Reasons to be Cheerful - Part 4

Here is my week 4 post for Reasons to be Cheerful as hosted by the lovely Mich at Mummy from the Heart:


A biiiit of a stretch for me after my GRUMP post yesterday but am deffo feeling a mite chirpier so heregoes:

1. We move in 6 days (gulp) but envisaging my furniture, lovely new sofa cushions and GG and BB running around in the new house is keeping me going!

2. I had a wonderful lunch with a friend today which stretched into more of a day (albeit with 3 children in tow between us). It entailed a lovely combination of baby talk (she is wonderfully pregnant), food (scampi, chips and mushy peas followed by a taster dessert of eton mess, lemon tart and profiteroles - who could ever not be cheerful about eating out?) plus the planning of a trip to London and talking about everything else under the sun.  I haven't done any housework (my bed is still unmade - oops better do that at least before Husband comes home) or packing!  Plus I think Husband and I are having a take away tonight - RESULT.

3. I heard Adele on the Radio1 Live Lounge yesterday and last night downloaded her new album 21.  If you have not yet got this album please get it - it is amazing.  The track 'Do you Remember' made me cry at breakfast time this morning - it's a masterpiece.  I love getting new music.

G.R.U.M.P

**WARNING, this contains grumpiness** **WARNING, this contains grumpiness**

Reasons why I am 'tetchy' today:

1. We are moving house 1 week today.  You know that feeling when you start clearing out your wardrobe, everything is on the floor in a mountain and you think 'why did I start this'.....this is where we're at.

2. DD has cried every day this week when I've COLLECTED her from nursery.  Apart from making it look like she's very unhappy to come home with me, dealing with tears and trying to listen to and console her in a small, over heated corridor with children and adults bumping into you whilst wearing a winter coat and holding an exceedingly heavy baby (or sitting him on the floor only for him to fall over and bump his head) is very hot sweaty work.

3. I'm tired.  Late nights from Husband being out Tuesday (I therefore couldn't get to sleep) and a late night 'discussion' last night has made me tired.  I'm not good at all tired.  Not a skill to have lacking in parenthood.

4.Yesterday I admit to yelling 'just leave me alone for 5 minutes' and locking myself in the downstairs toilet - this was to my DD. *fail*.

5. It's not fair that Husband gets to go away on trips (albeit work but I know how much fun these are too).  I don't want to work full time (nor even part time - I'm currently on maternity leave) but having had quite a good job pre-babies I know how much fun it is and what I'm missing out on.  I now have an inbuilt switch which means I couldn't go away and leave my children for a week if it was offered to me on a plate (Husband will have notched up 3 week long trips within a year).  Also the things that Husband does are with work so for free, if I was to do 'tit for tat' it involves money and therefore means a family discussion and further guilt on my part as this money could be spent on things for us all.  Humph. There is no answer to this I know.

On a lighter note, I am wearing my beautiful new navy blue flowery tights from M&S (have a look online, no sponsorship - just spreading the love), a woollen grey dress and clip in my hair with a button on.  I am therefore dressed like a petulant child.

Listography - Things I Wish I Could Do

I'm joining in with Katetakes5 listography this week for the first time - 5 Things I wish I could do.  I'm never content so this one's right up my street!

1. Speak French fluently (see previous blog for my Frenchiness), I did it for GCSE and got a respectable B and then did a conversational french course as an adult and can get by but would love to be able to do it all right with the verbs, masculine/feminine tenses and words correctly.....  I'll admit something....nearly 4 years ago I registered and baptised my DD's middle name as Beau, I thought this meant beautiful in French but it is masculine and means handsome......oops.

2. Have enough time, energy and determination to see all my friends regularly. I have a wonderful lot of friends I've met through school, college and work and through all of our busy lifestyles there is always someone I keep thinking 'I must see or catch up with them'.  Apart from strictly diarising all of these 'meet ups' and making sure that me and all of my friends are healthy, rich enough not to work, have endless time enough to travel and magical nannies appear to take care of children or a butler to do all the chores left I don't know how to make it happen.

3. Be a radio DJ.  I think that if I had my time again (I sound like a 70 year old) I would definitely have pursued a job in radio.  All that music and mindless chit chat would have been a perfect job for me.  If Edith Bowman can do it then surely I could? (I'm too late for the annoying celebrity list but be assured she would have been on mine - say your T's properly woman!!).

4. Have a long, adventurous holiday each year guaranteed.  I have so far been exceedingly lucky with my travel, working on international events meant I went to some fantastic places all around the world and as Husband loves to travel too we've been to some great places.  BUT there is still so much to see, if we were to go on a long far flung holiday every year for the rest of our lives (and that's not possible to start at the mo with the chidlers, I don't think they'd appreciate the Taj Mahal just yet) I still don't think we'd get to see everything I want to.

