Baby Squawks

Oh can you take him...
I can't take it. I'm gonna go mad.  I'm going mad. I've gone mad. I'm mad. I'm better. Right I'm going out. I'm out. I'm in. I'm losing it. I've lost it. I'm lost. I'm found. I've found it again.  I'm going mad. I've gone mad. I'm mad. I'm bad. I'm good. I'm ok. I'm going out. I'm out. I'm out of it. I'm ok. Really. I'm ok.  Honestly I'm fine. It's fine. I'm ok. I'm back. I'm not. I'm gonna go mad. I'm going mad. I've gone mad. I'm losing it. It's wrong. I've lost it. I've had enough. I can't take it.
Oh give him to me...

How to get through the day without any sleep

Having a little baby that won't go to sleep at bed time can be hard to cope with, especially if they are not sleeping through and waking up for feeds during the night.  The lack of sleep soon starts to show. You know, forgetting what day it is, using salt for sugar and making gravy with coffee granules, leaving the baby on the bus (did anyone actually do that, I wonder?)

They say you should tank them up during the day so that they don't want to drink at night time, but that has seemed to have the opposite effect and makes the young lad want more during the night, although I realise now that it s a growing spurt and he had his immunisation jabs too, which can leave them out of sorts for a few days. 

We were co-sleeping which was so much easier for the feeding, but we are now introducing a cot, so attempting to soothe him with shushing and patting and lots of love.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it is still early days and he's sleeping in the cot during the day time naps so we can't complain.  He doesn't scream loads at bedtime, just gets a bit grizzly and doesn't settle.  I've taken to doing some baby massage to relieve the wind, that works and I'm going to start the routine a little earlier because I'm wondering if he just gets overtired. 

I shall start to introduce water during the night-times too so waking up doesn't seem so appealing.  Drinking plenty of water yourself rather than coffee helps to keep the body surviving on 3 hours sleep and trying to eat healthy food that nourishes the body rather than always reaching for the biscuit barrel...

So you can try lots of different things to help the sleep through, but in the meantime my best advice to myself is to sleep when he sleeps!  So simple, easy to do at the beginning but tougher when you start wanting to get on with the household chores.  Having a thoughtful husband who takes him off for a couple of hours on a weekend morning gives valuable catch up sleep time too. 

He's sleeping right now, so what am I doing?! zzz

Home made wine

So we've just had a baby, moved house, made umpteen jars of chutney and jam and are now embarking on the home made wine ~ are we mad? Of course!

The wine idea came because Jam's Grandad's greenhouse hasn't been touched for a couple of years and it was completely jammed with grapevines. A massive trunk grows up through the greenhouse, along the top on the inside and out and around the top on the outside. It looked like a bit of a mission to get sorted and was quite a task that took Jam a lot longer than he had planned. (As do most of his missions but that's another story for another time...) How amazing though to actually see inside the greenhouse and marvel at the fact that we actually have a greenhouse, how very grown up!

What to do with the grapes though? There are so many and neither of us have the first clue about wine making. Jam has made cider in the past and we both made some sloe gin last year with sloe's from our boating neighbour's M&M who had gone on a mission down the river Lea especially for them, delicious stuff it is too, me having my first wee taste of it last week, ooh what a treat!

We looked up 'how to make wine' on the internet and found various solutions and then realised we were in the middle of nowhere and needed to acquire all this special equipment to do the task. A neighbour gave us a large barrel to ferment it in and Jam found a health food store in Wellington that funnily enough has a home brewing section. It's rather pricey for the stuff but seeing as though the grapes had been harvested we didn't think we had much choice. I did go off on a mission to find somewhere in Taunton selling the kit but had no joy so the health food shop it was.

Right now Jam is crushing the grapes, thankfully NOT with his feet, we were thinking of letting Rowan crush them, but I'm not sure he's strong enough yet! We're building him up though to defend himself against the country hooligans! And, as I'm sure you're wondering, he is doing just fine, his little face has healed nicely and he's laughing the whole thing off and we've found another group to go to with children the same age as him!

