Plague Diary: Day 14

I've been feeling better over the past few days. I woke this morning with only a 37.2^C temperature. So I decided to try working from home today. I was fine until around 1230, when my lungs let me know it was a mistake.

I've pretty much reverted a week from just a few hours of work. Not sure how or why, but I certainly won't be fooled like that again.I don't know what about work hit me so hard – perhaps it's my authoritative voice? Perhaps it was listening and paying attention and making notes? I don't know, but it's not something my body can cope with.

I am not impressed with this virus

In other news, we've been doing more video calls lately. R, like most children always acts up on the calls. So we tried something different – turning off our side of the video. It worked as expected, at first. She didn't act up or make faces at all. Until after a while she burst into tears about not being able to see herself. That was a surprising side effect. but I will continue trying to just not show our side of the video and see if there's a way to make calls to family more enjoyable that way.

Unsupervised

On Sunday we decided to try an experiment. Could we leave the girl home alone in the house for a few minutes while we popped to the shop?

She's 6½ now, so being unsupervised for a short period is perfectly reasonable. Well, for a 20^th century child. For a 21^st century child... Well, that remains to be seen.

By the time I was her age, I'd been wandering the neighbourhood unsupervised for some time. Though that was the suburbs, so it's not entirely a fair comparison. I'd also been left with my brother in a car waiting for my mum to do quick shopping. And how different is that from going with L to the shops that are 200 meters from the house to pick up a few items for dinner?

We were a bit hesitant to try this out, Last year, L left R alone in the house while she gave a package to one of our neighbours. She'd agreed with R in advance that she was just going to be gone for 5 minutes. But, when she got back home, R was panicking, putting on her shoes and readying herself to go outside looking for L. She wouldn't talk about it for ages, but eventually she'd told me that she didn't realise L had left, so when she found out she was alone in the house, she wasn't ready for it. Hence the panic.

At least we knew what we needed to avoid this time. R was hesitant when we first brought it up, but then I pointed out all she'd need to do is Skype us from her iPad if she needed us. That turns out was the 21^st century solution to the 21^st century problem of being alone. She was now perfectly fine staying at home since we'd be at her electronic beck and call. I just needed to test that she was signed in and could make a call. After much cajoling, she finally made a test call to my phone and all was ready. Just some final goodbyes and we'd be on our way.

Ok. We're going to head out now. Skype is working. Just call or send us a message if you need anything.

Playing on iPad Ok. Bye.

And if you get hungry, there's rice cakes on the counter.

If I get hungry, I'll just heat up some pasta.

Wait... No... No. You're not to use the oven or microwave by yourself, and definitely not when you've alone in the house.

Of course I won't turn on the oven by myself.

Remembering when she burnt a rice cake in the microwave And the microwave. Don't use the microwave. You must not use the microwave.

but I know how to use the microwave.

Immaterial. You're missing the point. Just don't use the microwave when we're not in the room with you...
Actually – Just. Don't. Use. The. Microwave.

You had to mention food, didn't you?

And so on.

We did get out of the house and make a quick trip to the shop. While in the check out queue, I decided to check up on her and sent her a message. No response, of course. Since Skype is now terrible at actually sending notifications, I figured it was nothing. But since my job is to worry, I just kept thinking of the worst possible situations. I send message after message, and kept thinking of more and more horrible mishaps. By the time we were on our way back, I was practically expecting smoke coming up from over the hill.

In the end, no, the house wasn't on fire. She just decided that she'd Skype her grandparents and was ignoring any messages that were showing up.

The experiment was a success. We did find a way to comfortably leave her unsupervised for short periods of time and managed to get dinner. I also learned that What could possibly happen? is just an expression, not an invitation to brainstorm.

So this happened

Gestation begins anew!

Well, not really begins. Began. Not quite sure when though. L is either 4 or 8 weeks pregnant. Which puts us at expecting a baby sometime in July 2017. So far, all I can say is second child is very different. Where the first pregnancy was a life changingly shocking in a I've got make some tea. Wait I don't drink tea kind of way. This one was more of a Take it in stride. Take it in stride. OMFG are we doing the right thing? feeling.

L had been feeling pregnancy symptoms for a several days now, but the timing was off. Then again, she'd been feeling symptoms off and on for a few months. So clearly her body was up to something, but that something was not incubation. Twice so far the signs were there, but the tests said no. But this time the signs were stronger, with a bladder the size of a thimble being the most telling. So yesterday morning before the school run L did a pregnancy test.

