- Sleep continues to be a bit of a sod at our house at the moment; I’m trying to persuade Mirth to cut back on the ol’ night feeds (four or five times a night really does seem a bit much, given that she is really not fading away), and will see if this helps at all.

- It’s sunny. Everything is better when the sun shines.

- Time spent with friends out of the house, Mirth asleep in the sling, Hero exploring new places and new people, is very, very good for the soul. Even if some of those places are the hell that is soft-play areas.

- Nappies – well, nappies. I may have misjudged you, my little cotton friends. Since changing detergents and starting a new wipes lotion (Dr. Bronner’s, heavily diluted, with some calendula oil), miraculous days of non-sore bottoms have appeared. Long may they last; I am truly delighted.

- Less delightful is the notion of my maternity leave coming to an end. Mirth is eight months old; I have already had a letter asking if my provisional date of return (end of June) is one to which I intend to keep. The short answer: no. I will drag it out until after her birthday, I hope. More angsting anon, doubtless.

- Horrid sums of money about to be spent on wood-fired central heating, which, once it’s installed, we should be able to run for free.

- Which means that the house will be crawling with people running pipes in the cob (Quercus might well be doing this sort of stuff, though, as it makes the whole thing less expensive overall) and making loud noises (something Quercus excels at, mostly, anyway), so the childer and I will be off to pastures new for a few weeks while that all goes on.

- Except this weekend. When I get two days to myself, with just Mirth for company, while the forward guard goes to Quercus’s mum’s house, leaving me to sort through our attic contents in a bid to simplify the sheer quantity of stuff we appear to have up there. Some to sell, some for charity shops, some back in.

Spring is in the air, folks. And it feels nice.

I tidy the kitchen after breakfast, sweeping the baby-led-weaning-strewn floor and putting some washing on. (I love the sound of the washer, quietly working away; it makes me feel productive even if I am sitting on my arse doing sweet fuck-all.) I wrangle wet washing into a bag, and contemplate hanging it out. Another bright day is promised; certainly it’s sunshine and horse-tail clouds out there at the moment.

I ponder what to do this afternoon, after walking down to collect Hero. Yesterday was spent at the beach in North Cornwall; an hour and a bit’s hop down the dual carriageway takes us to Trebarwith Strand, a beautifully Atlantic beach with huge breakers and small rock pools just right for a day’s pottering. There is sand in the bottom of the trug which holds the chaos of our regularly-worn shoes. We all have slightly pink noses, and Hero already has a generous sprinkling of freckles. Today, I decide, is a sandpit day, which may even mean I get to do some more seed-planting in the greenhouse while Mirth rolls about on the grass and Hero chases about with Wixon in between making sand cakes and leaf casseroles. I also intend to order a Kombucha scoby today, having read lots about how great this can be for all sorts of things, including eczema, my current lack-of-sleep-exacerbated irritant. (Experiences, anyone? Recipes? Recommendations?)

What’s today in your neck of the woods?

Ahem.

I digress.

Yes. Nappies. Nappies. Nappies are a complete sod. So far, we have had several bouts of nappy rash, each time we’ve tried to get Mirth into the cloth nappies I bought when I was pregnant with Hero. We’ve been using various lotions and potions, the creams of despair which we visited last time around, and this time we’ve had a similar result, with the small exception that I found, much to my displeasure and general cheesed-offedness, that two weeks using disposable baby wipes (Waitrose, since you ask, which come with the tantalisingly named ‘bot butter’) seemed to clear up all traces of the damn rash, when combined with disposable nappies. Sod, sod, sodditty sod sod.

We have organic cotton Tots Bots, and some man-made ones called Fluffles. We have tried PUL wraps (both Motherease and Tots Bots, and then again some on loan from friends, made, I think, by Nature Babies). We have tried wool wraps, carefully lanolised into oblivion before wearing. We have tried fleece wraps, which always make my brain hurt a bit because you use them to wrap up nappies so that clothes don’t get wet, and yet you also use fleece as nappy liners so that bottoms don’t stay wet… Either the wee goes through the damn fleece or it doesn’t, OK, universe? We have tried fleece, silk, bamboo, hemp, disposable paper and something else I forget for liners, and boosters. And still, the bot, it getteth sore in record time.

