Some days I am motivated to cook and clean, while other days I am motivated to eat random ready-made crap from the fridge, spoon-feed my child ready made stuff in jars and live in filth stepping over piles of stuff. I shall leave you to guess which kind of motivation I am having today.

Matei is crawling!* This makes him more of a menace than usual and I believe my CDs stacked on the floor will soon need to find a new home in loftier spaces, but they are safe for another while so long as Matei remains besotted with shoes and phones and all the dust bunnies he can pick up with his hands.

He's been a very very good boy lately. Spending up to an hour in the mornings lying in his cot and entertaining himself while his father and I half-heartedly ask each other whether we ought to go and interact with him or something before unanimously deciding in favour of more sleep.

*He is pulling himself forward with one arm, like a wounded commando in a manner that is a testament to determination and poor physical coordination.

I am lunching on a slab of chocolate. A slab! Morevor one containing strawberries and cookies and meringue. I'm not sure that can be topped.

For most of my life (thanks to starting and finishing school earlier than my peers) I have been the youngest, feeling one step behind everyone, out of sync as though I was perpetually racing ahead to catch up with the longer legged. I'd define most of my twenties as knowing exactly what I wanted to do but not being old enough to do it (case in point, it is not possible to start to train as a psychotherapist until you're at least 25). My early to mid-twenties were my meanwhile years, my treading water years. An ungainly growing-out, in-between stage.

And even as I aged, even as I finally became old enough to embrace my vocation it didn't feel real enough. Sure, rationally I knew I was older but the gift of those years didn't sink in. I might have been 26 but I still felt 20 - an impostor trying to pass myself as older than I was, trying to gatecrash, to sneak into the good stuff while waiting for my life to be allowed to really start.

When asked how old I was I would always have to pause, think about it much in the same way that I have to pause and calculate how many years Z and I have been together. I lose track of time, its passing feels dreamlike, I keep having to pause and reorient myself in its flow as I would in the streets of an unkown city or a place glimpsed through the windows of a car.

But now that I am 28, I finally feel 28. As though I don this age like a tailored dress.

It's appropriate enough, it's a Saturn return year and I'm finally where I want to be anchored to the earth by love and responsibility. I am a mother and an apprentice, and I love both things. But more than that I finally have a feeling of belonging, of having worked hard to get here and of doing good work and feeling worthy of respect of being recognised for my achievements.

I am glad to be here. I have travelled a long way. I am no longer the waif or the changeling, the alien or the impostor. I suspect I will always be an eccentric and outsider of sorts (this is fine, I think I would find normalcy a dissapointing experience) but at long last I belong to my true self and my life, the person I am meant to be and the life I am meant to lead are greeting each other rapturously like old friends meeting, like lovers shrugging off adversity and all the years they lost and wasted treading in space.

I have had a most wonderful day fortified as it has been by some wonderful people, and excellent cake, and two charming babies, and the sky never actually shedding rain even after Z nearly doomed us all by calling the clouds' bluff.

Now that my mother is here I am finding I can get an amazing amount of stuff done and the house is looking properly gleamy and shiny for once, which makes a refreshing and surreal change.

Also, proof that I am essentially an optimist at heart- typing 'benign baby seizures' into Dr Google.

I am wearing BOOTS in JULY. I believe this constitutes a new personal low.

There are many aspects of Britishness and Englishness and Life On The Isle which I love and embrace with all my heart. But the British sea is not one of them.*

Both Z and I spent a hefty part of our formative years on the Adriatic and Meditteranean coastline, which is why both of us view the British beach experience much as we view the British climate - at best as an ironic amusement and at worst a dire affliction.

For starters, in most places the beach is actively awful. It's often blustery, the sea looks about as brown and inviting as the Thames and even in places where the colour of the water is magnificent (e.g. Cornwall) the temperature is off-putting. I have never voluntarily dipped toe into the English waters without the support of a thermal wetsuit and even in July I have found it too bracing for comfort.

