Back home after 4 days in Sweden. Annoying time-wasting follow-up visit to the hospital with Ingrid. During any free moments, deeply absorbed in Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu, to the extent that I hadn’t even turned on the computer until now.

Ingrid was happy, ate well and slept well, so yesterday’s episode was at least not the start of any acute illness.

I got a songbook with Estonian children’s songs from my father and had fun rediscovering old favourites. “Süda tuksub” and “Tiliseb, tiliseb, aisakell” and “Meie kiisul kriimud silmad”. Plus missing verses (and accurate melodies) for various songs which I half-remembered but not enough to get all the way through.

Spent the day at the Royal London Hospital with Ingrid after she fainted at the nursery. Nothing useful was found, so I hope it’s a one-off.

Just after 9 this morning I got a phone call from the nursery saying that Ingrid had “gone floppy and her eyes rolled back”. Very scary, and not the kind of news you want to get about your one and only baby. (Not that you’d want it if you had more than one baby, either, but you know what I mean.) She recovered quickly and seemed fine, but just to be on the safe side the nursery called an ambulance (and me) and we took her to the hospital (Royal London) to be checked.

Nothing interesting was found but they wanted to keep her for observation. Nothing interesting was still found after a full day of observation and various tests, and the best they could tell me in the end was that “these thing sometimes happen and quite often we have no idea why, and it never comes back”. So I hope it’s one of those cases.

Useful outcomes:

• Blood tests were done and while they didn’t show me any of the results (of course – for some reason doctors here very rarely share any information unless they absolutely have to), they did mention that her iron values were a bit on the low side. Leafy green vegetables, coming up!
• Ingrid can sleep quite well in the Connecta if needed.

Outcomes that aren’t exactly useful, but are nevertheless interesting

• They measure babies’ blood pressure around the calf, and the pulse on the foot.
• They also take blood from the foot.
• Some nurses and doctors, despite working in the pediatric ward, seem never to have handled an actual live baby. They spent an eternity trying to stick electrodes on her for an ECG while keeping all the cables in a tangle just in front of her kicking feet, so of course she kicked them which pulled them all off again. After I had pointed this out three times, one of them finally realised the futility of it. Another nurse was going to take her temperature while she was asleep, and started off by lowering the side of the cot with a loud clang, and then seemed surprised that she woke.
• I got the impression that some of the tests they did were done not because they really expected any results, but because it would (a) preclude anybody from coming back and suing them, or (b) ensure they hit some kind of target.

Outcomes that are neither useful nor interesting:

• Most of the staff were actually helpful and sensible.
• Spending the day in a hospital for observation is about as exciting as spending the day in an airport, but with fewer shops. Most of the time is spent waiting, sitting in uncomfortable chairs. And just like airports, it’s exhausting even though you don’t actually do anything much.
• The hospital food was utterly abominable.

Brownies. I believe I’ve mentioned them a few times here.

There is a bakery stall at Spitalfields market that sells the world’s best chocolate brownies. They sell various other good things as well – loaves of bread, cakes, pastries – but it’s the brownies I keep coming back for. These are three-star brownies, the kind that are worth a special journey. They are deceptively simple, with no nuts and no decorative chocolate sprinkles on the top, but they melt in the mouth and feel so richly chocolatey. (I would guess they also contain very generous amounts of butter.)

I usually buy half a dozen, cut them in half (they’re big) and freeze them. When it’s time to eat one, I put one in the microwave so it gets all warm and squishy-soft and tastes even more. Delicious. London may not have any proper rye bread, but last I checked, Estonia didn’t have brownies like this.

Way too hot. Ingrid sleeping badly because of the heat (and because she pooped at 11 o’clock at night and then couldn’t go back to sleep), both of us tired. Went to the market for brownies and came home with a dress I didn’t really need but really liked.

I added some new photos to the album.

Most of my photos of Ingrid now end up similar this one: everything is sharp except her head and arms, both of which rarely stay still long enough for a good photo. In one series of about 30 pictures I deleted all but half a dozen.

A trip to Mothercare at Marble Arch to buy a safety gate. We keep our fire exit door open during hot days so we get a nice draft between that door and the door to the balcony. The door opens onto a landing that is very unsafe for babies (have a look at the photo – we live at the very top). Ingrid isn’t quite mobile enough to get there yet, but it’s a matter of weeks, not months, before she will be.

I’ve done a bit of tinkering with the blog. You may or may not have noticed that the category archives are now paginated (some of those pages were getting rather long). To satisfy my own curiosity, I’ve also created a page to list the most commented-on posts. I was expecting the Parcelforce rant to come out at the top, but instead it’s my review of Eragon. Teenage fantasy beats adult frustration.

By the way, the Eragon review is also the only post to receive comments containing the word “LOL” (is LOL a word?) and the only one where I am addressed as “u”.

The pagination magic was done with the MTPaginate plugin and the comment filtering with MTSQL, as suggested on the Movable Type community forums. Both plugins were really easy to use and did exactly what I wanted. The SQL script for filtering by comment count just needed a slight tweak to ignore junk comments, and another one to sort posts by date if the comment count is the same.

My new Connecta arrived (with the Cave painting fabric) which means I can now wash the other one without worrying about how we will manage without it.