Both Sides Now

I didn't realise it until someone pointed it out to me this week, but I'm in a quite unusual position, and so, I figured I should write about it.  I've sat on most sides of the mainstream childcare fence (with the exception of begging family members to be free childcare), more by accident than design, but however these things work, eh?  So as Joni Mitchell may have put it, "I've looked at childcare from both sides, now."

When Squeaky was but a little Squeak, and I first thought about going back to work, I didn't really know much.  I had seen a couple of day nurseries close by our house, and someone told me that the Family Information Service might be able to give me more info.  Sadly most of what they gave me was hopelessly out of date, so I got in touch with the two nearby nurseries and arranged a look around.  One didn't impress me, being all concrete yard adjoining a coach depot, but the other struck me as a pretty positive place, and we signed an enormous amount of paperwork, and Squeaky headed there quite happily for 18 months or so.  They did wonders for her, socially and educationally, and the staff are still friends now.

But.  I really didn't consider childminders.  I actually thought it would be the more expensive option, you know, that kind of close attention, a personal setting, it just struck me as being cheaper than a nanny or au pair (really never going to be an option), but out of my price range.  And the FIS only gave me contact numbers for 3, none of which were particularly convenient for either home or work.  Effectively the decision was made for me.

When Squeaky started at the part time nursery class in school, her teacher told me she could tell the children that had attended a nursery, rather than a childminder, or stayed at home, by the way they were more confident entering into the school environment, being surrounded by a group of other children their own age, and having that sort of structure to their day.  That was fine with me, the social aspect was something that was important to me, as we don't have any family locally, and so otherwise Squeaky would only have limited contact with other children, so it meant she got a chance she wouldn't have had at home.  The downside being my hours didn't fit too well with school hours, and the nursery that we had used weren't able to offer wrap-around childcare.

My salvation came in the form of a charity-based pre-school provision, linked to my employer.  I wouldn't have known about them if it weren't for working where I do, but their hours fitted in with my work, and their prices were considerably cheaper than the nursery's had been.  They didn't work in the school holidays though, so we kept in contact with the old nursery for a bit of help if push came to shove.  We also looked around at the education department's out-of-school provision, and while Squeaky's school didn't offer anything, another nearby did.  This didn't really work out, as they cancelled days where they didn't have enough bookings, which meant we were stuck at short notice, but they did get us out of a sticky spot.

My hours have gone down again at work (occupational hazard of working for a charity), so the summer holidays were reasonably manageable, and fast forward to now, where Squeaky is in reception class all day.  As I'm working less hours than she's in school, and breakfast club means I can be in the office well before 9, most of the time things are good.  Daddy works shifts, so I try to fit long days around when he's available for the afternoon pick up.  Usually this works out great. But last week, I was booked on a full day's training course in Swansea, and Daddy was on a late shift.  Slight technical hitch.  I sat in the office and worried, especially as I had asked to attend this course.  I continued to worry all the way to school, and stood at the gates still worrying.  Then I looked around.  Yes, there are a few mums I know well enough that I could probably ask a favour of, but I'd feel bad about that.  And then it dawned on me.  Standing next to me was a mum to one of Squeaky's classmates, ChilledGirl.  Who just happens to be a childminder, one who comes with recommendations from 2 completely unconnected people I know.  So rather than panicking, I asked her rates and what I would have to do for a one-off session.

I was shocked.  Honestly, breath taken away shocked to find she charged HALF what the nursery charged.  As she was picking up her own daughter at the same time, the pick up didn't cost anything either, and Squeaky's routine was as normal as could be.  We popped up a few days before to fill in the paperwork (there is always paperwork, it's a PITA but it's for everyone's sake), and Squeaky settled in seconds.  We spoke about it in the days leading up, that she was going to play at ChilledGirl's house, and ChilledGirl's mummy would pick her up from school.

She had an absolute ball.  The personal attention meant she had a tea that suited her, she was able to play in a home and family environment, and experience what it's like to be part of a bigger family (ChilledGirl has an older and a younger brother), and have your own chores and responsibilities - which in turn made me realise we can ask more of Squeaky than we currently do.  She didn't even realise that she was in childcare, which makes my guilt that little bit less.  Talking to other mums, the homely environment (as well as the surprising price) were a major motivator, the fact that their child didn't feel they were being placed in childcare settings was a big seller in some cases.

