How to protect your sofa and carpet from harmful UV rays...Sun Cream?

Firstly I apologise for neglecting my blog for the last few days, it's been hectic to say the least, and every time I've sat down to write something one of the monsters starts yelling from their afternoon nap or I get a phone call with yet another family drama that takes away another hour of my life that I'll never get back. I won't go into any details (for fear of reprisals) but my family is like the cast of Eastenders, full of drama, every day there's a new disaster, and for some reason I always end up playing councillor landing me directly in the middle of the controversy. Ah yes, never a dull day when you're part of this family, even when you make the massive effort of moving away from the nutcases! It's a good job I love them all regardless of the chaos that comes with them!

I've also been abit of a socialite, in comparison to what my social life has been over the last 4 years since having children anyway! Since my last blog I've been out 3 out of those 5 nights, and yes alcohol was involved in each and every outing. Since having my babies my recovery time from a night out is now between 48  to 36 hours, depending on how much alcohol was consumed, in comparison to the 6 hour recovery time needed back in my college days before the next party could begin!

Needless to say that I have been like a walking zombie struggling to keep up with my much more socially experienced friends, who are of course childless and who have the luxury of a good lie in the next morning, unlike my 6am wake up call by my little gremlins who have no care for the fact that mummy only fell into bed 4 hours earlier!

It has been a fun week however of catching up with old friends and following my hubby's band around for a couple of gigs, pretending for afew hours that we're young and carefree. This is a silly idea really though, or at least that's what I surmised the following morning when my head was thumping at the prospect of a full day with the monsters running rings round me. The guilty feeling in your gut could possibly be the worst side effect, and paranoia that you're possibly the worst mum in the world because of a reckless night out which has left you barely capable of lifting a mug of coffee to your lips, never mind meeting the demands of two small children all day. Does this make me a bad mum? I hope not. If so...well all I can say is there are alot of bad mum's out there!

Daddy's band, Zebedy. Daddy's the crazy lookin shirtless dude in the middle!

The worst morning after was Sunday morning. This was meant to be my lie in because daddy had his lie in on Saturday morning. However somehow at some stage between the dreaded 6am wake up call and 8am, when daddy came running upstairs in a state of alarm, the kids had managed to spot an opportunity and they did what any mischievous child would do and ran with it!

It was the funny smell that hit me first, then as my tired eyes focused on the living room I gasped in horror. Daddy had taken his eye off the ball, or the sun cream that had been in Megan's school bag to be more specific, and the kids had decided to paint themselves, the sofa and the carpet and just about everywhere else in it. The kids were nowhere in sight, they're not daft, they'd buggered off into the garden at the sound of their parent's footsteps on the stairs. A surprisingly clean looking Megan was pushing a greasy looking sun cream covered Ethan around in their Little Tykes car without a care in the world. Ethan's hair was fashioned into a mohican (although I suspect daddy was the culprit of that do, not Megan!) and his ears were thick with the stuff, I'm surprised he could hear anything!

I closed my eyes hoping it would all just disappear and my lovely clean living room and freshly bathed babies would reappear once I opened my eyes. Instead just my sheepish looking husband stood before me. Rather than grab a sponge and start cleaning however, he merely insisted we go out for breakfast. I could have slapped him it was such a stupid thing to say and only resulted in my exasperation turning to anger. Well it nearly did...maybe I was just too exasperated. We went out for breakfast.

Ethan's sun creamed hair do

Much to my disappointment the mess was still there when we got home, the kids still stank of sun cream and I was still hungover. So that day mostly consisted of scrubbing the living room and the kids, and yet I can still smell the stuff every time I walk in the house! I never realised sun cream was so smelly until now.


It reminds me of when Megan got hold of the sudocrem and pasted dolly with it before painting her lamp shade and wall with it too. I never realised just how smelly that was either til I found half my house smeared in the stuff, or how tricky it is to clean the blummin stuff off either! It's barrier cream after all so it has an amazing resistance to water! I kind of thought the whole thing was funny initially, I even took the time to take a photo (see below!) until I turned into a blaspheming demon scrubbing Megan's walls pointlessly, the wall paper was more willing to be cleaned off than the sudocrem!

