Update on life as we know it ...

I reached new professional heights this week when I was on the phone to our advertising agency. I was giving some amendments for some advert copy and I said the following;

“Yes, put a curly ‘c’ in front of the salary?”

As I said it, I knew I had forgotten that I was indeed speaking to a 40+ year old man and not my 4 year old daughter. I hastily ended the conversation and put down the phone. I then had an ‘I carried a watermelon’ moment (Haven't you seen Dirty Dancing?).

I am starting to notice changes to my body. So far this week I have noticed huge wrinkles around my eyes when I smile to myself in the mirror. Please note I do not spend time smiling at myself in the mirror, it was an accidental find. Nor do I chant 'Go get them Laura, you are the fabulous!' three times before I go to work.

Clearly these lines are caused by laughing. I like to laugh. I do not like the wrinkles. Also, nasal hair. After 30 years of just being there out of view it's suddenly grown. At the grand age of 30 is it time to invest in some anti ageing creams and find some way to stop the nasal hair before I can plait it upwards and into my eyebrows. Not an attractive look.

We have a house, the dream house in fact. Hooray! We move in 4ish weeks. I am particularly excited by the fact that we will have a dishwasher after 3 years without and a normal persons bath. We currently have a corner bath, being tall means this is not remotely comfortable.

I have started de-cluttering the house. A natural hoarder, I have found de-cluttering quite cathartic. I pick on a room armed with a bin liner and get rid of anything that has no use.

The 4 year old is fine, a little wobbly about the new house but she will be fine. "You'll have a bigger bedroom" I keep saying animatedly with a big smile as if that will make her feel more at ease.

She has said to me on three separate occasions this week that she doesn't like her dreams, that they are always bad. I have started giving her happy memories to think about when she starts to think about her bad dreams. The latest one was when I was pregnant with her and she kept me and the husband amused of an evening by hiccuping from within. She thinks this is amusing and I have told her it will ward off the bad dreams. Let's see how long that lasts.

She is still skipping with her rope at every opportunity and lassoing random people in the school playground. She keeps her skipping rope in a powder pink shoe box she got from school ... "It's the skipping ropes house". Who am I to argue.

The 3 year old is fine and dandy. He seems unfazed by our house move. He has recently added to his people collection (Mickey Mouse and Tramp) and soon will not be able to get into bed for his people. He has his post op (grommets) check on Friday which I'm sure will go fine. I'm paranoid that his hearing has dropped again ... it could be selective. If only they could do something about his foghorn voice and his snoring too ... Jeez ... the snoring. Each snore shakes the house.

He loves pre-school, more so when it doesn't rain and he can play outside on the bikes, pulling wheelies and handbrake turns, much to the horror of 'the ladies' as he affectionately calls them. He thinks it's OK to burp every time we sit down for a family meal, but it's alright because he says 'excuse me'.

The Husband doesn't burp during family meals or snore, in fact he makes no noise when he sleeps. Occasionally I have to check that he is even breathing. This week he has discovered Twitter, Wordpress and that he doesn't like iced muffins. he is designing a new website (to be unveiled sometime soon) for his freelance work and is about to embark on redesigning my blog. All this rain has accelerated the cabbages, peas and onions in his vegetable patch which he will be unable to transport to the new house. A case of 'look at what you could have won'.


The Tadpoles worry me and I think we shall be leaving them here. We had 30 tadpoles, stolen from Auntie Kate's pond. I thought it would be great for the children to see them morph into frogs. They are currently living on the decking in a large box. I feed them, but they much prefer the taste of fresh tadpole. We now have around 12 giant tadpoles.

Cheap at half the price ...

Travelling home in the car, just me and the 4 year old.

The 6 o'clock news is on the radio. A woman is appealing to catch her husband's killer, naturally, she is distraught.

Luckily the heater in my car sounds like a vacuum cleaner, the 4 year old doesn't hear the full details, but she does understand that the woman is crying.

4 year old - Why is that lady crying?

Me - Her husband has died

4 year old - She must be very sad

Me - Yes, she is

4 year old - She won't ever see him again

Me - No

She ponders awhile. I hope this is the end of the conversation, not wanting a full death discussion before bedtime, but no ...

4 year old - She can buy a new husband though can't she?

