The Face

Our lovely Alice is five months old it is a delight to be with her and I'm only too aware of this precious year of getting to know each other before returning to employment. Blogging for me is just as much about reading and commenting on your blogs as it is posting here. I look at my 'phone all too much anyway and I really don't want Alice thinking I've a black oblong of a nose, so I'm ready to make the decision to stop blogging. If I read an amazing quote that I want to save for posterity then I will post it here, more so it's stored somewhere and I'm going to start tweeting short favourite quotes as I read them but apart from that this is the last one.

Mother sent me this just after Alice was born and it seems a fitting way to close.

'The swaddled infant lies on her rug. She is the centre of the adults' care, of their comings and goings. Above her a shaft of light dazzles. The blurry brightness sharpens around tinkling objects swinging back and forth, back and forth. These tinkling shapes are tethered to the familiar voice, the familiar hand, the familiar smell. She has no words for these marvels. They are magnificent - but they are not enough. Her legs kick in unison. She cries out; there is a rustling sound. Events happen to her and around her in an unbroken stream. Her arms reach out to touch the firmness of the murmuring shadow above her. She struggles for this shadow to come closer. The fragrance now envelops. She wonders: Am I part of this warm shadow, so that I am lifted up, it really is me doing the lifting?Will this flow of movement, sound and smell transform into the familiar face - the beloved Face - that makes sense of me?
....
We emerge after nine months with very few welll-formed instincts. Fresh from the womb, we have no chance of finding our own legs and going off in search of food. We are helpless. We are equipped mainly with a desire for the human face. Babies are primed to search for any human face, though in time they seek out the familiar special Face they recognise. The beloved Face is sought with more energy and vigour than anything else.
...
Watch a mother and baby greet each other as the baby is waking... 'Hello. There you are. It's wonderful to see you.' And the baby mirrors this delight back, as she learns. 'Yes, I am here. And I am very wonderful.' This Face is our building block.' Sarah Savage Joseph

xxx

Rachel & Alice

Introducing...

Alice Emmeline

Born Saturday 15th June 2013

6lb11

 

As Pooh would say

bisy, backson

xx

a dress so flowery

'Miss Marriot tying up the clematis and wearing a dress so flowery that many foiled bees buzzed angrily round her for a moment before going on to the less deceiving columbines.' Mollie Panter-Downes It's the real thing this time in Good evening, Mrs Craven

dress

I doubt I'll be wearing a dress like this.

long mornings

'June came in with fields of white clover, and Catherine spent long mornings in the open, reading to Audrey whilst Adam slept and the sunny countryside slept too, mile after undistinguished mile, all about them. Swifts swung overhead, blue church spires pricked the distance, the scent of clover was solid on the windless air.' Elizabeth Cambridge Hostages to Fortune

reading

In the blissful ignorance before TT is born I like to imagine sitting under our apple tree reading whilst TT sleeps or plays. If I manage it once with our current weather then I shall be content.

I am waiting

TT is due any day now, so we are waiting.

'the girl did not know what to do now - oh yes, she thought, I am doing something, I am waiting; but reason told her that waiting is not a thing to do. A wait is something being done to you. She thought of her mother in the railway station, but in that case the train had gone: you do not wait for what has already happened.' Elizabeth Bowen A World of Love

waiting

Enjoying the wait, but waiting.

The Month of May

May started with glorious blue skies, blossom appearing on the apple tree in our garden, green shoots appearing everywhere, wearing shoes without socks.
Painted toe nails - one of the advantages of being 30+ weeks pregnant is that I have to have a pedicure, there is no way I can reach my toes to paint them!
A delightful christening of godchild number six and catching up with dear friends.
Mother and Pops coming up for the day. First time cooking summer food, pottering in the garden together and enjoying the sunshine.
My last week at work before maternity leave - all happening at just the right time. The final day, cards from different classes and being sung to by the different classes in my team. Receiving some lovely gifts, including a nappy cake and then to Canary Wharf for pizza. Home very tired.
Off to Twin and the Blessings for a lovely day. A BBQ in the garden and practising putting on a baby sling with a doll.
Cooking Warmth the meal I cooked on the weekend we became engaged as a celebration for first day of maternity leave.
Mother and Pops coming up for what should have been a day of gardening, but the persistent rain meant we sorted out the linen for TT.
Meeting up with a dear friend for lunch at Peter Jones and then on to try to get ahead by buying cards and gifts for all the summer birthdays.
Days having a gentle rhythm of reading, eating, napping, preparing for TT, pottering in the garden, doing small jobs.
A very belated birthday pamper day with Twin and Mother at Eastwell Manor. So lovely to have a facial, laze in the rest room, float in the deserted pool, have a foot massage, chat and catch up.
Off into town for friend's birthday meal at Bambou. I was determined to stay for supper and not just the drinks part. This will probably be the last time we go out on a Saturday night together with no babysitter.
Meeting up with new NCT friends for lunch at The Station, then after a brief afternoon nap out to Dalys Wine Bar to catch up with old friends.
A very wet day in Sloane Square, hoping to enjoy looking at Chelsea in Bloom shop windows, instead hiding in Patisserie Valerie with a dear friend and then hopping to The Saatchi Gallery and stumbling across Festival des Metiers a Hermes exhibition.
A final pre baby hair cut and lunch with Mama and Papa Warmth.
Good friends for a takeaway curry - we've finally found a good local takeaway Indian.
Pops' 70th birthday celebrations. Nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, aunts and immediate family. Thirty in all and the sun shone so magnificently that we spent the whole day outside, suntan lotions necessary.
A lovely Bank Holiday Monday - eating supper outside. Then the next day it rained and rained...
Quickly, or as quickly as I move at the moment, popping to Lambs Conduit Street to Persephone to buy Twin's birthday gift and then deciding I did have time to pop in Ben Penreath, even though I was then late meeting up with dear old colleagues at our favourite restaurant The National Portrait Gallery Restaurant. Lovely to see the views of London in daylight.

