Well, it was the last week of term before the Easter holidays and, on the last day, The Boy’s preschool suggested they might like to dress up. Never one to miss an opportunity to prat about, The Boy leapt at the offer and demanded we resurrect his robot costume from a previous Hallo’w’een. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever walked to school with a small person in fancy dress, but it is quite the experience. Random strangers and fellow school-run-mums stopping to congratulate him and smile. In fact, so impressive was he that the laconic teenager we pass every morning, whose expression normally vacillates between “fuck the world” and “so bored I could just DIE” even cracked his face in a half smile at the sight.
Friday Family round-up, 4th March – 10th March 2016
This week’s Friday family round up is coming to you live from a darkened bedroom where I sit propped up in bed, cocooned with a whingey baby who refuses to sleep on her own. I suppose I should be grateful for laptops that let me do that and the fact she’s asleep at all, which she often wasn’t, earlier this week. I would, however, like a little time off from being a need-meeting machine and that’s been in precious short supply lately. Oh well. Only 17 more years and she’ll be off to uni (insert a few rousing bars of ‘always look on the bright side of life’ here, as I weep softly into my chocolate).
Portrait of a stay at home mum
The Man is currently off sick with a chest infection, so he’s cocooned in a duvet on the sofa feeling sorry for himself whilst The Girl, who’s just had a nap, bounces up and down on his lap. How To Train Your Dragon, a family favourite, is playing on the television because it’s filthy weather outisde and we’re all a bit run down. The Boy has taken it into his head to dress up as a knight and is fighting imaginary dragons in our (tiny) sitting room whilst The Girl laughs at the floorshow. I am running in and out to check everybody is OK whilst also making leek and potato soup for lunch from our allotment produce.
Days like these
So, it’s nearly 10pm and for anyone who knows our family, they’ll know that’s pretty late for us. In fact, with The Boy’s penchant for 5am rising it’s nearly an hour past parental bedtime. I should be tucked up in bed with my Kindle by now, if not actually sleeping, but sometimes days just don’t work out like that.
The Boy was at preschool all day (well, 9am-3pm) so I had my eyes on the prize: a long list of things to get done whilst The Girl snoozed, or kicked away happily on her playmat. I put on a wash, started a bolognaise sauce, ironed a few bits that had been hanging around, then metaphorically rolled up my sleeves – time for the fun stuff. I started researching sun bonnets whilst I fed her, determined to make her a pretty one along similar lines to one my friend’s baby was wearing that had been bought in a boutique somewhere along the SouthWest coast.
The day of many washes
So a lot has been said on here about The Boy. From his taste in music to his robust personality traits, in just a week and a half I have covered many aspects of his little life, but I haven’t said much about my girl.
Well, today she made rather an impact on my life so it leaves me with very little choice other than to do this blog post about her. She’s very small still, not even three months old yet, so she doesn’t do much other than utilise her digestive system, gurgle a bit and sleep. Oh – and she has dimples. Truly gorgeous dimples which she uses to great effect, especially when charming her daddy.
Rules are made to be broken. Right?
So last week I famously (famous in my own head, anyway) posted about how I’d banned TV for The Boy during the week. Today I take it all back as we sit, slumped, on the sofa binge watching “Puff and Wock” – or Puffin Rock to you and I.
Last night was a bitch of a night. The girl, despite being only two months old, slept soundly, but The Boy was yoyo-ing between his bed and ours, whingeing, wriggling, crying and chatting. Eventually, after 10+ wake ups we found a solution in Calpol and a ‘warm water bottle, not a hot water bottle, just a warm water bottle my Mummy’ (he knows what he wants, this Boy of mine) but the damage was done. We’re all shattered today. Except the baby who is napping happily between my bosoms as I type.
