Coffee Good, Morning Bad

The banana tantrum

The banana tantrum occurred yesterday around 5pm. I took Toby in his buggy into  Bill's so I could get a cup of tea and a chocolate brownie and Toby could get some of his 5 a day into him as part of teatime. I ask the server if we could get some watermelon, as Toby had been rather keen on eating a little slice that was decorating a glass of juice when we had been there 2 days previously. This was instead of eating the potato, cheese and beans procured by his loving parents, but I digress.

What I didn't bet on was the finickiness of the one-year-old. What was greeted with joy and abandon two days previously was pretty much pooh-poohed 2 days hence. In fact, both literally and figuratively. But the point of the matter was that the watermelon was a non-starter. I can generally judge how successful an offering to the toddler gods has been by how much I end up wearing versus how much Toby is wearing. I was wearing a lot of melon and Toby had nary a pip on him.

Once he was done illustrating the displeasure of the gods, he started throwing his head back and arching his back squawking with the all-proprietorial  pointing that accompanies the state of wanting but not having. Oh lawks, I thought, he's spotted the Brownie. Duly, I slivered off a bit that didn't have nuts in and handed it over. He was kind enough to eat it and dribble a bit to demonstrate, this meal at least, he was willing to eat something but it didn't really cover what he wanted because as soon as he had eaten his sliver he began again with the squawking and pointing.

I turned to where his hand was indicating and behind me was a huge stack of bananas. I asked the server to add one to my bill and handed it to Toby, having loosened the peel. It was one of the biggest bananas I have ever seen and Toby demolished it in about 2 minutes, showing great displeasure when it was over, and even trying to eat the peel just in case.

The irony is not lost on me. There I was trying to feed my son melon, giving it up as a bad cause and placating him with chocolate brownie and all he wanted was a banana because he'd seen one and it wasn't something I actively offered him. Just like the melon 2 days previously.

So, next time we go to Bill's I'll order him several cakes, muffins and brownie slices and just make sure we sit near the counter with all the green vegetables. Then when he demands a plate of Savoy cabbage Mummy will just have to finish up the baked goodies.

Somedays, most days, being a Mummy is hard work

Bill and Thomas sitting in a tree ..., originally uploaded by RellyAB.

and somedays are like this.

We have a lot of the same old, same old going on here. House trouble, money not quite elastic enough to get to the end of the month, teething.
Nothing disastrous and certainly nothing that isn't perked up by coffee with friends or cake.

Toby is the star of the Annett-Baker show though. He has become a big fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, recognises him at 30 paces and say 'woooo woooo' and even tolerates a hat that has Thomas on (granted he has to pull it off every 30 seconds to check the Big T is still there but at least he attempts to put it back on again).

He's trying so hard to say so many words. He says about 5 clearly and attempts about a dozen others complete with signing.

He can walk. More than that, he can run with things in either hand. He can squat and pick stuff up without misbalancing.

He dances. His favourite dance is 'one finger one thumb', complete with shoulder waving.

He mystifies, baffles and continually amazes our single friends with his feats of food redistribution and will happily sit (mostly) content through Mummy having a coffee and a cake (providing he can snaffle some of aforementioned cake).

The hard work bit is made up with the tantrums that are beginning to emerge and the fact he has rather latched on to diet of pastry and dough based food products and raisins. Occasionally he deigns to eat some fish, chicken or broccolli. He was once rumoured to eat lentil risotto. Also he has started waking at 5.30 for a bottle but does go back to sleep till 7.

At which point he is ready to play trains and run around with toast in either hand, singing along to the Thomas theme tune.

Love his bones.

things that indicate the sort of parenting you are acheiving #472

My son can mimic, and does frequently, the way I say 'oh dear!'. It's my catchall phrase when he falls over/bumps his head/breaks a bone/severs a limb.

But do you have any idea how annoying it is to be carrying 3 plates, 2 glasses and some cutlery back to the kitchen, trip over a cat, stand on some duplo and land dans le derriere and to hear 'oh dear!' coming from the other room?!!

28 things to do before I'm 28

So, I have a 11 months and 6 days to ...

