Strange Treasures Lodg'd in this Fair World

We have a set of plastic stacking cups, bought for less than £5 but colourful and one of those items that get played with for years and years, pressed into service for every kind of game. Right now they float around in the bath and we pour warm water over our baby and use them to wash his hair. Each cup has three small holes in the bottom, probably some sort of health and safety regarding breathing although your baby would have to have a head the size of a cat to get stuck in there... maybe it's for cats. Anyway, when you scoop up a cupful of water, the three small holes slowly let the water out in thin streams. We hold one high over the baby's tummy and the little streams fall on him like a very pathetic showerhead. But he thinks this is one of the most extraordinary things he's ever seen. He gazes up at it with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open and tentatively holds out a hand to feel the water trickling on his palm, amazed that, for once,  he cannot grasp this thing he can see. Leaning over the bath we agreed that if that was your benchmark for 'amazing' then every day of your life would be extraordinary.

Creation Station run play sessions for babies and toddlers but their website also has great suggestions of things to do with babies at home and one of these was a Treasure Basket which is essentially a box or basket full of small objects which your baby can examine, building up their ideas around textures, sounds, shapes etc. It took less than ten minutes to fill one round the house but he loved it. His treasure box so far contains a toilet roll tube, some small stuffed animals from a mobile,  a chunky plastic sundae spoon, a tiny wooden bowl, his hairbrush (he has hardly any hair so no need for it for now!), a few interesting shapes from a box of building bricks, a measuring cup, some cupcake wrappers (horribly mangled in seconds) and a piece of brown felt. It took him twenty minutes to go through them, taking each one and putting it in his mouth, turning it over in his hands, dropping it and picking it up again before eventually flinging it over one shoulder, something he's started doing when an item is no longer of interest. His absorption with each item was quite touching and made me look again at ordinary objects around the house. I found a lovely poem which seemed a good description of what it must be like for a baby -

A stranger here
Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodg'd in this fair world appear,
Strange all and new to me;
But that they mine should be who nothing was,
That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass
The Salutation, stanza 7; Thomas Traherne

Watching Paint Dry

Our garden is getting a makeover, courtesy of my husband's hard work and the discovery that our baby is willing to sit and watch paint dry. Until recently my husband had to dash out to the garden as soon as the baby napped if he wanted to squeeze in a bit of gardening and DIY at weekends. But recently we discovered that, bundled up in the absurdly warm all-in-one pramsuit (seriously, it's like clothing for the North Pole and suitably shaped like a baby polar bear, with ears on the hood) and sitting in a bouncy chair on the garden path, our baby enjoys watching us at work.

First up he watched me pruning our two rose bushes and four fruit bushes in the front garden. I chatted away and he seemed quite interested. Next my husband started painting the garden fence panels, turning them from rather weathered grey wood to a new-looking brown. The baby is willing to watch one fence panel being painted at a time, about twenty minutes, before beginning to wriggle about and want to do something else. He also stared curiously at a large hole being dug for a new bush in at the bottom end of the garden. My husband has fond hopes, in a few years, of telling him that there's treasure buried somewhere 'in that bed that needs digging' - I temper this with recollections of my own childhood where various children, over several summers, enthusiastically 'dug for Australia', creating a fair-sized duck pond rather than a neatly dug-over vegetable bed.
Still, we'd like a pond in the garden as well so maybe one day....

Water Baby

Our son's first bath came very early on and he was quite relaxed, but then we left the whole bath thing alone for about a month and when we came back to it he was utterly horrified by it. He lay in warm water in his lovely little blue bath, hands clenched in fists on his chest, staring fixedly ahead, ignoring our smiles and coaxing as well as the yellow rubber duck sailing around his legs. It took weeks to gradually unclench his fists and bring them into the water, let alone get a smile out of him.

Once he got the hang of it though, the small bath didn't stand a chance against the splashing water he kicked up, so a transfer from the bedroom to the main bath (with a brilliant bath divider given by a friend) was effected. he even got used to having water splashed over his face. Starting with a tiny stacking cup (number 1) we are currently up to number 6, quite a sizable amount of water in his face with no qualms.

