Okay, so we didn’t make it to London on Thursday – we’ve rescheduled for June 8th as I have been in called in to talk about my return to work in light of a restructure. Sounds ominous – which is good – but I’ll talk about that another day.

We did, however, go to a few other interesting places this weekend.

The first thing we did in France was go to Canada (well, sort of). The Vimy Memorial land is owned by Canada, has Government of/du Canada signs all over it, and is populated with Canadian students working and Canadians visiting it, so that’s practically Canada, right? I told Mark to get his passport out, ha ha. So Oliver got to go to Canada and I dressed him appropriately for this first visit:

On Sunday, we had a tiring yet mostly good day in Paris. He alternated between sleeping through attractions (here, at the Eiffel Tower):
(sidenote: thank god we brought the Baby Bjorn with us as Paris is not pushchair friendly at all – if you can do it, leave the pushchair at home as the Metro/RER becomes a nightmare)

Or screaming them down. In the past few weeks, he’s developed a really high pitched scream that started off as a scream of delight. Recently this has morphed into an ear-piercing scream of distress that seems to mean “NO I WILL NOT HAVE A NAP DESPITE YOUR BEST EFFORTS TO GET ME TO SLEEP” and/or “MY EMERGING TEETH ARE KILLING ME”. I can’t even begin to describe how loud and high-pitched it is. Yes, we know we have been dealing with the run-up to teething for a while, but he’s really feeling the pain and knashing hard on anything he can get in his mouth. Stick a finger in there and you might not get it back.

So anyway, he screamed down the Eiffel Tour once we got up it, he screamed down a tour boat on the Seine (as this is what you do when you have a handful of a child – you pay for a sit down boat tour and you forget about the last time you went to Paris, as a student, and managed to walk and explore everywhere). He also screamed down restaurants, but luckily we managed to sit outside for dinner every night except Monday, where I had to run him outside to calm him down while Mark paid the bill. And he screamed down the ferry. I don’t deal with him very well when he gets like this – I want to chuck him in the Channel – so thankfully Mark takes him for a walk and he calms down when he has new things to look at. I hate that people are getting annoyed with us and moving seats away from us when he starts. But I don’t know how to quell it.

In Spain, baby stuff seemed expensive, although he did get some little swimming trunks and a souvenir boy in traditional costume. In France, baby stuff was supremely affordable. On a trip to the hypermarket where we bought our wedding booze a year and a half ago, we ended up getting him a wooden high chair, 20 pairs of socks, and various items only costing 1 Euro (such as a teething ring – this is good as the dog has actually eaten all his other teething rings). No souvenirs this time, though. I also got him a set of overall shorts with matching t-shirts, including one that is embellished with ‘les aventures de Jim, special sailor boy’. Sounds kinky.

And this weekend, he managed to roll from his back to his front for the first time. He hates being on his front, which is not good, as you learn when you have a baby that they need to have tummy time, and I know that I don’t give him enough. But rolling is good, rolling is development, and it means I have new things to worry about, which keeps me on my toes.

Another bad thing – am officially a Really Bad Mother now. I didn’t drop him on his head, I didn’t forget him in a shopping mall – I let him get sunburnt. We got caught out in Paris. At our hotel in the suburbs it was threatening rain and slightly chilly. We got out at Les Invalides and it was brilliantly sunny and warm. Despite a hat and a shady umbrella on the pushchair, I forgot the sunscreen and he’s got a pink nose, cheeks and arms. It’s not a bad burn but it’s still a burn and he is so not even supposed to get any sun. So we dished out some serious cash on some Vichy cell repairing after sun balm and it seems to be healing. I feel terrible. Never mind that Mark and I got really cooked and are sore with the sunburns too, it’s the red face of the baby that convinces me that people are looking at us and shaming me.

It was Mother’s Day in France on Sunday (my third one so far, pretty good considering he’s only 5 months old!) and I kept getting given roses for my pains – once at a small supermarket, once at a McDonalds’ for breakfast (yes there is also shame in eating McD’s when travelling to wonderful countries with great food – but I have to tell you, they also do the best tasting Bacon and Egg McMuffin you will ever taste in France; plus, we were on the road and needed a quick and cheap brekky).

I’ll put the rest of the story of the trip on the main blog and photos on Flickr, in between unpacking and cleaning. I can’t believe I actually managed to write this entire post without the screaming boy awakening the village… can not remember when I have been able to write so much during the day. A nice change!

Oliver and I are excited because we feel like minor celebrities today!
We got a mention on Blogging Baby, which I recently started to check out as Kristin started writing for them, and she writes one of my most favourite blogs ever.

So we have some new website traffic today from interesting places – glad I just added the sitemeter so I can see where people are coming from!

