Blog Entry 220: in which Mary tries vainly to say something new about motherhood

Winnie is five months old today.

So I've had five months of casual clothes, not wearing a watch and and struggling to do the most basic administrative tasks between baby sleep times.

If anything, my gorgeous girl looks more like this picture of Winston Churchill than when she was born - except for the bow tie. She's one of those babies whose impossibly round cheeks complete strangers feel compelled to pinch. Most of the time she finds this hilarious. The rest of the time, she's a screaming horror.

When's she's awake, her two settings are delight and despair. The tiniest thing (or nothing visible to the adult eye) makes her swap between the two. I spend half the day singing, shaking jingling things and waving toys at her to keep her smiling.

I'm still a bit surprised by how interested I am in her. It's like my genetic programming kicked in when she arrived and a switch in my brain turned me clucky. I lie awake and worry about the world she'll live in. I want to buy her endless toys and clothes but haven't bought anything for myself for six months. I devour news stories about babies and children and utter silent prayers of thanks to unknown powers that we've avoided major problems so far.

This means that I'm not reading very much at the moment. Even stranger, I feel no burning urge to be snarky about books I haven't enjoyed that much (Irvine Welsh, I'm talking about Glue here. What a waste of ink!) or to tell people that I agree with the Booker judges about The Inheritance of Loss and other judges about Mr Pip (Yes, very good. More please). I just sort of want to let things flow for a bit.

It's a beautiful day. I'm going to take Winnie for a walk and if there's time to read a book, I'll enojy it if I can.