:: the wildflowers we sowed this spring flowering

:: the size of those poppies

:: the fact that I’m not the only one who appreciates waist-high flowering bedlam

:: skies like this

:: small girl exhaustion after a happy morning at the village playschool (why is it more often called pre-school these days I wonder?)

:: having a garden to sow things in (today: leaf beet, amaranths, Italian parsley and basil)

:: having a lathed ceiling, complete with the first coat of lime plaster on it (though if it could see its way clear to bloody well drying now that would be good – it’s taken twice as long as we’d hoped courtesy of wet dank weather…)

:: having a bedroom which no longer looks like a construction project (it’s definitely back to being a room, even if it’s a room involving wet plaster and bare floorboards; let’s just hope the rest of the plaster coats dry more rapidly… We’re really down to the line here on timing – five weeks to go until this baby is due to arrive…)

:: beech woods and being able to actually walk a half-mile with the small girl, courtesy of a McTimoney chiropractor who (against my expectations, I confess) appears to have reversed to a large degree the SPD I’ve been feeling since week fifteen of this pregnancy

And finally,

:: the news that, contrary to the scare-mongering conference I had with an obstetric registrar who implied (as ever, it seems to me) that I am reckless and badly-informed in my plans to have this baby at home (and who told me that my midwife was very worried about my lack of growth and under-sized fundal height measurement), the baby who is actually in there, doing its thing, is now reckoned to be about 4lb 15oz, if ultrasound is anything to go by

:: the feeling that, unlike last time, where things like this would really have scared me, this is just box-ticking (a sentiment echoed by my supposedly very worried midwife).

And you?

(Format pinched shamelessly from Claire.)

You know how some days, life just feels rather shite-like, and you wish you could crawl under a sizeable rock and just stay there until everyone stops wanting something from you and it’s quiet and you can just do what you like, quietly, with alcohol and a gentle rocking motion? Yes, well, that has been a large portion of today, somehow. It started with a wet (big) bed and a child who thought this tremendous fun, and it ended with a shouty mama who just felt done: done with being patient, done with making light of it all, done with keeping it in perspective, whatever ‘it’ might be, done with being reasonable. So, there was shouting, and dramatic sweeping-out-of-roomness, and tears, and despair, and tiredness, and the constant wondering if we haven’t just done something completely insane and utterly defeating in deciding to prolong this particular brand of agony with another infant.

But.

After the tears were wiped away, and there had been an hour’s sleep in the big bed (which, only minutes before, had become forbidden territory ‘full stop!’), and some cake had been eaten, and some chai had been drunk, and some moaning had taken place, and some hugs had been given, the sun came out from the clouds and Quercus stopped looking at me as if I might bite at any moment.

Being a gentle parent, who listens without pestering, who gives space for my child to just be, who offers suggestions but not strictures, is something to which I aspire. As the child of a very consequences-driven father whose approach was almost Victorian, I know only too well how that set-up works, and it’s not something I want for our family, or for myself as a parent. I don’t want my child to do as I ask because he/she/it is afraid of me, but because they can see that I’m being reasonable, and that the chances are that I wouldn’t ask otherwise. I want he/she/it to feel able to talk to me, without thinking I’ll jump on them, and without worrying that I’ll belittle their feelings, be they ever so daft in nature. I prefer to wait those few extra minutes while the small girl finishes what she’s doing, rather than expecting her to hop to it when I command her to do so. I prefer to reason with her, and point out the pros and cons of various choices rather than just issuing directives. I value co-operation, and talking, and listening, and dwelling on the positive.

For the most part, I think I do OK, but sometimes, the anger that wells up in me scares even me. This pregnancy has certainly made life interesting. I worry about this. (Astonishing, no?) I feel that the second baby is getting a very second-rate experience – no hours of meditation spent imagining positive birth situations, no pregnancy yoga classes, no active birth sessions – and that the small girl is copping the flak of my flaring hormones and resulting bad moods. I am grumpy because the pelvic girdle pain, while manageable, is a constant presence these days, and somehow, in the space of only a few months, has assumed such a confident aspect that I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t feel like this. (I should add that I’m seeing a McTimoney chiropractor who has made me wonder if there might be room for it to improve; after the second session, I had nearly an hour of pain-free pottering in the garden, which was like sunshine after a thunderstorm.) And I snap because I’m grumpy, even though I know that doing so will only make the situation worse, will push buttons that I – and everyone else! – would really rather not push, meaning that the crying will last longer, the demands will escalate, the crisis will blacken, for lo! the Armageddon is nigh, and it is Mama-shaped.

At the moment, two things are making me work very hard. The first is broken nights, which continue to be the majority for us. The small girl has never been particularly consistent in her sleep patterns, and while sometimes I am zen about this, and can see that when she’s fourteen I’ll probably be using a pitch-fork to get her out of her pit, these days are proving extra-challenging. It doesn’t help that, despite his best efforts, Quercus remains generally unacceptable at night. It is me who must tuck the quilt in, administer that last kiss, move that hot-water bottle, or reposition the squirrel, and Quercus entering the room only seems to enrage the beast, causing screaming so horrendous that it just doesn’t seem worth it to even go there, really. We have had sessions where we switched for a few weeks, enduring the screaming in a bid to get to the other side and there find sleep nirvana, but as the time goes by and we are floored by the need for sleep and the knowledge that having only one parent on night-duty 100% of the time is just not workable, bit by bit, I end up going in at night and then before you know it, we’re back at square one, and Night-time Daddy Is Evil. I become generous in my sleep-drunk state – having had unbroken nights, I forget the frustrations, and muster myself to respond, and then we end up in the same cycle once again.

I don’t know how this will work when the new baby appears in August, and, to be honest, I tremble slightly to think of it. Things must – and will – change, somehow, but I had so hoped that they would simply have shifted by now, that more nights than not would be unbroken.

