My daughter is now 10 weeks old and is no longer content to be merely cooed over and gazed at with exhausted adoration. She wants entertainment and she wants it NOW.
I feel like an unrehearsed candidate on our own private talent show - Has Mummy got Talent? - as I wheel out my props each day and try my hardest to distract, cajole and amuse.
LOOK Iris, I'm a bird/monkey/snorty non-descript animal!
LOOK Iris, I'm an addition to your playmat you didn't know was there, up HERE, up HERE, look at my funny face!!
LOOK Iris, who's that pretty, pretty girl over there? (Cue mirror) It's you, yes it is, it IS, no over THERE...no don't cry, oh dear.
LOOK Iris, here's DOTTY the lady bird, crackle crackle, jingle jingle...isn't she colourful, isn't she FUN!! No? oh dear.
Sometimes Iris humours me with a beautiful beaming smile and I think, "yay, I've made it, I'm FUNNY!!". Then other times - in fact probably the majority of the time - she is the Simon Cowell of babies and just looks wearily away.
I've developed a whole new respect for those annoyingly young and bubbly CBBC presenters. I especially admire in retrospect the fairy that turned up to entertain the toddlers at my niece's third birthday party last year - she may have been rather large and manly for the tutu look, but she kept the children amused for ages.
I wonder if there's an NVQ in nursery rhymes, lullabies and toy usage that I could sign up for. That's another thing, the only songs I seem to know the words to are Christmas carols. Tonight for instance was Good King Wenceslas - a little aseasonal, but made a welcome change from humming the theme tune to Dallas, or the countless other made-up tunes we seem to come up with.
The strange thing is, Iris seems just as amused at me struggling with her nappy at 5am, as she does when I'm in full clown mode several hours and a coffee later. But then, maybe she's laughing AT me, not WITH me...
Ah well, a laugh's a laugh, and I'm discovering that, despite my new mum angst, having fun is actually quite fun.
Saturday 23 June 2007
Tuesday 12 June 2007
Weight a minute..
God I'm slow. It's taken me 8 weeks and 3 days to work out that the cake-eating breast-feeding weight loss phenomenon is actually an urban myth spread by NCT devotees to encourage vain new mums to feed au naturel! Or so I reckon.
There was I, assiduously devoting myself to post-natal cake and chocolate eating, and waiting for my extra weight to miraculously vanish. I was ready. My jeans were ready. My fingers poised over my old dress size on my next online order. But no, I have remained at stubbornly the same weight for the past 3 weeks.
Actually, last week I did lose 2 lbs, although to be honest this was mainly due to missing meals while playing foot chauffeur to my daughter. The bored anorexic demons inside my head leaped for joy at this promising start ("yay, miss more meals, miss more meals", they urged...), however my sensible self knew this couldn't last, and I was reunited with the missing lbs yesterday morning.
Hmm. So, on to the next phenomenon then. I took my new MBT trainers on their first outing last Friday (for the uninitiated Masai Barefoot Technology, or as I like to think of it, [new] Mum's Bottom Trimmers). Pacing round Dulwich Park with a slightly smug bounce, I felt sure I was on the road to muscle recovery. Unfortunately my bounce wained somewhere between the ice cream van and the pond, as I limped to a bench with a fine pair of blisters (and yes, ok, a Lemon Sparkle).
I haven't felt this over-nourished (I'm resisting the 'F' word) since I was recovering from glandular fever at 16 and self-medicated with carob peanuts. A little over-zealously.
Right, time to dust off the gym ball, swap the cupcakes for ricecakes and get a bit more realistic about my body prospects. Yep, any time now. Very very soon.
Er, Minstrel anyone?
There was I, assiduously devoting myself to post-natal cake and chocolate eating, and waiting for my extra weight to miraculously vanish. I was ready. My jeans were ready. My fingers poised over my old dress size on my next online order. But no, I have remained at stubbornly the same weight for the past 3 weeks.
Actually, last week I did lose 2 lbs, although to be honest this was mainly due to missing meals while playing foot chauffeur to my daughter. The bored anorexic demons inside my head leaped for joy at this promising start ("yay, miss more meals, miss more meals", they urged...), however my sensible self knew this couldn't last, and I was reunited with the missing lbs yesterday morning.
Hmm. So, on to the next phenomenon then. I took my new MBT trainers on their first outing last Friday (for the uninitiated Masai Barefoot Technology, or as I like to think of it, [new] Mum's Bottom Trimmers). Pacing round Dulwich Park with a slightly smug bounce, I felt sure I was on the road to muscle recovery. Unfortunately my bounce wained somewhere between the ice cream van and the pond, as I limped to a bench with a fine pair of blisters (and yes, ok, a Lemon Sparkle).
I haven't felt this over-nourished (I'm resisting the 'F' word) since I was recovering from glandular fever at 16 and self-medicated with carob peanuts. A little over-zealously.
Right, time to dust off the gym ball, swap the cupcakes for ricecakes and get a bit more realistic about my body prospects. Yep, any time now. Very very soon.
Er, Minstrel anyone?
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