It's the look on poor Dolly's face that made it comical!

Getting in shape and a poo on the potty, yay! 'Mummy can we keep it?'

Today has been a busy one, finally we got back to the creche so mummy can start her exercises again, the babies were thrilled to get back and I was instantly forgotten as they raced for the toys, and I excitedly joined my fellow exercise companions for a brutal legs, bums and tums session...that nearly killed me!

Due to the overlapping illnesses suffered by the children over the last few weeks I've had to cancel the creche every week and go without the nourishment provided by my grueling exercise regimes, and now I'm really suffering for it. My body has turned into blancmange, I'm all weak and wobbly. So the next few weeks of picking up my fitness level are gonna be tough, but worth it.

I've been doing the exercise classes and the gym ever since Ethan was 3 months old. I decided, as I stood mournfully eyeing my tired defeated body in the mirror one morning, that I had to do something to combat the slowly deteriating mass of flesh I saw before me. I'd aired my concerns over my non-recognisable self in comparison to my slender pre-baby figure to my health visitor, and to friends, and the response was always the same 'Oh don't be worrying about getting back into shape, that'll all come back naturally in time'. I listened to it all and couldn't help thinking, 'hmm well how come when I took that approach after Megan was born I remained fat and lumpy?'

To any new mums who may be reading this I will not lie to you, your body does not just magically return to it's pre-baby state without any conscious effort by yourself as many of your well meaning friends will have you believe. I think all mum's end up getting to a certain point after having their baby when they look at themselves and think 'Oh crap my body has fell apart and I haven't got the time or inclination to do anything about it', especially when you're hardly getting any sleep and every waking second is consumed by feeds, pooey nappies and crying (by both mum and baby if you're anything like what I was like in the early days!).

Sheer determination and a hint of panic pushed me to signing up at the gym, at first thinking I'd just try to get there in the evenings and weekends when the hubby was home to have the babies. As soon as I learnt that there was a creche available every morning I paid up front for a year! It was like all my christmas's had just come at once. All of a sudden I entered into a world where I could be child free for a whole hour every morning while I worked my bum off in the gym, making every second count. At the end of every session I felt exhilerated and proud that I was getting that bit closer to getting a shadow of my former body back, and the kids were so pleased to see me when I picked them up from the creche. I found I had more patience to deal with Megan's tantrums and Ethan's relentless crying in the evening when he had colic or was teething. My overall sense of well being was significantly heightened.

I mentioned all of this to my health visitor at a routine check for Ethan a few months ago, and hinted that perhaps it would be beneficial to let new mums know that this kind of thing was available for them if they wanted it. However I got the impression that health visitor's don't appreciate being told how to do their job and the conversation resumed back to Ethan before I pissed her off too much!

I do believe it should be advertised more to new mum's, not only do you get an hour child free but you get to work off some of that pent up new-mum-lifestyle-frustration. Or if you're particularly shattered just sit in the hall for the hour pretending you're having a breather, as I may have done on one occasion after being up all night with a teething boy!

Anyway, I'm getting side tracked. Back to today. So yes I'm back on the exercise regime, and was meant to be starting some kind of healthy eating plan today aswell, which certainly should not have included the Galaxy caramel chocolate bar I had after my chicken salad wrap, but never mind, one thing at a time eh?

We're currently taking on the potty training challenge with Megan, we've been tackling this particular stage of development for 10 months now, all the books and articles on 'How to Potty Train your toddler in a week' obviously were not referring to Megan, she has plans of her own when it comes to her bodily functions. At first it all seemed to be going so well, with the aid of 'Teddy' (see pic below) we managed to get her to put a wee wee in the potty, at which point we celebrated massively and handed out stickers and cuddles, all the right moves according to the books etc. But then nothing for months. She would sit for ages on the potty talking and reading her potty book, and not a drop. Then we'd pop her pull ups back on to go out and she'd have this contemplative look on her face for afew seconds before grinning from ear to ear and running off. Blummin monkey knew exactly what she was doing! Which on the one hand was quite reassuring because it was evidence of her having obvious control over her bladder, she was holding herself until we put her pull ups on, but on the other hand it was extremely infuriating.

