Tag: Recipe Rifle

Recipe Rifle goes shopping: Spring fashion

A thing my dad has taught me is that you have to modernise – or die.

It’s probably the only thing he has taught me by example – everything else i.e. the importance of a neat filing system, up-to-date insurance, legible handwriting, the causes and course of the First World War, he taught via a series of 40-minute lectures using white boards, diagrams, bright lights, water-boarding etc.

But modernising, that’s just what he did. He never said “You have to modernise OR DIE!”

He did it instinctively. He had a computer before anyone else, he mastered email before anyone else, he wore with flair and enthusiasm a pair of Converse trainers I bought for him about five years ago (I get him a new pair every year for his birthday). He listens to podcasts and has an iPod. Every few years he will change the style of his spectacles and he is sometimes seen with a new tie. His texting is not perfect, but it’s getting there. He keeps up to date on pretty much everything except the most absolutely current popular music, though he will definitely know who (or what) One Direction are (or is. Or, shortly, were.)

My father is 79, ladies and gents. Seventy Nine. Not some Disco Dad who accidentally became a parent at 18. SEVENTY NINE. I was born when he was 44. He remembers the war! But he could also pick Harry Styles out of a crowd. Maybe. I don’t think he likes modernising much, I think he finds it as painful as everyone else does, but he knows that you have to move on.

Whenever I catch myself about to say something awful and Tunbridge Wells about Instagram or SnapChat or, indeed, One Direction, I think of my dad. What would he say? He would know about it all. He would not pooh-pooh a modern thing for pooh-poohing’s sake. Because he knows that has the stench of death about it. And my father is not afraid of the tax man, or drunks and lunatics or answering the door after 9pm or changing lanes in heavy traffic: but he is afraid of death.

I always think of my very nearly Octogenarian father when I consider, with some horror, that I must Update My Wardrobe. It’s the thing I like doing least, because it means buying a pair of jeans that I will consider hideous for six months, of feeling self-conscious when out of the house, having to spend money on things that I’m not sure I like.

But I must Update My Wardrobe because if you don’t, you just look dreadful. If you don’t make incremental changes then you will still, come Spring/Summer 2014, be wearing a pair of grey skinny jeans (I bought mine in 2005) with a Breton top and a leaky pair of Converse. This is fine if you really, really properly don’t care, or really, really properly can’t afford it but for the rest of us, looking out of date suggests a deeper resistance to change, to modernisation. It speaks of a deeper stubbornness, an arrogance, a closed mind.

I once went to a lecture given by the agony aunt Irma Kurtz in which she claimed to stave off old age by trying to “change her opinion about things”. Sticking to your trusty old shapes and colours is as bad as declaring the same old boring allegiances to the thoughts and opinions you had when you were 25.

Not that I like to over-think these things.

So I have been utilising my new paycheques to Update My Wardrobe and it hasn’t gone too badly. Apart from the Boyfriend Jeans, which I am in love with and totally and completely horrified by in equal measure, it has been reasonably painless.

Here are the things I have bought, which I plan to wear when the weather cheers up. It’s not much, because it is all expensive as I have finally paid heed to my own advice of buying a few expensive things, not a lot of old shit from the High Street. Though I must point out here that I never, ever wear any of this gear while attempting childcare.

For childcare I buy a job lot of H&M sweatshirts and black 3/4 length leggings from TopShop, which get totally trashed, sent to charity for rags and then replaced. There’s nothing quite so nice as a lovely fresh pair of leggings.

I bought ALL of this stash with my very own pennies, that’s how much I love it all.

1 McQ Cross-printed sweatshirt, £165 available only online at matchesfashion.com. This is navy, although it looks black here. Goes with everything, excellent for anything smart/casual on the weekend.

2 Green crepe swing top, Michael Kors, £140, from Net A Porter. I love this. Hides the mid-section, great colour.

3 Acne Boyfriend jeans, £190 Matchesfashion.com. I am scared of these but they are, also, SO FACKIN COOL.

4 Longline layering shirt grey/chambray, £98 from ME +EM.

I used to love wearing shirts, but the way I used to wear them, just cotton, with the top few buttons undone over jeans or whatever, looks horrible and wrong these days for some reason. I wear this buttoned to the top and it feels sleek and nice because of the jersey top-half and the cotton bottom half doesn’t cling to my last remaining stubborn baby weight. Also, if you want to wear this under a sweater, there’s no cotton top-bit to bunch up and make you look like a man. I am a size 12 and got this in an M.

5 Navy v-neck “swing” jumper, Me+Em £98 in an S to fit a size 12.

Another favourite thing of mine, the v-neck navy sweater. I will probably be buried in one, but can’t find one that doesn’t cling horribly to my mid-section. It’s a common thing, I find, with anyone who was even last pregnant 15 years ago and is now a size 6 – wearing anything tight around your middle makes you feel like you’re being strangled. But this ME+EM sweater is terrific – a lot of their clothes have a lovely, very forgiving and super-comfortable “swing” to them.

