Tag: family life

It’s the 1st of July!

And summer is here! It’s so so hot. But the ever wonderful H, D and K assembled and filled two inflatable pools!!!

A big one (supposedly) for the three boys, and a little one for the two littler girls.

We are assisting simply by buying a new hose.

As H’s broke over the last summer and it’s replacement has mysteriously vanished – apparently there is no such thing as a cheap 100ft one left anywhere in Melrose! So we bought the premium luxury one from Job Lot. $37 well spent 👍🏻😃

But, as you might expect, that did not happen. #1 Son got fed up of waiting, so once the hus-creature returned from the weekly shop, he retired upstairs with his daddy to play Minecraft together… no, daddy didn’t get much of a choice! 😂🤣

And the twins were significantly more interested in the new “baby” pool, than their “we had this one last summer” big pool god love them!

TT dived headfirst into the big pool (as it was the one that was filled first) but got scared by the “sharks” in it – the inside liner is decorated with fish, seaweed etc.

But she had so much fun playing in the little one:

Group play in the baby pool

Then because of the bigger boys playing in it a little roughly (just boys being boys, but they are, we think, a little bit too big for it) it needed reinflating…

Which is the background noise to this video

All in all, we stayed outside until over an hour past her bedtime. She didn’t eat any dinner – but she had had a big breakfast and lunch, plus her bedtime bottle so I’m not worried there.

All the kidlets (except #1 Son, but we will work on that) had an amazing time, and this is just the start of the summer…

Oh, this is the bath after I insisted my daughter bathe before bed:

Do not worry dear audience, I have cleaned it 😂🤣👍🏻

A long break?

Hello dear audience, I know I’ve been away for a very long time. I think my mental health took a little bit of a downturn. I just couldn’t face writing things down honestly and quite a lot has happened in the last… almost 2 weeks gosh.

But here I am sat in the park with the kiddos on a warm but overcast day and there is a breeze okay there is traffic but will ignore that and quite frankly I’m feeling a little bit at peace.

I also just got handed this treasure from TT and it made me smile

Well in the first case #1 Son’s birthday party happened on Saturday, the 6th of June which was almost 2 weeks ago.

We had had quite a few replies in the positive for the party but on the day of I still could not shake the feeling that he was effectively going to be stood up by his classmates. But I needn’t have worried there was so many kids there it was wonderful. TT had a whale of a time and honestly despite it costing $600 (it was all thanks to Merry Tax-mas that we could pay for it!) it was well worth it.

Yes that is Jestro and The Red Ninja from both Ninjago and Nexo Knights who guest-starred in the party room. #1 Son was ecstatic truly. TT was in the “okay I really want to play with them and I really want to hug them but I know they’re scary!” mode which was sort of hilarious 🤣😂

There was pizza and cake:

So. Much. Cake. And So. Much. Pizza. As part of the booking there were seven pizzas and lord alone knows how many cupcakes included.

All I know is, we brought 4 whole pizzas and 16 cupcakes home!!!

No we weren’t allowed to give some to the staff. We tried.

So H received two pizzas and a box of cupcakes when we returned home, as, sadly, the twins had been poorly and hadn’t been able to attend.

And the gifts. Dear lord. We have never exactly cheaped out when buying the gifts for those classmate birthday parties that he attended, but seeing the sheer generosity from the fellow parents I definitely feel more than a little bit guilty. Well, now we know more for next year.

And I didn’t have to do party bags either praise the good lord Jesus because there was a buildable mini figure for every child included in the party package. That included a Duplo figure for TT so even she was catered for which was lovely.

The next thing to happen really of note was spirit day on the Tuesday which would have made it the 9th of June. Each child had a shirt:

How to make a parent feel old in one easy step? Put the year that their child will graduate overall from high school on the back of the Kindergarten T-shirt. Yeah my son will graduate in 2030.

Welp always good to be prepared right?

So Spirit Day seemed very much an open event but I didn’t manage to get up there as TT wasn’t being cooperative. However class photos were shared 💗

My boy is, as always, clinging to an adult God love him.

He had an amazing time though, and even caught the sun a little.

Fret not dear audience he did not burn

There was also an entire school photo posted on the schools own Facebook page so I feel no compunction about half inching it and popping it up here.

Hint: my son is the one clinging to an adult on the left hand side the bottom.

And after spirit today came DPW day. This is a day to celebrate Melrose Department of Public Works. Which for the adult sounds about as exciting as it probably was except that the kids had such an amazing time.

She’s absolutely in love with that little hardhat and tries to take it with her everywhere. Unfortunately it’s really flimsy plastic so blows off with the slightest breeze so I keep trying to persuade her to keep it in the house.

