The little baby brother arrived in a rush after Sunday lunch at the Botanics. This time we had a good home water birth although it seemed much more painful than the first time. But it was brilliant to be able to raid the fridge in the night and to get onto the internet and computer and send pictures and reports to friends and relatives straight away. And it is so much more relaxing if you know who is coming through the bedroom door and when. Since then we had been very busy with our two-year-old toddler who is keen to test out any rules from not bringing sand into the house to not playing with the toilet water or throwing about the cat litter.

When you have kids, or even one, time flies by and there seems to be so much more urgent things to do than writing a blog. I am pregnant again with our second baby due in summer. And so far 2012 seems to become quite a tough year for us. Our toddler is however our biggest delight, his favourite word is “no” now.

Last Sunday the episode of “The Secret Millionaire” which is situated in Pilton, has been broadcast on Channel 4 [ Episode guide ]. I found it quite intriguing to see Pilton portrayed by an outside TV production crew. They really managed to get the worst shots of the areas, mainly by going over to Muirhouse and filming the empty houses marked for demolition, which are still standing because of legal problems with some owners. The TV crew managed to take shots of the shopping centre without the audience being able to see any of the new buildings like the North Edinburgh Arts Centre or even the library or the super Craigroyston Community High School surrounding it and managed to portray the area worse than it really is, although the protagonist stressed that the area has got a really good community feel with a lot of the residing projects and charities.

If somebody you know writes a novel with strong autobiographical influence then one of the attractions of reading it is to find out and speculate about whom he writes about, how much of the story has really happened and in what ways it got changed and what has been left out and why. Out of this reason I did enjoy reading the book. So I liked the best reading about the political protests and parts which were similar to things I experienced, like when the author sets the scene at a London squat or describes the Anarchist Bookfair. Personally, I found the writing style really good and the plot has enough tension for the reader to carry on reading one chapter after the other immediately.

I did enjoy being on maternity leave a lot, and as baby has been so well-behaved even got the chance to read some books: Sheila Kitzinger: “Understanding your Crying Baby” is a great book and educated me about some common misunderstandings and prejudices. For example, I did not know before I read this book, that the mothers of many of the babies, who cry most, like over 6 hours a day, also experienced a bad, stressful pregnancy, a traumatic birth with lots of interventions and drugs and a patronising, autocratic hospital environment. Also interesting the fact that babies cry most at the 3rd week and in the 3rd month after birth and that some drugs take about a month to clear out of the babies system which leads to some babies changing behaviour dramatically afterwards.