'Ooh I could crush a grape' ~ am I showing my age there? Or strange sense of humour / memory for remembering something like that from the Crankies! Well, it's late, everyone goes to bed around 9 down here, so I ought to get some sleep and update on the next stage of the wine making another day. Jam has just come in saying he's got at least a gallon so far, and that's only half the grapes, and added 'I've got quite a good method too' sounding rather pleased with himself, then proceeded to explain his method, likening it to milking a cow, so on that note I think I shall turn in and look forward to the strange dreams of cows producing wine and such likes ~ oh now wouldn't that be fine, cow's producing wine!!

'City boy mauled by country kid'

Oh my. I know it happens sooner or later, but I was hoping for a bit later. I took Rowan to the local baby and toddler group today, I was hesitant about it because when I went last week there weren't any other babies, only toddlers, but I had met some nice people and thought maybe some more might be there with babies. So we walked up the hill in our little old-fashioned pram - quite a stylish original Maclaren, Jam was in it himself, his father had stored it all these years and it's still in good nick!

On the way Rowan fell asleep, but woke up promptly when we got there and heard the other children playing. I lay him down on a pillow in the play area, turned my eye one second to pick up a giraffe toy to show him and another child came out of nowhere and grabbed at his face, scratching his eyelid quite badly. Oh my god! The boy's mother told him off and made him say sorry, Rowan was screaming, I was cuddling him then when I saw his face I burst into tears too! I got up and we went to the tea making area, one of the other mother's got me some hot water, to cool and wipe his eye with, I calmed Rowan by feeding him, he didn't seem to mind too much, it was me that was more upset! The child's mother took her child away, apparently she is having trouble with him at the moment doing things like that, one of the other children had scratches on her face from the week before!

Once things had calmed down and the session was ending, Rowan had fallen asleep and so I popped him in his pram so I could help clear up and suddenly another child was at the pram scratching his face, copying what the other boy had done - oh my god! This was even worse, Rowan screamed blue murder, I cried even more, feeling stupid for having put him down, even though the first boy had left, I just wasn't thinking and poor Rowan's face, covered in scratches!

All the other Mum's were really sweet and had kind words and stories to tell of similar experiences. They insisted I come back next time but I'm not totally convinced. It's amazing the way you feel so protective for your little ones. I feel so guilty every time I look at his face and have flashbacks to the scene itself. It stirs up all the emotions. I shouldn't have taken my eyes off him for a second - lesson learnt.

Welcome Home!

Hello dear friends,

For those of you who have been following me on Londonboatlife ~ prepare for something totally different! If you're just joining me ~ hello, here's an account of our new life in the country, a lot has happened in the last month and I shall endeavour to update and regail you with all the fabulous stories that unfold!

I change the names of people I write about to retain their anonymity, it's also quite good fun doing that!! My name is a nick-name I acquired a few years ago and it's stuck. It's taken me this long to think of another blog name, I thought I couldn't really carry on with Londonboatlife, not living on a boat in london anymore. Last night just before falling into bed exhausted after a long day, it came to me ~ Country Mumkins! Combining the Mummy aspect, with the country and the endearing tendency for everyone on Jam's side to add 'kins' after our names ~ when Rowan (his real name!) was still in my tummy, we called him Squirrel, and we had the inevitable 'nutkins', which I really didn't like!! Ha ha! 'It's Squirrel not nutkins!!' Honestly!


So here we go ~ waking up to the sound of the cockerels in the neighbour's chicken run - aptly named 'Peckington Palace'!! That was Derek's first comment to us when we arrived ~ 'here look, you come from London, look, Buckingham palace you know well, now meet Peckington Palace! See, eh, what do you think?' Great Derek, great, let's try your eggs! Ooh and we do, and they're lovely and yellow, and half the price as in London!!