Rachel Coleman Finch

( whinge )

Migraine sucks.

I have the following baby-related things for sale, all currently located at my home in Cambridge. I'm happy to deliver within a few miles of home, and willing to come to some arrangement for family/friends living further afield.  If I don't sell things in the next week or so I shall brave eBay (and its weird policies on second-hand cloth nappies).

Changing table: Kub Eco Changer, White. Bought last June from John Lewis for £75 and still in very good condition. We are replacing it with a cot-top changer for space reasons. JL don't seem to do it any more, but it is available at other suppliers.
Asking £50.

Double breast-pump: Avent Isis iQ Duo pump: double pump, comes with carry/storage bag, 2 chill bags & 6 freezer packs. Costs about £260 new, I bought it second-hand on ebay for about £150. Since then it's been used daily for about 8 months with C, and as little as I could get away with two or three times a week for about 6 months with N. Everything still works well, but N is eating enough solids that I don't need to pump milk for him to cover my half-day absences, and so I won't.
Asking £100

Single manual breast-pump: Avent Isis, like this one, but I don't have the model number to be sure they are the same. Bought new for C, used only occasionally. Probably cost about £20 new.
Asking £10

Bottle/pump steriliser: Avent Express electric steam steriliser. Does not seem to be available any more - big enough to sterilise all pump parts and 2-3 bottles, or just 6-7 bottles. Takes about 10 minutes to sterilise. Probably cost about £50 new.
Asking £20.

Cloth nappies: Sized approx 0-6 months, they've had about 12 months total use, seem to be in good condition still.
18 Tots Bots Fluffle nappies, size 1, cost £8.75 new, no longer on sale. They are white, fluffy, and dry quickly when hung up.
Asking £75 for all 18.
4 Motherease Airflow wraps, size Medium, cost £8 each new.
Asking £15 for all four.

I got a new watch today. I haven't had a working watch since December: I had one dead-battery rotary, and one working-but-back-falling off digital. I finally got enough grip to remember to take them both with me on an errand into town on Wednesday, and confirmed that it would basically cost as much to repair either of them as it would to get a new one.

Since December, I have found it really frustrating not being able to flick a quick glance at my wrist to tell the time, but having to drag out my phone from a pocket or bag. The ridiculous relief when I got my new! shiny! watch! on my wrist today was overwhelming - five months' pent-up frustration I think.

Anyway, I vented a bit of my excitement on twitter, and my friend asked for a "bad internet photo of it on your wrist" so I obliged, and decided it would do as a new icon too.

Today has also featured a family expedition into town:

• Watching The Gruffalo's Child at Cambridge Arts Theatre.
• Buying an Angry Birds hat on impulse for Charles
• Lunch at Pizza Express for the four of us. We got two children's meals and Nico ate between a quarter and a third of his and then requested a feed.
• Shopping for new shoes and new non-school clothes for Charles.
• Shopping for shallow plates for Nicholas to eat from, as he'd done well with the shallow bowl in the restaurant.

Nico helpfully slept through all of the shopping in my sling, and woke up only when I sat down at home again. Since then he has been toddling industriously around the house, amicably torturing the cat (who is too old or too tolerant to run away) and repeatedly stealing my phone and/or the tv remote control. He's definitely a toddler now, not a baby.

Some phone-photos from today behind the cut:

( Grainy cuteness! )

Last Thursday we had local elections, and the weather was so nice, I managed to get sunburned after spending most of the day outside delivering, telling & knocking up. Such a contrast to last year, where I shivered in multiple layers and had changed clothes three times by lunchtime.

I took Charles with me to vote on the way to school, and we met one of his friends and her mother doing the same thing.  I cast a proxy vote for the first time, which meant they sent me round once with my friend's ballot paper, and once with my own.

I paced myself fairly well with the day's campaigning but by the time I picked up the children from nursery and kidsclub and got them home, I was worn out and unable to face speaking to strangers, even by phone knock-up.  So I got the children fed with Jonny's help, and put them to bed, and dozed with them for a bit before my father rang to catch up and make arrangements for the weekend.

(For those that are interested in the election results, Phil Rodgers again has good coverage on his blog, with a quick results-in-Cambridge post and a much more detailed follow-up.)

I had a quiet day at home on Friday, before we travelled to the west country to see my father for the long weekend.  We used the Travelodge in Swindon as a base, and took the bus to Cirencester on Saturday, and to Avebury on Sunday.   The weather was lovely on both days, and I realised at the end of our time at Avebury that I had sunburned again and more thoroughly.  Everyone else was fine: the baby had sunscreen & the others are either more sunproof or better at staying covered and in the shade.

