Sunday, January 30, 2005

Party Girl (on the Tixylix)

I would wager that our leaving party on Saturday was the most drug fuelled party ever held in the Crescent. Before Social Services are called, they were all legal - and totally neccesary. We were all suffering with VILE cold and flu symtoms that threatened to lay us low and stop all the fun.

Maia was dosed to the nines with Tixylix and Calpol, for anti-cough, anti-cold and anti-grump. All at carefully spaced medication times (for carefully spaced, read 'How about now, can she have some now? How about NOW?)

She managed to pass from one family member to another with grace and ease and happily circulated amongst the guests till she conked out around 10.30. Pretty good for a baby with a bunged up nose.

ALEC!!!

I CAN keep a secret...I knew that Alec was popping over to see us, help us move, see Sarah and generally be about for a couple weeks. I was so proud of myself for not telling anyone. However, the surprise was somewhat lessened by Alec sending a text message that read

'Just landed - you better not have told Sarah that I am coming' as soon as he touched down at Heathrow. But he didn't send it to me....oh no...you guessed it, he sent it right to Sarah.

Anyway, Sarah had a day to get ready and tell the entire Law Department at Leeds Uni what a fabulous boyfriend she had.

The surprise wasn't totally destroyed. Mum got the shock of her life as she opened the door to him - she didn't even recognise him for half a beat by all accounts, just stared at him. Then again, we were all doped up to the tens with anti-cold stuff, so she can be forgiven.

The day that Maia saw him (a couple days after he got into the country, after he zoomed up to Leeds and came back down again...) she refused to let him out of her sight, and spent most of her time being limpet-like, forcing him to wear her like a rather large and wriggly necklace.

I hope 9 months lugging tanks has given him good upper body strength... He is coming to live in Sheffield in March, and I don't think Maia is going to let him put her down for a moment.

Papi as a Boy

When on a trip to Grannie and Granpa's down in Kent, Granpa told us a story of my Dad, Barry, as a young boy.

He was about 3, playing with his cousin Peter from South Africa, who was also three. While the grown-ups were in the kitchen, the boys were playing in the living room, and somehow Peter banged his head. He started wailing, which brought the grown-ups into the room toot sweet.

There they found 3 year old Barry with his arm around Peter, saying 'Don't cry, Peter...Soldiers don't cry when they bang their head - they say Damn and Blast!'

Barry was most put out that this brought remonstrations upon him, and defended himself with the line 'But that is what Pa says when he bangs his head!'

So we are covered for when Maia swears in front of her Papi, then...

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Work/Family Life Balance... A Tug-of-War?

Maia has jetlag of quite spectacular tenacity and persistance. She cannot/will not go to sleep much before 10.30/11pm. To make matters worse, the central heating is bust so she is sleeping in my bed. Last night she woke up a couple times, and come 8.30 this morning I was somewhat reluctant to get out of bed.

Noonah to the rescue! Maia was coaxed out of bed with the promise of stars in her porridge (don't ask) and, once there, she happily tucked in. Then the phone rang. As it was by now 9 am, Noonah answered the phone as if it were a work call, which it was.

A particularly effusive German man that she works with called Wolfgang was on the phone hoping to discuss a thorny problem he had discovered with his database. Wolfgang tends to spend a great deal of time on the phone, and 10 minutes into the conversation, Maia was bored.

So she decided it was time for a pee. Still on the phone, Noonah instructed Maia to fetch the potty and do it All By Herself, like a Big Girl. This tactic worked very well, with Maia duly fetching the potty, taking her trousers down, having a pee, cleaning, pulling her trousers up. Mission accomplished, and Wolfgang was none the wiser.

However, then it was time to dispose of the pee. Maia knew that pee was to be flushed down the toilet, and was somewhat put out that Noonah was trying to prevent her from carrying a rather full potty across the room to the toilet. She pulled the potty. Noonah pulled the potty. Wolfgang chatted on. Fearing a rather damp conclusion to this drama, Noonah hit the mute button and explained that carrying pee was a Grown-Up job. Maia was not convinced.

