Introducing the reason for my inblogitude...

Hello. I'm back.

And yes, there is a reason why I haven't been blogging since September; but I think I might have trouble convincing you that it's a very good one.

When I started this blog, I did warn you. Honestly I did. Go back to my very first post, and you will find that I noted a phenomenon that had been the death of all my adolescent diaries: the moment something momentously bad or momentously good or just plain momentous happened, I stopped writing. It would generally be because I couldn't explain the event adequately straight away in the time that I had, and then I would leave it too late to make it worth recording at all.

Well. Let me introduce you to the reason that I haven't blogged since September:

There he/she is. And it's not just that I couldn't think of anything else to write about, but wasn't allowed to tell anybody about the above until the day that picture was actually taken. It's also the phenomenal, crippling, chemical hormonal tiredness that comes with the first trimester of pregnancy and has meant that I have had NO time of my own. When Abi was awake, I was with her, and when she was asleep, so was I. For 14 weeks.

I hate the first trimester. I really do. It's not fair that the time you feel crappest, sickest, most tired and most worried about the whole thing coincides with the time that you're not allowed to get any sympathy because nobody is supposed to know (although I have to say that anybody who has actually seen me in the flesh over the past, say, 8 weeks is either extremely unobservant or will have guessed instantly.)

Now that I'm 15 weeks along and beginning to feel human again, I've been able to reveal my 'secret' and suddenly everyone is asking me how I'm feeling, how I'm coping and whether I want to sit down. No, OK? I don't want to sit down. I wanted to sit down a fortnight ago. Actually, I wanted to lie down in a little hole and die quietly a fortnight ago. But now I'm feeling quite bouncy, thankyouverymuch.

So there you have it. I expect to be a fully functioning blogger again very soon, and might even manage to write about something other than pregnancy. Don't stop following me!

Not Me! Monday

Not Me Mondays are the brainchild of the marvellous MckMama, veteran Mummy blogger.

Our dishwasher is NOT still broken. Is has NOT now been broken for over two weeks. We did NOT, out of a mixture of desperation and laziness, continue to use it for most of that time. Our crockery did NOT come out with a white powdery film on it, which I did NOT simply polish off with a tea-towel before putting the items away. I did NOT eventually find mould inside the dishwasher. It did NOT turn out, when the repair man eventually got here, that the dishwasher's heating element was broken so that all our stuff had been washed in cold water for a week. I am NOT now gradually washing everything again by hand. We are NOT still waiting for the stupid little electronic part to be delivered to the repair man so that he can come and fix it. This will NOT cost nearly as much as a new machine.

While trying to find a repair person, The Rev did NOT lose his patience with all the evil giant corporations who create false 'local' web pages and then phone you back from somewhere like Swansea. When one of them phoned him back, he did NOT tell her that the dishwasher was now fine because he had "laid hands on it and prayed". When she asked for clarification that the dishwasher was working, he did NOT shout "Yes! Praise the Lord!" and hang up the phone. He did NOT later refer to this as "lying for Jesus".

What have you all NOT been doing this week?

Squeaky Clean

Abi Jane has a new obsession with cleanliness. Unfortunately, this is resulting in her being grubbier than ever.

Let me explain.

Abi has worked out what wet wipes are for (a bit slow on the uptake, I know) and while previously she used to kick and scream whenever her face and hands were wiped, now it's even worse - she wants to do it herself.

Ever wanting to encourage development, of course, I let her. After dabbing her mouth daintily with one corner of the wipe like a miniature Hercule Poirot, the job's done as far as she's concerned - and off she toddles, covered in jam. Any attempt to finish the wiping for her is met with absolute outrage that Mummy doesn't appear to find her standards good enough.

Wipes, according to Abigail, are also for wiping surfaces, books, the carpet, the bottom of your shoe, the sootiest bit of the fireplace - and THEN your face. And then Mummy's face.

She likes them so much that yesterday, she took most of a packet out of the packet while I was next door preparing dinner, and hid them in her toybox for future mess making fun.

Meanwhile, upstairs in her nursery, she's become tall enough to reach the drawer where I keep her creams, cotton wool and other small hazardous items like nail scissors. (I'm going to have to start sellotaping things to the ceiling, I think. Or sellotaping her to the ceiling.) The other day, she found the cotton buds and approached me clutching one with a quizzical expression, and I made the mistake of showing her what it was for: "See, they're for cleaning your ears...NOOOO, don't actually put it in your ear! Yes, I see that it does also fit nicely up your nose...no, don't put it back in the box now, it's all...oh Abi, just give them back..."

Abi has also carried this new love of cleanliness into the realm of tidying, and follows me about while I am tidying up, collecting things and helpfully putting them in the bin. It would be marvellous, but the things she collects are mainly books and soft toys, and her bin of choice is the nappy bin.

Yuck.

Still, this answers the question of what to get her for her birthday and Christmas - toy cleaning equipment! I'll just have to be prepared for the months of extraordinary mess that will be bound to ensue...

Evening Hymn

Recent conversations about writing parodies of hymns led me to think of this parody of The Day Thou Gavest, which I wrote ages ago on a different blog. When I searched for it, I found to my distress that the whole blog (it was an ancient MSN Space one) had vanished into the ether, along with the only copy of the song. Happily, The Rev had a go at searching too, and although he didn't dredge up the old blog, he did find that someone else had kindly reposted the lyrics on their own blog - and so we have them back, and before they get lost again, I'll repost them here. I regret to say that, despite the request in the final line, the words seem even more true to life since motherhood...

EVENING HYMN

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended
The darkness falls at thy behest
To thee my morning prayers should have ascended
But I was grumpy and sleepy and stressed.

