Author: alex

Not sure what I’m doing, though…

So, Sunday night and another fractured weekend. By which I don’t mean it was broken in any significant way; it’s just the way that time behaves at the moment, forming a chain of fragments which follow Lola’s needs. We just returned from walking an unsettled Lola around Crouch End, hoping to get her to sleep a little before we entered the final feed-bath-feed-sleep routine. It worked; but has left the parents utterly exhausted.

Yesterday we went to Camden, as Isa wanted to check out a shop in the market that sells cot veils (decorative fabric to hang from the ceiling to encircle the cot, princess-style). Which we found, but decided would be better bought at Ikea. It was good to wander round the market; seems an age since I had. It really doesn’t change a lot — OK, there’s all the new development up at the chalk farm end, but it’s largely retained the feel it had 15 years ago. Walk past the Electric Ballroom and I’d swear those were the same kids I was handing out Baby Snakes flyers to in the early 90s.

So we walked around, me carrying Lola in the sling and giving her a running commentary on all the exciting, vibrant markety stuff while she snored on obliviously. She did wake when we stopped to feed her; she really notices when she’s in new places, and spent ages staring round the cafe.

I must go — I was really only testing this new blog-stuff-from-flickr functionality I just discovered. I’ll tell you about the great little pizza stall we found and the long walk home some other time </lie>.

Isa’s gone out to the pub, leaving me to cope alone. No doubt she’ll roll in at some godforsaken hour reeking of beer and fags… Oh, no — that was me, in some past life 🙂

Isa has gone to the pub, though she won’t be drinking or smoking, to celebrate Lorien’s 30th birthday. I’ve stayed at home with Lola which, so far, has gone pretty well. Tried to put her down a bit soon earlier and ended up having to take her out of the crib and feed her; she was still a bit upity after that but I swaddled her and put her in her crib and she calmed down. I left her there awake, looking at her drawings; she sounds like she’s still awake now, a half hour later — cooing and ah-ing to herself.

Lola has been coming on in leaps and bounds since I last posted. Not that she’s leaping or bounding, yet, but she’s smiling, holding her head up, doing push-ups when on her tummy, and making lots of conversational noises.

She also seems to have gotten (sic) over her colicky problems. For the last few weeks, she had been getting pain with eating; mainly in the evenings, but then also during the day, too. It was starting to become distressing for us all; and Lola was rarely having a ‘happy’ day. So, a few days before last weekend, Isa took Lola back to Stephanie for another sacro-cranial session. This relaxed Lola a lot, and she had a really good day that day, though she cried in the evening. The next day, Isa saw a bit of a return to the former problems, so last weekend I did a lot of research which suggested that this problem, when considered along with Isa’s sore nipples, might be solved by working on breastfeeding technique.

So, several hours-worth of googling later and I was a lactation consultant. We worked on the latch, positioning, ways of maximising the flow… And it seems to be working; helped by another sacro-cranial session on Sunday, Lola has had a fantastic week — alert and happy, and with no horrid tummy pain 🙂

Lummy. She slept for eight hours (midnight to 8am) last night, then went right back to sleep after feeding and spent most of the day sleeping. When she was awake, she was calm and alert. She’s starting to smile–I was chatting to her while she was hanging out in her buggy today and she stared at me intently and gave me a series of smiles. *swoon* 🙂

She’s able to hold her head up a bit as well; I especially noticed when changing her this morning–I’d sat her up in preparation for her favourite bum-in-a-bowl-of-warm-water moment and suddenly realised I wasn’t supporting her head: she was. She can’t do it for long, yet but…

In other news, I finally had my bridge fitted today. The abuttments were screwed into the implants first and tightened with a torque wrench (apparently, the torque is enough to ‘weld’ the threads together, ensuring they can’t work loose). The bridge was then cemented onto the abuttments with ‘temporary’ cement (just in case the abuttments *do* work loose–they can get the bridge off and re-tighten; Michael said he’s never had that happen, though). It’s fabulous having my full oral cavity back–I can talk proper, and singing isn’t deeply frustrating, as it has been for the almost-year since this process started.

Anyway, beauty sleep; ‘cos I need it bad.

late to bed and early to rise doing BMJK stuff — putting mini-site http://www.bmjlearning.com/foundation live . . . the miniature-human alarm clock helps with the early rising . . . she had a rough night, as did Isa — Lola not feeding properly but stuck on the nipple . . . mum was going to defrost a bottle of expressed when dad woke and tried a song, which lulled instantly . . . so weird, looked like pain/hunger, but perhaps was something else if soothable by song

so, Lola a month old . . . a little longer, a little heavier, with eyes that follow and have lashes sprouting on the lids . . . still exquisitely beautiful; there’s nothing to compare with just holding her hand, watching her sleep . . . when we bathe her,  she almost stands up herself, just taking a bit of help for balance . . . she still loves her flash cards, spends ages lying peacefully while being changed, looking at her spiral, or her parallel lines, or her shapes . . . wish I could stay home with her all the time . .

