You know how some days, the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and a breeze blows in from the west, and things just feel right? Despite having woken up at five-something yesterday? And despite having spent quite a long time up to the elbows in semi-fermenting honeysuckle? Well, today is one of those days. Something has shifted for me in the last few days. I don’t quite know why, but it’s as if the energy around me has just altered for the better.

That’s really wanky, isn’t it? Sorry about that, but I can’t think of a better way to put it. I’ve been feeling stymied and tired and a little disgruntled for quite a while, in one way or another, for no reason other than just… because.

I think, for one thing, that having children of one’s own digs up, for me, a load of shite that would frankly be best left under the stone it previously relied on for cover; I’ve been introspecting to within an inch of my life, going over and over ground (my mother’s death, her illness, my father’s new relationship, my childhood, my father’s departure when I was a teenager and my mother was first ill) which is boring even to me. And now I think perhaps I am done with it. I think perhaps I am finally getting to the point where I can accept my father, and his involvement in my life (or lack thereof), for what he – and it – is: what he is, and what he can be at this moment. I am not his top priority, and I haven’t been for a long time. And that’s OK – I have priorities of my own these days, and Doc Witch’s post has just reminded me that actually, I chose this life, and I chose the things I do with it, and that any feelings of failure are created by measuring myself by other people’s standards or expectations, rather than because I’m actually fucking things up. So, yes: earwigs on the bathroom floor, grout which isn’t quite high enough, dead shrews littered artistically across the sitting room carpet, and a Baby Belling oven which is clearly sent from hell (along with a variety of mechanical and/or electrical fiends) – they are all part of this life that I have chosen. A life which includes a marriage I grew up thinking probably didn’t exist except in fairy stories (not that it’s fairy-tale, but, seriously, I do consider myself disgustingly fortunate in Quercus – I mean, as I write this, the man is going round the supermarket with the witchlet, picking up detergent, sugar for wine-making and whatnot, all having hung out the washing earlier this morning: what is not to like, I ask?), a child who makes me smile to myself in the middle of the night, a pair of cats who I adore (though don’t tell Wixon I said that; it’ll only encourage his twisted firestarter tendencies), a house which outwardly reflects so strongly who I feel myself to be (down-at-heel, but hopefully interesting nonetheless), and which Quercus loves as I do, and a life which, while there are still areas to work on, is, broadly-speaking, pretty damn good.

So here’s to taking ownership of one’s life, and of saying that the good stuff is all good, and the crap? Well, it’s transitory. (And sometimes, quite useful for comedy value.)

It’s easy to be thankful for the good stuff, as Mon points out, but can you be thankful for the not-so-good? Can you apply eager-beaver cheery optimism to stuff that metaphysically stubs your toe, I ask? Can you? CAN YOU?

Sorry. Got a bit carried away there.

Mostly, these days feel like a constant succession of tasks, with a few pauses in between; I wrote the other day about feeling as if I’m always en route somewhere, and I think that sums it up, in a way. I thought I’d have free time (free time!) once my PhD was out of the way, but somehow other things have crept up on me to take over what little time I used to devote to genuine PhD study, and I find myself with a constant mental list of things I should have done, things I must do, things I mustn’t forget, things I must finish, things I must plan…

But this morning, I got up at 6.20, staggered into the witchling, rootled her out of her nest and staggered back into the bedroom with her, where she came into the big bed for the standard half-hour of cuddles and fidgets. ‘Up,’ she insisted, ‘UP!’ Grabbing my fingers she pulled herself upright, wavered for a precarious minute, then slumped back down against me. ‘Up!’ Off we went again – up, down, up, down. Then a quick hiding session; she can’t resist peeking around the side of whatever she’s hidden behind, however, so a big blue eye, crinkled with merriment, watches as you ‘sneak’ up on her, asking ‘where’s that baby gone?’, to be greeted by a whipped-down quilt and a big beaming smile. I may be constantly en route, but the journey’s pretty bloody good.