The bonus extra of our little trip was a couple of hours in the pub with my dad's wife and her children on Sunday evening. It has literally been years since we got to spend time together with them all and it was a real pleasure to do so.

A disappointing exchange with Parkrun support following yesterday's email. Paraphrased, with full text behind cut at end so you can come to your own judgement on whether I'm being unfair.  I'm pretty angry so I probably am being unfair.
 
Parkrun: Comparative stats are important and popular! We store your DOB securely. Sorry about the discrimination against minorities but we're just following sporting world conventions. Hope that addresses your concerns.

Me: Nope. I just want to be social and opt out of this competitive ranking stuff. Also why does a voluntary local running org have to discriminate like professional sports? Why is it better to exclude me entirely rather than let me join in but not share my stats?

Parkrun: Ranking everyone by age and sex is one of our core values and builds community. If you disagree, please go away.


So much for the friendly grassroots running organisation for everyone.


*********

Some of this is about the overwhelming priority given to ranking everybody for their age group and sex. It's so important that opting out can't possibly be allowed, but so assumed that it's not even mentioned in all the warm words about parkruns being for everyone (see national site, Cambridge "about us" page).

The idea of wanting to run but not compete gets a lot of resistance, right down to my friend who said I would be "spoiling it for everyone else" if I could run but not disclose age and gender.

Next time I need to give an example of the hidden assumptions in organisational cultures, I've got it. Right here.

********
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Our neighbour, who converted his garage into a spare room last year, now wants to build an extension onto his house. It will run nearly up to the boundary between the two properties, and the builders need access through some of our garden to do the work. The neighbour gave me plenty of notice that he wanted to do this, and so we met with the builder last week to go over the details of what access they need, what will be taken down to allow the building, and what will be replaced afterward.

The extension is pretty much as big as can currently be built without planning permission (not relying on proposed even bigger exemptions), but it will not be too imposing nor should it affect our enjoyment of the garden once it's built.  The funny-shaped bit of land between the two houses will get a bit of improved landscaping, and the builder has promised me a couple of designs/quotes for landscaping our front weed-patch garden to be consistent in appearance with the new bit, and also easier to maintain.

Work begins in May and is planned to take 8 weeks.

And the hen? Her patch of the garden is exactly where the builders need access.  So we need to fence off a new area for her around the corner of the house and out of their way.  Afterwards, my brother Dan has promised to come and give me some landscape-gardening advice and help.  So we might end up with both front and back gardens looking reasonable this summer.

At the start of April 2003, I bought half a house, and I'm still living here.
At the end of April 2003, Tony & I became a couple, and I'm still in love.

Our tenth anniversary falls next Friday, which is the day we try to do dates. It's also the day after Iron Man 3 is released, which I am ridiculously excited about[1]. So we will celebrate with dinner and a film, which is roughly how we got started.

2003 was a very good year. 


[1] Not ridiculously enough to see the one-minute-past-midnight showing on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Not sure if I'm wiser or just older than ten years ago.

Today (Sunday) we went to the model trains in Newnham for the first time.  Charles loved them and zoomed around with his friend A while Tony & I hung out with A's parents.

Yesterday we went to London, first to join a meet up organised by techiebabe in the Red Lion, and then we took the DLR to the new cablecar.  Charles was delighted with both the "ROBOT TRAIN" and the cable car.  It was a bit tedious slogging back across London and by the time we got back to Cambridge we had just missed a half-hourly bus so we walked home in the surprisingly warm evening.  It took us about an hour, including a loo stop.  Pretty good for a six-year-old.

Last week Charles was in holiday club because of Easter holidays; the previous week all four of us went to France to stay with Tony's mother Louise.  While we were there two particularly noteworthy things happened:

• Nicholas WALKED for the first time (several consecutive independent steps, repeatedly). He's doing it a few times a day, but he seems to prefer crawling for rapid progress.  He still does this one-knee, one-foot.
• Nicholas made friends with one of his grandmother's cats, a kitten about the same age as him. One morning I saw the kitten rubbing its head on the baby, who promptly rubbed his head back on her.  DED OF CUTE.  Sadly, I did not have a camera handy.

February and March are a bit of a haze of being ill, recovering from being ill, and trying to get on top of things lapsed while I was ill. 

I managed to meet all my OU deadlines, have finished the two modules I was taking, and now have a whole three weeks off until I start working on the next one.  I've worked out my timetable for the remaining modules to finish the degree by the deadline of December 2017. 

I had fallen into the habit of cosleeping with Nicholas, and not-getting-round-to getting a cot when he outgrew the moses basket. Then he threw himself out of my bed hard enough to cut his mouth, and bled badly enough that I took him to A&E.  After he tried to throw himself out several more times in the days following, we got a cot. Well, arnhem gave us a cot and I bought us a new mattress & bedding, and Tony did the bulk of reorganising the bedroom to fit it in.  Nicholas does not yet entirely reliably sleep in the cot but he hasn't thrown himself out of it either.  I'll take that as a win.

This often comes up in discussions about sexual harassment (by men, of women), by people worried that shy, inexperienced men may inadvertently make women uncomfortable.

1. Here is a useful post on talking to women without being creepy from Dr Nerdlove, who writes a helpful blog for nerdy men who want to find find love/happiness with a woman: http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2012/09/dating-101-meet-women-without-creepy/all/1/

In summary: pick an appropriate time and place, avoid standing too close or blocking exits, pay attention to body language signals that say "I don't want to talk", apologise if you make a mistake.


2. However, if you are genuinely worried about inadvertently making women uncomfortable, you are probably not part of the problem.  There is academic research, grouped under the exciting title of "Predator Theory" that suggests the vast majority of assault and rape on women by men is carried out by a small percentage of men, who deliberately work within social conventions to get away with it: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/03/25/predator-theory

3. If you are really concerned about sexual assault and rape, then predator theory tells us what we need to do in order to reduce its incidence (summarised from the end of the predator theory article):
a. Listen to women who report sexual assault by a man: don't immediately defend the man, or minimise the seriousness of the assault, or look for ways in which they are at fault.
b. Challenge men who make jokes about rape or imply sexual assault isn't that serious.  Make clear that these attitudes aren't acceptable.
c. Look out for red-flag behaviour such as apparently trying to get women intoxicated and alone, and interrupt it when we see it.

4. We have evidence from Vancouver that targeting rape-prevention advice at men who might rape rather than women who might be raped seems to significantly cut the rate of sexual assaults: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/dont-be-that-guy-ad-campaign-cuts-vancouver-sex-assaults-by-10-per-cent-in-2011/article1359241/

My paternal grandmother Cecillie had two older brothers, Vincent and Theo, and they grew up together in Toronto.  Cecillie was doing a PhD at Imperial College when she met my grandfather, and as women did then, gave up her PhD to marry him and have children.

Theo had an amazing adventurous life, from the stories my aunt tells me, but I only remember meeting him once. He and his partner Bob were living in California and my parents took four-year-old me and my baby brother Daniel out to see them.  I have two strong memories of that holiday: meeting Snow White in Disneyland, and being taught to eat corn-on-the-cob by Uncle Theo.

Theo died of cancer when I was twelve.  When I was twenty-two, just graduated from Cambridge, I took my grandmother to see Vincent, now living in Washington State with children and grandchildren, and Bob, now living in Toronto.  Cecillie had early-stage Alzheimer's and needed someone to drive, to remind her to take her medicine and make sure she ate regularly. 

We spent a week in Bob's house in Toronto, mostly being tourists and meeting up with some of Cecillie's schoolfriends.  Our schedule and Bob's usually matched over breakfast.  Bob was dying of cancer, and refusing treatment after nursing Theo through it a decade earlier.  I knew this, but we hadn't told Cecillie to save putting her repeatedly through the distress each time she forgot.  The house was full of photograhs of Theo and Bob, their love for each other evident in every one. I spent a lot of time listening to my grandmother and Bob telling "do you remember" stories.

Bob said he was writing a story of Theo's life because it had been so exciting. One of the days we were there I fixed his computer and rescued the latest draft of the book, because that's what family elders ask 22-year-old computer science graduates to do.

I told Bob about being taught how to eat corn-on-the-cob and he told me what he remembered of four-year-old me:

Four-year-old me met Bob for the first time and did nothing but stare at him.  Bob was not very used to children and looked back a bit disconcerted.  Eventually I said "You're really old".  Bob said "Er yes, and one day you will be old too.  Everyone gets old."

I thought for a bit and said "When I'm old, you'll be dead."

Bob thought this was a) hilarious and b) a fine example of deductive reasoning.  I was embarrassed and sad, because we knew he was dying.  I forgot to take a photo of him to remember him by before Cecillie & I left.  He died less than a year later.

