8 weeks in

Today marks 8 weeks since Eric squeezed himself out of my bits. But great news, they're all recovered now. And we have a cute smiling little boy. He's not smiled for a photo yet though. He does very cute smiles and then we get out the camera and he's like "no mummy I'm not going to smile just for your twitter followers ,I refuse to be sucked into this superficial online world I've been born into. However I will do a sad face for you."

He bears an uncanny resemblance to his auntie Lydia don't you think?

So what have we been up to? To be honest I spend the majority of the time sitting on the sofa feeding Eric while Percy plays with his duplo. It's not that thrilling. But I'm getting to know all about the duplo characters and what they want from life. Turtle likes to wear a canon.

Polar bear likes to eat his fish fingers upside down, apparently.

And Granny (who is actually meant to be a farmer but Percy has always called Granny) likes to have sleepovers with the digger man. I know, my poor dad, he was gutted when I told him.

So thats the duplo gossip.

What else have I done other than duplo? Oh yeah we've been to a wedding... Remember that cod faced aunty, she scrubs up well. Sorry I breast feed as you were walking down the aisle Lydia, I hope thats not in the photos. I thought it was preferable to the sound of crying though.

We've got a new lodger. My good, potentially best friend, Rachel (she's deffo in the top 5) has been made homeless by all her housemates deciding to leave her house. And then the landlord decided, as everyone had left, it was a good time to do some building work. She is with us off and on till my sister moves in in August. Me and Rachel have been reliving our student days when we were house mates, when I get up at midnight to feed Eric and Rach is still watching tv in the lounge and I go and join her, it feels almost like the student days again. If only the mornings were so easy.

wide games in Delamere forest as students 2007ish

Rachel gate crashes the family holiday in France 2016

10 years ago:
Imagine getting up around 9, getting some breakfast, watching a bit of TV, hanging out with your house mates, having a shower then cycling into uni for about 11:30. Hanging out in the studio (I did fine art) doing a bit of painting, maybe popping in to town, doing a bit more painting and then heading home for around 6, for some pasta with cheese sauce, and then staying up for deep chats and episodes of Americas Next Top model till 1 or 2AM. Worth every penny of that 15 grand loan that I'm never gonna pay back.

Compare that with this week: after a terrible night sleep where you're up to feed to baby about 3 times (which can take up to an hour) your 2 year old wakes up around 6 or 6:30AM in a bad mood for no reason, or a ridiculous reason like, he's just noticed you've painted your nails blue, but he liked them better when they were red. You take him down to breakfast and he asks "what are you doing daddy?" you reply "he's taking the bins out". Cue meltdown because he was asking Daddy not you.

You need to feed the baby so you get into bed with a big pile of toddler books so that you can read to Percy while breastfeeding. But Percy doesn't want any of the books you've chosen, or any of the ones he can reach on his floor. He wants the ones on top of his chest of drawers that he can't reach but will dangerously try to climb to anyway. At this point I texted my friend Jenny who had offered to have Percy some time. I'd told her I'll wait till I'm desperate, and this was the time.

So today, Jenny has taken Percy to the safari park. I went to Morrisons this morning with just one child, it was like having a holiday!

Since we got back he's been sleeping and I've managed to:
unload the dishwasher
book the rabbit into the vets
arrange a man to fix our kitchen floor and pay him the deposit
begin some cooking for tonights tea
sort some clothes
make and eat my lunch
contact our plumber
and
write this blog

It's amazing how productive you can be when a baby could wake up at any minute. If I was this productive as a student I would have got a first! I wondered how I found just having Percy as a newborn so hard. This is easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was hard though, it was really hard, probably harder than having two. I don't know why, it just was.

Big respect to new mums: it is harder the first time, and massive respect to single mums. Yesterday Dan was one hour late back from work and I attempted to peel potatoes while jiggling a baby, and it made me think single mums (and dads) need more appreciation.