Again school wanted us to go with him to chaperone but there was free ice cream and snacks there was sunshine and all manner of giant heavy duty vehicles for the kids to climb on and poke, so I consider it a morning well spent.

Sadly it was too far away from the house for me to go it alone with TT so daddy had to come to and drive but we’ll had a pretty good time.

And then, it was Friday. Having chatted with his teacher at DPW day, at length, it was decided that we shouldn’t take him in for the half day on Monday because he actually handled the fifth graders leaving not very well.* And she felt (and I didn’t disagree with her) that given they already finished the formal teaching part of the year it would just add stress to have a half day. Which meant that Friday was his last day of kindergarten. I didn’t really quite know how to feel if I’m honest he’s grown so so much and then I saw this picture:

There just aren’t words to describe the sheer pride I have felt in seeing these pictures. He’s grown, he’s changed and he’s done so so well. And then to top it off his report card came home on Friday as well. Now okay he has slipped a bit in certain areas, but overall? He has excelled compared to the winter report. I’m so so proud of him.

So this update is already super long so I think I’ll leave it there and will try and catch up with this week plus last weekend as soon as I can which hopefully will be tomorrow. Having said that, he’s got his first summer Reading camp tomorrow so we will see how we go.

*We have put so much effort into explaining to him about the transition to 1st grade, the change in class, the change in teacher etc, but we completely forgot that he had a lot of friends in the fifth grade who are moving up to the middle school in September. He was devastated on the Friday.

A busy few days

I tend to not write posts when it’s much of the same old same old day to day stuff.

Plus it was Spring Break this week so I had both kidlets with me, so times to sit and blog were very few and far between.

I’ve made five sales in my store now! I’m just blown away that I’ve sold anything at all so fast! I just hope that it will continue. Sadly I missed the Easter sales, and alas I think Mother’s Day is closing too fast to take advantage there, but we shall see.

#1 Son has had the Sunday blues today bless him after a week off. So he has been cuddled and reassured. Hopefully tomorrow will not be as bad as any of us fear it could be.

Yesterday was a good, normal, family fun day.

TV whilst daddy had his lie in.

Followed by a lovely walk in the sunshine to have lunch at the local Mexican cantina:

We decided to skip dessert there as there was nothing that the kids (#1 Son especially) would recognise as pudding, so we went to Cloud 9 for ice cream.

TT had fun:

Do not be fooled by the implement she is grasping. She had given up using the spoon and had simply face planted her ice cream 😂🤣

An emergency bath was administered as soon as we got home:

💕💕💕💕

Butter wouldn’t melt I swear!

Today was much the same, but we had to return to the Mall in order to exchange a tshirt for #1 Son, as he is not an XS.

So we decided to have dinner there.

TT spent a lot of time transfixed by the ceiling:

She was saying “hello” to it a lot. Well it beats harassing other diners, which is her usual mode of entertaining herself when we forget their jab screens.

From next weekend there is another slew of birthday parties, so I have ordered double copies of the next few books in the Supertato series – #1 Son loves them, so he is happy, and his classmates are unlikely to have already read them.

We have also booked his birthday party, as it was recently Merry Taxmas and so some of the rebate has been used for that. Legoland Discovery Centre has impressively decent value packages, and TT is free for this year at least.

I. Have. To. Make. Party. Bags.

Oh gods.

I also need to send the invites out. That will be tomorrow’s job then.

Momma has departed

I had 9 weeks with my wonderful momma.

But the best things in life must come to an end and she had to return to the homeland.

There was much packing and re-packing:

I’m sad, but have been promised that she and dad will return in the summer for at least a fortnight, maybe even three weeks.

We will have barbecues and the kiddies will play outside…

Well, if we get the fence we were promised before we moved in

And we will do the tourist thing and it will be lots of fun.

Well, it’s only three months away.

Well, that and Momma accidentally pinched my fleece – so she has to come back to return it 😂🤣

For now, I will snuggle with the hus-creature on the sofa, and continue watching Wonder Woman.

Pass the whiskey

No. Really.

It’s 17:30, mom is starting her third beer, I am drinking my first (which is actually yesterday’s first – since my op I haven’t really drunk much in a go).

In the first instance mom kicked me out of the house, gently persuaded me, to take TT to the park.

She refused to wear her snow boots. Or indeed any boots. And there was snow.

Not vast amounts, as it is melting, but it was there. She got wet.

But there were moments of cuteness

She then found (and ignored) a stick

No. There was no stick song.

