Help! Help….I’m moulting.

….and I don’t approve. Wherever shall I find the time in the day to add ‘hand-weave rug from shed keratin’ to my already busy schedule?

I am cognizant of the fact that hair is meant to become unusually lush and flowy during pregnancy due to the hormonal changes that allegedly also render one all glowing and stuff. But as I recall it (somewhat bitterly), for me being pregnant was more akin to being an overinflated, greased-up, downright spotty barge. With hair that was stick-straw frizzy and (quite unfairly) also flatter than roadkill that had come an emphatic second in an altercation with a ten-wheeler. 

I’m not quite sure how exactly I achieved what should be two incompatible states of coiffure at once, but I did. It probably didn’t help matters that as time wore on I was too busy feeling sorry for myself (and complaining to the internet, of course) to bother brushing it half of the time.

Suffice it to say that I was most emphatically not glowing.

Anyway. I’m feeling more than a little ripped off by the latest turn of events in all matters hair-dressical.

Since I never got the shampoo-commercial lush locks, I had figured that at least I would be spared the post-partum moult. Unfortunately, this has turned out not to be the case.

To put it another way, I can’t think of a single location either on my person or in my house that I have not discovered a freshly-shed clump of hair in the last few days.

• Bathroom floor (including great drifts of the stuff behind the toilet for some weird reason)?

Check. Loads of it.

• Shower drain.

Yep- I’ve had to dig wads of goopy hair (of the well blended with soap and goodness knows what else variety) out of the darn thing on a daily basis, or risk relaunching The Ark when I ablute.

• All down the back of my you-think-I’d-know-better-by-now black t-shirt?

Yessiree! Additionally, the more likely I am to be venturing out in public, the more enthusiastically my rapidly depleting mane decides to make a bid for freedom strand-by-strand.

• Somehow mysteriously mixed in with the butt cream, creating a unpleasantly tangled surprise when I’m pasting it on the undercarriage of one of the Terrible Twosome?

Uh, huh. And it’s an absolute devil to pick hairs off the rear end of a wiggling infant when you’ve just liberally stuck them down with a glob of zinc paste. Believe me.

• In my hairbrush?

Well, duh, I guess. But I bet you didn’t expect me to also admit to having found the stuff in my toothbrush as well.

Sigh.

Sis-ter, more correctly pronounced ‘com-pe-tit-ion’.

Or on how the Terrible Twosome are learning that ANOTHER baby is also competing to be the Centre Of The Universe, and they most emphatically Will Not Be Having With It.

Lately, in an effort to relieve yawping baby boredom inspired by-I-see-the-ceiling-all-day-and-yes-I-know-mother-does-not-vacuum-nearly-often-enough-because-I-have-dust-bunnies-on-my-onesie, I have taken rather a fancy to lining Saag and Naan face to face, propped in sitting. Heck, I have additional hearty encouragement courtesy of our paediatrician given both babies are developing rather flat heads.

If the noticeable decrease in noiseworks is any indication (Hi neighbours! Yes, Naan likes to wake up at 6am, loudly. Sorry ’bout that. But we’re moving soon. Promise!) they seem to derive amusement from looking at the world in a vertical configuration for a change. In Saag’s case, this is equivalent to happy wobbling and for Naan usually represents a gold-plated opportunity to yell in excitement instead of anger. Progress is progress, and I’ll take happy squalling over red-faced complaints about the service in this hotel any day.

It’s also meant to encourage them to interact with one another.

Up until recently they may as well have been facing the wall and watching paint dry for all the interest they have shown in the Other Baby with whom they eternally compete for parental time. I don’t think they’ve even realised that there was competition, to be honest.

However.

I do believe a breakthrough occurred the other day when Naan honest-to-goodness-I’m-not-making-this-up firmly fixed her vision on Saag’s (rather coated with the crusty detrius of a milky meal) gormlessly smiling mug and coo-ed a greeting in Baby. Or perhaps it was a mate-y complaint about the food, or the slovenly service in Hotel Geohde. Who knows?

Unfortunately, Saag ignored Naan’s uncharacteristically gentle greeting (most being a strident howl demanding instant attention forthwith, damnit, or she’ll turn down the corners of her determined little mouth and positively howl). Mostly because she was far too busy being bewildered and befuddled by her dancing visual field.

Yes, stable head control still eludes her. I joke that it’s because it takes valuable energy that could be better spent manufacturing her spectacular fat rolls, which may not be too far from the truth. Apart from having more toes than a sloth is wont to, Saag does somewhat resemble the arboreal animal of do-bugger-all. Albeit a very cute one.

Anyway, Naan seems to have decided that This Snub Means War. Or that perhaps her enemy is weak. Or possibly that there is advantage to be taken in testing the bounds of her much larger companion.

Thus, for the last three occasions that I have risked personal hip dislocation by propping them facing one another, supported solely by my outstretched legs- Naan has progressively gone from item ‘coo’ to item ‘cast evil eye’ at her opponent and repeatedly pushes her feet into whichever bit of Saag is in range with increasing firmness.

Saag as a consequence, has good-naturedly, albeit somewhat absentmindedly, uncomplainingly copped kneading and shoving of clammy (Naan is a clammy baby, she has a grasp that will give you the absolute willies if you don’t know it’s coming) feet to her ankles, pudgy shins, her groin AND presumably as a bonus offer, one well-marinaded vomit over her toes.

But guess who had the last word? The baby with the poorer head control.

Not sure what I mean?

Suffice it to say that Naan has learned a valuable lesson about the role of the Liverpudlian Kiss in a proper sisterly relationship i.e. she got her face just that bit too close and Saag nutted her. Right on the nose. Yep, she howled. Me? I’m still giggling.

Mind you I fully intend to deal with all future disputes thusly: take the sharp things out of easy reach in the kitchen drawer and merely offer bandaids and sympathy to the loser. They’ll figure it out, hopefully without any blood drawn. 

I would think that the nutting was probably not on purpose.

Surely Saag wouldn’t be that underhand?

Possibly.

Or perhaps I have witnessed the Opening Salvo of many years of This Means War.

Now why do I get the feeling that wooden toys (Hi HFF!) will be applied with considerable enthusiasm to various craniums behind my back, once their tiny arms are up to the dastardly task?

BOTW, edition 2.

And so it begins again, the second edition of BOTW. Not sure what I’m talking about? Click on the logo to be taken to the reasoning behind my unsolicited blogaviews and previous BOTW’s.

BOTW. An unsolicited admiration of blog-ness. An acknowledgement of the road travelled. Putting my excessive Google Reader activity to good use. On some level, we all write to be read, don’t we?

This week(ish! don’t forget the ‘ish’, it’s important. I am nothing if not scrupulously honest about my likely inability to keep strictly to my intended weekly frequency), I choose to review:

Taking the Statistical Bullet

Firstly, the quickfire version:

In a nutshell?

Over the infertility rainbow. Parenting an IVF son after recurrent miscarriage. 

The clever search terms version? (incidentally, IS it a ‘boolean’ search if you abuse the plus key excessively, and what advantage does this present over simply bashing words into my nemesis, g.oogle?):

Miscarriage, recurrent miscarriage, IVF, PGD, parenting.

In more detail:

Katie began blogging in August of 2007. She joined the ALI community on the back of multiple miscarriages- six, as her blurb in her left sidebar details.

Again, I shall not over-revise her history (In case I stuff it up. Check out her blog for her story in her own words rather than my clumsy paraphrasing), but…

Her first pregnancy, whilst on the pill, was unplanned but nevertheless a very happy event. But it was not to be, and Katie sadly began bleeding by six weeks and was told her pregnancy was chemical. Needless to say, the pregnancy books that had been happily purchased were now a painful reminder and were put away.