I knew keeping R in the dark about trying for another child would be challenging. But being that we'd been keeping it from friends, coworkers and family, I didn't think much about it. It just makes it harder to have all the conversations L and I need to have. And in terms of the test, unlike last time where we looked at the results together, L just came out of the loo and subtly told me to take a look on the counter.

It was positive.

But we couldn't talk about it. Just a quick discussion while over breakfast while R got dressed. L made an appointment the GP for after R's school run, and I… well, not much I could do at this point. I went to work.

We spoke on the phone after the doctor’s appointment. They told L It's your second child, and you did a test, and you said you feel pregnant, so we believe you. Expect a letter in the next few days to set up your first midwife appointment. So that's the effect of the Tory cuts then. At least last time they did their own test to reconfirm things. Now, we weren't sure how far along things were. The timing of the symptoms implied she was pregnant before this cycle's fertile period. But she'd had a period, albeit a relatively mild one. So either the symptoms where phantom and the pregnancy started about 3 weeks ago, or the period was phantom (which can happen) and it started a month before that. The GP told us to plan for the latter since it's easier to slow down the whole midwifery process than to speed it up. So I guess that means our first appointment in a week or so, and the 12 week scan late next month.

So, last night, after R was in bed we finally got a chance to talk about it. Not that there's much we can do now. Beyond We really need to clean the house and Damn, I was hoping I could finally put our nice rugs back down without risk of someone peeing on them. A new bed for R. Got to decide if we're up for a home birth or not. Clothes and nappies. But there is time.

We're doing the usual not telling people til the week 20 scan and we're sure everything is going ok. We’ve told some of the immediate family. L told her sister while R was at school. We also caught my parents and brother on Skype between American Thanksgiving dinner and dessert. I made sure the nieces and nephews were out of the room when we told them since children couldn't keep a secret if they were in a secret making factory and were given easy-attach leashes to keep their secrets from getting away.

We've not had a chance to tell L’s parents yet. That’ll be tomorrow I guess.

Now we are two

We decided to try an experiment. We went to visit the family in the US. And then we left the girl with her grandparents. She's been there almost two weeks and she comes back tomorrow.

A bit of background. Life's gotten quite busy here. A planned visit to the States was to end with us coming back at the start of half-term. A magical period where not only schools are out, but so is nursery (because why would you need extra childcare then?). So zero free time has turned into negative free time.

When we mentioned this to L's mother she asked Why don't you just leave her with us for a while? You can change her flight home and I'll come back with her. Which we though Ha ha ha. That's silly — Wait.... why not?   Hey, what do you think about staying in the States with you grandparents for a week?

Yeah!

And that was that. Actually not quite. We were quite hesitant. But with her excited about it, we could at least take it seriously. I know we'd always expected for her to spend a summer or other break with her cousins or grandparents, but at 3½... we'd not expected to get the chance so soon. So to make sure we were doing the right thing, we did a number of tests.

Test One: The Sleepover.

The girl had never spent the night away from us. She'd recently gotten to sleep for a sitter, so we knew it was possible. But we'd never tried. So, with her assent, she spent a night a friends house. It worked. She had dinner and went to bed and eventually got to sleep and woke up without freaking out. Score.

Test Two: The Flight.

After staying with the grandparents she has to get back home. Which means a 7 hour flight. Her grandmother was going to fly alone with her, and the girl had to be trusted to behave for the duration. In other words, not run up and down the aisle into first class like last time.

Not an issue, if her flight over is any basis. she spent the entire time engrossed in the entertainment system. Hours of Doctor McStuffins and various other children's shows. She had to be bribed to leave the seat and go to the loo. So this would not likely be a problem.

Test Three: The day with the grandparents

She's a lovely lass, but can be a handful if you're not expecting it. So we had to be sure the grandparents knew what they were getting into. On the first full day we were in the States, we got up early and left the girl with her grandparents while we spent the entire day shopping and seeing friends, with the plan of returning after she was asleep in bed. We had a lovely time. She had a lovely time. She was actually asleep when we got home.

