Sorry This Is Late,

Right, let me start this with saying that I am under no illusions that there are people sat there hitting refresh on my blog page waiting for the next riveting instalment of whatever drivel I happen to be posting about next but I like my routine and I don't much like when it gets interrupted, even when it is a facade of a routine like this is because I can queue a few posts up when I can... Despite all of that, I'm sorry this is going to be posted a few hours late of my usual scheduled time of noon on a Monday, Wedneday and Friday. Partly because I'm sorry to myself. 

So why is it late? 

Well, as anyone who has read any of my posts in the last few months will know, things at home, in life, etc, are BUSY at the moment, and I feel like I'm chasing my tail constantly to keep on top of things like chores (God, I love washing, it's never friggin' ending, especially with a baby), food (try having the energy to cook when everyone eats something different and the baby doesn't like being left on his own for even thirty seconds!), wedding prep (I'm not even thinking about how soon it is now, because the number of weeks is counting down and we're nearly into the calendar month that it is, which kind of makes me feel sick because I feel like there is still a lot to do) and general baby raising.

Up until recently, I could find a minute to do things - not many, but the bare minimum to be called things is two, and breathing counts as one, right??? - when little man was napping, or playing in his jumper (my health visitor has seen it and approves of it so it's not one of these that is bad for their health or development) but all of a sudden the jumper is the enemy and naps are a conspiracy, and don't even get him started on the travel cot I've been using as a play pen... There has been screaming, crying and iff he had words then I think that my little lad would just be singing McFly's 'I Wanna Hold You' or a new version, like I Wanna You To Hold Me. Constantly. Forever. Or just I Wanna Hold An Infinite Bottle...

Look, I know it is most likely teeth, or sleep regression or something like that, but it's difficult when I have more to do and less time to do it because there's no napping going on, and even when I tried to put Up on to settle him for a bit, there was no calm to be had. (Before you judge, I was feeling pretty damn desperate at that point, so I tried it!) 

Don't get me wrong, I know the time I have off of work with my son is a privilege and I'm trying to enjoy every minute of it, because I know it will be over almost as soon as I can blink but at the same time it can be truly testing when all I want to do is go to the bathroom, get a shower, have something to eat, write a blog post, or something, but I can't because he just sounds distressed and nothing really stops him. All the usual tricks won't help him sleep, he's only just eaten and if he eats too much, he will be sick. I know there are carriers and slings and things, but that only works for walking around because for chores I would be limited in movements, and he gets bored pretty quickly, too.

The only thing I can do, or that we can do, the baby and I, is keep plodding on.

I Think I'm Breaking Up With My Nuby Rapid Cool,

Before I start this properly, I'm going to admit to something and that's the fact I've always called it Nuby like Nub-ee, but I say a video by an influencer or content creator or whatever they term themselves who called it Nuby like New-Bee, and I would presume that they have been informed by the brand how to pronounce the brand name or something, so there goes me making a tit out of myself as per usual. 

That's not why I'm breaking up with my Rapid Cool though!

I will say this: I love the Rapid Cool. It's not just because it's easier when traveling out of the house, but also because it takes the guess work out of bottle making, and makes the whole process faster for us. I'm not a big fan of the formula makers because I've read too many things about the hot shot method not being great, or they don't get hot enough or all of these other sorts of things. Plus, they're a whole extra appliance you need to find a home for, they're only useful at home, you have to keep buying them new filters and all that sort of thing, so there is a lot I don't love about them, but the Rapid Cool is pretty good, and even when the battery goes in the lid (which takes a while anyway) the cooling part still works and that is the main bit.

BUT they only go up to 8oz of milk, and when you get to 8oz bottles, like we're on with allergy milk, you can't actually fit 8oz of water in the bottle AND 8 scoops of formula, so I find myself putting 6oz of water into it with the 8 scoops and then adding in 2oz of bottled water into the baby bottle, which then obviously drop the temperature as well, but also just makes the whole thing more of a faff. Now, I could just make 4 or 5 oz and then mix up the rest, but again, faff. Rapid Cools are great that I can just go and make a fresh bottle up when I'm bug eyed and wishing my day wasn't starting yet, give bubs the bottle without worrying that I forgot to check the temperature and then I can get back to sleep whilst he has a nap. It doesn't always work out that way, but it's great when it does. If I have to start focusing more to make two bottles worth up, or add this bit, add that bit etc then it all goes to pieces and I'm too awake to go back to sleep by the time he's finished the bottle.

Now, I'm not saying there are other options, because to my knowledge the only cooling flasks of their type are the Nuby and Tommee Tippee branded ones and they both have the exact same capacity, but it is still a frustration and honestly, if they made an XL version, I would buy it and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one, because I don't know how twin mums (or dads or parents or other care givers) manage, or parents with babies who are close in age, because it surely makes sense when you're making a bottle to make enough for all babies on the same formula and then split it into feeding bottles, but you can't do that for anything over 7oz because there simply isn't enough space in there. In theory, little man's current 8oz feeds should be the largest ones we are doing, but I'm also conscious that he has good days and bad days with food, so there are days or sometimes just certain feeds in a day when he finishes his 8oz and is looking around for more, and I would love to be able to just realise what the pattern of that is and make him the extra for those times, but again, it's a faff so making two bottles is sometimes the less faffy of the two options. 

How Much AI Is In Your Wedding,

Obviously I know AI is a hot button issue right now and there are a lot of feelings involved in vocal opposition of it, particularly when it comes to art or image creation, particularly because that is either people's side hustle or their business and that can come under threat because of the capabilities of AI.

There are some things that, with the best will in the world, AI is not ready to replace. For one thing, it can design things, but it can't build them or interact fully with the physical world or physical things so even if you were to ask it to design a manicure or a hairstyle, it can merely provide ideas which then have to be brought to life by a person. Does that de-value the knowledge, skills and experience of those who have been in the industry for years? Of course it can do, but it can also help inform first time brides of options, help them feel a sense of control over their wedding and their planning and even assist newer suppliers, vendors and such in the industry by doing some of that work for them, but does that prevent them from gaining the experience that has a value later? Possibly. Despite saying that, my nails and my hair are things I'm working with lovely local businesses on without the use of AI. 

Even my dress isn't something which has been informed by AI. I did consider putting a photo of me through an AI and asking it to help me with some general guidelines of what would look better on my body, and then I decided to just choose something that I liked, which didn't go super well the first time over but I have since made up for it. I did ask AI to design me a wedding dress, just for poops and giggles really, but even if I had done that long enough ago to contact a seamstress, get a pattern designed, resized, tested, revised and eventually finished, I don't know if there would have been enough time between when we booked the wedding and when the wedding is, and it would have been ludicrously expensive. Even trying to do it myself would have been so beyond my skill level and excessively expensive, so it was really just for fun. And it did make me love my dress more, because it's real and it's well designed and it's pretty.

Before this sounds like a thing where I didn't use AI at all, I used templates on Canva for a lot of our wedding stationery because after extensive Googling I couldn't find anything that matched what I wanted or what I liked, and then when it came to our seating plan, we figured it out without using AI (partly by cork mats screwed to a wooden board and push pins in it) but then needed to have a seating plan image which we could share with the venue and I didn't want to have to draw it myself. The funny thing is that despite repeated attempts to get it to correct the errors, like going 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 or not putting enough seats at tables or too many seats at tables etc, it was still riddled with errors, but it was good enough to give an illustration. It definitely wasn't good enough to be printed, but that's fine since I wasn't planning on using it for that! 

I did consider using AI to make our welcome sign, but couldn't get close to what I wanted. At the point I was about to give up I found something a local artist had made that wasn't a welcome sign, messaged her with an idea that I had that was along the lines of what she does, and she was game for trying something a bit different. And it's amazing! 

There are other bits and pieces which my totally not artistic self is making or painting or doing and trying my best with, but we'll just see how it goes and how it turns out. Obviously I don't want to write too much about those at the moment, but maybe after the wedding... 

The True Cost of Working Away,

When my partner and I got together I knew that he was working in the type of role where he might end up working away, but the company he worked for at the point wasn't really getting him to work away a lot, if ever, and we had a long period of bliss where it just didn't happen, and from early on we didn't spend a whole lot of time apart.

Whilst we have been together he changed his role, which was good in some ways, and not so good in others (money, good, commute time, baaad) and there was talk about a lot more working away than there has been and part of that has been because his manager is a legend, and whilst we have been "enjoying" Little Man's newborn era (only in inverted commas because there are days when it is really rough) has been taking on a lot of the working away because he missed out on a lot with his own kids particularly in the early years, and he wanted to try and make sure that my partner gets as much time at home with our son as he can. (I'm so glad I'm out of the super hormonal part of post pregnancy, because otherwise I would be a weeping mess on the floor every time I think about how kind this is.)

