Treasure Hunt!

At last! A moment to indulge my almost forgotten passion!! Layla's asleep next to me in her pram - who knows for how long?! So while the sun shines, I shall make hay!

Windy and only very slightly chilly, the carboot sale in Holcot (the next little village along from us) was jampacked with carbooters and treasure-hunters on the forage for all that glitters. (Perhaps not all of them are magpies like me?!) Craig tends to whip along ahead of me, weaving inbetween the doddering, dithering masses, his eyes fanatically fine-tuned to pick out Stephen King novels from among all the rest of the books stuffed into crates on the muddy grass, or lined up higgledy-piggledy on wonky trestle tables. (He already owns 95% of Stephen King's novels - so his pickings on Saturday rendered nothing at all...)
I, on the other hand, discovered a bounty of deliciousness! But with only a few coins jangling hopefully in my pocket, CHOICE had to overrule my usually spontaneous shopping methodology. Also, haggling with an Englishman is not so different to bartering with other sorts of tribes - and I managed to get all sorts of little goodies thrown in for free or half-price. (It helps to plead poverty while holding out your 'only' pound coin, of course.)
Lounging in their rusty, forlon cars, haggard, semi-toothless women stare into the lonely space between milling customers, a drooping fag trailing smoke, caught on the moist part of the lower lip as though glued. Old men, busy busy busy, their crates of fish hooks, lures and reels of gut proudly displayed -- my eye drawn to the wooden boxes shimmering with the rainbows of finely twined feathers of fishing flies, protected behind glass, like rare butterflies caught in the depths of a jungle. Down-and-out couples selling off their old, dusty TV, their children's greying, stained baby clothes - and arbitrary knick-knacks I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy! And then, there are the prim, middle-aged ladies, their wares arranged artfully along tables carefully lain with starched white cotton tablecloths. Here you can find little Murano glass bowls, 1920s paste jewellery, marquesite brooches and jewellery boxes that make you wonder who their owner was, what was she like?
My discoveries included: a 1950s Bakelite 'black' doll, and an empty sweet tin - also circa 1950s. Four blood-red perspex hearts the size of dinner plates. Two boxes of chocolate incense. A collection of the most divine plates, tea cups and a bowl - possibly 1920s: the sweetest candy pink, handpainted embellishments in white, gold and turquoise. GORGEOUS!!! Another 1950s find: a silver-plated and red glass sugar bowl and spoon. PERFECT for my tea parties!

Our little Petal/Daffodil/Pepperpot (Craig's nicknames for Layla) will be 11 weeks on Thursday! And she weighs a healthy 10lb 2oz (4.6kg, I think.) She is constantly ravenous - and prefers to snack all day long, instead of gorging on a few large meals. This means a bit more work for me - but at least her reflux is under control this way! Anyone got any advice??

Exhausted, exhausted...

HRM (Her Royal Majesty A.K.A my baby girl) is still blessedly asleep, though as she swims to the surface of her sleep, she's grunting and sighing - causing my mothering hormones to flood my body, and I know it'll be a matter of mere minutes before I have to sign off, log out etc etc. But at least I am here on the page!
My second day all alone at home with this new little person who is 150% dependent on me has been fraught with anxious tears and sobbings of failure. (Oh, the drama, the drama!) But, after an emergency visit from the housewife, a few phonecalls to other mom-friends, I discover all of this is... NORMAL. Bugger. Yes, it does sort of help to know I am not an utterly useless mother -- but at the same time, I wish I could somehow leapfrog over this physicaland emotional exhaustion to a place where brushing my teeth is par for the course and not a massive accomplishment managed somewhere after lunch! (Out the window, I spy the Sainsbury's home delivery van: EUREKA! How much easier and simpler this will make my life!!)

I'm going to say ciao before my bambino awakes -- setting aside my beloved, but now quite extraneaous, writing for the greater good of a functioning household! (For any ideas or good old-fashioned encouragement, please use the COMMENTS section at the bottom of this posting!)

