Halloween

It's halloween. We're going to a neighbour's place for hot apple cider (non-alcoholic for some, stronger for others, sigh ..) and then taking Nina for the English version of trick-or-treating, which I gather is much like ours, only scaled back a lot. And some people think you should only go to households that have said they're ok with accepting visitors. Heck, people, just don't answer the door if it bothers you that much, I say. As a parent, and with a feeling of great betrayal to the child I used to be, I think it's a great idea that they don't collect 1kg of candy here. Nina's got a real witch's costume, which Hannah provided (ah, I'll miss her). I'm going to wear my velvet cloak and some lipstick and go as a witch's mummy.

Anyway, we've got our little witch, but she's asleep, after much tantruming when I wouldn't let her climb into the cotbed HERSELF. She was delaying and delaying and I said that if she didn't climb in I'd lift her in, and then, oh my god, I *followed through* and lifted her in, and the screaming started. She was, quite literally, hopping mad, holding the footboard of the bed and hopping up and down in anger. It was frustrating but hilarious.  The thing is, I've been thinking that I only had to take the bus towel away the one time - now we have no more trouble getting out of the bath ever. And it's the same with the pajamas - there was a week when we had pajama tantrums and now they are gone. So I have high hopes that this will disappear too, but the fact that she is really too big for a bed that's actually a sort of socially-acceptable cage is looming, and its acceptability is diminishing. Hmph. 

Anyway, on to something more positive: Nina likes puns. She has a book, The Snowy Day (which I'm sure many of you know well, or remember vaguely). She sometimes refers to yogurt as "dahin" (basically, pronounced as a nasal version of "day"). So I said "Is it the snowy dahin?" and she thought it was HILARIOUS. She's still chuckling over it. On wednesday when we went to Sainsbury's, she said "hee hee, we're going to SPAINbury!" She also loves it when we open a book, and start saying the text of a different book. She says: "Papa's TEASING me! Tease me again! Again!" 

Baby

It's real, it's still in there, it jumps around and kicks and puts its hand on its face, and apparently it is perfect, at least as far as they can tell:

Hi there, little Hink. 
 

Learning

I taught Nina the word "learning" yesterday. Naturally it was in the context of a bus, a double decker bus, and the fact that she always wants to make the two bus puzzles that she can do completely independently. One of these is a 12-piece yellow double decker bus, and if you flip all the pieces over, it's also a red one. The yellow one has animals as the passengers and driver and the red one has people. She worked out how to do the yellow one by herself really quickly, and since then has always made that one. Yesterday I told her that if we made the red one together, then she would learn how to make it herself. So we made it, and she said "I'm learning". Lo and behold, one attempt later and she could make it herself. 

Here are a couple of things I've learned in the past couple of days: 

 -- Don't tell your friend that your toddler is completely toilet-trained, even if he asks, and even if is apparently true, unless you wish to have a poo-related drama in a bath. That was rough. 

-- When a kid says she has to poo, then doesn't, [repeat several times], then says her "bum bum" (read: "girl parts") hurts, and wants rash cream, and then demands a bath, she is probably going to poo in the bath

-- After your kid does a tiny little poo in the bath, don't put her back in the bath!  (How dumb is that? How many degrees did we say we had?)

-- Toddlers are adorable, affectionate little creatures with an incredible knack for manipulating parents into delaying bedtime

In other news, amoxicillin doesn't seem to help with my chronic congestion. The midwive suggested acupuncture, which I may pursue. She also, however, suggested a home birth, and hypno-birthing. Granted, I had asked about lamaze classes (there aren't any, can you believe that?), and I gather that hypno-birthing may be a version of meditation/breathing techniques for labour, which I would actually like to learn about if it weren't called something that sounded alarming. And I had asked about how fast labour might be - it was very quick last time at 6 hours start to finish - in part because we're wondering how to set up very rapid care for Nina when I go into labour. Giving birth at home, particularly if it happened during the day when Nina's at nursery or when friends are available to take her: well, it would be great not to be stuck in a loud, disruptive maternity ward with dreadful food for one or two days, and it would be better for Nina to see us right away. I guess. So all good, as long as nothing goes wrong - and that's, of course, the crucial point. 

