Muddling up my words

With a dose of ditziness and tiredness I often get words muddled. Here's some recent crackers:

• Calling the kindle I'd bought my mum for her birthday a kimble (I think that's a better name!)
• Referring to hovercraft parenting - instead of helicopter parenting
• Yesterday I tried to describe a small bag I need for my bicycle to the man in the v.professional bicycle shop. He had to ask many questions just to get the right type of bag, must of thought I was a little mad.  

I think son 2 has inherited this characteristic (maybe its not down to sleep deprivation and too many balls to juggle) as he often gets his words muddled. Today he wanted to be caper-sized in the swimming pool rather than capsized. Poor child, his older brother often takes the p**s. What words do you get mixed up?

New nursery

Back to work yesterday after a week off with the kids. I had to 'settle' son 3 at his new nursery over the week which was strange and as with the other 2 boys felt slightly wrong leaving him. The staff must have thought I was the stupidest mummy as I didn't leave enough nappies etc, right clothes etc. Its just getting back in the habit of being organised, I've been so used to having a nanny who was often left with no food, not enough clean nappies (I use re-usable nappies), moody kids etc that I am not used to being super organised. Help, how do I become super mum?? On another note, my 2 older boys are driving me mad, one is moody and naughty (he kicked one of his shoes off into a lake at Chiswick House my friend nearly split herself in half on a fence rescuing it) and the other is going through the biggest growth spurt with huge amounts of growth hormones making him have toddler tantrums (he's nearly 7!). I also realised I'm not cured of my ditiziness, my friend in Singapore who recently had her 3 child got sent a lovely card from me without anything written inside. Well I'm sure the mystery kept her guessing for days.   

Silent Sunday

Soft Play Centres

With the summer holidays still looming ahead I took the boys to a different soft playcentre that I got a deal through Groupon for a chain called Gamboda and they have one in Chelsea. Let me give you some history on my relationship with soft play centres: I'm not keen, its like an ex-boyfriend you forget the bad bits; think its not too bad; serves a purpose; but then you meet up and hate them. We have 2 soft playcentres that are nearish to us. The first one is dirty, expensive and the staff deserve a slap around the face with a wet fish (I have complained about a incident where they charged for son 3 when he was 6 months old, I got a voucher but couldn't bear to go back). The second is not so bad, its in North London and it has off peak prices which are useful for son 2 and son 1 to take but weirdly there are a lot of over-protective parents so there are more adults than children in the play structure (is that what's its called?) than children with their arms stretched out ready to catch their little darlings if they fall. Also, why are they so expensive in London I went to visit my lovely friend in Norfolk and it was only £2.95 rather than £9.75 - why the difference? So, yesterday off we went to Chelsea Harbour and spent 5 minutes getting in as we had to register and take photos of everyone (including me) which was very 'big brother'. Inside it was clean, still desperately noisy but that's inevitable in the school holidays (but one women I think a nanny had managed to fall asleep). They also had bumper cars and a great bit for under 2s which son 3 loved but after a few hours and a few tantrums later from each child, sometimes at the same time I decided to leave. Son 3 really didn't want to go and had big struggle putting his shoes on so I was quite flustered. But I couldn't get out, I had to give them our registration card to log us out and I couldn't find it. I actually said to the assistant "I just want to get out, let me out of here, why do I need a card to get out of here, let me out". That reaction made me realise I don't like soft play centres, today we're going to a nice quiet playground.

Cycling

You may have noticed that there's not been many posts lately is because I've been busy training for a sprinte triathalon ( a mini triathalon). This has involved cycling a lot on the mean streets of London. This has been an eye-opener, I always thought it was cars that were the danger but its actually other cyclists. They are so competitive...Everyone overtakes me and I'm sure I'm not that slow, but it seems that cycling to work I'm actually in a pretend competition. I started blaming my bike, maybe if I get a road bike that might help as I have a mountain bike (when I'm going near a mountain I don't know) but apparently I'm just slow. Last week I cycled all the way to work through the beautiful parks of London but I got lost trying to get to St James's Park. In particular on the way back, I really got lost and wondered why through Piccadilly there were no other cyclists. Because they all know how to cycle back through parks! Whoops. I also found the cycle home exhausting, I nearly caught hold of a passing car to get a ride home. So I will keep you posted on how I do in 2 weeks in the sprinte triathalon (my goal is to finish).  

The Gallery - Water

As part of The Gallery  here is my photo to represent Water. This was taken recently on our holiday to Greece and this photo reminds me of how my boys enjoyed jumping, splashing, laughing, and diving in the swimming pool. This is son 2 who has always been a water baby, he loves swimming under the water (not so good on the top even after tons of lessons).  I love how the water distorts the image and makes him look slightly like a ghost.  Go to the Gallery and check out all the other entries...

