Quantity Surveying

yay stuff.

another annoying article about how terrible it is that small babies are in daycare.

Perhaps someone should instead muse about how terrible it is that we only have 14 weeks paid parental leave instead of say six months.

Perhaps someone should muse about the costs of accommodation which have risen rapidly over the last six years in this country which mean that people don't have the means to stay at home with their kids.

Or could muse about the complete separation between the adult and child world in our society which makes it harder to combine work and family and probably is the cause of a lot of teenage misery because they're placed firmly on the child side.

but no. It's much easier to prompt outrage by writing a facile article like this.

Example of annoying sentence:
"They see that as an economic necessity," Dr Angus said. "It's been seen as economically good for the household."
personally I *do* think it's good for the household if we pay the mortgage and our son has a roof over his head. It's not like most parents are just going back to work for the sake of buying gewgaws.

But hey stuff thinks it's important for my kid to not be in care so I'll just stay at home for the sake of the kid. Though how long we have a home is up for debate and I'm sure it's great for the wellbeing of my baby to be homeless. yeah.

another annoying sentence:
"Getting more kids into childcare is in the interests of providers and in the interests of government advisers who think it will increase productivity in New Zealand to have skilled women return to the workforce quite early on," he said.
Note that it talks about skilled women returning to the workforce - do fathers even exist in stuff-land? certainly not if they might stay at home and actually well i don't know look after their kids or something.

I could go on but instead I'm going to have breakfast and get ready for work so we can pay the mortgage and the electricity bill. Disclaimer: Owen will be looked after by his daddy all day who will feed him food bought with the money that is 'economically good for our household'.

Richard commented the other day that he flicked to my blog now and then but all that was there was my rant about Plunket Line!

So here's something else for people to read.

Stan the Snail follows the trail
through the flowers
along the path
under the leaves
around the flowerpots
and peeps behind the bucket
'Here I am Stan!'

Great Literature it is not! But it is is favourite book. Mostly because it's a cloth book so he can eat it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now something that is not about the baby...

Koalas have fingerprints.

Actually - I have nothing else that isn't about work or the cat...

I am really never ever going to ring them again - the first time I talked to them they judged me and the second time I rang up they hung up on me. What a waste of time.

I spilt tea on my computer last night and the delete key and two of the arrow keys no longer work. Sigh.

Oh yes, and while I'm at it, I really need recommendations of dinners that are easy to throw together or can be prepared early in the day because cooking with colic is really not an option...

'Cooking with Colic' - recipes for parents who can't cook between 5-7pm.

Seeing as it is my experience at the moment....

Time has passed swiftly since Owen was born - I can't believe that in 2 and a half months time I'm going back to work, when at the moment I feel like I can barely make it out of the house. (Well, actually I can't make it out of the house - I can't drive due to the caesarean, though I'm not so worried about the driving, the actual issue is getting the baby plus car seat in and out of the car at either end :-) People say it gets better.

Things i have noticed so far about parenting

- Whatever I do I feel guilty for doing the WRONG THING WHICH IS GOING TO DAMAGE MY CHILD FOREVER. Society needs to support parents, not make them feel like shite. It does an exceptionally poor job of this.

- Plunket line is completely unhelpful. When you ring them to say 'my baby is unsettled, these are the symptoms etc, they tell you about the 'feed, play, sleep' routine, and a bunch of techniques for settling the baby which are available from any website in the land. They also keep you on the phone for time that would be much better spent in actually trying to settle the baby rather than talking to plunket line. I was particularly not impressed when I said that we couldn't settle the baby and he'd been awake for three hours, and they told me I shouldn't have a baby awake for longer than 90 minutes. YES I FREAKEN KNOW THAT LADY, THAT'S WHY I'M TALKING TO YOU! Also mega-unimpressed when I said that the baby goes between four hours between feeds overnight and they told me I shouldn't leave the baby to sleep for longer than three hours. AND IF ITS FOUR HOURS BETWEEN THE START OF FEEDS THAT'S ABOUT 30-60 MINUTES OF FEEDING, NAPPY CHANGING AND SOOTHING BACK TO SLEEP WHICH MEANS ABOUT 3-4 HOURS OF SLEEP. They also didn't mention colic. Maybe the 'feed, play, sleep' routine completely eliminates colic. Ha Ha.

- I am currently not feeling very happy or confident with the advice of a significant proportion of the medical profession. There are some who are wonderful and reassuring, and provide assistance, not directions, and a lot who are completely judgmental and consider there is only one right thing that must be done for the baby, regardless of circumstances. I'm also feeling that a lot of the socially constructed mythology around natural childbirth and baby care is bollocks.

La la la, this turned into much more of a rant than I expected. Owen is lovely, he's smiling at us now, and has just started to take an interest in objects, including the elephant that plays a tinkly tune that his cousin sent him from Australia.

I need more sleep :-)

Not much posting on livejournal. More on facebook recently. I think that's because I only have to write one sentence on facebook, whereas on here it's more of a paragraph thing. That and the fact the baby finally arrived, so all I really have to say is 'baby baby baby', which may be an improvement on where I was a few months ago, where all I had to say was 'baby baby emissions trading scheme baby emissions trading scheme' which is why there hasn't been much posting on livejournal :-)

Anyway, to summarise, for those that didn't pick the news up from facebook, baby Owen was born on 5 June 2009, via c-section after a 26 hour labour... weight 9lb 2oz. 2 days later, the little guy was in neonates having picked up an infection in the hospital. One course of antibiotics later, we finally made it home on 13 June, and all has been going well since (with the obligatory sleep deprivation etc of course. Baby wrangling wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the sleep deprivation).

Eventually I might have it together again to have enough of a life that I can talk about something other than the baby or my job, but then again I might not any time soon, either.....

...It's weird, but generally when people talk about their cats and dogs, they go out of their way to talk about how cute and adorable they are. When they talk about their kids they seem to go out of their way to talk about how terrible and draining they are. Maybe I'm just noticing this because I'm pregnant.

NB this doesn't seem to apply to my friends, but does seem to apply as a general rule about workmates and other casual acquaintances.

Wow! It's been 18 weeks since I last posted on this blog. Time flies.

In that time:
- I got pregnant (the baby is due at the end of May).
- Our vegetable garden never got planted, and turned into a weed patch.
- I got a promotion at work.
- I did a woodwork course and
- Molly got a home made cat hut for Christmas, that she loves nothing more than to sleep on top of.
- I started a secondment, which involves a lot more work than my existing job. Sigh.
- I discovered the hard way that I now have a kiwifruit allergy in addition to my already existing tamarillo allergy.

So how about them Black Caps, eh?

For those of you that live in Wellington city, I heard a rumour the bus drivers are going to be on strike during the tomorrow am peak. Might be a good day to walk, or some other form of transport.