Gee, Jen Creer, who wrote the post, makes my life sound so good!! She caught me on a good week. I spend most of my time being envious of everyone with a baby who lives near their family and friends and/or in an urban area! Plus I am getting slightly stressed out as to how Oliver is going to act being out ALL day in London tomorrow, and then during long car rides to France this weekend.

Anyway, no time to worry. In frantic packing mode. Was going to do it all tonight but we just got word that Mark’s sister has passed her medical school finals (hurrah!), is now a bona fide doctor, and we are all due at his mum’s for a mini-celebration tonight.

So is there any truth in the news that I heard today that I should not be giving Oliver parsnips because they cause bad tummies in babies and possibly colic? ‘Cause he’s loving the parsnip. He’s not reacted so positively to a vegetable yet! Me, I don’t like them despite my best efforts, not even roasted with maple syrup.

Our post-natal group sort of bonded at the last minute and decided to continue getting together – so most of us met up today at a pub near a reservoir to go for a walk. But it started raining so we ended up inside with coffees and cakes. With six babies we ended up with 2 pushchairs, 2 car seats and one lap sitter. And then two more mums came in with two more pushchairs, and then also a dad with a baby in a backpack. And this place has no highchairs and no baby changing tables and it’s pretty small! Oh well, they make good cake.

I went to the clinic afterwards as my ride was going there as well, and got him weighed for the first time in a while. He’s just shy of 17 pounds and seems to be following the 50th percentile line now, after starting on the 9th. Saw my health visitor again too, which was nice – she’s so good, despite probably having a huge caseload – she always remembers what’s going on with us.

Busy week actually as Thursday him and I are going into London to visit my work colleagues all day – we will go in fairly early with Mark and then we have dates for breakfast and lunch in different parts of Westminster. Then Friday the three of us are going to France for the weekend.

I randomly just signed up for MySpace and suddenly found these people from high school and started reading their profiles. And found someone I did a class with in grade 13 is using the lovely woman who made my wedding invitations to do her wedding favours. How random. On the Uncommon Bride website, you can see our wedding invites.

So then for some reason I thought I should google myself. As my name is there on the invite. And oh boy look what I found!

They used to call me Craig. Now they call me the blonde bombshell . . .
LORRY driver Emma Bowman is a little bit different from your average trucker.

It’s unusual to find a woman in front of 30 tonnes of cargo, hurtling down the M1 at 55mph.And it’s even more unusual to find a woman trucker who used to be a man!Emma Bowman, aged 35, from Rotherham, has finally found happiness after finding herself trapped inside a man’s body for much of her adult life.The blonde trucker now spends her days happily travelling the length and breadth of the country, attracting wolf whistles and friendly waves.It took many years of confusion and a failed marriage to convince Dinnington-born ex-miner Craig that he should in fact be Emma.But now the chatty transsexual is well on the way to what will be a £25,000 transformation into a woman. Already she has undergone hormone treatment, a nose job, facial implants and breast implants at Rotherham’s Birkdale Clinic.A chin implant is on the way, along with a final operation to transform Craig, a miner who worked underground at Shirebrook colliery, Notts, into Emma.But the costs have not simply been financial. Emma has endured years of heartache, confusion and grief as she and her family tried to come to terms with the transformation.The price she has paid has been the highest with her family – with only her dad, Alistair, still talking to her. Her mum and brother have disowned her – which she is finding tough to come to terms with.”I think I first realised I was a transsexual at just five-years-old,” said Emma, who lives in Goldthorpe.”I got married when I was 23 and had a beautiful daughter. Unfortunately we were divorced after just seven years but I met another woman who I lived with for three years.”When this relationship also came to an end I felt very hurt and confused and couldn’t understand why women could keep being so cruel to me. I realised that it was probably something to do with my condition, which I had never told anybody about, that was not allowing me to open up and be myself.”I went to see my GP but she was very unsympathetic. She put me on a waiting list to go to a gender clinic in Rotherham but two-and-a-half years later I am still waiting for an appointment.”I decided to look on the internet and buy some female hormones to try and make the transition happen myself. I took these hormones for about a year until I realised I had to get professional help.”Emma saw a psychiatrist who specialised in gender issues and was prescribed hormone treatments in the correct dosages and now attends the clinic every three months to have blood tests to measure her hormone levels.She said: “It has been two years since I started the transition and it feels fantastic to finally be able to live how I want to. As who I am.”My best friend has been incredibly supportive, although he would not believe me at first until I went round to his house dressed up as Emma!”When he saw me dressed like that he realised I was serious and was impressed how long I had felt like this and how determined I was to change.”Emma says life as a woman is ten times better than being a man, although she still feels a little confused sometimes and yearns for a long-term steady relationship.”Women have much more power than blokes! Now I’m beginning to feel what it’s like to have the upper hand. People have said I look gorgeous and that’s great, but I just want to fit in and have people accept me for what I am.”I also want to help others in my position and also try to break down barriers with people who may have reservations and say ‘I am a normal person, not a pervert or something’.”Emma stands at 5ft 8in, slips into a very feminine size 10 or 12 dress size and wears size 8 shoes.”I’m lucky in that I’m not too big, but I needed the work on my face to make it real. It’s like a jigsaw and every piece has to fit to make it right.”Emma now works as a trucker for Grampian County Foods, in Thorne. Only last week, she received national recognition after police praised her for helping to avert a motorway tragedy.Emma risked her life when she saw an articulated lorry swerving repeatedly across two lanes of a crowded motorway. She chased the truck, sped past and then cut across its path to bring it to a halt on the hard shoulder.Emma added: “People now call me the blonde bombshell truck driver! The change is remarkable. I feel so much more confident and comfortable in my body than before. “I have also started attracting attention from men which I love.”

