We are family

I know, I know. It’s been too long. I could blame tiredness or lack of time or the fact that, for some reason, I find short bursts of info (facebook, twitter) somehow easier to deal with at the moment rather than long thought-out entries. Changing face of the internet, innit?

Or maybe it’s more that I feel this is my place for me and I’ve barely had time for me in the last few months. Eloise is now six months old, if you can believe it – I certainly can’t – and between her and Zoe, I’m certainly kept busy. We started trying Eloise with proper food last week, she’s thoroughly unimpressed by it all and, tbh, I’m too lazy to do it. If someone could present me with a baby capable of completely feeding itself whatever I put in front of it, that would be much appreciated. Zoe still loves nursery and we’re still waiting to hear which school she gets into – April 1st should be the date we find out, so it’ll be like some bad April Fool’s joke if we don’t get in. Duncan is still wonderful, I definitely couldn’t do this without him. And as for me, I’m exhausted but very definitely happy most of the time. Yeah, there are bad days, but then I don’t think it’d be normal for there to be no bad days, but there is certainly no reoccurance of the postnatal depression I had with Zoe. And whilst that’s good, it also makes me feel quite guilty at times. I can barely remember Zoe’s first 6 months. We took loads of photos of her but I struggle to remember taking them or how I felt at the time. There are still some books I should read as part of my studies that I haven’t yet because I don’t want to read something that’s going to tell me how much damage I did to my child by having PND and not being properly bonded to her in the first few months. I know that she’s a bright, happy 4 year old and that’s what matters, but I don’t need to see anything in black and white that says I might just have screwed her up a bit.

I’m nearly qualified as a postnatal leader. I start my 2nd course next week and have one essay left to complete. Hopefully, by September, I’ll have my diploma and be working, if not for the nct, then for a friend who now runs private antenatal and postnatal groups (for a lot less than the nct, so she’s doing quite well!). What else am I doing? Reading, knitting, trying to slowly but surely clear my house of crap, complete my 101 in 1001 list.

See, even when I make time to come on here and write something, what I wanted to write disappears. I thought about having a little rant about my brother, but when it comes down to it, I don’t care if he’s an idiot any more. He apparently wanted to have Zoe as a flower girl at his wedding later this year but when I pushed him on it (did I need to provide a dress? If not, what about fittings, etc), he told my mum that he’d changed his mind because Zoe wouldn’t ever leave my side so what’s the point? I’m not annoyed that she won’t be a flower girl, I couldn’t care less about that. But I am annoyed that he’s made this judgement about my daughter who he’s seen twice in the last year, so, yeah, she’s not all over him, but she doesn’t even know him! She’s shy, like me, but once she gets to know someone, she’s totally fine. My mum’s in one ear telling me how I should call him and get angry with him or try and guilt trip his fiancee into letting Zoe be a flower girl again, but I seriously couldn’t give a crap. I think it’s a lot more about my mum having no control over his wedding (because why should she, she’s not the mother of the bride. I can just imagine how it would have gone if I’d got married in the UK and heavily involved Duncan’s mum. Thank God I went abroad.

Which reminds me, Duncan’s mum. She’s starting to drive me a little bit crazy from thousands of miles away.  She’s talking about coming over to stay for an undetermined amount of time, which was inevitable, she did it with Zoe after all. But she keeps saying September and I keep saying to Duncan that September is just about the worst time – Zoe starts school so will be out of the house all day and potentially an exhausted nightmare when she gets home each night (judging by friends and their children starting school, they’ve been properly shattered for the first few weeks afterwards) and I start working again. I said July/August would be a far better time to come over – when Zoe’s off school, the weather’s nice, Eloise has her 1st birthday in August and Duncan can take a bit of time off and spend it with his mum rather than leaving me to entertain her endlessly. But no-one seems to be listening to me. I just know she’s going to announce one day she’s booked the tickets without telling us the dates beforehand. We also wanted to go to Blackpool for the weekend in September, take Zoe to see the lights, visit the Pleasure Beach, but we can’t book this until we know what his mum’s doing. And don’t even get me started on the crap she comes out with on Skype each week – expecting Zoe to be some sort of performing monkey each time – "Zoe, do this, do that!" and if she doesn’t, then the guilt trip is laid on – "Don’t you love your grandma?"  FFS! She usually calls around 6pm, by which point, Zoe is pretty tired and not really up to doing anything. But you can’t explain that to her. Plus the other stuff – spoiling Eloise by co-sleeping, picking her up when she cries, etc, etc. She seriously does my head in, I can’t evenn begin to imagine how insane she’d drive me if I had to live in the same country as her.

So, there you go, turns out I had a bit more to say than I thought I did. Maybe I shouldn’t leave it so long.

Until there is a next time…
xx