Teddy perched on the towel rail offering words of encouragement

Luckily spring brought with it some blisteringly hot days where I decided to abandon Megan's pants completely for a whole week! Following afew puddles on the kitchen floor and mummy's disapproving scowl, she eventually started weeing on her potty, triggering praise and stickers, and eventually big girl knickers with princess's on them. I was so pleased we'd cracked it, well nearly, there was still the issue of number 2's, and Megan's refusal to do them anywhere apart from in her knickers.

So the breakthrough was in May, and it's now August and we're still desperately trying to get Megan to do her number 2's on the potty or toilet before she starts school in September. She'll be the youngest in her year at school because she was born right at the end of August, hence the pressure to start the potty training perhaps a little earlier than usual (she'd just turned 2 when we introduced her to the potty to have a play with and 'make friends' with), and ever since the open day at Megan's school afew weeks back when the reality of Megan going to big school like a grown up little lady suddenly hit me. The thought of her teacher's having to face what I face in Megan's knickers on a daily basis made me blush and grit my teeth, I couldn't put another human being through that...could I? No no of course not, it is my parental responsibility to get my girl to do the deed on the toilet, and only on the toilet.

Needless to say I've tried everything; ignoring the whole matter to see if she'll go to the potty herself, encouragement, chastising, bribary, disgust, acting like poo is great! I've ran out of idea's. Then today when I was on the phone, Megan suddenly hopped off her chair and over to the potty for what I thought was a wee. I've never been so excited to see a grimace and pink cheeked look of concentration on anyone's face in my life. Completely forgetting I was on the phone I realsied what Megan was doing and began chants of encouragement, 'good girl, you do a nice big poo in the potty, that's it, big push, clever girl!!' Needless to say the rare phone phone calls recieved from that particular friend may now become even more rare, as I quickly ended the phone call to focus on my amazing child that had just managed to achieve something right up there with climbing Mount Everest as far as I was concerned!

I cuddled, kissed, swooned over, and threw her around playfully as she giggled (after wiping her bum of course..that could have been messy otherwise!). And on Megan's instruction we took a photograph of her 'big snake' that she had 'put in the potty all by herself' so that we could show Daddy when he got home, well it's better than the other idea she had which was to keep it in the cupboard for later so that everyone could see her snake, eek!

So we've had an afternoon of telling Ethan all about Megan's big poo, she went to wake him up from his nap, much to my dismay, as I was cleaning the potty because she just had to tell someone that wasn't me, I think she felt a little bit deflated that Ethan didn't seem too bothered, or even to understand, probably because he didn't, but I managed to get him to clap his hands in ignorant appraisal of his sister's toilet achievement anyway.

Hopefully this could be a turning point, maybe, please God, please let this be the end of scraping poo out of Peppa Pig knickers?! I'll keep you posted...

Megan with her stickers for being a big clever girl!

The Fun of Eating Out...

Today was definately a day of eating out, as is usually the case on the weekend when the hubby is off work and we try to make the most of our time together as a family. So as soon as we were all up and dressed this morning we piled into the car and hit the road for a 'fun family day out'! We have many of these 'fun family days out', where we head off in the car grinning from ear to ear at the prospect of fun and laughter whilst frollicking in the sunshine...but in fairnesss it usually turns out to be a couple of hours wandering around in the rain trying desperately to find a cafe that accepts buggy's, has a high chair, and isn't crammed to the rafters with 'polite people' who spend the entire time scowling over their tea cups at the noisy children.

However today was a pleasnat surprise, partly down to the fact that we went for simplicity instead of  extravagance (McDonalds!), and partly because the kids were just in such a good mood, I was flabergasted to find they were actually holding hands in the back of the car, I just had to take a pic (see below!), rather than the usual whining that one or the other had hold of something that the other just so desperately had to have right that second or they may just explode etc, they were actually expressing their subconscious love for one other!

