halojedha | Entries tagged with podling

I went downstairs to make coffee at 6.30am and the light in the kitchen was thick and yellow, filtered through orange-grey rainclouds and hanging heavily in the air as if I was encapsulated in amber, and saturating everything like a badly-applied photo filter. When I took my phone out to take a picture the camera auto-corrected the colour temperature and sucked all the gold tones out, leaving the room looking thin and blue-grey. I am taking a picture with these words instead.

I have a cold, which is why I was asleep before 10pm last night. I slept good, and feel a little improved this morning. Friday was the nadir: I leaned on Leo to take on childcare (which meant they had to take most of the day off work) so I could spend as much of it as possible resting in bed. Being self-employed is supposed to give me freedom around this stuff, but parenting makes it almost impossible to take sick leave without guilt. I could have dosed up on decongestants and ADHD meds and pushed through if either of us had had unavoidable commitments, but I felt so grotty I was very glad not to have to. Apparently testosterone hormone therapy makes you more susceptible to viral inflammation - but less at risk of auto-immune disorders - in a similar same way to people with naturally high testosterone (in other words, Man Flu is real!). Perhaps this explains why E sneezed twice but is otherwise in fine fettle, and Leo and I both feel we've been hit by a truck.

Yesterday I felt a little less bad, just about well enough to get up and have a cosy day teaming parenting with the three of us, but sadly it was not to be: Leo had succumbed and it was their turn to spend most of the day in bed. I think parenting while sick is my least favourite part of parenting: flashbacks to the pandemic, and the kicker of losing childcare support when you most need it because people cancel so they don't catch it. On Friday when Leo was busy with things I just hunkered down with E on the sofabed downstairs, and we watched Toy Story and ate snacks. But yesterday I felt up to resetting the kitchen and living room, cooking meals, and following E's self-directed play led to some lovely activities: doing a tarot reading together with their colour-in animal tarot deck (their question was about feeling sad when their tablet time is up, and the spread contained some fascinating reflections); making a soft play obstacle course in the living room out of cushions for E to romp across, and then spreading them out and making appreciative noises from the sofa while they practised forwards and backwards rolls; listening to the Cocteau Twins while I hand-fed them tiny slices of cheese crumpet and they pretended to be a baby robin; drawing dinosaurs together out of their new art activities book; watching the playback of their jiu-jitsu coach's competition win an hour earlier, which led to playing Sticky Klingon, a BJJ game where I'm on all fours, they're clinging to my back, and I'm trying (but not too hard) to shake them off; and after dinner we did a bedtime yoga session led by E, and they serenaded me with intuitive piano-playing and singing, both of which I really enjoyed. Their lyrics flowed seamlessly between English and a private language, and I could hear musicality and poetry in the bits I understood. I offered to accompany them on piano while they sang, and that was really fun and turned out sounding quite pretty; they quite quickly got bored and wanted the piano back, but I wish I'd recorded it. Sometimes I find their play extremely tedious, but yesterday between us we managed to land on a whole succession of activities I really enjoy, and it was lovely!

On Tuesday they're starting at the Garden, the self-directed learning community that lured us to Bristol. It's a three day a week setting: 10am-3pm Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays during term time. The focus is on autonomy and cultivating skills: young people take charge of their own projects, play, and learning, and the mentors are there to facilitate, provide support, and assist with conflict where needed. 5 is the youngest age they'll accept (a lot of home ed settings are 6+) and the jury's out on to what extent E is indeed ready to take responsibility for their own toileting, eating and drinking. I've been texting with one of the mentors, B, (who I know through Radical Routes, the housing co-op network) and am reassured that support is available with these things if needed. It occurs to me that being encouraged to undress, clean up, and get dressed again by themself after a toilet accident might be a wonderful incentive to start paying more attention to their bladder signals when they're in the middle of something. However I'm still considering hanging out nearby for the first day in case I'm needed.

*conversation in the car about why our car is a hybrid leads to explanation of climate change*
Me: ...and we want all the people to live long, happy lives.
E: like us! We're people! We're living long, happy lives!
Me: I hope so!
E: No we are, we are! *gestures outside* Look, it's all so beautiful! People are building houses, and the trees are beautiful, and there are cars on the road, and it's all so BEAUTIFUL!
Me: (delighted) What do you think is beautiful?
E: That house is beautiful! There are pigeons in the sky! There are - what are those?
Me: Telephone poles.
E: Do you know why?
Me: Because when I was your age, telephones were attached to the wall with wires, and the poles carry the signal to the house on the wires. The phones didn't have screens or video, only voice, and if you wanted to talk to your friend you needed to sit on the stairs.
E: (stares at me in incomprehension)

(Post format shamelessly adapted from kaberett)

Reading: I've started a few books recently without finishing them. My attention span hasn't been favourable for new fiction lately. I do intermittently manage to finish some new fiction: recent faves (for certain values of "recent" ie October/November) include Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, The Rising Flood by juliet Kemp, and The Galaxy and the Ground Within and A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. But mostly it's Locked Tomb fanfic and Gideon/Harrow re-reads.

Listening (Audiobooks): I finally finished A Promised Land by Barack Obama, which I got a lot out of, but lost interest just before the end and it took me ages to actually finish it. I've listened to the TLT audiobooks and am extremely glad I did, because Moira Quirk's performance is incredible and adds a lot to my enjoyment of the stories, including making it easier to write fic because I can hear the characters' voices more clearly. Continuing my self-directed nerdery in mental health and relationships, I took in Complex PTSD by Pete Walker recently which was extremely eye-opening and an excellent explanation of how the four "F" trauma responses work in practice, as well as containing lots of practical and grounded suggestions for managing flashbacks and approaching recovery. Since finishing that I've started Polysecure by Jessica Fern, which comes recommended by many and which so far I'm finding to be clear, compassionate and wise.

Listening (Music): A lot of Catriona MacDonald's 2000 album Bold on repeat. From there, the algorthm has recommended me Catriona McKay and Saltfishforty, both of which I've been enjoying. I've also been dipping into Tori Amos, Florence + the Machine, Kate Bush, Kathryn Tickell, Karine Polwart, and Kate Rusby, who I used to find a bit wet but now feel is the perfect vibe for putting on while I'm cooking, or driving Ember home in the car. According to Spotify I've also played Roundabout by Yes several times lately, which I am totally fine with. In fact I'm tempted to listen to it again now.

Watching: Not much, but I did treat myself to a film the other night after Ember fell asleep, and watched the whole Paddington movie on my own on my laptop. It was very silly and I enjoyed it. It's always a treat finding a kids' movie with an extraordinarily famous cast, who are all playing daft bit parts apparently just because they like working together. The posh-vintageish-London aesthetics were beautiful, in a Potterverse sort of way, and I want every single one of Nicole Kidman's outfits.

Writing: I took part in my first fic exchange! I managed to finish a work by the deadline and I didn't hate it, which was very pleasing, and I was delighted with my gift. I don't link my AO3 username publicly so I'll post links separately. Other than that I have a bunch of WIPs, all TLT. I managed to do some work on the non-fiction book last week - currently revising chapter 7/12 - but all my work hours have been taken up by commercial stuff this week. I'm keen to get back to it as soon as I can. I've also started writing down some of the stories I make up for Ember, with the vague thought that they might work as kids' books, although I don't really want to do the illustrations myself so it's unlikely to happen.

