Better than a kick in the knickers with a winklepicker

Ugh. Another weird weekend. Firstly, Alex has been sleeping really, really badly for about a week now. Teething issues I think, but very, very tiring and frustrating. Me & Hubs have had very little time or energy for ourselves or each other. Itching for some time away from Mummying, I made last-minute plans to go shopping/lunching at Lakeside with violetcreme on Saturday. Both children also have colds and were knackered on Friday, so we had pizza, gave the kids an early night and were done with the washing up etc pretty early and looking forward to a chilled couple of hours together on Friday night. Watch QI, maybe an episode of The Wire, maybe even a film.

The power went out at ten to nine, just as we were waiting for QI to start. The day nursery over the road has one of those burglar alarms that automatically goes off when the power goes out, and does not, as we discovered, switch itself off after any less than about an hour and a half... and then erratically continues to go off while the power remains out. Nobody came to switch it off themselves, because nobody was there. I really don't see what the point of something that automatically goes off so often and doesn't stop is - surely an alarm relies on the goodwill of your neighbours - if all it does is go off for no good reason and piss them off, if you are ever broken into, they'll just roll their eyes & curse the alarm again instead of checking it out or calling the rozzers. It is the alarm that cries Wolf.

The power cut, and the resulting loud, whining, persistent alarm continued until about 6 in the morning. We did not get much sleep. By the time I got to Lakeside, I was starting to see everything through a furze of surreality. Tiredness aside, Lakeside was a blast. Miss C made me laugh by calling escalators 'The Moving Stairs'. We loudly discussed Twitter, writing and TV in Starbucks, much to the obvious annoyance of a man in a nearby table who was reading a paper. It's a cafe, not a library, dickwad, we'll talk if we want to! We decided that all Telly People live together in one big house, with a special annexe flat for the Jewish ones. Maureen Lipmann cooks the tea, apparently. Maybe Newspaper Man was just glaring because he didn't understand irony. I did the Mum Thing of going out to get stuff for me and ending up with lots of presents for the kids. Alas, The Disney Store was to much of a temptation. Vi now owns a Little Mermaid Dollie, Alex a Winnie The Pooh Teddy.

Luckily, Mum had also made last-minute plans to come down this weekend, and provided us with childcare help and, possibly even more importantly, an excuse to go and get a Chinese instead of cooking.

I spent all last night paranoid that our power was going to go again. This was largely because, from 6am on Saturday morning until an unspecified time during last night, our power was supplied via an emergency generator. It was a massive thing - as big as a lorry, parked just outside the substation, which isn't far from our house. We could constantly hear the low hum of it as it churned out electricity. Now, I was really impressed about this - when I was little, if you had a power cut then the power stayed off til the problem was fixed, be that hours, days or longer. I hadn't expected the power suppliers to go to the trouble of bringing us an emergency generator for 24 hours. Its steady hum, combined with the memory of a miserable Friday night, however, still made me feel really vulnerable. We rely on electricity for so much - we have no gas oven or hob, and even our boiler won't work without electricity. I don't like being reminded of how much my comfort & that of my family changes is affected by the loss of one utility.

Everything's back to normal again now, except that I'm still brooding over my addiction to electricity. Well, that and my plans to make leaving wailing burglar alarms overnight a criminal offense.

Haven't posted here in a while - been mega mega uber busy - have had time to read stuff OL and do little comments & Tweets but little else.

The kids seem to have finally stopped passing that bloody cold to one another, although Alex still has a bit of a cough that keeps waking him up at night = bad sleep for all of us.

Bit manic with the run-up to Christmas - did the dry-run of baking for my extended family at the weekend - Christmas biscuits and the Nigella Chocolate & Pistachio fudge recipe that ladybracknell very kindly put on her LJ. Thought the biscuits were a bit rubbish at first, but now they're iced they're super. The fudge is amazing.

Christmassy things have continued a-go-go this week with us all going to Bluewater yesterday to do some last bits of shopping & take Vi to see Father Christmas in his Grotto. Unfortunately, Vi was just frightened of him. She also wanted to go on several fairground rides (a kiddies railway, a big wheel and the dodgems) which she decided half way through every time she didn't like any more. Oh well. And then there was the Toddler Group Chrimbo party today, which was lovely. Vi managed about 2 minutes of parachute play and then gave up on any semblance of organised fun and scampered off to chase her friend Henry (also disinclined to join in with the main events) round on a trike. Party food lunch for both of us. God, kids' party food is tasty. Why can't we always live off buffets of cocktail sausages, skips and jammie dodgers, eh? Answer me that, if you're so smart.

