of angel babies, blogging and freebies

My niece is an angel baby. I'm writing this as she's lying in front of me, staring into this new world. She sleeps, feeds, looks about a bit, sleeps. For a mum of a spirited baby (that means babies who object to about everything except being carried or being attached to a nipple, who nap little and cry a lot, who scorn the 400 quid pram and make you wish you had invested in slings instead), this is truly amazing, I can't believe there are babies like her. Of course the unexpected worries one, while we are also thankful that she is such an angel baby and lets us spend lots of times with the toddlers too.

It's a strange combination of confidence and amazement. Yes, I can still remember what to do with a newborn and feel confident enough, but she is different, reminding me that really comparisons are just plain rubbish. Cubling almost didn't posset. Whereas currently, we are all running about stinking of resurgitated milk. Like, I've never seen milk come out of the nose!!! In Cubling's case, I hardly ever saw any milk at all (which was a different worry altogether). I now understand why some parents go through a lot of muslins and babygrows (Cubling had her babygrow on for days on end).

It also reminds me acutely of why I got so into blogging when pregnant and after giving birth. In the few and precious minutes that you have when with a newborn (even if they are more of them with this particular newborn), blogging is great - you spend as little or as much time as you like/can and that's that. No bad feelings for not having managed to drink your cup of tea before it got cold yet again. No cursing that the heap of washing keeps increasing and you don't even make it to the drying rack. All you need is a laptop on standby and your get your 5 minutes of me time.

Of course, it was different 2 1/2 years ago. I could never have just put Cubling down on blankets on the ground in front of me. She would also never have napped for the greater part of the day. Or napped in general for more than 30 minutes at a time. Yet I got very proficient at typing away on my laptop while breastfeeding (believe it or not) and getting my me time during those frequent and long feeds.

I also made an interesting discovery last night, prompted by my inability to write emails from my webmail because it's programmed in a way that it won't work for Firefox, boo. So I had to use my gmail account which is there but never used. Previously, I'd wondered about all these offers and freebies that mummy bloggers apparently get which really haven't ever made their way to me unless it was me who made contact through British Mummy Bloggers. I'd put it down to my blog not being popular enough, and that was fine really (I wouldn't have said no to a box of legos though!). Well, you may guess, my inbox had a few offers. One for vitamin supplements for children over 3. How suitable. Another one something to do with school. How suitable again. Hello advertisers, check the age of my wean please. Others are offers that are so beyond my life at the moment that they made me chuckle. A pamper day, yeah right. When exactly would I want to do that? I sported a greying long head of hair for inability to make it to the hairdressers for a good few months. Then there's a free lunch with bloggers near me. In theory this lunch idea is quite attractive though considering I have yet to actually meet a fellow blogger (apart from friends who also happen to blog that is). So if you're a blogger and are around Glasgow or Clackmannanshire and fancy a free pizza lunch and meeting me, let me know in the comment box. I'll be likely to be with child(ren) though as way of warning ;)

Oops, and there she's asleep again. Not a peep. Not a whimper. This is surreal.

(Oh and you've still got a chance to send me your contribution to the first carnival on raising bilingual children - links to your post should reach me (blog @ cartside.co.uk) by 30th August. Ah go on, I'm trying to get 10 posts, and currently 3 short. It'll be fun, I promise!)

PS photo is entirely unrelated to blogpost. I just wanted to share it cause I like it - the moment before the balloon went pop in Culross a few weeks ago.