With all those tests passed, we still had one final challenge

Test Four: The airline tickets

We had to change the girl's ticket to a new flight, and get her grandmother on the same flight, and get them linked so they could fly together. And agree on a day with the grandparents. Not trivial but also not a big deal. Except to save like £100 per person we went through one of those cheap ticket resellers. Over email, resellers told me they can make the change. Good. But then they say on the phone only the airline can do it since it involves the grandparent's ticket. The airline, on the other hand, says only the resellers can do it since we bought the ticket through them. Back and forth few times til we learned the grandparent had to buy the ticket less than 24 hours before the child ticket was changed. During the back and forth we had to cancel the grandmother's ticket just so we'd have another 24 hours to resolve it. Finally, after a bit of escalation, a manager at the resellers says Look, only the airline can do it. If you don't believe me, call them. Then call me back on a three-way-call and I'll talk to them with you and we'll sort it out together.

So I gave the airline another call. After being on hold for 30 min. I got through and they, as chipper as can be, said, Of course we can help you with that... huh, there's a funny grinding noise on the line. Is that teeth?

I do understand why they initially denied it. Even with things going smoothly it took another 45 minutes of changing flights, changing times, moving seats, breaking up bookings, regrouping bookings, and so on and so forth. Until finally, everything was in order. The seats were booked and all was set in stone for the girl to stay.

As we stayed there we all became more and more comfortable with her staying without us. At one point when she was sleeping in another room, she got up in the middle of the night and walked to the room sister-in-law was sleeping in, and crawled into bed in between her and her infant daughter, and went back to sleep. In the morning when we spoke to the girl she said I thought you went back to London. Given how blasé she was about it, we figured she'd be just fine.

Our flight back by ourselves is where it started to hit us. First time in ages going through security without the child and her accoutrements. It was pretty easy. And on the plane L and I had a row of 3 by ourselves. It was too uncomfortable to sleep, but I had the luxury to find out, which was nice in itself. And when we landed we could go through the e-passport queues, so that took no time at all getting out, getting baggage and getting home.

It's been weird not having her around the house. Part of it is reverting to how life was before, when L & I were just a couple. So weird in that it's completely not weird at all. Though I do like being able to make the food I like to eat without worrying about spices or avoiding certain foods. La la la, let's just put a quarter cup of chilli peppers in here. Oh crushed chillies, I missed you. Let's be friends again. For a little while.

Another part of of the weird is recovering from the exhaustion of the past 3.5 years. So far I've twice slept in 12 hour chunks. I once went to bed at 7am and still got some sleep afterwards.

And there's the part where we can finally do the things that we've been putting off, like moving heavy furniture. I've been able to clean and hoover the house, and use caustic chemicals without putting them away immediately. I've done two years worth of shredding. We've 5 full recycling bags with just shredded paper and boxes we no longer need.

L on the other hand is taking the opportunity to let her attention drift. I suppose not having a child around lets you just sit and vegetate. That plus a phone with games and internet means you're not there when you're there. I found earlier that in order to keep her attention for the full duration of a conversation, I had to phone her despite being in the next room.

We've been getting reports from the grandparents about how she's doing. The first week seemed fine, though it looks like she's starting to wear down and tire of all the uncertainty and how different everything is. We've been doing Skype calls every 2 or 3 days, It's been lovely seeing her. Especially when say says I miss you dad. She's so much more rational on the calls than when she's with us talking to her grandparents.

Anyways, she's back tomorrow. We'll just have to see how she comes with this change and all the rest that's in store in the next month.

Once more unto the breech

We have a new au pair starting on Sunday. As you may recall, the last one just up and disappeared on us essentially saying it wasn't what she expected. A number of interviews later and, to cut a long story short, we've a 20 year old Italian lass coming to live with us on Sunday. Which is good, since we're kind of at the breaking point on being able to get work done.

It's been 3 weeks since the last au pair left. We started the search for someone new. Of the lot, three really stood out. The first was a charming male au pair from UK (a maux pair?). After a Skype interview we made an offer, but he turned us down – in the end, he needed more money than an au pair job could pay. The promise of free accommodation doesn't help if you already live with your parents.

Another potential looked good until the end of the call. Well, first off she'd not be able to stay the entire time we needed, but we could have lived with that id the rest was good. But then she ended the call with Oh, can I bring a friend?

She dodged all the questions of Who? and Can you give us a CV or some details of who this person is that you want to live rent free in our house and have access to all our stuff?
All the while she found it odd that we'd object, like we wouldn't find it at the limits of our space living with three adults in this flat, and having a fourth couldn't possibly make any difference.

