Friday and Saturday 10-11 November 2006

Well, I did manage to pretty much take the day off on Friday, other than answering a couple of emails. Chris's cold got quite bad, after he'd thought he was better, so he wasn't up to going into town. Rosemary and I did go into town, however. We went to the market and got some nice veggies from Gilda's organic stall and got some tinned beans and some nice granary bread from Sunshine.

We then went to Costa Coffee, where we had coffee with Granddad (well, I had hot chocolate and chocolate cake - it's so difficult to resist!). Rosemary was quite nicely awake for Granddad, which was good. I then thought we only had half an hour until Rosemary's jabs, so rushed round the supermarket and then round Mackays (or M&Co as it now seems to be called) getting some 3-6 months clothes for Rosemary, as she's grown out of the majority of her 0-3 months clothes (does depend on the make though, there are a few Newborn size clothes that she still fits).

We then got to the doctors surgery only to discover that I hadn't changed the time on my phone yet, so we were actually an hour early. So we called Granddad to see if he was still in town and went and sat with him outside the pub. I had a coke and Granddad had a sparkling fancy fruit juice (can't remember what it had in it, but it was very nice) as he's not drinking again now, because he's on Interferon (think that's how it's spelled!) and other medication. Granddad gave me the money for Rosemary's clothes, as he'd been wanting to buy her something put couldn't think what. So that was nice. Granddad held Rosemary for about 3 minutes while I nipped over the road to the pet shop to buy some anti-flea shampoo for Wesley (they only had the natural stuff, not the chemical stuff, but I got it anyway). By the time I got back she was crying for me. However, it seems that was probably more to do with being hungry, as she then had a feed for about 20 minutes.

We then went back to surgery, a little bit early but not too early. There were saw one of the women from the post-natal group with her baby and husband who were also there for jabs. (I can't remember their names - I'm dreadful at remembering anyone's names!) Rosemary had a similar reaction to the first lot of jabs. She screeched for about a second and then cried 'normally' afterwards. We went back out to the waiting room and I fed her for about 10 minutes (you have to wait 10 minutes, anyway, in case of a bad reaction), which soothed her quite quickly.

Rosemary slept quite a bit after that. She fell asleep on the way home and pretty much stayed asleep from then until about 6.30pm. Instead of working I sat on the sofa and watched ER and read a Mother and Baby magazine. I did also do a couple of loads of washing, a couple of loads of dish-washing, some hand dish-washing and emptied the bins. Put a bunch of washing away, too. Didn't get around to making soup as I'd planned, though, so just had the carton of fresh soup that was in the fridge (it needed eating anyway) and Chris had a tin of Chicken Broth.

While Rosemary was awake for a bit in the evening, she was not her usual alert and talkative self. She had another nap downstairs for an hour and a half and went to bed properly at just after 11pm. She slept through to 5.45 am, when she had a good feed, but wasn't too keen on going back in her crib, so she came upstairs with me and had a half hour chat and sing, before going back to sleep until gone 10am, during which time I did a bunch of work. (No more than 1 day off a week for me!)

We then went into town again, where we wandered round the market. We went into Adams to look for long-sleeved vests, but they didn't have any. We did get 6 pairs of tights, though, in 3-6 months size and a bit more funky than the ones from Wilkinson. We also went to Woolies, where we got the last pack of long-sleeved 3-6 month vests (yay!) along with a couple of outfits. (Well, I'd been planning on spending money on clothes for her the day before, but Granddad paid for them, so...) We popped into Somerfield for a few bits and bobs and then started walking home, but saw that there was a small French market on. Rosemary had actually fallen asleep just after we came out of Adams and had slept deeply through going in the other shops. Bought some Tartiflette (think that's how you spell it) from the French market, which is a Savoyard speciliaty that I never had when living there because it always had bacon in it. This stall had a veggie version as well as the bacon one, though. I wasn't that impressed though, although Chris did polish off his bacon one.

Didn't do any more work though when she slept in the afternoon. I sat on the sofa watching more ER, but mostly reading the Baby Signing book that finally arrived. I also had a little nap myself on the sofa! And did more loads of washing and other houseworky stuff. We had lots of fun in the early evening when she woke up. And Chris came downstairs for a bit and played with her, too. I love watching them together now; it's so adorable when she smiles up at him or starts cooing and gurgling at him. Awww. Ooh, very exciting... she picked up a book! It was just a plastic one that I'd given her more for the purpose of chewing than reading, as I think she's teething at the moment. I had read it to her as well. Anyway she picked it up and held it up for a bit in a similar way to what she did with Nellie the Elephant (see the video post that will be posted a bit later when the videos have finished uploading). It was, of course, just a case of her picking up something that was there when she was ready to pick something up - because she's exploring in that way - but it got me particularly excited, purely because it was a book!

She started looking a bit tired at around 9pm, so I put her in her bed clothes and she had a good long kick about on her changing mat, with her nappy off and chatting away to Nappy Monster. Then we went into the bedroom and turned the little light on and the big light off. I put the TV on, very quietly. Unfortunately, the Sky box had frozen, so I was stuck watching 'Meet the Fockers', although it was interesting/embarassing to see the Granddad doing babysigning with his grandson and being generally overly enthusiastic with the intellectual stimulation. Hmm, I'm not that bad am I? (I know I'm not, actually, so that was a rhetorical question!) She had a very good long feed (about an hour) and went down to sleep about 10.30pm. And slept through to 5.45 am again, then went back down in her crib at 6.15am. She's still asleep now, at 9am.

Instead of working (oops), I have been writing essays about baby development (see earlier post) and uploading photos and videos (see earlier and next post). I'm now going to try to get a bit of work done, though I imagine Rosemary will be waking within the hour, so I'll probably be doing some work during her afternoon sleep today (assuming she sticks with the pattern of having a long afternoon sleep, of course!). I'll probably pay for this later in the week and will end up having to have a couple of nights of only three hours sleep in order to get all my work done. Hopefully not, though.

Alternatively, I could get a few extra hours by having Granny come round and play with Rosemary one day. I need to start accepting that this is an OK thing to do now and then, and not something to feel guilty about. Then again, I really don't want to make it into something that happens all the time, because I have to work 10 hours a day or similar. Because I want to be the main person looking after Rosemary - alongside Chris, of course - and not be always handing her over to other people, even if those other people are her grandparents who, of course, would happily spend every moment with her and are perfectly capable of looking after her!

Yeesh! This blog seems to often end up with my expressing motherly guilt about something or other. Ah well, I'm told that it is inevitable to feel almost constant guilt and worry when you become a mother, so I'd better get used to it.