09 May 2005
Sheffield Today News

Oh my god!! It’s not me, I swear. Well of course it isn’t, she’s a size 10. That is so hilarious. I need to meet her.

Found out this morning that Oliver has a new second cousin! My cousin Peter and his wife Mary Joy, who live in Baltimore in the States, are adopting a baby boy from Korea who was born on 31st March. They’ve named him Nicholas Ji-hun, first name after our Uncle Nick. They get to bring him home in a few months time, so I hope that we’ll be able to see them soon after that. It’s great for my grandparents too – they get to be great-grandparents to two little boys now! And kind of cool as our family already has a connection with Korea, as me and my family lived in Seoul for 2 years when I was little. So that’s very exciting. He looks so peaceful!

How insane and stupid is this? Your kid finally sleeps through the night. Well, almost – he’s actually going a bit less than he was a few weeks ago. He’s generally down from 9ish to 5 or 6am ish, then I put him back to sleep, then he has a quick feed around 7:30am, then goes back to sleep, then we get up just before 9.

So anyway, as I was saying, your kid finally sleeps even almost through the night. But what do you do? You wake up in the night, convince yourself that he must be dead as he is so quiet on the baby monitor, despite the fact he hasn’t woken up at 2am or 4am for weeks and so this is completely normal for him to be completely quiet at this time. But he could be – Mark put him to sleep last night, what if he accidentally put him too near a stuffed animal. Or what if he gets overheated. And so your mind races. Until you finally hear a snuffle or a sigh. And eventually you go back to sleep. Press repeat – this happens almost every night. And I know how silly it is.

I’m never going to get a proper night’s sleep again, am I???

Can someone leave a comment and let me know if they also can’t see my flickr photos on the sidebar? I tried to re-post the code to my template and republish but it doesn’t seem to be working and I am not sure why.

Being at home means that my life currently revolves around the television. I’m not always watching it, but I do almost always have it on. We don’t have good radio reception here, and I now seem to only like listening to CD’s in the car once we are out of my London radio station broadcasting area. I need the background noise for company or I think I would probably go insane, as Oliver, Piper and Piglet don’t exactly talk back to me.

So the day goes like this – if we are up before 9, it’s BBC Breakfast or I put on some colourful kids show for Oliver to look at to pass some time. We usually aren’t up before 9 though. So at 9 it’s The Wright Stuff (I like Matthew Wright). And we move on as follows: Oprah (they just moved it to the mornings from the afternoon, annoyingly) or Entertainment Tonight, This Morning, lunchtime news on various channels, Taste, old ER, Ready Steady Cook, The Paul O’Grady Show (even though I kind of hate it) – and then the day is over, the 6 o’clock news is on, and Mark comes home.

But then the evenings lately are too good to miss. For some reason, all the good tv shows are on at 10pm right now (almost all) and normally here in the UK they kind of stagger showing them, and start them at weird times of the year. But almost every night I’ve got compelling viewing at 10pm – Lost, Desperate Housewives, ER (although kind of crappy this year), House (9pm), and Grey’s Anatomy (although I am struggling to get into it – but Sam told me I have to give it a chance as it will get really good, it’s only just started). And now, it’s Big Brother time again in the UK – which means weeks and weeks of tv that I don’t want to watch but somehow I will. I can’t do the live feed though, I have to only watch the highlights show or it’s way too much.

God this is sad. I used to think I was a homebody but I really need to get out of the house more! I hate being here all day. But Oprah and another cup of coffee calls (even if she is 3 months out of date). So I better go.

