Cotton Eye Grace

My beautiful, beautiful girl - 10 months young as we speak. Dressed by Matt the Husband for a public appearance at Honley Country Show last weekend, he somewhat suitably dug out a country-looking outfit complete with denim dungarees and sun hat which left her looking like a hay bale slinging cow girl from the farm, oo arr oo arr.

Believe it or not this photo of Grace with Charlie is taken on the same day - typically inclement weather that day - sunshine enough to leave the bridge of my nose a little scorched, rain heavy enough to have us running for cover and wind windy enough to be looking to the dog looking for someone or something to blame....

Step away from the bowl!

STEP AWAY FROM THE BOWL AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!

Gracie having a thoroughly cracking time at the breakfast table - getting to grips with a bowl of yoghurt.

Not bad for ten months when one considers this is the first time she's had anything in her hair!

Flying the nest

Not Grace - me.

I'm having a peculiar day. A good friends' Father once said I was a peculiar girl, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that I am having a peculiar day. Weird weird weird.

I am leaving Grace for the first time for, not just a few hours, but for 3 nights as I trot off to Madrid for work. We've spent the whole weekend together, me and the little lady, and I have to say I don't much feel like leaving her behind. Pocket size as she may be at the moment, I doubt Grace would fit or go unnoticed in my little case, since she is already taller and noisier than the worlds smallest man - Junrey Balawing from the Philippines, standing a mere 56cm tall. (Grace at last count was about 65). So as it stands I will be leaving her behind with Matt the Husband, Daisy-woof and a list as long as my arm of things I think are important (but to most are probably pointless and unnecessary twaddle) as I fly off to a very nice hotel in Spain for a two day conference on Business Continuity Management, thank you very much.

It's not that I am worried that Grace will go without while I am gone - Matt the Husband dotes on her. But a mother is a mummy... and Gracie needs her Mummy.

We had a wonderful day together today and I am sad to be going away.
A late Sunday morning breakfast of bacon on warmed ciabatta with a rather large dollop of ketchup followed by a mid-morning snooze that embarassingly took over much of the day seeing us wake a little after 1pm. After a rather late picnic lunch at the park, we enjoyed a wonderful sunny walk with D-W bouncing through the wild grasses with Grace chattering and giggling up on her perch on her Daddy's back.
Grace and I then had a particularly indulgent afternoon cat nap, snuggling in the double bed together while Matt the Husband made another bumbled attempt at DIY downstairs. It's the first time since the London Marathon weekend we have fallen asleep together, my heartbeat soothing her to sleep while her fluffy chicken hair (which is getting thicker by the day) tickled my nose... I wish to God those moments could happen more often - life is too busy and it's rare we can just BE.
A little magic later we ate together as a family, as we always do in the evenings, before Grace had her bathtime and bedtime routine.

It's her first night in her new lowered mattress cot - she's rolled over twice this weekend, which is a new trick for her, so we have moved the mattress level down so there is no risk of her pulling herself up and over. Bless her heart, when we put her to bed this evening she was dozing after a bottle of milk as she always does, but looking quizzically from side to side thinking to herself - I know this is my bed... and yet I know something has changed. She melts my heart.

In a nutshell then, I'm leaving my baby girl for the first time. I love her to the moon and back, Mummy's little button.

Toothy pegs

You might have noticed Lady Grace is sprouting teeth faster than my garden sprouts weeds... and that's fast by anybody's standards. We have been brushing since spotting the first berg back at Christmas only now we are spending more time on it as her smile fills out.

On last count this morning we had 8 mountain peaks. Two minutes of brushing seems like a long time, so we're singing the Brushing Song that I found surfing on google. We sing it to the tune of Row Your Boat and lucky for us, that is one of her ladyships favourties. We try to make the bathroom routine fun so I thought I'd share...

Brush, brush, brush your teeth, at least two times a day.
Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, fighting tooth decay.

Brush, brush, brush your teeth, every single day.
Gently, gently, gently, gently, whisking Plaque away.

Rinse, rinse, rinse your teeth, every singly day.
Swishing, swishing, swishing, swishing, fighting tooth decay.

I believe it wont be long before Grace takes over the brush herself - we let her dabble now and apart from blobbing the toothpaste all over her face and popping the handle in her mouth in the meantime, she's doing pretty well. I imagine she'll master it a long while before she masters the words to the song. A bit like Matt the Husband in a way, only different. He can grasp the words, it's the tune that eludes him :0)

Blame it on the buggy....

Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on the good times...

BLAME IT ON THE BUGGY!

It's in the lyrics, so I have to do as it says - blame it on the buggy.

That sodding Quinny Buzz 3, with it's wide wheel base, ten tonne weight and inexorable ability to be BIG in everything it does - it has a LOT to answer for.
So what if it comes with 5 star comfort and precision steering, the ability to turn on a six pence while pushing it with my little finger.
Who cares, when this bugger of a buggy has caused me pain and suffering???

Grace, the little dear, loves it - strutting her stuff on the buggy beat around the village with the dog, waving at her play mates like the Queen, as they wave back in their Asda smartprice 4 wheelers (the commoners) and MacLaren sports (the middle classes). But this means nothing to me - Lady Grace is happy, I am livid.

So what's to blame on the buggy?

1) Not being able to get into the loo at the shopping centre - the wheels are too wide - inconvenient, but free to fix - assuming you can ignore the tuts from the wheelchair users as I decend on the disabled conveniences.

2) Not being able to get into the changing rooms at Next - the buggy is too long to fit behind the curtain - inconvenient, but free to fix - though not permitted into the disabled cubicle (it's "against policy") you can get down to your smalls in the un-privacy of an end cubicle with the curtain wide open... fine, just avoid Half Term - too many leering snotty nose kids craning their necks to get a good look at my backside.

