Which bit of that did you not understand?

A few years ago, when I was annoyed at the fact that the Boy never seemed to hear what I said - or at least never took it in - I spent one weekend counting how many times the Boy actually heard what I said and how many times I had to repeat myself. After this small experiment, I found that he only hears about two thirds of what I say. After speaking to a number of other married friends, the ability to phase out the voice frequency of ones wife is quite a common skill.

Now we have Eve, and I am primary caregiver and spend more time with her, I find myself often telling the Boy crucial things about Eve (he would argue that I nag). The same two thirds principle applies, so often something quite crucial about Eve gets missed. It annoys me that I have to say things over and over again.

However, today Eve decided, in a more effective fashion than I ever could, to ensure that the Boy always listens to me regarding Eve in the future. We were playing at home and the Boy decided that he would "fly" Eve (lie on his back and hold her in the air - it makes her giggle lots). I advised, quite firmly, that as Eve had just fed he shouldn't play flying because it presses on her tummy and she would be sick.

The Boy looked at Eve with a look on his face that said "silly Mummy, she just wants to ruin our fun". He lay back, picked up Eve, where upon she smiled and threw up on his face (and in his ears) making it look like he had just been hit in the face with a large custard pie.

As he wiped the baby vomit of himself I found myself, with some satisfaction, uttering "I told you so".

Junk

The title being a reference to boats that can be hired for a trip in Hong Kong, as well as the amount of stuff I have to take with me on the aforementioned trip as a result of taking Eve with me.

A year ago, my very good friend R booked a junk for her birthday. It took us around the island in the warm sun, to lunch on a small island, and then back via a quick swim. I got pretty drunk (drunk as a skunk on a junk) and had a great time. And looked pretty damn fine in a bikini.

This year, R booked a junk again to repeat the same trip. However, my experience was somewhat different. I love my daughter, I really do, but a reflux baby is not quite a portable as perhaps I would like.

It started quite well. I made it out of the house after only one change of clothes (me) because Eve decided to wait until she was in the Baby Bjorn before she vomited up her breakfast. Being quite organised, I made it to the shopping mall near the pick up point to buy a card and gift, get the latter wrapped, and meet a friend to grab a croissant then was only 5 minutes late to meet the party and board the boat.

Eve initially slept like a log and various people marveled at how pretty/quiet/sweet she was.

Then the chaos began. Firstly, she was hungry. Feeding Eve without her super duper baby-sized feeding cushion is a challenge at the best of times, but on a rocky boat in swell it was a real challenge. She bobbed on and off while eating, usually a sure fire sign that she is going to vomit the lot back up. When I passed her to the Boy for winding, this is exactly what she did, all over the deck of the boat - while I cleaned it up and C, who was already feeling seasick, went a nice shade of green.

When we finally got to the pretty little island, Eve waited until the food came and then decided she was hungry again. I didn't know many of the people there, we were in a small Chinese restaurant that packed us in very tight, so I thought the better course was to find somewhere else to feed her rather than whip out a boob at the table. Except that it was very sunny and I was anxious not to get Eve to hot so finding a shady place took a bit of effort. Not that I worried for too long because on the way to find a feeding location, Eve did a huge poo and the mission's objective changed.

A little girl helpfully pointed me to the rancid, disease infested, dirty hovel that passed for a toilet. In the absence of anywhere else in the shade, I laid the change mat out next to the sink (in which a small family of unidentifiable bugs were living) and got on with it. Eve, being very much her mother's daughter, took one look at the disgusting surrounds and started to scream.

She was still screaming when she was in a new nappy and dressed, so the original mission continued. By this point, shade was merely a luxury, and anywhere with a seat would have been OK. Not far from the rancid hovel was a car park sort of thing. I say "sort of thing" because there are no cars or roads on this island so why there needed to be a car park was up for grabs, but it had a bench and I fed her. Or rather, she hung like a limpet off me and sucked for all she was worth because without the feeding cushion or an equivalent I practically had to sit her upright in front of me and attach her to a boob.

Did I mention there was no shade and it was bloody hot?

At the first sign that she was at least sufficiently fed to stop screaming, I walked back to the restaurant and ran into the Boy who had decided to come and find me. He politely pointed out that I had vomit down my back - the little darling had immediately vomited up everything she had just ate.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a bit of a stressful blur of vomit, feeding and poo. The poor darling, it was not her fault, she was feeding in such a bad position and with so many distractions that she kept of throwing up and then being hungry again. I pretty much fed her all afternoon.

I have never been so glad to get home.

Postscript: This was all compounded by another couple on the boat who had the "perfect" baby (one month older than Eve) who fed well, didn't cry and played sweetly with everyone.
Postscript 2: Did I mention I also get seasick?

Attention seeking

Over night the cat threw up. Clearly, as she is a clever little thing, she has realised that the best way to get attention in our family at the moment is to vomit.

I am waiting for the Boy to join in now.

Like mother like daughter

Since Eve was born I have been clutching at straws that there might be something, other than being a bit stroppy when she is tired, that she has inherited from me. She has the Boy's hair colour, blue eyes and occasionally looks scarily like his brother or my mother in law (if you are looking for something to screw with your head at 3am then feeding something that looks like your mother-in-law takes some beating). However this week I have finally found an area where Eve is like her Mum.

To explain this I need to take you back to Cardiff University Student's Union bar in the early 1990s. My sister was at Uni there and I, as a 14 or 15 year old, had gone to visit her. The bar doormen were quite tough so to get me into the bar she had to sneak me in quite early before the bar got busy and the doormen got picky. This meant I was in the bar with my sister, some of her friends, her ex boyfriend D and the Cardiff Uni rugby team at about 6pm.

To begin with the evening was quite refined, or as much as students ever are. I began by drinking pints of the tipple of choice of your average teenager, cider. After a few pints of the nicer tasting stuff, I moved onto larger. Hitherto I had never liked lager, but after a few pints of cider I was willing to give it a go. A couple of pints later, and a drunken conversation with a cute member of the Uni rugby team, D and I decided it would be a top idea to drink vodka with orange. After one drink, the mixer seemed like too much effort, so he and I stood by the bar just downing shots of vodka.

My sister, showing much common sense and foresight, decided at this point to go and spend the night with her then boyfriend leaving me in the capable hands of D and her flatmates. We stumbled back to the flat where my memory gets a bit hazy.

My next memory of the night was walking into her sitting room where her flatmates were sitting and asking them what I should do with the vomit I was holding in my hands. The next memory I have is of them cleaning the sitting room floor, and the final memory is of me lying with my head over the side of my sister's bed with a bowl underneath it.

The next morning it transpired that I had pretty much redecorated the flat. However, displaying a remarkable new talent, I had not at any point got vomit on myself but rather been very effective in projecting some distance and with considerable velocity (apparently the one down the mirror was especially impressive).

It was as I held my daughter yesterday as she projectile vomited all over the floor, bookcase and pot plant (fertiliser anyone?) but not on herself or me that the Cardiff Uni incident came back to me and I realised I have passed to my daughter a very important talent.