Personal Seagull

I have my own seagull.

Thankfully he isn't as noisy or as annoying as an ordinary seagull. But he is as persistent.

Our boy has discovered food and thinks it the best thing since sliced bread (which he had for the first time day... and ate the best part of a whole slice for afternoon tea). He went through the pureed food stage in less than a week and I am barely holding him in the mushed/mashed stage. Basically if I sat him down with a lobster salad tomorrow and helped him get the shells off, I think he'd eat the lot.

So, we feed him. We feed him as much as we think he needs (according to the books I read and their recommendations). We do feed him. I need to write this to convince myself, because sometimes the intent to feed is so strong I wonder whether we have inadvertently not fed him. But we do. Feed him. Regularly.

And then he sees us eating, and especially if he is near us, he'll sit there and open his mouth, waiting to be fed. It was particularly bad the other night when he had just eaten what I was worried was too much. I was eating dinner and he was sitting on Levor's lap. He watched me take a mouthful, looking at the food on my fork intently, watching it go into my mouth, looking at me with the practised stare of a small puppy. Then when he saw me put together the next forkful, he opened his mouth. Clearly, this one was his. I'd had the last one. Mouth open, very politely, please to have some food, mum. He got some broccoli for his trouble.

This culminated in much hilarity on Monday when we went out for the day. Here is the young seagull, perched on my lap. Levor had just taken about 30 photos of JD and I, trying to get JD to smile. He didn't. He was sucking a spoon and wasn't interested in smiling. You can see we got him to smile when he was with Levor (above).

Then as we were giving up, I took a sip of my tea. Out came the spoon. The mouth shot open. Eating was happening and he wanted his share! (Despite having just had a significant lunch).

A small, cute, persistent and determined seagull.

Dailies

Our quest each day is to go for a walk. I don't always succeed in this endeavour, but I usually try hard to make it happen.

Part of the reason I try and make it happen is that JD really enjoys walks. Which is surprising. Whenever we go walking he goes really quiet, doesn't say much at all (not even bird noises) and looks down at the pavement. But when we don't go for a walk, he is restless and doesn't seem to enjoy life as much. So, having made that connection I try and take him for a walk in the morning, and Levor tries to take him for a walk in the afternoon, thereby fulfilling our exercise requirements for the day and contributing to the demise of two feathered creatures simultaneously.

The photo is important for this blog because there are several things to note. The first is the hat. The hat is not on the boy's head. He is holding it, but do not let that deceive you. The hat is being held so that it can be chewed. Never mind the sun (which is always in his eyes without the hat because he won't endure a sunshade). The hat is for chewing.

The second thing to note is the socks. One of the joys of the walk for JD is trying to get both socks off his feet before we get home. If I am not watching very closely he'll lose them on the way home.

This means that at the age of 7 months I already have an odd sock problem with our son. I was expecting this more to be a 4 year old and onwards problem that I could work up to. But no. It has started.

The third thing is the big smile. The big smile happens as soon as we get in the door and tell him "we're home!" and he starts interacting and talking again. One could be forgiven for thinking that the walk was a dreadful imposition which he endure for the sake of the grown ups.

So, there you have it. Our daily quest. Worth JD honour points.

Sleeping Lions

Our little boy really doesn't take after me. He has his dad's face, expressions and generally looks like Levor (without his beard); he even seems to have something of his dad's personality when he was little (before his parents split up).

He sneezes like me. Often and always twice (at least).

He might have my eyes.

But the other day something happened that made me realise that he really is my son.

After a trying few hours I gave up and lay down with JD on the bed, and soon both of us were asleep. Levor happened upon us and took a photo:

You can see that JD sleeps like I do. Levor thinks this is cute. I think it's funny.

ROFL (literally)

Last night our little boy woke up at 12am. That is actually fairly unusual these days. He normally sleeps till about 3am and then does a stint of rolling onto his hand and knees and waking up and me rolling him back. We play that game for about 1/2 hour and he goes back to sleep till 6am. It's not a bad system. It could improve, but I can live with it.

Last night he woke up at 12am.

Wide awake. Arms and legs waving about in the air. Eyes wide open, looking at everything.