You know, it’s not often that I get the chance to sit down and write two blog posts in one day these days. Gone are the heady (for which read ‘crappy’) days of full-time PhD study, when blog posts felt almost like work because they included the writing of words, albeit words which were completely unrelated to anything I should have been writing about, and in their place are days of almost frenetic activity, of organised chaos, of places and times and movement and change and learning and teaching and… so on. The coin has two sides: one side is that Quercus and I manage not to use a nursery for the witchling, and can look after her ourselves, which is what we always wanted to do if we had children, but the other side of that is that we seem always to be en route. En route to work, en route home, en route to pick up groceries, en route to do, do, do. We have three-quarters of an hour between my leaving work and Quercus arriving at his desk, and a twenty-five mile commute split between the two of us; it’s tight, to say the least. BUT – and this is a big but – it’s working, I think, and we are settling into a new pattern, and I’m so very glad that when I leave in the morning, it’s Quercus who is holding the witchling as she looks a little uncertain about my departure, and Quercus who jollies her along with a wooden spoon and a quick waltz around the kitchen, and Quercus who gives her expressed breast-milk mid-morning before her snooze, which she takes in her own cot, surrounded by her own things, in her own house.

Anyhoo.

For some reason, I’m feeling introspective. Perhaps it’s an impending paternal visit. Or perhaps it’s the making of wine, which always reminds me of my mother and of my father, who first taught me such delights. And with introspection comes memory, and, often, thoughts of my mother. What would she make of my life now? Of our life here, all three of us, together in our tiny and slightly chaotic house? Of the new extension? Of the red paint? Of the fact that the house speaks of her in the things it houses, of her influence on my life, of my love for her, of the life I lived, the person I was, when she was last on this earth? I hope – I think – she would be happy. She would be pleased. She would be proud.

And that makes me think of the time when she was last on this earth. My twenty-second birthday preceded her death by a matter of days; I remember knowing that she was going to die long before the doctors confirmed it to us. I could see it in her; one simply couldn’t look like that, and be going to make old bones. I tried to hide my knowledge, and I hope I did; I know that we didn’t speak of what was coming, only of what was, though we did take, simultaneously and spontaneously, to saying we loved each other every time I left the hospice for any length of time.

And after she died, just before Christmas, I muddled my way through the assessments I had to complete in order to stay at university and maintain my grade average. It sounds uncaring, I always think, but I felt that to drop out would be upsetting to her – she had to leave university after she fractured her skull in a road accident at nineteen, and she never made it back, a fact which always pissed her off. She would have felt responsible for my failure. So I stayed, just barely, and a few weeks later, I went back for the start of term. Back to normality, in some ways, though in a world so altered that even the colour of the sky seemed wrong to me. And one night, long after Quercus and I had gone to bed, I woke suddenly, certain that someone was standing by the bed. I had an attic room in a Victorian terrace that year; my mother had liked the look of it from the photos I’d shown her, because it had reminded her of the room she herself had lived in during her brief university stint. The room was cave-like, with a dormer window at one end and the bed far back in the darker end of the room; I awoke to find just enough light to make out quite clearly a figure by the bed, one with light hair. That is all I can say with any certainty. I was so shocked that I did the cartoon thing of rubbing at my eyes and blinking to make it go away, to no effect. I reached behind me to wake Quercus, and as I turned back, it was gone. I didn’t see it again, whatever it was, but I never lost a feeling of being watched whenever I was in the house alone.

It’s that old cliché, really, isn’t it? There are more things in heaven and earth, and all that. How I have wished it would happen again, but it never has. I once smelt a scent she used to wear while I was in the car with my father, so strongly that we both got out and tried to find the source of it (to no avail), but I’ve never seen anything which could be connected to her since. It’s left me with a certainty that this isn’t it, though; I’ve always had leanings towards ‘alternative’ thinking on the religious/spirituality front, and I feel very strongly that there is something beyond the normal sphere of human existence, and sometimes one gets a glimpse of that.

So, that’s my moment of introspection for today, folks. See what too much Joni Mitchell will do to you?

Yesterday Quercus, the witchling and I went out to pick yet more elderflower. On Sunday, the solstice, we started off four gallons of elderflower wine. I took the witchling out for a walk while Quercus had a lie-in (it being father’s day), only to return with enough honeysuckle for another gallon – this is an experiment, as we’ve not done honeysuckle before, and there are dire warnings about all but the very ripest flowers (if flowers can be ripe) being poisonous, so if this blog stops being updated in about six months, you’ll know why…

Our second picking trip brought home a big bag of elderflower, gorgeously pollen-dusted and blissfully fragrant, which we then proceeded to ignore in the evening, having said we’d sort it as soon as we got home, in favour of sitting on the sofa and watching Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (we started out saying ‘ooh – we should so watch this more often! It’s a lovely film!’, then reached the bit where everyone gets blown up and remembered why we don’t watch it more often…).