We stayed out for about 45 minutes, and she had a whale of a time. But she did end up soaking wet due to snow and falling down.

I had to bribe her with candy to get her back in the pram! She totally charmed the man behind the counter in the grocery store though 😂🤣

Then came dinner. Sigh.

Yes, it went about as well as expected.

Take a guess, dear audience as to which bowl on the right hand side belonged to which child….

Go on…

I’ll wait…

She scoffed it. We are having the leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Honestly, even though I am tooting my own horn more than a little, it actually tastes really good!!!

#1 Son on the other hand? I basically begged him to eat three mouthfuls. Total bust.

I’ll keep trying…

Domestic Goddessing

No really. I have been.

Stop laughing at the back there!!!!

My wonderful momma is returning to Blighty a week tomorrow (😱😢😰) so I’m having to actually make a concerted effort to pull my finger out and get back to normality.

Right here and now I cannot promise to maintain standards of ironing for anyone beyond #1 Son – he likes “smart” so let’s see how we go.

God help me!!!!

So today, _I_ have thrown together the dinner for the children.

It is a stew of my own invention (and therefore probably lacks seasoning)

Order thrown into pot:
  • Fingerling potatoes – three colours
  • One small turnip
  • One parsnip
  • Three carrots – one orange, one purple, one white
  • One acorn squash
  • One boneless pork chop
  • Three (peeled) apples
  • Remains of a bag of frozen green beans that #1 Son has been refusing to eat
  • A bunch of fresh sage (I have since been informed that I shouldn’t have used that much and only used the leaves – these have since been extracted)
  • A pint of ready made chicken stock (like lamb, pork stock does not apparently exist)
  • Pinch of salt

Chucked it all in the slow cooker on high, been in 2.5 hours at the moment.

I’ll blend it down for their dinner and call it potage. TT will eat it. #1 Son? Almost certainly not.

Sigh.

Wow long time

No post.

Been a busy busy week and at so many points I found myself thinking “I must blog about today” and then it was late and I was tired and thought “I will do it tomorrow”

Well tomorrow never comes does it?

So, my last few days:

Friday:

We all accidentally got very tiddled. Which happens when you drink three bottled beers with a 9%ABV and add a glass of mead somewhere in the mix. Whoops. It was fun, and Momma and I chewed the fat, put the world to rights and ganged up on the hus-creature a little poor boy!

Saturday:

Momma and I were going to go to the pub for a drink, but both of us were feeling tired. (This is not a euphemism, amazingly I was not hungover!)

So instead, momma kindly volunteered to stay in with the (asleep) sproglets and we went to the cinema.

Where we had a (really not good*) meal at the bar-which-pretends-to-be-a-restaurant and saw BLACK PANTHER!!!

And if you have not yet been to see this masterpiece GO NOW. No, seriously, I’ll wait right here.

We didn’t get home til gone midnight, but mom had opted for an early night anyway so it was all good.

Apart from TT having a poop accident in her pants but one just isn’t worth fretting over.

*We sent back our nachos. It really was that bad 🙀

Sunday:

This was another quietish day, but #1 Son wanted a haircut.

Well, we felt that it was more than a little hard to tame, so for once we gentlyencouraged a cutting of hair

But there is only one barber in the whole of Melrose who is open on Sundays, so off we trotted.

And, rather unsurprisingly, it was very busy. We wanted to give the poor Mothership a break from her beloved grandchildren so we decided to take them both with us.

On the way out, #1 Son somehow caught a splinter in his finger 🤭 so daddy took him back upstairs to remove it whilst I stayed outside with TT – we had just gotten her strapped into the stroller and letting her out again was a nightmare I just did not want to deal with!

He was extremely brave – daddy managed to get half of it out with tweezers, but the bastarding thing snapped halfway out. So then enter the very experienced Nanny (the Mothership) with a sterile needle. And she got it out! And as he was so brave we decided that, regardless of cold, we would take him for an ice cream after the hair cut.

To try and limit the boredom factor for the kids, and to get more errands done, I sat with #1 Son in the barber’s whilst daddy took TT to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions

We actually had to pay a deductible this time – one whole quarter

Sadly we were nowhere near the chair by the time they were done. Fortunately we had the foresight to pack both tablets, so the kids were mostly contained, but it was still rather hair-raising*.

There was one cute moment though. There were a pair of brothers roughly of an age with #1 Son and TT, and, since there were only two barbers on shift, one decided to wait for his colleague to finish with his current client and not seat someone else in his chair so that both boys could be done together.

As a parent with two bored and fractious children this was slightly frustrating, but also wonderful to see from a customer service perspective.