She bravely girded her loins (presumably both literally AND figuratively- and as an aside Katie, as far as I am concerned, will forever be emblazoned on my brain as the blogger who coined the term ‘Sex Nazi’), and tried again.

And miscarried.

And tried again.

And miscarried again.

Recurrent miscarriage testing (after the third traumatic loss), revealed no treatable cause. Yet Katie had another miscarriage during the testing process. I think I thoroughly understand why the ‘statistical bullet’ joke Katie references was no longer remotely funny by this point. Being young, healthy and able to get pregnant but not stay so for no discernible reason was clearly very difficult, as is made clear in her writing about her lost babies.

Katie’s fifth loss was at a heartbreaking eleven weeks, just shy of that mystical twelve week line many of us draw in the imaginary sand.

Then came the empirical treatment with the Femara, HCG triggers for ovulation and progesterone supplementation…..and a sixth miscarriage.

Turning to IVF with PGD, Katie finally dodged the statistical bullet, conceiving her miraculous son (Will) in her first cycle.

She now blogs about parenting after IF, the good, the bad and the sleepless.

Care to read?

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Want to see YOUR blog featured? Like to be in my blogroll? Let me know in the comments section below and I’ll gleefully add you, after all a girl can never have too many hyperlinks in her sidebar.

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Only a week and a bit to go- just a gentle nudge in the direction of composing that brilliant cross-pollination post you’re been brewing and shipping if off via email to your match.

Think he’ll be cross?

So, I know it’s one of those slightly disgusting-ly kept woman-ish traits, but I have a confession to make.

When LS* and I got married, financially-risk-averse-would-keep-her-money-in-a-mattress-if-she-could became one with share-market-credit-card-multiple-loans. It’s always been a tricky balance to keep the peace between a woman who obsessively keeps receipts and ticks off every single item on her bank statement and a man who never opens envelopes with windows on general principles that the contents are usually disagreeable and bound to ruin an otherwise sunny day.

The upshot of all this financial incompatibility is that whilst I begrudgingly accepted a secondary credit card in my husband’s name, I never got one myself.

Yes, I am a functioning adult in all other respects, but I am scared to my very bones of credit. I lose sleep over debt. Any debt. Don’t hold it against me, please.

Anyway, I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

I do believe I have alluded to the fact that LS and I need to acquire a new place of residence um, all stat and stuff. Yet we both prevaricate about the bush like a topiary artist with rusty shears.

Well, I took the bull by the horns.

Would you like to congratulate the new to-be-owner of a partly built never-before-lived-in house? With carpets just begging to be puked all over by crawling sproglettes?

In other words, to make things rather more clear, do you think LS will be a bit surprised when he reads his statement and finds out just how I managed to max out the credit card?

Oops.

*LS. Long Suffering. My beloved spouse, until he gets sick of the ‘suffering’ part, I expect. Or reads his bank statement.

PS: Edited to add- no our credit limit ain’t THAT grand. I put the holding deposit on the card. Now to go hat in hand around the banks begging to get myself in a lot of debt……

I officially give up.

Oh, yes I do.

I believe I have already, quite thoroughly if-I-do-say-so-myself, canvassed some of the multitude of daft questions that come my way on a daily basis.

But, there is one particular question that is really really starting to sh!t me. To be absolutely, completely honest it’s making me want to go all postal on the ask-er, armed solely with a nappy full of Saag’s latest contribution to the fertiliser market, as well as Naan’s rather talented half-curdled well marinaded milky chunder. Oh, and perhaps a blunt spoon for good measure.

Believe me, I could do some damage weaponed suchly, so whatever you do, please, please, please never commit the sin of asking a woman who obviously has had two babies at once if they are twins. Find another way to break the ice.

I beg of you.

Because I mean not only will you at the very best earn a massive ‘Duh!’ in reply, but imagine how it feels to be asked the same incredibly inane question every twenty minutes all damn day? Now I urge you to imagine the poopy-vomity-blunt tablewear involved in the worst case scenario.

But, really, I give up.

You see, recently (in utter desperation) I even clothed the Tiny Tyrants (who, by the way at least in Saag’s case are no longer tiny- that girl could suck the chrome off a towbar, a golfball through a hosepipe and, well, you get it. She eats a lot.) in onesies that had two dirty great cartoons of TWO babies smack bang in the middle of the chest along with the ridiculously chirpy slogan ‘TWINS! Twice the fun’.

Actually they’re twice the screaming, twice the vomit and twice a lot of other things the makers failed to consider, but I digress…

Guess what the first question some I-hope-failed village idiot asked me when I ventured out with both children thusly preemptively passively-aggressively labelled?

Yeah, you got it.

‘Are’ (cringe)

‘They’ (eyelid twitch..)

‘Twins?’ (now where’s that goddamn spoon?)

Apparently they’re not only twice the fun but twice the idiot-magnet.

Belly go up…

….and belly go DOWN. No points given for picking the point at which I spontaneously exploded twins.

A.k.a (you guessed it) a tired, weekend post. Probably horribly misspelled to boot.

Lazy Blogging 101 strikes again, i.e. when low on verbage of meaning simply add pictures and hey presto! A post is born. Except I can’t figure out how to embed the darn thing, and have wasted an hour that could have been better spent creating actual content with meaning swearing fluently about it.

Could you all just play along and click on the link? Ta, ever so. Much obliged.

Looking at the pictures, I am freaked out anew with just how stupidly massive the whole growing-two-babies-at-once made me. The photographic proof stops somewhere at about 34 weeks, after that point I no longer wanted to ‘remember’ since the discomfort was burned in my refluxy throat….

To be honest, (a small disclaimer) I ordered them by my best slap-dash weekend approach of approximate bump size, and not date taken, so if I’ve got anything a bit wrong and appear to be shrinking and growing in a disturbing fashion it’s simply the fault of my decidedly dodgy editing and not some bizarre Foetal Ballet.

It’s actually kind of freaky to realise just how much you can distort your body and come out the other end only a bit-of-extra-skin scathed.

Check it out:

The Incredible Elastic Belly

Agony Aunt, edition 11.

Oh, my. Soon my little Agony Aunt shall be a TEENAGER. Where does the time go?

If this is your first exposure to my one-coffee-short-of-a-sense-of-patience (self appointed, no less) more-prickle-than-a-porcupine-convention Agony Aunt to the unfortunate victims of Google, please click on the logo above (it’s also in my sidebar, naturally) to be taken to an explanation and a backlist of previous editions of snark, fun poking err helpful advice.

Once again (with feeling, I promise), darling Google and I do the Dance Of Misdirected Search Terms. Let me begin with a list of my latest favourites.

1. Squirrels get sick, too.
2. Wholly shit, I’m pregnant.
3. If my boobs were my brains?
4. Physiology of a cockle.
5. Extreme nudity testic.les clear plastic.
6. Can getting a gunshot would in the butt make y….

Oh my, I am truly spoiled for choice this time.

Sigh.

Item # 1 (Squirrels get sick, too):

Yes, dear slightly defensive-sounding searcher, I am sure they do.

Really, I believe you. Additionally, I don’t ever recall implying anywhere on this site that the suffering of squirrels was something I would not feel deeply, passionately about, if it had actually ever occured to me. I’m nothing but compassionate. 

Suffer Ye Not, little I-think-it’s-acorn eaters.

But what, in summary, was your point?

Much love (and with only healthy squirrels in my environs, if any),

Geohde.

Item # 2 (Wholly shit, I’m pregnant):

Um,

Congratulations?

Would you like a side serving of dictionary with that main course of filled uterus?

Just wondering.

Love,

G

Item # 3 (If my boobs were my brains?):

…I’d be twice as smart, have two suckable lumps on my head and have an absolutely terrible time finding hats?