Guess what we’re going to be doing tonight, then? Yup – another four gallons of de-stalking flowers and whatnot. The smell makes it more than worthwhile, particularly as it gives us chance to sit in the kitchen, gawping at our newly-painted-red wall, and remembering the months we spent without plaster on the wall, and with cob dust collecting all over the place as a result. Cob dust. So very… dusty. And so very… red, in our case (Devon has very, very red earth). And, of course, as we pick, we listen to music. I suggested the idea of a music swap in the post below, and a few people have asked for a theme for playlists; on balance, I think the best plan I can come up with is to say how about music that just works for you? Here is a rough idea of what we’ve been listening to lately:

Joni Mitchell – we listen to a LOT of la Mitchell chez nous. Oh yes. From ‘My Old Man’ to ‘Free Man in Paris’, it’s all good.

Thievery Corporation – every. single. album. Even the slightly dubious mix ones.

Bach – particularly the Goldberg Variations, played by Glenn Gould.

Steve Reich – ‘Electric Counterpoint’ is one of my favourite pieces of music.

Gotan Project – ‘Queremos Paz’ always makes me think of driving across southern France and marvelling at fields of sunflowers.

Debussy – particularly the String Quartet.

Horace Silver – the first CD I ever bought Quercus was ‘Pieces of Silver’.

Cali – ‘Je m’en vais’ is an utterly fab song, and one which I can listen to for hours.

So, there you go. Illustrative of this week, at least.  If you don’t fancy the idea of the CD swap, then how about some listening suggestions in the comments box? Go on – be a devil.

(Quick update: just to clarify, what I’d like best is to do the actual CDs you think are worth a go – I burn you something, you burn me something, we all make tracks to the post office et voila!)

A while ago I mentioned the ridiculous number of things we’d attempted in a bid to keep using cloth nappies; one of our trials included a home-made bot balm, and, as we’ve ended up using the aforementioned balm for finishing off wooden toys, restoring dry hands, scenting one’s person, balming one’s lips (er…) and generally slathering about the place, I thought I’d share the recipe here.

Body balm
Get hold of…

A small bar of beeswax (ours was about an inch wide, three inches long and half an inch deep)

A (measuring ) cup of oil (I’ve used sunflower, olive, calendula and sweet almond)

About fifteen drops of essential oils to scent (I’ve used combinations of various, or single oils when I was in a monastic mood; I’ve also used calendula oil here too, because I was after something super-skin-friendly. Best scents so far: lavender and valerian for a sleep balm, and geranium, rose and lemon for a daily scent.)

Then…

What I’ve found works best is either to melt the lot together in over a small pan of boiling water, or to wait until you have something in the oven and pop the ingredients in a silicone something-or-other (I used a muffin tray and it worked quite well, not least as you can leave the balm in situ to cool and then you’ve got little poppable-out discs of it, suitable for stashing in a small tin for use as, say, lip balm or solid scent) and shove in for about ten minutes. I’ve read recipes which suggest grating the wax; I did this the first time, and while it may have melted a little more quickly as a result, to be honest, for the general knuckle-grating potential of wax + grater, I didn’t bother after that. Oh, and I found the wax took far longer to melt than I’d expected when I used a pan, hence my experiments with the oven; patience is a virtue, but not one which I possess.

In other lyrical news, how is it that now that I have the opportunity to listen to lots of music (my iPod is a constant companion in the morning shift at work), I’m bored bored bored with everything I own? Now, here’s the thing: that whole buy-nothing vibe is still very much at the forefront of my mind, so while I’m keen to expand the ol’ musical sensibilities, I’m also keen to do so without the outlay of a wodge of cash. So, anyone fancy doing a CD swap? I was thinking it might be entertaining to come up with a topic* (say, ‘travel’), and a collection of random tunes to suit, and to do an exchange. New music for the price of postage (and yes, I am certainly up for international exchanges – the more the merrier). Thoughts? Criticisms? ‘Are you having a laugh’? In the comments box, please.

*I owe this idea to Peaceable Imperatrix, who did such an exchange some time ago; it was good fun, and I got a v. g. mix CD from her imperial self.

This weekend I have A Plan. It involves large glass bottles, lengths of tubing, indecent quantities of sugar, and some hot water. It also involves tramping through a few fields with Quercus, armed with a long stick of some sort for hoooking purposes. (At times like these, I’m glad I’m beginning to get the hang of carrying the witchling on my back; we recently acquired a mei tai carrier in brown velvet, and it’s quite good for popping on and off, though I hate to say it, but I think perhaps, despite the time and faff of on and off, I am perhaps more comfortable in the woven wrap. Is that a woman i.e. ‘I have breasts; please do not attempt to flatten them with fabric’ thing, I wonder?)

