Up Up and Wobble

Rock Band

Strongly resisting the temptation to buy the remastered Beatles' back catalogue in HMV today I gave the nod to Simon to pop into Game to buy the Beatles Rock Band game!

It is fantastic, the graphics must have been a work of love and of course there is the genius of the Beatles music. We have already graduated from the Cavern to the Ed Sullivan show, with me on vocals, Si on drums and Tom on dribbles I've tried encouraging him to use one of his teething toys (he's not but seeing as he loves stuffing things in his mouth we got him some of the toys to nibble on) as a tambourine but he's more interested in sticking it in his mouth.

"Playing" the Beatles songs just make me want to go out and complete my collection but I don't want the fake stereo that they've put on some of the early LPs I want to enjoy it in the glorious Mono that it was meant to be heard it. And all they had in HMV was the stereo version. I'm also never quite sure about remastering as it's never quite about restoring an old master to it's newly printed freshness. There always seems to be a of unnecessary tinkling about on the edges so unless it sounds really muddy and murky there should not be any need to remaster it and George Martin was very good at what he did and I don't think my mono vinyl copy of With The Beatles sounds murky at all.

Toothless Squealing

Toothless Squealing, originally uploaded by Jane Goth.

Tom is becoming increasingly vocal with every passing day, but with each day his vocalisations change new things come in and other sounds are dropped. When he was very little he would make an "eh....eh...eh" noise when wanted feeding that's gone now. Currently he is developing his laugh, I don't think he's reached the final product as right now his laugh is a soft "grrrrus grrrus" sound that comes from the back of his throat, which just slays me. I played this video back to Tom straight after I had recorded it. Tom's reaction was fascinating, he was most perplexed at the little baby in the machine squealling in the machine and I think, while it was playing, a little bit disturbed by the baby noises however as soon as it ended he recovered his humour and it was as if nothing had ever happened.

Keep On Truckin

Keep On Truckin, originally uploaded by Jane Goth.

We had a modicum of excitement this afternoon with three very large oil(?) tanks on flat beds trundled down the road stopping the traffic. Police on motorbikes stopped the traffic in sections and further up the road work gangs from the 'leccy were hoisting up the power cables that ran across the road to make sure that the top of the tanks didn't get snagged.

Poetry Corner

I very rarely post poetry, I've done it once maybe twice, partly because I automatically skim when I see verses in blog posts, novels and newspapers so I assume everyone else does the same. Partly because it is often abusing someone else's copy write and also I feel it's lazy blogging to use someone else's words to try to state how you feel. Using song lyrics is lazy juvenile emo blogging but that's a rant of a different meter. Having said all that I'm about to indulge in some sentimental poetry (or possibly doggerel) blogging by posting this.

Song For A Fifth Child

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
(Lullaby, rockabye, lullaby loo.)
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peek-a-boo
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby lullaby loo.)

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

- Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Apparently the poem first appeared in the Lady's Home Journal in 1958. I can find out nothing about Ruth Hulbert Hamilton on the interwebs as almost every link to her name goes to a born again mommy blog. Disclosure time I first saw this on such a blog but I'm not going to link back as I don't want to give the poor woman the vapours.

This poem struck me as I have found myself fretting and feeling guilty about housework not getting done because I'm playing/soothing/feeding/cleaning/staring at Tom. There is a huge irony in this as I loathe housework and before he was born would have to force myself to chase the dust bunnies around the room and I hadn't ironed a thing in at least 8 years. Last week I found myself ironing some of Tom's miniature jeans as they looked "all wrong" crumpled.

I'm beginning to think I have been replaced by aliens - this is not me, I don't think like this and I'm more than slightly disturbed by it all. I was inordinately excited at getting a new slow cooker on the weekend, next thing I'll be doing will be wearing a pinny unironically. I think I need to order the Second Sex before it's too late for me.

Now the baby is asleep

He's flopped over my right arm snoring ever so gently, if I can get him to stay asleep when I put him down I might be able to put the washing on and wonder if we have all the ingredients for a veggie curry.

30 seconds later...

He's down and out, and I am free to use two hands again not only that I am up at the computer on the desk rather than struggling with the crappy PC laptop. (Rem to self must get in touch with the Apple Genius people to find out if it is worth getting the Mac laptop repaired. Buying a new one is not an option sadly)

It has been an age since I've blogged, but I am slowly coming out of the fog that is very new baby with colic, he is getting into more of a routine fortunately and doesn't normally wake up at stupid o'clock during the night, that is if you accept 5am as not being stupid o'clock.

I am now back behind the wheel after the caesarian, just being able to get about as I choose to have been so liberating even if I hardly go anywhere, my trips out have been mostly to the doctors or to the hospital. I have started to meet other people, my health visitor suggested going to a baby massage class which is run by the health visiting team. It's quite good if very small there are only 4 mothers at it although I get the impression they were hoping more would turn up and we have 2 instructors. It's roughly 15 minutes of baby massage and then 1 hour plus of chatting, mostly about babies so not scintillating conversation but right now I don't need scintillating all the time, just being able to compare how much our babies sick up and the day to day mundantity of motherhood is nice.

The next big adventure is mother and baby groups, I looked at the NCT website to see if they had any groups in the vicinity and the closest was Ely so that's no good, even if it does save me the cost of joining them. I will have to look at Mum's Net and find one that sounds friendly.

Hours later,

Finally got the washing on after he woke up, needing feeding and changing and playing with. I put him down on his tummy for some "tummy time" he coo'd for a bit then fell asleep only for him to wake up when I turned him onto his back so that I could sneak into the kitchen. He's now fallen asleep listening to Radio 4. Radio 4 is his "soap theme tune" I listened to so much of it while I was pregnant with him, the dulcet tones of Laurie Taylor seem to have a soothing effect on him.

Not Gone

Just no proper time for blogging