storbarnsförälder

So my owie arm made me sleep funny, which meant my already painful neck and shoulders are now made of bloody rocks. When I woke this morning I couldn't turn my head; I tried to get Rob to give me a neck rub but he can't tell which parts are muscle, skin, or bone, so that was no good; I tried doing warm-up neck-rolls and stuff and that helped a bit. All day I've been trying to do stretches without hurting myself, and keeping the muscles warm, but man it hurts. I did take ibuprofen before I got out of bed, or rather, as soon as I got out of bed the first time, and that made it possible to sit up and drink coffee, and so on.

BfN went well. This girls were marvellous, the session wasn't too overcrowded, and there was plenty of help. Some women returned slings they had borrowed, and I hardly had to do any cleaning, and I got to talk to the health visitor about some stuff that's been bothering me, and she TOTALLY understood. A well-trained pet health visitor is as useful as a well-trained pet librarian.

My HomeStart volunteer is ill today so we're just at home, vegging out and doing dishes and crayons and stuff. Telly, too. Rob did his basic minimum housework last night (we each have a basic minimum tasklist for every day) and the house is, as a result, far easier to live in than it has been lately. My own basic minimum this morning took far, far less time than usual, in fact. And tomorrow I have no commitments before about noon.

Saturday and Sunday are all booked up; Monday is housework and nursery and doctor horror and lying in bed recovering from that and editing stuff I volunteered to do; Tuesday is BfN stuff and tidying the BfN/Baby Clinic cupboard at the library, and then a co-op meeting in the evening; Wednesday is toddler group and nursery and a child's birthday; Thursday is BfN again; Friday is currently unscheduled, long may that continue; Saturday is two parties; Sunday is unscheduled; Monday is nursery day; Tuesday we fly to Sweden. Augh. Perhaps three sets of volunteering on top of full-time care for two children is a trifle excessive. I shall have to cut back, as soon as there are enough other volunteers to step in... the BfN thing looks hopeful, there are some local people qualifying soon.

Now on to sorting out the rota for that, in fact.

Self and Linnea walked to the library with Emer in the buggy. Went to baby clinic, had them both weighed (can't have one without the other), got the Health Visitor to look at Linnea's scalp but she had no advice other than "take her to a doctor". Right. Since we were in the library we had to go into the book part and Linnea looked at books, chose one Mog book. I collected a biog of Wilde I had on order. Chatted to the lovely asst librarian. Put Emer in hugabub and Linnea in pram and walked home.

Group of mums and children stopped to admire (a) toes (b) hugabub. V. impressed.

I walked to and from the library with buggy and two kids, 5 weeks after the section. I'm tired, but I did not overdo it, really, much, and my incisions hardly hurt at all.

Go me!

Fed Emer
Fed Linnea
Fed Emer again
Made Linnea wear a nappy (Rob spent 25 minutes trying)
Dressed
Did hair
Ate breakfast
Cleared breakfast table
Put Emer in hugabub
Set Linnea up with painting
Ran Linnea a bath for when painting is over
Tidied library
Tidied dining room

To do: brush teeth, bath Linnea

All else is jam.

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?

Friday morning, Rob left the house at 8:30, leaving Linnea, Emer, me, and my mother. Linnea was fed and dressed, which was fabulous. My mother was drugged out on antihistamines and unrousable. I got up, fed Emer again again, put her in the hugabub (badly!), and made tea and had breakfast. Then Linnea and I emptied the dishwasher, I cleared the table, filled the dishwasher, sorted some laundry, brushed our teeth (while carrying Emer!), and sat down in the library, where I fed Emer again and read livejournal, and Linnea read one of her books.

Mum got up at 9:30 and came downstairs. "Wow, it all looks so peaceful!" she said.

I felt terribly accomplished. Mind you, the major tidy-up of the two downstairs rooms had been done by Rob the night before, but you couldn't tell by looking that a toddler had been up and about all morning, just the same. Nor that three people had had breakfast.

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Today we got up and out the door by 8:10, took Mum to the train station to get her bus to the airport, bought tea and bananas so that Mum and I wouldn't faint (Linnea stole my banana), waved Mum goodbye, went and found breakfast in one of the few cafes open before 9 am on a Saturday, bought a pack of pipecleaners as a birthday-girl's-brother present for the party in the afternoon (tobacconists are open early, it seems), ate, found a charity shop opening at 9, bought a couple of gift bags and a birthday card, and incidentally a set of small ice-lolly makers, and went to WH Smiths to find a couple of books for the birthday girl for the party, and then went to Mothercare to have the assistant look at my buggy-cum-pram and tell me why it was acting all funny now we've turned it into a pram (we've lost the manual; my gods, my buggy comes with a manual!), and then went to the Farmer's Market, where I got a jug I've sort of had ordered since June, and a cute, dinky, dainty, adorable teeny tiny teaset suitable for children, large dolls, or covetous adults with a thing for handmade pottery. I couldn't help it. It was so cute I almost exploded on sight.

And then we went home for lunch.

After lunch, Rob and Linnea had a bath, and we all four set off on the trike for the party. It was a pretty stiff cycle - there was wind, and drizzle, and a non-trivial hill, and we'd never gone that way before. Several times I asked Rob whether I should get out and walk; he was huffing a bit. But I think he enjoyed it really, and he gets a bit of a kick out of pedalling his whole family around. Emer's carseat just fits - we've emailed the retailer to ask if there are any tips on transporting an infant in one, like a special small carseat that would fit better - and Linnea and one adult still fit ok. It's even fairly comfy, though carrying shopping is out of the question; Rob had to take the nappy kit on his back.

At the party Linnea sought the birthday girl out and gave her her presents (the one-year-old handed them on to Is, who gave them back to Linnea, but they all had fun and the presents were indeed left at the birthday girl's home when everyone went away again and that's what counts) and talked to a few people. I was too tired (can't imagine why) to be very sociable but we got there.

18 days after a c-section, attending a toddler party is about all I'm asking of myself. Being its life and soul costs extra.

Then we came back home late enough that we stopped for dinner at Chilis, where I realised I have never seen a fat or even plump member of staff, which is a bit weird when I think of the shapes I see walking around town. Then we went to Boots to buy cotton wool, and Linnea pushed a tiny trolley with a huge flag, and took things off the shelves and pushed them to the till and unloaded the trolley. It was gorgeous.

And then home, milk, bed.

And then we watched the hugabub howto video again, and learned where we've been going wrong with the newborn carry ("peapod"), and Rob practised it but dipped the hugabub in the bowl of clean water we keep for nappy changes, by accident. So he used the ring sling for the first time ever instead.

And here we are. I need a picture of all four of us lined up with the trike, now.

The four of us.

Oh my god. What have we done?!