No?

Sigh.

There’s truly no helping some people.

Item # 4 (Physiology of a cockle):

Dear searcher,

I must confess I had to hit up darling goog.le myself to figure out just what you were blabbering on about with all your big use of ‘physiology’ with reference to cockles.

I only know of cockles in the context related to the heart-warming thereof when an nice deed occurs.

I honestly had no idea whatsoever that cockles are a real live marine organism and that warming them probably counts as animal cruelty.

Sorry about that. My bad.

Don’t dob me in, please? In exchange, I faithfully pinky-promise I shan’t toast any more.

Item # 5 (Extreme nudity testic.les clear plastic- discreet use of punctuation my own work):

Clearly, oh hand-firmly-wrapped-around-a-certain-apparatus-whilst-typing-one-handed one, this is a search for specialist porn, yes?

Promise I don’t find you choice in turn-on funny in the least.

Clear plastic balls? Or perhaps real balls wrapped in clear plastic, trussed up like the “vegetable” component of the proverbial meat-and-two-veg roast of the day? Personally speaking, the mental image conveyed doesn’t sound like it would represent anybody’s best angle and isn’t precisely to my taste, but I guess it would be a dull world if we were all alike. 

Incidentally, since I’m feeling all nosey- what do they do about the hair? Doesn’t that rather spoil the effect?

Really.

snort……..

Item # 6 (Can getting a gunshot would in the butt make y….):

Oh dear.

I’ve been left positively hanging  dear searcher.

Can it make me what?

Judging by the lack of ending to your sentence, I’ll go for ‘dead’. Although ‘sore’, ‘limpy’, and ‘reluctant to ever go number two again’ may also apply.

Hope you get better soon.

xx

Geohde

Frontal lobe dysfunction?

Here’s a brief pop quiz, just for something slightly different.

Anybody want to take bets on who (I’ll give you a small hint on this one, me) scores an unintentional ‘frontal brain damage’ on a common question in cognitive testing?

Go on, guess….

Now don’t go telling me you all expected to hear as much, will you? Have a heart!

I always maintain (somewhat rigidly- ‘aHA! ’ you all cleverly exclaim ‘A perfect example of concrete thinking in action’) that the fault is in the question, and not in (for example) the brain of this particular answerer. After all, I’ve done many things I never entirely planned to in this life but have yet to include ‘acquire head injury’ on that list. Unless I’m forgetting something, of course. 

Goodness knows why I’m thinking of this now, but here’s the question because I’d like to compare notes. Tell me what you all think it means, and if you’re all rather more clever than I am with my interpretation, I shall commence (very belatedly I might add) some long-overdue panicked flapping about.

I may be late, but I can flap like no other, believe me. I’m also a confirmed Advanced Level Rude Word Mutterer and Gold-Prize Face-Puller at bad news.

Anyway, here ’tis:

Tell me what it means when you hear someone say ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss’.

Personally, and as I’ve already canvassed it’s the wrong answer, I immediately think:

‘Well, if the blasted thing is moving that quickly, then I can’t see how the moss has time to stick’,

closely followed by a very domesticated:

‘and at least it stays free of those hard-to-wash-out green stains’.

Not that I’ve gone rolling merrily down a hill and got green on my clothes in simply years, you understand. Promise. Or doing anything else in the grass to warrant stains in either easy OR hard to explain locations. Incidentally is it just my mind that associates dirty things with the rather banal term ‘grass stains’ and consequently feels the need to get all preemptively explain-y (and just a touch red in the face. Did I mention I’m also a World Class Flusher)?

It is just me? Oh, well.

Now, your turn. No pressure. I shan’t be taking notes on who else flunks the Dodgy Test of the frontally challenged. Please reassure me that it isn’t just myself?

And if you all smugly and gleefully get it immediately right first go, well, you’re all horribly cheeky and I’ll have no recourse but to tell you so. How’s that for a threat?

Interior decorating, Geohde-style.

Those of you who have had the misfortune to endure months of sleep deprivation, for whatever reason, know just how miserable it is. How it mushes up the cognition irrevocably, such that minor items one would normally have bang to rights with minimal consulting of errant memory banks (such as the correct date, or day of the week, or the sum of two-plus-two) all give serious pause or have you consulting your fingers. Just hoping for the answer to miraculously appear.

It’s actually pretty miserable to be so tired all the time. Yes, it makes me go all short-tempered and whiny. Can you tell?

Although things are gradually improving as the Terrible Twosome learn that night time is perhaps notthe ideal time to party unless they want to do it in their cot and in the dark on their lonesome, I’m still pretty tired most of the time. Mostly because Naan, quite unfairly if you ask me, is not only a late sleeper but a strident early riser as well and there is a limit to how much aural abuse I am willing to inflict upon my neighbours.

To put it another way, I wouldn’t attempt to get in contact with me in the mornings unless you really HAVE given up on life.

With all that in mind suffice it to say that mornings are not my forte, and that I am deeply and undeniably in passionate-possibly-forbidden love with my coffee machine. I have a caffeine tolerance trained up on years of heavy consumption as an occupational hazard. Really. Throw half a dozen latte’s at me and I won’t even twitch. Nary a palpitation. Try me. Consequently, I now regularly down many cups as I make the dozen bottles a day that the Army That Flails On It’s Stomach Disagreeably At Tummy Time demand.

Oh, and fatigue doesn’t only mess up your cognition….

Yesterday, I was downing my customary Elixir Of Consciousness whilst shaking bottles filled with boiling hot water, for feed mixing thereof, when it all went a bit wrong. Incidentally, isn’t the very best time for something to go all pear shaped when the words ‘boiling hot’ are involved in some way?

Yes, I make the feeds really, really hot because they mix in oh so much easier. You stir a dozen plus bottles manually every day and curse the errant lumpy bits as you do so, and THEN come back and judge me for not doing it precisely as suggested on the tin.

All went well until the second to last bottle, which sadly did not have it’s top as firmly affixed as I had intended. The lid predictably flew off as I began to shake….

and a veritable geyser of boiling hot milk, triumphantly released from it’s plastic cage, gleefully sprayed itself across me, several (suede!) chairs, the WALL, the carpets and PART OF THE CEILING.

Um. And furthermore, bloody ouch!

May I extend my sincere apologies to the many neighbours I unintentionally insulted with my top volume screaming of ‘fuckfuckFUUUUUUUCK‘ at the painful and messy turn of events. No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my lungs.

Next time I plan on having a little fun spilling boiling hot things on myself, I’ll make sure the windows are closed…

 As for the ceiling? It’s still got milk on it. I’m simply hoping that nobody looks up when we leave this house. I’m too knackered to be arsed standing on a (milk-coated, no less) chair and scrubbing it.

Sorry about that, everybody.

PS:

Cross pollination matches all emailed out today. Check your inboxes, and your spam folders (just in case). Problems? Didn’t get yours……email me/post a comment and I’ll do my best to fixit.

BOTW edition 1

…and so it begins, the inaugral blog of BOTW. An unsolicited admiration of blog-ness. An acknowledgement of the road travelled. Putting my excessive Google Reader activity to good use. On some level, we all write to be read, don’t we?

Behind the Mask.

Firstly, the quickfire version:

In a nutshell?

An IVF blog.

Ok, so you’re all modern, and you’d rather flavours of applicable keywords for your boolean search? (Incidentally, and I digress, many apologies if I’ve massacred the correct use of the term ‘boolean’. Many many lecturers have TRIED very hard to teach me how to use search engines properly but other than merely be present in body at each retelling, I have yet to make progress. To my current understanding it is *something* about search TERM and plus symbol oops-caps-lock-still-on, multipled by yawn and is it lunchtime yet?). Getting back to business…..