But our first lesson at Water Babies, a swimming class for babies, was fairly terrifying as an onlooker. The class lasts just 30 minutes and within twenty minutes each baby was taken and their whole body including head submerged underwater - fortunately by the teacher, while the waiting parent was told to keep a big smile on their face as the baby resurfaced. Remarkably, no-one drowned and no mothers fainted although you could feel the tension rise from each woman as her baby was dunked. Quite possibly out of the fear of this very moment all the daddies were sent into the pool with the babies and all the mothers elected to watch from the side. Apparently it's good practice to alternate although other mothers I know who are a class ahead of us say it's usually the dads in the water and the mums on the side. My turn next week, eeek. The babies ranged from three months up to a year old and while some splashed in quite happily and didn't seem to care about being dunked at all, one baby howled, setting off our baby, who kept looking at the first baby's terrified face and crying, only to be comforted when looking at the happy babies.

Top tip for all baby watersports then: keep a big smile on your face - and turn your baby's face towards the happy babies!

Pride comes before a Puree

I read once that people get most upset by criticism which attacks something they hold dear. So if you were to tell me my house is untidy I probably wouldn't be that bothered, tidiness is not a virtue I believe I possess, nor one I value that highly - I have bursts of making everything tidy before happily messing it all up again.

But cooking is another matter. This matters to me - I like to eat, I like to cook, I like cooking for friends and family. I like finding new ingredients (my husband despairs of enthusiastic shopping trips where I come home with six kinds of seaweed or four kinds of obscure cereals) and learning new recipes (BBC Good Food, online, is my favourite now, not a single recipe has ever gone wrong from them).

So - baby is weaning - and here come the purees! Having started rather suddenly I began with baby rice and Ella's Kitchen purees, which taste very nice and seem to have very pure ingredients. But while the baby started on those I was marshaling my kitchen. New gadgets, fresh ingredients, a freezer drawer cleared out. I made pale golden pear as well as apple & cinnamon purees, a vibrant green pea puree which took forever to get through a sieve, luminous orange pumpkin and sweet potato purees.

And he won't eat them. I've tried three times now. Each time he makes a lot of faces, then begins to purse up his lips and refuse any more after about four spoonfuls. Crack open the Ella's Kitchen and he opens his mouth again and eats lots.

Maybe the texture is different. Maybe mine tastes more intense (this from my husband, hoping to make me feel better). Who knows. I'll keep trying but there's nothing like a pursed pair of baby lips for giving your cooking pride a knocking!

Pack Up Your Troubles

I'm loving rediscovering the books I enjoyed as a child. Before our son was born I went through my mother's extensive library and wrote down all the books I had thought wonderful and have been collecting them ever since. It's awful that some of them are out of print now but (big thank you Amazon) you can buy some second-hand and they are very much worth it - well, except for the fabulous Apple Pigs, now on sale for £60 - I sort of draw the line at that kind of price for a picture book - perhaps it could be reprinted if there's that much demand for the few remaining battered copies? My mother very kindly donated her copy to the baby's bookshelf. Books too old for him that are still in print I wait to buy but if I spot any that are out of print I buy them up, they may have gone entirely by the time he's old enough.

Reading books at bedtime is great - we're reading books more suited to five years old plus but then he doesn't care, he just likes the pictures, and if the stories are good enough we get to enjoy them too.

Today Jenna and the Troublemaker arrived, a lovely book with illustrations by Tony Ross. I noticed it was out of print and hurriedly bought a second hand copy. It's the story of the Troublemaker, who makes and delivers everyone's Troubles. When little girl Jenna sobs that her Troubles are too much, he lets her choose from amongst everyone else's Troubles. Of course she ends up choosing her own. The pictures are great. I read it to the baby as soon as it arrived and he laughed like a drain throughout. He obviously has no Troubles of his own!

Some great books we're enjoying reading at bedtime: many are now out of print but very worthwhile buying second hand.

Stone Soup - there are many versions, this one is Tony Ross again and my husband's favourite. A clever hen outwits the Bad Bad Wolf by making him a delicious soup out of a stone, while he cleans her house.

Apple Pigs - a little girl tends an old fruit tree which showers her with apples as a reward, precipitating a party for Man and Bird and Woolly Beast in an effort to eat them all.

Strega Nona - An Italian witch and her magic pasta pot cause chaos for her dim-witted assistant Antony.

The Wild Washerwomen - Quentin Blake illustrations really make this story of seven wild washerwomen who run away from their enormous pile of washing and terrify the neighbourhood.

Dr Seuss books - the baby really likes the rhymes, I think because of the bouncing rhythm. Horton the Elephant is a lovely story about an elephant who takes his parenting duties very seriously. Other rhyming books he's liked are Peepo and Each Peach Pear Plum, classics for babies.

