Dropping naps…

Over the last few years, I’ve learned how to sleep in chunks. I think it all started when I signed up for a job with a 7:30 am start (I know!!). To most people this may not be a big deal, right? Well to me it was. Remember, I come from the big, bad, ‘glam’ world of advertising. There’s very little, if anything, that happens before a respectable 9:30 am. Talk 10:30 and you may well have a bit of success. Given that, and the fact that I was one of the ones that managed to be called a latecomer frequently in THAT scenario and you get my drift…

So when I got the 7.30 job, with a half hour commute… you do the numbers on the wake up time! I first decided I’d sleep way early. 9:30 in bed and 10:00 out cold, I said. Yeahhh... that didn’t work out so much! So after many months of various things I tried, I settled on a late afternoon nap to catch me up. An hour to an hour and a half saw me through some pretty rough days. So I fully respect ‘the nap’ and how great sleep time is.

And then baby came along. In the early days, all she did was nap. No day; no night. Then I slowly understood that babies needed a night sleep and some naps and that these get fewer as they grow older. Makes sense. I totally get naps, as we discovered. Now, however, the little lady is transitioning from 3 naps in a day to 2. Which is great on the one hand. Because no one said that getting the da*n baby to nap was hell warmed over.  And the less number of times we have to do it in the way, the better!

The trouble though is that we had at one stage, finally got her on something of a routine. We knew that roughly every 2 hours, she went to sleep. It might take a few minutes to get her there, and sometimes she woke, but essentially it was fairly predictable.

Now… My husband is a pretty hands-on dad (which is great, because love her as I do, I can’t see myself doing this without the now and then break). Unlike many, he actually seems to WANT to come home and hang out with her in the evenings and on the weekends so who am I to interfere ;)? But even with Mr. Great Dad, its fun to see the after effects. The other day I see him looking particularly frazzled! So I come in and ask, ‘what’s wrong?’, ‘When’s her next nap he asks,’ with a slight tinge of desperation.’ So I giggle inwardly and say innocently, ‘Not for a couple of hours yet, why?’. Of course he doesn’t answer because he’s a good guy. I then proceeded to make him feel guilty ;)… and said something like ‘Why, are you waiting till its time for her to sleep?’ And he looked shamefaced. Whaaaaat???? Why not? Its fun!!! :P

But seriously, I know where he’s coming from because I’ve been RIGHT there. Sometimes you can’t wait till its time for them to go to sleep. And then you truly appreciate how fantastic sleepy time can be! Right? Oh come on, you know you’ve been there!

Oh well...

Yesterday was the first time since I started that I didn’t post a blog on a Thursday! It was one THOSE kinds of days, I’m guessing you know the type? Oh well…

Lately though, I’ve been having a fair few of THOSE kinds of days. But usually, I manage to get the better of them. Not so much yesterday… oh well.

Oh well!

When I was little, I was brought up with a clear spiritual idea of good and evil. Whether my parents signed up for it or not, being in a school run by nuns meant that heaven and hell were introduced pretty early. You did good things, you went to heaven, and you did bad things, you went to hell they said and we respectfully believed. Well seriously… who wouldn’t? That’s pretty impressive stuff, God and the Devil… ain’t anything we were messing with. No sir!

Then as we grew older, we started to ask questions… ‘It isn’t quite that simple is it?’, we asked suspiciously. And the grey area was introduced. Bad things sometimes happen to good people they said, but its just a test. If you’re on the side of good, the other side will try to get you, they said, and the harder the troubles you overcome, the bigger the rewards. That seemed reasonable. (Over the years, the idea of paying my dues is something I’ve grown quite used to.)

And then came the beautiful concept of the guardian angel. One of the original minions of the ‘power that is’. Right there watching out for you. Making sure that what is dished out is only what you can take. The older I got, the more goose bumps that gave me. I guess that in my head then, I’d made that angel out to be this good, protective, benign force that watched out for me. With a shining cherubic face, halo and everything….