The second thing that is causing me frustration is the wet knickers of woe. The small girl learned how to use the toilet with very little prompting at about twenty-eight months. It seemed very easy; there were a few puddles, but mostly she told us the deal and we helped and all was well with the world. Until about, oh, December of last year, when there were increasing puddles and no mention was made of impending disaster, until I found we were at four or five changes of clothes a day. It’s not that bad now by any means, but today’s bed-wetting incident, which took place ‘because I was busy’, is far from atypical, and just drives me absolutely bat-shit. I know that getting cross doesn’t help. I know that retreating to nappies is an option, though not one I’m keen to try. I know that this too shall pass.

But sometimes, I am SO READY FOR IT TO PASS ALREADY.

I think that I need to learn not to feel terrible about feeling terrible. I am cross, sometimes. I am unreasonable. I am bad-tempered, resentful and self-pitying. But then how is this girl to learn the strength of my love for her if she remains unaware that, at times, it is tempered by bloody hard work and the need to keep on keeping on? I hope that she sees my anger for what it is: a transitory reaction, part of the range of normal human emotions which must be dealt with, both as the recipient and as the, er, feeler.

It is not all bloody. It just does a good impression sometimes. And that is OK. This too shall pass.

(Random pictures to remind me of the good bits, incidentally.)

Right now, I am:

• dealing with the news, from our new vet, that Wixon, our four-year-old rescue cat, is probably going to lose an eye and most of his teeth due to a combination of the feline herpes and gingivitis, despite our previous vet assuring us that he wasn’t in pain and that his teeth, while not great, were not a major cause for concern just last month.

• contemplating the number of major organs which will need to be sold to foot the vet’s bill.

• worrying that our plasterer is going to need to pick up his now-three-weeks-to-plaster-the-small-girl’s-room pace, given that he has the landing and our bedroom, which currently has no ceiling, still to go (Quercus is reinstating the ceiling, I hasten to add, rather than the aforementioned plasterer).

• wondering if the small girl will sleep better tonight; two nights of very broken sleep followed by mornings starting with a six and a five have not helped the familial mood…

• triumphing over the grubby microwave with lemon juice and steam.

• realising that the oven, rather more significant in size and grub, is still to come…

• delighting in the wildflower meadow area we’ve created at the bottom of the garden; cornflowers, poppies, daisies, all jumbled together in a chaos of willowy grasses.

• marvelling that today marks thirty-two weeks of this pregnancy. Where did that time go? (And did it take my needle case with it? When you need a bodkin, nothing else will do, really, will it?)

• finishing the first knitted thing I’ve made this new child, a hat similar in style to the small girl’s Noro berry-coloured creation, which she’s worn for two winters so far. (Or, rather, I would be finishing it if I could find the sodding bodkin! This is what happens when the furniture from your downstairs fucks off to live in storage.)

• remembering, just about, to breathe.

Today is the small girl’s third birthday, and, as such, has consisted mostly of gingerish cake (by request; recipe to follow as it’s rather splendid and it’s been fucking ages since I actually bothered to post something foodish) and sand. She has a new Quercus-made sandpit which is rather splendid too, together with a felt play mat which I’ve been working on for about three weeks (my fingers have been needle-felted most effectively in that time, and I’ve also discovered that felting needles are quite good for tidying up dreadlocks) (because obviously neatness is your first consideration with dreads), a zillion wooden animals and a beautiful wolf puppet from her grandma, who has accompanied her to bed tonight. Not for her the Riding Hood end of the spectrum; oh no – she would rather have the wolf, and ‘a bad wolf! with teefs!’ at that.

I am feeling super-lucky, and really rather happy.

Oh, and tomorrow, more plasterwork will be happening in the small girl’s room. At this rate, there is a distinct risk that we may move back upstairs before the middle of July, at which point the house will seem ENORMOUS.

(Warning: self-pitying ramble followeth, of the sort which may just warrant a kick up the backside.)

So, I’m doing a bit shittily at the moment, hence, in part, the quietness hereabouts. The small girl and I returned home about ten days ago, and I was just. so. pleased to get back. We’d spent a rather hectic week staying with Quercus’s mother, which, in theory, should have been fine, but when you throw into an already sometimes-challenging mix, more nightly wakings than I can remember coupled with house-sitting for friends with two very boisterous dogs, oh, and some extra-clingy toddler moments for good fun, basically chaos ensues. I spent the week ferrying the small girl between the two houses we were sort of inhabiting, and worrying about the state of the roof, and not really doing much else, except wishing I could get more sleep.

And then I came back, and sort of breathed out. The small girl went back to sleeping much more dependably; I had had this very strong sense for the entire time that we were away that all she really needed was to be back home, in her own place, surrounded by her (albeit rather dusty) own things, and it seemed like that was the right instinct. Most of this last week has seen her much happier, although the last few days have been a bit interesting as the Aged Parent was visiting, and, well, he has that effect on people. (For the most part his visit was fine, if brief; having not been here since September, he was polite about the changes that have taken part since then – garden, the creation thereof; ceilings, the removal thereof, etc. – but he doesn’t really get the small girl, so that she’ll be attempting to engage him in conversation – and her articulation is pretty damn clear – and he doesn’t even notice, and will instead start talking to one of the adults present, meaning that she gets a bit frustrated when it seems to her that he is interrupting her and so on. Basically I think she likes him well enough (though there was an entertaining morning question: ‘is that strange man coming back today?’), but doesn’t really connect with him; I have yet to decide for whom this is more sad, but I think on balance it’s probably for him.

The bummer of it is that I still feel that what she really needs is a sense of equilibrium, and we are about to depart the parish again for another week. I feel as if I’m doing a pretty rubbish job of life at the moment, truth be told. This whole pregnancy malarky isn’t overly fun for the small girl, methinks. The SPD symptoms are still far from ideal; it’s not as bad as it could be, but I’d say it’s fair to say that I’m in pain more often than I’m not, and that makes me both irritable (predictably), tired (probably because I’m not sleeping well, and that’s probably in turn because I’m not able to get as much exercise as I would like) and a bit self-pitying, not because of the pain but because I feel that I’m giving the small girl such a rubbish deal at the moment. She thrives on plenty of fresh air and Things To Do, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and just sit there, emerging from time to time to read the internet and give her a cuddle. These are not life visions which match terribly well, you see? I just wish I could take her out for a walk, stick her in the sling when she gets tired, and Do All The Things We Normally Do. For both our sakes, really.

I’m also crosser than I’d like to be. This morning I was That Parent Who Shouts. I am very, very rarely That Parent Who Shouts. Particularly when it’s not really for a reason other than the normal frustrations or challenges of dealing with someone who is not yet three. I just lost my rag, really, and despite knowing rationally that the very thing which will make her less likely to help put on her shoes, or find her coat, or walk in the direction which would be useful is shouting or being generally irritable, off I went, to the extent that Quercus intervened and took her out instead, while I went back to bed and slept. I hate feeling so emotionally unstable – tears before breakfast seems to me to be taking things a bit far, really, yet the last few weeks have seen that happening more often than I’d like, and it’s me with the waterworks, not her. She even picks flowers to cheer me up. And that, of course, makes me feel like an absolute sod.

This Thursday I am due to go back to work, after three weeks off. My GP, together with the occupational health advisor I’ve seen at work, thought that if the SPD didn’t settle down with three weeks’ worth of resting and whatnot, then it’s probably not going to (not hugely surprising, I know). Of course, some days it’s better than others, but some days it’s pretty crap. I’m going to see a McTimoney chiropracter at the end of the month, in hope that that might cheer my bloody pelvis the fuck up. In the meantime, I have to decide what to do about work. I have the offer from my GP of a certificate that would see me off work on sick leave until four weeks prior to my due date (the first week of August), at which point my maternity leave would kick in automatically. This is another thing about which I feel crap, obviously – insert maternal guilt at this point about not being able to just manage everything perfectly while still producing reams of creative writing and the odd sponge cake to boot. I wanted to work until the middle of July, and I wanted – and indeed still want – to be one of those people for whom pregnancy is a time of flowering, of ripening, of blooming. Instead, I am a ranting madwoman, prone to snapping and tearful raving, whose kitchen ranges from pristine (after moments of ‘I will now proceed to get a grip’) to disastrous, and whose moods seem to follow suit. It’s just a total bore.

And the irony is that I like being pregnant. Which seems to go against all the above, really, doesn’t it, but still, it’s true. I love the feel of this baby moving about, booting me cheerfully in the ribs on a nightly footing (ha – I can still pun, even on hormone nutjob status). I just don’t like the attendant chaos. I suppose this is what happens when you start to adopt the ‘there is no ideal time’ approach. This certainly isn’t an ideal time in lots of ways, but then again, I don’t imagine that if we’d waited, such a time would have presented itself.

So, I am trying to start over.

Tomorrow, I will pack the list of things I’ve just jotted in my notepad, and head over to Sussex with the small girl. I have a list of seven craft things we could do while there, and I have seven trips or potters which we might undertake, weather and mood permitting. I am taking this time to remind myself that reading books to a small girl is far better than simply sitting there, head in hands, wondering what on earth to do with ourselves. I am taking knitting, because clearly to be knitting is better than not to be, and I think half my trouble at the moment is that tiredness which comes also from the boredom of not being as physically active as I would like. My brain, you see, runs amok, and not in a happy way; perhaps the clicketty-click of the knitting needle will still its insistent tattoo. I am taking pencils, and felting things, and books. Perhaps being offline will be good for me; certainly when I’m feeling low, my internet time is apt to increase, which doesn’t seem like a helpful thing to do, really.

Anyway, we shall see.

Enough of the shittery. How are you doing, reader dear?

I’ve been away for a week’s general lazing about the place in Sussex, with Quercus’s mother. She has been getting the small girl up most days, and letting me sleep in until, well, whenever I felt like it, before providing me with cooked breakfasts, fresh juice and general freedom, the result of which is that I look about ten years younger than I did when I left, but am also slightly struggling to get going on the normal rythm now that I’m back in Devon. Partly, I’m attributing this to the reason for my departure in the first place: we’re going all out on finishing off outstanding work in the kitchen and bathroom. All those little things that had been overlooked, or never finished, or abandoned because other pressing things came to the fore, like, you know, leaking windows and render falling off the house – those are on The List at the moment. The next week should see both rooms repainted, the floor cleaned and sealed, the woodwork sanded and repainted (the gloss we used sucks big-time – under two years old and it’s noticeably yellowed; I’m contemplating eggshell this time…?), doors rehung and painted where needed, plasterwork finished and sanded, a bath replumbed and a whole host of other merriments which escape me at present.

So, the rest of the house looks like a patchwork quilt exploded on/in it – the contents of the kitchen are currently taking over most of the book/toy/general pottering room which used to be our dining room before we built the extension, and the sitting room is sort of languishing in general I’ve-just-got-back-please-unpack-me style.

But just think! A week, and then cupboard sorting! Tidying! Putting things back in place, clean, dust-free, orderly!

I know it is a bit on the tragic side, but this is one of my favourite things.

And then… the calm before the storm. For we, being reasonably intelligent and thoughtful souls, have decided to re-plaster the upstairs of our house, including taking down possibly two-hundred-year-old ceilings, by August! Woo! Clearly, in this house, nothing says ‘ill-timed renovation of a major and very dusty nature’ like ‘I’m pregnant!’. Bring on the toxic concoctions of lime-related woe! Twenty-four weeks down, sixteen to go…

In the making:

• a pair of rather appealing Moomin trousers. That is trousers of a Moomin-print-fabric nature, I hasten to add; I have as yet no actual Moomin to clothe.

• a pair of Liberty peacock print trousers, made from an old skirt of my mother’s that I found in amongst the stash of treasures Quercus’s mother is storing for that fabled and golden time ‘when the house is finished’. (I am not sure this time will ever come to pass; it has an almost Arthurian ring about it, doesn’t it? The Once and Future Furniture.

And you?