I was tired, and didn't feel like a long drawn out battle. So, I brought him into the lounge room and we lay down together on the doona. He gurgled away and whacked one of his toys with the enthusiasm which tires an adult just by observing it.

I went into one of those micro-sleeps you do when you are very tired. When I woke up he had turned himself onto his hands and knees practically on top of me, so his face was right next to mine. When I opened my eyes, startled, he burst into peals of laughter.

The incongruity of the situation made me laugh. Which made him start giggling infectiously. Which... well, you get the idea.

So, there we lay on the floor in the middle of the night, laughing out loud. It was extremely fun.

Midwife Moments

My midwife is hilarious. She is a large, German woman with a fierce kind of determination and mild ferocity. She appears to be a very good midwife (not that I would really know), but she has a good reputation and does seem to know what she's doing. She's obviously done some of those 'personal interaction' type courses because she gets a lot of the external positive signals right (like eye contact and smiling and so forth), but it is accompanied with such intensity and strength, and bluntness that it is quite disconcerting.

Some examples...


* She asked me whether we wanted to have the baby in the hospital. I said 'yes'. I was fairly strong about this. I've not wanted to have the baby anywhere else really. I'm fairly old-fashioned about pain. I don't like it and see no reason why I should embrace it or see it as a 'natural part of life' or anything. And I'm pessimistic. I see no reason why quite a few things shouldn't go wrong and I'd like a very clever, well-trained person on hand to do something about these things. And as these things are best resolved in hospital, I'd be quite happy to go there. But this was not satisfactory. The midwife told me to: "...go away and think about it some more". (In rather the same tone as you would send a small child to its room to 'think about what you've done'). So, I did think about it. And came to the same conclusion. Not just for the above mentioned clearly selfish reasons, but because as we live on the top floor of a building in which all the sound travels down, it would be profoundly unloving to give birth at home. So, I'm going to hospital for purely sacrificial reasons, and I'm allowed. The midwife is going to let me.


* She had a student (whom I felt so sorry for by the end of my visit), and the student was instructed to feel the baby and work out where the head was. The student couldn't feel the head and so said that it was too early to work out where the head was. The midwife said (to me, not the student): "The baby's head is pointing down." The student tentatively asked how she could be so sure. The midwife said, "Well, if I can feel its spine and hear its heartbeat in this position then its head must be pointing down; its the only logical conclusion. I don't need to feel its head to know where its head is". (Student became very quiet after this).


* Today was priceless. She sent me away from my last appointment with strict instructions to fill out the first page of my hospital notes. This I duly did. She then had a look at them today and turned to me and asked, "Is this your handwriting?" I nervously admitted to having written there. She looked at me as pleased as anything and said, "This is really good handwriting. It's very neat. You have excellent handwriting." This was said with an absolute beaming smile as though I'd just done something really rather remarkable.
I wasn't exactly sure how to react to this. It's been a long time since I was in Year 2 and I can't remember whether you're meant to ask for happy stamps or whether they are just given to you. (I didn't get one).

I rather like my midwife. She is always so certain, which gives me a lot of confidence. And one of these days I might just get a happy stamp. If I'm really good.

The Angels Have Left the Building!

I have a confession to make.

I do not like publicity, whether it is good or bad. Of course, good publicity tickles my pride, but it makes me conspicuous and I really don't like that. And bad publicity messes with my head and I find myself slightly freaked out.

And I'm married to a guy who is going to attract bad publicity throughout our lifetime. He will always call a spade a spade, and even kindly offer to label the different parts of the spade for those whom he thinks would benefit from such an education. He won't back down on issues of principle, nor where he sees someone in a powerless or relatively powerless position being treated unfairly, and he's in a position to do something about it. He will put himself on the line rather than have people think that he is wonderful, and frequently goes out of his way to demonstrate to students that he is a broken vessel so that they don't think too highly of him by showing them aspects of himself which other people would keep hidden under all circumstances. He won't pretend to believe what other people want him to believe, whether he is from their 'party' or not. Of course, like everyone he does it well sometimes, and other times clumsily. Sometimes the effect of his actions don't match his intentions, but I honestly can't think of many times over the years I've known him where he hasn't acted out of a desire to further the interests of others.