So yes breakfast at McDonalds was a relaxed affair and the kids devoured their pancakes. In fairness to McDonalds they've picked themselves up over the last few years and I don't feel as guilty as my health visitor would insist that I should do for allowing my children to eat there. They have after all recieved awards for their fight against child obesity and providing healthy options for all of the family, including Happy Meals for kids which now include fruit and fat free milk (that my children love of course, ahem). I'm not trying to promote McDonald's as the answer to difficult meal times, but I don't believe the odd trip to McDonalds will turn our children into insolent fat lazy littler computer addicts over night, even though the health professionals would have us believe it.

Following our naughty but delicious breakfast we hopped back in the car, loading our full happy tummies in beside us...or that could have just been me! and off we went to Chester for yet more family fun with my dad (Grandad), his girlfriend Elaine (who we are just in the process of getting to know but who seems very lovely indeed, my dad's smiling again so what could be bad about that!), my sister Nikki (Aunty Nikki), and my nephew Michael (Cuz Mikey).

The children were coy as we approached Aunty Nikki and Michael, and so were succumbed to silence in their bashfulness, which continued as we met Grandad and Elaine, and the unearthly silence continued as we strolled through Chester, so much so that I would have forgotten that the children were there if it wasn't for the fact that I was pushing a buggy!

In spite of our late breakfast we were peckish again so we went on the hunt for a half decent cafe that met all of the requirements listed above, and without too much trouble we stumbled upon a fabulous Italian restaurant on Lower Bridge Street called La Fattoria, and I hugely recommend this place for any family. They almost felt like a newly opened resteraunt because of their keenness to please and hospitaltity, but the service and food proved them to be a well established and well run business. They helped us in with the buggies, folded one down and hid it away for us, quickly surfaced a high chair for us, and cooed at the kids for a minute before leaving us to make our food choice.

During our meal I looked across at a young family who were struggling with their two toddlers, I empathised with them completely as it was like looking at a mirror image of a usual Saturday Harding-Smith outing, all red faced and flustered the mum was trying to hush her tantrumming toddler, when a lovely 'easy on the eye' Italian waiter flounced over, grapsed the little girl's hand and asked her to walk with him round the empty tables next to the family. The little girl was stunned into silence and so thrilled at the attention she was recieving that she walked around those tables with that awesome waiter for a good 15 minutes while the rest of the family finished their meals. If there is one waiter in this world that deserves a tip it's him!

And so we enjoyed a relatively stress free meal whilst the children amused themselves with toy phones, Aunty Nikki's real phone, and bits of pasta and garlic bread, ooh and ice cream of course, to the point where we actually managed to hold a converstation that didn't consist of 'put that down', 'don't do that' 'ssshhhh' or 'For God's sake let's go home'. It was lovely to catch up with my dad, and to have a giggle with him too, and to see my sister and nephew in good spirits too.

We were still smiling as we gathered ourselves to leave and the kids were sent on their way by the lovely child friendly waiter with a lolly pop each (which I promptly removed from Ethan's death grip and put away, never to be seen again! Megan was allowed to hold her lolly on the condition that the plastic wasn't removed, daddy must not have heard this rule and the second my back was turned the lolly was released from it's plastic wrapper and stickyness ensued...which I ignored to the best of my ability. The sticky mess caused by those tiny sticks of sugar are enough to send me into a OCD frenzy that could destroy the whole day!)

A stroll along the riverside and through the park to see the squirrels completed the day, and the sun even broke out from behind the clouds for a while, the day was definately on our side. So before anything could ruin it (the children were beginning to yawn and frown in indifference to the continuing festivities) we said our goodbyes and headed back to the car. The children slept the whole way home giving me and daddy time to talk and reflect on what a beautiful family we have and what a darn good job we're doing...what a contrast to the 'fun family day's out' where we huff all the way home annoyed that we couldn't seem to get to grips with the whole happy family situation, and that it must be down to our poor organisation and communication skills..some days work and other's don't, that's just one of the unpredictable adventures of having children, they decide if you're going to have a good day or not!

Thanks for the great day kids, don't worry, we know you're still the boss around here!

My sister Nikki with Megan

My dad and Michael with their matching Mafia style hats!

When sleep becomes you...

