The Musings of Miranda Dione, aged 6 months

Miranda has learnt to type!

 

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Isn't she a clever girl?! 

This does of course make doing anything on the computer - chatting on Facebook, my accounts, even my thesis, very, very difficult. Miri is not stupid. She can see that Mummy and Daddy spend a lot of time playing with computers or phones, and so they must be interesting for her as well. She wants to join in with everything I do!

In some ways, this is a useful development. We have finally got the Afternoon Tease cafe open and so Miranda accompanies me to work every day and STARES at people in the cafe. Her Granny knitted her a soft tea pot and some coffee cups and cakes and things, so she really can copy what I do, or shriek instructions at me from her high chair. She is instantly fascinated every time a new person comes into the coffee shop, and most of the time, she seems quite content in there which is fantastic. She is so good! And everyone admires her which makes me so proud.

The other major development that has taken place in her 6th month has been her sudden love affair with FOOD. Real food. Mummy-Milk is no longer enough. She is growing fast (achingly heavy to carry, nowadays!) and needs more than I can give her which unfortunately means I am constantly knackered and dehydrated - not great when starting a new business as well! We have been blending up what Carl and I have for dinner in the evenings, so Miri's tried pureed spag bol, rice n beans, roast dinner, mash and peas, lasagne and so on. I only sell sandwiches in the cafe, and I can't blend sandwiches, so I've been buying jars of baby food for there. She's on "stage 2" jars already - the stuff with lumps in and can get through 3/4 of a jar a day, plus a home made meal in the evening, and at least five milk feeds too. I am not sure if this is a growth spurt again or just what happens at six months. Still, she is easy to feed. Again, if she can see us eating, then she wants to, and so far she has eaten and enjoyed everything we've given her - with the exception of scrambled egg. I suppose it must be the texture she objects to, given that she eats boiled egg quite happily. But I can't see her ever being a fussy eater, and that can only be a good thing!

It is so hard for me to believe she is 6 months old already though. It has gone so quick. I don't want her to grow up too fast, I love her just the way she is: beautiful, bright, happy, alert, curious and adventurous. I am so, so proud of her!

Babycino

And Miranda herself enjoying her Babycino #afternoontease on Twitpic
CUTENESS.

PhD Mums

It is December, and unbelievably, my baby daughter is nearly 6 months old, and my maternity leave from my PhD is over. I am now faced with the daunting prospect of returning to Sheffield and writing up the last few chapters of my thesis before my new submission date of March 2011. It still seems a world away! Once upon a time, I naively thought that having six months away from the thesis would give me a fresh perspective on it all when I returned. As it is, I've almost decided that everything I wrote before is now rubbish and feel the need to redo it all.
One thing I am looking forward to is the 'brainwork' required for a PhD. Not that motherhood is a brainless activity, far from it; I have learned so, so much about babies, about myself, my capabilities, and also about my parents which I didn't anticipate. But PhDs require a high level of concentration, the ability to focus entirely on such a specific topic in such detail, that you seldolm get to use those skills in 'normal' life - if caring for a 5 month old, very alert, curious baby can ever be considered normal to other students.
The hard part is going to be the juggling; caring for my daughter and giving her the attention she needs and craves as well as writing something that actually has to make sense. I am very proud of my baby, but I do want to be proud of my thesis as well. My priorities have changed, perhaps inevitably, but I remain determined to finish and be Doctor Mummy, even if most of the thesis is written during "nap time"!

A "tame" weekend

Miranda coped fine with the plane ride back from South Africa, we were utterly exhausted, Auntie Jo had looked after the house and it's furry inhabitants with no problems, and we finally put Miri to sleep in her own cot again, had a sauna and managed to get some sleep. The problem was then, how on earth do we top these last two weeks? I am worried that she will no longer be content with my normal routine as it pales in comparison with globe trotting, and she'll get bored. I suffer the same - every time I go away, it is harder and harder to come back. I worry we have inadvertantly passed on itchy feet syndrome to our baby daughter...

Jopo and Grarr

This weekend was not exactly "normal" however, as it was Whitby Goth Weekend. We had our one night at home, and then drove straight to a self-catering cottage my Mum had hired for the weekend at Runswick Bay just outside Whitby. Booking anything actually inside Whitby is impossible since everything has been booked up for months, but this place slept my parents, us with Miri in a cot in our room, and Jo and Graeme who came along too, following us on the bus. We got lost but not majorly lost, but it turns out there is absolutely no phone signal there, so when Jo and Graeme missed their connecting bus and turned up an hour and a half after they said they would, they couldn't phone us, and we had to scour the tiny village trying to find a public payphone! Help! Wilderness!
I love Whitby Goth Weekend. It is daft really, because we don't really do much when we are there. There are bands on, a club night and occassionally other evening events, but I have only ever bought tickets for the evening events once and then decided it wasn't worth it. During the day we dress up and pose and be silly, then go round the stalls at the Bizarre Bazaar shopping for outfits for the next Goth Weekend. Then we eat fish and chips and get nicely tipsy (or worse) in our big gang of friends, which gets bigger every year. Carl never used to dress up at all, prefering to "be an individual" and look normal amongst the sea of freaks. He is slowly getting to it though, particularly steampunk styles!

Of course we dressed Miranda up too. On the Friday she was our Devil Child with red lined cape and a horned red hat. The next day she was all in black and purple; her Granny has supassed herself knitting a little Victorian dress, bloomers, cloak and lacey bonnet. She looked amazingly cute and we got paparrazzi'd all day! There are always hundreds of goth-spotting photographers there but despite our best efforts with my indecently short dress, the multitude of corsets and chris's spikey goggles, Miranda got more attention than the rest of us combined.

Herein lies the rub: should I really be inflicting my own dress sense on Miranda? I am fairly certain she will be extremely embarrassed about these pictures, and pretty much everything about her Sad Old Goth parents when she's older. But really, what is the alternative? She may just as easily grow up to hate pink or pastel colours and will still be embarrassed by us even if we both dressed ourselves and her "normally". I've already written about inflicting femininity on her and I don't really see it as any different. When she is older, she can choose for herself whether she wants to come to Goth Weekend with us, but until then she can be Mummy's Little Vampire, and be admired all over Whitby!