If you have to cram
your house with a pram
that is no longer needed then why
not just sell it for free, and make yourself a fee
use Totalbaby, look, why not just see!

Well, its my first poem for years…..probably since school.

I am at the mushing-up-a-small-amount-of-food stage, and it occurs to me, as it has in the past, that it would be handy if there were a tiny potato masher that fits in a cup to mash this pear up.   Rather that go down the route of patenting and designing and all that faff, I remember that I saw promoted recently a thingy called a Wean Machine.   So I just ordered one.   Will update on how it goes when it arrives but already I feel this will revolutionalise my life for the next month, til I start the real steamy-windows-and-food-processing-obsessive-buying-of-organic-food stage of weaning. Watch this space.

Listening to right now: the telly in the background.  Loose Women is on.  I hate the Malteaser ad. That woman is horrible.

I opened up my laptop today to do a bit of blogging. I haven’t done any for a while and wanted to take the opportunity whilst the baby napped. Instead I found myself looking at Lego online. I love Lego. I wish I had a room of my own I. I would sit there all day and make Lego. I do have a room of my own tho (the kitchen) I spend my time making meatballs and fish pizzas and planning meals. Its not so much fun.

Its been a bit like the end of January here, all the good intentions have fallen by the wayside and everyone is bogged down with the reality of life. Happily, after a period of child sickness which manifested itself as bad tempers, high temperatures and back to back Peppa Pig, things seem to be on the up again in our household. Needless to say I have fallen off the Builder Tea wagon and have been drinking it in bucket loads, I have ‘Goal Not Reached’ messages when I switched on the Wii Personal Trainer today….the disapproval of a games console is something I can live with I think, night after night of broken sleep due to hungry babies and sick children is not so easy to shoulder – tea is the answer!

Today was the first day I did the Personal Trainer work out with the whole family at home. It turned into a bit of a team event, with dad and baby watching, dad holding baby so baby didn’t cry so much, and the other 2 children joining in, which you can imagine was hardly stressful at all! DS2 twanged the rubber band thing whilst I was doing bicep curls. I got a bit tangled in the nunchuk cable, but today did not include the inline skating, which is tough, so on the whole, day 2 of the programme not so bad. I did ache a bit yesterday tho.

What I’m listening to right now: baby crying thru the strains of Love and Peace or else – U2

I’ve just done my first workout using the EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer (Wii) ‘game’. I’ve only had the thing 2 months! I planned to make September the month I started to attempt to get back into shape…. so here we are in Oct.. ahem. :*-)

I didn’t realise I was so unfit! I did the Gentle Workout programme and now I am glowing. It was grand, bit of running, few squats, some boxing. Baby was stowed in the vibrating chair watching mum til he fell asleep. There was a bit of a tussle in the middle as baby was getting a bit agitated before he fell asleep and the stooooopid rubber band kept twanging off the handles mid bicep curl (nb: double knot the rubber band onto the handle!). My (female) trainer was getting quite upset with me telling me I needed to perfect my technique on that exercise and advising me to go back to the video demo for /that/ exercise. Little did she know I was sitting on the sofa muttering as I retied the rubber band for the umpteenth time…… But I have got through it, day 1 of a 30 day programme. We’ll see how I am doing in a weeks’ time eh!

I have also started pilates – only 1 class so far and it was very pleasurable and gentle, I am led to believe this is just to get you hooked, get you into the habit of getting out of the house once a week. Then it gets tough and you wake up with sore bits… still if it helps a weak back (entirely put down to having had 3 children!) then I shall continue on with my Table Top position!

Currently, I am listening to: the washing machine on ’spin’, the baby babbling

So its the last day of the school hols, dedicated to clearing stuff out, adding name tapes to clothes, making sure everything is clean and mended and ready for the big day.  After being terrified of the loaming 8 week holiday, it has gone in a flash and really has been lovely – I can’t believe I am saying this. There have been moments I have wanted to run far, far away, but less of them than I thought there might be.  The answer turned out to be planning, lots of planning and researching activities we can do. It think w5 was a BIG highlight, although we have been there before, not whilst DS2 was this age (late 2’s) and it made the difference. I had a relaxing time for HOURS whilst they ran about, no fighting, no bickering – it really was stress free.  So I will miss the boys when they go back to school I think – incredibly!

