eagle eyes

One of the fun things about milling about with Dulcie is that she notices every tiny item of any interest whatsoever.  If there's a single insect crawling on the pavement 20 metres ahead, she will spot it and take me over for a closer look.  While we were sticking fallen leaves back on on trees (her idea!) in the Botanics on Friday, she found this crazy-looking little stick - furry at one end and spotty at the other.

I worked out it was one of these things without the seeds.  Not that I know what this thing is either.

 

It's fun to have someone with you to point out the world's small wonders :)

big girls do cry

Dulcie keeps surprising me lately with how much of a big girl she appears.

Here she is, looking very grown up while she watches TV, wearing the dress I made her a while back.  I had to wrestle her into it for some reason, probably because every task these days involves wrestling, but once it was on, nobody could deny how good she looked, not even Dulcie herself.  It fits her much better now than it did a few months back.

 

But really, she's still only little, I know.  I have to keep reminding myself of this fact in an attempt to keep myself sane.  Much of the time, she is the absolute epitome of a stereotypical terrible two-year-old.  The crying.  Oh, my god, THE CRYING.  She will scream about absolutely anything and everything, mostly about me not giving her enough attention or making her do one thing when she wants to be doing something else.  And you can guarantee she never wants to do anything we actually need to do - going to the toilet, eating meals, going to nursery, sleeping, getting dressed, visiting the supermarket...  And when you picture her crying, don't think of a stifled sniffle as a solitary tear trickles down her peachy cheek, it's more of a glass-shattering, eardrum-bursting scream, a red face and flailing limbs.  Once the screaming abates, she'll sometimes say something horrendous like, "I'm sad because of you, Mummy."

 

After a mammoth decorating marathon (helped massively by my parents on their recent visit) Dulcie finally moved into her own bedroom this weekend.  The room is lovely.  Dulcie still whispers, "Wow!" every time she walks in and gives actual guided tours to her soft toys.  She thinks having her own bedroom is the best thing ever.  But sleeping in it?  Hell, no!  After spending ages fighting with me about whether or not it can be night-time when it's still light outside (every night - aargh!) her real gripe is that she does not want to be left alone.  She begs and pleads with me not to leave her and will only stay in bed long enough to go to sleep if I am close enough to her so that she can actually hold onto me, usually by my hair.  Ouch.  Once she's asleep, I sneak out of the room.  This is the unhealthy manner in which I've been getting Dulcie to go to sleep for ages.  The thing is, while she was forced into a sharing a room with us, I would be back by her side by the time she woke up sometime between midnight and dawn.  All I would have to do to get her back to sleep would be to reach out my arm and let her know I was there, I hardly even had to wake up myself.  Now that we're in separate rooms, she wakes up on her own and sets up a blood-curdling and hysterical-sounding screaming session.  She keeps it up until I get out of bed, go to her room, tuck her back in and sit by her side while she falls asleep again, definitely not something I can do in my sleep.  Last night she woke me up at 2.30.  And 3.00.  And 3.30.  And 3.45.  And 4.30.  And 5.  Basically, I was awake from 2.30 to 6.15...and my alarm was set for 6.30!   Ugh!  (Yes, I really did go back to sleep for those 15 minutes...and loved every one of them!)  Graham tried to do his bit and went through a few times too, tucked her in, sang to her, even tried to reason with her, but this just made her more hysterical still and meant it took even longer for me to settle her back down afterwards.  It's nice to be wanted and all, but I need to sleep.  Our new king-size bed is proving to be super comfortable and spacious and it's so frustrating that I'm not reaping the benefits of that.

 

Dulcie was actually pretty sweet in amongst the hellish frustration and exhaustion last night.  I think it was around 4.30 when I finally succumbed to silent tears.  Dulcie, stroking my face, realised I was crying and said, "I want to make you happy, Mummy."  I honestly didn't have to work too hard to resist the urge to shout, "THEN GO BACK TO SLEEP ON YOUR OWN, YOU EFFING BLIGHTER!"  Ha!  No, really, I was still sitting watching her sleep and marvelling at how bloomin' beautiful she looked by 5am.  (What can I say?  I'm truly besotted.)  But something's got to give.  Even Dulcie herself was suffering as a result, looking pasty-faced and exhausted when she had to get up for nursery this morning.  And every day she promises that tonight will be the night she settles herself and every evening she goes back on her word and I'm left asking yet again, "What would Supernanny do?" and thinking that her solutions just wouldn't work for us, but obviously everything I'm doing is not working either.  At least doing things my way, the neighbours aren't disturbed for quite so long, right?

 

I feel like such a crap mum.  And a tired one :(

time-travelling tuesday (part 10)

21st March 1988

Kevin F, Lyndsey S, Donna W all have same birthday.

I gave a card to Lyndsey and Kevin and Donna because it is their birthday.  I went swimming.  It was good fun.

22nd March 1988

I desighned four stamps at school.  One was for Aussie being 200 years old, one for pancake day, one for Christmas and one was for easter.

23rd March 1988 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

It is Debby's birthday today.  The Nicolls were at our house to play.  My Mum was going to go to Huntly with their mum to get Mrs Munro's present.  But the clock that they were getting wasn't ready.  It is 18 past 9 just now.

