Home Alone

It's my first day home alone. Rob left (late!) 20 minutes ago. I can't believe the godawful state the house is in. How is it that it's fine when my mother is here, fine when I'm well, but 48 hours after my mother leaves and while I'm sub-par the kitchen is almost uninhabitable, the floors are filthy, and even the kitchen bins are overflowing? There isn't even anything here for our lunch, as far as I know.

Augh! Despair!

Also, I can't quite figure out how to tote Emer about in the Peapod hold in the hugabub. I think I'm doing it too loose. That, or I'm just too damn short. None of the women in the video seemed to be carrying babies that took up as much of their torso as Emer does of mine. I know this was a problem with Linnea until she learned to hold her head up. Please, this baby is tiny. Let me be able to learn this one. She keeps sagging down to the horizontal.

Babywearing and hosuework

I'm trying to learn to wear Emer in the hugabub. I think the problem is that I'm not tying it tight enough; she won't sit high on my torso in it. So far, I've tightened it every single time I took her out today, and I'm not taking the sling off - she's currently asleep upstairs in the moses basket - until I've achieved a tight enough tie to hold her in the right position. She's light enough that it's ok if she's not quite right first off; I can tote her around as long as she's comfy, and it doesn't matter so much that it would be awful if she weighed another 3lb.

So far today I've had breakfast, washed, dressed, done my hair and teeth, cleared the dining table, filled and run the dishwasher, hung a load of laundry and a load of nappies on the indoor drying rails (I can't really stretch to the outdoor line with any confidence), folded another load of laundry wet so's it doesn't dry crumply, sorted dry laundry into piles by owner (but not put it away; Emer's asleep in there!), cleared one and a half kitchen counters, put the magimix bowl to soak (encrusted banana cake mix - need to work on that recipe; cakes were incredibly dense and flat), took a phonecall from someone who hadn't been informed of Emer's birth (oops), found the cordless phone, fed Linnea her snack, and read some of another Adriana Trigiani, which are incredibly easy and lightweight and not too funny. I'd love to read the new Bryson, and we have some Fforde waiting for me, but I can't laugh too much yet. A little giggle is fine. I can get away with a chortle. Up to three chuckles don't strain the stitches. But side-splitting isn't amusing when it feels literal.

In other news, I seem to have lost the ability to make usericons out of lj pics photos. Huh?

Awake! Awake! Fear, fire foes! Awake!

Emer woke from a long, leisurely nap just as the beans were almost done (beans for Linnea's lunch; she had about half a 200g tin; 100g contains 0.9g of salt. Dear gods) and the toast had popped. And she needed an immediate nappy change.

I can see that for the next year I will eat all my meals except dinner with a baby on my lap.

Nursing.

And scratching.

Anyway, she's just nodded off, after a solid 90 minutes - maybe more - of awake alert time. I had another go with the hugabub but I'm wearing dungarees which aren't the best for experimenting with it. I'll try the ring sling when she next wakes.

She's my second baby. That's why she's sleeping slumped in the bouncy chair while the toddler watches tv and bounces on an armchair. I'm not sure how long TV will last today; after this (so far, she's watched 7 minutes of Something Special) there's 50 minutes of Big Cook Little Cook, which is loathesome. However, we might have visitors, which would be good.

I really need to clear the dining table and tidy the library. My incision - one of my internal incisions, that is - aches. I'm tired. Linnea did a stinky poo and Emer did a milky poo (explosive, and full of curds) and I cleaned them both up and I'm finding it hard to eat enough.

I wonder how long Emer will sleep for this time.