On this blog, you will find items such as, but not limited to, the following:

Clomid, metformin, laparoscopy, ovarian drilling, male factor, PCOS, Endometriosis, IVF-ICSI, miscarriage, FET, FSH FET, HRT FET, recurrent implantation failure, hysteroscopy.

In more detail:

Written by the inimitable Mrs Mask, the blog that shall henceforth be affectionately know as BTM* (because I can’t resist a good TLA**) came on the scene in March 2007, commenced as a journal of Mrs Mask’s first IVF-ICSI cycle.

MM*** came upon IVF by way of having patiently tried the usual steps along the way to getting-knocked-up-when-one-is-repeatedly-NOT-knocked-up (and is trying to be, of course).

The full summary can be found in her right sidebar, and I wouldn’t be cheeky enough to attempt to accidentally revise her history here, but essentially MM has tried hormonal treatments (Clomid), metformin, surgery (Ovarian drilling, to be specific. ‘Drilling’ almost sounds like a cute surgical equivalent of teeny-tiny jackhammers on the ovaries, but I suspect it’s no picnic) and time, before moving on to IVF/ICSI (due to a side order of male factor).

Here’s where I picked up MM’s story.

To summarise a year of blogging in a paragraph is difficult, but MM underwent her first IVF/ICSI stim cycle, reponded well to a low dose of FSH, had an uneventful retrieval and transfer, followed by a borderline beta.

She lost ’Bootie’ at 5 weeks gestation, and this loss has been compounded by continuing rough times in the fertility department.

MM has subsequently chewed through the heartbreak (let alone the cost) of another six transfers, using up all her dozen-ish embryos without a blip of HCG. Recurrent implantation failure testing has not turned up a cuplrit to point heparin and/or other big guns at, so here she metaphorically stands, about to start IVF again.

Wish her luck?

 

* BTM = Behind the Mask

** TLA = Three letter abbreviation. Yes, medicos are dorks.

*** MM = Mrs Mask, of course. Only she spells it with an ‘@’ symbol. I don’t, purely because I keep forgetting to put out all the pretend email address spotfires that wordpress automatically assumes I’m typing. See, I just missed another one. Fancy sending an email to the good people of ‘at’? Knock yourselves out. Sorry for mangling your name Mrs Mask.

 

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Next week-ish. Another unsolicited blogaview. Like a review, but for your blog…….want to see your blog here or your URL in my blogroll? Post a comment here and I shall happily oblige…..

Tomorrow, in other business, I shall be emailing out cross-pollination matches. Check your inboxes!

Oh, and just to see if anybody is still reading (if I haven’t bored you silly) the Terrible Twosome page now comes avec new pictures.

Virtual World Tour

Not sure what I’m blathering on about? Click here for the master list of the world tour, organised by the magnificent M.

May I present my wee corner of the bloggy world, Geohde’s garden? Promise me you won’t laugh?

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As has been previously canvassed, my garden is concrete. A white-hot glaring expanse of moonscape blatantly devoid of any living thing, unless you count the odd bit of bloody minded winter moss that does it’s best as and when seasons allow.

To be perfectly honest, this is probably just as well. ‘Natural gardener’ and ‘Geohde’ go together about as swimmingly as running and scissors. Or superglue and firstgraders.

I have a naturally gifted black thumb, and I shall now prove it to you in The Dead Plant, a story in five pictured (and one unpictured) parts.

Part 1:

This is the only step lacking image documentation, because at this point I’d just been entrusted with the gift of a (living) pot-plant by a friend.

Since I hadn’t had any time to kill it with my loving neglect as yet there was nothing to photograph other than leaves and such. Green ones.

My friend joked the plant would be good practise in the responsibility department, you know, if I wanted to get my hand in early before the you-know-what’s-arrived.

Let me think on that….

Part 2:

As hinted-at above, I promptly put the plant outside in my concrete jungle, full of confidence that nature’s bounty in the form of sunshine and rain would provide.

Then I spent sixteen weeks on bedrest, and completely forgot about the poor thing.

This happened:

Hardly surprising, no?

Yet I kind of was a little taken aback by the unhealthy hue my neglected botanical friend had taken.

Part 3:

Belatedly, I tried to help.

I tried water.

Part 4:

When water and guilty thoughts alone did not succeed, I tried the only intervention I knew anything about, but escalated it.

I put my dessicated pal directly under the tap. Perhaps the change of scenery would help?

Part 5:

It didn’t.

So I thought laterally.

Perhaps less UV exposure than the previous customary white hot glare of concrete would do the trick?

Part 6:

When that unsurprisingly also did nothing in the green-department, I decided a trim of the dead bits was in order. Vague recollections tell me that a vigorous pruning is just the thing, yes?

No.

My little friend now rests in the garbage, clearly having comprehensively turned it’s delicate little arboreal-toes up some months ago.

Despite my best efforts, the blasted thing stubbornly failed to re-incarnate.

Fancy that.

Thus ends my component of the VWT.

Next up: TroubleshootingComposting 101, when you have too much dead raw material and not-enough space. Kidding.

The odd spot.

By the end of this post I expect either recognition of wry cleverness of dual-useage of said title, or (more probably) a resigned sigh that I am again abusing the English language unfairly.

Let me relate my tale,

I do believe that I have once-or-twice subtly alluded to the fact that, despite all enthusiastic medical predictions that ‘being pregnant is a GREAT temporary cure for PCOS’ and ‘I could get (gasp!) knocked up on my own’ and, say, without the aid of a speculum and some embryos my RE prepared earlier, I am proving in true recalcitrant fashion to be the biological exception to the rule.

In other words, I have not only completely omitted to pop ovum in the last eleven-going-on-twelve (non-breastfeeding, mind you, so that’s not the explanation) weeks, but I have managed to spend most of it bleeding. With varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Hence my re-discovery of the multitude of options in the menstrual product aisle (I refuse to use the rather naff term ‘feminine hygeine’, I mean really? It reminds me of all those deliberately obscure pad advertisements that carefully use blue water to demonstrate how absorptive they are, rather than the more off-putting reality of clotty-red gore. No wonder my first period was such a shock).

I have just about every option to cover just about every situation, if you get my drift. Wings, no wings, bricks, liners, the usual array of, uh, internal options. The lot. I’m spoiled for choice, which is some small comfort when one is effluxing in the lady-business department for months on end.

Many of the situations are of the spotty variety (bah-bing! Reference number one).

Amusingly, the latest brand of panty-liners (a.k.a knicker savers, spot-catchers, who-knows-just-in-casers), comes complete with text all over the backing.

I don’t think the manufacturer really thought it through too thoroughly when deciding that it would be a, like, totally brilliant idea to put a bunch of random factoids on the back of the aforementioned menstrual product.

Under the cheerful heading ‘The Odd Spot’ (yep, second reference).

I suppose if I wasn’t dealing with my own ‘Odd Spot’ in the shape of an unexpected red tide, I wouldn’t be reading (third wearing out of the joke).

Regardless, courtesy of the educational material provided by the good people at L.ibra, I can now tell you that:

• Human thighbones are as strong as concrete.

I’m assuming they don’t mean to imply thighbones are simply great under compression, shatter into a million little pieces under tension, and are prone to random attacks with spraypaint in the wrong neighbourhoods?

• The total eyelashes shed by a human in their lifetime is over thirty metres.

Yes, but mine are never long enough at any one time. Clearly I must be shedding too bloody often. Besides, who checks this sort of stuff?

• An elephant can throw a baseball faster than a human.

And yet, strangely, I’ve yet to see a baseball team with Jumbo as their pitcher.

Odd, indeed.

BOTW?

Blog of the ya-what?

The cross pollination was so much fun last year (and is shaping up to be again THIS year- I’m taking names for just a few more days, particularly all the lovely ladies of sans) that I’ve hit upon a way to regularly indulge in a little cross-pollination type activity, all on my lonesome. Unilaterally, if needs be, featuring possibly YOUR blog. I like to read, and comment, but I also like to get to know people’s stories.

Perhaps because I’m terminally nosey, admittedly.

Not sure what I mean?

It’s simple, I will aim to feature every week-ish a brief precis/review of blog and blogger from my not-inconsiderable blogroll. Consider it free press.

Why week ish?

Because I’m honest. My intentions are always good, but time is (let’s face it) often not on my side.

I’m also happy to take any extra names whose URL’s I have yet to snaffle and shove in my blogroll, and both list and feature them.

At any time, you can simply click on the snazzy new button in my sidebar to be taken to all the collective featured blogs. In time, I should build quite a little library of our stories that anybody can peruse.

Is that not just the teeniest bit nifty?

Just a bit?

Cross-Pollination business.

Yeah, I know, you’re all probably sick of me yawping on and on…There’s secret womens’ business, and THEN there’s my cross-pollination.

This announcement is brief- today I sent out a quick acknowledgement via email to those of you who were kind enough to humour me in participating in this year’s event.

Could you all please check you:

A: Got it (also apologies that it’s so rudely terse, believe me when I say I’d rather waffle on. I had to send out about a billion emails and couldn’t figure out how to do a mass-sending) , and that

B: if it’s in your spam folder, you know to look there next time for your match when I email that, and

C: I’ve got you in the correct avec (with) or sans (without) children/pregnancy group.

To find out about item “C”, please click on the linked bee-flower logo in my left sidebar, I’m updating the post with the list of participants thus far for this year. I thought it best I check I got it correct since several of you were presumably accidentally mysterious in this regard. I did have a quick squiz at the sites concerned and did my best, but please feel free to tell me I’m a fool.

Thick skin here, chez MII.

In summary, please let me know if I’ve screwed the pooch (figuratively speaking of course) with any of the above items and I’ll happily put out any spotfires.

Oh, and I’m still taking names, if anybody is game to have a go? It’s easy…YOU post a comment and I email you the email address and url of a blogger with whom you trade posts for a day. For full details of how it works, click on the bee-flower icon.

 

Matches to come shortly (and don’t worry- if you’re still confused, my match email will be a step by step guide as to how to make it work, it’s not hard. Promise )

Aww. And possibly shucks.

I don’t often blush, after all, it takes an awfully large amount of balls (or possibly more a heady combination of blissfull ignorance, the absence of a working frontal lobe and complete removal of my Tact Centre at birth) to say some of the daft things I do.

Let’s be frank. I am the woman who, when a friend is congratulated on having lost considerable weight by a third party, happily says ‘since when?’.

No, I didn’t realise at all until some time later they (quite reasonably) thought that I meant to imply they were fat, rather than my more literal ‘I haven’t known you for very long, was this before you met me?’ when I uttered my careless ‘since when?’.

No, I haven’t spoken to this particular acquaintance much since the now infamous ’since when?’ happened. No matter how much explaining I do, it looks bad.

But anyway. All of this aside, I am a mild shade of rosy-cheeked red as I type this. Because the delectable Nicole and the unparalleled Tracy both nominated me for this particularly bloggy award. Nicole, Tracy and I have all been though heck, and have all been incredibly lucky in our infertility journeys.

Incredibly.

For different reasons, none of us had it easy. However. Between us, we now have seven babies under the age of three months. Since nobody can have a third of a baby, clearly one of us has triplets.

Believe me, it’s not me. I’m fairly sure my count stops at two, because even on my roughest mornings I can reliably count to two, even if it is with the help of my fingers (if I got to more than ten, to anticipate the obvious query, yes I’d have to take my socks off and consult my feet).

Shucks.

Furthermore, um, gosh.

Golly.

Err, ta, ever so!

Now, may I distribute this award to those whose cleverness far surpasses my own? It’s meant to be seven, but if I had my druthers I’d nominate my entire not-inconsiderable blogroll (btw, I have a new blog these days, about all things doctor-ical, remind me to mention the url when I’m feeling all brave and up to critical review….).

 

Let’s see, without further ado, I nominate:

Mrs Mask, because she’s had more transfer catheters through her lady business than fairness would dictate. She could do with some bloggy love. It’s IVF again, soon.

Wordgirl, because she has the eloquence I lack, and replace with liberal use of potty mouth. Eloquence is so much better.

Chicklet, because I cannot compete with her inimitable use of the CAPSLOCK.

M, because she has the bollocks I lack to tackle life by it’s bitchy unfair horns. Really.

May, because she is yet another blogger who makes me green with envy at her wit. Honestly.

Her hairiness herself, because, well she dealt with her premature labour with far more grace than I did. I just downed a bunch of morphone and whipped my tits out in the hospital corridoor. She went though heck and she still has the guts to attempt round two. Oh, and did I mention she’s got cleverly different internal bits?

Sara, who also has cleverly different internal bits giving her a tough time in the contract-y department these days. I’m always happy when she gains another precious gestational week, since I’ve been there and know just how scary it is to be counting contractions for weeks on end from pre-viability. I packed away my baby clothes at twenty one weeks in tears when the pro.cardia didn’t stop me contracting.

Cripes, I could keep going on-and-on…

I think I might have to start a button of my own in my sidebar linked to a page of blogs of the week. Everyone has a story. Everyone.

PS: Anyone else feel like cross pollinating? Still taking names.

It’s time to move towns.

Because I think I’m running out of people to make an idiot of myself in front of.

Or to put it another way, five new people now think I ride the short bus. Or the blue bus. Or whatever your local flavour of politically-incorrect transport system for the cognitively disabled is.

Here’s the deal.

Chez MII is currently not precisely ideal when it comes to wrangling twins. Whilst it does have the charm of being literally five minutes walk to work (hello sleep in’s and no parking fees!) it also has the charm of being in a neighbourhood infested with louts, drug addicts, unemployed-types and people who like to leave their smashed beer bottles all over the grass at the local park. Who, as has been canvassed, also like to nick numberplates (and presumably also rob houses and/or remove your car stereo for free, too).

Then there’s the minor matter of the precipitate and twisty internal stairwell, upon which both Long Suffering and myself have come a-cropper. I have every confidence in the ability of my children to eventually acquire a head injury should they ever get near it unsupervised. Oh, and the pretty open kitchen. Nothing says ‘oven and stove tops are fun‘ like having them within easy reach of your spawn. Also, lets not forget the lovely low-maintenance concrete backyard we have. Children just love playing in a concrete jungle, don’t they? I mean, when the alternative is a park where one can glass oneself…..without going to a dodgy pub on a Saturday night.

So, anyway, clearly we need to move. Soon.

To achieve this aim, LS and myself have been pouring over houses online, comparing the this-and-that endlessly. I’ve been nagging the poor man that sooner or later we’re going to actually have to get off of our ample arses and look at a property. After all, no house ever got purchased by pure strength of wishful thinking and hoping the problem will go away with enough procrastination.

But the bugger probably shouldn’t have chosen to spend some of his night shift last night merrily emailing agents about properties without telling me.

My phone started ringing at 8 bloody am this morning, and it’s yet to stop. Oh, and for the first five phone calls (before I had the sense to get online and have an emergency look at the mysterious properties in question) I assumed they were all talking about the one house.

Um, not the case, it would seem. No wonder they all (bar one) sounded so confused when I complained about the blue kitchen.

Five houses, Geohde, not one very enthusiastic seller.

Ah well, it’s not like I can’t find more people to make a fool out of myself in front of if the urge takes me. Surely.

A philisophical question.

