After my good long rant the other day about colds, I have made some decisions. Usually I don't take the view that we can really control things. But this thing needs some extra attention and I am going to make some extra effort. So I'm going to ask people for advice, and I'm going to follow it. I'm going to follow all of it (within reason). There is a hilarious segment on a This American Life episode of years ago where Sarah Vowell gets advice about insomnia and tries to follow it all; it includes dreadful things like not having caffeine (!) or alcohol (!).
So, here is what I have collected so far, from myself and others:
- handwashing: aggressive, regular, vigorous, proper handwashing
- washing of other people's hands, particularly those people under 4' tall who are likely to insert their hands in my mouth/nose/ears/eyes
- hand sanitising/sterilising (especially the small infectious vector-creatures as above)
- multivitamin
- zinc
- echinacea (particularly when getting a cold)
- vitamin C
- oil of oregano (thought to induce mild fever, thus assisting to 'burn' rhinovirus out of the nose, as it prefers a 33C environment)
- on a similar note, using a blow dryer, make the inside of the nose both hot and dry
(what is the half-life of the viral particles, though? Do I need to do this for 3 hours or something? happy to try it for a few minutes - after all, it's unlikely to hurt me unless my hair gets pulled in or something)
- ???
If anyone has any more tips, keep them coming. I am (gasp) going to ask on (dreaded) facebook too. That is just how desperate we are here ...
In other news, took the bike today after Wednesday's tube tantrum in which Annika spat out bits of a rather nice pain au chocolat I'd bought (after she whined relentlessly), and flicked one of the spat-out bits on some poor sucker sitting next to us. It was pretty bad. We biked, yesterday and today, and got wet today. It was drizzling hard. We were fine though.
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| Tantrum on the tube |
Colds. I really hate colds. There's a post somewhere back years ago called something about 1000 colds. We've had, we're having, our first big one of this season. I am looking down the cold, wet tunnel that is this winter, and I'm imagining all the hours I'll spend beside a box of tissue, almost completely incapacitated by endless sneezing; all the nights I'll spend with a roll of toilet paper beside the bed, all the embarrassing hacking chesty coughing I'll do during seminars, meetings, concerts, and I'm filled with dread, with a desire to sell up, buy myself a desert island somewhere and retire. Annika got sent home on Friday, not two hours after I took her all the way over there. I was sick too - that's yet another thing I hate about commuting to childcare: having to go all the way to work when I'm not feeling well because the other alternative is to take care of an active baby when I'm not feeling well. Anyway, she got sent home (as did I, effectively), I took her to the doctor even, and he said her ears were very red and no wonder she was so miserable. I was completely flattened by the damn cold on Saturday to the point of wheezing and chest pain, and I can't even bring myself to describe where that led. Now Nina's showing signs of it and A- has it.
All this work I do, all this stuff - some days I feel like turning it all on its head and trying to cure the common cold. I mean, why not engineer some virus that can out-compete the common cold in the host (ie, in your nose)? (not that I can do that but maybe someone else could...). It should have very low virulence (ie it would not make you sick). So you wouldn't sneeze it out, and it wouldn't be transmitted. So it wouldn't survive, naturally - the other colds would win. But, if we all went to the pharmacy and bought the damn thing so we wouldn't get the worse colds, it could win after all - it would transmit by social media, by capitalism, by word of mouth rather than by actual mouth and daycare centres and snot-to-snot toddler contact. And it would make someone very very rich. And it would make me very very happy. And, although I admit that it's kind of creepy, is it more creepy than this? (warning: gross). Actually, the problem isn't creepiness, the problem is that the little thing would mutate and turn into god knows what and recombine with all the flus and whatnot out there and that presents all manner of risks. But what gain, oh, I think it might be worth it.
Ok, enough about colds. I'm doing a big grant proposal, it is almost done and I am enjoying thinking about it being done. I actually don't mind writing proposals; it's fun to think about all the amazing stuff you're going to do when everything goes perfectly and you can hire great people and your ideas all work out. It just gets a bit much as you keep writing and re-writing. I've noticed that a very large portion of what I do is writing, oddly enough for someone with my training. In other news, Nina's reading is coming along in leaps and bounds. Annika is talking lots and generally being cute. She has taken up a dummy/pacifier, which she got interested in just before we went to Canada, and which I somewhat indecisively let her have, thinking that anything to ease a 10hr flight was well worth it. She calls it 'game'; I have no clue why. She loves it, and it is so incredibly easy to put her to bed because it's in the bed (it stays in the bed). We joke that she's got game. A- found a wine description on a menu that said the wine goes well with game. We chuckled. Oh - and I'm joining a choir; I auditioned, and I got in. Given that I already had the cold, had to walk 20 minutes in the rain from the tube to get there, had very little time to practice because we had a visitor, and practiced the wrong things because they misinformed me, I feel pretty good about it! (well, either I did well or they have low standards - guess I'll see). I'm hoping Nina can come to the concert in December; she'd have to stay up late, and Annika would have to have a babysitter.
