All tomorrow's parties

It seems to be getting harder and harder to be sociable with a child. Going out with the wife and without the child is expensive and requires lots of advance planning. I can go out by myself, which is okay, but I married L because I enjoy doing stuff with her. It's not as fun going to clubs or gigs without her. We could have people over, but that seems to be less and less an option.

If I try having a party or some other event, I'm more and more finding people won't come. Of all the various events I've organised over the years, the number of people who say they're going to come has dropped dramatically. However that's not dropped nearly as dramatically as the number of people who say they'll come and actually do show.

I've organised a lot of social events over the years. I've gotten used to people saying I might be able to make it, but x… and that meaning there's around 20-40% chance of them coming – depending on what x is. But if someone says I'll be there then they're almost certainly going to be there. I got the the point that I could guess quite accurately the number of people who'd actually show.

I've noticed a trend of of increasing flakiness with friends over the past few years – where people who said they'd come just don't show up, and saying I might come is actually shorthand for Thanks for inviting me. That was before the girl was born. Since she's been here, the flakiness of my non-childed friends as gone up drastically. Pretty much everything I've tried to arrange lately has fallen apart to some degree.

For my birthday last week, I'd tried to organise a nice little outing plus lunch. Despite a number of people saying they'd come, not a single one of my friends did. So I spent the birthday with the girl and her cousins from out of town. While a nice afternoon was had by all, that's not the point. This is just the extreme case of a trend I've seen amplified since the girl was born. yes, I'll come has more and more meant … unless something else comes up, or I decide to sleep in, or the weather is bad… I've stopped having parties at the house, since I got annoyed of buying and making food and drinks for the people who said they'd come, only to have less than a quarter of them actually show.

It used to be as much one in ten would or so would drop out last minute to due illness or some other emergency. And usually they'd mention being on call or getting sick days in advance. I'm getting far more last minute no-warning excuses now. They may be true – perhaps we're all getting older and more fragile. Or maybe they just like the credible sound of these excuses. Or maybe in this age of social media and mobile phones people don't really plan things and just decide last minute based on their mood when they go online and see they have something to do.

While I call out specifically non-childed friends above, it's not that childed friends are immune to dropping out. In fact it's the opposite – it's fairly common for people with kids to drop out last minute, and I expect that. The problem is amplified at children's parties. The number of people who say they're going to show up for a party is several times the number of people who do show. To the point where it's pretty common for no one at all to show, or sometimes only one or two guests come.

I know I've been guilty of this – children get sick, and you don't want to bring a nasty disease and turn a party into a den of germs. The girl was at risk of chicken pox last year (turns out she did have the pox) and we skipped a first birthday party I'd committed to going to. I felt horrible about it, but I did have a good reason. Just the fact that everyone else also pulled out for various reasons makes me feel guilty.

It's pretty disappointing to be in this dilemma. When the girl was very young it was trivial to take her to pubs and restaurants – she'd sleep or quietly sit through. Now she spends the time eating. She's well behaved, but needs enough attention that I find at the end of the night all I can remember is saying a few words to the person sitting next to me and maybe vaguely what I ate. That's not quite true – I can remember what she ate, what she threw on the floor, what she didn't like, which cutlery she used, how much she drank and the number of times I took her too the loo. I can do all that at home.

So, is it even possible to have a family and still have any sort of social life? Am I stuck with Facebook and the like being my only lifeline to my childless friends? Do I only get to hang out with other people with kids of the same age? I don't mind that last bit since we've plenty of friends with kids under 4. But I wouldn't be friends with everyone else if I didn't want to see them.

Holiday from EC

For some reason, for the past fortnight the girl has regressed in her toilet habits to where she was 6 months ago. A month ago she was wetting maybe 4 nappies a week – half of those in her sleep. Now she's going through that many in a day. She's no longer giving us any signals, and will deny that she has to go even when she actually does.

It's perfectly natural for an ECd baby to slip for a while. It's supposed to happen when they level up in other things, or when sick, or various other causes. She's done this before to a degree, but never so markedly.

The weird thing is she's really only missed at home. Well, she missed once at a friend's place and once at a pub yesterday, but for the most part, she's only missing at home. Admittedly she's home more often than she's out and about, but if she'd wet 4 nappies at home over the same period where she wet just one outside, clearly there's something there.

So I've had to regress along with her. Really watching her for any sign of change in behaviour, or interrupting whatever we're doing to take her too the loo. We've even stopped calling it the "loo" or "toilet" in favour of "bathroom" which is made up of sounds I know she can say – just in case she decides to tell us she has to go instead of her usual gesture.

