Just bug me enough, and I'll write. The question is, is it worth it?

I'm not looking up how long it's been, but someone emailed and said it had been a month, so that's probably right. There is nothing wrong, I am just completely washed out with work, which has stretched into a 730-midnight kind of thing, with (most days) 30 minutes to get Pob up in the morning and an hour or so to put her to bed at night. And weekend work too, and pretty much anytime I'm sitting still not with Pob, I'm working. It's getting really old and I'm very tired, but I don't think it will let up much until I go down to 50% the week of 15 June, and stop completely the week after.

To compound my stress, the builders who are doing our bedroom and bathroom are (of course) taking much longer than planned, so we're sleeping in the attic which is 6 long flights of stairs up from where we spend most of our time, which at 7.5 months pregnant is really no fun. Plus everything is in boxes, and the boxes and everything else is covered in dust, and I want to get stuff organised for Junior but there is no space to do it. So actually I think we are considerably less prepared for Junior than we were for Pob. Poor old Junior.

We also have no name for him, which is starting to worry me a bit. I like slightly avant garde names, but H doesn't, plus Pob's names have real meaning for our families so I feel there is a high bar that we need to meet for him, too. Our shortlist is currently very uninspiring, and I feel a bit stuck about the whole thing.

Of course this is nothing to those still in the trenches. I am not meaning to whine, I'm just being descriptive. Pob is doing lots of cool stuff, including her first three-word sentence a few weeks ago - comprised grammatically correctly of subject/verb/object. When I approached her to help her with a bowl of yogurt which was proving too much for her relatively new self-feeding skills, I went to take the spoon away from her. She pushed my hand away. "[Pob} hold it!" She said. So she kept hold of the spoon and I guided her hand to make things easier. Various other things not to forget about this stage:

• Nighttime routine still working ok, but increasingly she is taking ages to settle once we put her down - up to an hour of chatting, alternating with throwing everything out of the crib and then crying inconsolably for her dummy/teddy until we go and rescue her. Part of this I think is that she really suffers with her teeth - she has been getting the first set of four molars for the last 2 months. One is pretty much through, two are peeking, and one is still under the surface after all this time. But I'm not sure pain from teeth is enough to explain the lack of settling
• Waking up earlier in the mornings. I think this is the light. We are about to experiment with blackout blinds. Currently we lie in bed and listen to "Hello! Teddy! Park! Up up up up! Park! Hello! Mummy mummy mummy! Daddy daddy! Granny Granny granny! Outside! Morning!" for about 30 minutes before she gets really fed up and starts whinging
• She did her first pee on the potty after her bath a few days ago. A bit of a fluke, she hasn't done it again, but she's very interested and forces us to read the inane potty books I bought her at every available opportunity
• We have spoken to her about a baby brother, and she has various books about new babies, but I don't think she gets even a little tiny bit what it will mean for her
• She loves loves loves doggies, and her favourite treat is to be taken out on her trike so that she is at their level and can get licked all over when they find her
• She is not interested in dolls particularly, but loves her soft toys with a passion
• When she says 'yes' she shakes her whole body to emphasise its importance
• I can see her get tense with fury as she cries when she can't do something she wants to do, but it seems to pass relatively quickly
• When she wants us to do something she reaches for our hands and pulls us along until we are where she wants us to be. Sometimes this means just walking around the kitchen/playroom for a while, a little stroll together. 
• She adores the teletubbies, and asks to watch them frequently. Less frequently we give in.
• She loves some of her local friends, when she sees them she runs around holding hands with them and giggling, offering lots of kisses and chatting away in their own toddlerese. And sometimes pushing them over and snatching their toys away, too.
• She loves apples and will eat a whole one, including the core, given the chance. Just like mummy.
• She has just discovered cake and now asks for it regularly
• She is not allergic to eggs in cake, biscuits and french toast, but still has a reaction to scrambled egg. 
• There seems to be little limit on what she will eat
• She has started to get the hang of hiding to play hide and seek, but can't bear to stay hidden for too long and always reveals herself as soon as we ask ' Where's Pob?'
  
• I don't spend enough time with her
  

Got to get back to work. I'm fine, I'm just really really tired.

Comments

[Calliope]

YAY for an excellent update from you!
Glad someone gave you a proper nudge as I have been missing you.
xo

[May]

My God, you poor woman, that much work? Kudos for getting through it. SO glad you get to STOP soon. And whatever is it about builders' complete inability to do what they say they'll do when they say they'll do it? It's weird.