Which brings me to another unfortunate conclusion. As well as nappies hating my whole family, I fear that eco-friendly washing liquids hate us too. For it occurred to me: in our nappy trials last time around, the one thing I never tried was kick-ass washing stuff. I thought, as is perhaps natural, that chemically things could spell only doom and gloom for all things bot and indeed for all things sensitive skin, and I quietly, yet in my own mind unrelatedly mourned the fact that things never seemed to get particularly clean in our washes; indeed, some things came out looking insultingly similar to their state upon entering said wash. Then the penny dropped. Ah. Yes. The washing stuff (in this case, Ecover, Bio-D and soapnuts) is the only thing we never tried changing. So, here I am, hiding my Birkenstocks in shame, using Persil. I loathe the idea of using chemically things. I really do. But I also loathe the idea of having to soak anything remotely resembling a stain for hours in warm water and eco-friendly stain remover to stand even a chance of it looking any different when it emerges from the washing machine. And I loathe having to wash things twice, when once, really, should do it. And I loathe opting for sixty degree washes when I’d rather use a forty, or even a thirty, cycle.

I have to say, so far, the ‘standard’ washing powder seems to do a much better job. Which pisses me right off, not least as I have a bulk-order load of one of the eco versions to use up, and every time I stick it in the machine, I pretty much resign myself to accepting clothes which look fairly grubby. (The sun is a great bleaching agent, I find.)

Anyway, I have formed a plan. If, after this, we still get the nappy rash back within two days of cloth-wearing, I give in. I do. I truly do. I will sell the sodding nappies, the bastard wraps and possibly even the cloth wipes we’ve accrued. I will stop making camomile-tea-based nappy wipe solution, and I will stop fretting about the sodding rash because it won’t bloody well be there if I stop trying to be ecologically conscious. So, a ninety degree wash with conventional washing powder, and an extra rinse, and a day in the sunshine, and then we try these nappies one more time.

If you have any nappy recommendations, if you think that the nappies we bought just aren’t perhaps best suited to skin that’s easily pissed off or you have the best recipe for nappy wipes, then do tell. I am all ears, genuinely, as the last thing I want to do is add to the huge quanties of landfill generated by the average baby-including household.

Ugh.

This thrilling post was brought to you by months of frustration, coupled with an over-active social conscience. Ahem.

It’s 10.42 and I am sitting in the kitchen in my pyjamas. Well, sort of. I have a black furry fleece jacket on too, which, in my book, means I am very nearly dressed; hey – what’s a pair of owl pyjamas between friends? I have consumed my own body weight in tea, and am trying to summon the gumption to do, well, anything other than sitting here procrastinating. It was not a brilliant night. Not the worst I’ve ever had, but still, I was awake more than I was asleep, and Mirth was unhappy more than she was asleep, which isn’t a good combination, really. I am trying to set my sights realistically low for this weekend; I know that the batshit mother who shouts and indulges in ranty-ranty-rants is just about at the top of the path, and that much more of this will have her through that door like a rat down a drainpipe. So, I am thinking that just keeping the house tidy, and making sure we eat, and maybe getting out for a walk is about the most I should aim for. That and some quiet time without any company. I do find I need time alone these days; well, I think I always have needed that time, but it’s only in recent years that it’s become hard enough to engineer that I’ve noticed its absence, if that makes sense. Yesterday afternoon, I collected Hero from pre-school and we walked the mile or so back home. I took Mirth upstairs to our room for her afternoon sleep, and came down, fully prepared to do something entertaining and stimulating with Hero while Mirth slept, only to find that she wanted to spend time in the garden with Wixon, our insanely furry older cat. That time turned out to be over an hour and a half, spent mostly charging about with Wixon following because of a tantalising piece of string dangled just out of reach. This in turn meant that I cooked dinner, tidied the kitchen, lusted after some Noro yarn online and sorted washing out in the relative peace and tranquillity of solitude. (Well, there may have been US TV on courtesy of internet streaming when I knew Hero wasn’t about to come in, but that is another story…) It did me a lot of good; I hadn’t realised how much I was daunted by the afternoon until it was over, and hadn’t been the hard slog I’d anticipated when I woke in the morning, knackered after a night of up-and-down-and-round-the-houses with Mirth. Sometimes being a mother feels like the only reason I exist, in the best of ways – I look at my children and simply can’t believe that I have been this lucky not once but twice, and my heart feels so full that the only expression it can possibly offer of this immense love I hold for them is the spontaneous appearance of tears, silent and joyful, rolling down my face as I smile at whichever child I am holding. But then there is the counterpart to that, when everything feels like the hardest work possible, the highest hill to climb, the sharpest learning curve to master. What I am coming to realise is that the truthfulness of these states is not mutually exclusive; rather, it seems to me that motherhood is both the hardest and best work that I can do.