In the meantime, I am hoping to take up very very frequent hand-washing, vitamins, and I'm going to really try not to go to work when I feel horrible. And maybe I'll get an inhaler or something in case the horrible wheezy thing returns. If anyone reads this and has great cold prevention or eradication ideas, please let me know. Please.
It was Nina's first ever day of school today! Here she is in her little uniform. She had a good day. She was really looking forward to it, which was cute. I'm feeling happy overall, and mostly positive about the school; they did a home visit where we got to know the teacher and TA a little, and I think that was really helpful for her. They noticed that she had made a friend when we visited the school for a play session, and they've put her in the same class as this girl. And she enjoyed herself.
Here's what she did - according to her: she went across the monkey bars by herself, swinging (ie, hanging from her hands); she ate pizza with vegetables, broccoli and yogurt for dessert, and got a sticker for eating most of her lunch; they did the bear hunt story and two songs ('twinkle, twinkle' and 'if you're happy and you know it'), and they made things out of buttons that click together. The school is letting her go full time this week rather than settling in slowly - thankfully; for one thing we don't have alternative childcare and for another she's been so psyched about going that she really appreciated it. She even said to me, "thank you Mummy for asking if I could start on Monday". Overall, the teacher seems very nice, the school seems friendly and happy, and Nina was happy.
And here's why I feel a little ambivalent, I think. First off, when you pay for private nursery or a childminder you have a bit of power; when you're in the state school system, or any school system, not so much. The school could announce any number of odd and inconvenient policies pretty much at any time, though they haven't yet; they could equally make it really hard for working parents to participate or communicate with the school, they could (gasp) fail to understand how absolutely wonderful my child is and how brilliant and amazing and talented and smart and, and, and .. she could get bored or any number of things could befall her. Everyone feels this ambivalence, I imagine, or lots of people, anyway (not that she's not brilliant and all that).
To be honest this wasn't our first choice of schools. It's rated 'Good', and it seems 'Good'. The Ofsted report does, however, mention that more could be done to challenge the children. There's an 'Outstanding' school closer, which we weren't quite close enough to; who knows if it would be better. I imagine that at some point in the next few years we'd get an offer there, but maybe not. So that's one reason for ambivalence. The next is that they sent home a newsletter with two relatively big grammatical errors. Sentence fragments. A reminder that even teachers don't know what sentences should be. Like this one. Drives me crazy. Grrrrrrrrrrr. There's a note in there about parent volunteers, prompting A to suggest that I offer to proofread their written materials (!). I know: teachers of four-year-olds don't need to know about sentence fragments, right? But, but, but ... it's a school.
Anyway, Nina: I can't believe you are so big, looking all grown up in your uniform, and I'm excited for you that this is all just starting, and I can't wait to share it all with you.
Meanwhile, we have a baby, too .. she is talking lots more. The other day Nina was upstairs whining because she wasn't feeling well. Annika said to me: "Nini, whine?". It was cute. Annika loves being up, out and about; she will bring everyone their shoes and head for the door. If you're sitting, she'll come up, and say, firmly, "up". If you then try to pick her up, she'll say "Noooooooo! mummy up", or papa even, and she'll pull your clothing or your hands. She loves animals, loves watching and hearing birds and mimicking their sounds, and her smile is to die for. She doesn't eat. She's putting more words together; we'll have sentences next. "ball, down ..", "mik, where? papa". She knows where the ball is, who's getting the milk, whose shoes are whose, and that you need shoes to go outside.
Nina turned 4 yesterday. She was so sick yesterday that we didn't do much to celebrate (and fortunately her party is next weekend). Today we bought her her first pedal bike, which she rode all the way home from Finsbury Park. You can tell that Annika was aware that the fuss was not particularly about her and that she didn't get a new bike.
I had told Nina a couple of months ago that if she got really good on her balance bike (no pedals) we'd buy her a pedal one for her birthday, and she's been out practising, and is now really good with balancing. So we took the training wheels off after we got back, and she can ride fine while pedalling, but she can't start pedalling yet. It'll take some trying, which she got too tired for, but I'm excited about her learning.