Where was I? Ah yes. Alchohol.

We’ve realised lately that it’s been a bloody long time since we last made some wine. Last year, I got some sloes on the go when I was first pregnant, but then nothing else really made it after that; I s’pose knowing that one isn’t going to take part in the fruits of one’s labours (an oddly appropriate saying, bearing in mind my pregnancy) meant that I sort of forgot about it. And now, after a year of construction and general builderyness, our supplies are quite depleted – somehow, three demijohns of plum, three of sloe, one of ginger, one of lemonbalm, one of elderflower, one of crabapple and one of coffee wine have disappeared, leaving us scratching about with a few dodgy-looking bottles of vintage who-knows and some cobweb-covered I-wouldn’t-if-I-were-you.

So this weekend it’s time to rectify this situation. The field behind Earthenhouse is covered with elderflower, and there are more trees to be found in the lanes hereabouts, so that’s the first port of call. Then I’m considering a bottle of the ridicoulsly idyllic-sounding honeysuckle champagne, as the hedges are full of flowers at the moment, and – if I can avoid the poisonous foliage and berries – imagine what a thing to make.

Sadly, the first bit is always the worst. No, not the picking. No, not the taking of the flowers from the stems. Worse yet: the cleaning-out of last year’s demijohns. I’m not a complete slattern, so I do normally give them a perfunctory sluice when we empty the last few drops down our necks, but still somehow the intervening time seems to bring forth a plethora of mouldy whatsits and disgusting so-and-sos, and I’m sure that the strangely-shaped demijohn brush will be pressed into service once more, despite my attempts to avoid it… Oh joy. But I’m sure it’ll be worth it, right? When, in a few months’ time, I’m sitting and swigging the odd half-glass down?

Stymie
tr.v. sty·mied d), sty·mie·ing also sty·my·ing -m-ng), sty·mies -mz)
To thwart; stump: a problem in thermodynamics that stymied half the class.n.
1. An obstacle or obstruction.
2. Sports A situation in golf in which an opponent’s ball obstructs the line of play of one’s own ball on the putting green.
3. A weighty instrument used primarily in frustrated – and normally foolhardy in the extreme – craft projects.
See also kill-joy (n.), thwart (v.), fart-arse (v.), despair (v.)
Also consider: to suck the life out of (v.), to infuriate (v.).
Origin: twenty-first century Devonian (dialect).

Yes folks: I’ve temporarily lost my marbles once more, which behaviour led me to forget – very temporarily – that to approach the sewing machine – or the stymie, as we now think of it – without at least an entire bottle of gin as a back-up plan is complete lunacy. I’ve been making the witchling a blind since about, well, December. So far, it’s one-all; the stymie has successfully defeated many attempts to finish four simple seams, but I prevailed – sort of – today, and managed to get the front! and the back! together! Sweet lord. However, I fear the stymie may have the last laugh: approximate quantity of thread used to achieve seams of roughly six feet in length – so far, nearly an entire bobbin, and about half a new reel. (Is that right? ‘Reel’? It looks… wrong, somehow. Perhaps that’s guilt by association?) The seams, thankfully now hidden away, have literally dozens of short bobbin threads per stitch. It’s an interesting effect – kind of the Glam Rock approach to sewing: ‘Now with added fringing!’. Not quite what I had in mind, but see earlier statement re hidden away… Why? Why does it do this, I ask?

I came across this today, courtesy of the excellent Mama is…, and thought I’d share it here.

THE MANIFESTO OF THE IDLE PARENT
We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
We pledge to leave our children alone
We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
We drink alcohol without guilt
We reject the inner Puritan
We don’t waste money on family days out and holidays
An idle parent is a thrifty parent
An idle parent is a creative parent
We lie in bed for as long as possible
We try not to interfere
We play in the fields and forests
We push them into the garden and shut the door so we can clean the house
We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
Time is more important than money
Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
Down with school
We fill the house with music and merriment
We reject health and safety guidelines
We embrace responsibility
There are many paths
More play, less work

It’s rare that I come across something with which I identify so much.