Stand off.

After a good while and promises made to Wolfgang if he would just get off the phone, the call finally cane to an end. The potty was carried, by both Noonah and Maia, to the loo and the contents flushed.

Working from home has a certain rosy image in the corporate world of offices and boardrooms, but the reality can be far from glamorous.

Jet Lag Dragzzzzzzz

Oh God Please Go To Sleep Oh God Please Go To Sleep Oh God Please Go To Sleep Oh God Please Go To Sleep Oh God Please Go To Sleep Oh God Please Go To Sleep Oh God Please Go To Sleep

We have discovered that Maia has a very strong internal body clock. She was ok going west (towards the US) but coming back has messed up her sleep patterns like crazy. So, the process that normally takes me two days (one day in a daze lost to napping and junk food, the next day late to bed, and the third back to normal) has taken FOREVER.

She now has the Mother of All Colds, which last night, gave me an excuse to medicate her.

Mmmm...Tixylix. She was asleep by 9.30, 2 hours earlier than was fast becoming normal.

There is a God, and she moves in mysterious ways.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Just Imagine the Insurance Claim - Holiday 2005

We managed to judge the amount of food we would need for our week-long stay pretty well. On packing up, we only had a few bits and pieces that we packed into a box to be donated as supplies for Alec.

Alcohol was another matter.

1 hour before leaving, bags full, nowhere to put it, we realised we were going to have to drink it.

We managed to nail a 1 ltr bottle of anejo, 10 beers and a couple of frozen drinks mixes.

So by the time we got on the ferry, we were pretty merry. We managed to get ourselves to the airport ok, to be told by BahamasAir that they could get us on the 2.30 flight (even though it was 2.15 now, and she was sat under a huge sign that said GATES CLOSE 45 MINUTES BEFORE DEPARTURE and a smaller, more disturbing one that said All Guns Must Be Checked.)

As we were about to go through to the gate, Mum realised that we had left the passports on the desk. I was mentally writing up the insurance claim as we boarded...

"Well, you see, it was like this. There was all this rum..."

Faster Captain Mummy! - Holiday 2005

Hope Town in the sunshine is truely GLORIOUS. The turquoise sea shimmers, the candy striped lighthouse draws your eye towards it, sweeping past the boats moored in the harbour. It really is picture postcard.

Our house was cool - two bedrooms, great open kitchen and living area with a porch outside. (www.seagullcottages.com - we were in Gully's Nest) There was a pool outside, although at this time of year it was best used to chill the beers. Best of all, we had a little 13' Boston Whaler to potter up the creek and into the harbour with.

Maia loved this little boat. We were totally paranoid about her going over the edge for the first few rides and clamped her to us fiercely. Once we had relaxed a bit (thank you Bacardi, thank you Kalik) we let her sit on her own next to us and even let her drive. (What she didn't know was that the wheel she was happily twisting and turning was not connected to the outboard.) She sat in the boat, wind rushing through her hair shouting 'Faster Captain Mummy! Faster!'

Hope Town was a dream. We ate (almost) once a day at Cap'n Jacks, where I ate the best cracked conch I have ever had. We found out that Vernon's Grocery has better stock than Harbour View. The Lighthouse Liquor Store has very reasonable prices, even for Nassau, let alone an Out Island.

I had a 'This is where I want to be' moment on the top of the lighthouse looking out over blue sky and turquoise seas and pretty little candy coloured houses. We zipped between the yachts in the harbour and found out that people sail down from Canada to be there. I am not at all surprised.

We went to see a house for sale, and got there by boat. The woman who rented us the house drove us in the boat to another island, called Lubber's Quarters, and Maia yelled and shouted and whooped and shrieked the whole way there.

A boat baby. How perfect is that?

Bridge

A supremely complicated game with silly rules, for people who have too much time and too little to do.

Although, check back with me if I ever win a rubber...

BahamasAir - A Uniquely Bahamian Experience.

