On Gina Ford.

Having been very uncharitable towards Jamie Oliver’s Wife’s Book, you feel you should point out the childcare manuals you wouldn’t be without.
It should come as no surprise that you hadn’t heard of Gina Ford before your pregnancy. Or, indeed, up until about seven months into your pregnancy, which was when Best Friend gave you the [...]

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On Jamie Oliver’s Wife.

The dilemma of not particularly maternal women in their 30s who find that the whole biological clock thing is not a myth and has just caused them to throw a lifetime’s aversion to bodily fluids to the winds and get pregnant is that, frankly, they barely know which end of the baby is up, let [...]

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On growing pains.

The Star disgraced himself at the library singing group this week.
He didn’t projectile vomit all over the carpet while you were slightly too energetically flinging him back and forth during a spirited rendition of ‘Row row row your boat’. He did that aged 4 months.
He didn’t make a beeline for the nearest person with interesting [...]

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On collapsing the wave.

Once the Tardis turned up near where you worked.

You tried the door. It was locked.
But you didn’t speak to anyone about it for weeks.
At the time you told yourself it was in case it suddenly disappeared again.
But in reality what you were worried about is that it wouldn’t.
And you didn’t want to forgo the delicious shiver of [...]

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On tall tales.

In truth, you don’t have much true creativity.
But you are a good adapter of other people’s ideas.
So your daydreams tend to be a bit dull unless something odd happens.
Odd things don’t generally feature in your life.
Sometimes they happen to other people though.
And once they happened to you:

There you are, ambling down this pleasant street, when [...]

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On weaning.

In truth you are actually pretty smug about how the Star’s weaning is going.
The boy will eat… well, it’s probably easier to say what he won’t eat:
Papaya.
That’s it.
Unsurprising, though, as in your – and apparently the Star’s – opinion it smells like sick.
On the other hand, he does like broccoli, liver, semolina and the small beads from [...]

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On how to avoid health visitors.

Last week you were at the baby play centre you frequent when one of the organisers brought out a leaflet for the new meet and greet the health visitor they are introducing. This week’s topic, weaning.
You idly found yourself thinking ‘Hmmm, I wonder if that would be interesting.’
And then two things happened.
One: the woman in charge came [...]

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On having your cake and eating it.

With the Star’s first birthday beginning to hover on the horizon, you realised recently that the mantle of making interesting themed birthday cakes was about to pass to you.
You have fond memories of your Mother’s efforts. Particularly the one with lurid green peppermint flavoured icing.
So you decided to use B’s birthday as an opportunity to [...]

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On the garshok.

So the Star’s first word is officially ‘poo’.
Or rather, it’s a strange coughing sound which means ‘poo’.
This is his Babushka’s fault.
Ever since the six month mark she’s been lobbying hard for you to use a… damn, forgot the English word again… oh yeah… potty with the Star.
Despite your best efforts to ignore this, the fact [...]

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