The Riots

This post may not be the most ‘ up beat’ post I have written but I’m angry at what is happening across England with the rioting that has spread. I live Ealing which is one of the areas that had a bunch of ignorant kids burning cars and looting shops under the guise of ‘rioting’ for a protest. Our house is about half a mile from Ealing Broadway and I know some of the shop owners whose shops were looted. I can’t believe that the Police couldn’t contain these kids from wrecking the centre of Ealing, normally on a Friday night there are lots of Police around. Last week I had to stop 2 kids from stealing bikes from outside the main shopping area (I’ve had my type stolen from my bike in the same spot). I’m not surprised that it happened as I do believe that some people do not have the social morals to understand that destroying people’s livelihoods and homes is wrong and cruel. There’s been many questions asked about motives and Hello its Gemma had an interesting post. I believe that’s its not a broken society but a tiny minority who are greedy and don’t want to work to buy the goods that they could loot instead. I can say this as I used to work with long term unemployed for many years running projects to help them get back into work. There were a few (and most long term unemployed do want to work but are caught in the benefits trap) that fundamentally didn’t want to work unless they were paid extremely well. I do believe the Metropolitan Police could have planned Monday night better. I work near Scotland Yard so I frequently see the Riot Police around when they're preparing for protects etc so I want surprised they couldn't get them to Ealing and other parts of London quicker. They'd had riots on Saturday night in Tottenham and then when it spread on Sunday night, so they could have planned better for Monday night.  On a ligher note, my mum who was worried about me on the mean streets on London told me to get a baseball bat to protect myself. Ok, Mum don't think it will fit into my bag and the kids would want to play with it.

My six year old's girlfriend

It's official son 1 has a girlfriend, he had playdate with her on Friday. It all started a few weeks before the end of term, I was sorting out his school book bag and saw a lovely picture which I was just about to put it on the fridge when he told me it was from Rachel at school. I turned it over and it was a love letter (ah so sweet). She's a lovely little blonde thing whose not one of the popular girls in his year so I thought I would boost her future self-esteem as I'm not boosting but my son is gorgeous! That night, we had a chat about Rachel and I suggested that he asked her to be his girlfriend. He thought this was a good idea but then I asked what he was going to do about the 'girl next door' who has always been his 'girlfriend'. He then pondered this in that way that boys / men do. The next evening I asked if he'd spoken to Rachel, he said yes and that she had responded with the message that she knew he would eventually be his girlfriend. I like her confidence, maybe she didn't need my help with her self-esteem. Her mum then organised a playdate for them, don't worry its all v.innocence. Do you think he'll appreciate my suggestions for girlfriends when he's older???

The Gallery: Birth

I could go on about the birth of my 3 sons for the Gallery. Instead I'll focus on the 'vain' part of birth for me, that is the first photo of me with my newborn, spanking brand new baby! With son 1, I looked probably the worse I've ever looked - I look like I'd been on a bender for 4 days with no sleep. Minus the alcohol, that's how it felt - induced Monday night, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, finally born early Friday morning by emergency caesaran with massive blood loss. My mum took this photo and then proceeded to show it ever person she came into contact with for about a year, including an ex-boyfriend. Great!

Son 1

Son 2

After son 1, I was not going to make the same mistake. As I had an elective caesaran I made sure I'd done my hair and make-up that morning, the drugs also seemed to make me glow (literally) so this is my favourite photo of my birth. I didn't look this great 24 hours later though, after son 2 would not sleep at night (went on for a month).

Son 3

With son 3, it was nearly 2 years ago and I felt like this 3rd pregnancy had aged me a lot. I was very chilled out with my natural caesaran (another post to explain this) after the birth but I did look on the large size so not too pleased with this photo. You might also notice relief as my elective caesaran was delayed by a day due to other emergency caesarans (one was my sister-in-laws best friend who nearly died so put it all into perspective). At the time I was really upset and very anxious as I'd had the date booked for 10 weeks but after hubbie fainted in the operating theatre the hysterical laughing had relaxed me a lot. So how was your birth photo? 

Camp Bestival

 We have just returned from Camp Bestival where we had a marvellous time. Early in the year hubbie and I were discussing (as we do every year but never sort it out) that it would be great if we could go to a music festival preferably without the kids. We were looking at the Giles Peterson Worldwide Festival on a beach in the South of France (I know it looked amazing). After I got very excited especially as it was so cheap I then couldn’t find flights that would fit in with our childcare. I then looked up Camp Bestival which looked good as it was family friendly so wouldn’t be full of drunk 19 year olds (just middle aged drunk parents). Got our 4 man tent sorted, dropped off kids for a split weekend with grandparents and drove down to Dorset on Friday morning. When we turned up, we walked around all the fields trying to find a small patch of grass to pitch our tent, we started noticing that everyone had children with them, we were a minority being without our kids. After walking around the festival we figured out why, basically the whole festival is designed for families with 2 areas just for children (arts / crafts, circus skills, dressing up, discos and the list goes on). We had 2 options, get annoyed with ourselves for leaving the kids behind or embrace the freedom. Guess which option we took, so we sat in the fields (sometimes danced) and drank red wine / cider / cocktails and we ate loads of different exotic food. The only issue was that as I'm slightly ditzy (wow really I hear you say!) so acres and acres of tents I could never find ours fortunately I didn't try and get into some strangers tent. My highlights were: 

Blondie

• Labyrinth – Getting down with the teenagers by jumping up and down to this talented singer who was brilliant.
• Blondie – Debbie Harry although was a bit un-energetic at first (I think she’s 62) got rocking and I loved hearing all their old songs with lots of thirty something parents rocking along and was a really great atmosphere.
• Newton Faulkner – This dreadlocked white guy could really get the crowd going, he did a couple of covers including teardrop by Massive Attack and was so amazing on the guitar.
• Ed Sheeran – He’s only 18 but has bundles of confidence. For his late afternoon performance the big top was packed out and the surrounding field, very popular performer and he was great as well. Really talented singer / songwriter and all the 15 year old girls loved him, there must be something about him that gets the young girls going. See his cool new video that is using sign language for the lyrics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXvzzTICvJs&feature=relmfu

I would really recommend Camp Bestival, it was really well organised and a lot of thought had gone into the line-up and the timings to cater for the audience. I loved it but next year we are taking the kids.