We went to Clacton On Sea last weekend so Z could experience a flying lesson that I'd got him as a birthday gift (as a tangent, I'm the worst spectating wife ever; while entrusted with the task of filming The Event I managed to get some shots of the plane, and the back of Z's head while he and the pilot are walking towards it and then completely missed both the takeoff and landing because I was attempting to prevent the child from putting a stray grape into his mouth for the former and reading a magazine during the latter) and while we were there we thought we might as well check out the beach.



It was overcast and blustery and a mixture of amusing and baffling to Z and I. For starters we were dressed in more warm layers than any other people there (jeans, and jackets while hordes of children gamboled on the sand in non-thermal swimming costumes). We also seemed the least enthusiastic. I saw people cheerfully pushing strollers against the wind, I saw a middle-aged couple having a full-on swanky lunch with champagne on a table and deck chairs sheltered behind a wind-screen, I saw people sitting in front of those strange tiny bungalows, holding on to their wildly flapping newspapers and exuding the air of people who seemed to be very-much enjoying themselves without the use of any sarcasm.

But we are different people. People who don't understand why anyone is brave enough to venture into the English water for fun, let alone send their children in. People who don't get the appeal of owning one of those tiny box bungalows on the beach which allow you to cook a meal, and pull a couple of chairs out and attempt to read newspapers while sand flies in your face and the wind attempts to wrest them from your hands. We also fundamentally don't understand the appeal of fish and chips, especially when combined with vineagar - but that's because the fish I've grown up with was grilled and served with olive oil on a bed of similarly gently grilled vegetables, so stuff that's been battered about with flour and then deep-fried both tastes bland to me and makes my arteries stiffen in preparation for the clogging they are about to receive.

And yet, there are people who genuinely seem to enjoy all this. People who would given the choice prefer to holiday in Britain instead of France, or Sicily, or Dalmatia.

Are you one of the people who enjoys the British coastline or its beaches? Finds fish and chips deligtful to their tastebuds? If so, please tell me what entices you so. Help me understand what I'm missing.

*Peculiarly British pursuits that I find irrationally charming: snooker and bird-watching

** Other things I hate: camping, hiking and the dreary non-summer we are having for the second year in a row.

( A few more pictures of Clacton - I think they'd be better in black and white )

Humeur actuelle: happy

It was searingly hot in Belgrade, and Matei was using his new found hand skillz to rip out chunks of my tumbling locks every morning so I felt FIERCE and I paid a man to chop off my hair. It looks like my Bad Haircut Curse may well be broken because I still love my haircut, probably because it shapes itself into crazy things every morning and gives gravity the finger.

( Like this:  )

As a bonus it requires no brushing whatsoever, which is both mighty and fine since the way of laziness is and has always been my way.

I was in Belgrade for ages which was lovely (always at least one person around to hold my child when I want to use the loo! Drinkable yoghurt! Cheap cabs!) but I've been doing Childcare On My Own in London for nearly a month and it's going much better than I expected mainly due to the fact that my child suddenly decided to transform himself into a downright agreeable human being. My improved child comes with these new handy features:

1) A regular nap schedule of naps longer than 30 minutes. There are fewer things than can drive me to distratction quite like an overly alert, clingy baby so I'm deeply happy with this model I have right now who seeks the blissful healing arms of sleep every 1.5 to 2 hours or so, which is why I have been a lot more productive lately. Also a nicer person. My kitchen surfaces have even been known to gleam and the adults in the family have a healthy supply of laundered undies at their disposal. One of these days I'll even be on top of my game so much I'll start returning phonecalls and emails or something.

2) Ability to entertain self with minimal input from mother. He gets to roll around on the bed grabbing his toes and contorting himself into various yogic ballerina poses while I sip some tea and read a book and salute his efforts.