And then I went o Rome. To Castel St’Angelo. **** me! What a place. For those that don’t know, it is originally a tomb of one of the emperors and now a museum of sorts. What it has though is the most brilliant sculpture of an angel with a sword out of its sheath. Looks like he’s about to go into battle. AND WIN. Mindblowing. Call it spirituality, call it art; it is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen! Legend has it that he is sheathing his sword but not in my head :D! There’s also a bridge with various sculptures of angels; again all intimidating. That place.... took away all bland and boring images of rosy-cheeked, smiley angels which I hadn’t realized lived in my head for like a quarter century.

Do I believe all this anymore? I don’t know. I’m confused. All I know is I’m getting tired of the shyte days and need something to remind me of the good and the beautiful (No this isn’t about my baby alone. And yes I am also aware that there are millions starving and in all manner of real trouble which makes me look like an ungrateful whinger).

All I’m saying I guess is: if I am to have a guardian angel out there fighting for me, I’ll take this one please :D!

Hot tea…

So, I haven’t had a proper hot cup of tea in 7 months. ‘The tea jinx’, shall we call it? I don’t know what it is, but each time I make myself a hot cup of tea (or better still get someone else to make me one), something baby-related comes up. And much of the time not the heartwarming kind either. Its usually a giant poo incident, or a spit up, or a massive cry over something or at best some general purpose whinging. Its like she watches out to see the steam rising off the top of a cup and then sets in motion whatever diabolical plan she’s been plotting all morning in her pretty little head (albeit with dreadful hair, but that’s another story).

The first time I noticed this was when she was a few weeks old. I mentioned the odd timing to my mum and we laughed it off saying she was itty-bitty and just needed a lot of attention, so anytime was probably going to be a bad time. Little did we know that the tiny saboteur had already started :D! Since then ‘the tea jinx’ has been going strong, to the point that I have developed a slightly less than gourmet taste for microwaved tea, because I cant bring myself to throw away every un-drunk cup.

Now why is this such a big deal you ask? Because tea is all I have left *sniff*! No other vices anymore really… I barely drink because I can’t bear the pounding headaches the next day that I seem to get from even a couple of glasses of wine. (Yes, yes I know you know I’ve done a few allnighters – of the good kind – but with those I was prepared to pay the price and did. It isn’t something I do a lot though.) And that to me is huuuuuge. Also, from my preggy days, I’ve lost the taste buds that process coffee. That’s ginormously huge! So here we are with tea.

I try everything to get around it, because lets be honest, its become a bit of a funny game now (you see what us stay at home mums do to keep ourselves entertained). I make my tea when there’s no earthly chance of an interruption; like when she’s just fallen asleep, or when my husband or nanny are keeping her entertained. But nope, it’ll still be something. You see much as I love my tea, I love my baby girl more *blush* (yes I’ve said something deeply sentimental, lets move on ;)) .

This week should be especially interesting. Now that she’s just had her shots, I prepare for a weekend of no sleep and cold tea. You see, when you’re as tired as we are when she gets the vaccine crankies, there’s nowhere to go but up… even cold tea helps ;). So that’s what I’ll be drinking by the litre. But enough about me, lets talk about you. What’s your plan this weekend? I hope you’re doing something fun for us!

Obsessive compulsive…

I’m a little obsessive compulsive. No, I lie! I’m a lot obsessive compulsive. Even back when I was little, though the actual term didn’t exist, I definitely knew I had some sort of issue when it came to neat-and-clean-ness.

I probably first realized it in the context of my family. We have these cousins who are the poster children for OCD. They would sit at the edge of their seats on public transport because they were afraid of the train-and-bus-cooties. When they came into their home, they’d actually fully wash up in an external restroom, built specifically for that purpose, so that they wouldn’t pollute anything. And that is just the tip of the OCD iceberg. The craziness ran deep :P. And needless to say, they were universally mocked for it. But even as I laughed along, some part of me, deep down, knew that I had a bit of it. As did my sister :D. So while people blamed their oddness on the ‘other side’ of the family, I figured maybe ‘this side’ wasn’t completely innocent ;).

Now that I’m married, and live with my husband, I realize that I have actually found someone who makes my OCD look tame. He’s a neat freak and I’m a clean freak (we’re talking specialties here, that’s not to say we’re not fussed about the rest). We feed off of each other. So he’d sulk and gripe if I kicked off my shoes anywhere but into the shoe cupboard. And I’d fuss and grumble if he didn’t rinse out his mugs and plates instantly, and do the cr*p out of the laundry! So essentially, until recently, if you came to ours, you’d find it almost scarily clean and in place. And I say until recently because that’s when our daughter came along! Need I say more? Probably not, but I’m going to ;).