Cooking: A lot of comfort food. Pasta with creamy vegan cashew cheeze sauce and roasted cauliflower with turmeric - a sort of cauliflower cheese/mac n cheese mashup. Lots of tuna and cheese melted sandwiches. Butternut squash, lentil and tofu coconut curry. Quinoa with spices, broccoli and beans, made extra decadent with soy cream, tamari and chopped herbs to garnish. Tonight I cooked sea bream in foil parcels in the oven with chopped fennel, green beans, garlic, herbs, olive oil and lemon, accompanied with brown rice and roast carrot. The bream was from frozen and even 40 mins at 220C wasn't enough: we had to finish it off in the pan, and the green veg came out crispy. Next time if I'm doing it from the freezer I'll either give it an hour, or open the foil after half an hour to let it finish. The carrots were incredible though: purple organic carrots from our Riverford box, which I chopped in half lengthwise and doused in olive oil, salt and pepper, with a splash of balsamic vinegar, to cook under foil until tender and then caramelise uncovered for a few minutes at the end. They were definitely the highlight of the meal. Breakfasts are usually either porridge with nut butter and fruit, granola and soy yoghurt, or toasted bagels with tofu bacon (the THIS isn't bacon brand, which I like a lot) and a fried egg.

Making: Not much; writing and care tasks are basically it. I spent an evening sculpting clay with L last week and made a cat-dragon, but it's not finished yet. Lots of drawing and colouring with Ember. Ember and I have done various fun activities together lately: making a ball pool out of ball pool balls and a cardboard box; building blanket forts for the stuffies and Duplo villages; dissolving corn packing peanuts in water; making towers and nests and slides out of cushions; giving each other washi tape manicures; sticking foam shapes to sticky-backed plastic. Leo and I are making gradual progress tidying and organising the house with the aim to create more beauty and harmony in our space. I hand-sewed curtain rings onto an old pair of curtains and found it highly satisfying, enough so that I'm considering taking up cross-stitch so I can have more things to sew.

You are the sweetest pie

That I did ever spy

My little pumpkin pie

My sweet potato pie

You are my cherry pie

The apple of my eye

You are the sweetest pie

That I did ever spy

You are my treacle pie

My little key lime pie

My golden beetroot pie

My rainbow vegan pie

My chocolate cheesecake pie

My summer berry pie

You are the sweetest pie

That I did ever spy

I recently Confronted the State of the Veg Patch, after planting a load of seedlings out in May (I waited WEEKS for the frost to clear, finally got a few nights that were several degrees above freezing, planted them all out in a great rush, and then the frost came back for one night only and set the courgettes and beans back by weeks) and then neglecting them for (checks notes) nearly two months.

Everything shot up in June, including the weeds. The brassicas (kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli) had a brief moment of glory before being absolutely destroyed by slugs. I didn't get to harvest any of them. Got an early crop of radishes, then the rest have disappeared under the weeds and are probably powdery and huge now. The Asian greens (pak choi and tatsoi) looked promising for a couple of weeks but then bolted before I had a change to harvest them, so I missed them entirely. Almost all the dwarf bean seedlings died, and the ones I planted direct never germinated. But the climbing beans and courgettes have finally recovered from their frost shock and are doing well. I lost two courgette plants out of six, and the other four are getting big now. We've got the first yellow courgette flowers and the first purple climbing bean flowers (French Blauhilde), and the beans have reached the top of the frame. Carrots, spinach, beetroot, chard and lettuces are flourishing, totally overcrowded amid thickets of weeds and increasingly full of holes due to slugs.

I did a nematodes treatment mid-May after noticing the brassica destruction, which kept the slugs at bay for six weeks, but a week or two ago it wore off and they started making a comeback. So actually I didn't quite neglect the veg patch for 2 months, but all my available gardening time was taken up with mowing the nettles back, building the bean frame, keeping it watered and administering the nematodes treatment.

A couple of weeks ago I attacked the less crowded end of the patch with a rake for some large-scale weeding, while looking after E. It was a bit tricky to manage with childcare: the nettles were making a resurgence and E got stung a couple of times, and although they were enthusiastic about weeding, they also started getting enthusiastic about pulling leaves off bean plants. Still, I kept them engaged with my process and talked them through it, and they were really interested and adorable. I told them that the plants need their leaves to eat the sunlight, and explained about the difference between food plants that are good for us to eat, and weeds which are good to put in the compost to make soil. We found a volunteer lettuce that had self-seeded among the weeds, and E adopted it as a Food Plant. I said they could pull a leaf off to eat, so they tore it into tiny shreds and carefully placed a tiny piece of lettuce on each bean leaf "for the beans to eat so they'll grow big and tall". (heart eyes cry emoji)

I wanted to finish the weeding, but in order for E to be able to share the space, my next priority was to take care of the nettle situation. The veg patch is a deer-fenced area about, I don't know, five metres square? it has paved path around the edges, and the whole thing was hummocky grass and bramble and nettle when we started. We took the turf off two thirds of it, dug it over and dug in a bunch of compost and mulch and blood and bone, and that's where my veggies are planted. The other third, at the back behind the bean frame, remains hummocky grass and nettles. From there nettles spread amongst the rest of the plants and are unfriendly to toddlers, which makes my plan of Gardening With Child a bit tricky. I'd mowed them back once already, but now they were knee height again.

So on Sunday while Leo was in the garden and E was bobbining around between the two of us, I mowed them back again. Before doing this I had to lift up the planks I'd put down as a nettleproof walkway/buffer zone alongside the edge of the beans, under which I discovered Many Slugs. I found an empty kitchen compost caddy with a lid, filled it half with water and used it as a Goodbye Slug dropzone.

I also found a TOAD. It was hiding under a plank being very dry and brown and flat, pretending to be the ground. I did not want to mow it, so I went to scoop it up, and it jumped into the veg patch. That was probably a fine toad spot, but I was planning to weed it and didn't want to accidentally tread on the toad or stab it with a fork, so I got hold of it and put it in a tray that had a bit of rainwater in the bottom in the shade, for E to look at. E brought it a handful of grass, which was ignored, and a stone, which was sat on. After the toad had been admired and had tried to jump out of the water table a few times, I took pity on it and we took it round to the back of the garden where there are still very tall wild grasses, nettles and brambles, and released it in the shade where there was lots of tall foliage. It was a good toad. I hope it thrives.

So anyway, I mowed the nettles and then spent a happy afternoon covering the mowed nettles-and-grass patch with mulch to slow down regrowth and prepare it for planting next year. Forking grass cuttings off the top of the compost heap and wheelbarrowing them to the veg patch and spreading them out with a rake made my body feel so good: sweaty and exercised and strong. It was cloudy, but warm enough I took my long sleeved t-shirt off and went topless under my dungarees. My arms and shoulders felt muscular; I felt very sexually attractive.

Then I made a plan:

Weed the rest of the patch
Lay down the Marvellous Trickle Hose (!!!!) that Leo got me for my birthday
Mulch the whole patch around the crop plants to slow weed growth
Plant more plants in the spaces (but how does that work with the mulch)
???

I've recently heard of a thing called No Dig Gardening where you mulch, and it fertilises the soil, and then you plant and mulch more and the plants grow through the mulch, and you keep on adding more mulch without ever having to dig into the ground. It sounds good, particularly given how much I enjoyed the physical activity of forking and lifting and moving and spreading (much better for my back than crouching and weeding). But I'm not sure how it works yet. I think I need to watch some youtube videos.