BahamasAir was late. Not a huge surprise, but you always hope that they will be able to take off on time, especially when we were booked on only their second flight of the day. Nassau - Marsh Harbour. So, delayed, we pottered about the one room terminal, got some grits and sausage to eat (they were out of corned beef - no fire engine!) and ran after Maia. Up and down, up and down, up and down.

We finally got called to the gate and made our way outside, only to be stood under the little covered walkway next to the plane for a while. Long enough for Maia to try and get naked anyway, which on this trip, means long enough to say 'Maia, no, not here!'. The line to the plane was moving pretty slow, while people put their bags away, swopped seats and generally buggered about. All this would have been fine, were it not for the darkening of the sky and the unheralded opening of the heavens. A fellow passenger, white Bahamian and pretty vocal, started to yell at people "God Damn People! We got a baby gettin soak here, hurry ya ass!!"

Finally we got on the plane, only to find people in our seats. Fetching your own seats for BahamasAir is not unusual, but our steward told us that we were supposed to sit in the numbered seats. Ok, then, everybody move. We got everyone out, start to settle down, when a rather large Bahamian lady plonked herself down next to Mum, in Pat's seat, and refused to budge. Wet, bedraggled and not in the mood for recalcitrant travelers, Mum demanded the woman's ticket and finally succeeded in moving her on. Throughout this, Maia was still trying to get naked.

We were just about to take off, when a tourist realized that they were on the wrong flight.

Ah, BahamasAir. It is the little things that make the difference...

On Becoming a Sand Monster - Holiday 2005

My Dad (Maia's Papi) is a very accomplished man. He is well read, funny, a whizz at cards, works hard and is very good at what he does. He is also totally immune to the 'eeeewww' factor when it comes to sand. As a kid, I remember watching in awe as he would flop, face first, into a huge pile of sand on Rose Island and happily sleep in its grainy embrace. He would emerge, an hour or two later, rising from the sand like a Japanese B Movie monster to go and wash it off, usually treading on my carefully laid out, religiously sand-free towel.

Anyway, Maia's inital reaction to sand was very much closer to my end of the scale than his. She, when placed feet first on the sand, retracted her undercarriage and demanded that her feet be cleaned.

Papi decided that this was Not On. Time to Impart some Wisdom. Time to reveal the Secret of Being a Sand Monster.

I don't know what was said. I don't know how he did it. But he took a kid who spent 5 minutes cleaning between her toes after each step and sat with her in the ocean wash, getting enough sand in her keks to build a moderate sized castle. And in the process, set up this lovely, lovely photo.



Sand Monsters - Picture Two


Maia Meets Lorla - Holiday 2005

I think her heart was won the moment Maia mispronounced her name. 'It has been a long time since anyone has called me Lorla.' she said, smiling at Maia, and that, I think, was that.

Maia and Laura got on famously. Even more so after Laura :
  • took her to the park and pushed her on the swings for half an hour without trying to move her onto another, less labour intensive, activity.
  • gave her a mountain of Christmas gifts including bubbles and plasticine, books and bath toys
  • made her some homemade pesto
  • introduced her to Prince Mulder and his kitchen kittens (who make stew, so I am told)
  • cooked her pancakes
  • played with her every morning we stayed at Papi's house when Mummy and Daddy were far to tired to play
Maia has been born into two families with pretty complex family trees. Alec and I have two mightaswellbesiblings Gen and Jonothan, Pat and his brother Dominic have a much younger brother and sister from his father's second family.

All the family politics and feuds and fusses pass right over Maia, as they should. They mean nothing to her, and maybe, if we look through her eyes, they will mean less to us too.


Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Alpha Delta Baby - December 28th

Maia is a pretty seasoned traveller by now. She has been to the Bahamas, South Africa, back and forth to Barcelona a couple times, Devon...erm, Sheffield... you get the picture. Anyway, the trip over to Nassau was pretty good. We had a moderately uneventful 8 hour flight from Gatwick to Atlanta, a 2 hour stop over in Atlanta, then a 2 hour flight to Nassau.

Hurtling towards Atlanta, Maia made friends with the little boy in the seats in front of us (although only after failing to interest the doe-eyed Asian man behind us in playing with her playdoh) and we set up a play area by the emergency exits so they could sit and get jealous over their toys while his mother and I made small talk.