I was always one of those people who had strong opinions on how a home should look. There is no excuse in today’s world for bad design, I said. And if I ever had a child, I’d never let ‘its’ stuff creep into my space and take over, I also said. Ha! Kids stuff goes EVERYWHERE. So between the bold contrasts of our walls (they’re turquoise and brown) and the ‘rainbow threw up’ scheme of most kids toys, our house looks like the kind of thing that’d make me run screaming in the past. But, we’ve gritted our teeth, and coped.

And then there’s the feeding! Oh GOD. She’s recently started on solids and the process of feeding a child solids I think is an exercise you need to take if you’re trying to curb OCD issues! You can go one of two ways: you either feed them purees – which they spit and smear all over themselves and, if you’re not careful, stick their hands into. Or you can give them finger food and encourage them to feed themselves – which involves gumming and spitting and squashing and throwing of things. God help me! I do a mixture of the two, and shudder, even let her hold the spoon in an effort to encourage her to explore and generally not get our hang ups. Gosh, this is costing me a fortune is acidity meds to combat all that heartburn from the stress.

Oh well, all I can say is, the things you do for your kids boggles the mind. And hey, in the process we’re getting free therapy to break the habits of a lifetime, yes?

Dubai troubles…

There’s been a lot of jokes recently about ‘Dubai troubles’… You know the kind of thing we Dubaians find to be a huge issue, which, really, in the rest of the world is… ummm… life! Things like ‘oh no the maid is sick, who’ll make my tea?!!?’ or ‘my son wants his birthday party at the Burj Al Arab but the ballroom is bigger at the Emirates Palace’ or, or, or… ‘what do I do in the 5 minutes it takes for the guy to fill my tank and wash my windscreen… can’t even use my phone, damnit!’. People in Dubai have been mocked for their rich people problems quite consistently, because lets face it, a. its funny and, b. it is a bit close to the bone isn’t it?

Believe me, I’ve seen (and had ;)) my share of these troubles. I’ve met people who whine non-stop about taxi drivers and service staff not getting it (these are the people paid tiny salaries in glamsville, and trying to make it). Here’s what happened with my next door neighbor the day we moved into our current place… the windows hadn’t been fixed yet after the renovation on moving day, so we had workmen from the landlord, and moving guys and delivery people all over while I just tried to stay out of the way. Now one of the guys fixing the window decided it would be a good idea to go get the neighbour’s outdoor table and use it to cut the glass for the window. Not smart (or maybe very smart; he’s using resources available to get the job done :p). The neighbor, whom we’ve since established is mildly grouchy, storms into our open house, finds the first workman, takes him to the table and asks ‘What is this? Is this your table? Tell me, is this your table!?’ Seriously dude? This poor guy was from the depths of Bangladesh somewhere, he doesn’t get your snide remarks. He just wants to do his job well and go home. Just tell him not to use the table and move on! But you see, here, this sort of thing is quite common. Guess it happens when there are a huge number of people, from different parts of the world and different rungs on the ‘ladder’, being thrown together. In fairness though for every one of those there are atleast a few here who do loads for workers to improve their conditions of living, overpay their help out of guilt, tip everyone in the hope of making their life a tiny bit better, give huge amounts to charity, and really, think overall that spontaneous kindness is a way of life.

Now for the ‘had’ part… yes, yes, I’ll confess! This is me this week, ‘Oh no, the pram is in the other car, how will I take my daughter for a walk?’. And ‘Crap, the grocery delivery store (across the road) wont pick up the phone, and I need milk!’.

I’ll admit, under the right circumstances, life here can be pretty darn charmed. And why not, we work like hell to get what we have - well my husband does :P; what??? I did too until recently! (Don’t know a lot of people here who switch off after 5.) And we play hard. We do our bit to ease conscience when guilt strikes, and we can laugh along when you lot poke fun at us! That can’t be bad. And, things aren’t always as easy as they look, right? So maybe put that into the context of the jokes the next time you hear one :).