Well we did eventually get to the chair, and for a kid with sensory issues he handled it like a total trooper 😍😊

It was a full scissor cut with a slight buzzing of the nape – and since he hates the clippers this was amazing.

It has been four days since the cut though, and it is already growing back enough to start spiking up at the back sigh. The perils of thick wavy hair I guess.

*Pun not intended 😂🤣

Monday:

Not much of note to report beyond being four weeks post op and doing reasonably well. As long as I don’t overdo it too much I’m pretty okay. I did ensure that I renewed my ibuprofen scrip because I could!I’ve been doing some regular driving practice and tonight we went via the mall. Ostensibly to give me some more lengthy practice on a different route, but we also planned to pop in to their pet store to get some cat food, as we are running low on her majesty’s dry feed.

Big Mistake. For, you see, not only was it a very small store designed only for dogs; but they were also selling dogs. Or puppies rather. Stored in large aquarium style tanks.

Not going to deny, as a Brit this shocked and appalled me. I mean, they seemed happy enough but still…

It made me sad. So I went and did a little shopping in Newbury Comics and had a happy again. Game of Thrones t-shirts? Check! Game of Thrones socks? Check!

Right this is already stupidly long so I shall continue it in another entry!

Many things

It’s been a busy few days.

TT is (whisper it) 100% reliable during the day on the toilet when it comes to doing a wee!

We have also had two days in a row where she has successfully done a poo in the correct place*

We have had no accidents all week thus far.

Night training is not happening, as we are attempting to wean her away from her middle of the night bottle and it’s just cruel to do both at the same time…

That and the one night we tried it she screamed bloody murder, fully woke up, and then actively refused to go back to sleep without said bottle – she won that round!

But she’s doing amazingly – especially when you consider she’s only 26 months old!!

Okay so she doesn’t now need the “cooling” pull ups we bought, or the plastic pants. Bugger. Ah well, we live and learn. And if we hadn’t have bought them, we would have needed them.

Sadly we had a bit of a backslide with #1 Son on the behaviour at school front today. He ran out not once, not twice but five time today, and even ran back into school at pick up time whilst the Mothership was talking to his teacher about the previous five occurrences.

I received an email from her this afternoon confirming that he had had an “emotional” day (stating that no-one would play with him and that he felt that no one loved him 😰) outlining her strategies for helping him tomorrow and giving us a framework to talk to him.

One of the problems is his refusal to accept that other children might just want to play games of their own choosing too – we are working on this…

He has had two more party invites though (one of which is ice skating – but thankfully with options for non skaters) which ought to help a little.

The other is a bouncing party – your guess is as good as ours on that – but that should at least be fun for him.

The lovely H brought up some presents for the kidlets today and he completed one of them

Momma and I are hoping that H will be able to join us on a small night on the town on Saturday.

His reading has come on in leaps and bounds. He actually asked to read with mom when he got home from school!!!!

He still hates writing, so I think that will have to be the next point of focus, but it’s amazing to see how well he is doing.

Mom met up with his teacher on Tuesday afternoon to discuss his progress and ensure that we (mostly her) are not confusing him compared to how they are teaching him in class.

It meant she got to meet his support team, and see his little cubby that they’ve built for him to (effectively) escape into when he gets overwhelmed.

Yes, it is literally a cupboard – it works for him.

He will also be having weekly sessions with his therapist every Tuesday at 07:15 – this means he won’t be too late into school, thus not impacting on his daddy’s work day too much.

As for me? I’m slowly getting back behind the wheel. I’m not great, but at least when I screw up I’m following through and have not (for example) crashed into a roundabout, nor ran a red light, nor turned into oncoming traffic without signalling.

Which are all things I did back in England prior to passing my U.K. licence

So I consider that I am doing okay. I need practice, and I need to pass my theory test (yet again) but I am studying and having gotten through half of the USA equivalent to the Highway Code today.

I’m now exhausted and have an incipient migraine 😂🤣

I also had my second post-op checkup yesterday.

My doctor is very pleased with my progress. I am to increase my doing of things, though not to lift anything heavier than a gallon until I’m the full six weeks post-surgery.

He does however want me to break up with dairy 🙀🙀🙀

(I mentioned I wanted to lose weight)

At the moment dairy and I are merely agreeing to see other people 😂🤣

I can cope with losing chocolate but not my cheese. And I’m trying to work out what I could put in my tea instead of cow’s milk.

But I’m going to try.

He next wants to see me in six months, and this appointment is already booked 😱

Mom and I also went up to knitting group yesterday and had much fun 👍🏻

*With many apologies to the non-parents in my audience, this sort of thing is big news when you are a stay at home parent!

