Megan and the Moon

A couple of days ago it snowed again, so once more we've been stuck on the smallholding. I'm unwilling to try walking the four miles to town with Megan in a sling - in case I slip on the ice and accidentally destroy her. To save us from cabin fever, Phil suggested we go on a little walk around the land this evening, and I persuaded him to wear Megan (he has really good grips on his boots!) which gave me a break from carrying the stone or so that she weighs (now when anyone tells me they've lost a stone, I am extremely impressed. Before Megan, I had no idea how heavy a stone was). We wrapped her up well in several layers, as well as leg warmers and a Peruvian hat with ear flaps, then attached a fleece blanket around her over the top of the sling. She looked like she was being carried in a royal chariot.

It was getting dark as we left the house and headed up the track, the remaining patches of snow shining out bright white in contrast to the dark wet patches. Megan was happy to be out in the air, and stopped her fretful teething for the duration. Then something strange happened. Phil noticed that Meg was staring at the darkening sky, a look of consternation on her face. We turned to see what it was that had caught her attention, and saw the moon. As you know, Megan loves light fittings, but her reaction to this - the most regal of all the natural light fittings supplied with the earth (save the sun, the Mother of all Light Fittings) - was not giggly and light-hearted. Instead she took the moon very seriously indeed, giving it her full attention. She was very calm and very focused. It seemed like an important moment in her life so far. It crossed my mind that this was the very first time she had seen the moon. How amazing to be witnessing all of these firsts. And somehow it is as though I am experiencing them for the first time too, by proxy, through Megan.

For the Love of Light Fittings

Do you want to see a very happy Meggie? Just switch on the lights...


I was a little bit worried about Megan's love of light fittings until I Googled it and found that she is not alone in this particular fascination. She coos and squeals and giggles and smiles endearingly whenever she sees one of her favourite lights, but only when they are on, of course. This is the one in her room, her dad is treating her to a rare close-up view.

The one below is in my parents' sitting room, and as you can see, it looks a bit like a big-nosed, smiley face. She loves loves loves this one. I can't figure out what the actual lights themselves would be in relation to the face, but he's a jolly fellow, don't you agree?


She loves it so much that when she found it had been decorated with holly for Christmas, she took one look at it and cried. The holly was duly taken down, and peace was restored.

One of the great things about having a reliable smile-making object in the room is that you can make use of it to get a lovely photo like this:


Happy Christmas, and all that. :D

Still Snowed In

Meggie's first snow :D

No chance of outdoor work!

A view down the valley:

The trees are stark and beautiful.

My dad rescues the potatoes from the freezing cold shed:

The holly bush beside our house is bursting with berries:

We've got plenty of wood, and it's cosy inside :)

And Meg's got a very toasty pixie hat, ha ha...

Megan's Hands: Pics

Caught in the act!
(Note my slinky, sneaky, paparazzi approach!)

Are these fiddle-player's hands? That left hand falls naturally into a perfect bow-hold...

Creeping up without Megan noticing, I see her look of complete concentration:

Megan's left hand remains (as yet) undiscovered... How strange to be watching these developments taking place. Everything we (as adults) take for granted has to be learned, bit by bit. It wears me out just thinking about it.

Megan's Hands

Megan has found her hands. Well, her right hand anyway. She holds it up and stares at it in awe as though it were a creature from a distant planet. Meanwhile, her left hand is waiting in the wings. I can't wait to see her face when she finds two aliens - interacting!

This afternoon I tried to take a photo of her complete absorption in this strange, natural phenomena, but unfortunately she is very camera-aware, and any sign of a camera in her vicinity causes her to stop doing interesting things in favour of staring worriedly at the lens. I can't pretend that I am not to blame, I am. For the last month or so I have been showing her photos of herself (and little videos too) on the camera screen, so I think her self-consciousness comes from this. Silly Mummy! It's all my fault!

I have tried turning my back on her to get the camera ready, hoping she'll think I'm doing a boring (but important!) Mummy Thing and go back to her interesting hand. But every time I check on her by peeping over my shoulder, I find her looking back at me with a cynical expression, thinking So this is what Mummy does when she's out of the room, pretending to be busy. She stands somewhere, preferably facing a wall, and peers over her shoulder hoping no one is cottoning on to the fact that she's just hanging around suspiciously.

I shall endeavour to take a sneaky pic tomorrow.

Tangled Yarn's One Year Anniversary!

Horray!

*Sounds of party poppers popping*

Today is the anniversary of my very first blog entry!

*Cheers and whoops of delight*

I just had a quick nostalgic peep at my first posts, and was reminded about the One Hundred Days project (which - alas - seems not to be taking place this year, the old website is no longer there). I was also reminded of my very first (and only so far, thank goodness) bitchy comment, which I have left for the sake of authenticity.