But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, and when I was around eight months pregnant, my partner was needed to work away and as it's his job, obviously he had to go, but I think it was only one night (might have been two - my memory is terrible at this point) and the easiest thing was just for me to go and stay with my parents, because the idea of being thirty ish minutes away by car in case something happened overnight was a bit too overwhelming, and he was going to be over four hours away by car.

Naturally I did all of the usual soon to be mother panic and freak out things like making sure my birth plan was written out, making sure my hospital bag was with me at my mums, making sure I could charge my phone so if I needed to make a frantic call to him in the middle of the night, I could, and he did the soon to be dad freak out which I believe involves making sure that the vehicle is always brimmed with fuel, because no one needs to be looking for a fuel station when they need to start a mad dash to the hospital. As you probably already know, the mad dashes were not required.

Our baby boy is getting on for seven months, so it's been a while since the last time he actually stayed away overnight, but there have been a few locations where he probably should have stayed, but there wasn't the budget and or he hasn't wanted to leave us, so instead he's done long drives on top of long days and been utterly exhausted, but at least been able to sleep in the comfort of his own home and we've been together. And he was more than willing to do the same again, but I was worried about him, because driving tired is awful. Drinking Red Bull or similar so you are not too tired to drive is awful. I know he's used to driving and I know he's an adult and he can look after himself, but I also know it's not just that he wants to be at home to see me and to see our son, but also that he feels like he needs to be here to help, because babies are tiring. Babies are stressful. Babies are such a blessing, of course, and I love that kid so much, but that doesn't mean it's easy. He's a great partner because he wants to make sure I have support, but I don't want that to be at the detriment of his health, his wellbeing or anything else.

You can kind of see the stalemate we sort of reached here... but thankfully I promised I would get help, even if it was during the day, either go down to my mum's or go and visit family and such like, and reminded him that we have people around I can call for backup if needed (not going to lie, it would have been hard, my pride would have been hurt, but I would have done it, because I would have accepted that I needed to) and I've got through it just like tons of other parents do, but what's the cost been? 

For one thing, we didn't know until the last minute if he was definitely going, when he was going or if he was staying over, so it could have been a week of very early mornings (I apparently wake up, say bye and roll back over with no recollection of this most mornings) and very late nights where he would be returning home after our son was already in bed, or to a cranky baby who has been kept up to see his dad. None of that seems great for my kid. Because of that, things like food plans have gone out of the window and whilst I've adapted, it's been a touch annoying to say the least. 

As many people have, we've been watching the World Cup matches together and him being away meant that our last match of actually being in contention for the Cup we had to watch apart. Now, he might have been quite happy with that because I'm not a particularly big fan of football, but normally he is my barometer for when I need to look up from whatever else I'm doing (only when we're watching on the TV) so I don't miss the important bits... I missed England's goal but saw both the Argentina goals...

Naturally him being away affects our conversations, too, because when signal is crap and he's on the way home we can just say 'I'll see you in an hour, I'll speak to you when you're home...' or whatever it is, but when the only contact we'll have to connect over is the phone, it makes those calls far more important, and far more frustrating when the signal is shocking or my auditory processing disorder flares up (which happens a lot and is why there are subtitles on my TV permanently). I tend to have calls on loud speaker, because I can do other things at the same time then and that helps my brain stay "in" the conversation, but then it means that my son can hear his dad on the phone, and he smiles, he looks around and then he can't see his dad, so he looks confused. Honestly, that was rougher than I expected, because he doesn't understand when I tell him Dad's going to be home in a couple of days. He's still of an age where if it's not in front of him, it doesn't exist. (And joys of ADHD, I have times like that, too.) 

Earlier in this blog there were notes of triumph, because I've managed things okay. I've had help, but my son and I have been fine. He's been eating fine, smiling, laughing, and gone to bed when he should do. I've got washing done and tidied up and generally felt like something of a functional human, which is incredible, but I've also missed the hell out of my partner and I can't wait for him to get home. And yes, I do know that there are a lot of people whose partners work away and some are gone for months at a time or some go and they're working in war zones. I get it. Or at least I get that I don't get it, partly because I know I'm not built for that. In a big way, to me, working away sucks, and I'm pretty sure my little boy would agree. 

How Big Is Your Small Wedding,

And we're back onto weddings...

I may have said this before, but if I don't remember then what's the likelihood anyone else does? Actually, it's probable that someone else would remember better than me because my memory is terrible at the moment.

The smallest wedding that you can legally have in the UK (and probably anywhere, but I'm just writing what I know) is the two partners, two witnesses and then your celebrant(s), registrars or religious leader(s) which works out to five people at the very bare minimum, and the very easiest that you can do that is at a registry office, but even then you have to give notice and wait for twenty nine days (the day you give notice and twenty eight days afterwards) before you are actually able to get married. I will admit that I would have appreciated a wedding like that, partly because it's not having to talk in front of a bunch of people or having to have too many people involved or too many people's opinions and inevitably it's one of the cheapest ways to get married. I don't think it was ever something that we entertained though, because my partner wants his family with them and I do, too, and there are some people it would just be more hassle to not have there than it is to have them.

Thinking a little bit bigger would have been just including both sets of our parents, which for us would have meant the two of us, four parents and assuming that two of them could be witnesses (it's actually not a given) and then the registrars which would make for a room of eight people, or if we could have done something we did consider, at least for a minute, seven people by being married on a cruise ship and having the ceremony done by the captain. The problem with that being that my partners parents are raising one of their grandchildren, so we would have needed to include them, and then both sets of parents would likely have wanted us to include our siblings, which would have been another three, plus one sibling's partner, so four. Once you're including that number of people there are other family that we would need to include which then started to tick the numbers up even further, and as we went through it our small wedding seemed to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

This is one of the reasons, and there are a few on a list, but this is one of the bigger reasons why we weren't allowing plus ones for the wedding. To me, plus ones are just adding random people you need to pay for and accommodate and also tolerate to your wedding day, but they are likely people you don't know, have never met and will never see again, so unless necessary - like they are the spouse of someone who knows no one else at the event - they were something we definitely wanted to avoid. When other people have wanted to invite people to our wedding, it's been hard to say no, but for the majority of times it has been a no, because we didn't want some sort of massive event (and only partly because we didn't want a massive bill for it). 

By the end of it, we could have added probably another fifty people onto the evening do if we had really wanted to, but the most important thing to us was that it would be an event of people we are close to, who are close to us and it be something we can both enjoy and that our son can enjoy without being surrounded by hundreds of people we or he don't know, or have to spend the entire wedding introducing each other to half of the room. How big is our small wedding? Maybe a little bigger than we quite wanted it to be, but still small enough for comfort, I think.

I'm Screaming Writing This,

I'm so mad, because I've been doing so well writing these posts and scheduling them because I know finding the time is impossible, but it's been a super busy weekend and whilst I took my laptop with me to London to go and see My Chemical Romance for the second time, I didn't touch it once! Why am I screaming? Because the schedule I made for myself is to post these at noon and it's already 11 am and I'm working against the baby having been down for a nap for a while already, juggling wedding admin that needs to be done by our last wedding meeting with the venue (which is so soon!) and also my inability to type very fast because I'm still getting used to having gel nails and they're great, they look fabulous, but my God do they seem to get in the way of life. I wouldn't mind, but they're not even that long!

This weekend has been the best in a while though, because my partner has been home since Thursday evening and we've been able to spend it together. 

Friday was a family event and we got to enjoy that as a little family of three, even though I managed to forget to bring bottles and had to try and get Little Man to have his milk from a cup. He's hated cups for a while and seems to either cry at them, drop them or try and throw them, so that wasn't really going to plan for a bit, until he realised it was his normal milk just in a different type of container and then he calmed down... as we were organising an emergency trip to the supermarket for a new bottle...

Then Saturday was his first sleepover. In the heat. We decamped half of the contents of our living room down to my mum and dad's place so that they could look after him whilst we went to see My Chemical Romance again and I cried my little emo heart out screaming along to every song, because there will never be a point where I don't absolutely adore The Black Parade in its entirety. The little guy was fine, but holy hell he didn't make it easy on himself with refusing to sleep, crying until he was so red in the face it was impossible to tell if he was too warm or just on strike from sleeping, and then clearly wasn't impressed at sleeping somewhere different.

Sunday was all about the drive home, and yes, I could have had my laptop on my knee, tapping away whilst I wasn't driving, but I was doing *redacted wedding prep activities* instead and given how close it's getting, that was more important at the time! 

So that's life. Still busy. Still messy. Still disorganised, but making it work as best as possible, and still getting this blog written and published by noon, because contrary to the opinion of the doubting voice in my head, I can do this.

What's For Tea?,

Some people are probably not aware of the fact that I have a lot of anxiety around food because I have a lot of anxiety about talking about my anxiety around food, so I just don't a lot of the time, but I've been trying to more in appropriate places and at appropriate times because I think it helps the scouts that I work with know that they can talk to me about their issues with food and know that I won't push them on things they're not comfortable on since I get it. Before you say, nobody would, trust me, I've been there and I've seen it handled badly.

Naturally, when it gets to a certain point in an evening, the conversation between most couples or families or sets of roommates if they eat together is to ask what's for tea or what do you fancy for tea, or what are we making for tea etc. We used to follow that question up with the word Mum because even when she wasn't making it, she was always the one deciding what we were having etc because she did the shopping and knew what was in the house. Yeah, we were kind of lazy. For Paul and I, it's a bit more complicated.

I've been a vegetarian for over two decades (yes, it really has been that long) and whilst I've taken part in Veganuary a couple of times I have never thought I could seriously go vegan for any long period of time, so much so that when our baby was having issues and it looked like either lacotse intolerance or CMPA (spoiler alert: it was CMPA) I had a good cry over the fact that I would have to stop breast feeding or pumping at all because I just knew that I couldn't drop all dairy from my diet to make sure that my breast milk was safe for Little Man. That might sounds selfish, but most of the protein in my diet is from things like eggs and cheese, and whilst I had at one stage got myself off drinking 'normal' milk in tea and coffee and started drinking Oatly, it's something I stopped a long time ago, and when I've tried to transition back to it, I just can't make myself do it. There is a taste difference and the longer it's been since I drank oat milk regularly, the more it tastes somewhat porridgy to me and it kind of ruins my drinks.

All that being said, Little Man is now of an age where he's starting to have bits of food and it's quite nice to be able to give him bits of things we're having, but that's not very possible given his allergy, so anything I'm making feels like I'm making three different versions of so we can all eat, or we're having to make two or three different dinners to get everyone fed and meet everyone's needs which is honestly making life much more complicated and I'm not even back at work yet! So here's hoping that it doesn't take little man too long to work his way through the milk ladder and outgrow his allergy to milk, butter, cheese, cream and all the other good things in life, particularly because most dairy free chocolate sucks. 

Can You Play Musical Chairs At A Wedding?,

Genuine question because it would honestly make certain things in life, or at least during wedding planning, a lot easier, but it would make things a lot more difficult.

On the plus side, it would take out the need to do a table plan, which is a big thing, because it's not just the display, the ideas of how you do the display, how you put it up (does it go on an easel or a stand or have it's own legs or what?) or about everyone who tries to get involved and say who they will or won't sit with or anything like that, but it is the sitting down and thinking which personalities will mesh well, who is going to clash and who will bring the drama and who will calm the drama. It's about who is going to be shy or feel awkward, who gets nervous and word vomits all over who they are next to (and how the person next to them is going to take that) and all of the other bits that you worry about when you're putting people together for a stretch of at least an hour and a half. If you tell everyone it's a game of musical chairs you take the stress out of it for yourself, but then the problem is you pass it onto your guests and for us that would be horrible for a few people, because a few of them are travelling to the wedding on their own. For people that don't know anyone, it would be really hard.

As if passing the stress on isn't bad enough, and let's face it, it would be bad enough because some people are quite vocal about their disapproval of certain things at weddings, if you've planned a plated meal like we have, it would make it impossible for the venue. I read of a wedding group recently that someone was trying to do a plated meal but without options, so if you could find a dish that worked for everyone then yeah, maybe that works, but we have multiple people with allergies, people with multiple allergies, dietary requirements and sensory food issues, so unless we did something like chips, which let's face it, is not a meal, it wouldn't work. 

I mean, I suppose the answer to all of that is to have a buffet, but I would still worry that it means guests who have come on their own would struggle, and people you would genuinely like to introduce may never meet, and also buffets are, at least to me, somewhat problematic, because it all just feels like snack food and a wedding is a long day (or at least ours feels like it could be) and I need more than snack food to get me through it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

We started on our seating plan weeks ago and honestly found it a struggle, as many people do, but when we sat and looked at it again, pretty much determined that we were going to get it done that evening come hell or high blood pressure, we didn't even argue. We debated a couple of things, looked at it from personalities and also the maths of how many people fit on each table, but then it didn't take too long to come up with something that we thought actually fit the majority of people or was at least the best that we could do. 

And if all else fails, or someone tries to bring the drama, or a couple of people get too into their politics or anything like that, it kind of becomes musical chairs at the evening do anyway, because there are a few more people and the assigned seating kind of idea goes a bit out of the window, doesn't it? In theory people will move around, chat, dance and all that, or at least I would hope that they would... 

Little Library,

No, my library isn't a Little Library like the type people have in their front yard where you can borrow a book, or do a take one leave one kind of idea or anything like that, nor is my library little when it comes to the size of it, but I was struggling with what to call this post and that was the best I could come up with, so sorry and all that.

Today (day of writing, not day of posting) I have been wandering around the house trying to find something. Today is just another episode of an ongoing sequel of me trying to find said thing which is currently missing, and during said frustrating sequel, I have found other things I had stopped looking for because I had solved the problem in a different way. Which is somehow more annoying. Probably about as annoying as me being so vague about the whole thing really. 

The original missing thing was my birth certificate, which generally isn't overly big of a deal because it's not like it's something I need on a regular or even semi regular basis, but I did need it for my and my partner's appointment to give notice ahead of getting married. As I don't have a valid passport, I needed my birth certificate and my mother's birth certificate, and because I had already lost mine and looked everywhere for the damn thing, I had to order another one, so insisted that my mum come with us to the appointment because it was bad enough losing mine, I wasn't going to lose her's as well. That appointment was about three months ago, but I finally found the birth certificate in the loft whilst I was up there looking for my expired passport, because you need the expired one to renew your passport. Who knew?

In the meantime I had also lost the V5 for my car (not my car I actually drive but my first car which has been sat like a large lawn ornament for a few months other than the few weeks my dad needed to borrow it) and I wanted to be able to sell it, and just when I was looking at ordering a new one, but then found someone who wanted to buy it, we found the V5, ordered a new one to update details and then had a nightmare trying to get the tax sorted so the new owner could actually take it home. Oh, and my car keys. For my actual this is the one I drive car. I had the spare, but the spare has a dodgy battery and no keyring loop on it, which means it's smaller and easier to lose (clearly an issue for me). Thankfully that turned up in the pocket of a jacket I barely use, after I had put the spare into a pocket of a bag I always have with me so I knew where it was.

In my head, I can see myself putting the expired passport down the side of a book. It's not into a book, but down the side of a book, with the idea that I don't need it now, won't need it later and it's not something I need to worry about. I wasn't intending to sort out a passport until after the wedding, because it just sounds annoying to have to add it to the already long list of things I need to change my name on, but then we changed our minds a few times about what we want to do as a honeymoon and several of the ideas we are happy with require me to have a passport, so I was looking into doing mine and my son's. Except I can't, because my old one has either crawled away and is laughing to itself (not literally...) or been taken by The Borrowers to be used as a tent for a camping weekend or similar. Seriously, I'm running out of places to keep looking for it.

You might be sat there reading this thinking, there's got to be another way around it and there is, of course, because I'm neither the first, the last nor the only blinking eejit to lose my passport or assume that an expired passport has no value, but having to cancel the old passport and have it replaced takes longer and we're already running into the time of year where passports take longer than usual. Or should I say one of the points of the year, so I want to try and get it to take the least amount of time as possible, though I appreciate that doing so is meaning that I am wasting the amount of time that would have been added on by the cancelling, but it's a bit of a sunken cost fallacy now and trying to convince myself to just abandon the search is annoying me, because I know that the second I have done it, the missing one will turn up and it will bug me.

What does this have to do with the library? Well for one, between my future husband and I we went through the... several hundred... books on the shelves to check that the passport wasn't between any of them, and it wasn't annoyingly, so today I put all of the rest of the books from the boxes in the front room onto the shelves so I could check between the rest of the books, and it was still not there. As I was unpacking everything there was a buzzing through my head about the number of books I have and all of the comments people make about the number of books I own (to which I say, shuddup) but, possibly as a byproduct from having watched The Testaments recently, but my head went Gilead and the fictional worlds of Christine Dalcher and how owning books was prohibited for women, and the world of V for Vendetta where owning certain books was prohibited, most famously the Quran. I remembered a moment of standing in a street in Berlin where a piece of artwork built into the floor depicting empty shelves to represent all of the books that were burnt why the Nazis. All of this is to say that there are times in history and times in fiction where owning books, or at the very least a certain type of books, is considered to be an act of treason or an act of rebellion. Obviously I like the rebellion idea a little better.

Now, I'm not trying to suggest that that's the reason I own them all, because it's not. Even before I was aware of having ADHD there were signs and signals for the right person to pick up on, even if no one did until I was in my thirties... When I started collecting books (to the best of my memory it started with Goosebumps when I was about nine) these ideas were completely alien to me, but it might be part of the reason I continue to own them, even though I have been making efforts to at least slightly slim down my collection. It's also worth noting that although, as I mentioned, some of these worlds are fictional, I wouldn't be the first or only person to draw parallels with certain political figures, parties, ideologies etc to those worlds, so it's really not that out there to think that it's possible that during our lifetimes, owning books, whether specific or any sort, could again be an act of rebellion. Just a thought.