What with going out to the farm park on Sunday morning and spending the afternoon in the garden, I spent the whole day outdoors. It was really good for me! I'd been so fatigued and exhausted and flat the day before, and so I very much enjoyed the sense of vitality and vigour I felt during the gardening session. I don't get to feel this good every day, I like it. It was one of those idyllic days: the sort of day I yearned for when I was in my twenties. Child and animals and gardening and homemade food. The good life.

My initial plan was to garden during my parenting time, but it's been a struggle - the nettles are inhospitable, although less so now, and it's almost impossible to stop E pulling leaves off the crop plants, and they get bored quickly if they can't participate. Now that I'm back into the patch I'm really motivated to stay into it, and I'm reassessing my priorities. It makes me feel so good I think it makes sense to start doing it in my discretionary time when we have childcare support, time I would otherwise spend working or having my adult relationships. Even just half an hour on each childcare day it's not raining. It's good exercise (and I'm not making time for Tai Chi at the moment, so anything that gets me moving is good) and way cheaper than therapy (which I am also doing once a week, but more self-care is good, and gardening is good for different stuff anyway, I think).

Since then I've got out there twice. The first time I weeded under the beans, which was slow fiddly going and took 45 minutes without making much of a dent in the total patch. Today my new organic pet-and-child-safe slug pellets arrived (nemotodes were totally sold out), so I went out and distributed them on the weeded bits. I hadn't realised it when I bought them, but they're a barrier-around-the-base-of-your-plants thing, not a "treat the whole area" thing, so it only works to put them around plants where I've weeded, otherwise they'll get dug in when I weed and go to waste. I did another chunk of weeding, prioritising the chard which is getting chomped the most. Checked all the chard plants and pulled a bunch more slugs out by hand. The bucket of pellets did the beans and the chard I'd just weeded, which was about a quarter of the chard in total, and that was it. So I need to buy another couple of buckets of pellets, and weed the rest of the patch and put the pellets down, and then we can play with hoses and mulch, and then we can see about planting more things. Meanwhile we've eaten fresh chard every day this week, and when I was weeding I saw that the carrots and beetroot look pretty much ready to harvest.

I am glad to be back in the veg patch. It was stressful seeing how choked it was with weeds, and seeing crops flourish and then get got by pests before I could harvest them. It's been a bit of a race against the slugs to eat the chard before they do, but I've been grateful for the incentive to get out there regularly, and it's lovely gradually reclaiming it from chaos and seeing that there is food under there after all.

The spoon fell down
And the clouds fell up
The rain fell down
And E fell down
To bother the wriggly worms

A poem by E, aged 1 year and 11 months.

The sun is sunny
And the swing is swingy
And the trees are beauftibul
And the slide is slidey
And the seesawy is sawsery
And the play tower is play towery
And the ground is short

For ages I've been yearning to take E to meet some animals. They are obsessed with animals - their sketchbook is full of birds and fish, they get tremendously excited when they ever meet a dog or cat, and their favourite books all involve animals - but haven't had many chances to meet many different kinds during the pandemic, and were too young to really appreciate it before that. This morning I finally got to realise that dream, and met up with a friend and their kid E's age and went to a farm park!

It was Deen Farm Park in South London, chosen for its favourable location for the friend. It was forecast rain so we brought all our waterproofs, wellies and umbrellas, but in the end there was only very minor drizzle after we arrived, and after that the weather was fine. We met different kinds of chickens, pheasants, ducks, songbirds and turkeys, which I don't think I'd seen up close before - they really are enormous, with flamboyant tailfeather displays and strange brightly coloured tiny dinosaur heads. There was a horse riding arena, so we got to watch the horses trotting around, and there were a couple of pens for smol animals - one containing a couple of large, inert rabbits, and the other containing a mostly invisible burrowing guinea pig. They weren't available for petting, and there wasn't much to look at.

The highlight for me was the paddocks, where we met cows including a cute sleepy foal, large black cheerful sheep that came to the fence to get food and pettings, some donkeys way out of reach to prevent them getting fed, a tall black fluffy alpaca, two beautiful black pigs, and loads of different sized excitable goats, some very short and some the size of small horses, which all crowded round making a big fuss and expertly hustling for food. There were two baby kids too, a white and a black one curled together in a yin yang. I temporarily really wanted goats. (The cuteness is now out of sight, and I'm home and present to how many other hobbies I already don't have time for, so the intense desire has passed.)

E enjoyed it a lot - they fed goats from their hands and wandered off a lot to look at things, entailing several episodes of "where's our child" which is always a sign they're having a good time. On the way home they said their favourite animals were "the guinea pig rummaging around under the hay" (top use of vocabulary there, our kid) and the ducks. It's their birthday this week so we're planning another trip to a different farm park in Surrey, which is closer to us (less suitable for friends or we'd have gone today) and way bigger with a lot more activities. I had a really good time this morning, and I'm looking forward to more!

The only time I ever get to myself these days is after E is asleep, while Leo is cuddling them. By that point I've done 1-2 hours of bedtime already and am pretty sleepy myself, and depending how long it takes them to settle it might already be 10pm by the time I've brushed my teeth and done my skincare routine. (I only manage it once a day, but if it's the ONLY self care thing I do I am doing it, I swear.) Once I'm in bed I always spend some time journaling these days. If I don't, I lie awake in the middle of the night with stuff going round my head. So the paper journal has been getting the blow-by-blow of the last few weeks. I don't want to fire the laptop up in bed in the dark, because screentime at that point is poor sleep hygiene. And I don't really have any other opportunities during the day. So I've been quiet here.

The night weaning is... a whole story. TDLR: cold turkey Did Not Work, so now we're trying gentle breastfeeding weaning with nursing on demand at night but with gentle removal off the breast rather than letting them fall asleep with nipple in their mouth. The more on it I am with the removal, the less sleep we all get; the more exhausted I am, the more likely I am to just fall asleep while they're nursing and not do the removal. And the last week there's been epic teething. So it's one step forward, one step back at the moment. We're just hanging in there and weathering the teething and the waking-every-hour-to-feed while it lasts, and continuing to do the gentle removal and Leo being on cuddleshift rather than me (which does tend to result in fewer wakings to feed when there isn't teething) as much as we can in the meantime, and hoping that the nurse-to-sleep association changes. It apparently takes a few weeks, so it's OK if we aren't there yet.

We did a week of me sleeping in the spare room, during which E cried a lot and Leo stayed up all night every night walking them up and down in the sling. E slept only if in the sling in motion, and woke up whenever Leo lay them down in bed. After a week of that I got involved and we tried a couple of nights of trying to teach E to go to sleep in bed, but that resulted in screaming all night and by the end of the second night, I was nursing them at night again. We hired a lactation consultant to help me with latching and positioning, which helped make night feeds less painful, and I read the No-Cry Sleep Solution and learned about sleep associations and the gentle removal technique.

Then we implemented a strategy involving earlier bedtimes, more consistent routines, and all that good stuff. That's been going on for just over two weeks. We were seeing a notable increase in total sleep time and reduction in night waking after just one week - like for literally the first time in a year or more E slept for 13 hours in 24 (11-12 hours at night and 1-2 hours in the day) - but then the teething kicked in and we're back to much less sleep and 8 wakings a night.

We've been pretty zombiefied. Had to take a few days off work just to hunker down and share childcare in survival mode. The last couple of nights I've had a bit more sleep, but only by slacking on the weaning plan. Still, we persist.

So today is my first chance to write here, rather than in the paper journal, in weeks. E didn't nap today so Leo went up to start bedtime half an hour ago, and I've been drinking tea and having half an hour to myself downstairs during daylight. The luxury!