Watching for subtle changes in her behaviour is hard. By the time it's clear that she's gone from normal play to uncomfortably-full-bladder mode, she's actually moved on to unhappy-pants mode, and it's too late. The problem is amplified by (my suspicion that) she's actively trying to hide the fact she needs to go. Today I asked her if she needed the loo (she was still dry). She babbled a bit and handed me a book, demanding I read it to her. Despite the abridgement where the little train could quite easily without much effort, she was freshly wet by the time I finished.

So I can only hope this phase ends soon enough and we get back to normal. In the meanwhile I just have to try hiding my disappointment and making her experience on the toilet as fun as possible, so she doesn't start making negative associations.

She likes angostura bitters

When we go to the pub she orders angostura bitters and tonic. The glass looks like it's got any anonymous spirit, and doesn't raise any eyebrows or questions. Except from the barstaff. Apparently, when you’re in a pub (especially a festively unquiet one) and ask for angostura bitters you get a very blank look, particularly when the barstaff is not native English-speaking.

Last night I went to the bar to get us both drinks. I got a gin and tonic for me, and, for her, an angostura bitter and tonic. It went something like this:

Me: A Gin and Tonic, and an angostura bitters and tonic.

Barman: (With an eastern European accent) Ok. (goes about pouring the G&T)

At this point I’m relieved and think it'll be easy.

Barman: What was the other drink?

Me: Angostura bitters and tonic.

Barman: (points to a beer tap) Bitter with tonic?

Me: No angostura bitters

Barman: What?

Me: (furiously scans behind the bar for a bottle of angostura bitters) ummm…. (more awkward silence). There! (points to the pepper shakers below the rack of spirits) behind the pepper. Angostura bitters.

Barman: Um. (more awkward silence while he just looks at me and and the beer taps. Specifically does not look behind the pepper shakers)

Barman: Um. (goes and gets manager)

Me: Can I have an angostura bitters and tonic.

Manager: Ok. (pours a tonic and adds a few drops of angostura bitters)

Sigh. My hardcoded be-nice-to-woman-carrying-my-child can only take me so far. She needs to find another non-alcoholic drink of choice.

Gestation begins now

The point of this blog is to note down somewhere the process of becoming a father. I've read dozens of blogs from women detailing all the things they go through in becoming a mother, but few men I know go into anything but the most superficial details. I'm partly curious to see if it's a personal thing or something inherent in the fact that all the action happens somewhere else. So, without the squicky bits, is there anything to blog about?

I’m going to keep this anonymous for a while, mostly due to the fact we’ve not told anyone at all. Finding out you’re going to be a grandparent via a blog is a little cold, as I see it.

Now that that's out of the way...

It’s been 4 days since the test showed up positive. We’d suspected something since her period was really quite late at this point. We used a bog standard pee-on-a-stick test. When three minutes passed she told me I had to look at it. Fair enough. It was clearly positive. No ambiguity there. I just handed it to her... I wasn’t speechless. But I was surprised how much of a shock it was. I mean, it was not a surprise and nothing unexpected, but somehow it being real just was different. I somehow keep being surprised that I’m just made of meat and hormones and not just sense and logic. So when I get life-changing news I am stunned and I do babble and falter. I put on the kettle and made tea.

Of course, I don’t drink tea. But, being British it just felt the right thing to do for such a momentous event.

This was around 10 on a Friday night. We spent the next couple of hours backtracking to when she must have conceived and when she’ll be due. She estimates that she’s just shy of 5 weeks along and will be due on 23 July. We decide we won’t tell anyone til she can get to the GP and get a proper test from a proper doctor to be sure.

Saturday is spent with various friends at the pub and dinner. The only issue was making excuses for her not drinking. Easy enough to avoid. Or at least I tell myself that no one noticed me switching wine glasses with her when mine got low, then switching again, when mine was empty.

Sunday night we decide we need to sort out our diet. This is important for me to know, since I do just about all of the cooking. I’d been trying for ages to get our diet a bit more diverse, but now I really need to.
Folic acid! Lots of it. Oh the beans our diet will need. So many.
Vitamin D. That’s, ummmm…. mushrooms and sunlight. We’re fine for mushrooms, but sunlight? In England? In winter? We’ll just hope eggs, salmon and soy milk will do.
Vitamin A, but not too much. How much is too much? Is a big carrot too much? How do I go nutrient overboard and just leave out A? Then there’s the rest of the Bs. So I make pasta. With a sauce that has all the veg in the world in it. She computes that it’s shy on D but otherwise hits all the marks.

She can’t get an apt with the GP til Tuesday. She gets an early slot and calls me at work when she’s done. Yup she’s preggers. Yup, she’s 5 weeks along. Yup she’s due on the 23^rd of July. And, yeah, she still needs folic acid supplements. The cook in me is slightly offended.

Today is Wednesday and we’re planning to tell both sets of parents. I’ll post later how that goes.