I slept in a drawer for the first few weeks of my life. My parents were doing up a farmhouse in the mountains and in their naive eagerness completely forgot about things like, ooh, cribs, nappies, such-like. I like knowing I spent a few weeks in a drawer. It's funny.

Pob sounds adorable.

[Angela]

Glad to hear you're OK. I've been missing you too.
Pob sounds like a darling.

[Betty M]

Great to see an update from you although I am amazed given your schedule that you have a moment to yourself. Sorry about both the work hell and the builder hell. Never ever has a builder in this city finished on time.

Pob is sounding in excellent form. The name choice for Junior is an interesting conundrum - men get strange about the edgier boys names perhaps boys are just crueller than girls about names in the playground?

[Summer]

Sounds like you are working way too hard! I hope June 15 will come quickly for you.

Thanks for sharing the updates on Pob. It sounds like she is growing up to be a lovely little person!

[Lut C.]

How awful that you have to work so hard right now. :-( Hopefully the construction work won't be drawn out too long.

Lovely to hear about Pob's development. I'll resist the urge to compare.

[Kate]

Hi, came here through your creme de la creme post on stirrup queens, and your post about "would have been's" broke my heart as I also recently suffered a miscarriage. Im glad to hear that you succeeded now, and so glad you get to enjoy living beautiful child(ren).

[Nico]

Nice to hear from you! FWIW, Ant didn't seem to get that his sibling was coming until about three weeks beforehand when we put the crib together, got the carseat out, that kind of thing. It was also right around when he turned two - as Pob is a little younger, she may not comprehend until it happens - but in some ways that seems like it might be better!

[Heather]

Sorry to hear you're working so much lately. I know the feeling. I'm looking forward to my maternity leave very much as well.

[M]

So good to hear you're doing ok - but not glad to hear about your crazy work schedule. I don't know how you do it, I went out today for 4 hours and I just about collapsed!

[katty]

I stuck the edges of the black out blind down with sellotape. Ruined the wall - but the first morning they woke up at 7.15 instead of 5.30 so well worth it.
You are working WAY TOO HARD!

[motel manager]

Boys' names are much harder than girls', I think. With girls' names, I think the spectrum of interesting/meaningful-but-not-tacky-or-weird names is much larger. With boys, it's almost as if you have to be totally standard or completely bizarre. And that's why our second son didn't have a name for three days. Thank goodness I had a c-section and we got to stay in the hospital for longer. (They make you choose a name here before you leave; I recently saw a friend of mine from your neck of the woods whose fourth child still doesn't have a name after six weeks, so apparently things are different there. :) They call him "Baby" or "Junior" -- avoid that fate!)

I hope work settles down for you. Pob sounds delightful!

[Anne]

Glad to hear that all is well, relatively speaking. The work sounds crazy. The book *I Don't Know How She Does It* comes to mind... On the upside, you may find the sleepless early days with the new baby positively relaxing by contrast!

[sarah]

what a charming little girl!

[Hairy Farmer Family]

We had one, repeat one, boys name, and Harry got it. We got utterly grounded on a second name; so much so that the registrars wrote a snotty letter to remind us that: ahem, TIME LIMIT, people!

Good grief, all those stairs! Your thigh muscles will be in superb condition for a sneaky ski-trip away next winter though...

Pob has correctly identified cake as a Must Have. Harry flips opens his mouth like Pacman when he sees it coming!

[lucky2]

Ok, I love your sweet Pob.

So glad all is going well and hopefully the boy name will come to you shortly (along with some prebaby rest!)

[Hetty Fauxvert]

Oy, 6 flights of stairs at 7.5 months gone! I would say, shoot the builders! except that then you'd have to hire another set and it would take that much longer. Good grief. Hope they let you out of the attic soon!

Re the teething: Our boys LIVED on Infant Motrin (Ibuprofen) for a couple of months while their toddler molars came in. I would dose them both with the maximum allowable right before bedtime, and that was all that kept them from waking at 1 or 2 a.m. with the teeth (as evidenced by those nights I forgot and had to bring out the Motrin at 1 or 2 a.m.!). And Ibuprofen was much better than Acetaminophen because the effects last 6-8 hours, basically overnight, vs. 4 hrs or so. Really saved all our sanity. Also I think you will find the blackout blinds help a lot! Best of luck with your (obviously) adorable, amazing girl!