So 4 years ago today we were in Bristol with our tiny first baby, feeding, and feeding, and feeding, and feeding. And recovering from labour, in my case. I remember it started getting light at about 3:00 or 3:30; I'd know what time it was by the shade of blue, sitting up all night in that living room, looking at the fireplace, the ugly sofas (but not yet the yellow and green slide, which later because a fixture). I remember Amps and Andrew taking her out for a few hours and those 3 hours of sleep feeling just so good. I remember the first time she cried and it wasn't hunger (a few weeks in), and we didn't know what else to try. We've kind of made a fuss of her birthday but it's actually not because I think she cares that much, though she cares somewhat, of course. It's because I'm pretty amazed at myself, having done something this intense for four whole years and not being quite entirely nuts by now. I remember the midwives telling me to enjoy her, and thinking 'huh what?' and everyone telling me how fast it goes, and wondering how if it goes so fast, can one night take so bloody endlessly long? And it doesn't go by all that fast, really, it just goes by and then it is completely irreversible in a way that old times with old friends or old places aren't quite; the context of that tiny baby in that room in that year and time of your life just can't be revisited (such as it was; that summer was wet and everything we had went mouldy causing much anxiety on Amps' part, and some amount of wiping of suitcases and bleaching things and tossing of shoes and rueing the day we ever moved to this damp place, on mine...).
Four years on, Nina has her little accent, is perfectly capable of telling me what's a jumper vs what's a cardigan, thinks those little red bugs with black dots on them are ladybirds, and wants a chocolate cake in the shape of a train, which will of course be a Bakerloo line train, because chocolate is brown (and for those of you not in the know, the Bakerloo line is drawn in brown on the tube maps). A native. Well, all that, and she wears a sundress in June and doesn't feel cold.
Happy Birthday Nina. I'm so proud of you.
So, I've decided to post more often, and (probably) less each time. No long stories about why I haven't been posting, but I'll do more. Promise. If anyone is still reading.
And why "Commuting"?
It's the bane of my existence. It's what I blame for this constant sense of struggle, of not wanting to wish these days away, while basically, at least sometimes (daily), wishing them away - wishing I didn't have to drag my kids on the tube in rush hour every day, wishing I could find some way to get more work done (or at least feel great about what I'm doing while I'm doing it), to spend more quality time with the girls while they are small and precious and still in the mode where doing things with me is such an obvious joy, get more, and more reliable sleep, go out more and hence have a better relationship with A., and fix all the remaining irritating, ugly, things about the house. And find some way to have music in my life: buy a piano (ie convince Amps that I have, 20 years after leaving home and 8 years after finishing a PhD; 5 years after getting my first permanent academic job, actually finally waited enough already) ... and play the new piano. And take some holiday: we never go anywhere and once Nina starts school it'll be harder, we'll have to take time (if we ever do) when everyone else does.
And don't even get me started on the disaster that is the state of our plans for this summer. As of now, we have one way tickets to Spain; we'll be there indefinitely as of late July.
So, back to commuting. Sometimes we ride our bakfiets, and we all like it. But today I had this cough, the tail of the zillionth cold, and it was rainy. I don't mind if it's rainy on the way back but I do draw the line at getting soaked before my day even starts. And the wind was just howling.
Today's morning trip was ok. The train came pretty soon (it always does but if we wait 2-3 minutes it's full, due to the law of cumulative lateness -- all the previous stations have had a wait too, and the train gets packed). We got seats at King's Cross. Annika smiled at me and was happy and gorgeous. The bus from Knightsbridge came soon, and we had a seat. Arrival: 9:30. Office: 9:45. The trip back was a pain; Nina was terribly whiny about how she wanted to run on the ramp, then didn't to do so enough, blah blah whiny whiny blah whiny whiny all the way to the tube basically. Annika just about had her first full on tantrum when I took the water bottle away from her after the 2nd time I had to retrieve the lid she was playing with. Little monster hit me in the face. I got desperate enough to take some pictures on my phone, just to entertain them; they look delightfully happy in the pictures. Left office: 5pm. Left nursery: 5:24pm. Arrival at home (after a brief 3-min stop at the shop to get much-needed Leffe and Hoegaarden): 6:23pm. Did that take me the better part of 90 minutes? Yes. Damn, where my life goes.