Sunday breakfasts are something to which I really look forward. Quercus and I have long enjoyed the delights of Riseholme scones (a pretentious name we created for sort-of drop-scones, made with self-raising flour and indecent quantities of seasoning, named after one of the deeply self-conscious villages E. F. Benson created in his Mapp and Lucia books), and in the last couple of years we’ve also discovered the fantasticness of granola. Particularly the Hollyhock variety, which I learned about courtesy of a nice stint on Cortes Island a couple of summers ago. This morning, we’re rediscovering muesli. Not that nasty dry stuff that comes in bags from the supermarket, though. Oh no. I remember when Quercus’s Cortesian aunt offered me muesli while we were staying with them (did I mention the fact that they had an outdoor, wood-fired hot-tub? WOOD-FIRED? HOT-TUB? There is just nothing wrong with those phrases, is there?) and I responded in a distinctly luke-warm manner, until I found myself asking what was causing the zesty smell of lemon that hovered nearly permanently in their kitchen. That would be the muesli then. This morning I whipped up a new batch. It involves grated apple, the zest of one or two lemons, cinnamon, almond slivers, coconut, natural yoghurt, soy milk, cranberries and a ton of oats. Ye gods, how is it possible that something so simple can smell so utterly deelish? Well, who cares, in short, as long as it does? 

This morning, breakfast was onion bagels, pieces of banana and camomile tea. The witchling likes variety, see? (Nappy rash still raging, incidentally, for those of you kind enough to comment; thanks for the suggestions – we’re taking her to see our doctor again tomorrow, but I’m not holding out much hope. The simple fact is that the disposables don’t make her sore, and the cloth do. Again with the pissed-offedness. I’ve also been making Doc Witch‘s yoga cookies; full marks, is all I can say. Utterly moreish, and in a sort of ‘and I’m not even that bad for you’ way.  

The best part about Sunday breakfasts, you see, is that they normally take place over about the course of the entire morning, and are interspersed with lots of new pots of tea, coffee or chai being proffered, and various sit-down sessions, and the odd bit of playing on the floor, and then maybe a wander down the garden to feed the chucks some titbits, a conversation with a cat here and there, and maybe a spot of cooking for later in the day (today cookies, and the leg-work of a savoury tater bake thing for dinner later). Life is so fast, most days; we have to be a bit on the ball, especially as I am now working part-time, and quite a lot of our life falls into a sort of finely-tuned rhythm. Five mornings a week, from eight until twelve-thirty, I have my professional hat on, while Quercus has his Daddy hat on; come one o’clock, I return, armed with a bottle of expressed milk, and switch to my Mama hat, while Quercus pulls on his professional jacket and heads off to work until five-thirty or six, depending on how much he wants to work a four-day week. This bit is still in its infancy – I only started again on Thursday – but it does mean that we have to be in certain places, doing certain things, at certain times, where previously I’ve been floating about, as and when, hither and yon, and all that. So, all the more reason to celebrate Sunday mornings, and a return to the sanity of life as it happens, rather than life as other people demand it be. I think it’s important to really appreciate the times we get where we can do as we like, be what we want. All the more-so now we have the witchling; one of the things I hope she remembers when she’s older is that her childhood was not hurried – we made space and time to just be, whenever possible. So important, that. After all, what’s more important than wandering about with a baby peering over your shoulder from the comfort of a recently-acquired brown velvet sling, making cookies, swigging camomile tea? Nowt, I reckon.  

Just a quick rant. Honest. Actually, that’s a total lie. This is Nappy Rash: The War Years. And it’s really, really, really dull. Even to me. So I’ll completely understand if you don’t read along, chaps, but please understand, I’m SO DISAPPOINTED TO BE WRITING THIS. So. Disappointed. 

Sodding, sodding nappies. Yes, the clue is in the post title, really.

We’ve been using Tots Bots cloth nappies (and waterproof wraps, together with fleece breathable wraps overnight, and bamboo nappies for their absorbency) on the witchling since she was about three months old. For the first couple of months, all was glorious: no leaks, no extra purchases, no disposables chucked in the landfill. Then the nappy rash arrived. And lo! all was shite. Shite, I tell you. Since then, we have tried the following – quite ludicrously long – list of solutions, none of which has worked:

Changing detergent (we have tried bio, non-bio, eco-friendly, none-eco-friendly, and different brands of each permuation);

Different wash temperatures (before the rash set in, we were washing them at thirty degrees; I’ve even tried a ninety-degree cycle in case there was something sinister in the leg elastics, but to no avail)

Using nappy sanitiser or not (again, two different sorts);