Sht Happens,

I feel like pre-baby, I vastly overestimated the amount of 'blow out' nappies we were going to have, and whilst I appreciate that might sound like a really privileged thing to say, it is not, or at least not in my view.

I do have to wonder if one of the reasons we've not had as many 'blow outs' as the internet and other parents led us to believe we would is because my son has had digestive issues since he was only a few days old, leading to us spending far too many hours in the hospital when he was 4-6 days old (and yes, that was over the Christmas period) so yes, we've gone through difficult periods of constipation, but that normally results in the kind of thing that you would expect to cause a 'blow out' and it very rarely does. In completely honesty, the only real problems we have had have either been when we haven't realised he's pooped immediately and he's been sat in it for a bit of time, or when we've checked if he's pooped by pulling the frilly bit away from his leg, and then there is a leak... There have been more times when he has peed through his nappy, but even that hasn't been overly common. From what I understood in the before times, I thought it would be the sort of thing which happened at least a couple of times a week.

Why does it matter? Surely this is meaning that parenting is easier than you expected it to be? Well, no, not really, because you very quickly learn that cleaning up a dirty nappy or even a very wet nappy is not as complicated as you think it is, even when you accidentally leave the packet of baby wipes on the table when you're repacking the nappy bag. That might be because we carry wet bags (the type from reusable nappies, even though we're not using the reusable nappies at the moment), at least two extra outfits and I recently left the packing cubes of clothes we took on a road trip in the car because they had extra clothes, extra muslins, extra bibs and extra wet bags in the car for a week in case I needed them each time I went out, but I like to think that's just normal preparation... 

So, why does it matter? Because when you are planning how many clothes you are going to need for your baby it is a factor, and if I was being really nerdy (which I can be) I'd say it's the thing that takes you from thinking, how many clothes do I need, the answer is n, and turning n into like 10n (or 10 times n). You over plan, over buy, and then have to store all of these clothes that you just don't need. Some of it you bought, some of it friends and family bought and gifted to you, some of it you inherit from other people who've had babies, and some of it will never come out of the wardrobe, or it will be worn once or twice before the baby that was so tiny in it the first time you put it on is now spilling out of it in all directions, and you probably didn't even get a photo for the person who bought it for you. (I had always planned on getting a photo of the baby in each outfit that was bought for them and sending it to the person who bought it, and I have really tried, but I have also lost track of so many of the gifts, because there were a lot and there was a lot going on, obviously!!) 

Now, I know some people will say prioritise the gifts, but even doing that there was still a lot, or don't have them or let them rewear something that has been stained with food or anything else, but particularly when they get to the age little man is at the moment where they are eating purees, some things go on the outfit no matter how many bibs or wipes or anything you use, and then they never come out. And if you choose not to reuse things because that has happened, you'd just be spreading out the amount of things you were getting stains on, because like I said, it happens. There is a reason that some people keep one outfit, or set of outfits for nursery, and it's not just because kids play with glitter and paint and other messy stuff, but because they are messy when they learn to eat. My son was wearing a vest, t-shirt, shorts and a bib for about ten minutes this morning, because he dribbled his porridge down his bid and his shirt (and a tiny bit onto his vest) and smeared his porridge on his shorts, so everything but the vest had to come off, and that was only because I didn't have the energy or motivation to take him upstairs for a tiny wet patch on the vest which would be dry in no time thanks to the current weather, or would get bigger when he dribbled through or around his next bib. Last night, following a rather successful encounter with a pumpkin puree pocket (try saying that three times fast without tripping over the letters...) I had to put the whole baby in the bath because it was everywhere, and that's just where we're at along the weaning journey at the moment, so unless I stick to foods which won't stain (which sound beige and boring) we're probably more likely to be going for multiple changes a day now, even more so than when he was tiny, and I'm fine with that.

But I'm also still finding and packing up his nought to three month clothes and some of the newborn, first size and tiny baby ones as well, including the pram suits and realising that even though pram suits are generous in size so mostly you can wear them a little longer than some of the baby grows of the same size, they're still not in them for long and you don't need three or four to give you time to wash and dry them because they don't get that dirty on every wear, babies don't sweat like adults do in puffer jackets and, most importantly, most baby clothing is actually tumble dryable, so it can get washed and dried in between uses pretty easily, as long as parents can keep their eyes open long enough to run the machines.

That Wedding Series,

Welcome back to the Charlie moans about wedding planning and wedding things... If you're getting bored, don't worry, it's nearly here, which hopefully means the moaning over it is nearly over. Wouldn't that be good?

What do I want to moan about today? Okay, this is less of a moan, and more of a... I don't know. 

Once upon a tradition, people hadn't lived together before they got married and the vast majority wouldn't have lived out of their parent's house, so the things you got for wedding presents were essentially the things to kit out your kitchen or towels, because you didn't have any. It was like with a baby shower - you've not got any of the things you need yet, so here is everything. As time moved on, people potentially had lived out even if they didn't live together - for example, my mum had lived with her sister in law who is also one of her closest friends, whilst my dad still stayed at home with him parents - so instead of needing everything from scratch, wedding presents were things like a better set of pans, like Le Creuset, or a wedding dinner set which only ever comes out at Christmas or special occasions and never for the kids. (I don't blame my parents for that, because I drop things a lot.)

These days, it's really not that uncommon to have lived together before you marry and it's also not uncommon to already have a child or two, and so when people ask what you want as a wedding present, a lot of people will ask for money for the honeymoon. Mentioning no names but a few of my relatives think that is hideous. I'm passing no judgement because I completely understand why that would be the case, but I also understand why people don't much like the idea of it. Maybe one of the reasons I'm not overly fussed either way is because I don't currently have a passport and neither does my son, so we're probably not going to get the chance to book a honeymoon abroad and we've realised that our son isn't the biggest fan of a road trip which takes out a lot of options where we don't need passports. Maybe if we were booking something I would be saying the same as others because hell, we don't need anything...

We've been living in a house that we share since October, were living together in my house for a few months before that and were living across both houses before that, because from pretty early on we knew that we just wanted to spend time together, but none of that is simple, because we had to try and condense the contents of two houses into one, and at the same time gained a whole bunch of stuff for the baby. We were really, really lucky in that we were giving a lot of things to help us with the baby, but it was more stuff to find places for and there have needed to be a lot of decisions to get rid of some things and there's still a lot where we have duplicates of things. Some of that isn't so bad because it's things like milk frothers, which break when I use them a lot so having a spare is fine, or kettles, which is good because we have a baby who needs bottles making and my kettle is a dumbass smart thing that likes dribbling (but we love being able to yell at the Alexa to turn it off when we've left it on Keep Warm) but other things are less easy because they're things like a fridge freezer (so we have one in the garage to keep Costco packs of drinks in or huge packs of chicken nuggets and the other in the house).

All this is to say that tradition wedding presents aren't really something which we would need at all. Fancy wine glasses? We've got a few, ta. Fancy dinner set? As mentioned before, I drop things. In fact, we both do. Also, whilst I can understand that some people might want to get something personalised, I think it's a difficult one if the couple don't have a registry and ask for something particularly, because unless you know people really, really well, taste is a major factor, and decor is personal. 

You'd think from all this that I would be all over making a registry for the wedding and the truth is that I tried, but the problem is that we really don't want or need anything we can list from stores and if we do want or need it, it's normally because it's out of the budget of what we can spend on a month to month basis and we're trying to get past the wedding before making any major purchases because weddings are expensive enough, and I'm on maternity leave! Statutory pay is absolutely no joke, and we need to be careful about things we need to pay out for - like the photographer for the wedding - and things we don't - like an American style fridge and a carpenter to modify the kitchen cabinets so it fits where we want it, considering we have a working fridge. 

As far as I've researched there isn't something that can create like, pots, essentially, for gifting into, where the money is to be used for something specific, but that people can contribute whatever amount they want to contribute to. Let's face it, I could do a registry and put an American style fridge on there, but there are very few guests coming to my wedding that I think would be spending that kind of money on a gift - nor would I want them to! BUT if were had, for example, a 'pot' for the kitchen which was for the fridge and the work to fit it where it should be going, and people could choose to add whatever they wanted to it as a gift, it takes some of the hassle out for them trying to think of a gift, or the worry we won't need it, use it or like it, and also would help us with actual practical things we need or want to do with the house. Another example could easily be the bathroom. Neither of us is a fan on the tile, the cabinets have seen better days and the general amount of storage in there is abysmal, plus a really stupid part of the shower screen is broken so it's not working perfectly but is not annoying enough to warrant being high on the list for being fixed at present, but have a 'pot' for it where it's assigned to something like Wickes or B&Q or something, something that was specifically bathrooms, that would be really cool, though I appreciate it would be something that would take a whole lot of administration, but it would still be really cool. As it is, when people ask what we need I give the equivalent of a non-comital shrug, because I really don't know... 