Annika walked! She's been wanting to for a while now and the last couple of weekends have been tiring, what with her always wanting someone's fingers to hold on to while she practices. It's cute and endearing, but somewhat inconvenient when you're trying to, say, cook, or just take a minute to go the bathroom, and you find a small cute creature attached to your pants at the knees.
Today Nina was playing with the new wooden vegetables (a very clever toy: they're in pieces, that attach together with velcro, and it comes with a wooden knife so you can cut them up), and had also recently made a large duplo castle. Annika was standing, near me, and then she un-self-consciously took 4 steps towards the castle (breaking the top off when she got there). Then she took 5 or 6, then 7 or 8, in different spots. Then Amps finally came home, and then we made some videos:
I'm so proud of her. She's been trying so hard, for so long. After all, a few weeks is a relatively big fraction of her life.
In other news, we had a first birthday party for her on the weekend. She turned 1 a week ago today. The party was as much for us as for her; this year has been so hard, and we've mostly come through it intact, though we bicker more now. I should write more about her being 1, about how poignant it is, how she's not an infant, how we'll never have another infant (god forbid! I'd die), how much she's changed, and how she still suckles, and I still feel the last and final remnants of sweet, sweet newborn when I look down at her lush, long eyelashes and perfect baby cheeks. How the central paradox of children remains: one long sunday when your husband suddenly announces he has to work all day and you've got two kids to entertain, one of whom needs constant hand-holding (I mean literally, here!) and the other is whiny with a cold, one sunday like that just never ends. But infanthood, babyhood, toddlerhood just slip away unnoticed.
Annika: congratulations, baby. We are so proud of you and when you grow up we'll love our nights of sleep but we will miss your gorgeous baby smiles and giggles, the feeling of your tiny hands clasping our fingers as you balance, the smooth touch of your chubby baby cheeks, your fine wisps of thin dark hair, the way you charm the people on the tube with your little waves and your sweet sweet smiles; the way you say 'ba! ba!' for a duck's quack, the way you crawl up hopefully, bringing a book. I'll miss your pure joy you show when you see me come in to a room, the sound of you crawling fast towards me, the slapping of your tiny hands on the wood floor. There's so much more; we love you just so, so much. Happy 1st birthday, Annika.
And the other child? She can READ! She sounded out 3 words: fun, nuts, and seeds. (The last were in a cookbook we recently were given, which I was flipping through and she wanted to know what it was about). I'm sure she'll do more soon. And another amazing thing: she knows what an exclamation mark is! She said, see, it says "zoo!", not just "zoo", because of that upside down 'i'. :) So cool. I'd told her about that a couple of weeks ago when she asked what it was, in the story about the little owl who falls from the nest and has to find its mummy. So, congratulations to you too, Nina: you're entering a whole new world, a whole new set of worlds, and I can only hope that I can find ways to help you love reading as much as I do, in your own way, however you choose.
Not always this easy!
I haven't posted for ages - but now I have a new laptop, a macbook air to be precise. It is very sleek, and light, and my other one broke months ago, which is mainly why I haven't posted. I don't post at work .. and so if not at home, well, then not at all.
We do this commuting just about every day. It's hard. It's just like having two small children (sorry, Nina - one big, and one small...) on the tube in rush hour. Fortunately we usually look so desperate that we get seats. People are really nice, actually, and usually get up, or they play with Annika's little hands and smile at her smiles, or they help me with the backpack if I'm struggling. We're mostly used to it, I suppose, but doing it every day takes its toll on all of us.
So, life has been hard. I've got this long-lasting cough that won't quit. The house is finally ours, after a long struggle to actually get ownership of the garden bits. It's been ours since November 4th. We moved in and spent 2 1/2 months living here without our stuff, in varying states of chaos and renovation, missing our coffee machine, sleeping on inflatable mattresses and wishing we had furniture. Eventually we had a wall taken out between the kitchen and living room, and then in the midst of masses of plaster dust we went to Holland for Christmas. Annika learned to crawl. Eventually we had the floors put in, and Amps and two guys painted the place. Our things got here in January, or maybe early February. And I thought it was going to get easier, but then the dreaded winter bugs arrived: flus, colds, flus, more colds, sore throats, and The Cough. It never really got easier. I try to tell myself that having two small children, full time jobs, our first house, renovating the house, and finally moving, would just be hard anywhere. Nothing to do with London. I guess. Though the long sequence of bureaucratic nonsense prior to owning the house, and the weeks of stress hopping from one temporary flat to another, and then having to live somewhere that was being renovated, surely didn't help -- there's a British-ness to our suffering.
But we do have some fun:
