two high fives

She is now five months old. FIVE! I know. I am a walking cliché again to be so mama-amazed at that. And I don't care. I have only just turned around and blinked a couple of times since her birth and yet here she is all out of new born-ness and into the grabby chewy stage of gurgling screams. Five little, long, tine snapping,days often achingly long, bitter sweet, gone-in-a-flash months. Every day she seem to get cuter. Warning!! This is a 'mommy blog' or something... although, what are they anyway? I am guessing the ones where every post is about how their baby learned to clap that day or maybe smiled at the postman. Well yes. Those things are pretty exciting. When you are a baby or when you are a mother viewing the world through your babies eyes. I get it. Seeing everything all over again. For the very first time. It's AMAZING. When you look at our world it is sort of crazy. Some of the stuff we do and say is just weird. And little babies take it all in their stride. Everything is normal, fine and good and well. As long as they are in your arms. Why yes they may nod and blink totally nonplussed as a lion backflips into a pavlova. And why shouldn't that happen? That's why magic shows don't work for really little kids. Because the world is so crazy/magic/normal it's all one and the same.

 Anyway back to baby gah-gahing. Which is about all I am up for right now. She is my little flower fairy. Also, I am sorry sweet one but you have inherited your Daddy's ears. Nothing I could do to stop that from happening. 1/4 kids though. The rest have my little neat ones. Lets just hope her hair grows in long and thick (kidding, sorta, she is too delicious for me to care).

 This next one was sort of an out-take. One of those ones that stays on your disc and never sees the light of day. But honestly?! She has the funniest faces of anyone. She makes me laugh every day. Has this sublime way of making her face slack and amazed. Thus erasing what I said above about babies taking it all in their stride.

 And then she can be all, no way. I am so not impressed.

 Honestly she'd scare me if I knew she wasn't just the squidgiest softest, nicest smelling, kissable human baby on the planet. Also those knits I knit pre-birth. She has used them all up. Every last one. At five months she tops the scales and growth charts for a one year old. So my knitted items tell me. Outgrown. If only I had time to knit more! Alas no. So she has wrists peeping from her cardigans. We can live with it. She is still dressed in the clothes of luurve.


 Here she is with my mum and Esmé. I love seeing my mum with them both.

 Her sister gets the most smiles x10 than anyone else. She is memorised by Esmé who has all the time in the world, plus some extra, for her baby sister. The sun and moon and stars? They are Iona for Esmé. I am pretty much in love with just seeing them together.

 It's a nice change from the way Esmé screams at everyone else and gets her own way through violence and mayhem and pure will (power). Well her weakness and strengths lie in her love for Iona. Because she is like a bit of raspberry play-dough for her. With added glitter. All sweetness and fun.

 Esmé just turned Five. Five years. Another sort of where-is-my-life-sieving-away-too? My bright little star girl. She is beautiful. And the Queen. She is our sunshine and thunder clap all at once. Fiery and bright and oh so hot. Sweetness and the darkest night. And just when you despair at her contrariness there she is beaming with a gift of a sea shell. Just today she screeched, 'no! I do NOT want chicken!' While forking some happily into her mouth . And that is who she is. That one little thing captures her pretty well.

 The cake! She had high specifications as you might have guessed. Heart shaped. Pink. Umbrellas. Sweet shop. Marshmallows. Lemon. Eleven layers. I laughed her out of the eleven layers (as it was I made it in the middle of the night while dashing back and forth to check twitchy-cannot-sleep-alone babe). So one thick layer. But super yes to everything else.

Over the years I have gone from making some hard won healthy birthday cakes to going flat out to what ever whimsy their hearts desire. It's a birthday, not every day cake. C' mon. But it was at least gluten free. And cow dairy free. She can handle everything else she tells me. I just agree. Mostly to anything that keeps her in happy mode. It's the default setting of any mother with multiple children. I know it.

 She lost her first tooth on New Years Eve and since then two more. The fairies left a little door in our kitchen so as to visit us more often. They exchange notes and fairy dust and teeth and silver coins with this big wobbly toothed girl. A thread of rainbow yarn tied to her bed wound down to show her on New years Day this little door and it has been featured highly in conversation game and art since. One secret little word I shall whisper if you were wondering: Etsy.

Also the big thing so far this year for Esmé has been taking part in a real ballet show. She was a bumble bee in Snow White. I only have this one pic taken backstage as she anxiously waited in line for make up. Let me say the make up was the best part of the whole thing for her. She said reverently she felt almost like a Barbie. I try not to shudder just hope for better things while externally I laughed like a loon and told her yes, we all must dream big as she skipped with her bumble bee antennae bobbing around her head so happily.