It’s been a funny old month, thus far. The time I’ve not spent on this organisation/spring clean kick, I’ve mostly been trying to stop. To stop worrying; to stop cleaning; to stop moving, even. Having had persistent back-ache for about five weeks, I’ve accepted the fact that pregnancy for me is fine, provided I know my limits and I take serious, early, repetitive note. So, no long walks, no prolonged standing, minimal lifting and plenty of rest. Which sounds delightful if you can factor in the presence of full-time staff. In the real world, perhaps less-so, but still, I seem to be finding the happy medium, just about, and keeping things afloat.

I always used to think that the whole idea of pregnant people starting to nest and whatnot was probably a load of old horseshit, until I was pregnant with the small girl, when suddenly those cobwebs on the ceiling took on world-ending importance in the middle of the night and so on. This time around, it’s a little bit different in that much of the time I would otherwise have spent lamenting said cobwebs is now devoted to retrieving various garden implements from the hedge, or attempting to stop painty fingers from grabbing soft furnishings, but still, the instinct is there, nonetheless.

We now have a tidy airing cupboard for the first time in, oh, probably ever. All it took to achieve this was the realisation that space, in this case, is not the infinite place they make it out to be in Physics lectures. So, out go the old towels which can’t even remember what colour they used to be (they have now moved on in the karmic chain, to enjoy a new incarnation as wet wipes and dishcloths), out go the ancient pillow cases which were once white, out go the four zillion double quilt covers for which we have no earthly use, given that that still leaves us three doubles just in case, and hey presto! or something less trite: an airing cupboard which doesn’t bit when you open the door.

It’s also been a bit of a month for flux. The small girl has moved from her cot into a bed, in part because she said she wanted a bed of her own, and in part because encouraging that seemed like a good idea, given that the cot will hopefully see further use in the not-too-distant future courtesy of our impending arrival, and a nice gap between occupants seemed a good idea.

So, away went the cot, and in came the single bed, which is very lovely apart from the fact that its arrival caused us to realise that the small girl’s bedroom is only 6′ 5″ across, and most beds are just a couple of inches bigger than that… Which is tedious, in so many ways, not the least of which is that the only solution we could find was to jack the bed up past the skirting board to where the walls are a little wider, meaning the small girl needs a stool to get into bed. It doesn’t make for a very pleasant fall if you happen to tumble out in the night, either; so far, parental fail count: five. Five. Five times she has fallen out of bed in coming up to a fortnight. We can’t fit a straightforward rail, either, because Morpheus appears to have declared a bit of a fatwa about this whole bed situation, and this means that the fittings just don’t. Fit, that is. A trip to Ikea has helped in that we now have decent linen and a quilt the girl loves – feathers, properly snuggly, and a crocodile cycling amongst the stars were always going to be a good combination – but I am wishing that I had a spare £150 so that I could just buy an extendable bed, nice and low, which would fit the space without its tiny occupant needing an oxygen tent.

The small girl, whose name I am considering using these days if only because a nick-name seems a bit trite, really (anyone any thoughts on this? Do you blog and share? Or do you stick with no names?), has also had two days of going to bed without having a last-thing feed. She is two years and nearly ten months, and until the last few weeks has been feeding three times a day, or so: morning, naptime and then at bedtime too. As the naps have begun to taper off, the bedtimes seem to be following suit. The mornings are still going strong, for now at least. I have such mixed feelings about it, predictably. Part of me is ready for her to stop feeding – she is going to be three this summer, she seems so much more grown-up in the last few months, and I can see that she no longer needs it as she once did, although the need for the emotional connection is obviously still there – and I am twenty weeks into my second pregnancy, which has meant some discomfort from time to time… But at the same time, I still find myself saddened by the thought of this part of our relationship coming to an end. It’s been a joy, genuinely, and has given me such a powerful way to comfort, nourish and interact with her, for which I shall always be grateful.

And in amongst all this has been the usual roundelay of cooking, the odd bit of crafty whatsits (felted eggs, which were tremendous fun, and a couple of knitted cowls), the development of dreadlocks (yes, dreadlocks, again, despite my earlier attempt not going the way I’d hoped), and some fairly major landmarks for us in terms of our garden work. All of which, I find, might be fodder for another post, another day. (I want to get back to writing a bit more regularly, if only to get things down, rather than revolving them around in my head, or boring Quercus to tears with The Many Reasons Why I Need That Other Sling For This Baby). For now, curry is calling me, and it’s got a bloody loud voice.

• cough, cough, cough • sniff, sniff • grumbling small stomachs • back ache from too much standing and a lot of rocking of small persons who are not very well • cement mixing • homemade stepping stones x 40 • incredibly garlicky hummus • lentil, cheese and tomato loaf • a lot of salad • a small girl who loves her grandma (thank god!) • not enough sleep • not enough fun • knit, knit, knit • ‘MAMAAAAAAA!’ • ‘You mean and horrid, Daddy.’ • again? it’s 3 A.M… • Sherlock Holmes • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (why has she not written more books yet?) • tea in the sunshine • a cleared-out greenhouse towards which I have not lifted a finger • a clay-covered garden path • fizzy water, only drunk when pregnant • the tired-and-broke desire to spend LOTS OF MONEY on treeeeeeats • silver earrings? • why can’t I find new slippers that aren’t hideous for less than £40? • muddy pawprints • cream throws dyed brown look a lot less disreputable • the workshop now full of our things, and the borrowed garage storage now empty •

And you?

Isn’t it always the way that the weekend sees rain non-stop, and then Monday morning dawns bright and sunny?

Ho hum.

This weekend, Quercus has been trying to get back into the swing of working on our house. The current project is to get the garden work finished (as much as is seasonally possible) by the end of February; we have a block of time set aside for just this very thing, beginning on Friday, and Quercus’s mother is coming to lend an extra pair of hands, which is probably just as well given that this weekend saw me with the first twinges of a back pain suggestive of SPD.* So, Saturday was spent with the small girl and I pottering about the house, sorting out laundry (thrills! deep joy!) and house stuff, and pootling on the patio for tea-breaks with Quercus, who was otherwise engaged in making shelving for the workshop so we can get our tools and general shed paraphernalia sorted out, prior to doing more intensive work as the year goes on.