5. Re-train as a beauty therapist (I've completed and passed the anatomy part), florist, psychologist and midwife (also see point 3 above) sorry if this is cheating but I would love to be all of these things but have run out of points and potentially lives. I kind of stumbled into event management after my a-levels and never really knew what I wanted to be when I was 'grown up'.  Now I know but it's too many things and I'm pretty certain I'll be unable to do it all.  Oh and I want to own a Bakers/Florist/Coffee Shop/Greeting card shop one day....Please.

Reasons to be cheerful - part 3

Wowser, week 3 in my blogging journey is here already! Here is part 3 of my reasons to be cheerful today:

1. We are going to 'exchange' today and therefore have a moving day set for 3rd Feb! Whoop Whoop Blimmin Whoop!!  I had a few hours of panic and a stress tummy ache last night (a childhood thing which I've never grown out of) as reality set in and I was thinking of everything to be done but Husband and I* joined together all our separate 100 'things to do before moving' lists (we love a list in this house) and compiled one lovely neat and comprehensive checklist**.

*read Husband did it and I chatted to my mum on the phone.
** this however did turn into a small row where I accused Husband of treating me like his secretary when he gave me a list of points to discuss with the removal man today. I was tired :-)

2. I have 2 cousins who are pregnant, once newly announced yesterday. It's so exciting to see our family growing.  Even though we live miles apart and see each other once in a blue moon, Facebook has made it possible to keep in touch with every stage and moment of joy.  What on earth did we do without this invention??? (reminds me I've got to watch that film The Social Network).

3. I'm going 'home' on Sunday to see my Mum and Dad.  I haven't seen them since Christmas Day and I know they miss seeing DD and BB (and hopefully me and Husband a little) and I can't wait, especially to show BB's commando speed crawling/wrestling with furniture skills.

Mummy from the Heart created reasons to be cheerful.  Why not have a go? Link up and visit her here.http://mdplife.blogspot.com

7 things about me!

Mummy from the Heart http://mdplife.blogspot.com/  has included me in a link to disclose 7 things you don't know about me. Well I haven't been in the 'blog' world for long so it won't be too hard but I'll try and think of some interesting things!!

1.  I still have a 'dodey' - this is my comfort which started as a piece of ribboned cellular blanket as a baby but now takes the form of a hanky.  I keep it under my pillow and use when falling asleep, relaxing on the sofa, in a long car journey and it has been known to be secreted up my jumper sleeve on many a long flight.  A good hanky is one with tougher reinforced corners, often the older the better.  Even at the age of 34 my Dad still asks me if I've been rummaging in his hanky drawer and sometimes on my visits home I admit to having a little look at his collection if my few at home have got too threadbare!* My husband no longer bats an eyelid when I ask him to 'pop upstairs and grab my hanky' or wakes in the middle of the night to see me on all fours searching for it under the bedclothes.

*I'll often have a look at the hankies in department stores and Husband will ask hopefully if they're they any good and I'll sadly say no and turn away, they just don't seem to make them like they used to!

2. I had 4 fertility treatments called IUI in order to conceive my DD, I had more treatment 2 years later and after the 4th attempt I conceived but I lost the baby to an ectopic pregnancy and also had to have a tube removed.  3 months after my operation I conceived my BB completely naturally.

3. I live about 50 miles from my parents and two sisters who both have children, I have a lovely mother in law but miss having 'my family' close enough to babysit or pop over for a coffee and really envy people who have that.

4. My husband and I met on a holiday in Faliraki.  We met on the first night buying beer in the supermarket, got together (ahem) on the second night and haven't looked back since!

5. I love singing and will do Karaoke sober but am not very good (though once got 'Sing Star' rating singing Cindy Lauper 'Time after Time' and think my Alannah Miles 'Black Velvet' impression is almost acceptable!).  I will sing along to anything and have a really wide taste in music (why limit yourself when there is so much great music out there?!?!) from Meat Loaf to Rhianna, give me a hair brush and I'm there on stage at Wembley.

6. I'm a bit of a Francophile (is that right for someone who loves all things French?!?!), a small example is that I often lapse into a bit of Francais (see!) like Delboy from Only Fools and Horses and am obsessed with Breton stripe clothing, so much so my Husband actually made up a song about my love of Breton the other day to the tune of a well known Queen song which included the line 'oh Jojomamanbebe I love all the things you do'.  My family are also part of the weirdness - one of my sisters and Dad actually refer to each other as 'Papa' and 'Nicole' for no reason whatsoever.  And, yes we are going to France for our hols this year - we'll be the ones with a string of onions round our necks.