I gathered from our stay that his birth family had never approved of his relationship with Theo, but had reconciled with him after Theo's death.  They certainly didn't want to come and meet Cecillie or me.  They never told us when he died - Vincent found an obituary in an internet search when he couldn't get hold of Bob. We don't know what happened to the photos of him and Theo, or the book Bob had been writing. 

Bob was part of our family but it seems his birth family didn't see it that way.

They should have been able to marry.

I decided to set myself a month-goal of "getting to bed before 11pm on schoolnights", as an attempt to address chronic mild sleep deprivation and a sleeping pattern that had gone "stay up late and do all the things" or "collapse asleep with the baby at 8pm".

At first I wasn't doing too badly, an occasional 10:30pm and quite a few approx 11:10pm, and generally I was getting to sleep before midnight.  But the last fortnight, whenever I haven't had something taking me out of the house in the evening, I've fallen asleep about 8-9pm with the baby, woken about 1am and been awake for an hour or two, then back to sleep until 6ish.  Which is great because I'm actually getting at least the 7 hours I seem to need to function well, but sucks because "after the baby is in bed" is when I was doing my studying, and I've been sleeping through that for the last fortnight. 

Perhaps I should study for an hour at 1am instead of writing blog posts.

I share looking after our house and our children with someone I love very much. I make sure there is enough food for all of us, and that the house stays warm, and that the money we have pays for all the things we want to have and do. I make sure that we all have time to do fun things, and that each grown-up has time when they don't have to do any work or looking after children. I make sure that there is always someone to look after the children when the grown-ups are at their jobs or doing fun things.

When we want to visit friends or family or new places, I plan when we can go, and how much we can spend, and how we will get there, and where we will stay. I share the food-making and house-cleaning and all the other work of looking after a house but I think I do less of all of these than the other grown-up, because I do more of the planning and money things.

One of our children is only a baby and I do more of the looking after him because of the way he eats right now, but as he gets older, it will be easier to share looking after him, as we do with his older brother.

I don't get paid for any of this, and it used to be expected that women would do this work for free and never do any other sort of job. Some people still seem to expect this. I would be very sad if this was the only job I did but I think I am good at it when I don't have to do it all the time.

It takes a lot of money to pay for people to look after other people's children and sometimes that means it is hard for both parents to work in a paid job when their children are small. Sometimes one of the parents is happy to stop paid work and look after the children, but sometimes both of them want to stay in their paid work, but one of them has to stop anyway. Sometimes it is the one who is less sad who stops but usually it is the one who gets less money, whether they are sad about it or not, and whether or not the job they do is important and they are good at it.

Parents who stop doing a paid job to look after small children usually find it hard to get as good or well-paid a job again when the children are older, and they and their family usually have less money for the whole of their life than families where both parents were able to stay in paid jobs. Those parents may never do the things they are good at again.

Sometimes people who run businesses try to keep the parents who work for them in their paid jobs, so that the business can use the things they are good at. Some businesses pay for looking after children, or let parents work less for a while until the children are older.

The people-who-run-the-place-where-we-live say that parents have to be able to ask to work less until their children are older, and they help pay for some looking after children while parents are in paid jobs. This helps the parents who want to keep their paid jobs and it helps their families have more money, but it also helps everyone because the parents are happier and are doing jobs they are good at rather than being sad at home.

I used to think this was a boring thing to talk about until I had children and saw how many parents stop their paid jobs who would like to keep them, and learned how much money parents with low-paid jobs lose over their whole life when they stop working to look after children.

Now I think maybe everyone would be happier if all parents had enough money to pay for looking after children, so that they could really be free to decide whether to stay in paid work and how much to work. Parents who decided to stay home should still get the money because their work is important. I think it would take a lot of money to start with but I think in the end it would save a lot of money, make a lot more jobs, and stop a lot of people being sad.

[Written with the Up-Goer Five Text Editor http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ 
This started with me trying to describe the unpaid work that I do but then the personal became political.]

Books IN (strikethrough indicates book is no longer on the to-read pile):

1. Mountain Echoes, by C.E. Murphy (preordered from Amazon)

Ebooks to read IN:


Books OUT:

1. Mountain Echoes, by C.E. Murphy

Ebooks READ:

This is already a much better New Year's Day than last year.

• I'm not pregnant and I don't feel ill. (imagine this in big blinking flashing text, because that's how awesome it is from my POV compared to last year)
• My brother offered to babysit so I went out to a party! Without my children! And talked to other adults about things other than children! (ok, I did also talk about children, but probably not even the majority of the time)
• I went running yesterday, in the rain, and today I did the initial trial for twohundredsitups

Last year I made resolutions:

( how did I do? )

This year, I already have a whole bunch of ongoing commitments and specific goals (work, study, fitness, family, politics) and I really don't need to add any more.

