january babies are now riggling,giggling & crawling to keep us on our toes

[bodenaddict]

hi

Hello Soccerette! Welcome home. I was wondering about you today adn when you would be back. Barn sounds lush and I bet the area is great. ope DH is happy at his new place of work and settling in ok. Yay for teeth and standing. No teeth here, crawling backwards and a clumsy sideways type thing, and pulling up onto her knees, not quite feet.

H is a smiler, a real people person.

Moose - remember I was having that papoose knitted - it's finally finished. Its a bit short really as she grew as MIL knitted, and it took a few months. Its lush though, I would recommend to anyone. She wore it in the sling to good effect.

That ladt from last night may have been a troll. May have been.

Oh don't ask about me and mine at the moment Soccer we are the house of plagues - one horrible virus after another (always the same at the start of a new school year), plus I have just been diagnosed with gallstones. Dd is fine though, generally a smiley happy little thing, but with episodes of developmental mardiness.

Sorry, can't give an overview at the moment, poor coldy head can't even remember the last five minutes.

So its straight to walking, bypassing crawling on the way, for Esme then? Dd is pretty much a bum-shuffler, she does intersperse it with a bit of commando crawling and rolling though and can now get just about anywhere she wants amazingly fast.

Yay for teeth. That's what dd was like, out of sorts the day before and overnight, but right as rain after they appeared. She has her two bottom teeth as well. Lots of dribbling at the moment though, so there may be more appearing in the near future. I love it when they get those two little bottom teeth, it looks so cute.

I know Tree, saw the threads. Not sure what to think really. I think Stripey summed it up well though, when she said she would rather waste 10 minutes helping someone that turns out to be a troll than not help someone that really needs it in case they are a troll.

The papoose was gorgeous. Bet H looks really sweet in it too.

I like the term developmental mardiness.

I am with you and Stripey Moose.

She looks like a big neopolitan icecream - I went for cream, mint and pink stripes! I want another in muted colours too....

I wish I could knit [and had hours at my disposal]

Hi Soccerette. Glad move went well.
I am off to Center Parcs for the weekend so not about. Horrific night with S, the worst in months, so dinner and bed. Tree sounds like yours wasn't much fun either. Good luck with meds and thanks for your help.
Moose hope you are feeling better.

evening all, and hurrah, soccerette, you are back! hope new location is working out

feeling a bit meh about that thread, don't know whether disappearance is trolling or disappointment on the op's part - but hey, if she was in trouble, people helped her last night and should feel good about themselves (talking about you, tree)

c has definitely been going through the wonder weeks phase, loads of grousing going on, but also definite leaps in her understanding of things, things like anticipating consequences to actions. also much waving going on . she is very close to crawling now, and is utterly, utterly frustrated by it. we bought a second hand wooden playpen and she has been working on pulling herself up on (this is why we bought it, my mum said my siblings and i all learned to stand up using the playpen). we went to a gallery today (to pick up small shopping accident that i had [bankrupt]) and she was just delighted by the lights - you know those kind of spotlighty lights they use in galleries? shouting at them, she was.

i am just babbling, ain't i?

stripey babbling is good... especially as a first time mother its nice to hear other babies developments too! Glad C is doing so well, waving sounds very cute. We have mastered clapping but not waving!

Gumps Enjoy centre parcs.

moose for illness in your house. get well soon all moosey(s) xx

Tree H continues to sound adorable! coupled with that lovely firey hair! Mmmm!

Hello. Long day - working and being attached to a 9mo who swings between grizzling to be velcroed to me and grizzling to be unvelcroed is not fun. And as for the nights. I'm losing my enthusiasm for this place (MN not this thread) too. I've met some lovely people through MN but you know I just can't be arsed with all the politics, pompousness and secret codes.

ah lenni, don't go leaving us, now. that thread renewed my faith in human nature - i mean those who stayed around to support that woman - but there's always going to be some folk carping and being cynical, and you can only ignore them.

sorry about velcro boy - i still have this to look forward to, c continues blithely with her day with or without me. i am going to brussels overnight in early november so no doubt that's when she'll decide she can't be without me . she is even sleeping through every other night now, though that was no good to me last night, kept waking up with a painful knee

Poor you with your knee - I would go to GP. Ask for a course of anti-inflammatories and get them to do some bloods - is there any inflammatory/auto immune conditions in your family? In the meantime get yourself some omega 3-6-9 oil supplements or cod liver oil and try to eat fewer acidic foods (oranges, tomatoes etc.) and see if that helps. And you can take full dose of ibroprofen and paracetomol simultaneously for the joint pain. Ibroprofen in particular will ease it. Also heat pads help - a hot water bottle on the joint for 10-15 minutes followed by a bit of mobilising will help with stiffness.