It's been a good Sunday. We drove over to Li's new place to visit her for the first time since she moved out last week. (A whole other sad story which I'll tell another time.) Her new place is gorgeous and really perfect for her. I'm so glad to see her settled and comfortable, and it's only 40 minutes drive away, so not too far. We hung out in the garden at a social distance and chatted and ate stirfry, and the day warmed up and we took off our jumpers, and drank raspberry tea and no-alcohol pilsner. (E tried mine and exclaimed: "It's got SUGAR in it! It sure does!") It's sad and weird not to be living with her only 6 months after we moved in together, but it's clearly the right thing for her. We'll visit lots.

The rest of the afternoon has been active and satisfying - the first day in about a month I felt up to doing Things and had a day to potter around doing them. E "helped" me transplant the beans and courgettes which are getting too big for their modules. I was hoping to put them straight in the ground, but there was a frost last night and they haven't been hardened up yet, so they've just got bigger pots for now. Then we tidied the kitchen and living room, cleaned the kitchen and mopped the floor. Felt good to reclaim the space after a month of getting by with the bare minimum. The roomba is trundling around now making use of the clear floors.

Right - time to go help with bedtime. Not sure when I'll have a chance to write again, but when I do there's lots to share: the housemate hunt! The #notmycat saga! Books! Plants! But all that will have to wait til next time.

At least night weaning is distracting me from the plagueversary.

E had 3 hours of nursing and sleep catch-up yesterday morning, and an hour-long nap in the afternoon. In the evening they seemed very sleepy and quite relaxed when I left, but it was nervewracking knowing how upset they'd been the night before. I put ear plugs in early and did a lot of belly breathing and journalling. It felt awful to not be there with them.

And then... I got a good night's sleep? I slept for four hours, then two hours, then two hours, waking naturally from normal weird dreams, not horrible ones. I didn't hear crying. I woke up at 6 and was doing some chi gong on the landing when I heard E's little waking up mew, and went straight in to offer them a cuddle and a feed.

Leo filled me in before they went to catch up on sleep: it worked! E accepted the bottle in the night and there was no more crying than some night when we're trying to breastfeed (although rather more work for Leo with all the slinging and walking). They settled once in the car by their request, and three times in the sling. The second sleep was four hours in a row - far more than they or I have been getting with frequent night waking to breastfeed. And they slept the whole night in their toddler bed with Leo cuddles.

This is the start of fewer night wakings I hope! l feel reassured that we're on the right path, and hugely relieved that the return on investment was so swift. We'll do another night or two with me in the spare room, and then start the "Boo is here, but the booby milk is still asleep" routine.

I slept in the spare room. Leo took E to bed.

We got off to a bad start when they had a 5.30-7pm nap on the boob. I was just about to take them to bed when they woke up. Decided to let them have the milk, but knew that the sleep would disrupt bedtime.

I slept badly. This body didn't want to be away from E! Woke up every hour or so from heart-racing dreams of E needing me. I put earplugs in but even so, when I went to the loo I heard crying.

At 7am (the agreed time) Leo brought E through. They were so pleased to see me. We nursed and they immediately fell asleep.

Apparently the night was mostly crying. E refused to let Leo sling them, and only got about 2 hours sleep.

Oof. This is hard. Night 2 is I'm told often even harder. I still believe it's the best thing to do, but I'm looking forward to being in the room and supporting Leo and E through the transition.

What is life after night weaning like? Parents, paint me a picture. Particularly interested if you still all share a family bed, although maybe night weaning will be the thing that enables us to transition E to their own bed.

I really like being able to soothe them instantly. On nights when I'm woken twice or three times and each time I can roll over, nurse and pretty much go straight back to sleep, it works really well. I like the cuddles and closeness and the security of knowing I can get them back to sleep whatever.

Here's what's not working:
- they have sixteen teeth and their latch is often bad, especially at night. No matter how many times I take them off and adjust them I just can't get them to open their mouth wide and tilt their head back enough. I end up with toothmarks, nursing aversion and sore nipples. Plus the irritation keeps me awake.

- sometimes trying to adjust their latch stresses them out and they get into a proper tizzy. Twice we've had night terrors this way.

- the roaming tickly twiddly fingers under my clothes and over my skin. It's irritating and overstimulating and leaves me touched out and unable to stand normal breastfeeding even when the latch is better. Also intensifies nursing aversion. I have to constantly defend myself, which makes them more insistent, and then we're both awake.

- when they have a sniffly nose, which has happened a few times lately, they can't latch on. They want to suck on my nipple (with a very lazy latch), then breathe cold air over my nipple, then latch on even worse and have one more suck. It drives me mad. There's no way I can negotiate a decent latch if they can't breathe through their nose.

- chronic exhaustion and sleep deprivation. I get woken up to feed between 2-10 times per night. Towards the end of the night sometimes the feeds are back to back and I don't get a chance to sleep inbetween. If I need to pee I have to wait until they've finished nursing and gone to sleep. And then sometimes they wake up wailing 1min later cos I'm not there and I have to nurse them back to sleep again. If there's something worrying me or stressing me (which hello, pandemic) sometimes once I'm woken in the night I can't get back to sleep, even if E does, and end up lying awake for hours. When I do get back to sleep after 2-3hours, I'm woken soon after to feed them again.

- When they're wiggly, it disturbs my sleep. Even if they're sleeping.

- breastfeeding aversion. Happens every month when my period is due and other times too, when the above problems are going on. It's an indescribably horrible feeling.

- I'm trying to do consent based parenting, but lying there gritting my teeth and disassociating while my body is retraumatised by unwanted nipple touch is not consent based.

- I want an unbroken night's sleep. I want Leo to do a night shift without me. I want my parents to be able to take E overnight once covid permits so Leo and I can have a night off together.

They're 20 months old. I was vaguely thinking of doing natural term breastfeeding but also interested in honouring my own boundaries.

My fear if we night wean is that it won't actually result in more sleep overall, because we'll no longer have the insta-soothe (well mostly) option and we'll have to get them back to sleep the long way round.

So what's it like? ATM E wakes up next to me and says "booby milk" and sleepy nuzzles into my front and latches in. Sometimes I have to get my boob out, sometimes it was already out from last time. Sometimes I have to shufty them across or down the bed into a better position. Then sometimes they go almost straight back to sleep, sometimes I go almost straight back to sleep, and sometimes I lie peacefully until they're done and then go straight back to sleep and don't really remember it. Other times the above things happen. The whole thing usually happens lying down with my eye mask on and no talking or mental stimulation to wake my brain up and disrupt my getting back to sleep ability.

What's it like without booby milk?

I haven't done an "E's milestones" post lately because their development has happened too quickly to track. I don't think I can do a complete readout of all developments, and I'm daunted even by the idea of trying. So I'm gonna take bites out of it. This post is about language.

Language went from "learning lots of new words a day" to two word sentences, then three word sentences, then EIGHT word sentences, in a matter of weeks during the autumn. In September the only words they could say were "duck" and "there"; and just before Christmas I heard them say, "Roomba base dirty, needs wash, Zaza sort it".

First came nouns, then came verbs, then came multi word sentences made of nouns and verbs, and then adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and articles.

They're now (aged nineteen months) producing complete sentences with words in the right order, and they're just working on growing their vocabulary and figuring out those final tricksy bits, like which way round "my" and "your" go (it's difficult because they have to do the opposite of what we do, rather than copying it.) They mirror everything they hear us say and have learned "Oh my god" from our housemate. It's definitely time to stop swearing.