Looking at my attempts to get rid of the clutter whilst unknowingly pregnant (and completely exhausted because of it) reminds me how things have changed over the last year, and how different my life is now. I won't list all of the differences, but in the last year I have stopped touring with Ember (after ten years of travelling and performing with my musical companion), moved to a secluded smallholding, had a beautiful baby, written a novel (ha ha), and started making crafty presents for Christmas... And I've done a fair bit of de-cluttering too, obviously! :D


Anyway, I must leave these celebrations as I'm in the middle of making some felt finger puppets for Megan's Christmas present. Thanks for supporting me and reading my blog! Here's to another year!


*All photos found by searching on Google Image, and rather over-excitedly applied, sorry about that!

NaNoWriMo Winner!

Yesterday I completed the National Novel Writing Month challenge! At the beginning of November (when I couldn't resist picking up the gauntlet, perhaps because I saw it as some kind of antidote to babybrain), I had no idea what writing 50,000 words would feel like, or even if it would be possible. I discovered that it is possible, but only with the aid of the stats page on the website, and a particularly competitive personality. And a baby who will sleep for at least forty five minutes at a time. And by cutting down on washing and feeding myself. And by risking my relationship with Phil by sitting in front of my laptop for far too long every evening.

50,000 words is a lot of words - it works out at about 66 pages on NeoOffice. If I am to actually turn it into something I'm proud of, it will take a lot of editing. I imagine that if I edited out all the crap I might end up with a short story, ha ha.

Here is a Wordle word cloud of my text - giving greater prominence to words used most often (yes, the main character happens to be called Walter - how did you guess?!):


If I were to do it again (would it be possible with a 14 month old? Are there enough naps in the day by that age?) I think I would probably do a bit of planning ahead, rather than just writing what came to me on the day, though I did enjoy the freedom of the stream-of-consciousness method. And I would have to make sure I didn't fall behind right at the beginning as I did this time, 1667 words per day is much more do-able than 3000, which is what I was having to come up with towards the end.

That blip (above) on day 15 was when I was convinced I would be able to write more than I actually did, which shows how optimistic I was feeling at the time!

And that's the last you have to hear about it for the time being :D

Novel: Halfway There!

Yes, I am still very behind, but today I passed the 25,000 word mark, horray! According to the stats, at this rate I will finish on December 10th - which is too late to win the challenge - so I'd better get my act together.

I still feel fairly optimistic (although I'm going to need a new burst of inspiration plot-wise and a few more hours in the day) and I'm looking forward to printing out what I've written and doing some editing. As the NaNoWriMo website says, if you're going to edit your novel, you'll need words to edit, so the writing of 50,000 words is really just the beginning. I'm getting a lot out of this challenge though! I haven't had the chance (or the kick up the whatsit) to write for such a long time, though you'd have thought it would be impossible with a new baby to take care of.

I promise that Megan is receiving no less care than she would have otherwise, my priority is (of course) being the best mum I can be. The novel comes second, OK? :D

Now, I'd better get on with it.

Limiting Awake Times

Megan is eleven weeks old! And I can't believe that the last post I wrote about her was on the 15th October, wow, I am SO SLACK. A great deal has changed since then, and I feel that I have learned a lot (stuff I wish I'd known earlier) and we are all a lot happier because of it.

I was given a book called 'Baby Sense' which features a chart showing the maximum recommended times for each baby age group to stay awake. I was amazed to find that the 6-12 weeks baby should only be awake from between 60-80 minutes, before being helped to sleep. Wow, that's a very short period of time! But when I started implementing these rules, I found that Meg could send herself to sleep if I put her gently down on a fleece on the bed, covered her with a couple of blankets and then lay next to her. The dummy helps enormously with this too. It sounds funny to say it now, but I was really surprised to see her closing her eyes and drifting off, after all the hard work it had taken to get her to sleep previously. But previously I had had no idea about awake times, and she slept on the boob or was rocked and sung to sleep when she became hysterical. Basically, she was a fussy, screaming baby because she was always being stimulated until she was over-tired. The book explains that babies can't edit out the stimulation they are constantly receiving, unlike you or I, so they are overwhelmed by what they see, hear, smell, feel, etc., they can't even block out the feeling of their clothes against their skin.

So now I'm starting to feel more in control of my life, and Meg is so much more content. She hardly ever has to cry anymore as I keep an eye on the clock with regards to awake time, and can see immediately when she starts to get hungry (always bearing in mind what time she last fed). I wish I'd known this earlier, but at least I know it now, and can share the information with all of my friends who have also recently become new mummies. :D

And here are some pics of Megan I took a couple of nights ago, the hat (made by a lovely friend of my mother) seems to bring out some very amusing expressions:




This little cardigan is a bit of an heirloom - my brother and I wore it when we were tiny too, and I think Meg looks quite dramatic:

Novel Update

The "novel-writing" is continuing when I get a chance (although Megan seems to be sleeping a lot less than usual in order to keep me on my toes), so I thought I'd share my stats with you (rather than any actual writing, ha ha).


As you can see, I'm well behind. Those blue towers of my word count are supposed to be up there with the purple diagonal line of the Daily Goal. But the great thing about these figures is that they're actually helping me to believe it might be possible to write 50,000 words this month - I can finish on time if I manage 1970 words per day... Better keep going then and stop procrastinating... But uh-oh, I think I can hear Meggie stirring...