For me now?  Well, I have to be honest.  I'd be happier for her to spend her days in a smaller setting now that she has the socialisation at school. I don't have that same motivation to send her to a group setting when she doesn't need it so much.  Fortunately with lower and flexible hours I'm able to cover most holidays one way or another, but having looked at things from both viable alternatives, I think I'd rather place her with a childminder for those times when I really need childcare.  And as registered childminders can accept childcare voucher payments, I'm better off again, because we are still able to make the most of the tax benefits of the vouchers.  Obviously, if I had the option, I'd take all the school holidays off, and stay at home myself having adventures, but life doesn't always work that way.  I've looked at childcare from both sides, now.

I should also now apologise for having developed a bit of a photo editing app addiction. But, nah.

The most natural thing in the world

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want to do it too young, so we'll put you on the pill before you have your first serious boyfriend. It'll help with those cramps too.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want to mess up your studies, so we'll keep you on the pill, even though you're practising safe sex. It'll help with those cramps too, because the painkillers don't.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want to screw up your first proper job, so we'll keep you on the pill, even though you're not in any sort of relationship.  Cramps? You don't have those any more, do you?

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want a bump on your wedding pictures, do you? We'll keep you on the pill, you wouldn't want to be bleeding on your honeymoon, after all.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. So finally, you come off the pill.  You don't so much have cramps as want to claw your own uterus out with a rusty teaspoon. After missing 3 days work a month for 6 months due to haemorrhaging so badly you pass out, your employers start to lose patience.  But still, every month, without fail, along comes good old Aunt Flo.  Your friends announce their own pregnancies and elderly relatives start asking questions about when you'll follow suit.

You visit the doctor. He gives you painkillers. You become an expert in prescription and over the counter painkillers, their interactions and side effects. You become the person in the office that everyone comes to when they've got a headache as you have a better supply than the local chemist, on the days you're there, anyway.

Image credit http://www.freeimages.co.uk/

You cry. You go to the doctor and cry some more. Eventually he listens, and refers you to the hospital.  You get your appointment letter, and turn up on time. For a scan. In the ante-natal unit. Surrounded by happy, glowing pregnant women stroking their growing bumps. You cry as they scan your still empty womb.  And you still miss three days of work a month.

The specialist talks you through your options. Someone decides that surgery is the best step. You don't know who, you're too busy holding back the tears.  You go in for surgery. The ward adjoins the maternity ward, and you spend a sleepless night before surgery listening to the cries of other people's newborns, and drift off to sleep somewhere around 5. At 6 you're woken by a nurse with an evil glint in her eye and a single blade razor, who instructs you to have a shower and give yourself the kind of shave usually favoured by porn stars.

After surgery you learn that you're going to spend the next 6 months having a happy fun free trial temporary menopause, to allow your insides to heal. Someone sticks a needle in your bum, and slaps a plaster on your thigh.  You spend three days a month in bed with a migraine. Work remain unimpressed with your attendance.

A friend announces their pregnancy with their second child.  You cry.  That same friend loses their baby during childbirth. You cry again.  You cry for them and their loss. But you also cry for yourself. You're actually jealous. At least they can *get* pregnant in the first place. You hate that you feel this way. You cry because you're a bad person, feeling jealous of someone who has just lost their baby, for goodness sake.

Finally, they stop the injections, the patches, and you're left to nature. And when you're in what the specialist has said is the absolute last chance saloon, a miracle happens.  Somehow you're growing a new life inside you. Work are less than enthusiastic, but they've not seen much of you lately anyway.  Pregnancy is hard, childbirth traumatic. But at the end of it, you're left with the baby you so wanted. Who doesn't come with an instruction manual, and has a new challenge for every day of your life. Who turns your world upside down in ways you hadn't even considered.  Your friend goes on to have more children, and never even knows about your reaction.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But why did no-one say it would be so hard?

Buried Alive!

Squeaky is, err, shall we say assertive. She likes to manage, direct, instruct, and generally tell everyone else what to do.  If there's fun to be had, she's definitely the one making the decisions.