And let's face it, a gift registry is only ever suggestions anyway...

There Is Something More Frustrating Than A Blank Page,

I have thought before that the most frustrating thing is a blank page, but that's because I've never been planning something big as far in advance as I have been with the wedding.

The thing about the wedding is it gives me plenty of things I want to write about, but there is a lot of it that I don't want to post until after the wedding because some of the people reading it will be attending the wedding and I'm being a bit River Song over it (Spoilers...) 

And let's be honest, there is a lot of it which would just be moaning, partly because the things I have already posted have been moans. Wedding planning is stressful and there is a lot to it that I never knew about or never thought about and some really stupid bits like, because we already have a child together, his birth needs to be re-registered after the wedding so that he is seen as a child of our marriage, even though he wasn't because he was born over eight months before we were married...

It seems really stupid to me, but it is something that we have to do.

I have even considered posting some of the things I have been writing or wanting to write about the wedding, but blanking out certain details or changing details so that it doesn't have those sort of spoilers, but at the same time it seems weird to do this. For once, it is not a blank page which frustrates me, but pages full of things I want to say that it is not the time to say, so I have to delay it until after the wedding is done.

That Photo,

Let me start this by saying I am a habitual nail biter and have been for a decent chunk of my life. I have used the "trick" of painting my nails clear or nude or with a transparent glitter in order to not bite them for a small period, but my nails are pathetic and not just because of how long I have bitten them for; my mum's nails kind of suck as well (sorry Mum). I was never really bothered by it. And then I got engaged...

When we got engaged, I didn't want a photo of the ring on my hand where my nails were visible, because I just hated that they looked so awful and having a beautiful engagement ring (I think she's gorgeous anyway) only made me feel like they looked worse, but I just didn't take the 'traditional' photo or photos like the photo of just my hand and the ring or one with my hand on him with the ring visible, and I never really thought it bothered me too much that I didn't have it. And then I thought about our wedding photos... 

We've spent a fair amount of money on having a photographer for certain parts of the day, partly with the idea that at least one of those photos will be hanging in our house, and let's face it, both sets of parents are likely to want a photo from it in their homes, as are our grandparents, and I just kept thinking about how it would either be really hard to hide my hands, or they would just look awful, so when we were walking around the village a few weeks back getting errands done, I went into the nail salon and asked if there was anything that they could do to sort them out.

When I was going for the appointment, my partner asked how long I would be so he knew whether to try and keep the baby awake for me or to do bedtime solo, and I told him I had no idea. I even had to Google it on the way there as to what the type of nails I was getting done were since I had no idea. I had never had a manicure before so I had no clue about any of it. I didn't know how often I was going to need to get it done so they're alright for the wedding, or how much it was going to cost, but I knew it was going to be worth it so I didn't have to feel like they were ugly as hell and something I needed to hide on my wedding day, and I was right.

The finished nails are not something ridiculous or obvious, but they are a significant improvement, so much so that I  couldn't stop looking at them and kind of wanted to take the photos we had missed out on when we got engaged, but at the same time I don't want to feel like I'm trying to rewrite history just because I like something about myself now that I didn't like back then, but like this I can keep them looking lovely and have them looking nice on my wedding day for the photos with our rings and actually any of the photos that we have taken for the day. It seems like such a little thing but it's the sort of little thing that means a lot and I'm glad it's another item ticked off of the to do list. And given the number of things we are doing in the next few weeks, including a couple of My Chemical Romance gigs, I'm kind of proud that I didn't go for something crazy like black or red polish that would have been a lot more obvious!! 

The Unfinished Nursery,

Whilst I was still pregnant, I kept seeing photos and videos of people who were due at around the same time as me, or just before, or just after!, having finished their child's nursery. At the time I was naively thinking we would have plenty of time to sort it when we moved, then when we moved and I was basically useless for anything it was thinking that we would have time when he arrived to get the nursery done before he moved in there. Now when I think that the only thing I think  is about the bit in Billy Elliot where the dance teacher says 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. Fat. Chance.'

This isn't to say that nothing in the nursery was done. The cot was put together well in advance and we had an over the cot changing mat in place as well as the obligatory IKEA changing table. There's a slight difference in height which makes a big difference to my back in terms of pain and thankfully the separate table is better for my back, because the over the cot one has had to come off now he's sleeping in there and I'm not picking it up every time he needs a change, because he needs a change a lot...

We got an IKEA cabinet in there as a second wardrobe, sorted out the first wardrobe and have changed it around a few times too depending on where we were up to with different things we were trying (like having to have the wet bags handy when we were still using reusable nappies), but the walls are still white, the wallpaper is still half torn down and the carpet is still full of marks and splashes of things that happened before we bought the house.

Our nursery is far from picture perfect, and it's actually far from functionally perfect. There's a few steps between the nursery and the bathroom, and a long way between the nursery and the sink in our room, so any messy hands take a while to get clean. It's also a long trek through the majority of the house in order to get to the bin with any bags of nappies. Honestly I have told my partner that I would love to put a sink in there, which wouldn't be too hard really, but it's not something we're going to do immediately. The thing I would love to do immediately though is put something of a very small slide tube down from the window... and then park a bin under it. Maybe it's just me and having something against the Tommy Tippee bin that Amazon seem to think every parent wants, but I don't like them and there are some things even scented bin liners can't fix or help. On those days, I wish it was possible to just throw everything straight out of the window into a tube that passed down right into the outside bin.

The problem with this, of course, is a lid, and the fact we live in the country side and near a river so foxes, rats and other rodents... 

I don't think the nursery will ever be 'finished' until we are done having kids, and therefore done having a nursery in our house at which point it won't be the nursery that's done, but our nursery era, partly because of how we both are and our need to reorganise, but also because our son is young and developing and that constant growth and change means what he needs from the room is changing and evolving. We have to change things to keep him safe, move things so he can get to and use them, and move other things because he's either past them or bored of them. Some things are there waiting for him to be ready for them and some things are just stored because we don't need them anymore, but we're planning to, or at least hoping to, have another kid at some point, so we need to keep them somewhere and ideally not forget we have them!! 

I Felt Like Such a Bad Parent,

Maybe this is unique to the messy disorganisation that is ADHD parenting (though I suspect that it's not given that sleep deprivation can cause ADHD like symptoms) but there have been a couple of occasions where I have felt like a terrible parent because something that should have been in the nappy bag just wasn't there.

There have been two occasions where we've walked out of the house without baby bottles. We had the baby milk, but just no feeding bottles, and both times the reaction was just to go and buy new ones, because it was the simplest solve (and yes, I know there is an inherent privilege in being able to afford to do that, as well as sheer luck that our son accepts a bottle that is widely available) but the most recent one was worse.

We went through the routine of kid gets grumpy, kid needs changing, take old nappy off after finding a towel, because relatives don't have changing tables (not saying they should by the way) only to find that the stack of nappies we keep in the changing bag wasn't there and there were, in fact, none. First reaction - do family still have any of the overnight pants of the toddler? No, but we might have swim pants? Cool. Whatever will do just to make sure the car seat doesn't get soaked in pee on the way home. Except they weren't there either...

Eventually the answer was the same - go out, buy more, bring them back, no stress, or no more stress at least - except that Tesco had run out of the right size ones in a brand we've used before, and out of all the right sized ones in fact, so instead, to Lidl! We've never used the Lidl nappies before and I'm not sure I would again. It's not like they leaked... I don't think they did anyway... but they feel kind of on the thin side. Yes, okay, they're Eco and hypoallergenic, but I have no confidence in them to hold up to one of Tiny's mega wees, and he does them a lot. He can pee out of nappies that I have a lot more confidence in, so I'm going to stick to what we know works.

One thing I remind myself of though when I triple check the bag for the thing we forgot last time, or when I tether his teething toys to the pram so he can't throw them away never to be seen again is that I'm only human. My partner is only human. We're doing our best and sometimes we get things wrong or we forget things and that is okay, partly because it has to be, we are who we are, and we are both very tired, but also because forgetting a bottle isn't going to break our son, or make him hate us, or be the reason he doesn't do *something* with his life. It's a momentary annoyance, and when it has really, really mattered - like when we were on the allergy milk you can't just pick up anywhere - we were fully on top of it, because there wasn't another option. It was hard, it hurt both of our heads and I'm glad we're back at the stage where if we forget things, we can pop into Boots or Tesco or Asda or wherever and just grab the things we need that we forgot. I am also glad we're at the weaning stage as well though, because little guy being able to eat something other than baby formula makes some things easier, even though it makes other things harder! 

He Graduated,

I know it's something I have previously railed against, though whether on this blog or not I can't remember, but I'm using the word graduated for my little man even before he's left university with a degree. I guess I've got into the if you can't beat them join them camp, where kids graduate the NICU, nursery or pre-school etc and anything else we can think of before an actual graduation.