Finally finished Restoration by Rose Tremain - quite unlike her other books I've read.  It was a long slow slog. Speeded through Cocktails under the tree of forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller and The Rain before it Falls by Jonathon Coe. Baked this lemon drizzle cake for NCT ladies day, Hummingbird's Peanut butter and chocolate biscuits. A Ricotta and Lemon Cake, to use up left over ricotta, for Twin and Blessings.

The last day in May Twin and the blessings up and this also means the last month without a bundle of baby in our lives...

glowed with flowers

Our final Jane Eyre floral spring quote.

'that bright May shone unclouded over the bright hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples;' Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

roses

I've the first bud creeping on my roses and look forward to a summer of roses and sweet peas.

muffins and meringues

Even without the arrival of TT this summer is a summer of parties. It starts this weekend celebrating Pops' 70th, then at some point TT will arrive, at the end of June Mama and Papa Warmth celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary and then the end of July is Granny Warmth's 90th. In between all these large parties are lots of birthdays.

''...Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St. John's Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and nightclubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank dark brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris...' Evelyn Waugh Vile Bodies

parties

What's your favourite kind of party?

breathing scents of roses

I've been having such an enjoyable potter in the garden last week and over the weekend. The roses aren't out yet but the buds are there and on Sunday the sky was glorious. I'm excited for the summer ahead.

'The garden was peaceful, breathing scents of roses and stocks. The sky was glorious as if a flight of angels had just passed over, sweeping wings of gold from end to end.' Dorothy Whipple Someone at a distance

rose

How is your garden?

the friendship formed

As our due date gets closer we wonder what sex TT will be, who TT will look like, what their and our hopes and fears will be together.

'... she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.' Gabriel Garcia Marrquez Love in the Time of Cholera

children

pink and mauve wildflowers

I think we could safely say we're in late spring, or even early summer, so this passage about Russia in late spring 1910 is timely.

Never had nature been so flamboyant; its vibrant freshness was like a satin-lined jewel box containing a precious stone corroded from within by a black chancre. Copses of beech with silvery trunks and tender green foliage engulfed dilapidated manor houses with roofs collapsing on abandoned rooms and broken windows, shutters torn asunder. The wheat, which was just beginning to turn golden, intermingled with the tall grasses of the steppes and with pink and mauve wildflowers, undulating around half-rotted isbas that crumbled on the edge of the muddy pools below, above which loomed ancient willow trees whose branches dangled into the water, filled with brambles that no one bothered to prune.' Elisabeth Gille Mirador

pinkandmauve

I love the order and chaos of nature, and thinking about our garden even though it had  been neglected for at least one summer the roses still bloomed, the hydrangeas revealed, the apple tree blossomed and produced fruit nature keeps going it seems.. No matter what else is going on around.

a goodly smell

Today is the first day of my maternity leave, and I'm looking forward to leisurely delicious breakfasts. No more branflakes at 6.30am.

'The breakfast had a goodly smell to it. There were croissants, and two fresh rolls, and twists of very yellow butter, and a jar of honey, and a steaming pot of coffee. There was also a new packet of Toblerone chocolate and three sucettes on sticks, all of them different colours. He ate all the sucettes and half the Toblerone, before he started on his breakfast.' Daphne Du Maurier The Parasites

breakfastinbed

hoping soul

So, our due date is one calender month from today....

'The exact science of one molecule transformed into another - that Mabel could not explain, but then again she could not explain how a foetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul.' Eowyn Ivey The snow child

hopingsoul

subsequent eccentricities

'She wore green sandals, which fact in itself is enough to explain any of the subsequent eccentricities in her conduct. Green as a Cornish sea they were, flat as a Cornish beach at low tide, and decorated on the toes with a chaste cut out design.' Stella Gibbons A young man in rags from Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

Oh to be walking along a Cornish beach with the sand between my toes today...

April advanced to May

I know we're only three days in but so far May has been glorious. The gardens are coming alive, blossom is everywhere, the skies are blue and there is sunshine. Long may it continue.