Maybe I will try a month goal: for January I will try to be in bed before 11pm every schoolnight.

Last Christmas, I followed someone's link (probably from dreamwidth) to their Yuletide story, and that vast collection of stories helped keep me distracted from my pregnancy-related misery over the Christmas break.

So I signed up this year, and have enjoyed producing my assignment much more than I expected, and am extra grateful to atreic, hilarita & my mother for beta-reading it. I also wrote a last-minute treat, too late to get it beta-read. Both of them have had positive comments, including from their respective recipients, and the rush from that is amazing.

I loved my own story-gift very much, and heartily recommend it to those enjoyed the source material:

shedding light (and a little fur) (2087 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Cats of Grand Central - Diane Duane
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hwaith/Rhiow
Characters: Rhiow, Hwaith, Mike (Cats of Grand Central)
Summary:

"He followed me home. Can I keep him?" Rhiow gets a little time to talk to Iaehh - about several things. What do you do when the Queen grants your wish?

Just some quick photos caught on my phone of Charles sharing sunglasses with Nicholas.







I wish I was more in the habit of picking up the little point-and-click digital camera than the phone though, it consistently gets much better photos than the phone.

I finished work yesterday until January; today my only calendared tasks were to take Charles to and from his last day of school.  I have had as much of a restful day as one can have with a 5-month-old and intend to carry on in the same vein.  This evening I'm going to introduce Charles and Tony to the Box of Delights tv series which I bought last Christmas but never got around to watching.  I haven't watched it since my own childhood, so I hope the Suck Fairy hasn't visited it too much.

My last deadline was my Yuletide story. I managed to finish and upload my story with a whole three hours to go.  I am about equally split between pride for actually creating my first published fic, and trepidation that other people are going to read it.

Deadlines aren't the same as to-do lists.  I still have a lengthy one of those, but it can be tackled as-and-when I want to now, at least until next year.

We thought it was time to introduce Charles to the British pantomime tradition, and at fairly short notice got tickets to the evening performance of Jack and the Beanstalk at Cambridge Arts Theatre on Saturday.

Apart from the sound system being a bit too loud for my preference, I enjoyed it very much.  Charles was caught up in it very quickly, and even Nicholas showed a lot more interest than I had expected, focusing hard on all the music and movement until he zonked out all of a sudden at the interval.  The audience was sadly a little small but Tony & I at least held up our share of audience participation.

The script had the requisite bad puns, contemporary references (Olympics, the 99%, Gangnam style) and local place-name checks.  The costuming was lovely, with the Widow in particular having some excellently silly and over-the-top outfits.  The choreography and dancing of the chorus was solidly good, providing a background pleasure to my laughter.  The musical references were either very recent or from my teenage years, firmly reinforcing that Tony & I are now in the parents-of-young-children demographic.

Charles had a very loud and prolonged tantrum immediately afterwards, which I think was an unsurprising reaction to being so completely wound-up by the performance.  Luckily it gave him the energy to march all the way home, complaining most of the way.  We had a serious conversation about acceptable behaviour after he'd calmed down, and I live in hope that some of it sticks.

I have been reminded, by a bad-tempered comment I made on the Liberator blog, just how much I dislike the "playing devil's advocate" game. 

Both my father and father-in-law have a bad habit (which I think Tony & I have managed to break) of getting me into a heartfelt discussion about something I felt strongly about (e.g. smoking around small children, ID cards, sexist clothes for children) and then when I reach the point of being visibly upset, saying "oh of course I agree with you, I just wanted to see how good your argument was".

If I'm providing entertainment, I'd rather tell some good stories than get into an argument.  Especially a fake argument because the other person already agrees but is pretending not to.   Especially with people I respect and am disappointed to find seem to hold unpleasant views.   Especially when I didn't know it was a game and they did.

I have enough real disagreements and arguments with the world to need to make up fake ones or argue with people who basically agree with me just to "hone my argument".  There are plenty of real people that I'd like to convince to think differently and the internet makes it really easy for us to find each other.  Having arguments to mark them out of ten rather than to actually try to convince people is something I just don't understand.

I run into things every day where my disagreement is not a game, and not a performance I'm carrying out to be awarded marks for style. Maybe when we achieve the world where none are enslaved by poverty, ignorance and conformity, I'll learn to enjoy argument-as-performance-art.  But not now.