3)Appearing to be in less of an existential crisis. Beforehand it's like all of Matei's thinking was in CAPS and he'd wake up screaming because of ABANDONMENT and being so MISUNDERSTOOD and if food wasn't immediately available the moment he fancied a snack then it was STARVATION and he spent a lot of time in DESPAIR casting himself about and wailing about DEATH and DOOM. Sadly he had not yet learned how to slam doors, otherwise he would have been like this wee teenager. But now, now for some reason he's more patient. Normally he wakes up and gurgles to himself for some five/ten/fifteen minutes and he's willing to wait for food to be prepared and served.

4)A laugh, that sounds like a series of grunts. It is quite adorable, even though it continues to elude capture on video.

5)Notices everything. Remembers a lot. Loves to cuddle an empty tub of Pringles. Clearly this means that now I need to consume more Pringles. FOr the child obviously. Because he needs objects of comfort and affection. I have much the same relationship with Pringles myself.

My baby also comes with some annoying features:

1.Ability to flip himself suddenly, with great force, and in unexpected ways. This has brought forth the first Fall Of A High(ish) Surface when he dived off the bed. THis is likely to be merely the first in a series of Regrettable Exploits That Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time if Z's DNA has anything to say about it.

2. Houdiniesque ability to escape from restraints. Soon only an octopus will be be able to change his clothes or get him strapped into the buggy.

3. Inability to switch himself off and sleep, no matter how tired, because the world is too interesting and he has to KEEP LOOKING. While I empathise with the sentiment I also find myself covering his eyes a lot while whispering our family motto of "A nap makes everything better."

And happily he is still a cutie:



All in all though, Matei and I have found our groove and things are so much better. Downright easy some days in fact. Nowadays, it's less like we're constantly fighting each other and more like a dance. A quite jolly, rewarding dance. Sure, Arlene Phillips would probably make some arch comments about the footwork and timing and whatnot, but Len Goodman would give me two thumbs up and I think we'd get quite a good overall score from the judges.

I leave you with a display of fancy bendy tricks from the baby, and hope that you, wherever you are, whatever you are doing are also are having an excellent day. x

My son and I, it seems, have much in common.
When I'm hungry, I turn into my own version of the werewolf. I grow fangs and claws. I become nervous and restless, and cranky and angry. I spurn entertainments offered me which are not food, because I need FOOOOOOD bastards. I have even been known to display aggressive behaviour towards the one obstructing my asap access to food - my husband usually- and have been known to throw some mighty wobblers on this subject.

And then when food is administered - voila! A miraculous transformation occurs. Suddenly my wolf like self recedes. I turn into a peaceful human again, innocent and good humoured and chirpy. Or in the mood for love, if I have been fed right.

My poor poor boy. While being sustained on a wholesome diet of my pure breastmilk and baby rice and organic fruit and vegetable purees he has been suffering. He was often cranky and wild-eyed and full of restless energy (especially in the evenings) and it was not uncommon for him to wake up at least once during the night and had to be rocked and coaxed back to sleep.

I knew he was losing weight, but it was frightening to see how much. In the last two months, he has lost nearly a pound in weight. (To put that in perspective, he has plummetted from the 80th centile on the growth charts to the 7th - meaning that 93% of babies his age are heavier than him). He is not only officially failing to thrive, he has practically become an endangered spieces.

So Z and I have initiated Project Gingerbread House, and I think no fairytale witch has ever been as committed to fattening up a child as he and I. And nothing has transformed all our lives for the better, or brought us closer to this goal than the bottle of formula we've taken to supplementing his diet with in the evenings.

I want to weep with joy and gratitude and bow down to the makers of formula, because my child? No longer nervous and angry and resentful! Instead of a howling wolf-like waif who cannot be put down in the evenings and needs intense parental involvement for hours is now a content, purry kitten of a baby.

When he sees the bottle coming he practically starts to shake with excitement and needs to be firmly held to be prevented from attempting to do a flying leap towards it, gravity and skull fractures be damned. And when he is finished downing his seven ounces he sits there looking so full that he can barely breathe. Also happy. He is so happy. Now his father and I marvel at all the things we can do in the same room with Matei. Like surf the internet. Or have dinner. Or watch a movie. Because my son doesn't care whether you are holding him in your lap or have set him down gleefully in his baby chair. Because he is too busy digesting, and cooing, and being content.