'April advanced to May - a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses, it became all green, all flowers;its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants; I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone;' Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

May

Here's wishing you wherever you live a bright serene May

The Month of April

A quiet day pottering around the house, wishing the weather was warmer so I could potter in the garden. I'm missing the garden.
Meeting dear dear old work colleagues for lunch at Cote.
Another lunch date with a dear friend this time at Cantina Vinopolis - a delicious mushroom gnocchi.
Another day out of the house whilst the windows are being done. Meeting a dear friend, oldest godson and siblings at Chelsea Physic Garden. Oh it was bleak, Cold wind, blizzard of snow, no blue skies, cold cold cold.
After the day before being so cold meeting a friend at Greenwich park for a picnic was rearranged for soup and cake in her home.
Meeting Twin for a day out together, my first visit to Kensington Palace. A lovely lunch in the cafe, we couldn't quite stretch to the Orangerie, and then a short walk in the park. The sun shone, the wind was blowing elsewhere, it was wonderful.
Hanging out the washing to dry - a simple pleasure, but oh so wonderful.
Warmth had a few days off work so we went to visit Granny Warmth in Worthing, finally pottered in the garden, bending down is getting harder. Arranging the nursery for TT - it all feels more real now the room is ready-ish. Lunch with Mama and Papa Warmth.
Meeting Rebecca and Gemma at Liberty's Tea Room for a lovely catch up.
The final day of the holidays and a trip to school for some work and then dodging the April showers to potter in the garden a little more.
At the weekend I went away with university friends to a hotel spa which was lovely. We were last all staying together twenty years ago. We had afternoon tea, lovely swims in the pool, a wet walk in the grounds, relaxed evening drinks, a scrumptious breakfast, another swim, lunch and then farewell. It was lovely to spend time together and truly catch up, not just fleeting lunches together.
Home to the start of our NCT classes on Sunday night and then following on from that a tour of the hospital labour wards which was really interesting. Suddenly it all seems more real and imminent. Especially returning to work after the two week break to quite a few 'you've grown' comments, and feeling a lot more tired than I did before the holidays.
Dear friends popping round for a mid week takeaway as they were in the area.
Friday night mooching in Liberty's and then meeting an old print making friend in Waterstones.
A wonderful spring Saturday of lemon curd on toast, pottering I'm the garden and hanging the washing out. Mama and Papa Warmth to supper, bringing with them two tops that Warmth and his brothers wore as babies.
A mid week pizza and salad with a dear friend.
A few days of glorious spring weather - just what we all needed.
Friday night pizza and ice cream, Saturday morning off to Pick Me Up to look at the prints. We bought two and were so tempted by many others, especially for TT.
Saturday evening off to great friends for supper and to stay over, brunch at their local cafe and then home and another long nap. A weekend of three day time naps can't be bad.

Books read French children don't throw food by Pamela Druckerman, Restoration by Rose Tremain.
 On the Kindle, read in the night, The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield.

heart and limbs and mind

The only book from my Mr B's Reading Spa which I bought that I already knew about and knew I wanted to read was A Compass Error, the follow up to A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first book but it was lovely to be transported to sunnier climes in the midst of such a dull early spring.

'She loved the shapes of bottles and of course the romantic names and the pictures of the pretty manor houses on the labels, and she loved the link with rivers and hillsides and climates and hot years, and the range of learning and experiment afforded by wine's infinite variety; but what she loved more than these was the taste - of peach and earth and honeysuckle and raspberries and spice and cedarwood and pebbles and truffles and tobacco leaf; and happiness, the quiet ecstasy that spreads through heart and limbs and mind.' Sybille Bedford A Compass Error

bottles

What will you be drinking this weekend?

warm, eager, restless

Warmth very kindly bought me a Kindle, for my slightly sleepless nights, now and probably when the baby arrives. I'd thought that a Kindle with it's light would be a way for me to be able to find time to read. So far I'm downloading the free ones that I've already read, I'm sure I shall be tired so a re read maybe just right. Next one is Emma.

'That evening for the first time in his life, as he pressed through the swing door and descended the three broad steps to the pavement, old Mr. Neave felt he was too old for the spring. Spring - warm, eager, restless - was there, waiting for him in the golden light, ready in front of everybody to run up, to blow on his white beard, to drag sweetly on his arm. And he couldn't meet her, no; he couldn't square up once more and stride off, jaunty as a young man.' Katherine Mansfield An Ideal Family in The Garden Party.

spring

old-fashioned flowers

'He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple-trees, pear-trees, and cherry-trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illuminated the wreathed and dewy orchard-trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.' Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

oldfashioned

Another reason for loving Jane Eyre - the flower and spring quotes.

she had changed her skin

We started our NCT classes last night so this quote felt right.

'After Molly's birth, Lorna lay on her side and gazed at the baby, and Molly stared back with wide-open eyes and the strange unearthly look of the newborn, as though, Lorna thought, she had just arrived from some mysterious place. But when Lorna got out of bed and crept over to the chest to get a glass of water she glanced at herself in the mirror and saw that she too had that look, she was not the person that she had been yesterday, she had changed her skin.' Penelope Lively Consequences

baby