There we other potentials, but the one we settled on was already in London doing a class. She'd be available for 6 weeks when the class ended, but she was happy to come over for lunch to meet us all. It went well. Much better than her Skype call (which wasn't the best connection anyway).

So this whole time since the last au pair left, the nursery – now the au pair's room – has sat empty and unused. Which is a bit of a pain since we're short on space as it is in our house. but it felt like giving up if we started putting stuff in it again. It will be nice to get it used again and not feel wasted. I'm still hoping that at some point we start to see some benefit of having an au pair, and it'll take some the burden off and let us get some work done.

In summary – less terrified than last time, but more cynical.

Well *that* was disappointing

I'm still a bit shocked at how badly that au pair worked out.

When I last posted here, I mentioned we'd just hired a 24 year old austrian girl to look after our daughter while we get work done. She started last sunday, and on Monday, after a weekend visiting friends in Brighton, she declared she'd quit and was packed up and gone in under half an hour.

All this a day before my daughter's second birthday, which just adds to the awkward

Here's the story as far as I can tell…

This was our first time doing anything of this sort, so we went into it with a few reservations. We didn't want to leave the au pair alone with the girl until we knew we could trust her. So the first few days had her looking after the girl in the house (nicely coinciding with some well-needed rain), where we'd be on hand, but working, in case we were needed, or with L going with the au pair and the girl to one of the many nearby parks, partly to show the au pair around, and partly to see how she'd treat the girl outside of the house.

By the 3rd day we felt comfortable enough for her to take the girl for walks alone. We seemed to get along well, I even cooked with her, and it all felt quite comfortable. In her off time, we'd share meals together and spend time with her to make her comfortable with us and in her new home.

The only problem I'd had with her is when she was supposed to join me at a park. Due to a confusion with bus stop names she foudn herself in the wrong park and ended up not being able to meet up with me before I left. Admittedly, she did try calling, but the local (o2) networking was dropping our calls, and the one which could have gotten through I ignored because it arrived at the same time as the girl face planting off a swing into a patch of mud (causing me to try to comfort her and find out of she was hurt or just messy and find somewhere toy clean her up (air dryers in a loo don't help clean up messes)). All in all, it's a pretty minor problem to have, but she did end up missing an entire morning's work.

On Friday, day 5, we asked her to join us for a friend's birthday lunch. After which she'd head off to her friends in Brighton for the weekend. She was supposed to come back Sunday night for dinner with us, and work again on Monday. I cut short lunch, skipping the pub part, to head home and get some work done. That was pretty much the last time I saw the her, or at least the her I thought I knew.

On Sunday we exchanged a few text messaged which amounted to just this:

Are you joining us for dinner

No, I'll be back Monday at noon

Eh? We kinda need you here for morning

I won't be able to make it before then, I'll explain later

We were a bit annoyed at that, but we assumed she was having a life complication and it'd just be a bump we'd get past.

Monday noon comes and goes with not a sign or peep for the au pair. In the end we declare the day a waste and start to consider if we dock her wages or ask her to work on the weekend. I finally give up waiting and decide to pack up the girl and get out to the shops to buy some food for the girl's birthday lunch the next day. As I'm waking out the au pair comes in, bringing a friend of hers with. I'm a bit dubious about the stranger in my house, but, as the place is her home too, I couldn't complain. So I just say Hi. I'm off to the shops. I'll see you in a bit. L is upstairs. To be honest, after her being so rude to just show up hours late like that, I didn't want to talk to her.

I get the next bus out and 3 minutes later I get a call from L saying the au pair has just quit. I'm shocked. I get off the bus and get the first bus back home. When I get there, the au pair is in her room, with her friend, behind the closed door. L is working in the office and just tells me that the au pair had said that she was working far more hours than she was willing to do, and she would quit immediately and move out. The friend she brought was there for support, but as far as L could tell, was just there to be rude to us.

L brings me up to date for a few minutes then I go to talk to the now ex au pair. I catch her just as she's leaving, and bring up the fact that we had a contract and she could not just walk away with no notice. To cut an unpleasant interaction short, I'll suffice to say voices were raised and doors were slammed and that's it she was gone. She never even said goodbye (or anything for that matter) to the girl before she left.

