Singalong

So, here we are at our new home. Or at least here G is, asleep in her pram on the porch of our new home, at Dobcross in Saddleworth. The move itself was a bit of a production, with removal men that didn't turn up and Mrs J coming down with the lurgy, but it was all good in the end, even though most of our stuff is still in boxes.

Today I walked down the road to Uppermill, the nearest bigger village, to go to my first-ever mothers and toddlers group. It was a sing-along-with-baby sort of idea. Inevitably, once everyone was sat down I realised there were 18 babies, 18 mums, G and me. It wasn't too off-putting though, and I managed to get through it without doing anything that would lead to an outbreak of tutting, such as forgetting to warm up G's feed, or dropping her onto the floor. I'll go again next week.

In case you're wondering about the exact location of Dobcross, here's a mile post handily situated more or less outside our house. It reveals that we're almost equidistant between Manchester and Huddersfield:
But I don't fancy rushing back to the city this weekend, even if the shopping is better. There's plenty to explore around here. Not to mention a lot of boxes to unpack.

Rosy Cheeks

We're moving house this weekend, to our new place in Saddleworth. This means the flat is filling with boxes full of all our stuff. All this chaos might account for G making a bit of a nuisance of herself by being grouchy today. The picture above caught just about the only time she's smiled all day, and those rosy cheeks suggest we're getting closer to the appearance of her first teeth, so maybe that's what's bothering her. Hopefully she'll be in a better mood tomorrow, because if moving house is the most stressful thing you can do, I'm guessing moving house with a whining baby is even worse.

Baby Vomit

I'm sure there was a time when I didn't constantly reek of baby vomit. But between you and me, I'm struggling to remember exactly when that was. Baby G has been puking up very regularly over the last couple of weeks, which has come as a bit of a surprise because she only rarely did so when she was very young. But she's more than making up for it now.

The picture was taken during our recent stay in Wales, after a particularly bad series of sick-ups caused us to give G an impromptu bath in the sink. Curiously, she doesn't seem at all bothered by all the vomiting. The only clue she's even doing it is a bit of a gulp and, a second or two later, yet another stream of white liquid dribbling out of her mouth and down either myself or Mrs J (if we're unlucky) or onto a muslin cloth (on the rare occasions we're quick enough to anticipate it). The vomit itself kind of resembles salad cream and, I imagine, tastes like it too.

We don't know why G has started being sick so often, although seeing as she's not in any distress it can't be anything too serious. The Internet offers us lots of possible reasons, but it's almost not worth bothering trying to find out exactly what's going on because, let's face it, all babies throw up. It's just what they do.

Although it's usually easy to clean the vomit up, the smell is much harder to shift. Currently we're trying to show off our flat to would-be tenants, an activity that traditionally involves the baking of fresh bread to give off a welcoming aroma. All we can manage is freshly-spewed baby sick. Not quite sure whether an estate agent would be able to put a convincing positive spin on that.

Househunting

We're going to move soon. Currently we live in a third floor flat on Oldham Street in Manchester's Northern Quarter. Hanging out in the middle of town is fine for the time being, but one day fairly soon little G is going to start toddling and the amount of space we need is suddenly going to increase.

I don't think we're ready to condemn ourselves to cul-de-sac suburbia quite yet, so we've been spending our weekends visiting little towns and villages trying to find somewhere that's still close enough to Manchester for Mrs J to easily commute from, but also bustling enough to make sure I don't go insane when I'm at home every day with G. Other essentials are decent pubs (that's my idea) and a school with a good Ofsted rating (Mrs J insists on this). After applying these stringent criteria, we've pretty much decided we'd like to live somewhere in Saddleworth.

So we went out there today to take a look at a few properties. We're going to keep hold of our flat in Manchester and let it out, so we're trying to find somewhere to rent ourselves. One thing I've realised just from today is how househunting changes once you've got a baby to consider. Those cool-looking stone steps which an estate agent will tell you "adds character" instead start to look like a nuisance. Old houses split over several floors no longer seem like they'll be fun to live in. I suspect finding somewhere that fits all our new requirements will be harder than it first appeared.

Not that we're in any particular rush, though. And if G behaves as beautifully as she did today then we can go househunting every week as far as I'm concerned (it may come to this, perhaps I should be careful what I wish for). I took the photo at the top as we stopped in for some lunch in Uppermill. She seemed fascinated by the little packet of brown sauce, but hasn't yet worked out how to reach out to something with her hands. So she just stared at it. Such simple things won't keep her amused for much longer though, I fear.