This wasn’t supposed to be about all this at all, you know, but for some reason my emotions seem to be running very high at the moment, and I keep thinking about motherhood, and my own mother, and how things are going for us. It’s hard work, isn’t it, life, sometimes. But good work. Yes. Good.

Things are coming along here. Quercus has spent this week back at his desk-job (though at the moment his working week consists of a nearly-nine-to-five day for only three days a week) while we waited to hear back from electricians and heating engineers, and while we sorted out some practical things like sourcing wall lights which didn’t make us physically cringe, and finding curtain poles and rings and whatnot which didn’t require the loss of a major organ or a limb normally used for, say, walking. We are living in the kitchen, and thanking our lucky stars every day that a) we managed to finish the extension before we did this phase of work, so that we have a nice kitchen and a nice bathroom, and b) the weather is getting milder as each day passes and the world turns, bringing spring ever nearer and the fine weather which will mean the garden feels like another room of our house.

Talking of, Hero and I spent a pleasant hour or so planting seeds for this year’s veggie garden (butternut squash, tomatoes, parsley, basil, chard and beets so far, with the plan being that we’ll try for pumpkins, courgettes, sprouts, cabbages [the gorgeous January King], spinach, kale and a few other winter bits and bats later in the year) and clearing out the greenhouse (how is it that we leave it alone for much of the year only to find it’s a complete state whenever we return to it? How does that happen? Is there some sort of greenhouse-related goblin out there that we’ve never yet caught sight of?), and somehow we’ve acquired a third – yes, third! – lawnmower, free at the side of the road, which Quercus reckons will be good once fixed up (it’s petrol, and has a metal deck, which is apparently all-important in such things). The garden is coming alive, with birds happy to eat the food Hero puts out a few times a week, and cats lounging in the shade of unexpectedly warm March sun.

It looks as if I will take myself and the childer off to Sussex again later this week; I view this with a mixture of enthusiasm because it means more progress, and reluctance because it involves more driving than I’d like, and of course time away from both home and Quercus, which is never easy. My sleep trials continue; Mirth is currently going off to sleep easily and quickly for naps in the day, and at bedtime, but she wakes probably four times a night, with one of those wakings tending to take well over an hour of intermittent wailing and me upping-and-downing in a bid to get her back to sleep. She is also waking for the day before six, which is challenging me, frankly. Fortunately, Hero is sleeping well these days, which is just as well, given my comatose state for much of the day. I am in that hinterland of half-waking, half-sleeping which I know so well from the time when Hero was little, and which I like so little. Some days, if I’m honest, it feels as if the lack of sleep is just ruining my life; other days, most days, I am more realistic about it – it will pass; it is what it is; I can at least content myself with the knowledge that I am not going against my principles in my handling of night-wakings, and that so far, I am handling it with less frustration than I felt with Hero. But – realistically – something does need to change. I do not like myself when all I am managing is short daytime sleeps taken when Mirth sleeps in a frantic bid to catch up on the lost hours of the night; I am snappy, short-tempered, frustrated, lethargic. Rightly or wrongly, I set myself higher standards than the achievement of a relatively clean house, a fed-and-watered child, a vague notion of where we are in the cycle of grocery shopping, washing and tidying. To feel happy, to feel myself, to feel sane I need also to achieve a few things for myself, even if they are for other people ultimately – as such, knitting, whether it’s a cardigan for Hero or a shawl for myself (the latter being the current project), ticks the box, as does writing, as does anything creative, really. I just need that sort of thing to get through the difficulties of the continual night-waking without losing all sight of who I am, without dwindling to a mater-automaton who walks through the days with a mouth snarling into a growl and a continual sense of both ‘poor me’ and ‘evil you’. I must be more than that; I just must, and not least for the poor sods who have to live with me. (All I can say is thank all that’s holy for lactational amenorrhea. Just imagine this + PMS – hoo boy!)