The whole thing left me feeling just betrayed. I mean, I felt I could trust her and she goes and throws this in our face. I'm still puzzled about her claim she was working 12 hour days. Unless she counted time spent conversing or eating together as work, or the time she spent exploring the neighbourhood as work… I can't see how she's arrived at anything like that figure. A number of her final complaints, like how we were working from home, we told her about in her Skype interview. She never complained once about anything the entire week she was working. One of her references warned me about her taking on too much work and letting it get to her. Turns out, that was spot on, but I didn't expect it to come to a head so quickly.

It come across as her quietly seething against us the whole time, which doesn't strike me as true, since she did honestly seem to be having fun with us.

The only thing which seems to fit all the evidence I see is that when she visited her friends, they just talked about the parts she didn't like which spiralled out of control. Kind of like how when you explain the problems you have in a relationship to someone who doesn't know your partner they just quip Leave his sorry arse without knowing anything really about the situation. And given how rude the friend who came with her came across, this seems credible. So after a couple of days of egging her into it, she's turned the whole thing in her own mind into to a lost cause.

It's all supposition regardless. It doesn't really matter.

Anyways, this all means we're back at square zero. Desperately trying to find another au pair or childcare solution and still get the work done we need. All in all, over that one week we got maybe 3 hours of work in the same room the whole week and we generally wasted that on catching up on stuff that accrued while getting the house ready for the au pair. And now we have the added bonus of the girl asking where the au pair is. We've had houseguests before, so we're hoping the girl treats it like that and not anything traumatic. So we just explain that she went home and is not coming back. L and I try to not mention the au pair's name to avoid reminding the girl, though she still says go home on random occasions which we think is a reference to the au pair.

Back again

I spent a fortnight without the family last month. L took the girl off to the States to help L's sister give birth. I stayed at home putting in exceptionally long days trying to get work done. All the while I learned a number of things.

• Wow. Sleep is nice. But when you're alone in bed, it's really quite slow to warm up. I took to sitting on the duvet an hour before bedtime so that I'd not have to sleep with a jumper on.
• Without anyone else here, I never spend any time in the kitchen/dining room beyond actually making food. With the family here, I spend good chunks of my day here (where I'm writing this now), eating meals, playing with the girl, etc, etc. Then maybe I didn't spend as much time here because L took the laptop with her.
• Cooking for myself is easy. I can use as much spice and salt as I want. Though I have lots of trouble judging what a portion size for one is. I think I overate alot.
• I gravitate to later hours. By the time the family came back, I was keeping EDT time rather than BST. Dinner at 11pm, bed by 5am. Which meant we were all jet lagged when they returned.
  We'd Skype once or twice a day, which is what led me switch time zones. Chatting with L after she ate dinner was usually around 3am or so my time. And chatting in the morning so I could see the girl was around 7am or so her time (on a good day when the girl didn't wake her at 6am when the sun came up in their curtainless room).

While they were away I was able to make the flat slightly more liveable. I replaced another 3 bulbs (we have lots of those GU10 halogen bulbs, most of which have blown out. We're slowly replacing them all with much more expensive LED ones. It seems that the only place I can find with decent bulbs is ordering then online on Amazon, but 1 in 5 are dodgy and have to be sent back. Sigh. So we're just lacking now on the dimmable bulbs, which are really expensive and often have a rather dodgy definition of what "dimmable" means) – I bought 4, but one was bad. But we've now got one more room which use tens of Watts instead of hundreds of Watts.

I tried to do some DIY, but I just did not have it in me to drill holes in our nice walls and counters. So I left that for L and just settled on cleaning the stuffs with all those noxious chemicals I don't like to use when the girl is around. That said, I didn't manage to clean and seal all the floors since, 1) no one likes a neighbour who hoovers at 10pm, and 2) to really clean all the floors, I'd have to move an awful a lot of very heavy furniture.

I even got to work on my physio – something I just can't seem to do with the girl around. My right arm has been some degree of dodgy for several months now. At least now it's not debilitating, but it's clear I've lot lost a lot of flexibility and buggered my posture a bit (I bend down a lot). At least my extensors pollicis longus have had a chance to heal. They take the brunt of the weight when I lift up the girl, and have been getting ouchier and ouchier over time.

When L and the girl came back, they flew into Heathrow. I took the tube down to meet them. Their plane was delayed a bit, and it took what felt like ages for them to get their luggage and come out. It was a surprisingly teary reunion. Well... on my part. The girl was just a bit confused and clung to her mum, and didn't really pay much attention to me. Not as exciting as I'd hoped, but I was far more choked up by the whole thing than I expected to be.

