!

hangin' with my homie

This week just past I had just one medical appointment (shocker!) and managed to use the unusual amount of free time to start enjoying just hanging with my homie, Dulcie.  We went out every day this week (we even went to the cinema together) but here are some highlights from Friday.

  The health visitor's assistant popped round on Friday morning and told us that Dulcie weighs 7lbs 7oz.  This is double her birth weight and makes her pretty much normal newborn baby size.  Go, Dulcie!  Over the last couple of weeks she has become big enough to start wearing some of her vast clothing collection and picking out an outfit is always a nice way to start the day, whether we go for the sublime and stylish or the downright ridiculous.  Friday's outfit was very stylish, I think - grey knitted leggings and pink stripy socks/top, like a cross between an old man in his underwear and a young Brigitte Bardot.

 You can never start them too young, so we spent a little while learning about embroidery with Erica Wilson (see last post).  Dulcie was quite entertained and just had some milk whenever she got bored.

Dulcie won't really let me eat lunch in the house so I've been taking it out and eating it while Dulcie sleeps in the pram.  On Friday it was a bit drizzly so I had my lunch inside the Kibble Palace in the Botanic Gardens, which was very pleasant.  When Dulcie got bored/threatened to wake up, we walked amongst the hundred-year-old ferns and saw the sights.

Fancy fish in the indoor pond.

 Strange mini lollipop trees.

Succulents spiky...

 ... and succulents smooth.

 Also this very impressive flower.

 Not quite ready to go home, we went to the Oxfam book shop and then to the public library (see picture of library carpet above) to have a wee look at the craft books.  Nothing doing but I still liked being in the library in the afternoon.

I'm sure there will be more of the same this week... next week... and the week after that.  Ah well, there are worse ways to spend your days and my homie can be quite good company when she manages to think of anything other than milk.

erica wilson - brain ping

I know a YouTube blog post can seem like a bit of a cop out but I absolutely had to share this video, which is like one of my best vintage craft books come to life.  I wasn't aware of Erica Wilson, I don't think, until I found out about her this morning thanks to Pin Pals (who were prompted to post about her thanks to Cathy of California).  I immediately hopped over to YouTube and started watching her show.  Each episode is absolute perfection, everything I would want to see, all wrapped up in a 15-minute bundle.  Watching the one I shared above made me get so excited at the thought of embroidering (and a bit frustrated at my permanent one-handed status thanks to the baby who loves to cuddle) and my brain was literally pinging at the thought of exciting future projects.  I even have a rocking chair, much like the one in this video, that needs to be re-covered.  Could I do something like Erica's?  It would be a great birthday present for Dulcie... maybe when she turns 21!

There are quite a few episodes of Erica's show available to watch here and I'm hoping even more might be added soon.  Ironically, I was heading for 4OD to catch up, at long last, with Kirstie's Handmade Britain when I came across this.  Sorry, Kirstie, but Erica is the real deal!  I'm off to watch another episode right now.

exercise books

Found via SwirlyThoughts

Reading is usually quite a big part of my life, but lately it has not been coming easily.  The night I got admitted to hospital way back in November, the book I was reading (and so had about my person) was Smoking Ears And Screaming Teeth that you might remember I found in the street.  Since this book is all about medical experiments and people dying horribly as a result of them, it was not really the best book for me to be reading in that situation, but I found myself incapable of concentrating anyway and the book went back into my bag.  A week or so into my hospital stay, the night before my MRI scan, I decided to give it another go and picked it up... only to find myself at the chapter about MRI scans!  As you might imagine, I quickly put the book away and have yet to finish it!  

I struggled to concentrate on any books for a long time after that, but recently I've been getting back into reading, or trying to.  Just after New Year, I picked up The Last Family In England in a charity shop and managed to read it one-handed while feeding Dulcie in the evenings.  It was a very easy read and most enjoyable so I got another book by Matt Haig to read soon and I'm looking forward to it.  After that I read The Yellow Wallpaper, probably not recommended reading for anyone who's recently had a baby and is feeling a bit on the mental side, but I had been meaning to read it for at least a decade and enjoyed some of the stories quite a lot.  Just as I finished that, my friend Lorna sent me a book she had just read and enjoyed, Gillespie And I by Jane Harris.  I had wanted to read this book when it was first published and then somehow forgot all about it so it was a lovely surprise to get a copy in the post.  I managed to read the first chapter or two almost straightaway (Dulcie must have been on her best behaviour that day) and was instantly hooked, which was why it was so annoying to discover that the book was too thick to read one-handed while breastfeeding!  Nooo!  The book is so good, however, that I found ways and means to sneak in a few pages here and there and while I was around the halfway point I found I was able to hold it open and feed Dulcie at the same time.  Now that I'm nearing the end of the book, I need to find other times and places to read, situations where I have the rare luxury of two free hands.

The last couple of days I have been heading out to the park with the pram and stopping at a bench to read a few pages until Dulcie threatens to wake up.  When she stirs, I walk until she settles and sit down at the next bench and read a few more pages.  This might sound laborious, but I'm fairly romping through it, all things considered.  The book is set in the area I live in, although over 100 years ago, and it's fun to find yourself reading it in places where the action takes place.  The fountain in the background of this photo was the meeting place of a search party in the book.

I'm quite enjoying heading out in the bracing cold to read, but it is not without its drawbacks as this quote from the book illustrates:

"Vigorous exercise, indeed!  There is a saying that the Clyde is the only level highway in Glasgow, and the West End, in particular, is built upon a set of drumlins, producing the effect that - no matter which direction one takes - one always seems to be trudging uphill."

Now throw a pram and a heart condition into the mix and the green light is on for puffing and panting!  Who knew that a good book could be such good exercise too?!