Love,
Lisa

My New Life! (said with definite irony and ... JOY!!)

My fingers have forgotten the feel of these clicking letters and punctuation marks beneath my fingers after seven weeks of My New Life. Layla Rose arrived two and a half weeks ahead of schedule - though blessedly so, for many reasons I won't bore you with right now - but which will probably pop up some time in the future... Right now, my daughter lies in her navy blue Graco pram, being pushed to and fro by my leg/foot made tireless by my need to have her fall asleep! Mind you, it's not so I can have time to myself - it's ... I'm lying. It IS to have some time to myself!! I need to change from these clothes that smell like her curdled reflux after she projectile burped all over me in a hot, frantic splurge earlier this morning... I wish I could sit down with a cup of hot, sweet tea in the armchair where the sun is now that soft gold of late afternoon and merely contemplate my navel...

That's all I have time for - I have a grunting, moaning, squeaking bundle of joy who is soon going to let forth a great howl of hunger (or unashamed irritation at her poo nappy!)

She arrived!

Wow. How my life has changed.

Email, my blogs, my life in general actually, fell completely by the wayside for the last 4 and half weeks............ but here I am, sort-of back in action! My last blog entry is dated 12 days before Layla Rose arrived, somewhat prematurely, on the scene - and forever to turn my life magically and beautifully upside down! (I marvel with worshipful-like awe at my two fellow bloggers, Andrea and Caroline, who miraculously manage to find time and grey matter to write like they do: WOW, WOW, WOW!)

Until I find some time again,
signing off...
New Mommy Lisa

The Sheer Glamour of Birth

With the weather warming up, the snow is now nothing more than melted squelchiness - though still, I am sure, there will be children who'll head to the farm slopes just beyond with their homemade sleds! As my due date gets nearer and nearer, the danger of icy roads recedes into the past as a thankfully distant memory and exists no longer as an possibility!
All that needs to be done in Layla Rose's nursery is for Craig and Gary to put up the blind - a lilac, thermal, black-out blind.(After months of confused pottering, I've at last discovered how to add a hyperlink - so if you see text that is blue and underlined, it means you can click on it and it'll take you to photos or something else to juice up the story!) Otherwise, my TO DO LIST has only my hospital bag to shop for and then pack. (Sleep eludes me as I chase down all these niggling things I still need to do... Even my dreams are saturated with obsessions relating to birth, bodily fluids, crying babies...) Unfortunately, going shopping for the contents of The Hospital Bag, is not a glamorous affair -- and you will know this only if you are a)a midwife, b)a mommy or c)someone with rather sick, sad interests! From ultrathick maternity pads to those see-through gauze disposable knicker-things. Blech. Perhaps it's a shopping expedition best accomplished in solitude? I don't think Craig will ever look at me the same way EVER again...

Wishes DO come true.

Alone all day long with just my belly
to talk to, the days can be treacherously long - and I find myself counting down the hours and then minutes until Craig arrives home. Fact: men need to speak less than women do - and by the time Craig gets home from work, he's all talked out and ready to just chill out. But then like a tourist at a zoo, I poke him verbally as though he were a sleepy wombat to perform. Ya. Poor guy. I know. But hey - I get lonely!

THANKFULLY, I made a couple of very special friends when I taught at that little school in Kettering. The one is Tamara - another South African- who came over to the UK with her husband in August last year. She has been a Godsend - and has visited me twice on her way home from work even though she has an hour long schlep home to Peterborough from here... And then there's Wendy.
From the very moment I met Wendy, I hoped we would be friends - beyong the confines of colleagues' politeness and school hours. She just has this incredible warmth - like a glowing hearth-fire I craved to warm myself before. She was an absolute Godsend at work, literally being able to help with any situation or answer any, however random, question. (Personally, I think she should move her talented behind outta there and start her own company! She is DYNAMIC!)
Last Wednesday, in the pitch blackness of 4pm, Wendy arrived at the front door to what must surely have been an avalanche of far too many words - but bravely, she took it all in her stride (lol!) Hanging up her coat, she managed to get a sentence out inbetween all of mine: "Oh, and here's a little something for you."