We’ve had a few weeks of not doing very much around the house, somehow. There are lots of things to do, of course, but somehow, the slump around Christmas just took a while to wear off… so that despite his having worked really hard for a week in early January, we still find ourselves with a list which includes many tasks identified quite a while ago. I think the thing is that it’s difficult to sustain a really brisk pace over a long period of time, particularly when you’re also working, living in a house which requires a lot of just ordinary cleaning and maintenance even to tread water domestically, and bringing up small children on top of that. So, from time to time we just sort of collapse into a small heap of lethargy. Well, I do, at least, and I’m not even the one doing the majority of it. (I like to think of myself as er, ahem, a facilitator.)

But as the weather improves – and we did get some sunshine on Saturday, albeit followed by gale-force winds and pissing rain – and the days lengthen, we remember that somehow, I am fifteen weeks into pregnancy, and before we know it, this whole managing-a-house-with-one-child-plus-jobs-and-renovation malarky will seem like child’s play as newborn chaos reigns and we find ourselves back on rations of sleep which are expressed in minutes with perfect validity. So, the things we’re going to do by the end of this month include:

•  laying the stepping-stone paths (we’re now thinking about using meaty cordwood rounds instead of paving slabs, simply because we can’t seem to find something we like and can afford, despite months and months of hunting) down to the bottom of the garden;

• finishing off the workshop and bringing the contents back from storage;

• rotovating what will be the lawn, which is the largest of our three terraces;

•  grass-seeding;

•  sticking in decent quantities of manure and topsoil where the new growing beds are going to be;

•  planting a few things!

•  clearing out the greenhouse;

•  sorting a waterbutt or two for the workshop;

• plugging gaps in the hedge where necessary.

This, of course, is only half the story – the other side of our garden, which is about the same size as this piece, is completely broken. It’s covered in a combination of a goodly-sized woodpile (which will one day be housed in the barn which Quercus will build for wood storage, but probably not until next year), building supplies and general crud, but we’re thinking sufficient unto the day and all that, so for this spring, it’s the kitchen garden, effectively, which we’re hoping to finish, so that we can then try to work out a way of sorting two of the four rooms in the original house. (For ‘sorting’, read ‘taking down the ceilings; stripping the walls of their crumbling plaster; working out minor details like woodwork, doorframes, cupboards, shelving; reinstating plaster, skirting boards, ceilings and so on’.)

It’s quite daunting, truth be told, and I’m struggling with the feeling of being unable to help beyond the facilitating bit. This is a bit of a recurring problem for me; I like to be in control (‘what? you!? Nooooooo.’) and not being able to be in control does not bring out the best in me. I like to make lists, and to tick things off, and to move swiftly on, and whatnot. And I just can’t, really, when it’s not me who’s doing the things on the list. And it’s not fair of me to want things to move more quickly, and I know that, and I know it’s not helping to chivvy, but oh. It is not easy to park a lifetime of twitchy must-try-harder mental habits.

So, I am hoping that Quercus and I can write a list together, so that I know what’s likely to happen when, and so that I don’t get unrealistic expectations of what might be possible. I can do things to help, of course, like making sure there is cake for a break with tea, and food for dinner which doesn’t take much thought, and enough to drink, and clean working clothes. I can ensure the small girl is happily occupied, and I can make sure that I’m eating well and taking care of myself so that I don’t enter that horribly emotional state which for me often goes with tiredness in pregnancy, meaning that Quercus can Just Get On With It without having to worry about how I’m doing, and whether I’m about to sprout snakes instead of hair. But I so so so wish that we just had pots of money, so that we could get someone to help us do this, so that we could wave a bit of a magic wand and just make some of the list go away, preferably with time enough to spare that the last months of this pregnancy might not be such a balancing act, such a divide-and-conquer approach to our time as the two adults in the house. When you’ve got limited funds, where is that point that decides you on prioritising just getting things done over keeping the small quantities of savings that you’ve accrued…? And did I mention that Quercus may be made redundant at some point in the coming months, as part of UK government cuts to the civil service? Let us not speak of that, actually – we knew that this was a possibility, and I’m hopeful that with careful management, we’ll do just fine. I prefer to be positive about these things, after all.

Friends have been talking to me since I said that I’m pregnant, telling me of the importance of networks, and of local friends upon whom one can rely for emergency childcare, cups of tea, bolt-holes. I do know this, of course, but it’s hard to cultivate these networks when you’re generally always occupied doing something, be it commuting from work or freelance editing or spending time with the small girl or debating paving slabs and heating solutions. I am trying, though, and I’m trying to find out about things like pre-school, and whether or not it is right for us, and other groups to occupy small people, and ways to manage my time which make household-running easier.

Sometimes I’d like to just be pregnant, you know? But then, does that ever happen, I wonder? Or is it just that most people seem to have children at a time in their lives when change is inevitable? Moving house, changing jobs, having other children to think about…?

So. There you go. And you? What are you up to on this (hopefully) sunny Monday morning?

* SPD – to those happy uninitiated readers, this is basically where the ol’ pregnancy hormones get a bit carried away, and your pelvis loosens, meaning that the joints aren’t terribly comfortable. Sometimes this means audible clicking, sometimes ‘just’ aches and pains. Sometimes it means hydrotherapy helps, and sometimes it means crutches. In my last pregnancy I had SPD from about 22 weeks, so it’s not particularly surprising that it may be thinking about starting a bit earlier this time. Tell you what, though: it can fuck right off.

This weekend, I mostly made marmalade. How is it that so few oranges can contain so many pips, and what sort of bending of the laws of physics takes place in order to allow one to end up with far more marmalade output than the constituent ingredients suggested might be the case? Somehow I have eight pounds of the stuff. Not that I am complaining – at the moment, marmalade on muffins is about right for me. I’m also going to make lime marmalade later in the week, just because I can. I’m a devil, me. (Just don’t ask about jars, because I haz nun.) Making this stuff, though, prompted a quick overview of the things I made last year.