With this in mind, we made the most of the recent sunshine & headed to the beach for some good, old-fashioned family fun.  Sandcastles were built, as long as they met with her planning restrictions. Ice cream was eaten, Sun cream was liberally applied to all exposed surfaces, water was consumed in a way rarely seen in the UK. And we did as we were told.

First, Miss Squeaky demanded a hole to sit in.  Then the hole was extended to fit legs. And then she insisted on being buried in it.  How could I say no? Do you know, I even helped her get out afterwards, though I don't think her shorts will ever recover. Two trips through the washing machine and they still look like she had an embarrassing accident in them.

Am I missing something?

I've got a confession to make.  The whole "jubilee fever" thing has passed me by.  I'm feeling not a jot of patriotic pride, and am thoroughly bored with the whole thing already.  No bunting on my blog, thank you very much.

I can't even say I'm grateful for the extra day off work.  I work part-time see, and get pro-rata bank holidays, 3/5ths of the annual bank holiday entitlement, so when all but one of the year's bank holidays fall on my working days, and the office is closed, I've got to work outside of my normal hours to make it up. No extra day off for me, an extra day IN instead.  No-one's organised anything here, same as the one ten years ago.  It'll pass us by with nothing more than bad telly.

Part of me feels a little bit bad about this. Not that I don't really care, but that I'm denying Squeaky the chance of something important & memorable.  But then I thought about it.  I was 1 1/2 at the Silver Jubilee, 6 for Charles & Diana's wedding.  I know there were street parties for both, because I've seen pictures of me with red, white & blue ribbons in my hair.  But I don't remember a thing of them.  Not a sausage (roll?).  Yet I DO have memories of that age. I remember a holiday we took when I was 18 months old, sitting under a table in the hotel restaurant, listening to McArthur Park, and wondering why the hell someone didn't just bring that cake inside, or why he didn't copy the recipe down.  I remember all sorts of silly things about school, and the house we lived in before moving when I was 6, but nothing about the Jubilee or Royal Wedding.



I was going to say "something unique and memorable" in the paragraph above, until I realised what I was following it up with. The Jubilee is far from unique.  For pretty much everyone reading this blog, we've had another Jubilee in recent living memory (and if you're under the age of 10, why are you reading this? Go outside and play!) not to mention a proper royal wedding, a few quieter weddings, a couple of state funerals, oh and the Olympics coming up shortly.  I've got Union Jack overload.

So, enjoy your party, I'm off to watch The Tiger Who Came To Tea tomorrow with Squeaky and some friends (with their adorable munchkin), and I shall spend the rest of the long weekend trying to catch up with 2 weeks of Corrie, and almost the entire series of The Apprentice.  That's something to be grateful for, I suppose. And if we get really desperate, I could always stick Wacky Races on, pretend it's still 1977!

What can your Family Information Service do for you?

I was recently invited to join a parents/carers panel for my local Family Information Service, and it got me to thinking, what do they actually DO?  And despite me being famous/infamous enough to be invited, I wasn't really sure myself.  What better excuse to find out, and to share a bit of information with the world at large?

First things first.  The Family Information Service is a statutory service in England & Wales.  That means that wherever you live in England or Wales, your local authority HAS to have a Family Information Service.  If you're in Scotland or Northern Ireland, similar services exist, though they may have other names.  Elsewhere in the world, I'm afraid you're on your own for this one.

The Family Information Service are a "one-stop-shop" for any kind of information for your family (the clue's in the name). Looking for details of local childminders?  Out-of-school services? Youth clubs for a teenager?  Give the Family Information Service a call.  Maybe you've got a child with a disability and you're looking for some advice, or other parents in a similar situation. They can point you in the direction of someone who can help.

The Family Information Service don't provide all these things themselves, but they're a central point to find out what's out there in your local area, and to get information about services, support, events, groups, etc.  And if you're involved with a group, make sure your local Family Information Service have got the details, they can't give your information out if they haven't got it!  It's a great way to get new people involved, or if you're looking to expand a service, you can find out where there's gaps in other services at the moment (anyone who wants to set up an open-access playgroup around Merthyr Tydfil on a Wednesday, that'd be brilliant, and you'd have roughly no competition!)

