So I've been reading some economic background to the US's current trade deficit / unemployment figures etc and have also been looking at the UK's position with regard to a depressingly familiar personal debt picture, built on the back of hugely inflated house prices driving up peoples' perceptions of money they "own".
Continue reading "Random economics musing" »
Living life to write anything in here.
-Country walk with Nora in one of those back pack things, visited a donkey sanctuary. Big hit.
-Nora tried to run for the first time at the sanctuary.
-Noo has developed the habit of saying "No", in a mewly, pinch faced kind of way, whilst shaking her head, with a look that suggests a bad stink, when she doesn't want something. It is very funny. On Sunday, the bath was a bit too hot. She just sat there in the water, shook her head and said "no".
-Please read this book, "What we've lost" by Graydon Carter. It helpfully pulls together umpteen articles / books etc investigating the current American administration. It was written as a "For God's sake don't vote for him" treatise before the last election, but it remains relevant now. It is - to put it mildly, terrifying. Whilst I have no doubt that someone could have written a perfectly good "Do you realise what Clinton is doing" polemic when he was the man at the top, there's not a chance it would be as devastating reading.
I keep thinking I'll load up a few choice paragraphs in here, then running out of time. I'm sure Mr Carter wouldn't mind some free late push marketing. If I get the opportunity, I will. There's an astounding piece on the current state of Afghanistan that makes you weep.
Other than that, Nora can now say "pop" - we bought a whole load of bubble blowing equipment from the Early Learning Centre, y'see. She also said the word "Moon" after McK repeated it to her, but next time she pointed at it, she said "blurbleeburrrb" or something like that. Her favourite is still to say, in a nice tight rhythm: "Doh doh deee! Doh doh deee!" A lot.
Another very lovely thing she's been doing recently is lots of lovely hugs. WE play a game of "rock a bye baby", with her hugging me. When she lifts her head, I stop automatically. She puts her head against my chest again and I start singing and gentle rocking. She usually lifts her head up about 7 times, grinning like an idiot, throughout the rhyme.
Nora's love of books is becoming somewhat overpowering. Having built the bookshelves that are now in her room, I can't help but think that hiding her books from eye view and bringing them out judiciously might have been more appropriate! No, Nora of the future I am only joking, and I did make a pact with myself a long time ago to never say no to you if you wanted to read a book. I will now explain just how difficult that resolution has become to maintain:
-wake up, 7am. Desperate wriggling and pointing to book (any book), before morning feed can begin. I have now given up and do read a book with her before feeding.
-Feeding usually broken up by Noo scrumbling up because she's spotted another book
-Feeding can continue, but only after another book has been read
-Breakfast
-Another book before post-breakfast teeth, get changed, etc
-Now she is clothed, and likes to practice her walking by standing up and walking - to her bookshelf
-Spring has sprung, there's a lovely morning out there but no, I must look at the first half of Peter Rabbit again before I get bored half way through because I really should be reading something a litle simpler to deal with, shouldn't I
-Manage to get Nora outside. If in her Graco trolley, a small book must come along too, because even the tree touching game isn't enough to stop you getting a bit bored in there these days
-Pre-lunch period. Book
-Lunch! Then sleep
-Wake up. Afternoon milk (if she wants it) and scrumbling for bookshelf again
-Afternoon activities (get out of the house again, hopefully)
-Pre-supper - book
-Post supper, 3 stories before bed
Of course, if we can't make it out of the house because it's raining (or whatever) then the whole morning or afternoon is dominated by any books that are within eye view. Crayoning or paints have now made an appearance, which is all good, but books are basically - well, by the end ofthe day, we're looking at a vertiable path of them leading from the bedroom and covering most of the floorspace in the front room.
There are two points in the day when I know we'll read - just before lunch and before going to bed. The rest are entirely Nora's invention. It's the pre-breakfast books that get in the way of me getting to work, which is a slight issue, but at present we're doing ok, and I can just about manage her voracious appetite.