This weekend was good. After trying the pool in Spain to no success, we decided to try Oliver on a warm kiddie pool here. The closest leisure centre, where they do baby swimming classes, has actually closed their small pool for 5 weeks, so we went to another one. It turned out to be a good move – to our first confusion and then happiness, they have one giant changeroom for everyone. Meaning that I don’t have to wrestle with Oliver and changing him on my own while trying to get in or out of my bathing suit. We can all do it together! Fun fun. And Oliver was a champ – he spent 30 minutes in the busy kiddie pool looking at all the other kids and getting lots of exercise. Mark did some laps, and then came back and joined us. If you lay Oliver sort of on his tummy, he kicks everywhere, and he just generally moved around a lot and enjoyed himself. Too bad I didn’t take the camera.

And yesterday, it was redemption Mother’s Day number two (the Canadian one, to make up for the UK one). Oliver (in his infinite cleverness) got me a whole KILO of Dairy Milk and nice flowers. A kilogram of chocolate is not a good thing when you are stuck in the house with little inspiration for lunches or breakfasts.

It’s our last baby massage/post natal group meeting this week, which is a shame as it means we’ll be getting out of the house less. And I don’t feel brave enough to head out to these local mum and tot groups they hold at church or village halls without knowing anyone.

Food continues to be downed with amazing ease. Oliver has now tried apples (loves), pears (loves), carrots (okay), butternut squash (okay) and avocado with banana (okay). I’m really enjoying getting him on solids.

Midwives tell mums: pain is good for you (Sunday Times)

Dame Karlene Davis, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said women ought to regard distress during labour as “productive pain”.

“The pain of labour is a productive sort of pain with a satisfying outcome of a nice healthy baby,” she said.

Davis added that some women who opt for an epidural feel they have missed out.

They have suggested starting to charge women who ask for epidurals, although apparently the National Health Service says no way. When I heard about this story, I just wanted to kill the woman as I didn’t feel I had anything resembling productive pain. After the last full-on epidural/spinal I had (after having a mobile epidural, which I had after a useless TENS machine and gas & air), I grabbed my midwives hand and said “thank you, I don’t feel like I am dying anymore!”. Surely some people (e.g. me) are worthy enough of pain relief? If it had been easy and cope-able, which I wish it had, yes it would have been nice to limit myself to gas & air, but it sucked! Big time!

Has anyone had issues with bottle feeding after moving on to solids? Oliver has started fussing and arching his back when I try to feed him, and will often only take a bottle if I put him in a chair or something and feed him without holding him. Just in the last week or so. Is this not weird? However, solids are going so well that he ate almost an entire apple for lunch today. Just kept munching away. The big pig.

I don’t know what’s going on but I can’t get blogger or flickr to post photos. So you are going to have to go to my Spain photos on flickr here to see anything that goes with this story. I haven’t even been able to post this until today anyway, had to save it as draft as it wouldn’t publish before. Weird. Anyway…

Back from Spain which was a mixed sort of holiday. We knew going out there that we were going to stay in a holiday let owned by Mark’s dad in a place where there are lots of other holiday homes, lots of beaches and not so much culture. Not my normal idea of a good time, I would have preferred Madrid and/or Barcelona or similar, but we planned this as the first trip with the baby ages ago as we knew it’d be relatively easy to get there (2 hour flight from the local airport) and easy to handle his routine in a self-catering place.

And the Costa Blanca is a sort of nightmare of thousands upon thousands of new-build holiday homes, Chinese buffets and full English breakfasts. We did, with some effort, manage to find a bit of the ‘real’ Spain which was highly satisfying to my soul. We took a big drive out to the mountains south of Murcia, drove around and had a picnic in a national park, and found a little town out on a promontory that featured a nice old church and a ruined medieval castle. It had been pouring at the house that day, so thankfully the weather was a little better in the hills.

The day before we left, the sun came out in full splendour and we managed to find the Torrevieja (tore-a-vee-eck-a) May Fair on the city’s waterfront by following the trails of little girls dressed in gorgeous flamenca dresses! Young and old came out for the parade, including dancing horses.

The rest of the week, we visited a cave with in the hills near Alicante (though Harrison’s Cave in Barbados is better, not that I am biased), a market in San Miguel de Salinas, and saw white flamingos fishing in salt water flats.

We had some decent Italian and Mexican food (Spanish food is my idea of hell, ewww to tapas, so luckily there wasn’t much around). And one of my all time favourite things to do in foreign countries is go grocery shopping! So thankfully we spent a lot of time at the Carrefour hypermarket. I have to say that compared to other European countries I have been too, it wasn’t that exciting, but they did feature a wall of meat (cured pig legs) that you don’t see too often!

Next up is a long weekend in northern France and Paris in 2.5 weeks, and we’ve just booked a week staying in an ancestral home (converted into holiday lets) in deepest northern Scotland at the end of July/beginning of August.

In other news, we’ve just heard that I am approved as a sponsor to get Mark into Canada, and we just have to wait for the Canadian High Commission here to process his permanent resident visa, which should take 6 months or less…