The panel was really useful, in terms of finding out about things I didn't know, and finding out other parents' experiences.  It's like many aspects of parenting (and blogging, come to think of it), we all feel like we're on our own, and we're the only person to have faced this issue/made this mistake, and then we talk to someone else, and find we're all in the same situation after all.  I'm excited to be part of our Family Information Service panel, and hope we can make a real difference in improving the range of information available to people, and the number of people the information reaches.  One thing we identified is how marginalised you can feel as a working parent, so much attention is given to those who are out-of-work, that there's very few groups, informal provision or support available outside office hours.  If that's the impact we have, it'll be very positive for a lot of people. 


Oh, I mentioned events, right?  That's something our Family Information Service do too.  They run a Family Fun Day every year, getting lots of the agencies working with families in the area together to hold a day of fun in the sunshine, with arts, crafts, games, competitions, face painting, a great chance to get an idea of the range of services available (and also really, really good fun!)

So, that's the Family Information Service.  Have you used yours? Give them a call, they'd love to hear from you.

TIRED With a capital everything

I'm having one of those days.  One of those days where you want to say "Sod it", quit everything and hide under the duvet until the world goes away.

We were on one of the £9.50 weekends until yesterday, rushed back early because SqueakyDaddy was working a late shift last night.  So I'm weighed down by a huge pile of washing.  I've been in work today, followed by a meeting I said I'd attend as both Me The Mommy, and Me The Work-Person.  More work tomorrow, followed by a drive to my mum's, with Squeaky in the car, because I'm off to Blog Camp on Thursday. (Really? This Thursday? How did that come around so fast?)  I still haven't decided when I'm driving back over, but SqueakyDaddy is on about going up to his Dad's over the weekend.

I can't say no.  It wouldn't be fair.  But really, when do I get a weekend? And Squeaky, come to that.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it all.  But there is the promise of car boot sales, good car boot sales.  And a trip to the chip shop for roe & chips.  This alone will make 2 hours on the motorway seem worthwhile.  (No, it's not the same if I buy a tin of roe & cook it myself. I've tried.)

Nervous

We're having a couple of days off.  Squeaky is going to stay with my parents, while Daddy & I take a little excursion to Oxford.  No particular reason for Oxford, apart from that we've never been.

Now, my parents had me, they must have some idea of how to handle a child.  But I'm nervous.  They had her overnight last year for a night, and she was a bit of a minx.  She's sleeping a lot, lot better now, but she's also a lot more active and into absolutely EVERYthing at the moment.  She's going to run them ragged, isn't she?

Ah well, see you after the weekend internets.  Be good.

Bad Mommy, No Biscuit

Last night, I went out with a lovely Mummy friend to see Avenue Q in the Wales Millennium Centre (aka the armadillo place down Cardiff Bay). This immediately after a day at work, when SqueakyDaddy was off, at home with Her Squeaky Highness.  So aside from breakfast, he did everything for the whole day.  Nappies, lunch, tea, drinks, bath, bedtime, story, the whole works.  While I was gallivanting about Cardiff and trying to remember that the people around me had paid good money to her the folk on stage singing, and not me.

This was a bit of a challenge, but I'll be honest, he coped admirably.  There were no panicked messages on my phone, no texts asking silly questions like "where is her toothbrush".  Just good old fashioned coping.  Foolish man.  I'll do this again now!

And now, after having returned to near normality, I find myself desperately wanting to buy this book from Amazon.  Despite the fact it's probably the least appropriate book I could ever wish to own.  I somehow *need* it.  So if such a thing as an Amazon fairy exists, it's on my wishlist, along with a worrying insight into the rest of my psyche, and you could probably send it to me direct.

Honestly. I'm not asking for it really. No. I'll buy it myself after payday.

Shhhhhhhh!

I've just had an email from someone very important. Can you guess who?

Santa has just emailed me to say that he's written a special letter to Squeaky.  Unfortunately he's sent it by normal post, rather than Super Special Penguin Post, so I'm relying on Peter Postie (honestly that's our postie's name, and that's what he puts on those little notes to say he's taken something back to the sorting office) to turn up in the next couple of days. I haven't seen him for a week, so I really hope he gets it here in time for Squeaky to open before Christmas.