I admire him immensely for these things. And for his ability to count the cost of each of them, and decide to wear it, so that when it comes back to bite him he isn't resentful and doesn't think someone 'owes' him because he did the right thing.

I do however want to invent a machine which beeps when the angels leave. When the angels fear to tread somewhere and they all take off - I think then is a good time to sit down and be quiet. And its usually the time when Levor starts to speak. Actually, to be honest, it is usually the time when someone needs to speak if the principle or the person are to be defended. But increasingly, I am beginning to realise that Levor is one of those someone's, and that it is likely that he will be increasingly visible. And so I have forlorn hopes that we could get a machine which beeps, so that at least he knows when that situation is happening. Not that it would change anything.

I really don't want to change him, because there are so few people like this, and he is quintessentially like this. And I really admire it. But the cost is so high.

One of the things I was really looking forward to when we came to Oxford was sinking out the public eye for a while. And it has been so nice. I thought to myself that I would have a few years to get my head together on the issue before we came back to Sydney and quite possibly found Levor cutting a more public figure. Time to work through the anger and defensiveness and the desire to say, "But does it have to be you?"
But already - after a month - Levor is currently engaged in debate on a particular blogsite designed to demonstrate that Sydney Anglicans are heretics. These guys are going to paste him. He knows that, but he tries to engage them anyway, being firm (but not strident) and asking genuine questions.

Me? I would say that they weren't worth engaging with. I wouldn't even bother reading the blog. I wouldn't care about them. They are jerks. (Who sets up a blog just to attack a group of fellow Christians???)

Levor? Totally engaging with them - at least having a go and drawing on training with lots of other similar situations in an attempt to engage them for their good. Because he does care. And in the process he's using his real name.

The angels have left the building. *beep* *beep* *beep*

10 Things I like about Oxford

In no particularly order…

1. It’s a beautiful place, with an abundance of gorgeous trees, interesting buildings and cobbled streets. It’s a great place to just walk around in.

2. Levor smiles for no reason. It’s been years since I’ve seen him just smile.

3. No-one knows who we are. We aren’t important (either in a good or bad way) and no-one cares what we think or say. What I say in the Bible study group I’m part of isn’t the ‘right answer’ just because it is me saying it.

4. Church is enjoyable and enriching.

5. There are a lot of very edible cheeses to be had.

6. The pace of life is delicious. Our diary has blank spaces after being crammed full for months. I don’t have to do things on particular days. Levor can just study. He doesn’t have to do that plus sixty million other things, while juggling something else on the side. We are having evenings off and Sundays off and having conversations and watching Lewis (Morse spin-off) and listening to music… and on Thursday we are hoping to go out and see Antigone at a playhouse. This is really, really good. I’m sure it won’t last but it is almost like a holiday at the moment.

7. We haven’t had a phone for two and a half weeks. We have one now, but we don’t have an answering machine and have decided not to get one. People can ring again or email us, and returning phone calls is not something we’re good at anyway. I think we deal with change by bunkering down and not having a phone has really helped with this. Other people need to feel connected to people, but I think we are completely the opposite. We can only connect with people when we are sufficiently together to have something to give them. So, being by ourselves has been really therapeutic.

8. The medical system here is really good. Except for the tendency to not give people tests and drugs because it increases the NHS bill. I’ve seen the midwife and the doctor and next week we go to visit the hospital where (God willing) we’ll have our baby. It’s been so easy and is a lot more patient friendly than Australia.

9. There are lots of berries in the supermarkets and they are reasonably cheap.

10. We have a window in our apartment (on the fourth floor), which has a tree right outside it. Squirrels climb the tree and dance about in the branches, and when they are busy doing other things, pigeons come and sit quietly in the branches and think little pigeon thoughts. We can also see across the top of some of Oxford, a skyline of chimney pots perched on terrace houses and off in the distance there is a hill of some kind. We can see the rain clouds coming across the horizon and when it rains hard (which it did just this morning), the rain drums on the roof. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in a place where you can lie in bed with a book under the covers, and listen to the rain.