serialdeviant.org(y)

My daughter clearly isn’t impressed with having a ribbon tied round her head.

As a lifelong tomboy, I am extremely pleased.

So I tried this method of ‘mess-free’ finger painting (I used the second option). My conclusions:

1. Anne was more interested in trying to scrunch up the paper and put it in her mouth, so she’s probably too young.
2. If you use regular copier paper and acrylic paints, and your baby decides she needs to nap right now immediately after the activity, the paint will dry and stick the cling film and paper together. ‘Masterpiece’ destroyed.

Next: paint in a ziplock bag! I wonder if she’ll be more fascinated by that.

There was also a cackle-filled attempt at Greco-Roman wrestling between Anne and Bethany in Starbucks. They’re going to be a handful!

Anyone who knows me reasonably will be aware that I have never enjoyed cooking. Eating, yes, but food preparation just doesn’t do it for me. It stresses me out. And yet I have cooked almost every day for the past two weeks, at least twice a day (yes, making oat porridge counts as cooking in my universe). I’m no closer to liking the chore, but I at least know I can make decent food if I have to. And all because I want my child to eat a varied and healthy diet. Although her favourite thing at the moment is fromage frais because it tastes like ice cream.

It occurred to me that a business sure to fail would be that of a Sikh barber.

After ten months, I finally got round to making a sock monkey for Anne. Here is Doug, helpfully carrying the baby.

She tried to grab it when it wasn’t complete and we saw her first tantrum of sorts when I took it away from her. But now it’s finished (only took me a full week to make a tiny monkey) and she can have it.

What it doesn’t have is a name. She has so many soft toys I’ve given up. Her favourite cat plushie is named Cat. So help me come up with a name!

Update: his name is Boris.

Is a plastic cup.

Neil owns a huge stack of teeshirts (at varying levels of stylishness). But he does tend to wear a few over and over again. Here he is, with his first-born when she was about half a month old, and she’d just had her first bath:

And the same shirt again, after giving Anne her shower (she’s about nine and a half months old):

(It’s not the same towel. She grew out of that hooded one within a few weeks and complained that it was too thin.)

Even if loads of people didn’t like her professional life, all these parties and nasty postings and songs are just rather tacky and in poor taste.

I’m having a bit of a saga with my Seiko 5 automatic watch, which has now gone in for its third repair in two months. I had to go into town to do this as it’s still under guarantee, and a couple of amusing / interesting / puzzling things happened on my way back.

If you live in a house in Swindon you’ll have been visited by Mormons. As we live in a flat with a security entry, we do not (although I wish our neighbours would stop jamming the lock open). On my way back from the jewellers, a couple of young Mormons stopped me to ‘chat’. I’m not sure if I should be impressed by their dedication or annoyed at their opportunism, as they were collecting a pizza at the time. Maybe they thought a new mum would be susceptible to believing in a god?

And then, as I was making my way through town to get my bus back home, I noticed a woman walking in front of me as she had an interesting HP backpack (rectangular, black with blue accents — probably a freebie, but I liked the shape). She was looking around her as though she might be lost, and I was about to ask if she needed help, but then I changed my mind because she wasn’t really wandering in that way lost people do. She was walking a little too slowly, though, so I made to get past her. The moment I drew level with her, she sped up and cut me off. I would have written it off as a coincidence if it didn’t happen again and again and again (and again a few more times), through the main pedestrian drags in the town centre.

She was making it really obvious that she was following me from the front, by looking about her all the time, not letting me pass her at all, and slowing down where I might turn and quickly cutting me off if I did. I was getting quite annoyed and considered asking her why she was following me, but decided to try losing her as my bus was waiting at the stance. So I stopped once I got to the stances as though I was looking for the right bus, which forced her to move past the bus I wanted, which I then hopped onto quick smart (and checked she didn’t get on behind me — she didn’t). I didn’t want to confront her because I’ve watched too many ‘people are trying to scam you’ teevee shows and figured she was after a confrontation for a reason, i.e. either to claim I assaulted her or for an accomplice to slash my backpack / pick my pockets by forcing things to get heated. I think I was targeted because I had Anne in a carrier and therefore possibly easily distracted.

Or am I just being paranoid? She was definitely following me. I looked around for an accomplice following me from behind now and again but didn’t spot one. I’ve reported it to the police just so that if it is a scam, they have a description of one of them (vague, but something’s better than nothing). Just to be clear, I have all my stuff, so no crime was committed.

And that is what I perceive as my public service done for the day. Back to having some sort of rhinovirus!

Has Michele Bachmann finally gone too far? Of course — but don’t we come to expect this total crap from politicians now?