I thought my bit of impromtu sun/apple shelter was pretty nifty. Just a tarpaulin strung between the two apple trees and then guy-roped into shape. Looks kind of serenely aerodynamic. Whatever that means.

Anyway. I put that up on Wednesday and it’s now Sunday and Lola is a month old. But I’ll have to catch up some other time. Now is bed time. Zzz.

Midday on Sunday and Isa and Lola are having a nap on the big bed. Lola slept well last night: from ten-thirty to half-four, then from quarter to six to about nine this morning. Which is great, but Isa’s still pretty tired — had quite a sleep-disrupted few days, and she didn’t nap yesterday: too much exceitement with grandma’s visit 🙂

It’s a bit cooler today, much to our relief. Last night it was 26°C in the bedroom. Perhaps we’ll pop out for a walk this afternoon. Meanwhile, I must get on with tidying the flat a bit and then starting a ragú.

Making use of one of the features of the new parental abode in Watchet (its comparitive proximity to London), Lola’s grandma came up today to meet her for the first time. My Mum (as she also is, by an odd coincidence) hopped on a train at Taunton and got to Paddington 100 minutes later; total journey time about three-and-a-half hours.

We had a fabulous time, sweltering together in various locations in the house and garden. An awful lot (with some emphasis on the awful) has gone on since we we last together at Christmas and it was so good to see her looking well. And just so good to see her. Full stop. What a fab mum.

A great shame that dad couldn’t come up, too; still, luck holding, Lola will get to meet her grandad in a few weeks. Whether he’ll come up in the camper or we go down there, we’re not sure yet. No reason not to go for both…

Isa has decided that Lola looks a lot like her grandma and I must admit that, now she’s said it, I do see a lot of Mum in Lola. Then again, I am a credulous kind of chap with no great eye for these things.
Any road up. I would like to witter on more, but the desire to go to bed is just too strong.

‘Night.

Oh my, it is hot. And has been all week: I’ve been sweltering at the office, my paternity leave sadly over, and Isa and Lola have been sweltering in the garden. At night, we all swelter together in the bedroom, where we sometimes also sleep.

Lola’s not slept well the last couple of nights, this cloying heat presumably not helping there, either.

It was not nice having to go back to work; there’s a nagging wrenching of the heart. Lola tends to be getting less sociable by the evening, but I get some good time with her, bathing, changing, chatting, singing. This morning, around 4am, I managed to stop her crying with a song that I then had to keep up for about an hour as I tried to give Isa a bit of a rest. There’s not a lot I can do to aid the nighttime feeds, being devoid of boobs.

Yesterday, I cut the trunks of all the ivy which is throttling the sycamore tree at the bottom of our garden. Not that I have any great love for the water-guzzling sycamore, which was probably partly responsible for the death of one of our apple trees this year, but the ivy foliage is very thick and stops a significant amount of light from reaching our garden.

I felt very guilty killing the ivy, though. I’ve recently started killing flies and mosquitoes and, occasionally, moths. Which also makes me feel terrible. How dim is that?

Abdoul popped round last night, bringing a couple of lovely dresses for Lola. He looked very well; he’s off tomorrow to a festival in Ipswich to cook Morrocan food (plus one Brazillian dish, apparently) for 300 people. It sounds like things are going well for him since he got back, which is great.

After he left, we bathed Lola and started making some dinner and thinking about making the biscuits and brownies for Elly’s picnic. I’d just put the chicken salad together and Isa had measured out all the ingredients for the brownies when Lola started crying. And crying. Mum had to go and feed her, and was unable to leave her for over an hour. I managed to do the required bit of 5eye work and then make the brownies. Isa eventually escaped the nipple-monster and came to eat and make the choc-chip cookies at around one AM.

That was the start of the worst night so far, with Isa being woken again and again by an insecure Lola. This morning was no better, and our attempts to get ready for the afternoon’s picnic (including baking muffins) were heavily compromised by Lola’s only-a-nipple-will-do unrest. Still, we did eventually get out and make it to the picnic with muffins, biscuits and brownies, which astonished the other guests who assumed simply looking after the newborn would be as much as anyone could do!

Does this mean we’re neglecting you, Lola? 😉