Sorry - that came across as a bit of a lecture but I don't have time to change it now.

Just feel a bit flat about this place lately. But then I just feel a bit flat generally.

not a lecture at all - thank you. plan to neck some nurofen before bed

i'm sorry you are feeling flat - tiredness? i know you've been really busy. any chance you can get dp to take charge of the los and go and do something nice and leisurely, for yourself? or is everything still too frenetic?

and no, no family history. really hoping this is soem sort of temporary weirdness, had to get dp to carry c down the stairs this morning

There is a lot going on. The latest installement is we are having issues with DD and a close friend's daughter. Bullying is the wrong word, they are too young for that, but she is being upset by her. It isn't a good situation.

I guess ultimately my problem is I don't know what to do with my life - professionally speaking that is I have no direction and no ideas. I am falling slowly into academia but only due to my own apathy at finding something else. I feel very apathetic lately, everything seems too much effort. I think I need to decide what I'm going to do about bf for a starting point - I think I'm planning on stopping at 12mo. That is the biggest hurdle with work atm.

I hope temporary weirdness too - but don't put off GP, non-temporary weirdness is usually easily managed nowadays and if it is a bit of joint damage rather than anything more chronic it can usually be repaired. I know of plenty of 20 and 30 somethings having joints cleaned up etc.

do you feel that academia isn't where you want to go? that it's a kind of unwelcome default? because if that's how you feel about it then that's not where you should go, i guess.

it isn't surprising, nine months into sleep deprivation, with bf which is a big physical strain, no matter how happy you are to do it, that you are feeling less than energetic about future planning. i know you can't put all thought on hold until you are done, but if it takes another few months to work out where you want to go next, is that terrible?

(i say this as the queen of not knowing what to do with my life...)

and i've had ten years longer to think about it, too

I truly don't know what I want to do. I feel a bit overqualified to go back whence I came, as if it would be a waste of what went in between (sorry if that sounds smug, it isn't intended to). And I am good at research and writing (the academic type - MN writing not so hot!!) but don't think I should do a PhD unless there is some end purpose to it. I could go into freelance research but I would rather actively practice what I preach iyswim. Does your DP have these struggles or is she content with academia?

dp has been an academic for twenty years and i think is feeling a little burned out with it at the moment, i think it's probably a moment which happens in many careers but she is quite the driven type so is finding it hard to deal with. she has only ever worked in academia though, which is probably quite different from going from a professional practice to its academic study, i guess.

do you want to do a phd, but feel put off by the possibility of its not having any use? is it an end or a means for you, i mean?

Scary moment of outing myself coming up but my PhD is meant to be in the role of education in community cohesion - I have done a lot of research around racially divided communities in the North West and want to look in more detail about the perceptions that professionals dealing with these communities have. It is a practical topic. What the heck I would do afterwards is a scary thought. I guess the biggest fear is putting my family through 3-4 years of a PhD and the financial/time issues that would go with it and then not really being any further forward with getting a proper job, just having an ever growing list of letters after my name without being any more employable...

but it sounds like it would be useful in itself. and you want to do it? will you really regret it if you don't do it? is it financially possible? what would you do if you don't do it?

i am not really sure how these thigns work in the uk, but potentially you could go a policy route? don't local authorities in the uk have a fairly controlling interest in education? would that be possible/of interest?

i mean after the doctorate.

Yes, the policy/Local Authority type jobs would probably be the realistic alternative to freelance research or academia. I do want to do it - and I would regret it I think if I didn't do it. It is a now or never kind of thing, if I don't do the research someone else at the university probably will, but it is my baby.

I don't know what I would do instead. That is the problem really, I have no comparison to make - scientists like to have a control experiment

Financially it wouldn't be great but would be possible - I am sorely tempted to 'just' get a regular job though, after 3 years of baby related poverty it would be so much easier.

I do question whether it would be time well spent though. I have spent 4 years on my undergrad degree, 1 year doing my PGCE, 4 years teaching and 2 years doing my Masters and various other related diplomas and probably have cost the state far more in tuition fees than I will ever repay in tax contributions.

Sorry for all the boring, dreary posts btw.

you can repay the state in other ways, you know. using your brain on its behalf, that kind of thing

i guess you can't take a year out with a paying job to evaluate? (cover someone's maternity leave, maybe? ) or do you think that would derail everything? it sounds to me like you should go for it (but i worry about regretting things not done far more than things done). honestly. if you think you can juggle doctorate, children and money (or if you even hope that you can)

not bored. and think everybody else is clearly sleeping/having some sort of rl ecxperience so they have something to write about tomorrow