He also now sleeps like a log which is a positve development, since from my perspective 6 hours of sleep in a row feel like being fed ripe cherries by a host of angels while I laze in a bathtub of warm water and bubbles and we all sing Glory Halleluiah.

Tags: baby

Yesterday was a horrible day. Matei screamed for about 5 hours solid (I think it's teeth again) and refused to sleep unless I was holding him and WOULD NOT BE PUT DOWN. I currently have a sprained muscle in my shoulder from catering to that demand, so you can imagine how much I'm looking forward to carrying him around today.

It was awful. I haven't had a day that bad in months. I held my shit together, more or less, until 6 o'clock when Z was due home and when I learned that Z was stuck in a traffic jam my shit fell apart in a rather spectacular way. With jazz hands! And fireworks! (The highlight may have been putting my child down and leaving him to scream while I walked away to engage in such soothing activites as deep breathing and banging my head against the wall.) I ended up walking vacant eyed in aimless circles holding my baby and sobbing in big gushy sobs which strangely enough made Matei quiet and contemplative. I think I may try it again. It was quite soothing.

And then a bad night followed a bad day and the sight of a grinning cooing baby at 3am made my head full of #####&^&*(###'s and thank god there are two parents in this household is all I will say because I was ready to give him up for adoption.

Nothing hits to the core of me quite like the sleep thing, because you know, I thought we'd got over that. He has pretty much been sleeping solidly through the night, and while the fact that babies his age are meant to sleep from 7pm until 7am is a concept he scoffs at, sleep from 9pm until 5:30is am is actually pretty ok by me. And I get slightly hysterical when he doesn't sleep because I am transported into the Bad Old Days commonly known as months 0-3 whose broken nights still make me break out in PTSD symptoms.

And then there's today, when the child is engaged in his number 2 nap with minimal assistance from me. Babies! They are weird! And unpredictable! I think it's a design flaw.

( Things Which Irritate Me About Breastfeeding and Its Promotional Materials )

I was told repeatedly in the lead up to my wedding that marriage is the best way to study in detail everything which annoys you about your spouse.

This was correct. Being married gave me a unique opportunity to be irritated by Z's hypochondria, the incorrect way in which he serves tea, the rictus of pain which crosses his features when he is forced to admit he was wrong about something, and the romantic limitations he suffers from which frequently lead to outbreaks of Foot In Mouth Disease. For his part I have amply incensed my husband with my charming habit of leaving a trail of dirty cups and plates scattered throughout the house like my own version of Hansel and Gretel, my sensitivity and shifting moods and propensity for overanalysing his statements as well as for not treating his health issues with the gravity and respect he feels they deserve. (On the other hand, how can you respond seriously to the health beliefs of a man who says 'It's miraculous how well I am functioning today considering I've had to medicate myself' when he has ingested two Lemsips).

But being married also made me appreciate all the many ways in which he is amazing, so without further ado here are 31 Wonderful Things About My Husband:

*He is funny. Hilarious actually. So funny that I forgive him his inability to express emotions of love or romance unless he can couch them in comic terms.

*He is generous and gives amazing, thoughtful gifts.

* He is honest and down to earth.

*He exudes a certain pleasant RARRRR MANLEE! energy while at the same time thinking nothing of representing his cyberself with a kitten icon.

*He is incredibly capable and handy. It's like living with Mr. Fixit. He has installed pretty much 90% of furniture and light fixtures in our house.

*"That's professional" is his highest expression of praise.

*He has wonderful hands - wide, capable, strong, with trimmed nails and one of the most beautiful voices on planet earth.

*He is a friendly and social creature, game to try and settle into any situation.

* Although he sucks at expressing his emotions verbally, he will work hard to pour all his love into his actions. This is the man who will happily invest hours and hours and weekends of his time doing any house project I think is pretty and will cook up and serve elaborate beautiful meals without any grumblage whatsoever.

