Moolies

British summer time - means Spain and weaning

...was invented to confuse babies. It clicked over on Sunday, and today is the first vaguely well oriented day, timewise. She actually slept when she was supposed to sleep and all that jazz.

Took long enough!

Now her schedule will again be destroyed the sheer horror of a trip to spain where McK's parents have rented a villa. I am absolutely in bits, frankly, and trying to keep it together. Ha! Meanwhile, I won'tb be able to update for a week, I'd bet so I'll come back to a blog full of crap spam, I've no doubt.

Spent the day today pulling together some share options (alarmingly average amounts of money, unfortunately) and more importantly, making Nora's first ever babyfood! Apple (of course), carrot and swede would you believe. It is now residing in the freezer awaiting our return. While we're away, Nory gets her first ever baby rice. All very exciting.

Signing off for the mo.

Links a go go

So.

Warren linked to:

-the mirror of Elena's motorcycle journey photos through the Chernobyl area. I missed this first time around, which is hardly surprising. It's astounding and brilliant.

-His friend and comics colleague Lauren McCubbin's blog, which in turn led me to the new talk radio site in the US, "Air America". It's new and potentially excellent, being a radio station that features Chuck D amongst its regular contributors. It doesn't say it's going to stream anywhere - tell you where they should stream to - iTunes. that thing has a slew of radio stations on and reaches a global audience. I've mailed them and asked them - and suggested that.

Lauren's blog looks good - full of good friends debating. She also linked to this story about weak willed democrats not coming out and supporting gay marriage. Unfortunately they suffer from being politicians.

Oh and lastly.... bless. Angel fans are trying to get it un-cancelled by marshalling interwebness on savingangel.com. Well. You never know. You know it really \isn't bad, as TV goes. alright it's a bit daft but the scripts zare pretty good.

Bumbo's ahoy

A "bumbo" is a very strange looking baby seat which was invented in Sud Afrik. Ity helps babies who can't yet sit up... er... sit up. It's advised that they're used from 4 months on, because of the whole muscles / neck business. well, we bought one on E-bay (it worked out as only a ferw quid off - these things are in demand) and we've been practicing with it once or twice a day for a few minutes at a time. Nory's head was flopping forward and she looked very uncomfortable, unless you actually called out to her and she looked up to engage with you.

Oh arse

The central heating's buggered. The thermostat has gone, and so earlier on inthe evening, feeding nory became a battle against sweat. we switched it off, which means a game of tag team tomorrow phoning ventral heating engineers and switching the heating on and off such that the flat veers wildly between vaporously hot and nasty, damp cold.

Such a good move with a 3 month old child in the house. Sigh. Thank god it's only damp and bloody cold, rather than snowing and freezing.

Oh oh! She did her first roll on her own today! And demonstrated tool use with the "pre-weaning spoon-toy" what I have given her to mess about with so she doesn't get freaked by spoons when they start being used (thanks again to the Sears book for that advice. They also suggested: first time you introduce a solid - as in the first time ever, put some on the end of your finger, so bab will only get completely freaked out by 1 thing, not 2. ).

Oh, I rarely do this, but I pass on a link c/o Malbec. "Gay" men in an "I'm Spartacus" moment.

Comedy

I don't often talk about comedy in general terms any more. The reason being that not only do I not get to go and see stand ups in action, but to be frank, I'd rather pull out my teeth than listen to a hell of alot of those (predominantly) guys.

Inevitable. And a bit sad, obviously

Top hole Dr Who news.

ie: they might actually take it seriously, and be able to erase the shame and misery of the Colin Baker and even worse, Sylvester McCoy eras.

I am hoping that they have realised that the most popular back issue episodes are the ones which were actually scary in some way, and the horror of making it all child friendly was the ruination of the programme.