Meanwhile a cloth book called Woodland Animals from Mothercare donated by my sister that his cousins used to have has actually taught him to turn pages, which is remarkable. He tries to turn paper pages now, a bit trickier but he has the right idea!

A Perfect Numbskull

I'm a fan of the concept of baby-led weaning, that is to say, you wait until the baby is about 6 months old and then skip the whole puree stage and just give them finger foods and foods they can eat by themselves and they take it from there, catching up quickly to eating whatever the rest of the family is eating. Years ago my younger sister, not yet weaned and left for a moment alone near a large bowl of roast potatoes, started enthusiastically stuffing them in her mouth - job done. So we were all set to go down that route until we were 'led' in a different direction.

The appalling sleep was really getting to me - after sleeping beautifully our baby suddenly started waking every two hours, all night long. I felt like a zombie, cried when I woke up in the morning. But the baby led weaning book was adamant that this was not a sign that the baby was hungry and should move on to solids. My older sister, with two children (both good eaters) of her own, had a different opinion. She took one look at the dark circles under my eyes and said, "Feed him." "Oh no," I protested. "Baby-led weaning and blah blah blah." She nodded kindly at the explanations and said, "Feed him."

The next day he was booked to see the osteopath. Before going I sat eating a Petit Filou with the baby on my knee. I offered him the loaded spoon to smell, as I do with most foods. Usually he would smell it and look slightly perplexed. This time, he grabbed the spoon and stuck it in his mouth, made a few grimaces at the unusual flavours and opened his mouth for more. I gaped at him but we were late and had to leave the house.

The osteopath was very kind and gentle, with an array of interesting baby toys (including one whose giraffe-like neck you yank so it sings a song, an ironic toy for an osteopath to possess). He asked lots of questions, examined my baby with great care and in the end sat back and smiled. "He's fine from my point of view," he said. "He has a perfect skull and excellent digestion. Feed him."

I know when to give in. I went and bought baby rice. At home, I tentatively offered the portion I had mixed up. He wolfed it down without hesitation. When my husband came home ten minutes later I made another portion just so he could see him eat a mouthful. "He's probably full now and won't want it," I warned. He gobbled the whole second portion. The next day he was more jolly than the last couple of weeks. That night, with food during the day again, he slept like a log.

And that was it. He's back to good sleeping, managing five or six hours at a stretch like he used to. He eats willingly and has so far swallowed everything including a broccoli/pear/pea mix which my husband and I were dubious about. It's like watching a new dawn - only sleeping through it, which is much better.

I feel a lot less sleep deprived. And a numbskull for holding out.

Mamma Rat

You know you're sleep deprived when...

You need more food: you make a beeline for the carbs at every opportunity: studies on rats showed that the sleep-deprived ones ate larger helpings of food and became obese.

You feel cold: Your bedtime apparel consists of flannel pajamas, socks, vest and heaps of duvets. If you look at your husband he's wearing nothing at all and has thrown the covers off.

You can't think straight. Where did that baby go? I'm sure there was one here a minute ago.

Your mouth is one big yawn. I think my jaw's about to dislocate.

You become 'incapable of putting an emotional event into the proper perspective' - but the commercial was so sad (sob sob)!

You get irritable. I said pass the muslin! Now!


Still, when it's really getting to you consider that the world record for not sleeping is 11 days. Yawn.

A kind word

Getting on the tube, somewhat zombie-fied after only four hours sleep, to visit an osteopath to see if he had any words of wisdom on the appalling new sleep patterns of my baby (see previous post), I found myself opposite an older woman, perhaps fifty, with a wheelie trolley. She smiled in acknowledgement when I excused the baby being scared and crying at the loud station announcements (meanwhile someone else changed carriages to avoid us). As the train started I managed to soothe him and he became calm as we journeyed onwards.

The woman and I got off at the same stop and she strode off ahead of me towards the escalator, but just before reaching it she did a u-turn and came back to me as I prepared to get on the escalator (always tricky). "You're very good with him," she said. "You look like a lovely mother." I just managed to say thank you and smile before she made her way onto the escalator and disappeared up ahead of me.

Standing on the escalator, balancing the pram, I very nearly cried. On a bad day when you can barely string thoughts together through lack of sleep and you've run out of ideas on how to make things better, to have someone stop their own life for a brief moment and offer some kind words makes a huge difference to how you feel.

So to the lady on the tube who turned back to say a kind word, whoever you were, thank you. It meant a lot.