3) Not being able to change my own tyre - I have the AA to call when the car gets a flat, but who's there to rescue me when the buggy pulls a puncture half way round Newmillar Dam? The answer is nobody - I have the man handle the hulk of a thing round on the rim. Inconvenient, but a good workout for an out of shape Mum.

4) Not being able to fit in the car. You think I'm joking. Matt the Husband and I bought the buggy based on kerb appeal and a gripping promotional video with a forgettable soundtrack. Yep, the buggy didn't fit in the car, and no amount of pushing, grunting and cursing could change that. So we changed cars.
And it still didn't fit... until we realised the back seats slid forward, so now it fits in... JUST.
And what else? That's when our AA membership really came in handy. 4 breakdowns later (3 for the new car, one for me), we're on the road again and out of pocket. But Grace loves her new wheels and the space it affords her. On a recent trip to see her grandparents in Norfolk we managed to fit in all of her favorite toys along with the dog, right there in the boot with the buggy.

I hate it. Grace loves it. It's our first mother-daughter difference - she's got her own mind, and it's starting to show! Here is a photo of Grace at 9.5 months, up in arms about the talk of replacing the Quinny with a cheaper model so we can sell the Troublesome Touran and get a Robin Reliant instead.

Singing in the Rain!

Or if you are Matt the Husband, it's more like Warbling in the Wind. Blessed with a musical ear and talented on the song-writing front, he somewhat sadly can't hold a tune for toffee. Grace however loves every minute of it and whether he's whittering 'The Grand Old Duke of York' or 'Old MacDonald has a Farm' she likes being out with her Daddy walking the dog in all weathers.

And all weathers it was today. One minute sunny and warm, the next pissing down and flipping the brolly inside out for good measure. Nevertheless Grace sat stoic upon her throne and braced the wind and rain as any nine month old would do. Enjoying watching Daisy-woof of Dewsbury darting around with her clan, the dog walk passed in a flash and it wasn't long before we were back in the car for a warm up.

The Godfather- Michael, (horses head safely away on storage), cooked up a breakfast fit for a king (or a godfather if you will), and then had a good long debate with Grace in the kitchen... talking bananas for sure, to be sure.

Happy Sundays!!

Beans on Toast or Sunday Roast?

It started out with me pondering family traditions. Would I follow the trend of my upbringing - the Sunday Roast - or would I create my own? It started back at Christmas when we decided how to spend our first with Grace. We opted to travel to my parents in Norfolk and then spend New Years Day with the in-laws in Yorkshire. But do I want to do this every year, or more's the point today, do I want to slave over a Sunday roast every week?

It might not come down to choice. We've started today with a frugal feeling in the air. As much as it pains me, I will be budget-busting, frugal-finding at the supermarket from now on as this month marks the last of my back from maternity leave overtime.
I draw the line at becoming a freegan. Freegans raid the bins for food chucked out by the supermarkets, and it's a trend I'm quite interested in but not brave (or crackers) enough to try. And why would I when there's a perfectly decent supermarket a stone's throw away. Besides, we're skint - but not that skint. No, we wont be turning to freeganism (is that a word?). But we will be shopping for groceries on a budget.

I always said the one thing I wouldn't skrimp on would be food, and to be honest we live pretty cheaply in that department anyway. I think the key to it is cooking with raw ingredients from scratch. It's fun to cook and it tastes so much better than anything processed, and we tend to eat a wider variety of meals rather than sticking to a tried and tested meal plan, getting a taste for some adventurous bites along the way.

Grace of course is being raised on a multi-national baby-led weaning diet. Her favourites to date include chickpea curry, meatball risotto, paprika chicken and of course the age old favourite chilli con carne. In a rush for lunch last week she ate a tin of Cross & Blackwell pasta shapes in tomato sauce with toast. I ate it with her - it was suprisingly bad... tastless slop and something I vow never to feed her again - not even for convenience. I'm glad I tried it, I see things differently now.

Healthy balanced food needn't be expensive, or at least that's what I'm hoping. We've loaded the card Matt the Husband gets as a perk from the bank - it's a pre pay mastercard that you load with cash and shop as normal - the benefit is, you get between 1-10% cash back on all your spends depending on where you shop. Asda is 4%, Sainsbury's 5% etc etc. I'll let you know how we get on. The bonus is, you can't spend more than you've loaded it up with, so there's no overspend risk.

As for Grace, she's still doing really well with her weaning. She's taken to taking little bites from an apple which is terribly cute, and she's still enjoying her weetabix for breakfast - she can knock back a whole one now, it's only a matter of time before she nails two!!

But back to the point of this post - Sunday Roast or Beans on Toast? This week marks the last weekend shift for me in a long long time. In fact ever. Every job I have had involved evenings or weekends. And at last 18 years after starting work, I am working my last weekend shift. I can hear fireworks and fanfare in the background just thinking about it. I may treat myself to a glass of bubbly.
Coke that is, remember I'm on a budget!
So anyway, once I start weekdays I think I will start Sunday roasting it. I may even attend Church every Sunday although that does largely depend on what time Grace wakes. As for beans on toast? That might be a mid-week treat as we all love beans, Matt the Husband in particular.

In essence then, traditions are what you make them. Grace will have her Sunday roasts, and she will also have her Beans on Toast. As for other traditions like Christmas, well, its a bit early in the year to be musing about that. Ask me again later. And other traditions? I'll create some just for Grace as we travel along life's path. Watch this space!