Several important milestones

So yesterday wasn’t your average Sunday.

I was going to walk to the pub with mum but it was raining really heavily. So we all had a baguette meal at #1 Son’s request. Both children really enjoyed themselves and actually ate real food. TT also tried various adult foods such as horseradish cheese and Gorgonzola dip. No, she didn’t like them but at least it was funny when she tried.

TT has been trying bunches again:

I’m not sure she approves yet 😂🤣 whatever we do she yanks out within 10-30 minutes anyway sigh.

We decided that it was a good idea to actually get some exercise, so when we discovered we were almost out of cat food (I know right how did I let this happen?) We decided that I would go to Shaws with the sprogs and the hus-creature, and get some fresh air.

Well we managed it. Nobody ran off, broke anything and I didn’t collapse. Then something very amazing happened.

I drove the car home!!!!

Yes, me – who hasn’t been behind the wheel in over six months!!!

I was probably more than a little aggravating to the other drivers, but I made it home.

#1 Son even told me “you have done well Mommy, good job”

And trust me, I needed to hear that!!!

We went out tonight for a small spin around the immediate estate and to the train station and back – a bit of road position practice mainly. Again, nobody died and there was only one instance of my getting my side of the road screwed up – approaching a one-way gyratory on the left whilst turning left fired up my dormant muscle-memory neurons, but I moved over before there was an issue and didn’t even get beeped so all is good.

I need to be able to do the school run before Momma returns to good ole Blighty.

Tosay #1 Son voluntarily tidied TT’s room – it was done very well. What was amusing was TT checking all the cupboards in her little kitchen to see what he had put in there.

TT is now very upset to wake up to a wet nappy, and for the last two nights has insisted on “wee wee” within 10 min of her bedroom door closing.

So tonight we cut down her bedtime bottle amount and as of last night have cut out her 11pm bottle 🙀

We will be attempting to sit her on a potty at 11pm instead after getting #1 Son up for his middle of the night toilet break.

Both of them are growing up. TT is now almost 100% reliable on the #1 front, so now we are working on #2.

Night-dry may well be possible much sooner with her…

I’m also three weeks post-op now. Time flies when you’re “having fun” I guess.

A productive few days

TT has been dry in the day for three days on the trot!!!

This is amazing! And she has completely bypassed the potty and has gone straight to using the toilet.

So I could have saved the $20+ I invested in a mini toilet style potty but never mind eh?

We are struggling a little with #2 at the moment but we are getting there.

We have already thrown at least one pair of underpants out

She has also been a little unwell the last day or so. Wednesday night was awful. She woke screaming in pain at 22:00 and was clearly either constipated or very gassy. We tried a warm bath, Nanny/daddy walking her around, we even gave her an approved constipation tablet – nothing worked.

She was so bad she gave herself a fully hoarse throat the poor wee thing 😰

So we ended up co-sleeping because she just would not settle back in her bed alone.

And it reminded me most forcefully why we do not do the co-sleeping thing.

Poor Daddy ended up curled up on the foot of the bed under the duvet whilst I ended up very sore due to the squirming sleep-thief octopus.

So I spent a lot of yesterday resting because I was exhausted and in pain.

Much better today. However TT has had a slightly upset tummy, so the two events may have been linked. Her pjs were a bit of a state this morning 🤢

#1 Son has been doing reading and writing practice with Nanny. By reading phonetically with the Biff, Chip and Kipper books supplied by other Nanny he is now romping through, and is already on Level 2.

My pride knows no boundaries. We are more than a little concerned though that we are teaching him the British way and not the American way, but it’s working for him – so Momma has volunteered to chat to his teacher about it next week to see if either they can keep letting him learn this way or provide us with suggested resources to help him move on from phonics.

But he is enjoying reading. This is a bloody miracle.

TT decided yesterday that she wasn’t up to being outdone:

Reading practice with TT

I mean, logically it’s nowhere near as impressive, but it’s pretty cute.

Momma has also been trying to tame and tidy the unruly mop that is her hair:

It lasts about ten minutes but hey it’s progress!

We are planning on working on colours and shapes with her next week once #1 Son returns to school.

And as for writing with #1 Son? Well Momma is working on individual upper and lower case letter formation with him, and we are already up to K!!! The hope is that by Monday he will have done the entire alphabet through, but we shall see.

He has also had a full session with his new therapist and he doesn’t hate the musical therapy.

*collapses in relief*

I’m going for a walk at the weekend!!!

💕💕💕💕💕