Adding white vinegar/not adding white vinegar;

Nappy-free time;

Different wipes recipe (normal is camomile tea with honey; have tried no honey, no camomile, lavender oil, tea tree oil, calendula tincture, plain ol’ water, and bicarb);

Wool wraps (so far, complete disaster; despite lanolising three times, this one leaked like a sieve today – as if someone had poured water on my lap. I also have concerns about the warmth of them – they are, after all, wool, and it’s bloody hot here at the moment. Then I have subsidiary concerns about the size of the blighter; the right size according to the manufacturer is HUGE, and thus not very snug-fitting, which raises questions about the leaking, and also about the hotness of wearing them… And so the long day wears on…);

Fleece wraps (which I love love love – jazzy patterns, no leaking, and I think a less sore bot, but not less sore enough, if that makes sense);

Fleece liners (though possibly not constantly enough; we’ve only got a couple and perhaps you need to use them all the time; trouble is, where do you draw the line re expenditure? We’ve now spent a fucking fortune trying to sort this out, and we’ve got nowhere – I thought the woe of thinking about nappy purchases ended when we bought the sodding nappies. Little did I know that the best was yet to come…);

Knitted raw silk liners (made no difference, and she actually looked worse in the morning, as you’re advised to use them without a barrier cream in order that the silk is in direct contact with the affected area);

Creams, lotions and potions (so far: Kamillosan; Sudocreme, Bepanthen, Metanium, vaseline, zinc & castor oil cream, homemade beeswax balm [which is as effective as anything, I find, and provided Quercus with a handy finishing balm for the wooden animals he made for the tiny daughter's birthday], thrush creams [Canestan and Daktarin; the first made virtually no difference (or at least the difference could as easily be explained by our doing a stint in disposable nappies in despair), while the second brought her out in a bright sunburn-like rash], Hypercal lotion (calendula and hypericum, in other words), calendula tincture, and, finally, I think, aloe vera lotion);

Disposables (the only thing which appears to make any difference at all; the rash clears up mostly on her bot, but remains on the area where the elastics of the nappies and wraps go. This makes me think that there’s something in the nappies, but WHAT? WHAT CAN IT BE, for the love of all that’s holy? I mean, it’s withstood boil-washes and more detergents than you can shake a large stick at, as well as TRIPLE RINSING, so it’s not sodding detergent overload, either. WHAT ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, I ask?).

In short, we have changed everything apart from the baby. I am now at the point where I am wondering when enough is enough. I mean, we really, really wanted to do the ‘right’ thing. The thing that means no landfill, and a more natural childhood for the tiny daughter, with nice natural fabrics and nice gentle detergents, and lots of nice gentle line-drying. Instead, the only thing we’re getting is a bright red bot which peels eventually because it gets that sore (at which point I end up buying some supposedly eco-friendly disposables, feeling really pissed off about doing so because I really like our fucking useless cloth nappies but I’m unable to leave her sore when the dispoable, kill-the-planet-why-don’t-you nappies seem to help). 

Oh, and did I mention that I think the nappy bill is now about £300, all told? That would have been a shedload of disposables, wouldn’t it? And yes, I know all the numbers quoted for the cost of nappies per child. I have never quite worked out how they arrive at the sums they give; we worked it out for ourselves the other week and man, it was depressing. Our figures suggested we’d be saving, overall, about £200. Frankly, at the moment, I’d've paid the £200 up-front to avoid thinking about all this for so long, and to avoid her having such horrible rash. 

Balls, balls, balls. 

Please tell me that the guru of nappies is out there, and will make it all better in the comments box?

 

This time last year, our house looked like this.

 
This time last year, the tiny daughter and I were just getting to know each other. She’d had her first feed, and was asleep on me. She seemed so tiny, yet so very much her own person. I wondered how I would ever be enough for her, yet somehow I felt I would be. 

This time last year, the buttercups looked rather like this. The field across the road was covered in a sea of nodding golden flowers, a breeze taking the edge off the heat.

This time this year, the tiny daughter is rather more alert, and is enjoying birthday presents from friends and family, including the very lovely Ma Me Pa her grandpa sent (much to my delight), the animals Quercus made her, and the owl I put together back in February (I think). Happy first birthday, tiny daughter. We have enjoyed your company so much that there are no words which sufficiently articulate our ongoing joy at your presence; the best we can do is to snatch you up and snuggle you, to catch you up and cuddle you.

This time this year, the buttercups are just as good, if not better. A good metaphor.