Who covers for Mum?

I'm on day eight of the cold from hell. I've gone through sore throat, stuffy head, tickly cough, stuffy nose, lost voice, snotty cough, and I'm quite frankly fed up of it!

My first mistake was being Mum. Baby Badger came down with a cold last Wednesday, and the poor thing was sneezing snot everywhere and really not happy about it. The stoopid voice inside my head was grateful that I'd only got a sore throat and had obviously escaped the full force - Hello! Seriously, I thought that?! - and she came into bed with us for the night for some extra comfort and unrestricted booby milk. It did, of course, mean I got much less sleep than normal as our bed is simply not big enough for the three of us, and the cold took hold. Bah!

My second mistake was attempting to carry on regardless: I had a full week of evening activities that I didn't want to cancel. A couple of years ago I could have done it. Apparently now I can't. Bah!!

This wasn't intended to be a rant about feeling unwell, honestly! It is, after all, just a bad cold. I guess my main point here is this: who covers for Mum when she's ill? I had one relatively recuperating day while Baby Badger was still ill so we spent most of it in bed together feeding and sleeping, but for the rest of the week I've had a bright and bushy tailed 11½ month old wanting stories, games, food, carrying around and general full-on awake attention while I've worked my way through mountains of tissues (which I then had to stop her from eating).  Exhausting! It was such bad timing: family members were either away or unavailable; Father Badger wasn't able to work from home at all.

So... what tips do you have for low effort entertaining? Not that I intend being this ill again, but it's always best to be prepared.

By the way, I was amazed at just how quickly Baby Badger recovered from the whole thing - yey for booby milk! I'm actually quite jealous that I'm taking so much longer to kick it - I've had a few people suggest that I express my milk, shove some up my nose and drink the rest. That doesn't entirely appeal, but if it's not gone in a few days I may be reduced to giving it a go...

Image: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Happy Birthday to me...!

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday dear ****!
Happy birthday to me!

No, I'm not telling you how old I am, but it's somewhere between 30 and 40 and it's not a prime number.

For the last few weeks I've had the usual questions about what I want for a present, and the honest truth is nothing. There's nothing I'm itching to have and nothing particularly I need, and I really don't see the point of people buying me something for the sake of buying me a present.

I had a lovely pre-birthday. Yesterday, as their "present" to me, Father Badger's mum and sister came round and helped me weed a flowerbed. You've not seen the state of my neglected garden, so you don't really get the scale of their generosity! It's gone from three feet high nettles, goose grass, twitch and other assorted weeds to neatly isolated plants surrounded by bare earth. Wow. I say again: wow.

I also had a lovely birthday today. Father Badger took the day off work. He and Baby Badger ran errands this morning, leaving me to lie in until 9:30, I had breakfast cooked for me and then I relaxed in a lovely hot bath to melt away the aches from yesterday's gardening. Once I was up and dressed we went off to a local farm centre to show Baby Badger dexter cattle, geese and alpacas (but mallard ducks waddling past, quacking, were definitely her favourite). We had a lovely lunch at the cafe, with Baby Badger happily scoffing our peas, potatoes and spinach (and a sneaky bit of chocolate pudding). It has truly been a lovely family day together.

As an added bonus to the day, I stepped on the scales this morning to see my change of attitude this past week has paid off: 4lb lighter than last Monday! I've enjoyed a day off with extravagant breakfast and pudding at lunchtime, but I'll knuckle down again tomorrow and see what this week can achieve.

Image: Rawich / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Steps, sleep and missing my mocha!

Baby Badger has now been in her cotbed in the nursery for two weeks, and is doing remarkably well. She has been sleeping from 11pm until 7am quite happily, so I decided it's now time to work on an earlier bedtime so that we're established with a good night's sleep and a 6:30 start in time for my return to work in June. Obviously, it was never going to go smoothly.

Monday evening went well: she was in bed asleep at 7:45 ready for my mum to babysit for an hour or so, but woke soon after 10 (luckily I was home) screaming at the top of her lungs for milk - screaming so hard that she gave herself hiccups! I got her back off to sleep again, and she woke again at 3am. I've reminded myself that compared to a few months ago when she was waking 2-3 times per night, this was actually a good night! After the recent luxury of a full night's sleep, it didn't feel so good...

I'll put forward my excuses now: after a disturbed night, day two of the new healthier me was not quite as good as day one. I had two biscuits at Baby Signing, but I did skip my usual (much enjoyed mocha) and get a  mug of tea instead. I'm not sure that entirely balances out, but it's a step in the right direction! Speaking of steps, I managed 5,777 of them, again with a 20lb Baby Badger strapped to the front of me for most of them. She did do her best to help me make up for it however, as she ate going on half of my chilli pasta bake at Baby Lunchbox! Don't you just love Baby Led Weaning?!

Image: Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A new healthier me: day one

Today is day one of a new healthier me.

I'm not expecting overnight miracles. I'm not expecting to drop all my bad eating habits overnight. I'm going to try to chip away bit by bit at the unhealthy me; try to make each day slightly better than the last.

Today started with a few aches after a lot of digging in the garden yesterday, but I dragged myself out of bed as soon as Baby Badger had finished her first booby feed at around half past seven and got on with the day.

Food-wise it's an improvement on recent weeks. Muesli for brekkie, and toasted bagels with cheese, olives and apple for lunch (shared with Baby Badger). I had a slice of toast with marmalade mid-afternoon, which shouldn't have snuck in there, but hey ho. Dinner was chicken, boiled potatoes and asparagus with a little mayo. Also, only three mugs of tea today so, on balance, a pretty good day.

What about the dreaded exercise? My pedometer says I've done 6,015 steps, and most of those were done in my MBTs*. A good 3,00 or so were done with my 11 month old daughter in a sling, so that's got to count for something!

I'm counting today as a success. Roll on day two.

* If you don't know what MBTs are, check out the UK MBT website where they explain the benefits. I can honestly say that my leg and bum muscles feel like I've spent hours in the gym!

Image: www.milletsports.co.uk

Tomorrow is the start of something new

It's been a good weekend. I spent a lot of yesterday pottering around, not getting a lot done other than relaxing and playing with Father Badger and Baby Badger.

Today was more productive: a lot of digging and weeding in the garden, plenty of laundry (boring) and a bit more playing - this time with the sticklebricks I found on a stall at a fete last weekend. Father Badger showed his typically male tendencies by immediately building a robot and something gun-shaped. I followed up with my OCD tendencies and filed them neatly into similar shape piles...

All dinner plans went out of the window as I was still digging at half past six, and we ended up having a takeaway. Obviously Baby Badger didn't have takeaway: she had yoghurt and banana, feeding herself like a big girl. Only she's not a big girl, she's 11 months old, so obviously a fair amount of the yoghurt ended up on her face, the floor, the chair, my shoulder (how?).

Tonight's takeaway is one (or possibly ten) takeaway too far. I've been thinking a lot lately about my health and weight, which is a good couple of stone too high. I've been trying to assess what goes wrong. I'm intelligent and educated: I know what I should eat, how much exercise I should get. I understand that a lot of the time I eat the right foods but too much of them. I also acknowledge that I am an emotional eater and can happily trough an entire 100g chocolate bar in one go if I think I'll feel better at the end of it.

What it appears to boil down to is willpower and motivation. A few mums have been tweeting about Thinking Slimmer, which claims to change your attitude to food rather than putting you on a diet. It sounds exactly what I need, even if I am a little sceptical.

Image: sundayhill / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Silent Sunday - 8 May 2011

Take a look at more of today's Silent Sunday posts...

Silent Sunday - 1 May 2011

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