We have a cupboard full of jam:

• ten jars of spiced apple jam;

• eight jars of quince butter;

• six large jars of sweet and sour spiced plums;

• eight jars of dark Seville marmalade;

• seven jars of apple and herb butter;

• four jars of plum jam.

And the booze:

• four gallons of sloe wine;

• two gallons of quince wine;

• two gallons of plum wine;

• two gallons of elderflower wine;

• a gallon of greengage wine.

And then there are clothes:

• trousers in brown velvet, brown cord and cornflower blue cord for the small girl;

• a turquoise fleece dress for the small girl;

• two sundresses for the small girl, one with a bell closure;

• a sun bonnet for the small girl;

• a reversible quilt… yes, for the small girl;

• a knitted hat, in Noro’s gorgeously soft Kochoran yarn, together with scarf and legwarmers… for the small girl;

• two pairs of pyjamas bottoms, for Quercus;

• a brown fleece goblin hood for the small girl;

• clothes for Bluebell, the doll I made for the small girl’s second birthday;

• knitted wristwarmers for Quercus’s birthday.

And then there are, well, things:

• a seat cover for the small girl’s high chair;

• a felted wrap for our coffee pot;

• more felted pumpkins than I care to number;

• several sets of felt dreadlock-style hair ties;

• more felted acorns than is strictly decent;

• a baby.

EEK.

Ah. Yes. I realise that last point may require a little explanation. Ahem. Thirteen weeks down, twenty-seven to go: our second child is due in early August, if all goes to plan. We’re delighted, and, predictably, knackered, terrified and skint, not necessarily in that order. Did I mention that this is the year when we plan to replaster the rest of the house?

In slightly more detail:

• I’ve cast on the child’s placket neck sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts (that was Knitted Gits first time); I have some rather lovely Rowan wool in, worryingly, a shade called ‘Rage’. Does this indicate the shape of things to come, I wonder? Probably, as I’m relearning the magic loop technique for this sweater, and wishing – so, so wishing – that it was just knitted flat. And on BIG needles, rather than 4mm ones, which seem rather piddling after the 9mm variety I used for the last knitting I did. Anyway, we shall see. I really hope that I find my knitting zen; I think that despite my professed love of winter, I am finding the stultification of a very wet, muddy January a bit of a bummer, technically, and as previously discussed, I need to achieve things if I am to avoid feeling a bit shit, really.  I’m also hoping to kick off the hourglass sweater in the same book for myself (the first thing I’ll have knitted for me! all me!), but am a bit dismayed at the concept of 15 skeins of Noro anything; approx. UK price for that would be somewhere over £100, so I’m going to be attempting to come up with an affordable – hopefully tweedy-looking – alternative. Any suggestions? I would love to just use up some of the stash I’ve accumulated since I started knitting, but as ever, nothing is the right size, or the right quantity. Typical, no?

• Why do I keep seeing knitting things I want to do, but which always call for either a different sort of wool or a size of needle which I don’t yet possess? Also, as an aside, how is it possible that I don’t now own at least one instance of EVERY SIZE of needle, given the vastness of my inherited/purchased collection?

• I find the prettiness of my circular needles rather distracting. I keep finding myself wandering off, mentally, and completely forgetting how many stitches whatever particular form of torment I’m engaging in at the present moment I have actually done. This has lead to an interesting border to the bottom edge of the sweater. (I’ve now frogged the blighter and started over.)

• I have submitted my tax return, though I hope to all that’s holy that the calculation is wrong; it’s over £100 more than I’d estimated. Fortunately, I’ve got a week to speak to someone about it before the deadline, so if it’s out, I can hopefully sort it before simply stumping up. Sodding, sodding student loans.

• Today, I declare to be a baking day. This morning, the small girl is at a toddler group with Quercus brandishing craft supplies in line with the theme of shopping; this should mean that she probably wants a reasonably quiet afternoon, and baking is our default activity at such times. I’m itching to try something new, though; cake suggestions, anyone?

• Preschool: the pros and cons thereof. Please discuss. At present, the small girl goes to a toddler group once a week, and we meet up with friends who have similarly-aged children probably most weeks, so she gets a reasonable quantity of socialising, but, left to our own devices, our rhythm is pretty home-centred. Lots of people we know are now looking at preschools, or, indeed, have had their infants merrily toddling along for the last few months; are we doing ours a disservice by not following suit? I can’t imagine leaving her somewhere on her own at the moment; she is going through a particularly mother-centric, well, life, really, although she is confident with people she knows reasonably well, and will quite happily toddle off with some of our friends and so on. I don’t want to push her into something for which she isn’t ready, but at the same time, I do think I underestimate her sometimes, so I am wary of being simply selfish in my desire to keep her with me, all the time. Ahem.

• Wet, dank, grey. That is Devon this morning.

And you?

I had lots of good intentions about various posts, but somehow none of them got written, and ten days two weeks slipped by without my noticing it. I’m going to go with the zeitgeist for slowing down, and blame my lassitude on that. Ahem.

This evening finds Devon under a thick quilt of feather-like snow, downy and soft. Last night, six inches fell, and more is predicted tonight; this is so unusual in this area that most people have been quite caught out by it, I think, so often are the forecasters wrong when it comes to ‘wintry showers’. We ventured into Exeter, our nearest town, along roads thick with ice and slush, and the drive along our lane was easily as interesting as I would want it; no gritters get within two miles of us, which, given the tiny nature of our lane, is not surprising, and I was glad to get back safe and sound, with a bootful of food and a toddling person gleeful in the face of impending blueberry consumption. (The small girl has been out of sorts for a few days, with a temperature and a cough, hence tantalising morsels to eat.)

