Woblinland

Josie makes me laugh. Today, we were hanging the washing out and she was shouting very loudly. I had been telling her for an hour or so not to shout in the house, as Andrew was trying to work and Lori was having a nap. The exchange went something like this:

Me: Stop shouting!
Josie: *shouts*
Me: I've been telling you to stop shouting all morning. How many more times do I have to tell you?
Josie: Um...(thinks)... eight.
Me: Oh.

A rhetorical question is possibly not the best parenting tool.

I'm going to post this to a couple of communities but I thought I'd do a test one here in case anyone is passing. I have my very last essay of second year to do and quite frustratingly it has a questionnaire component, annoying when one is on maternity leave and doesn't have access to the classmates that everyone else does! So...I picked LJ as my website to look at, thinking that at least I have access to a community of people here and have composed the following questionnaire.

It is tres pants, my lecturer in psychological testing would be embarassed to have taught me, but at this stage with a 3 year old and a 6 month old and a husband with many deadlines it is simply a case of getting it done asap. 'Tis a pilot anyway with the intent that it would be refined later if the subject was followed up.

So, see below if you fancy replying to it for me, I'd be most grateful. You can either simply cut and paste into a comment with the answers or if you want it to be private then feel free to cut and paste it into an email and send it to my uni account: lcook@cis.strath.ac.uk

( Questionnaire )

Thanking you

Edit: Oh, and anyone who passes by if you can help, pleeeeease get all your friends to fill one in too. I would much greatly appreciate it!

We are on holiday just now at my Mum and Dad's house. By we, I mean me, Josie and Lori as Andrew stayed behind to fix some stuff in the house and do some work, unfortunately he came down with a really bad cold and general malaise just as we were leaving (lucky escape for us!) so he has been mainly recuperating on the new red sofa. Onthe other hand, we have been busy busy busy. Planting potatoes, peas and nasturtiums in what used to be James and my old sand pit. Josie wants to dig them up now, the day after planting, and has had to be explained to that they need time to grow. While digging we found some archaelogical evidence of its former use - a plastic sheet with sand still sticking to it that was used to line the sandpit and and discarded Mumch Bunch freeze pop wrapper. We've also put up a tent, but it is a bit glum for garden playing now. I am not a sun lover, but I do wish it was a bittle brighter.

Yesterday we had visitors: 4 and a hlaf year old Ross and his little sister Heather, 2 and a half. Josie played very well with them, if a bit bossily! Ross and I tried to shore up a Lego house which his sister and Josie seemed intent on knocking down when he turned to me with a puzzled look and asked: "Are you a grown-up?". I replied, "Well, what do you think?". He looked puzzled and replied, "Well, you are very tall", as though he had presumed I was a child and then suddenly realised that if I was, I must be a very large child!

I think if other children can presume you are a child, and yet you can still keep order (which I was) then that's not too bad a thing!

We get an organic veg box, and this week we had loads of apples left over. Josie seems to have gone off them a bit. To use them up I turned them, and some pears, into puree for freezing in little pots for Lori in a few months. It was quite relaxing to be back making baby purees again, and pleasing to be using all the assorted tupperware I have acquired. By the time she's 6 months old there may be a veritable orchard's worth of puree in the freezer though.

I've set some aside for Josie though - I think she'll appreciate the apple more in stewed form this week. She choked on a bit of orange and was very sick all over the rug (and me and Lori), so she's been a bit wary of fruit she needs to chew this week. I was holding Lori and Andrew was out when it happened, and I thought I was going to have to quickly put Lori down and turn Josie upside down to unchokify her. Luckily, nature intervened in the form of violent retching. Not so luckily for me and Lori, we were in her path. Cue a bath for Lori, while Josie tried to help, and as she was out of her nappy, chose that exact time to need a wee and not know where the potty was. Cue wee on the floor and now two rooms for me to have to clean the floor of. By the time Andrew came home all was gone though, with no sign of the disaster!

Still, it's better than some of the projects I worked on last year - so maternity leave still wins!

I had a lovely Mother's Day, or as Josie decided it was "Mummy's Day". Despite that decision, and Andrew's schooling, when she came downstairs with my breakfast of her devising (strawberries and cream cheese on toast, with smoothie) she wished me a "Happy New Year".

He presents, which she selected herself, were: Kingdom Hearts 2 and a purple alarm clock. She apparently thinks I need to wake up earlier to play the PS2 with her. Hurray!!

We have just started potty training, which is going wellish, as she has an aversion to pooing in the potty but is happy to wee in it in return for wearing "big girl pants". She wasn't ready for ages and then all of a sudden it has happened in a flash, although still a long way to go before nappies can be dispensed with in the day completely.

There's so much to do around the house, and I never seem to get the time at the moment. Andrew is preparing for Conpulsion, so is busy after a little break. Before I go back to work I'd like to learn how to knit (again - I knew whan I was 6 but have forgotten) and set up the sewing machine and learn how to sew properly with it. All this requires a much tidier and less damp house, so a trip to Ikea is in order to kick start this, plus we need a new sofa as ours has broken.