What am I talking about specifically? Little man has graduated from the Snoo.

When I bought that thing there were a few people who thought I was crazy for spending several hundred quid on a used bassinet, and I'm sure that my partner was one of them, but it was something I knew that I wanted and it wasn't worth anyone arguing with me. We saw it working before we took it home with us, and actually I was pleasantly surprised by everything that came with it for the price - two sleeping bags in each of the three sizes, anti-colic legs and about four mattress covers as well as the dust bag for the whole thing, and all for around a third of the price of just the bassinet by itself brand new. It wasn't just that it felt like a bargain, but it felt like an opportunity to sleep more than we would without it and I firmly believe that we got that from it. It was so important that it even came with us on Little Man's first holiday to Yorkshire, but that was mainly because it was what he was used to and he had already fallen out with the bassinet by then so we weren't really too excited to see how he reacted to a travel cot.

When the midwives visited us, and the health visitor, they were all a bit sceptical, and some were more keen than others to be open to the idea, because when you say it swaddles the baby and restrains them that sounds pretty scary, but it's just that they're "clipped" in so that the motion of the bassinet doesn't move them too much. It plays them white noise, it rocks them and it "listens" for them being disturbed. If it can settle them back down, great, and if not, it stops and it notifies your phone to say it's stopped, which worked well as a baby monitor when he started sleeping through the night and going to bed earlier, because we didn't need to be perfectly in hearing range. We could actually go out into our garden!

But all good things come to an end and at six months, a certain weight limit or when the baby can roll, they need to come out of it, and Little Dude is now rolling, so out he had to go. It was also kind of important to me to get him used to the cot before we go and see My Chemical Romance at the end of the month because he can't come with us sadly (yes, I would have taken him, as long as he had his ear defenders on) so will need to be babysat, and I wanted that to be as easy as it can be on all of us. 

The little guy isn't yet six months, though that's coming in a couple of days, but he is rolling and had taken to kicking the crap out of the end of the Snoo, and I wasn't sure how well it would take to that. 

It's only been a few nights and it's not been perfectly plain sailing - he's gone from sleeping through the night to a couple of wake ups, but that happened before he came out of the Snoo so was not solely down to the change - but he's still sleeping pretty damn well and it means we get our room back, the Snoo can retire to the loft (once all of the sleeping bags have been washed) and we're moving towards our next milestone, which is either sitting or crawling.

And I get to feel bad that the six month mark has rolled around so quickly that we've STILL not decorated the nursery. I can kind of understand why people do it before the baby arrives now, because I feel like I blinked and these six months have gone by...

Nappies,

I don't know if I am behind on this or not, but recently I realised that despite a lot of effort into being super prepared for the whole life of nappy changes etc, we messed up and were running out of nappies in the right size. Now, I've been a bit obsessive in terms of making sure that when the little guy moves up a size we have something to move on to or move up to as it were, but when you're not ready to move up to another size putting on something too big is just bulky and uncomfortable. Now, we were in an okay position because if all else really failed then we would have been able to use the reusable nappies we had originally planned on using full time, but we've done the reusable nappy thing and I found it too difficult to keep up with the changing and the washing and the drying etc which comes with them, which is why we stopped using them.

Anyway, obviously we're not stupid, so when we were getting to the point in the stack of nappies where it was touch and go of how long they would last us, my partner suggested going to Costco for a box, but it's not near us at all, and the amount of money saved on a box of nappies would be less than the amount we spent on the fuel to get down there, especially since it would have been a rush after work, so instead my partner went to Aldi. I told him to get the size that we needed, because if the baby is a size 2 in nappies, they're a size 2 in nappies, right? Wrong.

When I looked at the nappies we had in the house, which were a few different sizes across different brands, I realised that each different brand seems to come up with their own different sizing. Little one was still a size 2 in Costco nappies and could wear a 2 in Pampers, but also fit into a size 3 in Pampers, is a 3 in Mum and You's and needs a 3 in Mamia Aldi nappies as well, so I had more nappies in the house that I thought I had which fit him, but it wasn't until I was putting him into the Aldi size 2s that didn't fit that I realised that they didn't fit him. Now that we've been able to get to Costco for the nappies we use the most, I've also realised he's not going to be in the size 2s in that for long either though and I'll be surprised if we make it to the end of this box, because he seems to be going through a growth spurt right now.

There seems to be a big thing at the moment about whether or not some nappies are day or nighttime nappies according to the picture printed on them, and I honestly hate the fact nappies seem to be getting more and more complicated. I kind of regret not sticking to the reusables for longer, but then they weren't as easy as I wanted them to be, and now that baby has started weaning, it means that changing poop nappies, or rather cleaning poop nappies, is even more messy than it was when he was breast fed, on formula, or mixed fed.

One of the other reasons this is such an issue is because babies don't get weighed all that often. The health visitors and midwives come and weigh them at the house in the first few weeks, but then the six month visit is something that can happen over video chat, so obviously they don't weigh them then. I considered getting a scale, but it's just another big thing that I would have to store in the house which I really don't need. The best I can do is get on a scale holding him, then put him down and get back on the scales and take one number off of the other in order to get a rough idea, but it's not brilliant and given that postpartum is a rough time for me, my body and my weight, getting on the scales regularly isn't exactly doing me any favours on that one. Basically, every size change is a best guess, just like the change of size of clothing is a guess, because he really is a little one for his age, though at least most of the clothing runs to practically the same size or at least a lot closer than the nappies do! 

The Christening That Went Wrong,

When our son was born, my partner and I had always intended to get him christened, not because we were regular church goers ourselves (we were not) or even that anyone in the family is, but most of us describe ourselves as some form of Christian and so it felt important to bring our son into that as well as what some people see a christening as these days; a good reason to get everyone together to meet the baby.

Honestly, little man's christening was the first time a few people had met him and that was a really lovely experience for him, for them, for us getting to introduce him, but because of the church we do now attend with him, it was also a really lovely event because the Reverend has kids herself and she knows how to not only allow kids to be kids in church, but how to include kids in a service so it's not just that they are tolerated, but that they are very much loved and welcomed in the service.

I remember when I was younger that church could often feel stuffy and long, and it was something where we sat through it and got on with it and were moaned at or stared at if we wriggled, giggled or were anything other than statues effectively. I think it's one of the reasons I enjoyed being part of the serving team in church, because it gave me something to do, and I'm better if I'm occupied. Whether it was carrying candles, ring bells, swinging an incense handbag (I know that's not what it's called, but it's what it looks like, so that's what we called it) having something I could do, and it being something I was SUPPOSED to do was really helpful, but obviously you can't do that with very small children, can you? Turns out, you can!

The Reverend had my four year old niece and my friend's six year old come up and help her prepare the baptism water by splashing in it as she was praying over it, partly to keep the sound of the water in everyone's minds, and then when we were praying at the end, she used bubbles to represent our prays, and told us to think of the pop of the bubble being that that prayer was heard by God... and so the girls were there to pop the bubbles, and it kept them engaged, it got them involved and it brought even more joy into a very special day.

You might be wondering then, why it was the christening that went wrong...

Well, as far as I have ever known, it's not the sort of thing you send out a formal invitation to, but one of the biggest problems from that is then there's no real RSVP tradition, so when a caterer or venue asks you for numbers, it's like trying to pick a lottery number. We didn't want there to be masses of food left over, but also didn't want to have invited people to come and celebrate with us and then the food be like, two quarter sandwiches and half a sausage roll each because we had massively under estimated. As it was, we guessed the numbers about right, except for that on the day quite a few people came down with sickness bugs, and it's not even like they were all people who would have given it to each other (in each family, yes, but each group doesn't know each other) and it's not like they're from the same area where it could be something in the air or something in the water... 

What didn't help was a number of people in both of our families have hearing aids, and whether they weren't turned up, weren't turned on or the batteries were out, I don't know, but it meant that a lot of people were missing different announcements, whether it was that his Godmother was ill and couldn't be there (but the Reverend said it was fine and she was still his Godmother), where the toilets were (so someone was looking for the toilets in the toy corner) or a few other funny things which I'm not going to embarrass people with, it made it a bit of a comedy of errors at times.

I know some people might think it strange that we had our son christened before we get married, but it was something we wanted to get done (or maybe it was something I particularly wanted to get done and my future husband just went with, because he knew it would make me and members of both our families happy) and I figured I could use it as something of a dress rehearsal for myself and my son ahead of the wedding. As in, if I wear something white or cream or light in colour, is he going to puke on it or poop on it. I was organised, too, because I even had a spare dress in the car, and multiple outfit changes for baby (he had one outfit for the morning church service which was a Pooh outfit on purpose - if you know, you know, a cream baby grow for the Christening service which was what my brother wore for his - and I waited until the last minute to put him in it since the Pooh outfit didn't work - a baby grow that's designed to look like a baby suit for the party afterwards - God bless you Ted Baker, that thing is adorable! - and a spare for in case there were multiple accidents) and the only one that didn't get worn was baby's spare, because he was sick on my first dress, but I hadn't practised sitting in it either, and every time I sat down the neckline at the front rose and tried to throttle me. I tried remembering to move the back of it slightly as I sat down, but it was a bit on the short side, so there wasn't a lot of spare space to do that, so getting changed was also a comfort thing in the end...

