Avoiding talking about it

Last weekend we went to a wedding. It was fun seeing loads of friend for the first time in ages. Parenting does not lend itself to being social very often. So while most of the parents at R's school know that we're expecting, very few of our friends know.

That became more obvious pretty much every time anyone would see L that night. Almost every meeting went like:

Hi! How’s it going? looks down at L's belly for a moment it's been ages. What's new?

Which was fine. We didn't want to steal the celebration on their wedding day to make it about us and our news. So we were happy to let the topic slide. A few times, though, someone would say Okay, I have to ask... which would lead to OMGs and congratulations and suchlike – which makes for a good icebreaker between friends who've not been in touch lately. But, for the most part, it was just the long pause and carry on with conversation. That's the downside of not seeing people much.

Baby sitter

Tomorrow we're getting our first real baby sitter. Hiring a professional to come in and look after the child while we go off to an evening wedding.

I really don't know the etiquette for this. We don't have a TV. I don't have any computers in the house I'm comfortable letting a stranger use. Do I give the sitter our Wifi key and tell her to bring a laptop or phone? Tell her to bring a good book? She's going to sit in our house for 7 hours – maybe 5 or so after the kid's gone to bed.

Do I provide food for her? The sitter, not the baby. The baby gets all the milk she needs (L's been pumping). Do I leave something for the sitter? Um, there's oatmeal and lemonade and some left-over pasta sauce in the fridge. And help yourself to espresso. Somehow I don't think that'd be too appealing.

And looking at our house from the perspective of a stranger — man it's unevenly cluttered. Yes, it's a bit messy. that we can tidy up. But a lot of things just have no "away". They came into the house after the baby was born and have just sat on a sofa or chair or table, and that's as away as they get. At least through some rather hard work in the past week from L we can now walk from one end of the nursery to the other without having to jump over something (which I can kind of pretend was a makeshift baby gate).

On a similar note, today she found the off switch for the router. She just crawled over and cheerily flicked the switch on the surge protector. Fortunately the PC plugged into it was off, but it killed the internet for a bit. Perhaps it was because I stopped her from pulling the books off the shelves? Regardless, I've got to find a way to have my stuff and her stuff coexist in the same rooms.