We're still fairly comprehensively snowed in. My car is completely immoveable, SqueakyDaddy's is OK, and the main roads are passable, if you can get to them.  We're meant to be driving up to the Midlands on Friday, so we're just hoping it will be halfway reasonable.  I think Squeaky & I are going to spend the day drinking overpriced coffee in Cardiff while daddy's at work, and then we can go from there, rather than messing about coming back here.

*Fingers Crossed*  We've got enough adult food to last a few days, enough baby food and nappies for about 10.  By then it'd better have cleared, or else!

I'm BAAAAAAACK!

After a week of near internet-silence, I'm back!  Don't worry, I hadn't fallen off the side of the world, or damaged myself, just the computer decided to have a bit of an existential crisis and needed to go for a little holiday.

But we're back now, with a little update to remind you that we're around.

TBH, even without the computer to distract us, we didn't get up to an awful lot last week.  Doctor's appointment to get them to look at Little Miss Squeaky's eczema (poor little mite), and visiting pretty much every relative under the sun seems to cover it.

But we did indulge ourselves with a trip to the car boot sale on Sunday.  Not that we were really looking for anything, but we went anyway.  The ground was horrible, all frozen & lumpy and slippy, but the Symbio coped admirably, far better than me in my boots.  And the blessing of it being frozen, I guess, is that everything stayed clean.  A little more thawing & I'd still be hosing the mud off now.  I love the way the cosytoes can fold down over the bar, or up, practically to Squeaky's nose.  She's a little demon for sticking her hands out into the cold, but this way she stays lovely and toasty warm.

 

Time Off!

Last week, SqueakyDaddy surprised me by saying we were off to Torquay at the weekend, to a lovely guest house we'd visited the previous year on his birthday.  And better than that, we were going to be adults!  Squeaky was booked in to stay with my parents.

Now, I've got to admit, I wasn't sure.  She'd been a pain when they were babysitting for the evening a couple of weeks ago, so a whole night and day? Whoa!  But I swallowed my concerns, if they were happy to be kept awake, then it's their choice.

As it turned out, I went over a couple of days before, thanks to visiting Trunki, and catching up with old friends, which meant Squeaky could get properly settled in before we left her.  And settle she did, like a trooper.  Played merrily with her toys, was asleep earlier than normal, woke only once for a cuddle at 6a.m., and was a little gem, by all accounts.

Me? I went swimming, drank more than I've done in 18 months, ate curry, shopped, and didn't sleep because my boobs hurt!  24 hours is a long time away from a breastfeeding baby.  I expressed a few times, and it broke my heart to have yo pour that precious milk away, but I had no way to store it, and complete strangers don't take kindly to you wanting to grab their baby & shove your nipple in its mouth.

We're home now though, and had a rough night.  Squeaky's got a cold, and tooth number 2 has finally broken through the surface.  Calpol is our friend.

(The guest house don't know about, and didn't request this link. I just like them, and wanted to tell the world.)

A quiet week (or two?)

It's been a while, however long it is.  Bad Blogger, no biscuit.

What's been happening in Squeaky World, then? We went to Grandma & Grandpa Squeaky's house last week, so SqueakyDaddy & I could go to the theatre, and she could menace my parents.  And menace she did.  Even though one tooth has come through, the other bottom tooth is still giving her all sorts of problems, and she squeaked and squawked and squealed and generally refused to go to bed until we got home.  Oh dear.  She's 8 & a bit months now though, I think a lot of it is separation anxiety, though I don't know how to deal with it.  Apparently she would settle and go to sleep on either of my parents, but wouldn't go in the cot, and just created every time they tried, so she kept them up all evening.  Little minx.

And then, she was having a dodgy evening at home on Tuesday, and it took both me & SqueakyDaddy to calm her.  During this time, SqueakyDaddy spotted that the curtains were slightly apart, and gave them a quick tweak.  Which somehow turned into Total Existence Failure and a curtain rail on the floor.  So Squeaky has had to spend the last couple of nights in the travel cot in our bedroom while we get the gear together to put a new rail up and rehang the curtains.  Grrr.

