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!