Yup – I have 5 mintes of peace and quiet – lots of sleeping children but I better not speak too soon. Just to follow up on the last posts to say that potty training is not as straight forward and stress free as I might have led readers to believe in previous posts. We have had numerous accidents, some that almost seem deliberate and malicious, but we are getting there – thank God it is summer so I only have to carry spare shorts about, and its not too chilly on a wet bot.  Also dusted off for use with #2 my Portable Potty (Potette) again – I am constantly saying ‘do you need a wee wee’, ‘do you need the potty’ like some demented OCD fussy mum, but he just forgets, or denies that he needs the potty till its too late. I am spending my time frantically running between toilets, scrubbing floors and washing hands (thats the OCD bit), either before I feed the baby or just after I have cleaned up after Potty Boy or in between cooking a nutrious family meal with fresh ingredients. Then I am running the gauntlet thru the day trying to find stimulating things to do for the wee’uns before they drive me potty, or kill each other.  Counting down the days til the schools go back ( I have such respect for teachers since the school hols….) Still, we have done loads of great things even if at the end of the day I am a big sweaty heap.  The other day I decided to take the boys to McD’s – something we do annually, so they didnt get the excitement of it – til we left, then Big Brother came home and told Dad – ‘we were at Old MacDonalds’.

Number of times peed on today: 0! but my trousers have been soaking up puddles, so are wet at the bottom.  Also Potty Boy is at nursery and the day isnt over yet…

Listening to right now: Nothing, the sound of silence – aah

I never thought that this would happen for me but I think we have managed to potty train the 2 year old in a week! The first few days I was beginning to think that it wasn’t going to happen, and I have to admit I wasn’t very confident it was going to work. Shame on me for not beliving in my son. The problem I was having was when we put pants on him he would wet them, he was fine when he was wearing nothing, but this isnt very practical The turning point in this week was prompted by a very timely discussion on the Jeremy Vine BBC Radio 2 programme this week.  The discussion was about children who go to school who still are not potty trained (!!!!wtf). One man who rang into the show confirmed what I had been beginning to think, that children wearing nappies don’t realise they have peed because they dont feel wet, so they need to pee themselves in clothes a few times to realise they have wet themselves. There was a short diversion into this being a good reason for cloth nappies, as the child feels they are wet, but we wont go there right now. But basically, one of the messages coming through was once you start, don’t turn back.   But seriously tho, what are parents thinking keeping their children in nappies until school age??  Quite apart from the expense of buying the nappies, do they not realise their children are likely to get teased?

Anyway, the last time I potty trained one of my children, child#1, it went on for quite some time.I honestly thought this would be a repeat of that experience. I think the difference this time is that when we started training child #1 he had just turned 2, child #2 is nearly 3. I think the age difference helps. With child #1, as soon as he showed an interest in the potty I went into potty training overdrive.This time I chilled out a bit, and lo, after the initial interest, child #2 lost interest in the potty. Had I known this would happen with child#1 I would have saved myself hours of clearing up messes and changing clothes. Having other children about also helps, for child #1 it was children he went to nursery with, he got the general idea from them and I think there was an element of wanting to do it because they did it.With child#2 he had the advantage of having an older brother, plus he is lucky to have a close buddy his age who has already made the move.

So this time I picked a week with a little stressful situations as possible, starting with day 1 being a day at home then took it from there. Going to safe’ places (with toilets) not putting myself in the position where I was in a rush to be somewhere at a certain time, and bringing at least 4 changes of clothes (pants and shorts). The week has culminated with a day at nursery, and that was the real test, a full day away from home not wearing a nappy. I think its a success when he came home with only one accident, and that was because he didn’t ‘quite’ make it.

Another useful tip is its definitely better to do potty training in the summer, it’s so much easier to carry around 4 pairs of shorts and pants instead of 4 pairs of long trousers and pants, plus they don’t get so cold when they run around bottomless!

This vaguely reminds me of a funny little man with a table covered with strange little grumbling flump-like creatures who drove around in tanks exploding things *.
That’s not what I’m thinking of in this post. Yup its that time in every mothers’ life that you approach with a deep intake of breath and plenty of clean clothes. I am potty training my 2 year old. This, like many other things in the lives of our small ones seems to be an area of subtle competition between mums and their tots – if you have been there you may have met the mums who declare that their prodigy potty trained at 15 months and it only took a week, and you smile and declare that they are a total wonder, whilst inside you scowl and mutter. Well it took DS1 aaaaages. After a while I began to resign myself that my two year old probably would not be potty trained by the time he was thirteen, let alone three. But just as I was giving up, he asserted himself and got his act together, yeah hay! Still,I am still clenching my buttocks at the thought of training DS2….

* Michael Bentine’s Potty Time

Number of times I have been peed on today: Well, where do I start? Considering the title of this post….  two times by DS2 (in Teskimos) and only  once by DS3, just in the routine call of duty.

What I am listening to now: I’m too embarrassed to say here.:-*)