Hardly a thing any parent dream their daughter will say but the thing is, I just want her to love what she loves. If it's Barbie and ballet and pink cakes with cocktail umbrellas, so what? High fives really. At least she knows what it is she loves. So many people don't.

 I will comeback soon and update again with lovely Boy Stuff. And also with some URBAN house moving stuff that's on our agenda (I know! It's necessary for the sanity and togetherness of our family).

Last pics: obligatory baby feet pic

my biggest and littlest having a chat

Isaac yielding the camera (too early for me to be dressed or looking decent but oh well).

 And Esmé cross because Isaac asked her to smile. Not many of me and my girls so I'll take it.

 Baby in daddy-arms being bounced to sleep on the exercise ball (best thing ever for babies)

 And another two from today, my sweet Iona (ohnee-moanie we like to call her, in affection - of course). Nothing to do with her random bursts of screaming/crying. Unfathomable and perplexing and leaves us all huddled in shivering quivering nerve wrecked heaps. She is still the most lovely baby, so Felix tells me. And he is always right.

Alive! I am here and waving (just about)

Still here. Just. Hectic is too calm a word to describe my life right now. Hanging on by a thread. We had a busy, stressful run up and then calm sweet Christmas. But illness hung in the air like fog and keeps on sweeping one of us up. Iona is in the poor little dreary spotlight for this now. Hacking cough, of which I am sure babies ought not to experience, and bursts of fever pitch crying. Wipe the world out crying where we are all so torn to shreds afterwards I know not what to do. She has been tugging at one ear and not even feeding which I suppose would make a sore ear worse, with the swallowing. Ended up in hospital with her and the dr diagnosed an ear infection. Ack. It is just pure misery to be in pain and to see such a tiny sweet little person in pain. And The man is in pain with a tooth abcess right now also. And we just de-registered Isaac from school. See what I mean about hectic? I have already sort of forgotten Christmas in the mayhem which has become life. There is a meter wide, meter high higgledy piggeldy pile of clean clothes (at least they are in fact clean, I can cling to that) right next to my bed that needs sorting and carting to rooms and draws. It is nearly midnight and children are asleep, do I feel like doing it now? The only chance I may get, hands-free, in which to do so? Or drag myself to a bathroom to clean that too? No. 11 pm is the available slot for doing. Anything. And here I am, on the laptop. And it is midnight. Because I don't like letting this place totally slide. It is a little bobbing raft of sanity which I can lash myself too. And stare up at the moon. Wolf like. Descended from which, the dog is perpetually in need of walking and someone always seems to be either walking it, just about to walk it or just home from walking it. And there it sits continually begging for more walks until I cannot bear to see it and wish it would go and walk it's self. Some days I'd like to shoot it. Kinda. Just so as I'd have one less thing 'to do'. When the baby is crying and some one is asking how to spell 'legionnaire' (I ask myself too how to spell 'involuntary dog-slaughter'). Someone else needs a drink and then in help yourself mode the glass gets knocked and smashed, and at the same time the postman arrives to find me in PJ's still and needing a parcel signed for. I ask the four year old to do it. She is good at forgery. Already. Everyone always seem to want food. And I find myself swinging a knife one handed in the kitchen while the other bobs a fractious baby. I mostly manage to chop things exceedingly well. I can in fact cook entire meals with one hand. I can fill a kettle with one hand. I can thread beads with one hand (and also floss my teeth) I cannot however do all these things at once. Which is a shame. Since they seem to all need doing at exactly the same time. Who knew life could get so mad? I could snort with laughter at my poor struggling self ten years hence with one (ONE!!!) little child. Ho ho ho! I'd boo at her in my best Father Christmas voice, 'this is as easy as it gets! Ho ho ho!' Then I'd cackle madly for quite a long time and vanish. Only I don't have time to time travel and laugh at the old me. Today I did not have time to look in the mirror which is just as well all considered, since I didn't have time to brush my hair either. A second spent glancing in the mirror may have been a second too long. A second better spent picking up one of the 280 beads my dd spread over the sitting room floor perhaps. Wouldn't want to waste that extra second of fun. And don't report me to the RSPCA you strange take-literally lone reader. I am not about to be cruel to my dog. I was just being.... funny. In a necessary sick way. And yes! Four offspring at home full time. Lets see how it goes. Poor big boy Isaac (soon to be 12) has not had a good Autumn term at his new school. From bullying and crazy random mean kids, to his belongings being ripped, to truanting (yes! he left school grounds when he was not supposed to). Then there were teachers who put off speaking to me and make me feel like some crazy over protective person for actually caring what my child experienced day to day. We both sort of had had it. And were tired of hoping that this next day, this week might be