She handed me a camera.

What?

A camera. I didn't know what to say. I didn't understand. Was she loaning it to me till I could get one of my own? Eventually, I understood the depth of it all: Wendy was actually giving us this camera - and it was gleamingly brand new, stocked up with the very best rechargeable batteries and a 4GB memory card!!! Gobsmacked. Flabbergasted. Completely and utterly blown away. I felt like a bit of a fool - inadequacy of verbiage for once paralysing me into silence. I could hope I appeared as grateful as I felt...
We had a couple of cups of tea, a few nasty little sugary biscuits I discovered in Craig's corner of the tea/coffee cupboard -- and altogether the most wonderful conversation I've been treated to in simply ages! (Craig looked grateful seeing someone else have to absorb my daily quota of words.)

I guess what I'm really trying to say is THANK YOU, darling Wendy, for the most incredible gift - a gift with long-reaching meaning: Layla will have her childhood lovingly archived because of YOU.

(To showcase all my latest photographs, I got us set up with Google's Picasa! Here is the link to my 'Nursery in Progress' album. As usual, I would LOVE comments!)

Candid Camera

Right now there about a thousand images I wish I could capture for you -- the sight of my pale, ballooning belly, laced with pale blue deltas of veins, the delicate wood carving on the antique wardrobe I've spent hours painstakingly stripping of years of paint, the giant pile of softness in whites, pinks and pale yellows: all of Layla's newborn babygrows, jumpers and blankets sent all the way from her granny Sally in South Africa...

{this pic of me was taken at Christmas time: I am now uncomfortably rotund at 33 weeks, though the midwife says my uterus is full-term/40weeks in size: GULP!!! And how will the next 7 weeks pan out?! Can my skin really stretch anymore?}

But alas, the awful little camera we bought from a colleague of Craig's needs 2 brand new batteries to take just 3 or 4 grainy photos before agitatingly konking out. My 5 weeks of working at Avondale Juniors (blood, sweat and many, many heartbroken tears later)and the money I earned was used to pay my dad back - though I was promised, as part of my employment contract, reimbursement for mileage driven and 7.50GBP a day for lunches. HOWEVER (insert 'thunderous glare' here) the company who processes the payments, MyKeyPay, insists they have absolutely no record of me - and because I am on maternity leave, there is nothing they can do about it. To put it kindly, I'm bloody pissed off as all hell!!!! I followed the correct protocol in terms of registration, filling in forms and posting them back etc. I EVEN received a telephone call from one Gaelic-sounding Sean CONFIRMING my registration two days after the fact. SO. WHAT. IN. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?? A South African colleague of mine who teaches at the same school, hired by the same company, blah blah blah: SHE gets all her expenses paid. So why not me? The most frustrating part is that I was hoping to use that 200quid to buy a camera and various other things for Layla Rose's arrival. And now I can't. You can't have a baby without having a camera. (I know it sounds somewhat insane - but after my own mom has documented our lives so exquisitely in album after gorgeous album, I can hardly imagine not having captured Layla's growth from wriggly little newborn all the way through to first steps and messy icecreams...)
I have someone from my employment agency looking into it for me - so perhaps I may be paid after all: I told him I was writing about MyKeyPay on my blog - and that he better warn them that a feisty little journalist was gonna take 'em down if they didn't sort me out with some cashola!!! (Said in jest. Sort of.)

Anyway, if any of you have an old camera lying around you're not using, could you please send it my way? THANK YOU!!

PS. I thought I was a really cute 'n cuddly baby - but since I put my baby photo up on Facebook as my profile picture, absolutely NO-ONE has commented on it. Think I better take it down - and replace it with one of my arty pics which always elicit enormously good responses. lol