I've been going to baby massage classes, which are good fun, and Josie has been coming too and playing with the teacher's 3 year old - she has finally made a friend ans asks to go to baby massage every day!

It's 5:30ish and I have't been able to sleep for about an hour - I have a really sore throat and bad cold that has made my SPD even worse. I really didn't want to miss work at the moment, but I'm not sure I'm going to have a choice due to the whole lack of sleep and not really being able to walk. I am very glum.

I've also lost my workmobile somewhere in the house, on silent. It's not where I left it and I am now worried. Which is not helping me sleep.

On the subject of strange, it struck me a while ago, but I have never written it down. The Lindsay who I am in my dreams, (my avatar, for want of a better word) isn't pregnant yet.

With Josie, I was pregnant in my dreams a lot quicker. Dream Lindsay looked and felt and had experiences of being pregnant. Dream Lindsay hasn't yet this time. I think it's because last time I had a lot of anxiety dreams about being pregnant - the fear of the unknown. This time, I'm a bit more relaxed about the whole thing, so my subconscious is not feeling the need to act out labour and new babydom like it did last time.

It is perhaps quite revealing about why we dream what we dream - is it just worry, or is it valuable practice of how you would cope if some of the crazy dream stuff happened?

Interestingly, I have notices disparities between Dream Lindsay and me before - she lags a job or so behind me. So when I first started at the Bank, she was still working at the Balmoral and having nightmare shifts in the restaurant. Likewise, she lingered at Pizza Hut long after I had left. I think she left University around about the same time.

I know that people may just say that I am just dreaming about the past - but vivid dreams, taht you remember every night, have a continuity of their own. Especially when Dream Lindsay has talents that I don't have that persist and develop in dream world. Like flying, which is not simply being passively whizzing through the air in a dream anymore than driving, or being on a bus, is a passive in real life. There is a reason to need to fly, knowing you can fly, taking off, maintaining height and speed, changing direction to go where I want to go and landing, and subsequently not flying. It is part of the story of the dream.

Anyhow, have been meaning to write about the weirdness of Dream Lindsay not catching up with me yet for a while.

hapimeses has just left for Games Day, a process which always reminds me how utterly symbiotic we have become after 11 years of being together and 10 1/2 of living together - since I was 17 and he 19 - we really have grown up together.

It's not so bad when you are the one going away, as I find when Josie and I head off to my parents on occasion and leave Andrew to work. But when you're at home, and Josie is in bed, it's unspeakably lonely. And he's only been gone since 25 past nine, 5 minutes ago. Humph. These things are supposed to get easier with time, as the first passion of love fades, but I don't think it ever really has (either faded, or got easier). As every year goes by we simply become more intertwingled as a pair, more things that make it impossible to imagine 2 people where there is just "us". Even the arrival of Josie, which many couples say "changed their lives irrevocably" merely added a third little best friend to our house, who now adds to the mix of unique memes that make "us", where everything that happens is defined by what it is to "us" not what it is to "me". The rhythm of our lives, so far removed from most people's late 20s routine of work and party, suffered a little blip of sleeplessness and has now settled back in.

Why has it been relatively easy for us? Because, unlike most folk, we were both there, 24 hours a day, for the first (and most difficult) 6 months of Josie's life. We functioned much more like a little support unit for each other, and many of the mothers I was in hospital with were extremely jealous when their partners had to go back to work after 2 weeks (a month or 2 if they were lucky) leaving them with a dilemma - who stays up for hours with a baby who won't sleep - the one who goes to work all day, or the one who stays at home and works all day!

The modern maternity and paternity leave system is just not set up to provide the support parents need - and with modern professional parents often being far removed from a support network of grandparents. Going back to our ancestral roots - we Westerners have never lived in such proximity to each other, and yet in such isolation. A strange paradox of modern living. A tribe of 30 or 40 wandering hunter-gatherers would give each other more support and human contact than a city of 400,000.

My child and I are alone in our box made of bricks, my husband is away, and I have no tribe to sing songs around a fire with and slowly fall asleep while it dies down to warm embers. I am merely surrounded by people in their own brick boxes.

The world is strange.

Woo hoo! I just got my Yougov account credited for my first two surveys, a grand total of 50 whole pence for each.

Contrary to most people, I quite like doing surveys. Especially online for a reputable polling agency where I can cross every single box that says "Don't contact me except to tell me about new surveys".

If you like doing surveys too, sign up via this link and I will get half of whatever you make for the first three months. 25 extra pence. Woo hoo! I'd be rich, rich I tell you. I signed up on my brother's link so he's just made an extra 25p for each of my surveys. I bet he's pleased. Travelling around the world is an expensive business.

http://www.yougov.com/users/registrationintro_ref.asp?refid=354381&jID=3&sID=1

That's all.

We had a great time at the zoo for Josie's birthday. We saw a tiger having a nap, 4 lion cubs having a nap, lemurs having a nap, koalas having a nap and a polar bear having a swim (poor old lonely bear). You may have sensed a theme - it was incredibly hot, and all the animals and I wanted to do was swim or nap!

Andrew will be uploading a piccyture of Josie at the zoo later.

My brother is ace - he has done the picture for me - here is the link: http://www.jamespcook.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3651