One of the great things about having it as a trial run was being able to trial some of the sweet treats we want at the wedding - which was ace because they went well - including a version of one of the cakes, which went down a storm. I know as someone who bakes I should be more willing to spend the hundreds it costs to have a "proper" wedding cake, but my future husband doesn't much like cake, and I'm not much of an icing person. Also, I despise fruitcake. Even it touching another cake is enough to ruin the other cake for me, and traditionally the top tier of a wedding cake is fruit cake and it is saved for the Christening of the first child. Well, the christening already happened, and we did have a similar cake, so I guess we don't need a fruit cake!! (Yes, I did have a proper sh!t eating grin on when I decided that one... Some traditions in weddings are fine, but that particular one can suck it.)

It wasn't as though I was the only one that little man got with dribble or anything, because he caught his dad, too, and in the clean up left him looking like he'd missed when he went for a pee, but that taught us both something, I think. We need a cover or an apron of some description when holding the baby on the wedding day, there's no such thing as too many muslins (there is never such a thing) and the baby isn't going anywhere near my dress until we've had photos done.

As things go, it could have gone a lot, lot worse and it was a day of love and joy like it was supposed to be. Little guy slept through almost the whole thing, but that's what he does... football matches, rugby games and now his own Christening including when he was getting water poured on his head... and it was better than a screaming, crying, fussy baby. Everyone got to see him, see how much he's growing and smiling and laughing and learning, and he was fully and officially welcomed into his church family, including getting his first bible which has the cutest illustrations to help him follow along.

Rings on Her Fingers,

In complete honesty, I never thought I would be a fan of breastmilk jewellery and, I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but when I was coming to the end of my pumping journey, I decided I really wanted to get a breastmilk necklace, because it was a long, hard journey and I was really proud of myself for how long I managed to carry on. It was difficult, but it was rewarding, and whilst it wasn't what I had imagined it to be before Little Man was born, I wanted the necklace to honour that journey. It even has his initial on it in a little charm made of my milk, which is gorgeous.

I've always understood the concept of inclusions of ashes, or hair, particularly when it's a person who has passed away, because at least it is keeping a part of that person with you, and it's the same with pet fur. I don't think anyone gets the kick particularly when it comes to inclusions of dried flowers, but maybe I'm wrong? 

I watched a reel this morning which was about a ring made with an inclusion of a different kind, and my initial reaction was ew. It was a ring which included a sample of sperm. Surprisingly the comments were not mostly ew, and I wonder why that is my initial reaction, but then the story behind why it was made does make it make more sense. I think the fact that my partner and I didn't have to have any medical intervention to have our son makes me feel differently about it, because that particular ring was made with a sample of sperm from the couple's IVF journey, and so... right, I can't think of any better way to put it than to be a bit vulgar, so we're just going to have to go with it.

When I was getting my breast milk necklace, it was made from milk I had expressed, or pumped if you prefer, to maintain my supply but after I had a drink (an alcoholic drink...) so I couldn't have fed it to my child. It was in a bag marked as bath milk only that I was keeping in case he had any issues like eczema, but,  touch wood, we're okay on that front. Had it not been that, I'm not sure how I would have felt, because I struggled to pump the amount I did for my son, and it might have felt selfish to have taken any of that for making jewellery. Had I not breastfed at all, and only expressed milk in order to make a necklace, again, it likely would have felt weird. 

IVF as a medical journey often means that men have to... express themselves? (My head is screaming at me to just say rub one out instead of trying to be delicate about it) to have testing done or to provide genetic material which will be used in the creation of embryos. Inevitably, it's an act of love backed up by science and a whole lot of hope to make it possible for a couple who have struggled to have a child be able to realise that dream, and there is a lot of power in immortalising that and I think acknowledging that meaning and that journey changes things.

Over history, jacking off onto someone or onto the image of someone has been about power, control, humiliation and things like that, and I think there are effectively scars on, let's call it societal memory for lack of a better term, that mean we have a gut reaction of urgh, jizz, bad, or maybe it's just like, urgh, bodily fluids, gross. I can understand the perspective of 'making jewellery from any bodily fluid is weird' and the cool thing about it is that this most of this stuff doesn't scream that that is what it is. It's a quiet and personal tribute. Obviously that's different when that gets shared on social media, because at that stage a poster is either inviting opinions or often trying to inflame opinions. The problem I have, and the problem I saw in my own reaction, was the differentiation between a tribute to breast milk that was produced to nourish the baby, and sperm which was surplus to requirement to make the baby in the first place, that was already expressed and used in a lab, so would have otherwise been discarded. 

If it was something where a person was made to wear it, then I think that would be obviously very different, because of the aforementioned issues in history where the intention behind it has been very different, and I think if it was supremely obvious that it was what it was - I don't know, like a sperm shape on a ring or something - it might be different, but since it's a quiet tribute which looks much like any other inclusion ring, it's probably not something that needs a whole lot of noise, but when the maker posted it on social media, it obviously creates a conversation, and there will always be accusations that they are doing it to be divisive, because that's what gets views and comments and reactions which keep the cycle going. Ultimately, it's not something like Megan Fox's engagement ring, where taking it off will cause pain and damage, and instead it feels like a nice thing to do with IVF byproducts, which can be another really difficult debate.

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago when I saw the video originally, but juggling being a mum, keeping "on top of" house chores, getting our garden de-nettled etc and every other thing we have going on at the moment, trying to get it finished and posted has been more than a challenge! Which is also the reason it's not being posted on one of the days I would normally try and post a blog. It's not that I have anything against Thursdays, but aiming for Monday, Wednesday and Friday sometimes seems more realistic to me, even if it's not so much at the moment.

The Path to Saying 'I Do' Part 5,

I fully appreciate that some people are distrustful of AI and some people just plain hate it and there are a lot of good reasons for that. I do, honestly, especially because I don't think there should be a debate about the fact that it's use should be able to get us to the point where we have more time for our passions, rather than less, or rather than the AI effectively doing our passion projects for us, like when it creates artwork, but...

When it comes to weddings there are a lot of people who have started wanting to do a lot of it themselves, whether because it works out cheaper or because it gives them a lot more creative control or just control generally. And I get it.

When we started planning our wedding, I was kind of aware of the fact that there were going to be all of these little bits of things which would crop up that we hadn't thought of or hadn't known about, but I also had a bit of a general idea of how much things might cost. My future husband, God love him, thought that the price we had from the venue was a package price and we'd have to get a suit and a dress (his dress is gorgeous... KIDDING) and rings, but that other than that it was sort of a plug and play thing where it was all done for us, and it has shook him how much there has been to do. (And I haven't even made him do most of it.) 

I think he was aware that wedding invites weren't in the scope of what the venue did but I think he was of the opinion that they couldn't really be that expensive, could they? And I was like, yeah, it says wedding on it. Whatever price you're thinking of, add a zero to the end and you're probably closer to the figure than you were with your first guess. It was like the conversation over the pram all over again. I looked into a few different options, but as some of them were going in the post and I didn't want two 'tiers' of invites, we wanted them to be flat and as few sheets of paper or card as possible. We were also still trying to sort out with the venue about the menu so just asked about allergies and not food choices at that stage, but a lot of places that I was looking at wanted to do an invite "bundle" with an RSVP card to physically send back, an "info sheet" and a menu options card... It was all getting a bit out of hand, so thankfully I used Canva to do our own and do them our own way.

Now, I've always been more autistic than artistic (it's fine, I am ND, I can make that joke, and I do, regularly) I was pretty impressed that I chose a design I liked that was completely the wrong colour scheme (although one I'm wishing had gone with our venue, because I looked at a burgundy suit over the weekend and liked it - not for me!) and changed it, then managed to change the design for the back of the invite to make it a bit more simplistic, but still on theme and cute, so we could pile a bit of info on there without it looking cramped or cluttered, but when it's come to other bits that I want to mirror the invites, I'm sad to say I just don't want to mess around with them the same way, and I just want to press the AI button and say do this next bit, whatever it is, like that, so it matches, and then it poofs and does it, but it's not working out that simple.

I'm not asking for rocket science, I just want a template for *one thing, or another thing, which I'm not going to put because I never quite know who reads this and they might be coming to the wedding...* but it keeps saying, nah, I don't want to do that, do it yourself. And then I want to scream. I mean, yes, I can do it myself, but I don't want to and I thought the whole point of AI being there and "making our lives easier" was that I didn't have to, but it seems that there is no such luck on this for the moment, so I'm just going to have to keep plodding on with it and hope it's done sooner rather than later... 