We have also acquired a wooden sledge, knocked together by Quercus the first morning of the snow, and perfected with plastic drainpipe runners; this means longer walks are good fun for all of us, rather than presenting boot-topping challenges to the smaller of our number…

These days, one of the best things about living in a house which needs, ahem, a bit of work is that we have so many things kicking about the place. Of course we had drainpipe and suitable wood, because, well, who doesn’t keep eight metres of plastic pipe kicking about? Er… It’s both delighting when we get to make something out of, well, not quite nothing, but certainly oddments and remnants, but at the same time maddening, as we have so much stuff which has yet to find a proper home, and even more stuff for which a suitable home is unlikely to appear unless we move to a much larger house… Oh, the irony – fix your house, in the process acquiring so many tools that you then need to, er, move…

And yes, that is the goblin hood I mentioned a while back, which I managed to put together quite quickly as the sewing machine has switched its allegiance back from the powers of darkness to me, largely, I think, due to blandishments involving fine-grade oil.

It took about three hours to get the sodding door shut, of course, after we were foolish enough to open it…

Predictably, while I have yet to finish some of the things I’d like to do before Christmas arrives in earnest, as it were, I’m happy to undertake side-tracks right left and centre. Note: felted winter fairy queen whatsit stage left. But the weather shift has changed the feel of the days already – we live at a slower pace, aware of impending darkness from mid-afternoon, and waking when the light bounces off the brilliant white of the fields and hedges which surround us. Somehow, the sense of busyness which I felt only a few days ago has receeded slightly, and I’m just letting myself go along with that. (See earlier jumping-on-bandwagon-excuse-making.)

Things have been crossed off lists not because I’ve done them, but simply because I’ve ended up questioning whether it was actually that worth getting worked up about. I have nearly finished grouting our tiles (for interested parties, we ended up with a sort of biscuity colour, which seems to set the bright colours off well), and I’ve managed to make some clothes for Bluebell, the small girl’s doll, and to attain a level of control over the craft cupboard not seen since shortly after its arrival, but for the most part, I am trying to feel OK about Just Being. Because it’s a bloody good thing, isn’t it? If you can get it to sit right?

Just Being is so important to one’s sanity, isn’t it? It’s something Quercus and I are both utterly rubbish at. We both struggle to sit, to contemplate, without constantly Doing, and Achieving. I only realise this, really, when we have nothing obvious on our lists (of which there are many, naturally, at levels ranging from ‘fix house’ to ‘sort escutcheon on front door’): these last few days of snow, neither of us has been out and about doing our normal things, and we’ve both been a bit on the antsy side, casting about for Tasks, for Purpose, for Things To Finish. Funny, really, for two people who often lament the lack of Time Off – when we are given it, we don’t seem quite sure what to do with it! It has meant, however, the completion and organisation of a few bits and bobs which were just sort of hanging; we’ve shoved (what felt like) hundreds of demijohns up on top of the oak cupboard, and we’ve put things in the newly-finished workshop, and we’ve hoovered the place and generally sorted a few things out. All of which is good. And makes me think, slightly, ‘this must be what sane people do at the weekends, rather than buggering about with knackered old houses which have a tendency to fall apart’. That said, of course, I know enough people who do what we do to realise that we’re not alone…

Anyway, with Quercus’s mother arriving tomorrow and a small girl who quite miserable (and has her first ear infection, we learned this morning), I’ll be back in this space in the new year, folks, so a medley Crumphole to all who read and visit and comment here, and bright starry wishes for 2011.

Every year, since I’ve been a grown-up in control of my own household (ludicrous! the very thought of it!), I’ve had various ideas about Things I Ought To Be Doing at any given time. This gets particularly ridiculous as winter draw(er)s on. Chrimbly, it seems, is quite important to me. Not, I hasten to add, because I’m Christian, or indeed religious in any way, really, but rather because I so love this time of year that I want to celebrate it with gazillions of biscuits, with strings of lights visible quite maddening in their multitudinousness (is that a word, one wonders?), with Comfort and Joy and All Things Nice. I wonder if it’s because my parents were a bit haphazard about the whole festive affair; usually, Chrimbly involved a last-minute dash, normally conducted in the pissing rain for maximum enjoyment, to some dodgy car-park or oddly dark household wherein lurked a Christmas tree vendor normally seen only in police line-ups, to procure a tree of dubious vintage whose needles numbered somewhere in the region of, well, thirty, or so, on a good year. This joyous trip was normally sprinkled with various enticements such as the opportunity to see one’s paternal relative invent new phraseology to cover falling over in the ice, the inability of the car to shift its arse on its own, its stubborn to start despite multiple kicks, verbal and physical – you get the idea.

So much for the hunter-gatherer end of the equation, whose giddy jollity was complemented by my mother, largely displaying signs of one who felt she Should Have Done More By This Time, i.e. there should have been handmade decorations a plenty, set off to perfection by a veritable shedload of biscuits (of some predictably Germanic or Swedish origin, for it is written that They, and Only They, know how to do Christmas, and indeed winter as a whole). Instead, she’d have sort of thought about it, and then ended up playing the piano for a while, and making a few biscuits while telling me the story of the Nibelungenleid. That was the thing about my mother; she was so incredibly knowledgeable, and so very talented, that it was hugely frustrating sometimes to watch her beating herself up about not having done something which she could actually have done in a jimminy-whatsit had she so girded her loins.

Loins, the girding thereof, is not my problem.

My problem, gentle reader, is overstretching myself, and taking on so much that even the fun bits end up feeling like some hideous Herculean task designed to extract the very last ounce of festive spirit, before distilling it, adding in a little hemlock just for kicks, and asking you if you’d like ice with that.

So, this year, I found myself compiling an ever-increasing list of Lovely Things To Do. Somewhere, this list metamorphosised, cunningly and slyly, into a list of Things Which I Must Do If I Am To Be A Good Person. See? Not cool, is what that is/was. Suddenly, my old friend Procastination was creeping through the door, bringing with him his cousin, Guilt, and I found myself swigging back the hemlock like mother’s milk.

