Quasi-Evil

Posts Tagged ‘Scarlett’

Stay at Home Mum

Scarlett was a bit restless today, so I dressed her up in my favourite dress and took her outside for a posing session. She does love posing for the camera.

So far, being a stay-at-home-mum has meant I’ve had less time on the internet, not more as I expected. It’s wonderful having so much time with Scarlett and I know she’s loving it but it’s also knackering, and occasionally stressful. Most of the time she’s incredibly well-behaved but she wants constant attention (that comes from my side of the family unfortunately!) even if it’s only for me to watch her playing. This means I’ve gone from having 12 hours a day for my freelancing and volunteer work to trying to cram it all into four.

This is the most time I’ve spent with her in one go for over a year, and it’s totally worth it. So forgive me if posts are few and far between, but I’ve got this gorgeous little girl to see grow up.

It all sounds like poo to me

Yesterday was another mummy-baby day. After spending the night alternating between producing levels of drool comparable to Beethoven and shooting incredibly accurate snot rockets, Scarlett slept till noon. There didn’t seem to be much point in taking her to nursery so I subjected myself to yet more Teletubbies.

I attempted to read books to her but she wasn’t in the mood, eventually she got so annoyed with this that she said “Poo Pit Chair.” Having no clue what she wanted, I got her to repeat herself several times till eventually she sighed exasperatedly (like I thought only a mother could), walked over to my ‘office’ corner, pointed at me (“Poo.”), crouched on the floor (“Pit.”) and pointed at the chair (“Chair.”). I obeyed.

An hour or so later, she demanded dinner except what I heard, for the first five or so attempts, was, “Pooner! Mummy, Pooner.” It was only when she led me into the kitchen, pointed at the fridge and said, “Dinner. Din-ner,” like I was some kind of retard that I realised what she’d been saying.

Several hours later, I heard, “Poo Christmas card, poo you?”

“Huh?” I asked.

“I said, did you get your Christmas card?” My next-door neighbour clarified.

So Scarlett may well be speaking in meaningful sentences, I’m just not hearing in them.

Life’s Too Short

I kept Scarlett off nursery on Friday; we needed a mummy-baby day. We spent most of it curled up on the sofa watching Teletubbies, the Christmas DVD, which has led to me singing “Mary had a baby” constantly ever since.

We drew pictures and amazingly Scarlett managed to recognise my mangled drawings of various Winnie the Pooh and In the Night Garden characters. She didn’t seem to notice that Eeyore looked like he was on speed or that IgglePiggle had had an unfortunate accident with a shovel. After that we pretended to drink tea from those shapes that you’re meant to post through holes with the lid of a pretend cookie jar in place of a teapot. At lunchtime, Scarlett helped me make meatballs (I opened the packet, she counted twenty into a bowl and I microwaved them – what? Like I was going to piss about with minced meat) and we discovered that mayonnaise is surprisingly hard to get out of the carpet.

In the afternoon, I tried to convince her to go to the park but she refused because it was raining. Sensible child. Instead I read books to her and once I couldn’t stand another rendition of Little Red Riding Hood (the crap version where Grandma hasn’t been eaten and is instead hiding in a cupboard), we moved onto the Discworld books (Eric mainly, and The Last Hero because they have pictures). Eventually, I loaded the car up and set-off for her Dad’s; she was asleep within minutes.

It was the best day I’ve had in ages.

Organisation Rediscovered

I appear to have rediscovered my old organised, productive pre-Scarlett self. I didn’t want to say anything too soon in case I jinxed it but then when I was tagging all my old posts, I realised that far too many of them are filled with worry over my procrastinating ways and I thought it might do me good to focus on the positive. So I am:

1. University is going well. I’m currently acheiving a very solid First and though it’s early days, there’s not many other people managing it so it’s something to be proud of especially with the current workload. Of course, now I’ve got a website, an event budget, a presentation, a PR plan, market research pilot study, an outdoor event plan and an updated portfolio all due within the next two weeks. I’m on it.
2. Scarlett is still the best baby ever. She’s a little angel, everyone adores her, she’s super well-behaved, has progressed to talking in sentences (mostly “Where are you? I am here.” and “In the Night Garden.” and “Can I have milk….than-q.”) and I’ll stop now.
3. Conventions are mostly in line. I’ve got an online committee meeting for Discworld Con 2008 later today (and I haven’t been to bed yet, oh well), a whole lot of planning to do for LX 2009 (I don’t know why I don’t just stick it all in a Project Manager, for some reason I feel like I shouldn’t use project management software for SF cons and then it all takes three times as long as it should), a possible proposal to produce for a conference and a couple of bits for an as-yet-unannounced con in 2009.

So that’s me being positive. It feels good.

Making Things Pretty

Two posts in two days? Shock horror!

Of course, there can be only one reason for me suddenly getting my arse into gear and blogging: Procrastination. I have to hand in a group portfolio on Monday (for which I’m having to type up everybody else’s notes and make it look pretty) and our group has a presentation on Tuesday (for which I’ve made the presentation – although I didn’t have to, I just got inspired and sort of did it by accident – and am now creating the accompanying booklet, again with the writing and the making it look pretty).

I’ve had a week at home alone (Scarlett’s been with her Dad) and I have got a fair amount of stuff done for the above as well as some other university related things. I sacrificed my night out on Wednesday for Halloween in favour of watching 300 and getting some sleep but what I haven’t done all week is any tidying up whatsoever. And it’s bad. I have pretty much only today to finish the stuff for uni and make the place child-friendly again. I suppose procrastination was practically obligatory.