8.5.26,

There is a significant thing about today that I only came to realise a couple of weeks ago, and it made me happy, and it made me sad.

 

Today is Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday; that's a lot of candles to fit on a cake. Like many British people, particularly the animal lovers, I do have a lot of love for Sir David. His book in the Little People, Big Dreams series is one which I sought out to buy for my son as opposed to one of the ones we've just kind of ended up with... It's also one of those which I have made a point of reading to my son, as opposed to some that I've left on the pile and we'll get to at some point. All this is to say that today is a day of great celebration because it is the centenary of an icon, effectively, but today is something else to me, too.

Today would have been the 100th birthday of my Grandpa, Jim. My grandpa Jim was my favourite person when I was a child. I've got a photo of a chubby little baby me sat on his knee on the Santa train, grinning my head off, probably because he was making me chuckle. We watched football together, even though I later decided I didn't like football - maybe it was because he wasn't there for me to watch it with anymore. He had a love of flat caps, old cars (or as he called them, cars), Man United, Frank Sinatra and Lancashire. He learnt German and told stories about World War 2. He served in the Navy, worked for P&G and pottered about in the garden. He had blue eyes, a cheeky smile and a soft voice, and I miss him so much.

When I was six weeks old, he went into the hospital for a second bypass surgery. He had had the first one ten years before, and the type of surgery that it was, at the time, was expected to last for about ten years, so what I was six weeks old, he needed it to be done again. My mum took me to the hospital with her and when my nana went to go and see if he was okay for visitors, Mum waited in the waiting room with me, and the next minute he was at the door, having walked down the corridor to come and see his granddaughter. I wasn't his first, I wasn't his last, but in the eleven and a bit years I shared with him on this planet I got to spend quite a bit of time with him and one thing I know is that it wasn't enough, but no amount of time ever would have been.

After he died, I wrote my first poem. It wasn't something I was asked to or told to write, but I sat and I wrote it, and we read it for him at the funeral, because it was just a kid trying to tell her grandpa how much she missed him already, and I have spent the next two decades and more missing him. I wish he had been there to see me go to college, and then to university, moving to London, graduating... coming back from London... learning to drive, meeting a man that reminds me of him in subtle little ways it took me a while to see, having my son, and later this year getting married... But especially meeting my son.

My son is named after my grandpa. It was a decision I had made myself a lot time ago, and it's a decision I'm glad my partner was okay with. I didn't want it to be his middle name or anything, but I wanted my first son to be named James so he could be Little Jim, Baby Jim, whatever nicknames, but he would share a first name with his Great Grandpa. I didn't know I was going to be raising a little blue eyed smiler who liked football and cars, but I love that he shares those things with his dad (not the blue eyes - that sort of skipped a generation) and that they're things he has in common with my grandpa. It's a different football team, but they both supported local football clubs, and by the time my son is old enough to drive he might not get a choice in the fact that cars are electric (though his dad will hopefully still have a couple of classics on the road including an old mini) but the main things, the main themes, are there. My son's already being raised on stories about how wonderful his Great Grandpa was, and that'll continue from both me and my mum, but it does mean that whilst I'm happy for Sir David, and his family, upon his 100th birthday, I'm going to spend the day feeling just a bit sad, too, because I wish Grandpa Jim was here to share it, and that he could spend today with my son. 

Grey's Anatomy Doesn't Feel The Same Anymore,

I have loved Grey's Anatomy for so many years, since I had to try and convince my mum to let me watch it (I was kind of sheltered at 12, okay?) and whilst I could have a moan about how only having the M left from MAGIC and even then, not all the time, makes it not as good, but honestly, I love it. I've loved the offshoots of Private Practice and Station 19, I love the political side of it... I just love it. I cried when Eric Dane passed away because he was so incredible in Grey's and I don't think I could have watched him in anything else and not expected him to be one of the Dirty Mistresses, but I put myself on a bit of a ban of watching medical dramas whilst I was pregnant, so no Grey's even for comfort watching, no Casualty or ER or This Is Going To Hurt or Bodies, because I was stressed and scared enough without adding fuel to that particular fire. 

In the first few weeks after the delivery of my son, I wasn't really watching a whole lot of television anyway, because I would have just fallen asleep on the sofa or fallen back to sleep in my bed, because I was, like all or at least most new parents, exhausted and trying to learn how to function, but you would think over 4 months down the line I would be able to lift that ban now? Well, not really.

Whilst I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would look at my situation and call me lucky, I did experience a level of birth trauma that I'm finding it hard to navigate. Whilst it wasn't the whole thing of being rushed in for an emergency C-section where the surgeons are racing against the clock to make sure the baby, me or both of us are not in danger, it doesn't mean it was easy, or an experience I want to repeat, and there are a lot of times where I feel like the situation I was in, the stresses and worries and circumstances, basically robbed me of the birth that I wanted and the impact that that had, especially early on, was huge, but it means that watching women in labour on TV programs is hard, and watching storylines about people experiencing complications is even harder. I know it's worse at the moment because even though our little guy is sleeping pretty well for a still pretty small baby, I'm not sleeping properly and I'm not a hundred percent sure as to why, but lack of sleep always means I have more of a hair trigger for things like this, so I've been having to ask my partner to mute things or skip through scenes, because I just can't cope with them right now.

It's the sort of thing that people tell you gets better with time, and I honestly hope that it does, but I think it's not just time, but distance, and distance requires not poking a wound, even a mental one, whilst it's still fresh and open and healing, so for now, I'm trying not to poke it by staying away from things which remind me why it hurts. 

Wouldn't It Be Great If IKEA,

I'm going to start this by saying I don't agree with the Lancashire Hot Pots on this one and I neither fear IKEA nor dislike it, in fact, I love it. I know that not everyone likes them, I know some people see them as just a cheap furniture pusher and I'm sure that some people are devastated that the entire MALM range is going to be going soon, even though they already axed the best colour (one of the previous oaks that was a textured veneer and just generally beautiful) partly because it's been around for 24 years (I'm not sad enough to know that without looking it up - it was on the wall of IKEA when we were there last) and it's hard enough when an entire brand goes pop and you can't get it anymore, let alone when a business makes a decision to move on from something that has been a staple for that long. 

I've been irritated with them before, because they do something like make the best plant goujons you've ever tasted and then discontinue them, or make the plant balls a bit too meaty so I have a half panic until Paul reassures me that they are the plant ones, he checked and he watched them make my food (he's a good egg), and when the Warrington one decided to slim down their menu for some reason and they weren't sharing that reason because it was after they finished the kitchen refurb and they dropped the rice bowl, it boiled my piss, but the recent salve to that has been a return of the rice bowl and another deal for super cheap food.

I've also seen some amazing things in IKEA like nursing groups in the cafe, they've done a pub* quiz and all those sorts of things that make it more like a community hub than a shop and I love that, and I love the feeding area for babies that I've used as a pumping area more than once. There's a lot that I like about IKEA, even if the Tetris game of getting things into a small car is both laughable and infuriating, the names are a dyslexic person (me)'s worst nightmare and there needs to be a lane for dawdlers because I just want to push them onto the nearest sofa so that they are out of my way. (I wouldn't but the thought crosses my mind on a more than semi regular basis...) I feel similar in the Trafford Centre, but there's less soft landings for people there.

So what is my latest IKEA related gripe? I like the new blue Billy bookcase. In fact, I love it. I love the green Kallax, too. I love the wonky nature of the shelves being different widths and things, but you can only have it in green and the green one is only in wonky. The blue Billy? No height extension, no drawer for the bottom, no doors at all... and let's face it, colour matching is hard to impossible, and because of the nature of what IKEA is, it's not going to look the same if you vinyl wrap or paint your own at home, so it's cool and it's "highly customisable" but not highly enough really. If you want a desk on a Billy, it has to be a white one, if you want the drawer, it has to be a white one, if you have non-standard ceilings... options are vastly reduced. I know, I know, it's mass produced and it's cheap and it's not meant to be custom furniture and you'd pay a lot more for something that is, but just imagine being able to use it like a pick 'n' mix, even if only on the website, and going here's the materials, here's the styles or patterns or whatever you want to call it, and then being able to get multiple height extensions for the Billy bookcases if you have high ceilings, because as long as it's mounted to the wall, the engineering of one versus two shouldn't be complicated at all. I'd love to be able to get blue ones with a drawer at the bottom for little man's toys, a couple of opaque doors at the top and glass doors down the middle to mean that my books get less dusty when they're sat on their shelves, but there are no blue doors and there's no drawer in the brown walnut that I also think would look quite nice.

We had talked about getting a carpenter in and getting something done in the front room and I think what we would be looking for would be very similar to what I've described above, but as I say, it would be more expensive, and we can't do expensive until after the wedding, because until then, well, we have a wedding to pay for, and weddings don't come cheap either!