But is this child ever mobile?  I can't believe it's been only a month since she mastered the art of crawling.  Seemingly that's not enough for her.  Now she's pulling herself up with ever-greater confidence & ability, and starting to try and walk.  Hasn't she read the books?  She's not meant to be doing this yet!  I took her into Clarks' on Monday to get her feet measured, so I could *consider* buying shoes, and her feet are still too small for even the littlest size, so she'll just have to deal with socks or tights.  She takes shoes off as soon as I put them on her, anyway, so it's probably not a bad thing.  We'd only end up losing a shoe somewhere silly.

Holiday Time

The Squeaky family are just back from a short trip to Blackpool, and are absolutely exhausted.

Maybe we should have chosen a different hotel, one where the ambient temperature was slightly below that of the surface of the sun, but how do you know until you arrive?  Seriously, the place was like a sauna.  And that meant that Squeaky didn't sleep well.  Despite normally sleeping straight through the night with very rare problems, we woke 2 or 3 times every night, and took forever to settle.  Which meant that all of us had trouble getting back to sleep.

It was a good trip though.  Sometimes I, not forget, just get used to how adorable Squeaky is.  It takes seeing other people to remind me.  Breakfast took upwards of an hour every morning, due to her smiling at everyone, and the recipients of the smiles stopping to talk to her.  She's a little gem when we're out as a rule, and behaved beautifully in the dining room, eating her breakfast without too much fuss, at least in part due to the level of attention she was getting.

What is it though?  At home, where there's all the changes of clothes in the world, meals go in mouths, and clothes stay pretty clean (Squeaky's, obviously. Mine always end up with weetabix on the shoulders).  When we're away, and there's only (only!) a couple of changes of clothes per day, she manages to get covered with food every time?  She was a very grubby baby some days last week, I must admit.  The day she decided to eat sand on the beach just added to the general grubbiness.

And as usual, whenever we go away, she's picked up a cold.  I don't know whether to blame it on swimming in a different pool, or just exposure to different people (and therefore different germs).  Either way, she's grumpy and snotty, and grouching when I try to wipe her nose.  She won't let me near her with the aspirator bulb thingo, so we just have to go with the saline spray and the snot.  Mmmmm, nice.

What else to say?  We had a fab week, went to the zoo (where Squeaky promptly went to sleep and missed almost everything), went on all the piers, on the beach,  in the Sandcastle waterpark.  We walked for miles, and Squeaky happily sat in her buggy or in the carrier.  We went on buses and trams, ate lots of meals out, breastfed in cafes all over the place, ate chips, cheese and melon, but not all at the same time, and won enormous cuddly toys in the amusements.  See?  Big enough to sit in the buggy.

Oh, and yeah yeah yeah!!!  We're crawling!! Squeaky has now figured out what to do with her arms as well as her legs and is zooming around on all fours.  Watch out world, we're mobile!

Squeaky The Celebrity!

Ages and ages ago, when Squeaky was a tiny little Squeak, she had a set of professional photos taken as an entry to a "Cutest Baby in South Wales" comp.  Sadly she didn't win that, but we had the photos anyway.

SqueakyGran decided to send one of them in to her magazine, because Squeaky is "Far cuter than any of the ones in there", even by our biased opinion.  This was AGES ago, but that's the way of these things.  And now we've had an email, and Miss Squeaky herself is in My Weekly this week, in all her cute, pink-frocked glory!  Awwwwwwwwww.

And right now this minute, she's stolen my mousemat & is trying to eat it.

We're BAAAACK!

I know, I know, I'm a rubbish blogger.  The whole point of this was to make me write more frequently, but I'm just not that kind of person, or I don't have that kind of life, or something.

The whole Squeaky family went off to Devon last week for a little holiday.  It seems quite alien to me that my main holiday for the year is a week in a holiday park, only a couple or 3 hours drive from home, but giving up multiple foreign jaunts each year is the price we have to pay for having Squeaky, and she's worth it.

Oh, we had adventures!  All sorts of adventures.  Trips to the beach during the first couple of days when the weather was sunny.  Now Squeaky's that bit older, she spent a lot of the time playing with sand.  Not in the sandcastle building sense, obviously.  But in the "Wow!  What's this powdery stuff?  Can I eat it?" sense, running it through her fingers, pouring it on her face, then objecting to the sand being on her face, things like that.  It's incredible to watch her become more and more aware of the world around her, and start to explore it more.