Anyway, I looked up acupuncture for congestion and there have been controlled trials showing that it is effective, although it doesn't seem (in these trials) to eliminate it completely. Hmph. It is apparently quite widely used in pregnancy. Learn something every day. Anyone reading this have any acupuncture experience?

 

bagels and snotty noses

Well, not only is our child potty trained, with a few hiccups (polite phrase for them) here and there (a less polite phrase would be something more like "a few endless angsty whiny hour-long repetitive bathroom-leaving-bathroom-entering dramatic disaster-producing episodes"... but these seem to have stopped, so we'll go with "hiccups") ... our child is also nose-trained. I seem to have successfully, if perhaps temporarily, convinced my child that her hand will get sticky if she uses it to wipe her nose. Now she urgently says "I NEED to BLOW NOSE!". We STILL all have a blasted COLD. This is week 3. It started on Sept 19, for me, for her a couple days earlier. She's been well in between, but I haven't, and let me tell you, it sucks. I hate it. Amps isn't that well either. I'm coughing and congested at night, Nina's got a runny nose and Amps is coughing and feeling unwell. And I can't take anything, like a decongestant, or a gravol, without taking at least some risk with the baby. Blah. Teaching starts next week - it hasn't even started yet! If this season's anything like last year I'm going to have trouble pulling my teaching together...

Anyway. On Sunday, Nina helped me make some bagels. I haven't made them since I was pregnant with her - there was even a little note on the recipe that they had turned out too small, "but pregnant", I wrote in the margin, as if to explain that of course I would naturally want *big* bagels. (Actually, I remember not being able to eat much at a time, suddenly feeling massively full after 6 bites. Some of that is coming back now, but with this pregnancy at least the nausea has been better. It's the headaches and the endless cold that are problems)

Anyway - bagels. I love them. When we lived in Montreal I could get them whenever I wanted - literally - I had the best ever bagels, fresh as could be, available 24 hrs a day at Fairmont and St Viateur, not too far from where I lived, and near my favourite brew pub too (Dieu du Ciel. I can't start talking about food and drink in Montreal or this post will never end. And the deps! And the Chu Chai! And, and, and ... sigh).

But here? Well, if one is able to go to London, one can apparently get pretty good bagels. Consensus on the web indicates that the best are to be had a ways north of the centre, and/or in Brick Lane. Now, it is MUCH faster for me to make bagels than it is for me to go to Brick Lane and back. A very thorough internet search reveals that good bagels are categorically NOT to be had in this city. English ale? Yes. Bagels? No. Well, bready non-bagel toroid objects from the supermarket, yes, but these are NOT bagels. Bagels, as you know, are boiled before they are baked, whether you like NY bagels, Montreal bagels, or whatever. They are chewy, they are a bit crispy on the outside, they are fantastic with cream cheese and they are the ideal breakfast. 

Nina loves playing with dough. She loves putting things in the mixer, and turning it on, and watching it mix. She loves standing on a chair and helping me, pretty much whatever I'm doing. It's great. (In fact I've figured out that she can put all the cutlery away, leaving me to unload the rest of the dishwasher without interruption).  She liked putting her finger through and making the holes. She shaped her own little piece into a mini-bagel, and she loved eating it. In the end, they were a bit small (but of course I'm pregnant), and they are delicious. Next time I'll have a longer second rise. She loves eating them. And I do too, and somehow, making them felt like reconnecting with who I was before Nina, someone who had time to make homemade bagels, only this time I have someone to share it with who is making them for the very first time. 

Before the new baby comes I want to get to some more concerts, get to the chamber music club to play the grand piano, and do all those things I'll probably pause again, now that my child is the advanced, mature, age of .. er .. 2.

 "I TWO! Mummy .. is... " (let's say 27 for now.)

Well, if anyone wants the bagel recipe, leave a comment and I will post it (that'll save me some effort: no one ever comments! but that's ok folks, this is all for me, for Amps, for Nina, for, well, posterity).