Me - Umm, I don't think so

4 year old - Yes Mummy, she can buy a new husband and marry him like you and Daddy *

Me - How much do you think a husband costs?

4 year old - I don't know .... fiftyten pounds maybe.

* I would like to point out that although my husband and I are married, there was no dowry involved much to my fathers disappointment.

... and we all talked drunken bollocks

The 3 year olds party was perfect. Lots of children racing around getting sweaty, flailing in ball pools, climbing the wrong way up slides, snubbing anything uncrisplike and eating the sweets off the top of buns.

Regarding the 40 year olds party, there are just a few things I would like to raise with the venue manager regarding our party ...

Dear Manager of Venue

There are just a few points I'd like to raise that luckily did not detract from our enjoyment of the evening, but none the less I would like to bring them to your attention

On our inspection visit a few weeks ago we thought the function room smelt damp and foisty. I brought the subject up with you who said something would be done. The odd squirt of Febreze would have been better than nothing. But ‘nothing’ you did and on arrival the smell of wet dog still permeated our nostrils. This wasn’t a problem to one of our forty or so guests who has no sense of smell.

The fact we could use our own ipod and playlist appealed to my husband (a music snob) who dashed off to create his tour de force. It took him the best part of a day and was, I quote, “Eclectic. Loud and laid back, old and new, mainstream and indie; something for everyone and tailored to suit each friend that attended the party”.

I didn’t much mind standing on a rickety old table, risking neck breakage, to access the aged stereo and plug the ipod into its lead. I did however get slightly irritated at the ipod having to be in one position and one position only to play; tilted on its left hand side pointing upwards and wedged behind the stereo. If it were moved 0.1 millimetres to the right it went silent, sounded like it was being pumped through an elephants rectal passage or jumped like a CD in a go kart on a cobbled lane. At times myself, my husband and occasionally, our guests had to stand on the rickety old table to reposition the ipod.

I’m fairly easy going so most of the above didn't really phase me, besides we were too busy laughing with our friends ...

HOWEVER – What did razz me off was this ... When I initially called to book the venue I was told there would be waiter/waitress service to the room below the bar we had booked. With the press of the shiny red button someone would appear and take our drinks order. No mixing with the riff raff upstairs. Excitedly I pressed the button ….. and waited 15 minutes. Nothing. Giving the button the benefit of my doubt I pressed again with more gusto. Nope, nothing, nada. We were informed that as the bar was so busy, with it being a Saturday night, you were unable to accommodate our demands downstairs. I spent the following 30 minutes queuing at the bar upstairs. When I was finally served I panicked and bought several drinks, which in turn made me take several hangover cures on Sunday morning.

The excited menfolk gathered on the wooden floor to play pool, a floor that felt like it had been been mopped with golden syrup. It was very much a case of ‘look at what you could have won’ when it became apparent that you had lost the cue ball. Still, the pool table was nice to look at all evening.

Towards the end of the night, tracksuit clad chavs unable to read the words ‘PRIVATE PARTY’ tried to join us. They were given short shrift as our guests hugged their handbags closer. Nylon tracksuits I ask you … on a Saturday night. What is the village coming to?

Yours faithfully

Mrs D

So it came to pass that on Saturday night we celebrated husband’s 40th in style; It's the company you keep that's important, and the company we kept on Saturday night was outstanding!

After the party we went for a curry with leftover revellers which was delicious and we all talked drunken bollocks.

I woke yesterday to a dull throb in my head but managed to shake off the hangover when I discovered the 3 year old in the bathroom having an early morning hair styling session. He had used the best part of a tube of hair gel which was now running down his forehead towards his eyes. Only a bath and hairwash would do.

Next time we’d be better off having a party at home. We have Flash All Purpose floor cleaner, uninterrupted music, a ‘no nylon’ policy and a fast drinks service.

Sure, our home smells of dog and burnt chocolate crispie buns, but, we have Febreze.

What do you mean you're not supposed to bake chocolate crispie buns?

A Cavernous Cavity

Husband is a fantastic cook and my services are very rarely required. He is the king of Sunday roasts and this morning bought the ingredients for a chicken dinner … and then promptly vanished to bed to have man flu. He cocooned himself in the duvet and shivered for five hours.

I was left holding the chicken as it were. This is fairly appalling to admit but, I am 30 years old have no idea what to do with a whole chicken. I have no problem with rustling up a bog standard meal, but a whole roast chicken is definitely husbands department.