*He managed to ride motorcycles daily for over a decade without having an accident, but broke both of his arms while riding a bike.

*He was an amazing source of support throughout my whole pregnancy and labour. I did not have to lift anything heavier than a spoon for eight months while he took one for the team and dragged 80lbs of our luggage up about 2000 steep stone steps in Dubrovnik in blistering sun and 40Celsius heat.

*He is loyal and rocklike in his commitment. Z will work hard as an ox, and pour all of himself in response to the words 'I need you'.

*He sold his motorbike so I could have an independent midwife to look after me in pregnancy, labour and crazed early motherhood.

*He turned down dozens of social invitations in order to help me cope with the baby.

* When I'm with him I feel amazingly safe. It's like walking around with a bodyguard.

*He has wonderful eyes whose colour shifts constantly from blue to grey to green.

*He is deeply courteous and respectful. Within a man who can compare his wife to a table rests a deeply sensitive core.

*He is fairly easygoing and optimistic and genial which is a lovely contrast to my more temperamental nature.

*He thinks nothing of causing a public scene and standing up to defend me if he thinks someone is giving me a hard time regardless of the fact that I can cope rather well on my own. The time when I got happy slapped at the busstop he was aglow with rage and the urge to hunt the evildoers down. He makes a thousand small protective gestures like reaching out to steady me if we are going down a path he considers in any way steep/slippery/dodgy, he walks in first into an unkown sea to scout it for perils and hangs onto my waist when I get tired in a strong current, he always places me on the more sheltered side of any situation/place/road.

*When we were courting he brought me the first rose which bloomed in his garden. He wrapped it in a paper funnel to protect it against wind damage since he was bringing it through the medium of motorcycle although it didn't work that well and he ended up giving me a stem with about two petals on it, but I appreciated the gesture all the same.


*One time when he was in Paris for training he paid for a Eurostar ticket for me so that I could come and visit him for the weekend.

*He has a beautiful broad back and olive toned skin which smells of sunlight.

*He can lift our baby with one hand.

*He is both honest and a terrible liar.

*He abhors users and parasites.

*He has a strong need to be independent and self-reliant. He put himself through University in England while working as a courier and pizza delivery man by nights in order to earn a living.

*He is game for pretty much anything, especially if it involves travel.

*He adores his son.

*He agreed that if we have a second son in the future, that child will have my last name.

*He is the person in whom I place my deepest faith.

Happy two years of marriage baby! I still love you and in the beautiful spirit of enduring romance I officially totally forgive you for that one time when you compared me to a mole.
xxxx

The day started out rather well. We woke up from a night of restful sleep among friends and the baby was being sweet and my allergies were not too fearsome so I was all prepared for a day of Sun and Nature so we packed up the car with lunch and the baby and the dog and my immediate family and set off for the countryside where an excellent time was had by all for many hours.

Behold the proof:



The dog found dog friends and ran around as part of a dog pack, and the child got passed from lap to lap like a baby equivalent of the Olympic Torch and at 4pm we set off for home with jaunty waves and armfuls of roses.

At the outskirts of Belgrade a spring rain began falling, and rapidly turned into large rain. Nobody was duly alarmed although I made allowances for the weather by rolling up the windows. As we were pulling into our street the Large Drops turned into Menacing Gangster Rain and as we were working out where to park and how to unload the child and stuff from the car in the most speedy was possible Menacing Rain suddenly became Tiny Hail. And just as we found an (illegal) spot to park our car in front of the home all the more easily to unload it Tiny Hail graduated to Satan's Popcorn and then from there leapt to become Huge Snarling Minority-Hating ASBO Hail of DOOOM.

Like this:

Hailstones the size of quails eggs and those gigantic olives you get at the deli. Hailstones that were not only large but numerous and they fell so fast and heavily and hard so that the windshield became blurred and the street beyond us turned into a river of white.