6 Hold fast signet ring, £140, LauraLee. I rang the shop and a nice girl had this made for me in a special weeny size to go on the little finger in a kind of witty mock posh/butch way but with the unassailable message printed thereon: HOLD FAST. It’s a nautical term, as Captain Jack Sparrow would say, which roughly translates as “hang on to something and shut your eyes until it’s all over”.

7 Silver Birkenstocks, £39, Natural Footwear Company – or cheaper on Amazon probably but I couldn’t work out the shoe sizes and happened to be passing this shoe shop while on my way to the London Transport Museum with Kitty anyway.

The “ugly” shoe is IN this spring/summer (I may be making this up) and I am absolutely thrilled about it. I plan to wear these with my terrifying boyfriend jeans, a neon sweatshirt and a pedicure

(ENDS)

More food soon

Recipe Rifle goes shopping: BABY ESSENTIALS

When it comes to baby kit, especially with your first baby, I say get everything. EVERYTHING. A tummy tub? Why not. An £8,000 buggy? Go for it. Fourteen different kinds of dummy? Great!

Because all babies are different and they like, weirdly, different things. And some things might work for you, others not. Both Kitty and Sam for example like Avent bottles and dummies and immediately spat out any dummy that was not made by Avent.

Avent’s anti-colic bottles do, I think, work in reducing what is known in my family as “squirty tummy” in newborns. ALL BABIES have “squirty tummy” to varying degrees, whether you use an anti-colic system or not because they are new and rubbish at everything and their stomachs don’t work for ages, resulting in “squirtiness”, which is an unspecified gas/digestion problem that makes them screw their faces up and go “meerrggghgh” or even “WWAWAAAHHAHHAHHAHAH!!!” I like to try to avoid this.

So I also use Infacol, which is an orangey-tasting liquid that helps babies bring up their wind. You can give it to babies from birth, but I find that wind problems only emerge at about 3 weeks onwards. You give them a little dropper of it before a feed and then they bring up lovely rich, orangey burps and sleep like logs and are less “squirty”. Kitty lived on it for about 3 months.

I also believe, with swivel-eyed evangelism, in swaddling. This, for the uninitiated, is when you wrap a newborn up very tightly in a long strip of cloth to replicate the squashed-in feeling of being in the womb. There are some cloths specially designed for swaddling called Grobag, which are very good

and also the terrific giant muslins from Aden + Anais, which used to be very niche and hippy when I had Kitty, but now everyone uses them. They are absolutely brilliant for all sorts of things, from swaddling to using as a blanket, a sunshade, rolling it up into a sausage to wedge newborn into sleeping on its side if you feel a bit neurotic that the baby is going to puke in its sleep and choke on it, (but are too scared to put it down on its tummy), using as a vomit sheet to stretch over the bottom sheet of a cot belonging to a child with noro – you get the idea. They are quite expensive but they will last you for years.

There are millions of swaddling tutorials on YouTube – I urge you to look them up if you are about to have your first. Just do it before every naptime until they are about… I dunno… six weeks old.

Chloramphenicol antibiotic eye drops.

Available over the counter at any pharmacy. If your baby’s umbilical cord is taking its sweet time to come off and is starting to stink, slosh this over it to prevent any infection. It is mild enough to go in your eye, so it’s perfectly okay to use on a tummy button.

Lansinoh cracked skin balm

This will rescue your nipples if you are breastfeeding – put it on every time you breastfeed or any time you express, or any time you remember to. Buy one for every room in your house so you are never without it. You can never have too much because it has a million other uses – it mends cracked heels overnight, works as a basic but effective night eye cream and is officially the world’s best lip balm (second only to Lanolips – available at Waitrose).

Gap make the only socks that babies will not kick off.

Seraphine make very nice nursing bras. They have one that comes in a small, medium and large and another that comes in traditional bra sizes. I’d say that the one that comes in traditional sizes is better.

I’ve got this bra in a size 1 million. And also some others that I had specially made… BY NASA

Aptamil formula. I fed Kitty a combination of formula and breastmilk from pretty much day 1 and have done the same with Sam. My personal attitude to breastfeeding is this: I do not like hearing babies cry and if I don’t have to, I don’t want to. So if my child is crying or unsettled because it is hungry, and I do not have enough breastmilk to sort it out, I give them formula. I partly breastfed Kitty for about six weeks and will probably do the same with Sam, unless with two children in tow breastfeeding and expressing becomes completely impractical, in which case I will stop sooner.

For expressing, I use a Medela Swing, which is about 10 years old, but gets the job done. Muy sexy, no?