I tried to shove a lemon and several garlic cloves into its neck stump instead of its rear cavity, I then covered it with olive oil and nearly dropped the slippery sucker when transferring it to the roasting dish. It is only because the husband mentioned basting during one of my ‘check on the man with man flu’ trips that I didn’t present the children with meat the consistency of one of Ghandi’s flip flops.

It was delicious; I sat with the children and told them what a wonderful chicken it was and how lucky they were to have a Mummy that could cook such a splendid roast. They agreed with everything I said because they didn’t want to eat their broccoli.

Husband ate his later when he had stopped shivering. He hasn’t yet passed comment on the quality which can only mean that he is frightened of losing his ‘Best British Roaster’ title … ahem.

It's Been An Epiphany

Over the Christmas break we have transformed into a relaxed and smiling family.

Without our usual routine; get up, shout at each other, eat breakfast like it is our last meal, rush kids to school (hopefully dressed), rush to work realising I am dressed but haven’t brushed my hair, work, rush to school to pick kids up, referee arguments, make tea, an element of cleaning, put kids to bed whilst refereeing a fight, collapse on sofa, turn brain off and stare at the TV, perhaps grunt at the husband, go to bed … repeat as necessary.

We have rebelled. Some days we haven’t dressed till lunchtime. We have used the Christmas DVD’s as a babysitting service some mornings to gain an extra 30 minutes in bed, Wii’d till all hours, eaten rubbish, played hide and seek and laughed, lots. We have only been out on two family outings and one of those was to the supermarket because we had run out of rubbish to eat. Usually family outings are a stress filled event making my husband wish he’d had a vasectomy 5 years ago.

I’ve reacquainted myself with the 2 year old and realised he has many more endearing foibles than first thought. He likes to sniff everything, not just food and his sister but the kitchen floor and his toys too. He likes to line things up in order of size and colour. He likes to have a conversation about the colour of the sky every morning over breakfast. Most of all he’s happiest when he has more time to explain himself.

The 4 year old and I didn’t really need reacquainting. I am fully aware of her personality traits; she’s just like me with an extra sprinkling of stubbornness from her father. She has become funnier; she’s been telling more jokes (as they can loosely be termed). She’s discovered she loves prawns, beef and cheese (?) sandwiches and telling tales on her brother (granted, he was on the kitchen worktop hanging out of the biscuit/sweet cupboard at 7.30am).

The biggest change of the holiday is that the husband and I have been exchanging more than just one syllable grunts. We have been speaking. That’s right, having a conversation (talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information are exchanged). It’s been an epiphany.

In the past I’ve been excited about the end of the school holidays. Frazzled and short tempered I bid farewell to my children and rush to work for a break. Now it is three sleeps till school/work and I want it to be three months. I want the 2 year old to sniff my apron strings and the 4 year old to tell a joke about an orange crossing the road to buy a jumper (it’s a grower!). I want to keep my new and improved family close.

Cinderella Spilt the Pheasant Stew

This will probably be my last blog of 2008, so I’ve decided to do an update on a few things before slipping quietly into 2009 …

I’ve neglected my blog this past week. I’d like to say I’ve had ‘Bloggers Block’. In part I have but we also got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas which has been slightly distracting. We’ve had a ball, quite literally. We bowl together on wii sports … usually betwixt the hours of 6 and 7am. The 4 year old is the family Kingpin. I on the other hand have all the grace of an elephant and have nearly taken out a glass overhead light fitting on more than one occasion with my over exuberant bowling style.

The 2 Year Old still has the original batman t-shirt and now a long sleeved version which he refuses to wear, a Batman figure, the notorious cape (which he has worn for approximately 40 seconds) and some wrist cuffs which were the cheapest but most successful of his Christmas gifts.

Another spate of undetected ear infections are over so his hearing is up again and his speech is coming along. He has had five ear infections this year alone – they last between 2-3 weeks. There are no outward signs until his ear pops and gunk comes out. We visit the Dr – they say ‘Oh yes, I see, but he’s fine now, goodbye’ – I say ‘Oh yes, he’s fine now, but this is the 5th time this year. That’s around 15 weeks of living in a bubble. His speech is affected! Do something about it’. Reluctantly they have referred him – we only have to wait another 4 months till we go to the hospital to speak to an ‘ear professional’ (who I’ll probably have to cry and blow snot bubbles at) and then another few months until something will be done. With my calculations that’s another 3-4 ear infections and many weeks of deafness. Oh well – at least he can say cracker coherently now.

