Tight Butts

I've been thinking lately, thinking so much I'm getting dizzy: as soon as Illy Bean can sit up and support her own neck, I am learning that lil' girl to eat grub from a spoon! 

Right now she's almost turning onto her stomach, which is supercute to watch. She struggles a little, and makes cute little struggling noises, and then I help her lift her tiny, though enormously heavy for her, legs, to flip over. Then she lifts her cute little coconut husk head on its wobbly neck stem and looks around like a turtle, like a mini jiminy cricket, peeking out from under her little forehead. She has really high hair at the moment. No matter how I comb it flat to her head after her bath, it perks up like a little cockatoo quiff.

SO, the reason why I have been thinking about getting Illy in solids ASAP is that she won't take to the bottle, no matter what size or shape teat, no matter if it's this or that brand formula or even goat's milk formula. This means that she only breastfeeds, which also means that nobody can look after her but me, which means that I am basically Cow On Tap in this house.

It also means my plans to get back into shape have been severely thwarted, not the least by my overwhelming lazy bone. It's huge! It keeps me stranded on the bed when I (mentally) want to aerobicise my fats away.

While I write this, that goddam Anna Farris Tight Butt is breathily saving her sorority house in cheerleader skirts and bikini tops in House of Bunny. So funny.  I love that movie :)

Also, Illy is busily sucking her thumb and fingers in a noisy reminder to me that she WILL NOT suck on a pacifier, thank you very much mum. Her little home sewn black leg warmers which I made before she was born turn her little pea-green polka-dotted onesie into rather a cool outfit. 

Some of you out there might be going, yeah yeah yeah, she's adorable, just like any other baby that looks at you with those funny lovey dovey eyes and then smirks as you go googley eyed at her. Heard it all before, blahblahblah. Eyes like pools of deep adoration that look right into your very soul, cheeks like pillows of cushiony cream designed like human memory foam - especially for long noisy pressy kisses -  and that smell, god what do they call that baby smell? Surely it has it's own name? 

BUT I'm GETTING OFF POINT HERE... What I mean to write about is that because Illy must keep me by her side practically all the time, I cannot sneak out of the house to do errands, or embark on my highly sophisticated plan of getting back into PREMOTHER shape. That's right folks, I said preMOTHER, not prePREGNANCY. That means my goal is to be lean, taut and SIXTY FOUR KILOS you understand what I'm saying? None of this "5 kilo" nonsense! The mind is prepared, the body would follow if the baby would be fed by others.

Sigh. She's a week shy of four months, so my dreams have yet to even begin to come to fruition. Since she's only just holding up her head whilst being held upright, it's a ways to go. I'm thinking, another two months at least before she sits up unaided.

I have also been thinking long and hard about what else I would like to do since I am more or less a mum and housekeeper (not really a housewife since my husband is not a house) and no longer working on production.

I must say, Illy Bean is great company to have all day. She doesn't say much and when she does, it's very meaningful with lots of eye-contact. Every now and then she tests her vocals and lately has been screeching, which is quite a feat. She has a good set of well-rounded lungs and can be very loud, alarmingly so, even when she is not angry or upset at all, which she very very rarely is. She has stopped projectile vomiting. She used to soak my mattress with about a cup of milk vomit. As I look at her now, she has been chewing on her fist for about half an hour, very loudly, sounding a bit like a balloon being twisted into an animal by a party clown - loud, squeaky, slightly scary. 

I've been looking after Illy alone, and apart from a few days' help from my lovely mother who has flown from Sabah a few times since the birth, and help from my inlaws who will take in my gromety older girls for a day or two to allow me to spend the whole day lying down with the baby (hurray for remote controls and laptops!), or out walking the mall strips :)

My new boyfriends are Tom Norrington-Davies the Great British Food chef who is rather fun with his dry self-deprecating sense of humour, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the Hobbity urbane farmer from River Cottage. My new girlfriend is the newly-polished and lean Anna Olson, whose Fresh is just as lovely to watch for its colour and visual pop as it is to imagine cooking all those lovely recipes. We all know that cooking shows are mostly for viewing pleasure anyway, not for any documentary value!

Illy in discussion with Dada

Wearing the beret I crocheted for her.

And relaxing while watching the Older Gromits at their Sports Day.

Speaking of whom:

Older Gromit One

Older Gromit Two.