On that child friendly note, have been catching up on series three of Angel. NOT downloading them, shock horror, but borrowing the dvd's from the slightly misnamed "lovefilm.com. Much better watching them widescreen. you know, they really aren't bad, as it goes. It's a shame that British television so royally cocked up the scheduling, because other shows before this one have been saved by foreign sales (correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Cagney and Lacey cancelled then saved by foreign sales?). Anyway. No chance of that with Angel unfortunately. As I was saying to someone t'other day, he may be an attractive bugger but the world's greatest actor he ain't. So I fear we may have seen the last of Mr Boreanez (sp).

Teething and grinning

Nora loves it when you lie on the floor and hold her up with your arms straight. She's looking down at you from a funny angle, and feels completely safe. Even when you let your arms drop 6 inches suddenly. She thinks that's *hilarious*.

It often strikes me that I use this thing to write about my worries, and I miss out all the good stuff. When the good stuff is happening, I seem to disappear for days on end. The point is, she's basically completely fine, now. The teething is coming and going and good lord, does she like to gnaw on her fists. Sometimes she gets upset at night, and she hates dummies so what with being too young to get in to shoving all and sundry in to her mouth and more importantly, holding on to it (ie: a teething ring, for example) the only thing she really has going for her when it hurts is the gross disgustingness of teething gel (apparently - believe me, I've seen what she looks like when it's applied) or pressure from my little finger along the gum line. Luckily, at present it's only sporadic.

The rest of the time, munchness has slowed in her dramatic change and growth, and is now pottering along slowly with carteful development. With the help of baby massage and her love of shoving her feet at me to play with, she has begun to get interested in her toes, and tries to make a grab for them when changing. The weather yesterday was warm enough for the first time that she could wear just one layer in bed and no socks. No Socks!!! No babygro over the feet! What sensory luxury!

She's a very happy, grinning and quiet little girl. And I want to smother her with kisses. At all times.

Very silly

Yoz's post regarding Cory Doctorow's newest (published) novel which you must download if only to peruse before buying it, obviously.

Reminds me of the days when we were all five years younger. And alot skinnier. Meanwhile, do read Cory's book, it's a good read for people.. well, people like us, I suppose.

You know what, I think we've worked out the food problems - I think it's early teething signs. But now I'm unutterably tired so I must join my grouchy, munchkin daughter in the bedroom and pass out for a couple of hours before the next feed.

"I'm going to be literally, physically sick"

From Brad DeLong's excellent blog.

There. I used it as a blog for once and not a diary. Aren't I good?

When nature provides, it also gives us obstacles

*Sigh*.

The aforementioned super-milk situation has an unfortunate downside. Well, there's the frustrating downside, then the really bad downside. The unfortunate one is that Nora was so regulated to having a formula meal last thing that the "easily digestible, that's the whole point" human milk version is causing her to wake up at anywhere between 5.20 and 5.40. She normally has a brief "mimble" around that time and settles back down to sleep. Not anymore, dear reader. She writhes herself awake and cries for desperate nourishment.

Nourishment which she then rejects.

You see, the "really bad" downside is that she won't take milk from my right breast. The big "factory" one, the one that two sucks on the end turns into a vertiable crop spraying device. The aforementioned spraying has, over the course of a week and a half of it happening, traumatised Nora so much that she has decided that latching on to that one is too distressing for words. I can't even get her near the nipple without a screaming fit so upsetting to her that I have to pull back and hold the beetroot faced, sweating and anxious baby to my shoulder and rock her for a good few minutes before she can calm down.

Friday's visit to the health clinic yielded no results. the Health Visitor didn't take the problem seriously because Nora still put on weight last week as opposed to lost it. I felt a bit let down, truth be told. she suggested stopping "top up" bottles altogether and getting her to feed at the breast exclusively. Er, yes. Well, that might work if I could get her to the bloody breast in the first place. Given that she'll only touch the left one, I do not see how stopping her from receiving the rest of her meal is going to solve things. I can see the cold logic of the position but unfortunately, that missed out the clenched, sucking fists and crying element. No way on the planet am I inflicting that on my child.

So. suggestions are welcome.