7. I love food. I think about food a lot and like to plan what my next meal will be.  I wish for my figure that I was one of those people who can just look at food as fuel but in truth I think life is too short to not enjoy all the wonderful delights out there.  I once thought of writing a blog purely on what food I'd eaten daily but not sure this would be interesting for anyone to look at (on second thoughts I've just looked at all the above!!).

I've got to now invite some more bloggers to join in but everyone I looked at had already done this so sorry I'm late to the game.  If you are reading this please just tag yourself below in my comments and join in and I'll deffo come and read!

x

Reasons to be cheerful - part 2

Here are my reasons to be cheerful as created by Mummy from the Heart http://mdplife.blogspot.com



1. Husband bought me some tulips on Friday, they are brightening my sitting room and have reminded me that Spring and therefore my favourite season Summer (along with my birthday!) are on their way.  I adore Christmas but as soon as it's done I want the sunshine and heat (fingers crossed!!) to be here.

2. A very simple thing but my family's hair makes me cheerful.  I have got quite nice hair, it's received a few compliments in it's time, dark and a little bit curly and as of this evening freshly ungreyed.  It falls out in droves but luckily seems to grow in the same hearty manner (to the extent that I've got excess in other parts of my body I won't go into that here).  My GG has amazing strawberry ringlets that make people in the street (elderly ladies in particular) smile and we don't go a day without somebody commenting on it, I dread the day it's been dyed black and straightened to within an inch of its life but I know it will come.  But, what has made me extra cheerful recently is the sight of BB's hair growing and starting to curl round his ears, I can't bear the thought of cutting it already.

3. We got the paperwork through for our new house and think it'll be a matter of weeks now before we're moving.  It was another weekend of packing but every box packed is a step closer. Yippee!

Boy oh Boy.....

I've got a confession to make. Yesterday I googled 'games for an 8 month old baby'.  Yes I know. RUBBISH.

Anyway (one of the results inspired me) and I pulled Beautiful Boy out from underneath his pile of toys, sat him up and got a ball.  We rolled in back and forth a few times and he even placed the ball back in my hands responding to my "Ta, now give it back to Mummy" - yippee all was well and good until he quickly found it much more interesting to turn around and start whacking his ball on the laminate floor because the loud sound was brilliant and instantly provided a huuuge grin on his face.

Now - I know how to occupy a baby, with GG I did activities like a mummy possessed, we did underwater swimming, yoga, massage, rhyme time (which was great especially for me as I couldn't remember hardly any of the nursery rhymes from my childhood apart from Old MacDonald and she got bored of that early on) and play dates galore.

But I have done nothing with BB, not one little class or course and I can't help but feel guilty about the lack of stimulation and friends of his 'own'.  My main excuses are:
a) sheer exhaustion and the memory of getting a baby and myself in and out of the pool is still too fresh in my mind
b) nursery runs/timings don't fit with classes
c) but mostly because we've been waiting to move to a new village (hopefully in a few weeks now) and I'm waiting to immerse myself in life there and then BB will have all the new friends he could ask for (and maybe a few more for me!)

So mostly he just seems to roll about and commando crawl about the house banging toys on the floor, which admittedly he loves but I can't help thinking it's not constructive enough?

Watching BB try and pull his Little People Car Garage on top of himself for a wrestle, even Husband quietly suggested at the weekend that he thought BB might need more organised play.  Actually, this was uttered from his lips in barely above a whisper and he quickly left the room.  You would have imagined that he'd be worried that I'd blown up in response to his supposed criticising of my parenting skills but really. As if.

Before I had a boy I used to think that people spouting the 'difference' in boys and girls was just rubbish and an excuse for ignoring their little soldier rampaging around the soft play pushing and shoving and swiping at anything, but now I'm starting to wonder........

Anyway I decided to try again and got the wooden building blocks.  GG used to love playing with these and would sit quietly for ages creating amazing structures. Some were a bit freakily good and we took photos joking she would be an architect (one day, like a scene out of Poltergeist I opened the washing machine to find a perfectly balanced column of 4 wooden blocks, that was scary).

I sat BB down and as expected GG came over straight away and we started to build the towers out of the blocks, and what did he do? Knock them down.  For about 15 minutes straight he found it hilarious for us to build towers and as quickly as we could build he was knocking them down and laughing his nappy off.

It was great fun - and stimulating to a degree I think? So, I'm not going to worry too much, he's probably just going to be a WWF wrestler and work a bulldozer.