Long time no blog, and many changes!

Miranda is now ten months old...!
I have been rushed off my feet with the cafe and the Phd and every other mad scheme, and despite the exhaustion, I feel so lucky that Miri takes it all in her minute stride. She is very, very social, and really does appear to love the cafe. Most of my customers think she's wonderful, with total strangers commenting on how bright, alert and CUTE she is! Of course, she laps up the attention.

The third tooth is just about visible now, top right we think - it looks as though it will break through any day now.

Miranda is also talking - she babbles away happily to Carl and I, shrieking at things that annoy her or amuse her, gurbles intently at her toys, and makes emotive political speeches, accompanied by wild gestures and appropriately forceful table banging, from her high chair in the cafe. All of this is in Mirandese. She has got the hang of Ds and Bs and Gs - dadababagaga and her favourite: BooGURgoo. Annoyingly, she says Dada all the time but hasn't managed Mama yet. I changed her nappy the other day and I could swear she suddenly yelled "CABBAGES"! More worringly though, she came at me far too close the other morning, grabbed my hair with both hands and said "Braaaaains". Baby Zombie!! Aaaargh!!

At the end of February, we went to stay with Granny and Grandad for a week (leaving poor Carl behind.) They fussed over her no end, insisted on giving her a bath pretty much every night, and we got a Titch-hiker thing that lets her ride around on my shoulders which she adores! Meanwhile, I managed to finish the last chapter of my thesis. I love Miranda with all my heart, but sometimes she doesn't exactly help...:

We went to Miri's second Whitby Goth Weekend too, just for a day trip. Miranda wore a fabulous little Spider suit given to her by Ione Chapman complete with Velcro'd on extra legs. Whitby was a bit quieter than usual, but she had great fun meeting up with our extended goth family - and of course had her photograph taken ALL DAY. I bought her her first doll, a little 'Batling' like a Cabbage Patch kid but wearing black and with bat wings!

A few weeks ago, I also experienced my first Mothers' Day! Bizarre feeling really, I almost forgot it now applies to me. I send off a card to Granny, but then Carl  - I mean, Miri - bought me a Book of Cakes and a bib for Miri saying "Don't Laugh, She's My Mum".

The biggest news though is that MIRANDA IS MOBILE! She has been veryvery close to crawling for so long, but she hated doing it, much preferring me to bend double and walk her around holding on to my fingers. When I didn't want to give myself a bad back any more, she used to wail at me and complain instead of actually crawling. That was until four days ago. Suddenly she twigged and worked out what her knees can do. It really was a case of overnight mobility, on Thursday she was still getting cross when I didn't walk with her, then on Friday she was scooting about on all fours, making bids for freedom out of the front door, getting into the cupboards at work and cruising round the edge of the furniture. She can pull herself up on most things now and there has been plenty of bumped hea-ds and wailing - usually more out of surprise than pain. The floor comes up and bites her when she isn't looking! So Unfair!!

So, the cafe is no longer my own. Jo and I are constantly dreaming up Miri Containment Schemes (possibly involving picket fences - "it's ok as long as you call it a playpen and not a cage!"), and I am hunting for socket covers and feel as though I am constantly vacuuming after she distributes raisins and crumbs and bricks and various detritus around the place. 

 

My little Moomin Cheese is growing up!!

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!