It is not, after all, Quercus’s fault that he can’t feed Mirth in the middle of the night, any more than it is Mirth’s fault that, despite not exactly fading away at about twenty pounds at nearly seven months, she isn’t ready to stop feeding at night. Nor is it her fault that my impatience to get back to a slight pattern at night, to a little more sleep than this, is partly due to the three and a bit years of continually disrupted nights which preceded her birth. So, today, I breathe out again, and I try to accept that tonight will be the same, and probably tomorrow night, and probably the night after. I try to set aside my worries about how I will manage this little sleep when I have to go back to my desk job (which will still be part-time, and won’t be until August, despite my early-start fretting). I try to think of the chaos and disruption of a small house crawling with dust, electricians, heating engineers and building supplies mixed in with the usual detritrus of small children – a kitchen rug covered in small, bare-foot-hurting wooden animals, an always-overflowing washing basket, a table sticky with… something… – as a necessary part of the overall project. And above all, I try to remember to be grateful for all this. That we asked this heady mixture into our lives. That, for the most part, it is a good mixture, and we love it, and we are lucky, lucky, lucky to be able to do so much of what we do.

And for today, that is all.

Things are coming along nicely. Quercus has buggered about with the woodwork between the sitting room and what used to be our dining room; we have shelves, and pieces of wood to support the first floor, as in pieces which actually touch the floor as well as the ceiling… which makes a pleasant change from what was there previously, it transpires – !

So, my day has been full of mopping super-dusty floors, cleaning super-dusty surfaces and generally unpacking the things we brought back from Sussex. Tomorrow I hope I’ll finish sorting through the things, and gradually we’re moving towards the next bit of this work – we have an electrician booked! and a heating engineer! – which will probably see me taking the children away again for another few weeks. I find this harder than I’d expected, in the unexpected ways – I can cope with the night wakings and the early-morning starts, and I can cope with always being on duty, but I so miss having an adult to talk to who doesn’t just take the opposing view for the sake of it, and I really miss just the friendship of my husband, perhaps a tad pathetically. Also, being a bit of a home-creature, I also miss having my own space, albeit a tiny chaotic one, just to be in. But I’m aware that we’re really very lucky to have somewhere that I can go for extended periods like this, complete with howling-first-thing-and-leaping-on-your-head Hero and middle-of-the-night-wailing-for-ages-and-ages-and-ages Mirth, and for that I am super-thankful, frankly.

My head doesn’t appear to have anything more useful or interesting to say than that tonight; I think the short rations of sleep that I’ve been existing on over the last three weeks, together with a lot of practical decisions to be made and research to be done while we’re back here, have turned my brain to mush. So, tell me, dear reader, what you have been doing, and what tomorrow will bring you, and let me pass you a virtual cup of hot chocolate while we catch up on such doings.

Anyway. A bright sunny day in Devon; cold, but gloriously fresh, with clouds stretched thin across a cerulean sky. Quercus, Hero and I are packing up the house. So far, we have books shoved into boxes, and most of the sort of detritus of normal life is following suit. Our living room and what’s now known as the room between (our old dining room) will be out of action for probably two months, I should think; we’ll be restricted to the kitchen, the bathroom and the bedrooms, but at least we’re lucky enough to have a large kitchen with space to beetle about like a mad thing (Hero), to kick and explore (Mirth), and to eat, take care of, read, knit and just be (Quercus and me, given time). So, two weeks away initially, so that Quercus can demolish ceilings and strip ancient wallpaper (vinyl) and plaster from the cob, and then we will regroup to form the next plan. Hopefully, I won’t be away for the entire duration of the work, but posting here will be even more sporadic than it has been of late, I fear.