Part of my problem is that, while I’m not particularly avaricious by modern standards (it only really takes shiny or bright colours and you’ve got me, hook, line and proverbial), I am crafty-avaricious. I read blogs. I look at pictures. I think about the things I could make, the things that the small girl would like, the things that, if I’m honest, would make the people who I love love me more than they already do, because, obviously, it is completely logical and unassailably reasonable to assume that nothing says ‘I love you, and I am a lovely person who you love! Right? RIGHT?’ like a felted reindeer.

And there you have it, you see, in (in)glorious technicolour. For some reason, I seem to equate making, producing or otherwise creating with love, to the degree that I feel that I am almost betraying people if I think of making them something and then back out for some reason, even if I hadn’t mentioned the plan to them. So, the list of things that I wanted to make for the small girl grew, and grew, and grew, until it assumed quite fairy-tale-like properties, and I started to wonder if there was an ogre on the other end of it, piling on the suggestions until it wasn’t just the craft cupboard which was threatening to explode… ‘Thar she blows, Cap’n!’

This week, I have reached a bit of a low point. I was dreading doing any of the things on my list, even though in theory I was happy to do them, and had got the things necessary, and could see them complete. I procrastinated. I spent more time on Facebook than can ever be good for a human intent on making it past forty. I even cleaned the sink. Oh, it was quite like old times – many, after all, was the happy hour I spent thrutching about in u-bends for old tealeaves rather than writing the odd word towards my thesis. So, after realising that I’m going completely bollocking mad, and all for the sake of the random assembling of buttons, beads and felt into a small herd of Chrimbly reindeer, I have decided that this is lunacy, and must be set to one side until sanity can prevail. (Assuming that day comes, of course.) I’ve put the thing I’m making Quercus on hold (largely because a two-week break from it served only to produce a ‘…. But that is complete shite! What was I thinking?!’ reaction during our reunion. I’ve scaled back my plans for the small girl, and I’m trying to remind myself that what she would really value this year is a mother who doesn’t twitch involuntarily at the mention of the word ‘present’, and who is able to remember she has knitting needles in her hair before leaving the house.

It’s a learning curve, this sort of bollocks, isn’t it? Pass the biscuits.

So far, December has been very cold, from the outset. The night before last brought a beautiful hoar frost, covering the land in a blanket of icy crystals which didn’t leave even in the brief midday sun. The small girl and I walked to the top of the hill along the lane, to see reindeer and to look at Christmas trees, which, thankfully, appear to be half the price they were last year. I’m trying to make sure that the cold weather doesn’t prevent us going out and about as much as ever; it may now involve snowsuits, mittens and wristwarmers over the top, but the small girl’s ride in the sling was clearly good fun, and she loves to make observations about what we see as we walk, enjoying the superior views afforded by my towering… 5′ 6″. Ahem.

In between our forays into arctic survival, we have mostly been baking and making. So far, six jars of apple mincemeat, with, rather conveniently, no ingredients bought beyond what we happened to have in the cupboards. (This probably testifies more to the strange contents of our kitchen than to any particular fortuitousness…), several batches of gingerbread and Chrimbly Scandinavian-style biscuits, nine red fleece hearts to hang on the Chrimbly tree, when we get it, and three moosibous (somewhere between a moose and a caribou, these felty critters are now lining up on the shelves, complete with antlers, bells and the odd button nose). Still to go: lots more felt hearts, lots more biscuits, cake, puddens, and various crafty bits about which I cannot speak for fear of Prying Eyes. (And yes, I am looking at you, Quercus.)

Oh yes: before I go wittering on, has anyone out there perfected The Ultimate Chrimbly Biscuit? I am thinking of something along the Pfeffernüssen and Lebkuchen line, with spices and whatnot. We’ve tried a few recipes this year (and I wrote my own recipe a while back, when I was blogging as Kitchen Witch; I’ve meant to add my archives from that site to this, ever since I started here, yet have I done it? Have I buggery. This means I will have to go through the hideously long text file version to find the sodding recipe. That’ll teach me) but I’ve yet to find The One Biscuit To Bring Them All And In The Gluttony Bind Them.

The ice was about an inch long on some of the ferns; just beautiful.

Holly leaves, with cinnamon, orange zest and whatnot. Lovely smell, but recipe was a tad disappointing as the biscuits were a bit on the dry side, despite adding extra milk, and a bugger to roll out as a result.

I’ve never been particularly sure about this lamp, which is in our garden; it always looks a bit out of kilter to me, with its nineteenth-centuriness, against our blatantly-older-than-that house, but it does do a good Narnia line in this sort of weather, so I think I will get over it.

This morning it is bright, sunny and cold once more, though the magical dusting of yesterday has now gone, and apparently it’s going to be warmer this weekend. I love winter; this time of year is my favourite. I do hope we’re not about to have a bout of warm-and-wet, though, because that is all sorts of crap in my view. Let’s stick to the cold and bright, please, weather gods.

In about a week, it will be ten years since my mother died. I can’t quite believe it: an entire decade of this alternative life, this strange, skewed existence which still seems off-balance to me sometimes despite the passing of time. I have decided that December 14 will now be the day when we get our Chrimbly tree. I don’t want to wallow, and I don’t want to dwell on the fact that my mother isn’t here to do this with us, to meet the small girl, to watch us grow, together. Rather, I will spend my time with a small girl for whom Chrimbly and the midwinter is so very exciting, this being the first time she has really taken note of what’s going on, and I will celebrate the going-on of life rather than its disappearance, inevitable, inescapable, ineffable. This small girl of mine has done what no amount of counselling, or thinking, or mourning, or distraction, could do, and she has done it without even knowing she was doing it, never mind trying – she has flipped the coin, making me the mother, and recasting my loss in a new role. I am now the mother, and in so becoming, I feel in charge of myself, grown-up in a way that I thought I had lost forever when my mother died. So, here’s to the healing powers of mincemeat, and of cake-baking, and card-making, and present-plotting, and cold walks in the crisp frost, and reindeer who live at the top of our hill.