[Mrs Munro was my school dinner lady.  We used to fight for the right to go and collect the milk from her because she would give us a fruit gum from a tin she kept in her drawer in the school kitchen.  She also made really nice food for us every day.  I think I loved everything except her jelly.]

24th March 1988 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Nobody's birthday today.  But it is Emma's tomorrow.  Groan.  I was at brownies.  I got three badges - venture, dancer and writer.

25th March 1988
25TH MARCH
I was at Mrs Munro's presentation.  The act went very well.  Today I had my last dinner made by Mrs Munro.

26th March 1988
Today it is Julia's and Garry's birthday.  We went to Banf and Aberdeen.  We went there to look for a suite.  Kerry and I found a set of bed springs with a toy duck on it.  There was a sighn saying push down springs to make the duck fall of.  It didn't because it was stuck on with glue.

27th March 1988 Jack Jack is is
Today is Sunday the twenty seventh of March.  I had to give a cristening certifacate to Clair's mum at church today.  I was in bed for most of the day because I had a sore tummy and I was tiered.  After tea I went outside.  Tommorrow we won't have any water from 9 oclock till 3 oclock.  Boo hoo boo hoo.

sunday lovely sunday

We went on such a nice outing yesterday morning.  I cycled for the first time in about 20 years!  We went to Maryhill swimming pool (we normally have to fork out for a taxi there on a Sunday) where the gates were looking particularly gorgeous in the sunshine.



I got Graham a Dulcie-sized bike seat for his birthday back in January, but he only got it up and running a couple of weeks ago.  (Long story.)  Dulcie and he have both been really enjoying it and I've been managing to overcome my crazy mother fears about the danger involved.  This weekend was the first time I'd joined them on one of their wheely outings.  I did not want to wear a helmet really, not because I look like a knob (I know I do!) but because it was all mouldy from years in the cellar, hanging on Hillary's handlebars.  Eugh.  But we're doing our best to get Dulcie to equate bikes with helmet wearing, so I took a spore or two for the team!

 

The cycle to the pool was pretty horrendous, to be honest, and I was regretting getting back on my bike and thinking wistfully about how I'd have to send her back to the charity shop from whence she came.  My poor bottom was in agony at every bump and I couldn't decide whether my thighs or my lungs were burning the most.  I kept worrying my heart was going to do something crazy (when I pedal bikes at the hospital, they have doctors and resuscitation experts watching my heart on a fancy monitor, after all, for fear of death) or that I was going to be hit by a car on the roads or cycle into a lamp post, or (worse) a pedestrian, on the pavement.  I couldn't really look around without veering dangerously, so I had to keep stopping at every potential hazard.  And it was uphill nearly all the way.  By the time we got in the pool, I was too tired to swim any lengths, but Dulcie insisted on riding me around the baby pool using my swimming suit straps as reins, so it wasn't exactly restful!  At least the water soothed my saddle sores slightly...  I spent most of my time there dreading getting back on the bike and wondering if there was another way of getting home.

But once we were back in the saddles, I had a total change of heart.  Gone were the cars, lamp posts and pedestrians, as we cycled along the canal path instead.  And it was glorious - pretty, sunny, smooth and flat!  I was able to pedal for a bit and then free-wheel to let my legs and lungs recover, so there was much less stopping and starting and much more of that lovely feeling of fun and freedom that I'd remembered from childhood cycling.

We left the canal path in time to stop off at Jaconelli's cafe for fried food and ice cream, which felt well deserved and made us all happy.  (I do worry I'm turning Dulcie into a comfort eater, something I've only recently realised I am.)  Unfortunately, it was back on the roads and pavements from then on to get home, but we went between pushing and pedalling and at least it was mostly downhill and I was a bit less nervous/out of control by this time.

My bum is still very painful today, but my thighs are surprisingly OK and my overall feeling about my first adult cycle outing was pretty positive.  I'm definitely up for some more journeys on Glasgow's cycle paths, although I wish we didn't have to go by roads to reach them initially.  I also wish Glasgow was flatter, but that is nothing new.

Lately I've been trying to think of ways to exercise more that would fit in with my life, laziness and poor health.  I can't see myself becoming a regular cyclist really, but some fair-weather bike riding can surely only be a positive addition and I think it's good for Dulcie to see us doing these sorts of things too.  I'll let you know how it goes.  If I say nothing, you can probably assume Hillary and the helmet have gone back in the cellar to gather more mould!

housing small objects

The Oxfam bookshop near us always has nice displays.  This little house shelf is part of their current Scottish window display and caught my eye because it's very like something I'm planning to make for Dulcie's room.  I bought a huge bag full of these shelves in the Salvation Army shop about five years ago.  They're just untreated wood and were three for £1 or something.  I had plans to do them up and sell them in my Etsy shop, but never got round to it, so I've decided to use them in Dulcie's room instead.  I'm going to spray paint them white, put some vintage wallpaper inside the doocots and hang them on Dulcie's bedroom wall in a little neighbourhood.  She's already got some wee trinkets to store in them (including some of my old trinkets) but there should be plenty of space for her collection to grow over the years.  I'm pretty excited about this little project, despite this proof that my idea is far from original!