I haven’t managed to get to grips with my waffle iron Chrimbly present yet, either, and I fear now that it may be some time before I do. It sits by the stove, awaiting another try; the first time, I think I hadn’t got it quite hot enough, but I have high hopes that next time I’ll crack it. Just need the winter to stay around long enough for us to get back from Sussex and be able to use the room where the stove is again… It’s in the sitting room, and that will probably be out of action for a loooong time as lighting it with lime plaster going off would not result in good things. Of course the sod of this is that the whole house will be noticeably colder; we have a heater in the kitchen but nothing in the bedrooms, so I view this proposition with a less than enthusiastic sentiment. Did I whinge on about central heating? I think not. The plan is that we are going to fit wood-fired central heating, run off a back boiler on the stove, with a thing called an accumulator tank, which should mean that it’s not just a question of stove lit = warm, stove not lit = cold. Now that I type this, it seems oddly familiar. Clearly I am losing my mind in one way or another; either I’ve written about this earlier or I simply think that I have. Ahem.

In the meantime, here are some things of wintry warmth, while the winter weather persists. First, I finished Hero’s cardigan, a rather splendid hue of purple in a pleasingly quick super-chunky wool. Then I discovered rice pudding. Oh, rice pudding. Where have you been all my life? Anyway, here is the recipe I have come to.

Spiced Rice Pudden

Wossinit?
About a mug of pudding rice
Somewhere between a pint and a pint and a half of goats’ milk (obviously ordinary, soya or rice would work just as well)
Cinnamon
Dark brown sugar
Coconut cream (I used a sachet of the Patak’s variety, but have also tried a half-carton too)
Cardamom pods
Lemon zest
Ground allspice

Then…
Sling it all in a nice thick-bottomed pan, and cook it as gently as your impatience will permit, poking it suspiciously until inspiration strikes, at which point sling in some dried fruit of some variety (we’ve had cranberries, mixed dried fruit and apricots so far) and continue to poke. Pop a lid on, checking back from time to time to ensure no calamity has occurred, and as soon as everything looks nicely squishous, scoff it down with a cup of cocoa.

Right. Off I go, to continue packing up the rooms next under attack. It feels oddly nostalgia-inducing, this process; we have lived in this house for six years with things pretty much as they were when we moved in (at least in the case of these last two rooms), and while I will not be sorry to bid the mould and the horrible, horrible carpet goodbye, I can’t help but think of the time when we first moved here: so much has happened since then that our selves as we were then seem almost to be another incarnation. Hmm. Must not get sidetracked, particularly in self-indulgent melancholia, so wish me luck (and spiders).

We have been making rather a lot of window thingies. Well, technically, I have been folding things like a mad creature, while Hero menaces tissue paper and glue. They are quite addictive, though, these things – I so love looking at the colours with the sun coming through the window, and anything which reminds me to look outside, that the world will not always be covered either in rain or in mud, can only be a good thing. (I shouldn’t say this, really, given that the last three days have brought bright winter sunshine and crackling starry nights.)

Hero has a new coat, and pink and purple boots made for her by the very lovely shoemaker in Exeter. Her choice of colours, which was nice. The buckles are a complete sod, it must be said, but ultimately they are lovely boots, and how many people get to choose not only the colours but the style of their shoes, from a virtually limitless list of suggestions? If you can’t do it when you’re three and a half, then when?

Our newest familiar, Hecate, is settling in well. Wixon is, shall we say, quite taken with her.

The aforementioned winter sunshine. Good, isn’t it?

Both the heart-shaped casserole (full of rice pudding, a rather unlikely favourite of mine of late; sadly I am alone in this as neither Hero nor Quercus can be persuaded of its divinity) and the cow coffee pot visible in the background are things which make my heart sing whenever I spot them.

My ridiculous magpie-like love of shiny colourful things took over when I saw this sling (a Girasol Earthy Rainbow, if you’re interested) for a very good price indeed. We have bought next to nothing new for Mirth; it seemed nice that she should have a sling to herself, given how much use it’s going to get!

