"No photos please!"

She's pretty fast in that walker.

Chicken says "dod."

She has been saying "Dada," and "Mu-mu-mu," for some time, (and lovely as that is it doesn't count quite as much.) But she started saying "Dod" every time she saw grandma's dog, and will now say it when I show her a picture of a dog too.

Today is Friday, I spent the morning counting down to Pop's nap time. Now she is asleep and I can attempt to relax and then hopefully be pleased to see her when she wakes up. (which i will be, especially as she has now perfected geting up on to her knees and peeping through the cot bars)

Now Pops is crawling I have become the poppy police, "POPPY NO" (don't take the lid of the nappy bucket and bite it. I don't want you to eat that night light. Don't explore the toilet. Mummy's shoes are dirty and I would prefer you bit the teething toy.)

I don't like being the police, "no" doesn't work very often when I say it any more anyway, and therefore I am getting a lot of exercise by frequently scooping my little chicken off the ground. It's surprisingly taxing on the brain to, as I have to look around and think where I can put her down again that wont result in me having to scoop her up again straight away. I can't think of anywhere 9 time out of 10, and decide to sit on the couch with her and let her play with my necklace, my new deterrent, in an attempt to get her to stop pinching my neck.

Not the usual way to kiss someone but being grabed by the hair and pulled in to be mouthed, has become one of my favourite kind of kisses.

I'm on a real energy saving thing at the moment, going round turning of all the light bulbs, TV, and all those things with little lit up displays that we hardly ever use, whilst trying not to annoy Joel. I'm worrying about the energy prices going up and our bills increasing, which they have done. I'm blaming it on the computer, I seem to only sneak on to it when Joel is out and Poppy is asleep.
I keep having amazing ideas while feeding Poppy, for things I could make, like cloth baby books for Pops, where I paint the pictures my self, or use that transfer stuff and put photos of people she knows on the fabric. However by the time I come down stairs and eat, I only really feel like watching TV, or think I should write my shopping list or something.
I've been doing baby massage classes, which I really enjoy, but Poppy seems to think the main objective is to roll over and make busy and unavailable any limb mummy is trying to massage. I've also been asked if I'd like to train as a breast feeding support counselor, as i'd been really encouraging a friend who was having a difficult time, and she'd passed on how helpful I was. I havent quite decided yet, as it means i'd be committing myself to not give up for a while.

I think my blog has turned a bit "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it did it make a sound?" as my thoughts clatter off the keyboard into the web alone

Sometimes I spend half the day wishing I could have some time to myself, and when it comes around I don't know what to do with it. It seems a waste to watch TV, it seems a waste to do nothing. What were we designed to do with all this time. Surely not just the dishes and the laundry.

While being bitten by a tiny set of gums this morning, I found a tooth, peeping up. Which was very exciting as it's the very first, I'd quite forgotten about teething gel for the last few days too, no wonder she was grumpy.

Inspired by a friend last night I began. So now where do I go, My Dad was talking to me yesterday about fear of failure stopping you starting new things, well I lay in bed last night wondering what I could write that people would want to read, that also makes me sound interesting, intelligent and cultured. I may be those things, but I've spent the last 7 months with my daughter, and intellectual conversation has been limited.

As Poppy sleeps upstairs, I dig deep to find a part of myself that has itself been asleep for some time. Its all so tied up with hope and dreams of who I want to be, and how I want to live. I get frustrated as I think about things I'd like to do, and think, I only have one life if I want to do something, live a certain way then I should do it.

I want to live a real life, in touch with the world around me in an eco friendly way, (whatever that means.) I want to grow my own food, recycle (shame that seems to mean I have to share my rather small kitchen with an increasingly large collection of sticky bottles, whilst I try to persuade Joel they need to go to the bottle bank.)

I want a walking through fields, make things myself, eat good food, reduce my carbon foot print (now that's a wordy one, do you know what it is? I'm not exactly sure I can tell you, but its to do with less air travel, which is a huge pollutant, not taking the car to the corner shop if you could walk, that sort of stuff. The band Coldplay planted enough trees to neutralize the footprint made by the production of there last album apparently.)

I'd like to have renewable energy, and think maybe the British government should make it compulsory for us to put solar panels on our roofs, and why do people complain about wind turbines when we have big bad electricity pylons stringing there way across the country.

Thats more of a rant than I intended, but maybe its better to try and fail, than delete this entire blog.

Its way too late to have started this, its only 10.25pm but the chances are i will be up at least once for at least 30 minutes sometime tonight while i'd rather be sleeping. but i'm curious to know if i've done this right, and having spent so long trying to set the thing up (twice, i think there is another one out there floating around but i can find it.) I dont want to have wasted time, especially when i could have been sleeping.