Current "all time favourites" include really getting to grips with a lift the flap books which, rather cutely involve a baby with its hands over its eyes, "peepo" style. Pull the flaps back, peepo, etc, and the truly wonderful "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?", which I would heartily recommend to anyone's cvhild under say, 3. It turns out you can also get it in French, which we may do. I can't think of a reason not to, and it can only be positive for Noo's small but ever expanding brain.
The Dr Seuss books I bought a while ago (cheap boxed set through work) all bore her witless and I'm not surprised, so apparently there are a bunch of board books which I'll get this week. She can manage "Hop on Pop", which is pretty good but gets a bit too complex at the end (and it's far too long, too).
Amazing Baby books are still very positive, and she's now getting far more interested in the actuality of the content. "Clever Colour" really interests her at present, and she likes to point at the words so I obviously break them down in to their constituent parts. The best part in the book being the last two pages, which are a smorgasbord of colour squares with the names in.
Anyway. It's all good. Fairly exhausting though.
So the RSPB came back with - they nest in undergrowth, those Robins do. And a reminder that it is illegal to deliberately destroy a possible nest site during the breeding season.
So that's that then! Oh bugger!
How on earth does one come to the point of wanting to clap Jamie Oliver on the back?
He's done a brilliant thing. He worked like a trojan. Really amazing.
And so the small person looked up at me when I came to nursery to pick her up, and immediately started crawling away! Cheeky wee miss wanted me to crawl after her and give her big fat nuzzles and tickles.
She is, very definately, better.
Quickly grabbing twenty minutes to do some more ivy removal on Sunday, I really thought I was breaking through and making some ground yankign away huge chunks of canopy.
All of a sudden, a wee robin - suerly the most precocious of garden birds, was flitting from branch to brand only a foot or so from my head.
Ah.
Ok.
Continue reading "Robin's nest" »
Not quite, but the meaning of finding out what you're like in a "danger, danger" type situation is watching your baby collapse in front of you with a temperature of 102 (that's 38.9 degrees to you celcius folks).
The chest infection that Nora has is a result of a very chesty virus that she caught at the beginning of the week (see below). The chest bit just seemed to get worse, then on Saturday night she had a temperature crisis.
Thank you for calling back at just the right moment, NHS Direct. Thank you emergency out of hours doctor for coming over within about an hour and a half (we had her temperature controlled by then).
And thank you, lovely girl, for being so much better today. Today, you had your first ever antibiotics. It is apparently lemon flavoured, and comes from the family of "general" antibiotics and it is Amoxycillin, 5 mls 3 time a day. I'm amazed Amoxycillin cures anything at all anymore but there you go. It probably won't, by the time you get round to reading this.
And so far you've been alseep for about an hour and a half. I'm crossing my fingers you have a good night's sleep, because you've missed at least 12 hours sleep in the last 2-3 days.
All of that, and would you believe it, she's still pulling her hands in to her mouth and chewing on them with tooth pain. Not fair. Not fair At All.
So I've noted that I'm not the only person who is beginning to have low level background panic about this thing.
It feels to me a bit like that bit at the beginning of "War Of The Worlds", when the narrator notes how people went about their daily business, drinking cups of tea, playing croquet (whatever) whilst the first cylinder was fresh in the ground only a few miles away. But what if it's all nonsense? What if nothing happens at all?
(Quick update before you start reading my slightly panicky blether, this is the WHO Bird Flu info site. It appears to be an excelent guide to what the hell is going on.)
Continue reading "Science fiction Bird flu update" »
...and a bad chest (again) to boot.
Nora's not a happy bunny. Teething on the molars is not funny. She's been dribbling like a fountain for days, and is so out of practice chewing on her teethers that she doesn't automatically do it - instead, one of her hands is permanently shoved in to her mouth, and occasionally I've even seen her doing that little wretch thing when her fingers go too far in.
I thought her coughing might be just some kind of teething bi-product, but in fact I think when she's teething she tends to get more infections, for some unknown reason.
...of course there's no visibility on the actual teeth yet. I'm praying to God they either come through shortly or the pain dies off for a few weeks, then they blurt out all at once.
My poor muncho!
A walking update: she walked on her own for a few steps in the library (I wasn't there, as usual), but hasn't since! Now she's ill again I've no doubt that she won't move much further forward on her own, as it were.