Some things I heard them say today:

"Hello roomba, nice to meet you roomba, said E. Hello E, said roomba!" (The roomba is a favourite topic of conversation)

"Boo's got a purple mouth! E doesn't have a purple mouth." (I was wearing lipstick. I was particularly impressed by "doesn't have", which was new)

Narrating their independent play: "E riding in a box of clothes, with a hand! Out of the clothes box, so we can... take a clothes out of the box! Put away E's trousers, put away a cardigan, empty the clothes box. Put the brown trousers on the unicorn. One sleeve on the feet..." And so on in a a pretty much constant verbal stream of chatter.

This is an astonishing speed of language acquisition, and very exciting! It means that the communication between us is getting better and better by the day, which makes negotiating everything else so much easier.

There are also some recurring Eisms which are absolutely delightful. My favourites are "big hug" ("Big hug with Boo!" said as request, and then again on completion of request) and "carry carry up" with arms raised, always with two carries, never one.

They can count to three, and know all the numbers 1-10, but need a bit of help getting them in the right order from 4 onwards.

They love reciting nursery rhymes and song lyrics, but I haven't heard them sing a melody yet, although I sing to them constantly. They have an astounding memory and can "read" several of their books all the way through, having memorised the words. This has led to lots of E-generated memes, in-jokes and references which I enjoy hugely. Julia Donaldson's Monkey Puzzle, Open Very Carefully, and their Chuggington storybook (an animated kids show about trains) currently get gleefully recited on a daily basis.

So in the whirl of the last few months I totally failed to document all the interim language cuteness, such as the period where anything too hard/heavy/difficult was "too BIG!"

Given how quickly they're picking things up, I reckon we might as well give the alphabet a try soon because they might be ready for reading before too much longer. I've bought some letter magnets for the fridge and am starting to introduce phonemes through "what sound does that word start with?" type questions. I'm in no rush for my own sake - more like scrambling to keep up!

The sun came out and it wasn't too cold! The first time in a week that were wasn't snow on the ground. I took E outside and we pottered in the garden doing our first bits of gardening of the year. I swept the slimy leaves off the paving stones, tidied up the perennials in pots and filled the compost bin. E was fascinated and very chatty, joining in with everything I was doing. We met some wriggly worms, some cold snails and a tiny spider, all of which were very exciting. The worms got politely moved to the compost bin in hopes they'll do some good in there.

It was lovely. There was still ice and the soil was frozen if you dug a little way, but it felt like spring.

It gave me hope that I could plant some things and do more gardening with E - time without them is precious and needed for work, but the housemates and I have grand garden plans. I wonder how well E's tolerance will last?

Coming to the end of our fourth day of holiday and I feel really good. It took me a few days to unwind. Even a couple of days in I was noticing more anxiety and reactivity than usual. I think there's still a backdrop of "only moderately okay" - what I've heard people call "covid good", as in, as good as can be expected given the pandemic. Able to take pleasure and be grateful moment to moment, but every few weeks you have to fall apart and put yourself back together. That.

I'm feeling more grounded and relaxed now than I did at the start of the break. It's been a lovely, foodie, rhythmic, family few days. We've cooked and eaten several delicious meals - king prawn panang with homemade panang paste, Thai style sea bass, winter salad with fig, satsuma pieces, walnuts and olives, the mushroom pate, and a big roast dinner - in fact cooking, eating and cleaning up has taken up a substantial amount of each day, and I have no regrets.

Leo and I are spending as much of the time as possible together, enjoying sharing E with each other and the luxury of having two adults sharing whatever tasks need doing. E's been loving playing with their new toys from grandparents - especially their additional box of Duplo and their wooden bear puzzle, and the fire engine puzzle they got from Gina a few weeks ago. They're also obsessed with drawing so we do some of that every day, with paint pens (although we have to stop them eating them) and Crayola washable markers (which are all a bit worse for wear and we've just bought a new set).

We've done wet play in the tray table outdoors in the garden during the cold sunny day yesterday (warm water from the tap, because the rainwater was icy), walks in the nearby woods (E has a new puddlesuit gifted by biascut, and is very excited by puddle jumping - "da da da da DLASH!"), taken it in turns to DJ for living room hangouts, danced together, roleplayed with soft toys, done collaborative brightly coloured artworks, and other lovely things. We spent yesterday getting very giggly, and rolled around on the living room floor together with E climbing on us, and invented games like parachute with a blanket and twenty ball pool balls, which was hilarious (they went everywhere).

E is breastfeeding much less during the day these days. Since the start of December we've had three days a week of childcare on work weeks - Char on Fridays, who's been with us since E was a few weeks old, and our new nanny Shirley, who lives locally and brings her ten month old to work, so E has a playmate. I believe this will be good for them as they've had so few opportunities to spend time with other kids this year, but E is so far unconvinced.

I've been out doing work stuff for three long days this month, and E was fine every time. Our electric pump stopped working so we've been giving them formula in a cup when they ask for milk and I'm not there, plus solid food and herbal tea and water as usual of course.

I've noticed that even when I am there, they breastfeed a lot less during the day. Sometimes they're teething and can't manage it without biting. Sometimes they're super wriggly and chatty and stimulated and can't settle. So even if they're asking for boob, I often end up giving them cup milk instead, after a breastfeed is unsuccessful.

As a result, they're sleeping on me a lot less. We've started doing daily pushchair walks to induce naps (which is how Shirley and Char both get them to sleep). After lunch, warm clothes, blankets tucked in. Either I go alone and listen to podcasts while Leo does physio, or Leo and I go together.

So far it's worked everyday. They sleep for variable lengths of time once we get home. We park them in the garden with the hood up and tuck another blanket around them. For some reason they sleep better outdoors than indoors - bringing them in usually wakes them up. The day before yesterday they slept for two hours in total, three quarters of it in the garden. That was wonderful! But the last couple of days it's been much colder, and they've been waking up after twenty minutes or so no matter how many blankets we pile on.

So naps are in transition at the moment, and we need a new system that works in winter. I'll try bringing them indoors again, but we might need to try a hammock indoors, or start trying to build a sleep routine in their bedroom that doesn't rely on feeding to sleep (which is how they still get to sleep at night time).

Today was the first day we tried to get some domestic tasks done, rather than focusing exclusively on play, food and relaxing. We started putting up a curtain in the dining room to make the downstairs space cosier, cos it was freezing, but we realised the curtains needed adjusting, so we ended up measuring all the windows and curtains and figuring out which ones would go where and how much adjustment they each needed, plus making a shopping list for the rails and curtains we need to buy. It was a long job and at the end of it we still had no curtains, but it was an increment of progress at least.

This afternoon we both did our physio, which is the first time either of us have managed it since the start of the holiday. We also spent an hour trying to unfuck our bedroom. It's not what I'd call tidy yet, but it's heading in the right direction. Leo still has a few Boxes of Argh to unpack and I'm fighting a continual rearguard action against the floordrobe.

I also gave one of the orchids some attention. It had a few roots growing into the air, so I emptied the pot and repotted it so all the roots were under the bark layer. The orchids are so happy on the downstairs wet room windowsill. It's perfect for them - indirect light, humidity, warmth, regular mistings from the shower.

I still need to figure out what the pothus and the calathea need. Pothus is in the dining room now and is looking healthier - the conservatory was too cold. But some of the leaves have gone yellow, which suggests overwatering. The calathea is in the entrance hall, for warmth and shade, but it's still looking a bit brown and limp.