1) Read 28 novels
2) Bake 28 cakes
3) Make fimo jewellery
4) Start and Stock and Etsy shop
5) Take driving lessons again
6) Get some photoshop-fu going on
7) Go abroad
8) Make 150 scrapbook pages
9) Use up 50% of my craft stash
10) Learn some new meal recipes
11) Eat my 5 a day (or at least attempt it!)
12) Make Christmas cards and gifts
13) Complete Zelda: Twilight Princess
14) Make 10 new friends
15) Complete one semi-large cross stitich project
16) Decorate my flea market furniture
17) Make regular blog entries
18) Find 28 new songs to love and share them around (no RIAA, calm down, not in *that* way)
19) Create a daily something
20) Take a photo everyday (whne my fecking camera comes back!)
21) Learn how to make 5 good cocktails
22) Decorate the bedrooms
23) Learn how to use my sewing machine properly
24) Write something for money
25) Earn some money and save up for something
26) Try new dishes or foods
27) try 28 new sweets from cybercandy
28) Go away in the UK.

Look, I even scrapbooked it ...

This was inspired by a blog post by Elsie Flannigan plus I remembered the lesson from my Heidi Swapp class - if you want to acheieve a goal or find an opportunity, tell everyone about it, write it down and shout it about. Then you have to do it :)

if my husband ever has an affair, it'll be with Youtube

I have come to loathe and resent Youtube to a degree that surely isn't natural for what is basically just a website. Sure, it's an excellent way of getting cool stuff out for people to watch, to find clips of kids shows you had long forgotten and to see otters holding hands.

But mostly it's a big time suck. And not for me, even. I resent how often these days I hear my husband say 'I'm just watching sumo wrestlers slip over / UFOs over brooklyn / someone imitate my magic trick / yadda yadda yadda / yawn yawn yawn ...' and then 10 minutes later 'I have no time free!'

If TV stopped families having conversations around the dinner table, then Youtube is set to stop people talking ever. Because there is Just.So.Much.Crap out there to watch.

Seriously, people. Put the Youtube down. Remember what you did before someone emailed you 5 videos of puppies on skateboards everyday? Go and do it.

video games and crafts = heaven

Looky looky, Wonderland has been doing an Etsy rummage and come up with some awesome hand crafted video games pieces. I especially like the Heart-container necklace. Go see!

Murder on the Leviathan

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done for a while (barring Potter of course). I read a fiction book. In fact I read it from start to end. And it was a book translated into English from Russian. I'm practically an intellectual!

The book in question was Murder on the Leviathan and it was really rather great. I have a bit of a soft spot for quirky crime stories - somehow in my sleep-adled state 10 days post Toby I read The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear over a couple of days - but this was the first time I'd actively seeked out a book at the library that I'd been tempted by in Waterstones.

If you're interested, the premise is as follows:

  In Boris Akunin's Murder on the Leviathan the former St Petersburg investigator Erast Fandorin (hero of The Winter Queen) competes for centre stage with a swell-headed French police commissioner, a crafty adventuress boasting more than her fair share of aliases, and a luxurious steamship that appears fated for deliberate destruction in the Indian Ocean.

Following the 1878 murders of British aristocrat Lord Littleby and his servants on Paris's fashionable Rue de Grenelle, Gustave Gauche, "Investigator for Especially Important Crimes," boards the double-engined, six-masted Leviathan on its maiden voyage from England to India. He's on the lookout for first-class passengers missing their specially made gold whale badges--one of which Littleby had yanked from his attacker before he died. However, this trap fails: several travellers are badgeless, and still others make equally good candidates for Littleby's slayer, including a demented baronet, a dubious Japanese army officer, a pregnant and loquacious Swiss banker's wife, and a suave Russian diplomat headed for Japan. That last is of course Fandorin, still recovering two years later from the events related in The Winter Queen. Like a lesser Hercule Poirot, "papa" Gauche grills these suspects, all of whom harbour secrets, and occasionally lays blame for Paris's "crime of the century" before one or another of them--only to have the hyper-perceptive Fandorin deflate his arguments. It takes many leagues of ocean, several more deaths, and a superfluity of overlong recollections by the shipmates before a solution to this twisted case emerges from the facts of Littleby's killing and the concurrent theft of a valuable Indian artefact from his mansion.

It had all the plot twists and turns I could have wanted - not to give too much away but the inclusion of the pregnant woman was a stroke of genius - and I shall be seeking out some more Erast Fandorin books, and some other stuff by Boris Akunin. If you want to read Murder on the Leviathan it should be back in Brighton Library by tomorrow if nowhere else :)

I quite fancy Skulduggery Pleasant next,  but as it's out in paperbook early next month I'll probably find another book or two to fill my time and buy it on the 3rd.