Since then the girl has been really clingy to her mum. It's harder to settle her, and I can barely put her to sleep at all. We've not had a single night where she's slept by herself the whole time. I think she's still getting over all the chaos of the past month, with all the new things she's been doing and places she's been staying. Well, we have a month at home before going anywhere else. Hopefully she'll get used to hanging out with me again. We've already had a few pleasant days out, and I've planned a few more. So, even if things are not the same, it'll still be fun.

By the way, their trip to the US was successful and I have a new niece (that I've only seen over Skype).

Walking off a cliff of verbage

Around a month ago L and I started to be concerned about the girl's language development. Mostly it was that she could only say a few words, used them erratically and pretty much with only one syllable. It wasn't any red flag or anything, but better to be safe than sorry. I mean, she could certainly understand us – that's been clear for quite some time. It's just she would not say anything to make her needs known. So we decide to take her to the monthly Talking Walk In to have her checked out by a professional.

The next session was 3 weeks away.

About a week after we made that decision she started adding a new word roughly every day. Plus she started being able to make new sounds like L and K. Not only did she have new words and sounds, but she started to be able to use them in useful way. Stuff like

• help
• please
• book – give me that book to read or read me that book
• cup – I want water
• shower I want to bathe
• back – take this away or I want to be someplace I was earlier or just give me that thing I had earlier
• sock / boot – as in,give me the... or take this ... off me
• panda – she carries around this tiny stuffed panda everywhere. She says this over and over if she can see it and she wants it. It came with a small book, and occasionally she calls the book panda too
• tissue – please wipe my nose
• bag
• bed
• cot
• bees – she has this bee mobile she's fond of
• oh – that's surprising
• teeth
• wet – Oops. I've missed.
• seat / sit – Usually with tapping next to her please sit next to me, though sometimes it's I want to sit there.
• talk – Oooh Skype. I want to talk.
• watch – Is that Youtube/iPlayer? Can I see?
• walk – I want to go outside
• up – lift me up, she also says this when walking up the stairs
• down – She repeats this when walking down stairs
• dark – I notice you just turned out the lights
• light – please hand me / turn on the light
• bucket – she has a toy pail she likes to play with
• and occasionally she says what sounds like bog when she needs the loo.

On top of that, hello, water, dog are now quite distinct. She even has fun repeating duck and dog over and over making sure the words are sufficiently different. Same thing with keys and cheese, though less often (she really likes cheese, but she also really likes playing with keys – I'm not sure which she likes more)
She can say cat, but recently has tended not to in favour a sad, plaintive mewing noise she obviously picked up from her time spent with friends' cats.

Anyway, back to the point of this post… Over that three week period she started saying more and more. To the point that when she babbles, we can catch some sense in there as often as not. Two days before we were due to take her in, on a whim I decided to recite the alphabet to her:

A — ay
B — beeeeee
C — ceee
D — dee
E — əə
F — eh
G — Jee
H — ay
…and so on, for the full alphabet. We got to the end and she'd managed all but a few letters. L looked at me and asked Do we really need to take her to be checked out?
At which point we decided that if she wasn't on track, she was coming along nicely. It's weird how it seems to have exploded from almost nothing to almost practical in such a short period of time. Brains are fascinating.

Not appropriate for all viewers

The other day the wife and I were watching a video while the girl was puttering around the room. It was nothing of the sort the girl hadn't watched dozens of times before. At one point a mildly scary scene came on and the girl turned to us and started bawling.

The wife tried to calm her down telling her it's just a story. I tried figuring out how we'd be able to watch the rest of the show if the girl was going to react so badly. But mostly I was trying to figure out when this switched on in her. She didn't react this way to the 6,000 spy and cop shows we saw on TV in the US (mostly Law and Order marathons). She didn't react this way before we went on holiday to the US – she was perfectly happy watching Daleks be all kinds of menacing without once making a move toward the safety of the back of the sofa. Perhaps it was the fact that we spent so much time in the States with the people she normally Skypes with. Since we Skype using the same display we watch videos on, maybe she thinks all the people she sees there are real, just they often (usually during dinner) just ignore her and talk amongst themselves.

Perhaps I'm wrong to expect some degree of reason in her actions. I just know I'm going to need to be even more careful in what media we expose her to. We've already had to cut Game of Thrones and other more edgy material out of our dinnertime video routine. At some point we'll have to even drop The Daily Show – and then we'll never know what's going on in the news.

Dadadadadadada

First off, the wee one is making a variety of sounds. One of her recent masteries is saying Dada, which I think it utterly brilliant that that is her first real word, even if she extends it too far most of the time, Dadadadadadadada.... I'm sure she does not actually know what it means yet, but I always turn my head to her and answer yes? when she says it, in hopes she'll get it in time. I always said I did not know what I would be called, and, conveniently, she seems to have decided that for me.

I'm pretty sure she is actually trying to talk, in general, but just does not have the muscle control to make actual words. When she says something short and a seemingly random combination of syllables, I do try really hard to figure what word she's trying to mimic.

In related news, the internet brought this article to my attention recently: At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns.

I have to say, yeah. True. Clearly. The little one knows her own name. Has for a while. At least she looks at me when I say it. When I say her mother's name in the exact same tone, she does not look at me.

Another case I discovered recently, to my shock, is how well the EC cue for urination works. She was fussing while I was trying to get her to sit on the toilet. I my frustration, I decided it might help to make sure she understood why she was there and what I expected of her by sounding the urination cue.

Turns out, she clearly knows what the cue means. She stood on the seat of the loo and promptly started peeing on my leg and the floor.

So… that article... obviously, and definitely spot on. Babies know more than they let on.

I'm sure if I paid really close attention could point out lots more cases where she knows what I'm saying. She knows that it's me on the other side of the little box when I do video calls on Skype. She is sentient, to a degree, even if she doesn't have the ability to clearly communicate it.

Now we area sitting

First off, happy new year! Looking back, I'm a bit startled to find I started this in 2010. Admittedly, it was the end of 2010, and now it's the start of 2012, but it's interesting to watch how this gestation thing has evolved from watching the wife and guessing at what was going on insider her, to watching the child and guessing at what is going on inside her mind.

I'm impressed how fast the wee one's picking up things. Literally, in places. She's gotten quite good at grabbing. She can pick up toys pretty well now. Or various other things like nappies, towels, clothes, anything remotely near where she's sat. Tonight I was feeding her and she surprised me by grabbing the bottle, and holding on to it with both hands. I eventually let go and she kept holding on, and drinking. Which is really novel since she's refused to drink out of a bottle for weeks, until yesterday. And now she's drinking and holding the thing. She needed a bit of hinting about tilting it to get more as it empties, but she was firmly and clearly feeding herself. I'm rather proud.

In other skills news, she can also sit. She can't get in a sitting position on her own, but she can stay sitting for a while til she gets tired. She finally mastered that on Sunday. It certainly made getting her in position with the Skype video call too the grandparents much easier.

Most interesting is she now responds to her name. I'm still shocked at that. I say her name and she turns and looks at me. I can say other things and she won't turn. Not in the same way. Well, sometimes she responds the same way, like when I say Doodlehead. But she does not respond at all when it's L's name, even if I use the same tone. Clearly I need to experiment more with this one.

So very different

I was talking to my parents over Skype a bit ago and my father mentioned that things have changed since they were new parents. I agreed and pointed out that we were chatting overseas over video for free. Since then I've been thinking about all the ways things are so very different now.

Birth philosophy has changed, making it far closer now to how it was in the grandparents' time. Except there's far more washing of hands. For a while everything was clinical with mothers giving birth on heavy drugs on their backs and feeding the kids of this highly artificial but easy to store cow's milk product. Now we know on your back is probably the worst way. The coccyx just blocks the whole exit making things much harder. Birth positions are quite varied – under water, on a bouncy ball, leaning against the wall, etc etc. Drugs are still strong, but much more targeted to avoid affecting the offspring. Breast feeding is still a bit awkward in the UK, with about 20% of children still getting breast milk after 6 months – but at least medicalness and legislation is trying to make it easier.

Nappies. As far as I can tell, there are like 30,000 alternatives for nappies. At least we've got velcro now, and don't have to deal with pins.

Information is soooo much easier to come by. The wife posted a comment about how the baby seems to have engaged, and she got lots of replies saying things like my baby dropped 2 weeks before I gave birth and other really useful things. It's like having the joint experience of all your friends and relatives, and a few strangers on tap. I can hardly imagine how hard it must have been just not knowing and not knowing you didn't know.