There was nothing suitable on TV (damn you, Delta, Shrek MUST be available for those little screens) but she watched a bit of Chinese kung-fu movie The House of Flying Daggers. All very pretty until they started cutting people's heads off, at which point I beagn to read stories with great verve and vigour. Even the Asian man behind us was impressed.

Arriving at Nassau airport was interesting. We had been saying the entire flight that we were Going To See Alec. 'If you don't put your seatbelt on, we won't be able to go, and then we won't see Alec!' 'If you go to sleep now, when you wake up, we will see Alec!'. So as soon as we arrived, Maia's tired eyes lit up and she attached herself to Alec with the glee of a limpet finding a piece of fresh rock in a nutrient stream.

Totally unaware that a Mitchell/Packington/Siddons family drama of pretty epic proportions was taking place around her, she lay her head on his shoulder and hugged like there was no tomorrow.

Unfortunately for Maia, Alec wasn't taking us home (Dad and Laura were). We then had the delicate job of removing a besotted toddler from her besotee and trying to interest her in sitting down AGAIN. The wail she let out was just heartbreaking, but we managed it.

A long day for a two year old, but she did pretty well.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Christmas...December 25th

Christmas started for us all when the next door neighbours Tony and Linda with their kids Gemma and Russell came round to exchange presents with Maia. Gemma brought the newest addition to her seriously impressive range of baby buggies. This one was in a radioactively shiny pink material with hearts all over it and contained a baby that moved its eyes and cried and took milk from a bottle. Maia was smitten. I was spooked. The grown-ups opened some champers and chatted as Maia pushed the buggy about and looked avariciously at the rest of the presents.

According to Pat, Christmas Day is about eating, laying about, drinking, laying about, presents, watching crap telly and having another drink. So he wasn't overwhelmed with enthusiasm at our plan to take Maia walking in Cassiobury Park. At least he was, until it was made clear that he would have to come too.

It was pretty cold, so we bundled Miss Maia up in coat, gloves, hat (her not-very PC-Russian-furry-one, no less) and all tramped and huffed our way through a lovely walk in the woods. We saw a very cool canal boat pass through a lock, got adopted by a yappy dog and got very muddy trousers.

Back home (oooh warmth!) we decided it was 5pm somewhere in the world, and therefore not too early for a sherry. Christmas drinking is great - you get to drink all these things that you would never normally (sherry, Baileys, port, Tia Lusso etc etc) and ridiculously early too...

Before dinner we made an assault on the present mountain. Maia took equal interest in the wrapping paper as the contents, which was up from last year's total focus on the crinkly shiny stuff that made presents interesting. Good haul for her this year - books, crayons, paints, puzzles, musical instruments, DVDs, more books, clothes, teddies, loads of stuff.

Anyway, dinner was produced (details are a bit hazy, I have to admit...) and was very tasty. Maia blew out the candles and we sang Happy Birthday. Maia was an angel, and went to sleep pretty well. Again, though, the details are hazy...Pat put her to sleep while TV put me to sleep.

Happy Birthday Jesus.






Children's Christmas Service...December 24th

Abbots Langley Children's Christmas Service has a real live donkey. I don't think they let it in the church, so it sits outside munching apples and bemusedly accepting congratulations for carrying Baby Jesus to Bethlehem from pious 4 year olds.

We, though agnostic/atheist, decided that the Mass would be good theatre and would let us introduce Maia to the joy (?) of carol singing. She seemed to enjoy the experience, although did pipe up and volunteer the information that the Baby Jesus was really Molly's sister Bethany. At the end, there was a candle-lit procession past the Nativity scene and out into the church yard to congratulate the donkey and shake hands with the vicar.

We ended up directly behind one of the Three Kings, and I couldn't help but feel slightly guilty. I never ever go to church, and I wonder if being behind a Three King in such a high calender event is a bit of a coveted position. Don't know why - it is actually quite nerveracking, what with all the billowing robes and candles and kids. Feels a bit like the 'before' film in a 999 programme. Maia soon distracted me from such thoughts by singing Happy Birthday and blowing out my candle.