And as the sky continued to pelt us (ever harder) with its baby fists of ice we were effectively trapped because there was no way to drive the car somewhere safe (like the garage) and no possibility of grabbing the child and leaping the four feet to the safety of the doorway without sustaining some serious injury to my person.

And as the heavens unleashed their unseasonal and unexpected rage upon our heads I watched the dog teeter on the edge of Fully Losing Her Shit (she is terribly afraid of storms and being bombed by hail was close to her idea of Room 101) while various scenes from The Day After Tomorrow unreeled themselves before mine eyes.

I was still mostly fine, and was prepared to continue musing idly on the unpredictablity of nature and the subject of global warming when I observed that the hailstones (now the size of kiwis) were falling so fast and so furiously that they were bouncing off the ground the other cars and the hood of our car in order to hit the windows in viscious ricochets, and it occured to me to wonder "Goodness I wonder how much of this abuse the windows can withstand before they you know, SHATTER".

(Z, later on the phone:"Pah those windows need to get him by soemthing the size of bricks in order to break, and besides even if they had broken they would have splintered first instead of exploding " which is nice to know and I'll remember for next time, but in that moment I didn't have access to his Reassuring Engineer Knowledge only my Imagination and Fear which is a potent partnership at the best of times)

And as my Inner Tension suddenly leapt from Quite Low to Holding Shit Together For the Sake Of Appearances And The Mental Health of Dog And Child, the baby woke up, realised we were being bombed by the sky, whiffed The Fear being emanated and promptly began to wail. Except I couldn't pick him up to soothe him because I was thinking his sheltered car seat was the safest place for him to be in case of Window Breakage and as I prepared to valiantly throw my body across him to shield him I was still not completely at ease with the idea of fragments of a hypothetically broken window flying forwards to embed themselves in my back. (For starters my sweet white jacket would have been RUINED).

And as I was playing with various scenarios (eg. was it safer to just open the damn windows) the hail slowed and then stopped and the street looked like this:
>img src0"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2277/2502175237_7f1bf8fc27.jpg?v=0">
and my balcony looked like this:

but nobody was hurt except the plants.

How was your day?

Because I am a fan of instant gratification, here is a little entree if you will, a photographic amuse bouche for those of you who read this seeking not my incisive wit but chubby Aryan baby goodness:



Matei is changing. Beforehand he was in many ways like my mother's dog : an affable but greedy attention whore, who didn't mind who was holding him as long as they were doing his will and he regularly beamed at all and sundry. (I think my mother's dog incidentally would be delighted to see anyone, including robbers, that she'd be all - You're here to gut the place? Go right ahead! Here, start with this shoe I bring you as a token of my esteem.)

But now Matei is more like a seasoned dater, no longer the slatternly baby that is free and easy with his smiles. Now he is beginning to view strangers with a tad of suspicion and he's a coy tease making them work for it.

He is also developing a strong distaste about having a voice raised at him or his hand smacked lightly (either or both of which I am likely to do when he grabs my bosom in a violent baby grip of death) which he exhibits by throwing his head back and wailing in a particular way that indicates he is feeling quite sad. So I am going out of my way to be gentler. More cuddling. More soft speech. More snuggling.

Which is fine. Because I am not averse to snuggling at all, in fact I am fiercely pro-snuggling, especially when the snugglee is less intent on throwing back his warm fuzzy baby skull to knock me in the teeth. He abuses me it's true, but I do love him so.

Still, shocking a bit, to realise how fast he is becoming both emotionally aware and emotionally injured. That he has a tender heart which bruises as easily as the skin of say a sensitive bosom that is working hard to provide him with nourishment, the ingrate.

It's been an intense sort of learning process this, keeping a baby alive and intact, but slowly, slowly, I feel like I'm getting more competent at it. More parent, less inept-but-well-meaning-babysitter. It's nice, that feeling, of knowing what I am doing, at least some of the time.

And on the subject of things which continue to remain a mystery to me, I am going to try and post a (grainy, badly-lit) video of my child bathing just to see as an experiment if I am a little LJer who can both upload and embed.

I tell you, it's wild to be me.