We also went to a "haunted" manor house, where Squeaky made very well timed comments (raspberries) while the guide was talking, but was generally good as gold, went on a funicular railway, where she charmed everyone, ate ice-cream & white chocolate buttons (don't tell my health visitor, please), and to a farm park, where she made friends with sheep, goats, horses, ducks and bunnies.  Giant bunnies, like the ones on Teletubbies!

And we stayed up late in the evening, watching the entertainment, or watching the world cup final.  Squeaky fell asleep before the end, but then again, I wasn't far behind her.  She slept in her travel cot without any complaint, which is another big relief, and means we don't need to worry about renting a cot when we go elsewhere.  And she went swimming nearly every day, making friends wherever she went.  It's amazing how many people want to talk to a small and chirpy baby.

Hooray for John Fowler holidays, because we had a lovely little chalet, right by the pool and entertainment.  Plenty big enough for 2 adults and a Squeaky, parking outside our door (you don't get that at the bigger parks).  Friendly welcome for us all, enough to keep us occupied, but not so much that you feel like you're missing something if you decide to have an early night.

And now, Squeaky's 6 whole months old!  I can't believe how the time has flown.  She's learned and grown so much, and taught me so much.  She had a whole bowl of cereal this morning, and she's having three solid meals a day, though not always very much of them.  She's eaten chicken, both fresh cooked by me, and from a jar, all sorts of veggies and fruits, and a few things she possibly shouldn't have (see above ice-cream & white choc buttons).  No great quantities of the treat foods, just a little try to introduce more texture, flavour, etc.  As long as it doesn't get in the way of proper food, or become too much of a habit, I don't see it as a problem.

Like Mother, Light Daughter

Squeaky has lots of friends. A few of them are the other babies she meets at Boobie Club (our name for the breastfeeding support group), some are her toys, and the rest are random items. Maybe I should introduce the cast members.

Plant - strangely enough, this is a plant. To be specific, it's a poinsettia that's been living on the windowsill since before Christmas. How it's still alive is a mystery to me, but as long as Squeaky keeps talking to it, I'm glad it's going strong.

Mask - a lovely red & cream Venetian mask above the bed. Clearly fascinating first thing in the morning, and gives her someone to talk to when she decides that sleep is for other people.

Lightbulb - Oh, her best friend. All her best friends are lightbulbs. The conversations they've had, the fun they've shared! Even when a light is switched off, it's still worth staring at for a while in case it comes on and she can talk to it for a while.

I mentioned this to SqueakyGran the other day. BIG mistake. She just laughed, and "kindly" reminded me that lightbulbs used to be my friends too. And more to the point, that I would spend many a happy car journey talking to, and feeding, the streetlights. I'm not entirely clear on how I fed streetlights, let alone why, but it's true. As soon as she said it, I remembered it quite clearly. I wonder who feeds them now. I hope they're not too hungry.

Stealth poop and daisies

Squeakybaby, daddy and I went to meet her great-grandma for the first time yesterday, thanks to a bit of subterfuge involving my aunt and a factory shopping outlet. We had a lovely meal and shopping trip, and Squeaky was at her well-behaved in public best, aside from one stinky nappy shortly after we arrived. Easily dealt with, and on with the day.

At some point during the hour-long journey home (and I suspect at the start) however, Squeaky did what I can only describe as a Stealth Poop. Honestly, this child doesn't see the need to share with me the fact that she's filled her nappy, and would rather sit in poop until I notice. Not a squeak out of her, and strangely, not a whiff out of the nappy. So by the time we got home, she'd been festering in her own filth for somewhere in the region of an hour, and her poor, delicate baby's bum was all red & sore. I've explained to her that she's better off telling me these things, because then she won't be sore again, but I don't hold out much hope.

I've turned into a bit of a tree-hugging hippy-mom. Aside from the breast-feeding (it's cheaper, it's easier, and I might as well get some use out of the jugs nature so kindly provided me with), we've been using some lovely nappy/boob/anything sore cream called Kamillosan that's chamomile based, rather than the horrible looking & smelling Sudocrem. Seems to work wonders too. The sore bum of yesterday is still looking a little pink, but it's drying out well, and aside from when she actually has a nappy change, she's forgotten all about it.

Does that mean my baby's dirty nappies really are full of flowers?