I am sure she came away with some fairly warped ideas about the Christmas Story, but it was fun none-the-less.


Monday, January 17, 2005

Oh God, Not the Pink Marshmallows - December 23rd

A Lost Boy? What the hell does a Lost Boy wear?? In the midst of packing for Nassau and Christmas and house moving came the Funny Farm Christmas Party. The theme was Peter Pan, and Maia was instructed to come as a Lost Boy.

After the initial narrowing of the eyes (She is not good enough to be Tinkerbell?? Just look at that pretty little face! Look at those curls! That doesn't scream Tinkerbell to you??) followed by conscious effort on my part to save it for the casting director for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (see Funny Face from the Funny Farm), I constructed a costume using only a pair of pajamas, a dinosaur print teeshirt and a tie tyed sarong. So that is what a Lost Boy looks like...

Maia had a whale of a time and it was great to see her interact with all of her friends. Lewis and she spent a good deal of time chasing each other round and round the hall, squealing with delight. Lewis was dressed up as a pirate, which attracted alot of attention from the kids, as it seemed to be the one costume that allowed you to draw on your face. (Now, whenever Maia holds a pen up to her cheek and is told not to draw on her face, she says in a don't-be-silly voice "But I am being a pirate".)

Activities included musical lilypads, with everyone jumping like frogs from one green spot on the floor to the other until the music stopped, singing songs practiced during the year ("soggy semolina, soggy semolina, Ding Dang Dong, Ding Dang Dong") and dancing to very loud, very raucous music.

After a great deal of running around, and a moral dilemma for Pat ("But it feels wrong to drink beer at a kids party") the kids sat down to eat. Now, normally every morning at the Funny Farm, Maureen cooks up a batch of stew packed with chicken and veggies and good stuff. But this was Christmas, and that meant E Numbers with a sprinkling of colouring and a dash of sugar. Before we had even sussed out where she was sitting, Maia had whipped open the cracker containing the sweeties and was cramming them into her mouth with the look of a girl who knew she would lose them if she didn't eat them RIGHT NOW. By the time we reached her she had one slightly damp pink marshmallow left and I didn't have the heart (or the strength) to remove it from her vice-like grip.

We won something or other in the raffle, and emerged, dazed, carrying a tired and somewhat sugared-out Maia. Given that this is a girl that can make one jellybean last a good 20 minutes, I reckon her system is still recovering.

Three in a Bath - 21st December 2004

Tanya, Tom and Charlotte came for dinner and a movie (Oh Shrek! Where would we be without you?) and some running about outside with Pat... (for Tom and Charlotte, of course, Tan and I stayed in the warm and drunk tea.)

Tom really enjoyed spending time with Pat - running about outside, popping bubbles and yelling and shouting for all he was worth. Charlotte and Maia were also outside for a while, but didn't partake so enthusiastically of the 'spin-me-round, no, throw-me-in-the-air, no, chase-me' games. They preferred to come inside and toddle about the place on the ladybird and bike trundle toys.

We did dinner in stages, with kids eating first, then grown-ups sitting down to the delicate strains of Shrek and mild squabbles from the other room. After dinner, it was bathtime for the three of them.

Maia was only slightly put out that there seemed to be FAR more people in her bath than normal, and soon was happily making introductions to all her bath toys, teletubbies and sponges. After a small spat over who would be washed with the ladybird (Maia) and who would hold Tinky-Winky (Charlotte) we hauled them out, dried them off and sent them downstairs for milk and cookies. After milk and cookies for the little ones and tea for the grown-ups we waved goodbye to the clan as they made their way home.

A good afternoon all round I think - loads of fun but MAN more than one baby is alot of work. I definitely have the utmost admiration and awe for people like Tan who have to manage TWO kids (or more) day in and day out. I would be run ragged. I think one baby is fine for me, for the moment.

Backlog! Bear With Me....

LOADS to tell you about, so I will do my best to post a post a day till we are up and current...