I’m still taking names for the Cross Pollination for another week…Clicky-click. You know the drill.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Or how I earn bonus credit points in the Bad Mother 101 remedial class of 2008.

Yes, almost-three month olds who are two months old adjusted, hold on…..adjusted? That’s not a word frequently applied to any member of the Geohde household.

• Frequently irritable, check.
• Snarky, yep.
• First class ass-flasher in formal occasions, um, tick.
• Likes to argue with the bearers of red tape, just for fun, frequently.

Adjusted, well no. Especially if the word ‘well’ is used anywhere in front of it.

(if we’re being all finicky about milestones here, the reality is there is no real NEED to adjust for minor prematurity because the range of ‘normal’ is wide enough to encompass the Tiny Tyrants, but every mother prefers to see her Little Angels Who Snot A Lot near the top of the metaphorical milestone race, and not firmly at the tail end, puffing to keep up….)

But I digress. I’m rather good at that. Now where was I? Ah, yes, got it. Three-months old-ish infants don’t generally sit all that well on  their own. Just as the Denver if you don’t believe me. Yes, I periodically Denver my own spawn just to check, even if I don’t have the correct raisins for them to regard (yes, raisins. Why raisins and not, say, a yummy dustbunny or perhaps a delectable discarded tissue, as I seem to have both of these items in great supply and a veritable dearth of raisins, I have no earthly idea. According to the good people at Denver, it must be raisins), I make do.

But anyway, what I’m trying to say is that whilst my spawn really like to sit up, they need adult help. Mostly because they also really like to lurch in random directions, and generally wobble around alarmingly. They seem to really get off of on a visual field that dances around wildly, I gather, by the chuckles. Personally, it makes me nauseated when the world is an uncontrollable whirl…

(for those who would say ‘nauseous’- personal point of grammatical irritation, that’s when you make other people feel sick, not yourself. I may indeed be ‘nauseous’ in my descriptions of Saag and Naan, but I am not nauseated by them myself),

…..but who am I to argue when it’s A: cute and B: involves non-yelling-and/or-screaming-tantys, unlike Tummy Time?

So my much belated crux of the post in a small philosophical question. If I, hypothetically speaking (of course), propped Saag in sitting on the wide-well-cushioned couch (in all seriousness, she couldn’t roll off, I’m not that delinquent) and tended to Naan’s latest dummy spit in the next room, which by the way are now up to about two feet of pure projectile well-slobbered silicone teat, and when I came back she was now sideways and looking amused that the world had so creatively rearranged itself, well…

A: Did she make a sound?, and

B: If nobody saw it, did it really happen?

To re-cap, if a Saag falls sideways on the couch and nobody notices…is it like the falling tree in the metaphorical forest?

Remind me again…

Please remind me to beat Long Suffering upside of the head the next time he INSISTS on putting pristine, expensive white sheets on our bed.

I told him it would be a Bad Idea, really I did.

True, it was mostly out of selfish reasons, because I’m the one who does the laundry and I can never be bothered with all that separate-whites-and-colours crapola, with the predictable result that anything wearable that starts out life in the Geohde household white ends up a yellowey-browney-pink by the third wash. And stays that way for the duration, because I also can’t be shagged bleaching things (mostly because I inevitably spill bleach all over my black trousers and end up with snazzy piebald-looking legs).

It’s the laundry equivalent of survival of the fittest.

Heck, I also chuck things in the dryer with merry disregard for all those dire ‘do! not! tumble! dry!’ tags.

I’ve yet to have one spoil my fun by spontaneously combusting, melting into a synthetic pile of goo or shrinking into hilarious tinyness, no matter how much I challenge them to. I therefore conclude those tags are the clothing version of ‘may contain traces of nuts’, i.e. they’re on everything. Jut on spec, so no responsibility ever has to be taken by the manufacturer. Sneaky buggers.

But anyway, I digress.

Back to my formerly-white sheets.

I say formerly because (not only due to my laundry related failings), to be slightly delicate about how I phrase things, Niagra Falls struck in the night. Yes, again, anovulation is probably the culprit behind what I can only presume is about three feet of unstable endometrium currently taking great pleasure in making a bid for freedom when I least suspect it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m anaemic by now, given I’ve spent about fifty of the last eighty days gleefully giving away perfectly good haemoglobin.

Sigh.

I guess the rest of today is either going to involve buying a very large bucket and some bleach, or the purchase of a new sheet set. I think I’ll spring for the latter.

In black this time.

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Oh, yes, the 9th of November IS a Sunday this year, as so many of you cleverly pointed out.

Clearly I need to regard a calendar occasionally before I merrily mix up my dates.

So Sunday it is! For those of you who ( naughty!) use your employer’s time to post AND are also lucky enough to work Mon to Fri, not only do I hate you with green-eyed envy, but it’s fine to post on Monday if you’re not up to setting the post up to automatically post itself on the Sunday.

Promise!

Any more cross pollinators out there?? Clicky-click…

Shopping, or how I have my priorities all screwed up.

Please click on the logo, and join in this year’s cross-pollination effort! I’m taking names for another week or so, and then I’ll be emailing out matches. It really is a good way to get involved and make new bloggy friends. Promise. All welcome, just let me know whether your blog includes children or not…..

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Really, I do.

Let me explain.

From my point of view, all shopping is not created equal.

Grocery acquisition, whilst mildly interesting at times, is not really something I covet. I don’t look forward to it, I don’t browse aisles dreamily examining the latest in fabric softener technology. I really couldn’t give the proverbial rat’s re.ctal cavity about the various merits of the fifty kinds of dishwashing tablets I have to choose from.

I am a list shopper.

I write a list, of things I need. No extraneous items.

I then go in, get a trolley, and march around the aisles (occasionally taking out the odd shopper who fails to notice my determined trolley-wielding charge) until I have my list.

Then I go home, pack it all away (including an anal degree of organising perishables by expiry date) and bask in the satisfaction that I won’t have to do it again for a week.

But lately things have changed, and I don’t think it’s simply because I get to dump the Terrible Twosome on Long Suffering and escape for the duration. I’m quite attached to the tiny tyrants, and I’d much rather spend time with them than in grocery purgatory.

Given the change in my purchasing habits, I’m guessing it’s because of  the you-know-what’s rather than in spite of them. I’ve become one of those painfully slow moving g-damn aisle browsers who won’t commit to either one side or the other, completely oblivious to the presence of others. I used to cause occasional podiatric damage to people like that, with a well applied shopping trolley to the absent-minded foot.

I buy so much baby crap in my absent minded travels (Ooooh, Butt Paste comes in so many varieties these days….) that I think an intervention may be in order. Or a firm thwack aside the head when I ignore my list, or we just may starve Chez MII.

Yesterday I came home with three kinds of nappies, two new types of bottles, a swag of clothes that won’t fit either child for at least twelve months (But! Were On Sale! Bargain! Whee!). And a bunch of bananas and three tomatoes for the dinner of the adult quotient of the household.

For the rest of the week.

With a now emptied bank account.

Um.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Clickity-click…….

Without further ado….

Batters up for 2008 in the ‘avec’ group:

Kami

Martha

Chili

Kandace

Delenn

Babysteps

Kristen

Mel

Nancy

Alison

Lori

Wordgirl

Dilasari

MrsSpock

Calliope

Katie

Jen

Serenity

Artblog

Maresi

Korechronicles

And, obviously, myself…..

And, batters up for the clever ladies of ‘sans’:

Babysmiling

Willow

Phoebe

Sarah

Keiyou

Spirit

Sam

Jenedis

Mrs Spit

GreenEggsNHam

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No, really, it is.

It’s time to begin taking names for the Great Blog Cross-Pollination, again. Not sure what I’m talking about?