better. He has been miserable and flat and just plain not learning anything for weeks and weeks. You get to the point where you wonder why send him in? He's so unhappy he is not learning anything, he never smiles any more, he has no bounce in his step. And this was my super-bouncy-happy-go-lucky-into-everything boy. Where did he go? Who replaced him with the glum, sad, pale, tired shadow? He was up at seven and some days at the end of term in rough weather was not in until nearly 5pm. Homework on top of that too. He said it felt like prison. The bits of the school experience he liked were the actual lessons, or a few at least (one science lesson he put his hand up to explain he could not carry out his work as he is colour blind and was told to put his hand down there was no time for questions or talking - they just needed to get on with the lesson! WTF? You know?). He has really taken a shine to the piano lessons and guitar and cooking. Oh and Spanish. So we will keep these up. I am going to order curriculum in Maths and English and Science for him (and his brother while I am at it) just so that I know where to go to keep him on par with basic subject matter should he ever want to return to school (ha!). Or for my own sanity and likely home ed inspector people now we are official home edders, as opposed to the under the radar ones we have always been until now. Other stuff: Esmé and I were into a riot of craftiness pre-Christmas, cooking and baking and sewing and making stuff (with added glitter) every single day (by requested). Every time Iona would nod off to sleep in the sling we would rush to get our craft on. Results would be shown here if I ever had a minute to upload anything. I wish my dslr had a built in in wifi thing that magically uploaded photos to photobucket. Ohh.... what a nice day dream. In any case I can no longer really take photos, I have my baby in a sling, so I can either clunk her over the head with my big Nikon, or just not use it. The latter, yes. I do though take about a million photos a day on my camera phone (whoops I mean phone camera, although I am not sure I know how to make calls on it I do it so infrequently). The camera phone is magical. One because there is something known as Instagram which is like blogger and facebook combined. In an instant. In photo form. I am addicted. I can take a quick pic in a mini second with my feather light phone and shove it back in my pocket (no baby head cluncking) later (usually breastfeeding sit down pit stop I add a quirky filter and press and hey presto, it's both online/on phone and uploaded to photobucket and anywhere else online I so choose. Obviously not great quality for a blog but hey ho. I can either parent or take photos. I cannot however do both. I also cannot parent/home educate/baby mind AND keep my house 'neat and sweet' as Esmé likes to say (as in, 'lets make my room all neat and sweet'; she orders me to participate against my will to get this to happen. So every other Thursday when the boys are off all day in woodland magical Forest School (two children has never felt like such a holiday) I get my mop out and try to ignore the dog hair the rest of the time. Yes I am still obsessing over the dog hair. And said dog is due to come in to season any day now. Any day. Isn't that just thrilling. I'd have her 'done' but the vet tells me in order to make the operation less expensive she needs to weigh less (!!!). My god. So she is on rations. Although I can think of seventy five other things I 'd rather spend my money on than getting the dog's tubes tied. Like little fancy labelling stickers. Or random ebay stuff (last week I ordered borax, coloured lolly sticks, velcro sticky dots and food colouring). I bet you wish you lived such a high exciting life as this. My purchases alone could feature in some really exciting conversation. In fact if you could actually talk to me you might get sort of bored. I talk to myself quite a lot and bore myself with my incessant mind chatter, and not just in a things-I-wish-I'd-said way either. But oh, I won't tell you about that, I could probably squeeze another post from it. Or get paid and put it in My Column. Yes, I have one. Because I hardly have anything to do these days, I thought adding in another thing would be cool. It's on the last page in The Green Parent magazine. Like this I write it at 1am, squint a bit and just hope for the best. Cute non crying baby pics too will be along shortly. She is a sweet sweet angel baby when not in pain. So squishy and chubby. She stares at me so intently and with so much trust, sometimes I could weep. I want to go oh no, I may not deserve your adoration little one. Because I think these last few weeks with her crying so much, and my not knowing why I have felt pretty miserable, quite inadequate and questioning everything I have been doing with her. Wondering why I was failing her that she was so unhappy. Nothing erodes your confidence quite as quickly as a crying baby. I will have to trust though, as always that if she chooses to look at me this way then it's for a good reason. I will try and be worthy. And I also will try not to kill the dog. If you were wondering. I will try not to do that. As much as her waggy-tailed frickin walk-me persona compels me otherwise. Hopefully updates on our little life in this crazy muddy world might be more frequent. If I can make this midnight slot without falling asleep too. Miss blog land ever so much.