The week past, from Saturday morning

It's Saturday morning, the babies are asleep, Nye is asleep, the washing machine is running, the kettle is boiling and the smell of cinnamon bagels drifts from the toaster.  A week ago we were moving to London (or maybe Brighton) at the end of the year, now we're not.  

I hadn't talked about it here but in February Nye and I decided we were going to move south, that we were going to be brave and uproot everything and carry it all with us and live our lives for a little while at least in a city that has whispered sweet words of enticement to us for years. We were going to leave the city that we Don't Love. We were going to have A Great Adventure.   

Now we're not.   

Our roof is sick and it needs fixed and we live in a communal building and it could take many years and thousands of monies to make it well again and in the meantime no one will buy a flat with a sick roof so we can't move.  So we're stuck.  In many ways it's a good thing (sort of.) We're tired, we just had babies, before that we spent a long time trying to make babies, and starting a business, and renovating a flat. Before that there were family upheavals and fights with educational establishments. Before that we hadn't met.  It would do us no harm at all to Just Be for a while.  The problem (apart from the thousands of monies, much mess and the fact that we don't really want to live here) is that we don't know how to Just Be. We've never Just Been. We've always (see above) had a project/battle to occupy/consume us.  But it's something that we need to learn and so begins Operation Just Be (The No Project Project) (subtitle thanks to Meg who has a way for noticing and illuminating the ridiculousness.)

In the last week Amelia has learned to talk. She says 'ahbahbahbah' 'adahdahdah' and 'ahgahgahgah'.  She has also discovered that she has volume control (thank the good lord) and it's more than a little hilarious when she says 'AHBAHBAHBAH ahbahabahbah AHBABAHBAHB ahbahbahbabah AHBABBAHBAH.' Just to practice.  Her new-found vocal skills seem to have released some of her frustration with the world.  Much like with the rolling, Ella did the whole talking thing a couple of months ago, for a couple of days, and has been pretty quiet ever since.  She's now fully occupied with eating.  That girl can eat moosh faster than we can get it in her and her enthusiasm kills me dead.  Sitting in her little seat on the table she spots the spoon, lunges for it, often misses entirely poking herself in the eye or cheek, then tries again. There's no point in me trying to guide the spoon to her mouth as her lunging for a moving object as opposed to a still one only increases the risk that she is going to swallow the spoon too.   

Amelia will not be fed.  Nuh uh, no way, not ever.  She sees the spoon coming and clamps her mouth shut so tight ain't nothing getting in there.  But.  Give her the spoon herself and she will put it straight in her mouth. Well not straight in her mouth, and therein lies the problem.  The process goes something like this: mouth open, spoon in ear. Mouth still open, spoon in eye.  Mouth open, spoon brandished through the air. Mouth open, spoon finally in mouth. By which point there is carrot in her ear, on her eyebrow, splattered across the walls and the baby is sucking on an empty spoon.  It's entertaining but I'm not sure how long she can last on milk and an empty spoon. Nye thinks that her determination to do it herself is a good thing. I'm going to remind him of this when she's 4 and we're running late for school and she wants to put her shoes on BY HERSELF DADDY.  

* Ammie, Ammie, Ella. For those of you who STILL can't tell the difference.