Here is a link to last year’s event (also accessible by clicking on the bee icon on my left sidebar), and now I shall explain how it goes for those of you toying with the idea of participating this year. 

Ha Hem. (draws breath in, and puts on best Offical Voice…and then wildly flails around her blog for the explanation she typed twelve months ago). Ah, got it:

I blame Mel’s (of Stirrup Queens fame) phenomenal organisation of so many damn fun bloggity events for giving me ideas.

Well, actually only ONE idea, I lack imagination.

Admittedly, a slightly grandiose idea, quite possibly above my station in the blogosphere as a persistently jacked off, disgruntled, whining infertile who shouldn’t complain so much now she has her much sought after you-know-whats. I only hope I can get away with it.

You see, it’s all about my needs at Chez MII, as per usual.

Inspiration (or possibly denial of my need to ever sleep) has hit and I’ve begun to entertain the crazy thought that maybe I could get off my lazy butt and organise a little something myself. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Don’t answer that.

Hoping desperately that I’m not about to bite of more than I can comfortably chew and offend you all with my devastating inefficiency, let me share my Cunning Plan.

Drum-roll, please…..

The Great Blog Cross-Pollination.

See, isn’t it just fantastic?

I bet you’re all inspired, yes?

No?

Oh.

Then let me explain my Cunning Plan.

This all comes from the observation that, out of the zillions of fantastic blogs you all write, I only know and regularly visit a subset.

I’d like to get to know more of you, after all a girl can never have too many fellow ALI’ers to bitch to about recalcitrant reproductive systems.

I am aware that clicking though blogrolls would achieve the same end, but the way I propose would be more fun.

The executive summary?

Essentially, the net effect for those who participate would be that on a nominated date (Sunday the 9th of November), instead of your own usual post, you swap posts with another blogger.

This would all be clearly signposted in the title that the post is ‘guest’ , of course, and with a hyperlink to your own post, existing as a ‘guest’ post on the swapped-blog site. 

The goal is cross-pollination of bloggity goodness.

Visitors to your site get to visit another (hopefully fresh and new) blog without even the bother of all that clicking their mouse, let alone typing a URL. Nifty, huh?

As an added bonus, they can have the fun of guessing the identity of the mystery guest blogger is in the comments section.

I wonder how many of us will pick a familiar writing style in a new home?

If you’re frowning in confusion, let me break it down as to how it will work:

• Firstly, those who’d like to join in post a comment to this post with their name, blog URL and email address. Also add if your blog is avec or sans Rugrats (children/pregnancy) so I can match up kid-kid and non-kid-non-kid blogs. I don’t want to offend any sensibilities.

 

• Secondly, I will compile the list of participants and email you (in about a week or so) with the name, email address and url of your matched blog cross-pollinator. This gives you a couple of weeks to dream up that awesome post you’ve always wanted to get out of your system.

 

• You then both compose your post for the date (Sunday the 9th of November) and email each other the post text, or, ideally the code for the post text also ideally in the week before the Big Day, so everyone has their post on time to publish it.

You can access the code for your post in most blog programs by clicking on the ‘view html’ or ‘code’ tab (to give Blogger and WordPress examples, respectively). Copy that and email it if you can.

I’ve tested emailing code between Blogger and WordPress and it seems to work. If finding the code is too tricky for you, simply compose your post in your usual blog program and copy it into your email and send it. That should also work okay, if my experiments are to be trusted.

Just please, please, please don’t use MS word to type your post as it seems to create an ungodly amount of irrelevant tags that will have your cross-poster cursing your name if one breaks.

• On the Cross pollination date (Sunday the 9th of November, if you’re not keeping track), post the swapped post you received via email with the following additions:

 

• The title ‘A guest blog entry, bought to you by the Great Blog Cross-Pollination’.

 

• A request at the bottom of the post to guess the identity of the cross-pollinated blogger in the comments field and a link to their blog URL (obviously entitled ‘click here’ or somesuch rather than just listing the url. THAT would make it rather too easy to guess) to find your post for the day. That way your regular readers can find you, even if it’s not your usual location.

That’s it. I hope I just made sense.

Voila, Blog cross pollination.

If you’re feeling all snazzy, also feel free to lift/upload the file for the bumblebee-flower logo above to stick on your site and link this post to it. Not sure how to insert/link a sidebar icon? Just tell me in your comment below and I’ll email you platform-specific help.

So, what are you waiting for?

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Sniff.

My little babies are not so little (with bonus new pictures) any more.

They’re growing up.

Sniff. Pass me a tissue, will you?

Okay, so to be rather less melodramatic about the change, let me acknowledge that neither Saag or Naan is about to pierce something embarrassing, get a drunken ill-advised tattoo, stay out all night, wear entirely too much black, move into their own apartment, get married, finish university or have babies of their own (please wait while I stop my head spinning at that particular concept), but still.

It is the eternal Mother’s Lament, along with complaints about clean socks and snotty noses. They change so much and so very fast.

I only recently just noticed, believe it or not, even though both babies are now visibly longer and storing roly-poly bits wherever they can hide them (in Saag’s case, her rather large dimply posterior, legs and her I-hide-milk-here-for-later neck folds. Even Naan has managed sneak in a couple of cheeky thigh rolls in the Body Fat Party).

The whole melancholic observation was prompted by the necessity of packing away all the teeny-tiny preemie clothes and hats that neither Saag or Naan now even remotely fit into.

I actually had somewhat of a minor freakout when I absentmindedly tried to shove a hilariously small bodysuit onto Saag. The arms were a struggle, but I managed to get them in, although in retrospect it should have been a warning when both sleeves finished at the elbow. But it was simply not to be as far as further application went. Not only could I not get the crotch of the damn thing anywhere near the correct groinal location, even with the most determined downward pulling, but it also wouldn’t button up at the front, either. I won’t go into the fact that I ended up using her also-amusingly-too-small lovely knit hat (made by the oh-so clever Jen) as a tissue as I searched for something bigger to cover the poor child’s unprepared-mother = prolonged-nudity with.

Ah well. Upon reflection, it would be worse if they weren’t outgrowing their clothes, and I hardly need an excuse to go shopping for All Things Baby.

Long Suffering is probably in for a heck of a credit card bill shortly…..

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In other matters. I shall shortly again be posting a link for names and blogs of those who would like to take part in the yearly Great Blog Cross-pollination. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, feel free to click on the bee icon in my left sidebar, it should take you to last year’s event.

Go on, click!

Vax-sux

So it begins.

Naan and Saag (or should I say Saag and Naan, I usually say it the latter way around rather than the former, but I’m trying to be fair….) recently had their first vaccinations.

The poor mites. I don’t think they approved of my preventative action on their future health in the slightest.

It all began deceptively pleasantly. I felt all kinds of evil (although virtuously so) as I walked them to the appointment on a lovely sunny day. I even managed to choke down the ‘eatshitanddie’ reflex response to all the daft questions that eternally come my way …..

(the latest gem, a chirpy ’A boy and a girl, right?’ from some village idiot with a death wish…….who then proceeded to disagree with me when I corrected the error, because everyone knows baby girls have rather more hair than Naan. Geez, it’s not like I don’t get a good look at the key bits of anatomy at least seven or eight times a day. I’m pretty damn sure she’s not packing any hitherto-undiscovered wang),

….because it was so sunny, and the babies were so very sweet. They were on their best behaviour, with absolutely no public puking or call-child-protection vile screaming in sight. Nice.

Monster that I am, this did not stop me in the least from yanking down their trousers and sitting them happily on my lap, chubby little legs exposed and vulnerable, when we arrived at the Needle Place.