I'm off work until January the 4th or 5th; it feels good. Aiming to spend the rest of the time with a good balance of relaxing fun activities and satisfying house sorting. I've got a few fun things in the diary too - a kids' zoom rave, a walk in the park with a friend and her 18 month old - and some more ideas for family activities. It's lovely to have a nice long staycation and really focus on E, rather than trying to fit parenting in around other stuff.

E is one year old! Their development seems to be happening so fast. Here are the big ones lately:

Communication: LANGUAGE. IS HAPPENING. This is so exciting. There have been days recently where it feels like every single day we have a new language milestone, it's coming thick and fast. E now has six signs that they use regularly in context: Milk, Tree, Bird, Sun, Shower and Rain. (We spent AGES on the difference between sun and shower and now they're totally on top of it. We were walking in Lea Valley Park the other day and when we saw a waterfall they signed Shower. INCREDIBLE) They also understand a lot of other signs - such as Food and Wait - and they definitely understand English too!

For instance: E has a pet dead spider. It is on the back of our polycarbonate secondary glazing, which has come down off the window and is leaning against the wall for the summer. The dead spider is on the far side of the polycarbonate. Its underbelly is revealed in anatomical glory. E is obsessed with it, and keeps stroking it through the polycarbonate, pointing at it and shouting with delight. I've been chatting to them about it and telling them about spiders, using the sign for spider and so on. And then I sang Incy Wincy Spider the other day and they pointed at the spider. Leo also tells me that they said "toys" to them and they pointed at their toybox. So yes! Language! AAAH!

Mobility: They're confidently climbing onto the sofa from the floor and down again. They zoom around on hands and knees, and are almost as fast walking with a hand on furniture. They frequently take two or three wobbly steps when crossing from one support to another, like from the sofa to me or vice versa. As I was typing this I just watched them walk a metre from the sofa to Leo, who was in the middle of the floor - four steps at least!

They can climb up stairs without help and sometimes do, if we leave the stairgate open.

They can get down from the bed feet first...

...like on Monday when this TOTALLY CRAZY thing happened! I was having a lying down feed with them in hopes of a nap, as I've been waking up early or lying awake in the middle of the night a bunch lately and have been a bit sleep deprived. I didn't nap - heart and head too full of Things - but E had a good long sleep. We were up there for two and a half hours. They fed for a bit, slept a bit, fed a bit, slept a bit, fed a bit, and I was expecting them to be done with lying down after that feed... but they slept and rolled away from me, sleeping totally independently on the bed like they do at night.

So I snuck out. I went downstairs, and Leo and I had lunch and a zoom call with friends. While we were on the call I heard a thunk from upstairs. The cat was down here, so I went upstairs to check on E...

...and saw them happily CRAWLING TOWARDS ME ALONG THE UPSTAIRS CORRIDOR.

They had woken up, seen that they were alone, seen their water cup on the bedside table, fetched it, had a drink (as I learned later when I found the water cup in the bed), heard voices downstairs, got safely down from the bed, and started coming to find us. All without a cry!

How's that for independence? This is literally the first time they have woken up on their own without crying and I am SO IMPRESSED WITH THEM I CAN'T EVEN.

Sleep: The rain noise is m a g i c. Pure magic. We use Tropical Rain from mynoise.net (we have a subscription to the app) or sometimes Rain on a Tent. It works every time. So now we've got into a really great sleep routine. At 10:30am E has a long breastfeed, I put rain noise on, and they sleep on me. They're either feedingsleepingfeeding without ever really letting go of my boob, but sometimes totally limp and relaxed and not suckling before they wake up a bit and latch on again, or they feed for a bit and then sleep for a bit in my lap. Then in the afternoon either I take them for a sling walk, or Dot does*, or we do an upstairs lying down feed and nap together, or they fall asleep on my lap during their afternoon breastfeed. I'm definitely not doing the sling walk thing every day or even every other day, which is an enormous relief for my body.

At night they're feeding less, finally. I think the rain noise and lavender oil are helping with the sleep conditioning, so they feel familiar and safe to go back to sleep sometimes when they wake. They've slept "through the night" once or twice recently - like 9.30pm through to 5.30am - and then fed and dozed on and off until finally waking up at 7ish. Most nights they sleep 9.30pm until 7am with feeds every 3 hours at the start of the night and every hour from dawn onwards. Now I just need my own insomnia to sod off and I'll be better rested.

* OMG we have childcare again 1.5 days a week and it is literally lifechanging. Char is still unavailable but Dot has stepped doing and is doing an amazing job, and the extra work time is taking an enormous amount of pressure off me. It is SO GREAT.

Activities:
They're still obsessed with books and love being read to. They're very specific about which book they want. Today they climbed up on the sofa and pointed to the shelf of spillover books and kept pointing and vocalising until I picked out the one they wanted (Where's Spot). They love flip the flap books although several of them need repair after over enthusiastic tugging.

Char introduced me to the idea of schemas. E is currently fascinated by Enveloping and Positioning. Lots of moving items around, sorting them into piles, pulling stuff out of bags, putting things into containers and pulling them out again. They love playing peekaboo and will play it by themself, throwing a muslin over their head and pulling it off again and giggling. They love being given boxes and bags to open and toys to unwrap.

Their manual dexterity is greatly improving. They were playing with a little plectrum type object today, putting it in and out of a plastic cup. We like building towers out of wooden blocks - they don't do the building yet but they hand us blocks, we build with them, and then they try and remove blocks from near the top of the tower without knocking the whole thing down. They're getting pretty good at it.

They're getting more consistent with their shape sorter. They enjoy stacking toys. They've learned to pull the rings off the peg with their fingers (rather than just tipping them off) and have even put them back on once or twice, with a little guidance from me. They love playing fetch with a little plastic ball, and are learning how to roll it themselves.

They LOVE helping and being involved in whatever we're doing. They once took an entire airer of dry washing down for me, all the bits they could reach, and passed them to me one by one for folding. They like passing us nappies and laundry to hang and put away. They do sometimes try to take things down as we're hanging them, which is a bit awkward.

They love pulling books off shelves, will pull things off the dining table if we leave them too close to the edge. They're obsessed with getting their hands on whatever we're drinking, so we can't leave open containers of liquid around. We've baby proofed pretty well and are starting to be vigilant about pan handles sticking out, knives on the kitchen counter and so on

Food: still confidently eating with their hands. Broadening their range of tastes. Current favourite meals include cheesy omelette, bits of veg or fish picked out of our stirfries and curries (we've made our cooking totally salt free in order to be able to share it with E, and just add tamari or whatever to our bowls), fried mushrooms, courgette, fruit, bread and cream cheese. They are obsessed with smoked salmon, but it's salty so we almost never give it to them, and mete it out very carefully when we do. Most mornings they have the same breakfast as us: porridge with almond butter, defrosted frozen fruit, stewed prunes, Greek-style vegan yoghurt. They eat a mixture of vegan stuff, a bit of fish, and a bit of freerange organic egg and dairy.

They've been teething a lot lately - they're up to eight teeth now - and that makes them grizzly. They also have constant little flurries of frustration and temper when they can't do something or want something they can't have, but they're usually quite easily soothed. They know what they want and they're determined, persistent and wilful - definitely my child! Boundary-setting around biting is a work in progress and is creating some upset, but it's early days and since we changed our responses I have found it easier. Occasionally they get overwrought, but a snuggly breastfeed usually sorts it out.

