Food for thought

Well, my (bigger) baby has gone back to school, and things are a bit calmer chez moi. I really do miss him though, although towards the end I was looking forward to him going back! He seems happy at school, and glad to be back in the routine.

My smaller baby (!) is as cute as a button, it's amazing how the changes start to take place. He's grabbing at toys that are dangling down, he's lifting his head and shoulders up from his chair, standing up on me if I hold his fingers. He loves "Round and Round the Garden" and "This Little Piggy" and he loves to be bounced up and down on my knee. I think in a couple of weeks I'll ge the baby bouncer down and give him a go in it. It seems amazing that when A was his age, I began to wean him, there's just no feeling that I need to do that at the moment. He's happy enough on his boobyjuice, although in October I might start him on one bottle a day, and then I think I'll wean him at the beginning of November. If it happens before then, fair enough.

I'd quite like my body back now. It wasn't much to start off with, but it is starting to get me down now that I am hanging on to quite a big of baby weight and my boobs are better than they were but still ridiculous. I'm trying to eat healthily and doing ok, but I'm sure that feeding isn't helping me. Neither is my mother, who tried to feed me FOUR bacon rolls for my lunch yesterday, which really upset me. She would never, ever, ever in a million years give my sister four bacon rolls (petite, blonde size 10, horrendous relationship with food IMHO, which she is in danger of passing on to my niece, who unfortunately for my sister and her hang ups, is built like me) and i got quite cross and gave her two of them back, she took umbrage. They weren't huge, they were rolls about the size of a small orange, but even so. The trouble is, I would have eaten them, I know I would, so they needed not to be there. I don't have an unhealthily relationship with food any more, it doesn't control me, and I don't feel the need to binge/berate myself/obsess. I do however feel a need to get back in my pre-pregnancy trousers. I will never be a size 12, but I could do with being a 16 again. Four bacon rolls will not help this, and it makes me wonder, why am I so much bigger than my sister? I think that my family has a propensity to being bigger, both my parents are fairly chunky, as are thier brothers and sisters. I think it's two things, my sister is amazingly controlling about food (she has a list of dislikes and aversions as long as your arm, which I think is her way of controlling her appetite) and I think because she was a picky eater as a child I made up for her by eating well, and was fed by my mother to make up for her not eating. And I am greedy, heh. I noticed my mum encouraging A and his cousin to eat (they are both good with food, although my niece has a more limited diet. Wonder where that comes from??) even as thier mouths were full, "Eat up". I had to say "Mum, he's got his mouth full, give him a chance!"

It's so important what we do with our kids, because what we do now sticks with them, and there are enough outside influences on them without the people who love them most joining in. I don't want my niece spending the best part of her teens and twenties loathing herself and sporadically bingeing and purging like I did. It's how I handle that if I think it's coming, because there's one thing that it's impossible to do well - criticise how someone is rearing thier child.