I did a Bad Thing!

I did a bad thing today!
I brought my child a toy when he didn't deserve one. We have an unwritten rule in our house, that we don't just randomly buy toys for the kids unless it's a birthday or a special reward for good behaviour and today I broke that rule.
However there was logic to my moment of madness...
Recently my sweet blue eyed baby boy has turned into, well, a devil child! He screams at me, throws himself on the floor, pushes his sister around and just generally does the opposite of everything I tell him to. It actually got to the point where I thought there was something wrong with him, I'd convinced myself that he must have brain damage because know one can have such an extreme change of personality in a month. (I have since been informed that it is not brain damage and he is just being 3).
After hearing about the 'terrible two's' and how he sailed through that year without a single tantrum or raised voice I did not see this coming.

Anyway back to the subject, so I now have a devil child and I wake up every morning with a feeling of dread, knowing that I have to face a whole day of abuse and raised voices.
I told Phil how I felt this morning and he suggested that I do something with him to keep him amused.
His teachers at pre school recently told me that he spends a lot of time doing puzzles so I thought I'd give it a go, problem was we don't have any puzzles at home. So this is why I had to buy him a toy when he didn't deserve one.
We went to the shops and got a puzzle and he's been playing with it all day. It's definatley been the best day we've had in over a month. There was still the odd tantrum inbetween puzzle making but nothing like it normally is. Result!
I'm still not proud of what I did but I've got to say it was the best £5 I've ever spent.

The Photo Gallery: Friends

Just yesterday my little boy told me that Lj (his sister) was his best friend in the whole world. He absoulutely adores her and is very protective over her. (Poor girl is never going to be allowed to have a boyfriend when she's older).
The picture quality isn't great as it was taken on the spur of the moment from my mobile but I thought it was to cute not to share.

To see more gallery pictures this week visit Tara's blog at Sticky Fingers.

http://stickyfingers1.blogspot.com/2010/02/photography-is-my-thing-my-love-my.html

The Photo Gallery: Landscape

This photo is of the Teignmouth/Shaldon bridge in Devon and I have to confess that as much as I would like to take credit for taking it I can't. It was infact taken by my partner. However I felt it was too good a photo to get lost in a folder with all the others.

This was taken off of our boat not long after we moved down here.
We treated ourselves to a new camera and Phil went out to play with it. Not bad for a first attempt.

Check out Tara's blog at Sticky Fingers to see other landscape photos of the week x

Boxes, boxes and more boxes!

Looks like we might be moving again!
We have only been in this house for 6 months but I have found the house of our dreams. A lovely cottage with exposed beams and open fireplaces and a spare bedroom for guests, fab!

Just the thought of having to pack all over again fills me with dread but luckily we still haven't unpacked half our stuff from the last move so this time it should be easier, (We'll see about that). Also this house is only just down the road instead of 200 or so miles away.
The kids, no doubt, will be about as much help as they were last time, (unpacking the boxes as I was packing them) and screaming at me if I try to pack any of their toys. Oh joy!

Last time we moved they looked like this...



and now they look like this...



They change so quickly, blink and you miss it.

I'm going to have packing a house down to a fine art by the time we settle somewhere.
Let the packing begin.

...and then there was Bob!

We seem to have a new edition to our family.
His name is Bob and he's a hedgehog! (One of the stuffed and cuddly kind)
Bob came into our lives while I was out shopping with Lj.
I'd just like to point out at this point that Lj hates shopping with a passion. Infact she hates it so much that the minute we get into a shop she screams at the top of her voice and won't stop until we leave.

So on this particular day we are in a charity shop, Lj screaming while i'm trying desperately to look for a frame for a picture.
Next thing I know the volunteer came up to Lj and gave her this fluffy hedgehog (Bob) and ask her to look after it for him. The screaming stop instantly. Hooray now I could look in peace.
So I found my frame, went to the till and paid the man but it then came to the moment where we had to give Bob back.
I tried to get him off of her but she wasn't having any off it. The volunteer, sensing the impending meltdown, said she could keep it. Result!
That was by far the easiest shopping trip i've ever had with Lj in tow.

The problem I'm now faced with however is getting Bob into the washing machine.
Lj never lets him go (hence the picture above).

It's very obvious looking at Bob's matted fur and slighlty funky smell, that Bob had formally been loved by another sticky fingered little one and is really in dire need of a good scrub down.

The thing I don't get though is that since Lj was born we seem to have accumilated a number of furry, fluffy & cuddly soft toys and she has never shown an interest in any of them. Even with me putting an adorable (clean) elephant in her cot every night, hasn't resulted in her growing any kind of attatchment to it. Backed up by the fact that I come in every morning to find it on the floor on the other side of the room, where she has clearly thrown it out of her cot in disgust.
And yet here we are with Bob, the manky hedgehog that the man in the charity shop had to give away for free because no one wanted to buy him.

I fear that I'm going to be spending a lot more time with Bob in the coming months.

Face of an Angel

Whenever I start moaning about my son everyone always looks at me like I'm mad and the reply I get from them is always the same, 'rrr but he has the face of an angel'.
He may well have the face of an angel but not the mentality of one.




He has really pushed me to my limits this week. I am so glad that half term is over.
He only goes to preschool two days a week but it's part of what he does.

The problem is that he is fanatical about routine, if anything is different in his weekly plans, he just can't cope.
The week started okay and progressively got worse.
All i've found myself doing all week is repeating the same phrases again and again and again, 'Don't touch that, put that back, get down from there'
He has an obssesion with pressing buttons whether there on the CD player, plug socket, light switch or microwave.

The final straw came today when I came downstairs this morning, opened my fridge and found the entire contents of it frozen! The little monkey had turned the dial right down without me noticing. Grrr kids.

Photo by Robert Fornal

It's not like we haven't been out and about this week, infact we've been out and done something every single day. He just generally can't cope without his routine.
I hoping it's just a three year old thing and will grow out of it eventually.

Mystery Slug

photo by Louise Joly

I think I am living with a slug!
That can be the only explanation for the slimy snot trails I keep finding everywhere.
Of course it's nothing to do with my 1 year old that keeps pulling herself up onto things face first with her nice runny nose.

As a family, we seem to have got every bug going this winter. Constant runny noses, persistant coughs and sore throats, you name it we've had it.
Phil and I were hardly ever ill before the babies came along and now we seem to go through medicines and tissues like there going out of fashion.

Photo by vanherdehaage

People keep telling me that it's good they are getting all the bugs now, while they're still little, less time off school when they're older.
So I suppose it's a good thing, however I do wish they didn't feel the need to share all of the bugs with us.