We've known the sex of the child for about 26 weeks now. It makes picking names much easier. And we've already got a bunch of clothes. Not that getting unisex clothes would have been so hard – I have no idea what people used to do. Just do the bulk of the shopping after the birth?

I don't know what they did in my parents' day when it came to exposing children to music. Especially while they're still in the womb. Put on record after record? Put on the radio and hope for something good? The wife and I put together a playlist of 3200 songs combining our favourite appropriate contemporary music and a huge chunk of classical music. We just hit play and let it go until we need to turn it off. The other day work gave me an iPod nano as a baby shower present. Quite nice of them – I really appreciate it. I've whittled the playlist down to the 2500 songs that fit on it. We can now play it all day at a fraction of the power consumption of the PC we used to use. Plus UCLH apparently has iPod docks, so we we can have music for the birth without needing to being a laptop (no wifi, what's the point?).

Some months ago I made a list of things cultural things I wanted to export the kid to. A fair chunk of that was meant for when she's older and can read herself or watch TV, but one thing I really want to do is use Skype video and get her grandparents to read to her. I really want her to get to know them, and them living on another continent would otherwise make it hard. But as long as they're comfortable reading to a small camera… I just have to figure out where to position the camera so it looks like they're making eye-contact.

Telling the family

On Tuesday I made the announcement to the extended family. The parents and siblings already knew, of course, so it was just a question of how to tell the cousins and aunts and uncles and so on. We debated a bit how to tell people, and in the end decide on a short and sweet email. We had thrown around a number of options, which got me thinking about how long distance communication has changed in the past few decades.

Thirty years ago a pregnancy announcement would have all been done almost entirely over the phone, calling on weekends or after 11pm. Phone the parents and siblings and maybe a few key extended family members and let them pass the info on virally. Some people might have even sent letters, or maybe some kind of share our joy mass mailing greeting card. This is just a guess since, as a kid, I wasn't really privy to the we're having a baby announcements.

Twenty years ago would not have been much different. Close family would be told over the phone. The dozen or so people you knew in other countries or states that had email could be told by email. Mass announcements to friends could be done on the more social Usenet groups.

Ten years ago there was a bit more choice. The younger generation of many families had email, plus a few in the older generations. I suppose I would have phoned the immediate family, IM'd those I could find logged on when I was around, and emailed the relatives I could. Then just rely on them to pass it around.

Today I find IM to be fairly useless. There are so many types that everyone seems to have the one you're not on. So it's really hard to find anyone around. I didn't even bother phoning the immediate family to make the announcement in the first place - I just used Skype. A video call is so much better to see the eyebrows raise when you tell them you're expecting. We considered using Facebook, but apparently they limit messages to 20 people max, and I'm not ready for a wall post about this yet. We ended up going with email is that it's so saturated that just about everyone has an account. It's just the easiest way to reach as many people as possible.

So, I managed to pull together about 50 email addresses in an hour or so and I was pretty sure they all worked. I sent off the message in the morning and spent the rest of the day slowly getting congratulations from people who live further and further east from us. It was nice to get all the good wishes. I suppose the you're doomed, doomed, I tell you comments will come from the friends when we tell them :)

On another note, I've decided this blog looks hideous. I need to sit down and figure out the set of bizarre incantations I need to invoke to twist this into something reasonable.

And now she's ill

So now she has a bit of a cough. Not surprising given how cold it's gotten. They say it'll even snow this weekend, but I really doubt that.

Her illness seems quite minor, just a bit of coughing and stuffiness. But she has to experience it all without any meds. Definitely no sudafed. Just lots of hot water with lemon. Would be honey if I could remember to get to the shops. It's just so cold, when the work day is done I just want to go home.

We've told all the parents and immediate siblings. All done over skype since they're all too far away to tell in person, and phone just seems so impersonal.
I'm not comfortable announcing at large until the new year when we're a bit sure it's taken. So this blog remains anonymous

In "that's interesting" news, I find myself being usually polite to her. Carrying things for her, putting up the kettle, that sort of thing. I'm not quite sure why. She's just a few weeks in and not a delicate flower at all -- she can leg press 2½ of me. I'm wondering if it's some hardcoded male thing: Must provide for woman carrying my spawn. I guess if I'm still taking out all the rubbish in a month, we'll have our answer.