Caution: contains whine.

I got to the end of week 4 on couch-to-5k on 1st November. It's now the 17th and I've got no further.

• 2nd-4th Nov migraine & recovery
• 5th-9th Nov failure to organise around a massively-clingy baby drinking all the milk I could pump
• 9th-10th Nov visiting family, staying in hotel, didn't want to pack running gear
• 11th-13th Nov painful knee after museum visit on 10th, removed supposedly supportive insoles from boots which went in a few weeks ago and which seemed to have triggered knee pain - knee started to feel better
• 14th-16th Nov dodgy guts, thank you baby
• evening of 16th Nov: tripped over in kitchen, fell hard on knee (same knee as start of week) while trying not to drop the baby, now have a massive bruise and lump

I WANT TO GO RUNNING WAAAAAH

Good thing: because of c25k I am being kept in touch with other people progressing with couch-to-5k, and I can believe it will still be there when the latest obstacle heals up, and I can pick it up again (perhaps repeating week 4 as I must be losing fitness by now), and I will have support. I haven't failed for all time, and my virtual partners are keeping me reminded rather than it fading into memory as a failed attempt to do something.

Context: this post from Bruce Schneier led me to a list of "potential indicators of terrorist activity" in hotel guests issued by the USA Department of Homeland Security.

In the UK, the health visitor screens mothers with a questionnaire when the baby is about 3 months old.  I ... didn't pass the screening.

It's more a disappointment than a surprise. I am taking the screening seriously and I'm seeking help, with appointments with my GP and my employer's counselling service later this week.

(And the rest behind a cut)

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It started Thursday night (and oh goodness walking home in the cold dark feeling nauseated gave me nasty pregnancy flashbacks; I'm making a point of extra layers now). 

I spent Friday on painkillers and mostly in bed with a cheerful baby, who seemed pretty pleased with all the uninterrupted cuddle-time.

It was still there when I went to sleep but had dissolved by Saturday morning,   I spent Saturday feeling tired and getting very little done.

Today I managed the cycle ride to the Funky Fun House and back, and some studying while there.  Definitely no running; maybe tomorrow after work.

It is 14 weeks now, I should write it down before I forget any more.  Key differences from Charles's birth are that I remember the section fairly clearly, and that thinking about it hasn't made me cry.
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Work
I restarted work! Mondays and Tuesdays only. Tony is not working on those days, and brings Nico to me at lunchtime. We heat up lunch in the little kitchen microwave and sit together at a table in the foyer of my building. I eat and cuddle my baby and feed him, and most times I also take him off to the ladies' loos and change him, and almost always I get to show him off to a passing colleague or three. And then I give him back and go back to the office and work for another 4 hours.

I love it: being back at work, feeling useful and competent, but not having to go too long without my baby cuddles, and getting to do a big feed rather than a big pump at lunchtime. It's not quite as good as the conference creche but it's SO much better than going all day without seeing my baby at all, and a huge improvement on the work pattern we did with Charles where I went from 0730 to 1330 without my baby 5 days a week and didn't see Tony properly except at weekends.


Running
All the updates are on c25k but basically it's going well and I am liking it more than I thought I would. I've had a cold this weekend which has kept me indoors and I am missing it more than I expected.


Study
Going well, though I have been less good at getting in my weekly hours since starting work. There was a tutorial yesterday at Hill's Road and I was too ill to go, which annoyed me.


Charles turned 6 last weekend and we held a party at home for some of his schoolfriends (note for future reference that "colouring in pictures" which I'd thought of as an easy-to-join-on-arrival activity kept the assembled children happy for nearly an hour). He asked for an Angry Birds theme and we did our best, including commissioning this most excellent cake from planetxanna (it was delicious too):



He seems to be enjoying year 1 of school and certainly it is stretching him a bit harder than Reception. We are supposed to get him to read out loud to us for 10 minutes a day and we probably manage it 80% of the time. He has started spontaneously reading out random signs on the street and titles of books we leave lying around. It is really, really cool to see him starting to use this skill as a tool for himself rather than just something we or school ask him to perform.


Nicholas is three months old, almost certainly teething (dribbling, gumming hard down on things), smiling at people with great enthusiasm, failing to sit up but wanting to, sleeping midnight to six most nights plus several other naps each day, continuing to breastfeed plentifully and remaining beautifully baby-chubby. He is getting the hang of hitting and grabbing things on the baby gym but would mostly rather be held/carried in a sling.