Our bedroom, post-transformation. Look! A ceiling! Which stays up and everything! Not particularly neat at the moment and covered in baby-related paraphernalia, but the room is blissful, and I am quite in love with the increasing quantities of wood which are becoming visible in our house. (Not least as their presence means the roof is not about to join us for afternoon tea.)

Mirth, aptly named both here and in real life, sporting a rather fetching bib and velvety suit passed on to us by some very lovely friends.

Mirth investigating this whole sitting malarky. Note also Pink Mousey, who looks like Sniff of Moomin fame, and who was sent to us by the lovely L-Q-S.

Mad hair and mad exploits with a new puzzle house and a plethora of animals. Hero’s ‘farm’ now includes – but is not limited to – a camel, a fox, a wolf and a wild boar. She is quite the connoiseur.

Such a smiley baby, it is just not true. Also, note plumptious legs – this babe is already nearly 20 lb! That explains all those night-feeds, then…

Star lights on shelves of jars with various bits and bobs. Including plastic reindeer. As you do.

It’s February already, somehow. Mirth will be six months old on the tenth of the month, and, in between sanding and waxing a Stokke highchair bought for £20 at an advent fair, I am wondering how on earth she can on the verge of joining us for dinner, yet her careful attentive watching as she sits on one or other of us while we eat assures me that she is, as does her poise when sitting and her reaching hands as she sees glasses and cutlery move. January has been a difficult month – one of those where everything goes wrong – and we are still finding our feet in its wake, but Mirth and Hero provide me with daily joy, genuine glee, at having two such bright souls in my life. (Yes, even at 3 a.m.) So, I am reminding myself of the happy things as I reach for the strength, the persistence, to sort out all the irritations, the challenges, the oh-you-just-bloody-well-would-wouldn’t-yous. (Current tally: frozen pipes = no washing machine or dishwasher and only sporadic sink water; new washing machine as last one gave up; car breaking down intermittently since Christmas Eve because of a veg oil conversion; my car’s brakes decided to stop working properly due to Comedy French Wiring (a well-known term on sad-git car forums); sleep, the lack thereof; money, the lack thereof; hard-drive dependability, the lack thereof.)

And in less than two weeks, we begin the next phase of work on our house, and Mirth, Hero and I will be heading to West Sussex for a few weeks (anyone local, do say hello!), to stay with Quercus’s mother while Quercus takes ceilings and plaster down. As part of this, we are meeting a central heating engineer later on today; I am quite excited (though I’d be so more fully if I had worked out an infallible bank-robbery strategy first, given that we are probably looking at about six thousand pounds to do the sort of thing we need to do). Our pipes are frozen for the fourth year running today; we had a heating plan and a plumbing plan designed for us by ex-friend David, and basically the latter sucks and the former never materialised. So, we’re finally taking the bull by the proverbial and seeing if we can at least fix the heating problem. At the moment, we have a woodstove in the living room, and that’s it. What we’re hoping for is a larger stove (12kw or so) with a back boiler, and thus a radiator in the kitchen, a towel rail in the bathroom, and radiators in each of the bedrooms. Of course, our house being difficult and minute, it is a tricky job and the heights and levels are all wrong. But it would be so, so good to get this sorted once and for all – I would not miss the lakes which appear on our windowsills each morning, and nor would I miss the mould which forms when things get damp, and nor would I miss the searing heat we achieve in the living room combined with the chilling see-your-breath cold of the bedrooms.

Still to come: the saga of the Steinway piano sale (or not), the rice pudden recipe to end all rice puddens, and the fact that I appear to be sliding towards vegan cooking.

So, that’s where I am at the moment. Where are you, internets?

Remind me that these nights of five, six, seven wakings will pass, would you, internets? And that being awake for two hours with one of those sessions is not de rigeur forever?

Ahhh.

January. January. Time of resolution (or lack thereof). Of dark days, and short evening. Of lengthening days, and, if you are us, so far, cars which break down. Lots of times. Twice, with a small baby with bronchiolitis (a horrible closey-uppy breathing-tubesy thing which affects small babies rather nastily) on motorways. And then again, just for the fun of it.

So, tell me nice things which cheer me up. Tell me things which aren’t about asthma, or bronchiolitis, or middle-of-the-night wake-up calls. Go on. Do.