He is doing really well with his OAP childminders – after all my stressing. He is always happy to go to them – and equally happy to return to the bosom of his mother. In his first week I had to explain the 2 year olds ear problems to them so they didn’t think he was rude and ignoring them. They in turn told me a long, drawn out story (5 minutes before I was due at work) about their son. He suffered from a similar problem during childhood and to summarise ‘had his ears off twice, but it is fine because, although he needs a hearing aid and is dyslexic he is also a Dr’. To add insult to injury ‘his feet are so big that he couldn’t buy a Citroen car’. Although reassuring to hear about his triumphs I had to rush off, I then spent my day at work haunted by the vision of my boy having his ears removed TWICE.

The 4 year old is still bossy and has decided she will call her first born ‘Jesus’. She got a Cinderella dress for Christmas and has worn it for approximately 36 hours out of 48. The only reason she hasn’t worn it for longer is because she spilt pheasant stew down it and I had a three day laundry strike during the festive season.

She’s had a terrible hacking cough over Christmas and I am sick of saying ‘cover your mouth when you cough’ every 45 seconds. After 3 sleepless nights I relented and gave her some ‘night time’ cough medicine. I say relented because as you know the 4 year old has a bad reaction to sugar and additives. Cough medicine is full of colourings and sugar. We were desperate and it promised us that she would sleep soundly. No such luck – the man visited and she thrashed about all night whilst shouting and screaming random sentences.

The Husband got Guitar Hero : World Tour for the Wii, so spends his evenings strumming to an imaginary stadium of thousands in his band ‘Jumbo Ballsack’. I have learnt not to speak whilst he is ‘performing’; it makes for an easier life. We are planning his birthday party for January and he is seemingly unworried by hitting the big 40. His only concern is that overnight his pubic hair will go grey.

Me – I got the BIGGEST hamper of Green & Black’s chocolate for Christmas. My body is currently 70% cocoa solids. I’ve had an eye infection, usually I wear contacts but I had to forgo them for antibacterial eye drops and my ‘Evil Edna’ glasses. My eye was so sensitive that on Christmas Eve I had to watch TV with one of the 2 year olds socks wrapped round the right lens. I would have been much better off with an eye patch.

On Boxing Day morning I was sat with my sister on the kitchen floor watching the kids racing mini santa’s on sleighs. The children were arguing about which Santa they wanted (there was a choice of 12). My sister watching them said “I remember thinking it would be great to have my children close together” (she has the same age gap between her kids as I do – my niece and nephew are now 12 and 14) she pointed at the 2 and 4 year old who were grappling with a shiny green sleigh and hitting each other “but often I wondered if I’d done the right thing – this is one of the worst ages”.

I on the other hand think there is probably far worse to come and I look forward to sharing it with you all!

Happy New Year!

Nigella Does Jamie At Christmas

We were invited to see Polar Express (in 3D) at the IMAX in Bradford this weekend. Unfortunately we had to decline. We were on a mission to IKEA for 8 x 250ml kilner jars … as you do, the last Saturday before Christmas. Let’s just say that the husband has watched too much ‘Nigella Does Jamie At Christmas’ this week and our kitchen is a veritable hubbub of festive produce. As I type he is polishing his jars for his cranberry and apple chutney.

Luckily we decided to pass on the Polar Express and return directly home. I say luckily because later on my friend (teacher friend mother of three) told me that she had had to leave the IMAX with her eldest child (age 4). She was scared and they had to stand in the foyer where there was an exploding poo situation in the toilets (hopefully the 4 year old and not her) and a host of Cliff Richard Christmas songs being piped out. On the way home she asked her 2 year old son if he’d had a good time, he replied “No, I had a scaredy time”. Once home her husband admitted that they indeed have the film in their DVD collection and could have, instead, been scared in the comfort of their own home. To add further insult to an already expensive and frightening injury it is also on TV on Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile, I had snuggled on the sofa after our IKEA scramble for some pre bed cartoon fun, when I noticed The Goonies was on Boomerang. Caught up in childhood nostalgia we watched, and laughed at Chunk’s ‘truffle shuffle’. I thought we’d struck gold; my little munchkins cuddled up in their pyjamas, the fire roared and the smell of cranberries wafted through the house. Once the nostalgic thoughts had cleared I actually fast forwarded the film in my mind and started to remember it in more detail; skeletons, scary Italian mafia types and the character Lotney ‘Sloth’ Fratelli … then on our TV … cue dead body falling out of an industrial freezer on top of a child.