They are a delight. Their mood is great most of the time: alert, engaged, curious, expressive, communicative. They're excited and delighted by the tiniest things and help make the simplest activities utterly joyful. Watching language centers come online is the best fun I have had in years.

Bedtime tonight is totally out of whack.

E's been doing their Magical Non Napping Child thing lately. They've got very good at resisting being slung when they don't want it. They didn't nap the day before yesterday despite being slung twice, breastfed in bed with rain noise, the whole caboodle. Yesterday we managed to get them into the sling and then they slept for an hour. Today, no naps.

They're going through a bitey phase. ( Biting, breastfeeding and boundaries )

Naps help reduce the biteyness. We like naps. But naps don't always happen.

Today we tried the sleepy breastfeed, we tried the sling, we tried the nap routine with the singing and the rain noise and the lavender scent and the dark room and the breastfeed, and then the bottle milk when they were too bitey for boob. But no nap.

Then I had a work thing for a couple of hours. It was urgent and time sensitive - me and

denny, who has very limited availability, deploying new code, which meant breaking a public facing commercial website and fixing it again asap. I wasn't in a great position to stop once we'd started.

I heard lots of squawks and shouts from downstairs, and when I checked in via Signal Leo said they'd been teething and had just had Calpol. Then quiet. We were nearly done. Started to hear screaming again and it was a real effort to concentrate on work. E's getting more and more toddlerish with their sudden intense Big Feels if something is Frustrating or they Want something or feel Thwarted, so outraged shrieks of displeasure are a lot more common than they used to be. I figured if I got a message asking me to come, I'd come, but otherwise I'd press on and get the damn website back online.

So I did, and we did, and then I rushed downstairs to find Leo sitting on the kitchen floor holding a completely distraught child, who had sobbed themself into a state of utter wretchedness. They had been trying to get into the bathroom apparently, perhaps thinking to find me there, and then I wasn't there. Oh darling.

I scooped them up and cuddled them and talked to them softly and fed them, and they latched on and suckled in that heartbreaking pink, hiccupy way of a distraught baby. It was at this point 6.30pm, when we usually have dinner, followed by teeth brushing and books and bedtime routine and into bed by 8.30pm.

Reader, they fed until 8.30pm. I was nursing for two hours without a break for the first time since they had their tongue tie cut. They slept and fed and slept and fed and slept and fed. I read my book. Leo brought me food and beer and I ate and drank one handed. E's hot little head and body in my arms became damp with sweat, although they were only wearing a t-shirt and nappy. Halfway through they woke from a snooze Suddenly Very Sad again, but I got them back on the boob eventually.

They skipped their solid dinner entirely.

We had an hour of awake time, during which I desperately tried to go to the loo and brush my teeth and get both of us ready for bed while dealing with E's separation anxiety. Didn't manage to finish my teeth. But they are now, finally, after another bedtime routine and even more feeding, asleep in bed.

I've been awake since 5am and was hoping for an early night tonight, but it's now half ten and it's going to take me a while to calm down after all that.

We've finally found a sleep routine that works. E's sleep has always been difficult - they tend to get hyperactive when they're tired, and they're very bad at napping. We've never been able to achieve lying-down-on-their-own naps, they've only ever slept in full body contact, either in my lap after a feed or in the sling.

A few months ago I listened to The Gentle Sleep Book by Sarah Ockwell-Smith. I love the gentle parenting philosophy, and it was reassuring to hear someone back me up on how cry-it-out or controlled crying sleep training is a really terrible idea if you want ato raise a securely attached, emotionally regulated human. But it didn't have much to say about naps. It was also incredibly repetitive - the sort of thing which is skippable when you're reading but unbearable when you're listening.

Still, I got a few useful things from it. Namely:

However many hours of sleep you've heard your child "should" have, ignore it: every kid is different and they need what they need. If they seem cheery and energetic and well rested they're probably fine.
If bedtime is a struggle try moving it later. Most kids get sleepy later than we think.
Routines are everything. Develop a routine, adapt it and stick to it. It's okay to be baby-led in terms of what time the routine starts, following tiredness cues, but whenever you start it, do the same things in the same order each time.
Don't be tempted to push bedtime back for your own convenience, like because you want to stay up late or want a lie in the next morning. Follow your child's circadian rhythms consistently.
Waking up frequently for night feeds is normal and nothing to worry about as long as breastfeeding is happening. And beyond that, totally normal for older toddlers to want comfort and cuddles when they wake at night.
Do what works for your child. If they need to be held to sleep, sling them. Trying to fight them over it is unlikely to be successful.

So I've been slinging them for daytime naps. It's time-consuming and increasingly tiring as they get heavier. It doesn't always work either, even when we're scrupulously attentive to cues. But it gives them the sleep they need, and that makes the rest of the day, including bedtime, much smoother if they're not overtired.

E needs around 11-12 hours sleep in 24. They usually get 10-11 hours at night - they're a great nighttime sleeper. Usually asleep 9-9.30pm and awake 7-7.30am, sometimes sleep in til 8am. (I know, what a blessing!) They feed 3-6 times during the night, usually more from 5am onwards. A couple of times we've had two long stretches of 3-5 hour sleep back to back with just one feed in between, which has been amazing!

Bedsharing helps them sleep longer, they seem reassured by my scent and warmth and perhaps sometimes they're waking and going straight back to sleep because I'm right there. It also makes night feeds almost effortless - I can literally do it in my sleep, or wake up for 1 min to get them latched on and then I fall asleep again while they're feeding.

After a few months of trial and error we've refined our bedtime routine. Here's what works:

Bedtime at 8.30pm or thereabouts. Dinner at 7pm, brush teeth, read books quietly downstairs until we see sleep cues.
Carry them upstairs singing a short "It's time for bed" song.
Sit them on the potty and put them in their nighttime nappy and pyjamas. Offer their water cup.
Close the curtains.
I get into pyjamas and take my meds, then sit up with pillows and offer a breastfeed. I've discovered that starting the feed sitting up is better than lying down, as they're usually wriggly to begin with and cradling them allows me to soothe them more effectively. When we're lying down and they start wriggling they just end up on all fours and it's no good for the latch, or they roll over.
If they're too wriggly and want to play, read books quietly, or stand at the window and let them watch the street (they LOVE this and can do it for literally hours, especially if it's raining, or there are dogs) or Leo sometimes gives them a soothing light show with their lev wand.
Once they're calm, back on the boob.
While they're breastfeeding sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We learned four additional verses to help them settle.
Also while breastfeeding, play Tropical Rain Noise on the minirig from the myNoise app
If we remember, put lavender oil on the oil burner (we haven't got good at being consistent with this yet).
When they're feeding sleepily and have stopped wriggling, carefully lie down with them without breaking latch and let them fall asleep on the boob beside me.
Leave the rain noise playing all night until we get up in the morning, which helps them get back to sleep when they wake up in the night.

We don't do a bath every night, but when we do it's really helpful. I've learned that humans need to be cool to sleep, and baths are helpful because they raise our core temperature and then we cool down and the cool feeling makes us sleepy. So one thing that's really helped is not over-dressing E at night. They need fewer clothes than me to be comfy at night, and are often warm enough with just a t-shirt and nappy.

We've bought some extra padded night-time nappies with pop-in layers, which can cope for 12 hours of weeing without leaking. So we no longer need to do middle of the night nappy changes (although Leo got adept at doing them while E was lying down feeding or even sleeping without disturbing them).