The curtains I made for Dulcie's room are awesome.  They're not perfect and they took me approximately half a lifetime to make and they don't keep the light out as much as I'd hoped, but they have made such a big impact on the room and are so bright and fun and nicely finished.  I'll share some pictures soon.

cancel the games

This monstrous ensemble represents Team Scotland's parade uniform for the Commonwealth Games.  Honestly, when I first saw this, I thought it must have been a joke.  So wrong on so many levels, not least the ladies' little handbags.  Ugh.  It looks like it's been thrown together by the losing competitor on week one of the Great British Sewing Bee, someone who panicked when they entered the fabric store and then had to construct everything in the last five minutes using safety pins and sellotape.  "And tartan... And drape...  Aaargh!  Done!"  Perhaps I'll find some other country to support.  Ha!

In other news (non-news) I am perilously close to my 1000th blog post!  Wowsers!  I'd like to do something to celebrate, but am rather uninspired.  Any ideas?  I'm happy to raid my handmade-goodies drawers and have a wee giveaway, but I'm not sure I have much that I haven't given away before and haven't all six of my regular readers won something at least once in the past?  Be quick with your suggestions, if you have any, because I'm trying to blog every day in July (had you noticed?!) and my 1000th post is due to fall this Tuesday.  If nobody has any great ideas/interest in a random giveaway, I'll just post my diary as usual and give myself a wee pat on the back instead :)

heads up, it's public art!

Dulcie is really into letters these days.  She's got quite a lot in her repertoire and loves to spot them whenever we're out and about (or in and about).  And so it was I found myself leading her on a letter trail a few weeks back, in an attempt to distract her tired legs from the journey home without having to carry her.  That was why I spotted what I thought was a bit of paper stuck to the wall in this back lane.  "Ah-ha," I thought, "More letters up ahead!"

When I got closer, however, I realised it was a small ceramic plaque cemented into the wall, that I must have been walking past for the previous three weeks or so.

A few days later, I decided to check out the website and discovered this.  So the lovely little plaque was not the art itself, but was the information about the art - a small ceramic head nestling somewhere nearby.  I also discovered that the next writer due to be featured in the project was someone I met (and spoke to at some length) at that wedding we were at recently.  How odd.

Anyway, armed with my camera, I headed out to see if I could spot the head and I found it just to the right of the ivy in that top picture.  The weird thing was, as soon as I looked at it, I realised I had seen it before.  I had spotted it while walking past on my own and it had given me the heebie-jeebies so badly that I had blocked it from my mind, to the extent that I was surprised to learn there was a head there when I looked at the website.  I'm not sure how to explain how I know I had already seen it, but I KNOW that I had.  This has rather freaked me out.  If I can wipe a ceramic head from my memory/consciousness, how else am I distorting my view of the world?  It's probably best not to think about this too much.

The next day I was walking down the lane with Dulcie again and decided to show her the head.  I had to lift her up to do this.  Despite its spooky appearance and its being surrounded by cobwebs (her personal obsession at the moment) she didn't seem too troubled by it, so I decided to let her have a conversation with it.  "Hello, Dulcie," I said in my best man's voice, i.e. a cockney accent delivered from the belly.  She was a bit taken aback, so I encouraged her to say hello to the little man and they ended up having a fairly lengthy conversation about where she was going and what she was doing.  She was having such a lovely chat that she didn't want to leave, but was eventually persuaded to walk off, looking over her shoulder and waving and shouting, "Bye-bye, little man!" as she went.

Dulcie is quite used to having conversations with animated inanimates.  She can be quiet or, at best, vague when Graham and I ask her what she's been doing in a day, but if Susan the plastic seahorse asks her while she's in the bath, all the news comes spilling out.  That night, Susan asked Dulcie if she had met anybody interesting or done anything fun that day.  This was her excited response:  "We met a little man.  He had a funny voice.  He lived in a hole.  He didn't have any legs, just a head and no body.  I told him I was going to the library."

A few days later I was thinking about the little head while I was at work and marvelling at just how many things it had made me think about - how strange it was that I had spotted it and unremembered it and remembered it again, how much of an impact it had made on Dulcie, how coincidental it was that it turned out to be connected to someone I had just met...  I was messaging my colleague Emma and wanted to tell her the story, but couldn't think how to explain its many legs of strangeness in a brief message, so I just told her that a small ceramic head in a hole in a wall had made me think all sorts of thoughts and had even turned out to involve someone I'd met at a wedding recently.  Emma immediately messaged back, "It's not Nicola, is it?"  Well, Nicola was not the person I knew, but she was the person who had made the head and organised the whole project.  It turned out Emma had worked on a similar but different project with her before and had blogged about the experience.  Unfortunately, this all took place at a very sad time for Emma so only amounts to three posts, but her brief record is so beautifully written and I was really glad to have read it, something I wouldn't have done if I hadn't been looking for letters and spotted that plaque on the wall.

All in all, I can hardly believe the strange paths that little plaque has led me on.  I bloody love Glasgow.