4 year old –“Mummy that man is FAST asleep”

Me – “BEDTIME!”

I don’t think we’ll be entertaining anything more perilous than Tom & Jerry from now on.

Sprucing it up

(Almost) a new year a new blog. Well not entirely. The content will be the same, I'll be the same, I will forever be tired wishing there were more hours in the day.

I’m going to ‘do it up’ give it a makeover - new colours, new logo (hopefully), better layout. Give it a new lick of paint, make it more user friendly, better on the eye. All those terms the husband, who is a graphic designer by trade, hates.

Who knows – he might even create a new logo for me …. I’d like to think out of husbandly love but more out of embarrassment that people who really know me won’t think he is responsible for the fuzzy makeshift one that is there now.

Please bear with me whilst it is fiddled with.

A two pronged carving fork ...

“Do you know where the office drawer keys are” came the shout from our home office. My husband works from home. The office is situated between the kitchen and the living room and is frequented regularly by the children. It is the hub for his business. Important documents, cheque books and other vital items are kept in the drawers.

I didn’t have a clue where the keys were but I knew a 2 year old who more than likely did. I had witnessed him playing with said keys which were hanging out of the drawers at the time. Leaving the keys in such a desirable place is tantamount to leaving a big sparkly necklace in full view of a magpie.

Having been in similar situations to this on several occasions I realised I had to tread carefully. I have lost many items in the past; money, mobile phones and kitchen utensils to name a few by going in too heavy handed. Cross words or a face like thunder would not retrieve the keys. I had to be like Kevin Spacey in the film ‘The Negotiator. I had to play the game, talk him down to recover the bounty.

So I approached the 2 year old with caution and said in my best Mary Poppins-esque jolly voice “Do you know where Daddy’s drawer keys are?”

There was silence, he was thinking, weighing me up, working out if I was really jolly or whether I was going to frog march him to the naughty step. Staring at him with honourable and trustworthy eyes I waited with baited breath.

“Garden” he simply replied and continued about his business. He’d admitted his guilt with just one word, I wanted to bollock him but I was still in negotiator territory.

We have a fairly large garden with more hidey holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. I knew this magpie; I knew he would not put them in an obvious place. If I had said what I wanted to say … “Go and find those keys immediately and then return to the naughty step where you will stay until a week on Wednesday” then they would be lost forever; or, until, we’d had a trip to IKEA to buy a whole new drawer unit when they would miraculously appear just as the flat pack instructions were being sworn at and ripped in two … isn’t that what always happens? Law of sod.

So I morphed once more into my Mary Poppins alter ego and with a look of sugar coated glee said to him “Mummy would be absolutely delighted if you could find the keys”. That was all it took, he was off, like a sniffer dog. I watched from a distance not wanting to put him off the scent.

As he walked towards the playhouse I felt relief, a sensible hidey hole. Then he stopped short of the playhouse, knelt on the decking and pressed his face as close to the wet wood as he could, moving along the 1cm gaps between each plank until he stood up and announced in his solo-word style ‘Gone’ and shrugged.

Like a member of the SAS I moved in. Kneeling on the wet decking, which is quite unpleasant, I set about looking for the smallest glint amongst the soggy leaves which lay beneath. A few moments later I spotted the little buggers. My next task was to retrieve them. If I were a real member of the SAS I would have had a length of string with an elaborate magnet attached to the end which I would keep down my undercrackers for such situations. I had to improvise. A magnetic fishing game would have been invaluable at this point. Alas, this is probably the only toy we don’t have. Instead I had to resort to a two pronged carving fork.

Triumphant I returned the bounty to my husband who wasn’t as amazed as I would have liked after the aptitude I had shown. He was probably relieved that he wasn’t going to have to crowbar next month’s gig tickets out of the drawers.

If anyone is wondering what to buy the 2 year old for Christmas, a magnetic fishing game would be perfect.