Well following 3 weeks taken over by chicken pox and infections I have been exhausted to say the least. First it was Megan who erupted into a mass of itching red bubbles that at first horrified me, until 10 seconds into my panic of thinking 'Holy Hell, what the hell kind of insect could have done this to my child over night?!' I realised it was more than likely the common virus Chicken Pox. A week of restless night's and irritable days ensued whilst Megan suffered the feverish effects of the illness. I texted all of the family to inform them of the important news, but my tired brain instructed my fingers to text everyone the news that Megan in fact had 'Chicken Pots', much to my embarressent when I later realised my error.

Ethan's 1st swimming experience!

Secondly I ended up in accident and emergency in the wee hours of the morning with Ethan, who's little willy had swollen to about 4 times it's usual size, terrifying me into a complete panic as I stood clutching my baby in one arm whilst frantically trying to call the out of hours doctor on the phone with my other hand, bewildered as to why I was just getting a funny buzzing noise on the other end, only to realsise after 10 times redialling that I was phoning a fax machine! Giving up we made a dash for the hospital which turned out to be the right move as it tuned out Ethan was very poorly indeed with an infection of the foreskin, most likely cause was the trip to the swimming baths the day before, which had been Ethan's very first swimming experience, very unlucky.

Once on the antibiotics however Ethan was soon back to his cheeky monster self, darting around the garden with his sister on his heals. Until the dreaded blistery angry red spots began appearing all over Ethan's body I'd been thinking we would finally get a half decent's night sleep...but no, the 'Chicken Pots' had other plans; 'no sleep for you mummy no no no, your job is pacing up and down the living room with a crying feverish boy until your arms go dead and your back gives way', and the 'Chicken Pots' were right too, that's just what I did, as I'm sure millions of mother's before me have done.

The lonely task of dragging yourself away from your lovely warm bed in the dark of night to soothe the crying child, as the husband snores softly on unaware of the upset elsewhere in the house. In the light of day I'm not resentful at all of my husband's ability to sleep through the chaos of wakeful children and stressed out mummy in the middle of the night, it's a good job he can really so that he's rested for his work throughtout the day. But in the midst of the morbid heart aching night's of soothing poorly babies all I feel like doing is waking the bugger up and telling him to take the pressure off.

It requires great will power not to wake the husband and to deal with the night time chaos on my own, especially over the last few weeks. But the feeling at the end of it all is worth it. Rewarding. You don't get a medal for doing this job, god you don't even get a pat on the back, you're never employee of the month, you don't get a pay rise, well you don't get paid! But what you do get is complete dependency  from your children, hmm wait there, I suppose I was meant to say something good there! But really and truly it is a good thing. To know that your baby wants you and only you, and only the warmth of you as you hold them in your arms can soothe them back to peace, and make them smile, that's the biggest ego boost in all the world. To be loved so unconditionally and completely, that's enough payment for me...

The 'Chicken Pots' Children

But from time to time even the toughest and most enduring mum needs some kip in order to keep going! And I'm pleased to tell you all that in the last 24 hours I got 11 hours sleep (in 2 doses) and it feels like christmas! Hence me finally having the energy to begin my blog. I think sleep deprivation is possibly the worst part of having babies. Out of all of the challenges faced by new parents, surely lack of sleep tops them all, and makes all of the other challenges 10 times harder. It is afterall used as a method of torture by the japanese. Sufferer's experience hallucinations, paranoi, disorientation...all fun symptoms to be having whilst caring for small children, keeping a nice tidy home and ensuring the husband's happy with his lot!

Ah blessed sleep, and on that note, I'm off to bed. Night all...

An Introduction...

Well I've been saying for a while now to anyone who may be interested of my desire to begin writing a blog, so here I am, finally I have got round to opening an account, and this will be my first post. Ooh how exciting..and yes I feel quite nervous. This blog that I'll be keeping is almost like an emotional outlet I suppose for the day to day 'trials and tribulations' that exist as part of being a stay at home mum. If I can be of any kind of comfort to other mums out there who are in the same situation, and who realise the brilliance and magnificance of being a parent, but who at the same time feel like tearing their hair out on an hourly basis as the children slowly break down their defences and self control throughout the day, then this will more than satisfy the purpose of this blog!