Once we've even had a dry night nappy followed by a big wee in the potty, but that's only happened once!

The routine works really well. It's been easier getting E to sleep and they seem to stay asleep longer since we got it figured out. The rain noise in particular is total magic - it works on me too, I fell asleep at 9pm last night!

A couple of times we've tried the night routine upstairs for a bedroom nap during the day. It usually just results in a long dozey feed rather than actual sleep, but I intend to keep trying!

What has happened a couple of times lately is E falling asleep on me in a way that I can still get things done. They're great at sleeping in a back carry, which is perfect for doing quiet housework or gardening. They fell asleep being breastfed during a zoom call last week, and then slept soundly in my lap for 90 minutes while I sat on the floor with both hands free to type on my laptop! That was great. And once or twice I've been able to get them to sleep moving around in the sling, and then sit down at the table and use the laptop while they finish their snooze. And once, Leo has been able to get them to nap upstairs with them, without a breastfeed - although it took two hours and a lot of crying. But then they stayed asleep for 90 minutes and I had over three hours to myself! Magic!

So although the majority of naps are quite physically taxing involve long walks in the woods with the sling, I don't mind. It gives me a chance to listen to audiobooks and think, the exercise is good for me, the woods are beautiful and it's nice to get out of the house. We're a long way from "E sleeps / naps alone in their own bed" but that's okay. They're getting sleep, which is the most important thing, and usually without a lot of drama. And I think we're moving closer to Leo being able to be nap facilitator without me, or me being able to feed them to sleep upstairs and then sit quietly next to them with my laptop. I feel like it's going in a good direction. I'm so glad we started the routine, it really seems to be working!

We took another two day weekend. I'm so glad - I really needed it. The first day was spent feeling entirely floopy and fragile. We defrosted food and avoided the housework, doing the bare minimum and trying to rest as much as possible around E.

I feel like true rest doesn't exist any more. Even if Leo takes E while I rest or nap somewhere else, I know the clock is ticking, that it's taxing Leo, that I might be needed any moment. And when we're all together (which is the second most restful thing available) half my attention is always on the needs and safety of the rambunctious proto-toddler.

I spent Sunday experiencing grief over various things resulting from the pandemic. It hit me hard for a while.

But then on Monday we decided to take a second day off work, and I felt great! I slung E in the morning and did some gardening.

( Gardening things including bean woes )

Yesterday also contained lots of cooking. I baked cake, which turned out well - I'm enjoying getting the hang of baking which meets Leo's dietary needs. And we cooked two batch meals (kedgeree for the fridge and fish pie for the freezer, using the fresh fish from the last grocery order before it went off).

The other big achievement yesterday was a job which we've been talking about for ages, and which we only just got round to. ( Moving the rooms around upstairs )

We've been in lockdown for 7 weeks. We started shielding early, before it was compulsory. The days are all the same routine, pouring through my fingers like sand.

We've both been tired. Childcare, work, housework. We take it in turns to prop the other up. We rarely have the energy to cook. We'll batch cook and then eat the same meal six meals in a row. We've been raiding the freezer which we stocked up in case we got sick. Our veg box is still being delivered, and it's an effort to use the fresh veg before it goes off. I steam a lot of it and give it to E.

E is fine. Thriving. They have five teeth now and are working on a sixth. They are a bonny, curious, wilful darling. We got them some new stacking and building toys - wooden blocks, rings on a peg, stacking cuboids. And we have a whole pile of new second hand baby board books after I bought a few job lots on eBay.

They like holding a toy in each hand and rummaging in a toybox, swapping what they're holding for other toys. They can crawl quite quickly around the house now. We keep having to move the cat litter and bowls out of reach. The stairgates we ordered arrived but we haven't had the time or energy to fit them yet. We've got one for the kitchen, since it doesn't have a door.

They can stand freely now, and walk holding onto furniture, climb on the sofa, but they aren't walking yet. They like pulling leaves off houseplants, pulling soil out of plant pots, pulling books off bookshelves, opening kitchen drawers and throwing things on the floor. We need to reorganize the downstairs, but it's hard to find time for extra jobs when we're not even keeping up with the laundry and dishwasher.

E is also doing this inconvenient thing right now where they're basically self-weaning during the day - preferring water and solid food to breastmilk - and then keeping me up ALL NIGHT breastfeeding twice an hour. I'm exhausted.

I've barely done any work lately. About ten hours a week. The rest is housework and childcare.

But I'm okay! Tired but okay. Taking the pressure off myself with work has freed up energy for everything else. And there are lots of things bringing me joy:

Growing things! A tonne of earth arrived and I moved half of it through to the back yard by hand. I felt strong and happy. I now have six full grow bags of earth ready for plants. I've potted up my courgette, bean and squash seedlings, and they're in the conservatory staying warm in their bigger pots. I planted some more beans, herbs and salad. Next is potting up the brassicas.

Online readthroughs organised by

wildeabandon are very fun - a good way to socialise, and it tickles my thespian/literary fancy. I played Crichton in JM Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, which is a silly satirical play about class inequality. The lead role is a class-loving snobby butler who loves serving, but who ends up becoming the boss of the group when they're shipwrecked and he's the only competent one. I do believe Kryten was somewhat based on him.

We also just started doing Good Omens, two episodes at a time. Episodes one and two were great fun, and I'm doing Crowley in Episode three (history sequence hurray!) against

leonato's Aziraphale. I'm looking forward to all of it!

Good Omens fandom is bringing me joy! I've been writing, and obsessively reading fics and meta. It's wonderful to have something creative and social which is absolutely 100% unequivocally Not Work. I'm loving the no-pressure writing inspiration, the nerdiness, the queerness, everything about it. I've never really got stuck into a fandom like this before and I really like it.

Our hot tub brings me joy, when I get a chance to take E out and have a float. The opportunity doesn't open up as much as I'd like, but when I do it's marvellous. It's empty right now waiting for a scrub and refill.

It's satisfying building my capacity to integrate E care into my life in a harmonious way. The best way to get E to nap has been to sling them and go for a walk, but recently those walks have been 90-120mins long (it takes E 20-50 mins to fall asleep, and then they sleep for 60-90 mins, and then it takes a little time to get home). I don't know how much they weigh, but they're ten months old and h e a v y. Afterwards I'm knackered.

So this week I've had great success with slinging them at home and getting them to sleep here. I put them in a back carry and work outside. The movement and the warmth of the sun lulls them, and it gives me a chance to do garden stuff. I even did some of the digging and earth-moving with them on my back, which felt powerful. Babywearing is getting me fit. Every night I go to bed achy, and every day I'm stronger than I expect.

And this morning E was fussy and sleepy during a Zoom call, and I thought I'd have to make my apologies and get them to sleep, but first I tried slinging them and bouncing on the yoga ball while we talked, and they slept on me so sweetly for an hour. It feels amazing to meet their needs while getting the stuff I want to do done, without having to take a massive chunk out of my day. My dream is to get them to sleep in the sling and then do some painting, but I haven't made it happen yet...

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gajumaru

Entries tagged with podling

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Man flu

Car conversation

Input/output

Sweet Pie

Veg patch: nettles, slugs and a toad

Poem at the breakfast table

The Isness of Everything

Aminals

Sunday catch-up

Night weaning: night 2

Night weaning: night 1

Life after night weaning?

Toddler talk

Out in the garden

Fourth day of Christmas

E's milestones: one year old

Non-napping piranha

Sleep routines

Garden progress and furniture moving

Lockdown week 7

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January 2025

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