On the Cold Front

The cold weather has come at last. It's below freezing and the wind is high - feels like -15C, they say. Munchkin and I are ensconced in the bedroom upstairs, with the electric heater nearby and the wood fire burning in the living room for good measure. The water is like ice and the bathroom will soon double as a second fridge.

Both Munchkin and I have come down with colds. For Munchkin that's a real first, and for us, a fun new adventure in baby cold treatments. We have come to master the nasal aspirator and the great strength of lung required to operate it. Even Munckin has stopped trying to escape by tunneling backward into the mattress whenever we pull it out, and simply stares at us with pained resignation. 

We put droplets in her nose and position her upright in her bouncy seat, despite her best attempts to backflip herself off with the leverage of two very determined feet. And we have invested in a nebulizer, which we use to coax saline mist up her nostrils and rescue her from the awful torture of trying to breathe through her mouth. 

Munchkin's torture device

Our nebulizer is shaped like a cow with a tube coming out the side of its head. It comes with cheerfully teal-coloured gas mask attachments in two sizes, as well as an infant attachment with the mist-dispensing opening built into a pacifier. As I write, Munchkin is busy pulling the pacifier attachment out of her mouth, waving it around, and putting it back in again. 

Besides putting everything in her mouth - mostly different parts of my face - another new habit of Munchkin is to hold gentle, murmuring conversations with different pieces of furniture. Just now, post-nebulization, she is telling a long, slow story to the lamp, with one thumb in her mouth. At any rate, it's distracting her from trying to catapult herself out of the bouncy seat. 

And as of about two weeks ago, she is officially a roller, although we've only seen her in action two or three times. She has successfully got herself from her tummy onto her back with great surprise and perplonkiness. She is also now no longer quite so terrified of being on her tummy, and has hung out there quite contentedly many times. 

And her new favourite word is "ma-ma-maaaaaaaa". She says this while tugging on my sleeve, grabbing my hand or pulling my hair to get my attention. She also says it while tugging on the blanket, grabbing her rattle or pulling on her mobile - but hey, it counts. She also says "a-woom", "lahh", "beeeh" and "neee", and several other sounds that are somewhat glottal and resemble the consonants of an exotic language I can't quite place. 

And she has learned sharing, since she gave me her cold without even being prompted. Very advanced indeed. 

On the cold front, we've had the yellow gas box installed in front of our property - some digging machines dropped by last week to set it up with minimal noise and fuss. A guy came on Saturday to survey our indoor pipes, and it looks like they'll be coming back tomorrow to do some work in the bathroom, where the boiler will be installed. 

So it may not be too long after all before we stop spending our days camping out in the bedroom, watching movies and reading books and playing on the play mat, and start paying real grown-up gas bills in return for a moderately warm house. It will be the end of an era, almost a way of life, for us to have a warm home, where we don't need to scuttle from frigid room to frigid room in layers of fleece and woolly hats, or to perform all household activities under blankets.

It's cold out there!

However, for as long as Munckin and I are recovering from our cold, movies and books and snuggles and lots of naps will be the ongoing game plan.