I must also give a plug to a company called notsobig.com, which sent me a lot of babygros for Sam. They couldn’t possibly have forseen that babygros with slogans on the front are my least favourite thing ever, but it was a kind and thoughtful gift. And one with LOL on the front, did make me smile, although I cannot guarantee that Sam will wear it. Looking at their website, they have all sorts of terrific things on there without hideous slogans, so do give it a go.

Little Clothes Mouse – littleclothesmouse.co.uk – sent me some excellent newborn stuff for Sam, including a Petit Bateau hat that actually fit his weeny head (he was not born small – 7.5lb – but 0-3 month stuff was HUGE on him). In general, the website sells discounted designer childrens’ clothes and is a small company run by a very nice lady, so I heartily direct your business to her. She has also kindly and generously offered Rifle Readers a 10% discount at checkout with the code RIFLE. Use it or lose it ladies (and germs).

Recipe Rifle goes shopping: JEWELLERY

Everyone said “The second baby will be so much easier” and I prayed they were right and I knew they would be. And so far, they are.

I mean, in my experience the fun, (and when I say fun I mean nightmare), doesn’t really start with babies until they are 3 weeks old and don’t do that thing anymore where they’ll just sleep any on any old warm, stable surface for most of the day.

But for now, while Sam is doing this lovely thing that newborns do, I can actually genuinely appreciate it because I know it changes. And, unless I experience a serious rush of blood to the head, Sam will be my last child, which I now – released from the horrors of pregnancy – feel sad about, but in a good way. If that makes sense.

Kitty, (poor, poor Kitty), when she was born, signified the end of my life as I knew it. Sam is the beginning of my future; he is the first day of the rest of my life. Yes, I’ve got a newborn again, but I have never felt so free. I never left the house with Kitty when she was small because I couldn’t quite believe the hassle of it and there were all those what ifs – what if she’s sick, or screams, or does a poo? What then?? Easier to stay at home, thanks. Sam and I are out all the time: we take buses, we sit in cafes. Why did I not do this with Kitty? What was my problem?

And it turns out that I have remembered some valuable lessons about babies it took me months to learn first time:

1) if you put a baby down for a sleep and you know it is not hungry or cold or ill, it will eventually nod off, even if it squeaks and grunts and squirms or, even, emits the occasional bloodcurdling yelp.

2) if it’s not crying, it’s probably ok. Leave it alone.

3) give it a break, it’s only a baby. Even if you are a total routine freak like me, deviations here and there – or entire days when absolutely everything goes tits up, don’t matter. You have to just write the day off as a fucking disaster and start again tomorrow. Babies and small children respond best to persistence. It has taken an entire year to teach Kitty to say Please. Thank You she had no trouble with, but we’ve had to hammer Please into her just by saying it over and over and over and over again. Babies and little children are stupid, you need to repeat the things you want them to do, like, a billion times.

4) tiny babies do not get bored.

5) it’s probably not meningitis.

Anyway, what OF Kitty? I have been asked over again what she thinks of Sam, how is she taking it? And I reply with what I always say about Kitty, which is that she doesn’t give much of a fuck about anything, except the whereabouts of Rabbit, her blanket, Mr Tumble and the availability of biscuits.

She understands Sam is a baby, she gives him kisses, she only tries to jump on his head out of sheer exuberance, rather than malice, and knows that he doesn’t like having his nappy changed. Other than that, she’s unbothered. I think problems of jealousy and anger come later.

In the meantime, life for Kitty is simply super: her Daddy is around a lot on two weeks’ paternity leave and they disappear together, scampering across London all day having an awesome time pointing at animals and eating chips. And most days a present turns up for her at the house, in commiseration for her having this “brudder”. So in all, it’s pretty nice for Kitty right now.

Me? I got jewellery. I don’t understand especially the recent fashion for presenting one’s wife with an expensive gift for having a baby. You are only fulfilling a biological imperative and it’s not like a pregnancy isn’t utterly miserable for fathers, too. (I bought Giles a pair of £140 sunglasses from Zadig & Voltaire to acknowledge this.) But still, I’m not one to pass up an opportunity to direct my husband and his Amex to Selfridges, so I requested this Anina Vogel charm necklace that was quite astoundingly expensive. It did for a birthday, wedding anniversary AND “baby” present, it was that pricey. I love it.

Here it is. You buy a naked necklace and then fill it with charms. Giles chose these – the Star of David is his idea of a joke (he is Jewish). The others are a cat (Kitty) and frying pan (cooking) a pistol (there were no rifles) a moses basket (new baby) and a typewriter (obvious).

GILES BOUGHT THIS FOR ME WITH HIS OWN MONEY

And from lovely Babes With Babies I got THIS little beauty, which I really love. At £158, not as ruinously expensive as the Anina Vogel and if I was on a slightly tighter budget I would have requested this from my husband instead, you can have up to 20 characters engraved on it and Posh Spice has got one.

GOT SENT THIS FOR FREE

My readers get a 10% discount at Babes With Babies by typing RIFLE in at checkout. Don’t say I never give you anything.