I'm sorry, Lord, that I have stumbled
Through today without your word;
And any prayer I might have mumbled
I'd be surprised if you have heard.

And I will soon be deep in slumber
My night time prayers cut off midway,
I wouldn't like to count the number
Of things that I'll forget to say.

But wait here, Lord, while I am sleeping,
You know the troubles of my heart,
And when my snooze alarm starts beeping,
Help me to make a better start.

Toddling through Greenbelt

I spent last weekend storytelling at Greenbelt. It was mainly fab. I mean, there was lots of good stuff. I got to meet Bridget and Adrian Plass and actually have tea with them; I got to perform a new show called A Special Pair Of Shoes; I bumped into plenty of people I know, which is always fun, and I enjoyed channelling my inner hippy in festival dresses, rainbow striped knee-high socks and multiple jangly bracelets.

I also had Abi Jane with me.

Now, two years ago I went to Greenbelt at 20 weeks pregnant, and I think that more people told me then that I was mad than they did this time around. But 20 weeks pregnant was easy. Sure, I "stood" in several queues for talks on my hands and knees because of the constant danger of fainting, and I developed a very close relationship with the nearest set of portaloos to my tent, but all in all, it wasn't difficult.

However, here is just a flavour of what Greenbelt was like with a toddler.

We arrived ("We" is me and my wonderful friend Bekki, who I should say at this point looked after Abi a huge amount and kept me sane), and needed to unpack the car and put up the tent, preferably before it rained. For a while, Abi Jane was evidently either going to scuttle off into the depths of the campsite as fast as her legs would carry her, or take the tent apart as fast as we were putting it together.

But then she found the bag of food. So that was OK.

Camping itself wasn't too bad. Abi got the hang of tent life with surprising alacrity, even though bedtime did not include the usual bath.

The first night, she and I both woke up at about the same time - 3am ish - mainly because it was freezing cold. I sat up and piled everything I owned on top of her, and she went back to sleep. I didn't. The second night, she woke at 5:45am and the third night she was awake between 1am and some other hour that I didn't care to look at.

It wasn't the nights, though, so much as the days. The main problem with taking a toddler to Greenbelt is that for every hour you get to spend doing things like this:

you have to spend about twelve hours doing things like this:

until you feel as if your brain is going to leak out of your ears. The festival programme sits in your bag mocking you: "Look what you could be doing if you weren't on your fourteenth circuit of the showground pushing a little plastic car!"

On the second day, I discovered the Parent Support Venue. That was lovely. You go in looking tired and harassed, and they give you free cups of tea and magazines to read while you watch your offspring bashing other peoples' offspring over the head with Fisher Price toys. They provided baby baths, too, but I didn't like to imagine the carnage that might ensue if I actually tried to fit Abi Jane into one of them.

It was also on the second day that I finished putting Abi Jane to bed at about 7:30pm and realised that I hadn't been to the toilet for over twelve hours. Because you can't if you have a pushchair and a toddler with you and your only option is a queue for a tiny, muddy portaloo. Unless, of course, you leave the pushchair and the toddler outside to the mercy of the queue, which was tempting at times.

Yet despite all my complaining, I still somehow contrived to enjoy myself a lot of the time. There were unexpected pleasures, like meeting a family of complete strangers because Abi Jane decided to wander into their tent. They turned out to be absolutely lovely people from Norwich, another clergy family, who allowed Abi Jane to mess about with crafty things while we chatted about rural ministry. They weren't in the Daily Diary, but they were one of the best bits.

I don't know quite what I'd imagined would happen. Did I entertain visions of Abi Jane playing happily at my feet while I listened to scintillating talks, or sleeping through late night comedy sessions, or dancing along to music at the mainstage? Did I really not suspect that she would be grumpy at being contained, sleepless and whingy? I'm not sure, but in my foolishness I am already starting to contemplate going back next year. Surely with a nearly-three-year-old it would all work much better...

To sleep, perchance...

We've definitely reached that awkward stage at which it's time to drop the afternoon nap, but impossible to actually do so.

The main problem is that Abigail is rarely tired enough to go to sleep straight after lunch, but is shattered by about three in the afternoon, by which time is far too late for her to go to sleep, as she will then sleep until suppertime and be up all night. And for everybody who thinks they have the simple, Supernanny answer to this (I could hear the sharp intakes of breath from here) yes, she really does sleep for up to three hours if she naps, and no, I can't just wake her up after twenty minutes or whatever the magic number is, because waking Abigail up turns her into a screaming, wailing, howling, red-faced demon who acts as if she is being tortured for the whole of the rest of the day. Last time I tried it, she cried for the best part of two hours without stopping. Once she's asleep, she's asleep and that's it.

Once it gets past midday, therefore, I only have one question to consider in all of my planning for the afternoon: will she sleep or won't she? This afternoon, for example, I realised that I needed to buy wine and parmesan cheese for tonight's dinner. Driving to the nearest town is no good; it's too far, she'll almost certainly fall asleep in the car and then I won't be able to go into the shop until she's woken up. It's too hot for her to sleep in the car today anyway, even with the windows down. I might just make it to the nearest village with a village shop, because at least if she falls asleep on the way there, I can leave her for two minutes while I dash in and buy wine and cheese. But what if she doesn't fall asleep? We could stay in the village and go to the park too, but then that increases the chances of her falling asleep in the pushchair on the way there, or if she doesn't, in the car on the way back, and...no, wait. All this information is too much for one small brain. It's much better expressed in a flow chart:

So that is how I plan even the briefest of excursions these days.

Not Me! Monday

This week I did NOT leave the dishwasher open while I went and attended to some other emergency.

I did NOT return to find Abi Jane climbing about inside the dishwasher.

She was NOT inexplicably covered in yoghurt.



What have you all NOT been doing this week?