The immunisation nurse, clearly used to surprising little babies with unexpected sharp objects in their vastus lateralis muscles (otherwise known as cute chubby baby thighs), wasn’t the least put off by their friendly yawping ‘hello’s’ in Baby. She jabbed them anyway.

Saag immediately crumpled into sobbing tears of saddened betrayal. Actual tears. Dribbling miserably down her fat cheeks, no less, as she lamented to the world at large about how her mother had failed to protect her from the Nasty Sharp Things.

Then it was Naan’s turn.

Naan, after a brief moment of puzzlement, went red all over, livid- white across the forehead and shrieked. At the top of her lungs. On, and on and on.

In fact, she’s still cross with me now (several hours later), and keeps yelling at me every time she wiggles her drumstick thighs about, presumably because they hurt.

Neither of them can fathom why I find  it all so vaguely amusing. To be honest, I’m not sure why I do either. Although now it’s rather less funny since the rotavirus (oral) vaccine does seem to be causing some rather impressive lakes of liquid green vegetal smelling stuff to fill their nappies.

Honestly, I’ll never understand just why it takes them so much red-faced grunting to spray out what is essentially liquid.

Farkit.

I’m disgruntled.

Actually, I’m totally and completely p.o’d.

Why?

Because some adolescent git with thumbs presumably just opposable enough to operate a screwdriver has numberplated my car.

Little turd. I’m so flipping cross about it.

May his testicles rot and his willy shrivel up and fall off at a publicly embarrassing moment.

May his underwear be forever hole-y and his socks pair-less.

May his pockets be eternally torn, and his wallet fall down a particularly unclean public loo, right after someone with virulent gastro has done an untidy number two. May there also be no remaining toliet paper.

May his pubes spontaneously combust and giant zits occupy his nose.

May especially malodorous dog crap affix itself intimately to the underside of his trainers.

May week-old chewing gum find it’s way into his hair-do.

May he be infested with particularly ineradicably lush ear-hair, a nasty case of jock itch and several creative verrucas.

May an extensive infestation of intestinal worms make his bottom itch no end.

May an unusually well-aimed albatross with dysentry shit right down the inside of the back of his shirt.

 It would serve him right.

There’s nothing more steam-inducing than wheeling two babies and a veritable bucketload of groceries (including melting icecream- AND whilst balancing a bulk packet of nappies on one hip) back to one’s car to discover that:

A: It’s pissing down freezing cold rain (hello wet, screaming children!), and

B: The aforementioned plates have, fortunately without a scratch to the paintwork (sliver lining and all that), been neatly relieved of their position aft and fore on one’s new car.

Fark.

Also may I say ‘piss’, and ‘shite’ without judgement?

Wanna take bets on the odds of a 3am visit by the po-po when the little jerk responsible uses them to commit some late night crime at a random point in the near future?

Grrrr……..Snotty little gobshite. Unemployed and unemployable little prick…..

If I ever get my hands around that unwashed graffiti-spraying-dole-bludging-and-teenaged-smoking neck, it will go very badly. Very badly indeed.

Thank you. I just needed to vent.

Tomorrow, I get the fun of an outing avec babies to report the plates comprehensively nicked, as well as pay for their replacement. Nice.

Be careful what you wish for.

Or, on how I feel like a total b!tch for ever, even briefly, wishing bad fortune on another.

Let me explain.

I don’t believe in magical thinking, really I don’t.

But.

A while back, I was reading the story of a woman on her first cycle of trying to conceive. In the manner of many carefree fertile types, her writing was chock full of optimistic references to the planned nursery, baby clothes, names etc etc. All the stuff that gets taken for granted by so many women, because for so many women the act of trying to get pregnant actually leads to pregnancy. Often quickly. In their bedroom. Without thousands of dollars in expense or, g-d forbid, having anybody other than their spouse put anything remotely near their cervix. Let alone a catheter right through it. Or blood test after blood test, injections, inseminations, ultrasounds, public exposure of one’s genitals, living life via reference to ‘cycle day’, loss and heartache.

It kind of rankled that this woman was taking her fertility for granted, even though she had every right to. After all, my experience, like those of most women in this community is (whilst more common that publicly acknowledged) not how the majority of people make their babies. It seems surreal, but for many, many couples their high school biology teachers were right.

To be brutally honest, it pissed me off.

Rather than doing the smart thing and stopping reading, I was drawn to her journal like onlookers to a particularly nasty car crash. I just had to keep picking at the scab that remains over the scar infertility and loss leaves, even after finally having children.

Pick. Talk of baby names.

Pick. Talk of which room the nursery will be.

Pick. Talk of gender. Talk of her husband as a father. Talk of lots of baby related stuff.

…….and she’d only JUST started trying….

and, of course, wouldn’t you know it but bammo, pregnant. First bloody go. Talk about bile in the back of the throat.

PIck. Pick. Bloody PICK.

Here is the bit I’m so dreadfully ashamed of.

My first reaction was to wish that something bad would happen, just so this woman would learn that you shouldn’t assume. That life isn’t that easy for some of us. That it’s somehow wrong to buy baby clothes before you’re even pregnant. That many of us suffer loss and heartache after heartache and that it isn’t always as easy as she’d had it.

Not nice, huh?

Then I stopped reading, because I was ashamed of just how uncharitably I reacted to the happy news of a stranger.

Recently, I started reading again.

She lost the baby, late in the second trimester.

Now, intellectually, I know that nothing I thought had anything to do with it, but boy do I feel like shit about even ever thinking it. Because now that it’s happened and this poor woman has had her world turned upside down I am mortified that I would ever ever think anybody deserved loss and pain like that, just because they took their fertility for granted.

Sigh. Not nice at all.

Do the locomotion.

Or, on how nine week olds cannot crawl, no matter how much they would like to.

I believe many a time I have alluded to a minor difference in personality, or to be rather less polite, tendency to screaming snits of frustration at minor provocation between the terrible twosome.

To recap, Saag (bless her presumably-cotton-with-one-eternally-missing socks) is more than a little on the laid back side. I’d use the expression ’so laid back that she’s horizontal’, except that she truly IS horizontal most of the time. Rather taking the fun out of the expression, and turning it into a rather dessicated bald statement of fact.

Saag is quite happy to be horizontal. Permanently, I’m starting to think.

I have visions of poor Saag being the first baby to firmly refuse to learn to move out of pure slothfullness. I kid you not, the back of the poor child’s head is going flat from the constant pressure behind it. You could just about put corners on it.

Naan, on the other hand, has been variously described as a ‘firecracker’, ‘feisty’ and a ‘bloody screaming handful with her knickers firmly in a twist’ respectively- depending on whether the describer is a friend (and therefore polite), family (and slightly less polite) or (as in the case of the third term and thoroughly impolite) her father.

Naan wants to move, damnit, but the her muscles just aren’t up to the task she sets them. Even if she knew what she was trying to achieve, which I have a sneaking suspicion she doesn’t, she lacks the firepower. And the co-ordination. And the patience to figure it out.

I keep telling her patience is a well known bloody!-coooo-virtue!-darlllling every time she screams at me in frustration when, as inevitably happens about a million times a day, no amount of supine limb flailing achieves whatever goal it is she has in mind.

I try placing her prone, and help her move by wedging her feet so she can gain purchase on the ground. But then all that happens is the following:

She’s got the triumphant lurch forward down pat. No worries there at all. Unfortunately, as the diagram might imply, she also has got the ‘fail to move the arms in any way’ part down pat, too. Hence Naan travels in a series of increasingly frustrated parabolas with a hearty face-plant into the floor at the inevitable end of each arc of movement.

You wouldn’t believe just how red in the face THAT makes her go. With accompanying wah-ambulance siren at top volume, of course.

Boy, learning to walk sure isn’t going to be much fun Chez MII if this is how crawling goes……