Seaside

Sitting in the car with children sleeping, this is my view:

The magic wand

 Amps and I used to have this friendly evening debate: would you want a magic wand that would make you an amazing Thai dinner? Or one that would clean the kitchen afterwards? We both agreed that cooking is a lot more fun than cleaning, so we'd go for the clean-up wand. 
     Fast-forward many years ahead to today. The question I have for you is: how much would you pay for a wand that puts your children back to sleep?
Now, there would have to be some rules. The wand wouldn't work, say, when the child shouldn't be sleeping, so you couldn't just use it like a mute button (now, a mute button for kids? Probably that would be popular too. I won't go there).
     But at night, when it's sleep time, you could wave it, and your kids would go back to sleep. 
    I think this would change the world. Like a washing machine or a toilet, everyone would have to have one.  Who scrubs all their socks on a washing board these days? If you didn't have one of your own maybe there'd be a wandromat or something where you could borrow one for a bit. Or maybe they'd be tied to property (like toilets); you'd mortgage an extra 100k for it and sell it when they got to be 8 or whatever. Like washers, dishwashers, dryers (I remember those! oh, I want one, not so much for the drying as for the floor space), running water: it would liberate women. Women, who are by far the majority of the night-risers, the night-feeders, the night cleaning-vomit-out-of-the-bed, softly-singing sleep-deprived pajama'd ghost-people ...
    I figure 100k is probably a little steep. After all, we can survive without this device, in some sense. But I'd fork over 20k without hesitation, especially if I could mortgage the thing. And I'm talking £ here. 

A few pics while i feed this baby

At the park... in the car on the way back from the Cotswalds.. at the other park, and at the pick your own strawberries farm. These are good times, if tiring and overwhelming. But already I am sad in anticipation that they'll end so fast.

In motion

Annika's first four months have flown past. She's asleep, in the bedroom, on "my" side of the bed. Amps is out at the pub. Nina's in bed - her bedtime's great now. Annika, however, until 2 nights ago, spent her evenings in the living room with us, alternately breastfeeding and dozing on the sofa. This thing about spending time alone in a bed, any bed, even mine, is new to her. I've been in to settle her twice already. She sleeps with me, and Amps is exiled to the hard futon in Nina's room, poor guy. I never intended to co-sleep, but the thing is, the operative part of "co-sleeping" is sleeping. It's always felt like it's that or co-waking. Since day one it's meant that I spend the bulk of the night actually asleep, though it's broken up. And I can feed her without really waking up, or not usually waking up, not much.  Every night I consider putting her in her cot. Most days, at some point in the day, it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to get her sleeping in her own cot. Occasionally I even try it, only to have her cry an hour later (where otherwise she would have slept for 3 or 4 hours). Every night I give in, put her on my side of the bed and go back to sleep. In 2 months I'm supposed to be going to Boston for a few days, and every day, it occurs to me that I've no idea how Amps is ever going to cope. 
  In other news, for those readers (if there are any out there) who don't know already, we are moving to London. It turns out that this is expensive (breaking news!). We are attempting to purchase a small, non-period, 3 bedroom house in a pretty good location in North London, and the process is very frustrating. I have a cool new job, in a location so expensive that we can't live near it. We're looking forward to it, except that I'll have to commute across London every day with both the girls. Tube, bike ... not sure how it'll go. 
  Today I picked up my lovely children from their nursery, where Annika has now learned how to drink milk from a bottle (after gently starving herself for 7 hours the first long day we left her there). And they gave me this: 

It's a picture of me! It's a birthday card - not sure why it appeared today, whether it was made today, or was sitting in Nina's bag for a while. But it's awesome. I am so excited about all the amazing drawings I know she'll make. My mum still talks about our drawings, about coming into my room and finding all these treasures. Some of my brother's, and I guess one or two of mine, are framed in their house. His penguin is just awesome. Nina liked that I was excited about it, so she made this: 

The figure at the bottom is me. The circle above my head is her - Nina's head, which has one arm reaching towards me, and the other reaching skywards, with fingers and everything. Apart from the occasional bus and plane (both of which I've posted here, I think), her drawing is mainly scribbles,  colours, and the occasional surprisingly well-formed A or 5 or O or C. 
   I feel like we - Nina and I - had a subtle, and minor, rough patch since Annika arrived, and it's clearing now. On Saturday, we tried to go to her gymnastics - just a free play toddler session at a gymastics place. It was closed, and I braced myself for her to be just so disappointed; after all, I was disappointed but I tried not to show it. Just across from it, there is a very minimal, somewhat run-down, little playground with a slide. I laughed with her, went down the slide after her, chased her jokingly around, jumped with her off the little benches, and she loved it. I guess I don't do those things when I have the baby to watch, or a friend to chat with. I want to make sure to do them more. It's so charming, how good-natured she is, how robust. It was bittersweet, in that there were beer cans on the ground, and, er, evidence of drug use. Of course she didn't care, but I was sad to see these markers of "the other side of town", and yet at the same time, so charmed to see her so happy. 
 Preschooler in motion: