What to do??

We’ve just found out that our baby is allergic to our dog. We’ve eliminated everything else. When the dog is in the flat, she sneezes non stop and scratches herself. We ‘eliminated’ him for a few days and her skin is better than ever and she hasn’t sneezed once.

I brought him back this afternoon for a quick experiment and it all started again. I brushed him thoroughly to make sure he was dust-free. To no avail.

Our doctor is convinced she’s allergic to the dog and told us to “get rid of it”! But then again this is from the same doctor who prescribes antibiotics to patients without examining them first!

I most certainly will not. We got him a few months after our first baby died, and he helped us in ways that you wouldn’t believe. We had 100% support from our dog, which is more than we can say about family and friends.

This is a conundrum, and one that will not be easy to solve.

Freaky

There are very few things that freak me out. I don’t frighten easily. Well, except when it comes to flying.

Oh, and spiders, obviously.

But what really really scares me is when I take my mutt across the fields at night and he suddenly stops and starts barking and growling. Now, if he was looking and digging at the ground, I would assume it were a mole. But he’s looking up! *shiver*

Also, when my baby stares at a fixed point to my left and laughs out loud at nobody. Always in the same room, at the same point! *shiver*

Leopards?

I thought that when our baby would be born people would change their ways. Maybe I was just secretly hoping they would.

So listen carefully.

If you see me walking in town with with my baby, don’t come up to me and say, “Oh look, she’s beautiful. All’s well that ends well.” or “You see, I told you God would reward you!” Yes, you did and I wanted to kill you less then than I do at this moment.

And please don’t ask me if my baby is similar looking to my first child. Not only is it none of your business, but what normal person would ask such a question?

Maybe I’m just having a bad week. Zosia won’t sleep unless she’s got a breast in her mouth. She will NOT take a dummy. When she falls asleep, after a few minutes she’ll realise that there’s nobody there and start crying. My wife spends her life in the bedroom. And I don’t mean that in a good way :-( I’m not even going to mention sex. I think I’m fed up enough without going into that.

On a more optimistic note:

• Finally got round to sending off for Zosia’s passport and ID card. They’ll take about a month to get here and we need it before Christmas as we’re flying to Ireland then. I absolutely hate the photos for the passport (front profile, no smiles) They look so unnatural. Love the ones for the Polish ID card (left profile).
• The cradle cap is gone thanks to Jo. I scrubbed her head raw :-) Thanks.
• Zoska loves when I sing to her. She could listen from the morning to evening to my singing. Sometimes when my voice is raspy from hours of crowing, we listen to the radio. There’s a song from a certain beautiful Norwegian called Marit Larsen popular at the moment over here. As soon as it comes on the radio or MTV, my baby looks like this:

And daddy likes looking at her too, so that works out well for everyone :-)

Happy All Saints'

Yes folks! It's that time of the year again. While most of the western world is preparing to celebrate Halloween, here in Poland it's time to get our sad faces out of the cupboard. Yes, it's All Saints' Day. The day when you visit your deceased loved ones and mass is said in all the cemeteries.

The week leading up to 1st November is a strange one. You go to the cemetery and clean up the graves of your loved ones. Some people even buy black markers to make the letters on the headstones look better than their neighbour's look new.

Flowers and coloured candles (znicze) cover graveyards and cemeteries all over the country. From Gdansk to Krakow, from Szczecin to Lublin. It really is a wonderful sight to behold. I personally love the smell. All the fresh flowers and candle wax. Here is a typical cemetery:

Then there's the whole reason for this. Of course this is to honour the dead, to pray for them. Now this I can deal with. What I can’t fathom is why the church chose one of the most depressing times of the year to do it! Why couldn’t they have chosen a nice bright afternoon in June or July?

My wife and I won’t be going to the cemetery for Mass tomorrow. We don’t feel the need to look down on our neighbours. We also don’t understand the concept of using one day of the year to think about and pray for our loved ones. We also don’t feel the need to spend the rest of the year gossiping about people who didn’t have their graves properly cleaned/had poor clothes/had a new hat (wherever did she get the money?!) etc.

No, as usual on 1st November we’ll visit the grave in the morning before the rest of them arrive…

Give me bonfires and pumpkins any day!

Happy Halloween :-)

My typical day by Zosia...

When mummy is home:

• Wake up gradually with a smile on my face. Try to look as cute as possible. Open my eyes, look at mummy and flutter my eyelashes.
• Lie, smiling, while mummy washes me all over and puts baby oil on me. (Note to self – must work on cute giggle)
• Lie in my bouncy chair and amuse myself, because this gives my darling mummy time to herself and eat breakfast in peace.
• Laugh, play and make gurgling noises all day. This makes mummy happy.
• Evening bath time. Smile at mummy while she gives me a bath.
  
• Go to sleep with a smile on my face. Another great day
  

When daddy is home and mummy is at school:

• For about half an hour before I open my eyes I must move continuously while scratching my face (must work on sharpening nails – the more blood the more panicked he is :-) )
• Wake up with a frown. Cry a little. Try to look not impressed with life in general.
• Scream while daddy is washing me. NO fluttering of eyelashes. And absolutely NO giggling.
• Won’t be laughing today. How dare HE leave me in my bouncy chair!
• No breakfast for daddy :-)
• Will I drink the expressed milk today? Hmm? No, I don’t think I will actually, thank you very much.
• 8pm start bath time nightmare sequence. Scream. Red face. The lot. Make sure daddy gets as much water as possible on the floor. (N.B. Must work on my baby-oil wriggling technique!)
• Listen out for mummy coming in the door at about 8pm and scream like a banshee for 10, maybe 15 minutes. Make it virtually impossible for mummy to ‘calm me down’ while giving daddy a smile over mummy’s shoulder.
• 'Reluctantly' agree to feed and go to sleep.

Another few weeks of this and mummy will eventually see the light, realize that daddy can't cope, and quit school *insert evil laugh here*

Others have it worse....

I drive 100 kilometres to and from work everyday. This doesn't bother me in the slightest because I love driving. The problem is that twice a day, four days a week I pass by two places that stir up memories. The first is the shop where I bought the headstone and grave for my kid. The second place is the grave itself. I literally drive about 10 metres by the grave. Every. Single. Day.

To tell you the truth, I haven't been to the grave since before my little girl was born. I just can't face it.

This week that changed. I was driving to work on Wednesday, past the cemetery when I noticed a young man standing at my kid's grave. I should mention that it's a cemetery between two villages and it's usually empty. So I pulled into the car park and went to the grave for the first time since June. The man was actually standing at a little grave of his own. A new one next to ours. I glanced surreptitiously at the details on the stone. It was also a little boy, but two years old.

It's hard to describe how I feel when I visit the grave. I can never quite nail it. 'Sad' doesn't nearly cover it. 'Depressed' doesn't work either. I would be inclined to say 'Crestfallen'. Yes, that's what it's like for me.

It was only when I looked at this man that I saw real pain. We looked at each other for a brief moment and I saw that his eyes were haunted. I quickly looked away and pretended to be cleaning my gravestone. Over here they have a habit of putting pictures of loved ones on graves. This little boy looked like an angel. Smiling for the camera. Not a care in the world.

I went again on Thursday morning at the same time. We got talking. His son died of kidney failure on the way to the hospital.

Jesus, there's always someone who's had a rougher time than you have.

Changing views...

I have been an uncle for almost as long as I can remember. I think I was about nine or ten when my first nephew came along, much to my parents' dismay, as my sister was extremely young at the time (sitting her GCSE's). But they got used to the idea, my sister finished school and everything was all right. She now has two kids. Another sister has five, my eldest brother has six or seven (I can't remember now), and there are more. Altogether I have about fifteen or sixteen nephews and nieces. My brother's wife gave birth two weeks after my daughter was born.

But what I want to say is this: I was there. I changed nappies, I made up bottles and sang babies to sleep. I even stayed with one of my sisters for a while as she was a single mother and needed all the help she could get with boisterous twins! But then, and this is important, I went home. "Bye then! See you when I see you." I didn't really think about what is is like to have a baby. What it's like to get up at night to feed them. To be in the middle of a shopping centre when your babe starts screaming and you can't find your wife because you left her in yet another shoe shop and you have no idea how to calm the baby down.

I didn't realise how hard mothers work. Although it's the most rewarding job on Earth, it is tiring. I'm going to be a wee bit nicer to me ma and sisters in future. In fact I might even give them a ring tonight :-)

My eldest brother is great too. He loves his kids dearly. Yeah, yeah I know that everyone loves their kids, but he had a huge part in their upbringing. I remember when he didn't have a car. He used to take his children to Belfast shopping on the bus. He used to talk to them the whole way (20 whole miles!). He would point at the animals in the fields and make the appropriate noises. The kids had a great time. One day he nodded off on the bus and woke with a start. He saw some sheep and said, loudly, "Look, sheep BAAAAAAAA!" only to discover that the children hadn't come out with him that day and the old woman sitting beside him almost had a heart attack :-)

Other things I have learned in the last few weeks: cosleeping is the best thing in the world. I don't care what anyone says, it's great (we don't do it every night though) and your baby smiling at you evokes powerful emotions you don't even know you had.


I have also reduced my driving speed in half :-)