I am sick. My baby is sick. We are miserable. Having a small baby seems to involve nothing but illness.
On mature reflection, this is perhaps not the upbeat tone that I was hoping for when I decided to start a blog. Babies are wonderful. Marvellous. Endlessly entertaining. Oh is that a yowl I hear? Better go. More later. I bet you can’t wait.
I wrote a great entry this morning but I managed to lose it. I am very keen on instant gratification so I haven’t bothered to read the getting started instructions that the kind people at 20six supply. I regret that now.
It’s pouring rain here and at 15.50 already quite dark. Both baby waffle and I continue to be quite unwell, though improving slowly. Mr. Waffle is out to a work dinner tonight so we will snuffle at home alone. Poor us.
The whole Christmas present thing is becoming fraught. I have no job and theoretically lots of time, yet I have not managed to find presents in the past weeks and now Christmas is almost upon us and I know I will end up pushing a buggy around crowded streets on Christmas Eve looking for pressies and people who are like I used to be will think “My God, what’s she doing in here with a buggy, those people should be banned from the city centre at this time of year, for heaven’s sake, they have all the time in the world to make their purchases”. Do you think that that last sentence needs a full stop?
You will see that in my list of favourite blogs, there is only one, Fluid Pudding http://www.fluidpudding.com/index.html. Hey, I’m new to this. I came across FP when I was pregnant and looking for entertaining stuff on pregnancy on the internet. If you are pregnant, I strongly recommend looking at the FP archives. If you have a small baby, also very entertaining stuff. A little scary however on their baby’s eating regime. The FPs are very rigourous on what their baby eats. As someone who nearly choked her baby on a croissant recently, this makes me feel a bit bad.
Today in the waffle household things are improving. Baby waffle is 8 months old and teething. We are, on the whole, relieved. Her father has pointed out that she is falling behind her age cohort in tooth and hair production. At least her teeth are catching up.
I must note that Mr. Waffle is not entirely pleased with the initial entries. Since he compromises, as far as I know, one half of my reading public these complaints are not to be taken lightly. In the interest of balance, I wish to inform readers that although Mr. Waffle has been out three nights this week while we languished at home, he has hardly been out at all since April.
on 12 December 2003 at 15:14
wow I don’t envy you..teething can be a night mare! good luck!
Gosh, I am really taken with this. As you can imagine, not a lot has happened since mid-day (although I have got two comments – v. exciting, thank you kind commenters). I have also changed the colours on the site to look girly. Oh the thrill. Will there be the option of Christmas backgrounds, I wonder?
You will be delighted to hear that my crabby baby has been restored to health and happiness. This is due to consumption of infant nurofen. I will tell you how I got this because I feel that I should perhaps seek to entertain and this is mildly entertaining.
This year has been a bit of a wedding marathon for me and my beloved husband. With our new baby we have travelled to 6 weddings. That’s a lot of weddings with a small baby. Mr. Waffle churlishly points out that the weddings are designed to be in locations which are expensive and inconvenient to get to.
At one of our weddings our baby got sick. This was the first time our baby was sick and we were traumatised. Mr. Waffle stayed in the hotel bedroom comforting our unhappy tot and I went off to find a doctor. Thus I committed my first social solecism as a mother. You see, I knew that the bride’s mother was a GP. So I hoved up to a sister of the bride and explained my difficulty. Bride’s sister was a tower of strength and rounded up her mother who instantly agreed to examine baby. She brought with her a friend, an American doctor who was a guest at the wedding. So up we went to the room and all four of us trooped in, me, my friend, her mother and the American lady. Poor spouse had not realised my search would bring such instantaneous results and he was pacing up and down in his boxer shorts with roaring baby. Oh dear. Mother of the bride picked up our precious baby by the scruff of her babygrow whereupon she (baby) instantly stopped crying and heaved a sigh of relief. A brief examination and the doctors decided that nothing was wrong except perhaps a slight temperature. Had we any Calpol? No. Any nurofen? No. A thermometer? Alas, no. Doctor shook her head at our ineptitude and thrust a box of baby nurofen upon us. And how useful it has been. Can I recommend this as an investment to all parents of small babies. Particularly if you are going to move to Belgium because all you can get here is baby suppositories and I assure you that babies do not like these.
And, excitement, here is a picture of baby waffle. Please admire.
I have just finished a dreadful book. Dreadful in content and dreadful in prose style. I am so pleased to have polished it off. I feel compelled to finish something once I’ve started it. I suspect I am the only person to have read the Phaidon coffee table book of the century thing cover to cover. This is a character flaw, I know.
I have to give a plug to the best book I’ve read this year. It’s called “What I Loved” by Siri Hustvedt. It is outstanding, a page turner with in-depth art and hysteria references. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Worst book I have read this year is undoubtedly “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier. I took it into hospital with me when I went into labour and two days later when I had my baby I was still wading through it. Who cares about this man and his trip back to Cold Mountain? Why was this book awarded a prize? What possessed the author to make it so bloody long?
Illness continues to stalk our household. Most trying. However, you will be delighted to hear that we are recovering and hope to be healthy for our trip home on Friday.
Somebody asked me where in Ireland I was from. I am from Cork. We are an independent and proud people brutally subjugated by the nasty east coast Dubliners. My loving spouse comes from Dublin so our Christmas holidays will be scrupulously divided between the two locations. Well, reasonably scrupulously. More of this later.
I think perhaps the following story would help to explain the Cork spirit. I met my husband in Brussels and, despite the fact that he was from Dublin, I liked him straight away. I rang my mother and said to her “I’ve met a great guy”. My mother, like many another Irish mother was concerned that, as I lived in Brussels, I might meet a local and settle down far from the ancestral home so she said “Not a foreigner?” “No” I said.? “Ah”, she said in tones of great relief “he’s from Cork”.
Our holidays are not as fairly divided between Cork and Dublin as they might be. A friend of mine from school (the “heart surgeon”) is getting married. As a 34 year old mother of one, I thought that my bridesmaid days were over, but apparently not. I am supporting actress in the wedding which is taking place in Cork on January 1 so we are staying in Cork a little longer than we might otherwise have done.? My friend has selected really lovely dresses for her bridesmaids but there is one tiny snag. Cork is chilly in Winter and wearing a strapless dress on January 1 is definitely going to take from my enjoyment of the occasion.? Particularly since there will be a photo session on the beach.
Finally, have been surfing around and have to plug this site which tells of the adventures in Brazil of a friend of ours from Brussels.? Makes me feel most uninteresting which is quite distressing but is very funny and worthwhile.