Flipping knackered at the moment - Alex has snuck back to 2 night feeds now - managed to technically make it just one by waking him for a feed at 10.30 last night, but I still didn't get to sleep til midnight-ish, then had to get up to feed him again at 2.20, got back to sleep at 3-ish then had to take both kids at ten to 7. This is after about 5 hours broken sleep the night before, as well. And it doesn't really stop in the day now with the 2 of them - once Vi's napping and the washing up's done, Alex is awake again for another feed - so no opportunity to nap. Considering this week's only 4 days, it's going on forever! All writing has ceased at present - it's taken me about twice as long as it usually does just to write this!

Reposting the photo meme - need more suggestions to make it worth breaking out the camera!

List up to three (3) things you would like me to take pictures of. Once I've gathered up all the requests, I'll make a post with the pictures I managed to take.

We're currently waking about once every 2 hours with Alex - extra annoyingly, it's not always for food - this kid poos more often than you'd believe, and sometimes wees so much that it escapes his nappy even after two or three hours. If he wakes up dirty or wet he often won't want much milk and so wakes up hungry a couple of hours later again... I'm sure if we didn't keep having all the poo calamities he'd be waking after closer to four hours. Anyway, the long & the short of it is that Hubs & I are both very tired and irritable. Plus I've had a touch of Da Baby Bloos - nowhere near as bad as it was with Vi, but still enough to make me feel even less like my usual self. We still have Nana Help at the moment but after the weekend it'll just be the four of us for a bit, and we'll have to amuse Vi ourselves as well as catering for Captain Poopy. Dreading Hubs going back to work, although that's not for another fortnight yet.

I do keep managing to take small consolations during these Zombie Weeks, though. Firstly, night feeds aren't for *too* long - we should be able to get Alex into a less exhausting 4-hour routine if not this week then hopefully by the time Hubs is back at work, and Vi was giving us around 6 hours straight at night by 6 weeks, I seem to remember. And after that's over we'll never have to do the Newborn Night Feeds crap ever again.

Another consolation is that I am now done with pregnancy for good. I may not be allowed to sleep for more than 2 hours at a time, but at least I can lie on my front again for the first time in about half a year. I'd missed that - I love sleeping on my front.

Also, I'm back to my old dress size! I don't feel beyond heavy whenever I walk any more, and have been out for a few walks by myself while the kids have been napping over the last few days, enjoying my new weight and the re-emergence of my waist. Plus I bought some nice Normal Person Size clothes today - Yellow Top, combats (on sale - woo!) plus 2 New Look TShirts that I can't find on their website, but they're pretty and probably too young for me but shit to it!

Vi had her first train ride today! She bloody loved it! We had another Playgroup Excursion to this park not far from Dover - it had been rescheduled from a fortnight ago when it had been raining, which was great because it's been a glorious day today. Vi had loads of fun, played with her little friend Henry (chased him around a lot shouting 'Henry, come back!'), kicked balls, climbed on climbing frames, covered me in chocolate icecream while remaining immaculate herself somehow - the lot.

One minor point, I'll have to create a virtual memo to myself that while my pride in many of my friends writing and publishing both online and in paper Gay Erotica is a fun addition to many discussions about literature, mentioning it to a group of mums from a Church Playgroup in the presence of their tots might not be a great idea. There was Tumbleweed Moment, and the conversation moved on. Hopefully they'll forget about that one or attribute the faux-pas to somebody else.

Great toddler conversation from today:

Little Boy to Vi: You're a Bashy-Bashy!
Vi: Not Bashy-Bashy; Vi-Vi. I'm a little girl.
Little Boy: I'm a boy. I've got a winkie!
Vi: I've got a winkie!

Also, while colouring in and waiting for her dinner, Vi picked up the calculator, held it to her ear as t'were a mobile phone and said:

Hello, Nana. (*pause*) Playing. I'm drawing Igglepiggle. (*pause*) Mummy's pretty, Daddy's pretty, Vi-Vi's pretty. (*pause*) OK. Bye-bye.

That kid. Cuter than a kitten full of baby rabbits.

OK, now why the Hell has Vi suddenly decided that she hates her bed? At what was supposed to be nap time today I came upstairs to check on her and found her lying, half asleep, on the floor next to her book box. All attempts to get her back into bed were met with horrified screams. I thought it might just be that she didn't want to nap today, but now that it's bedtime she keeps crying and leaping out as if it's a hot potato. All that's different is that I've changed the sheets, which I do every week.

*Sigh* It's been a long day.

Escape to London today was well worth
a, the guilt of leaving the house just as Vi, who had been doing really well all morning, puked up her breakfast
b, possibly the worst Coach journey ever, on a completely packed coach. Picked a sleepy lady to sit next to, which was good, but ended up sitting the other side of the aisle to two massive charvers who spent 2 hours loudly and swearily sort-of chatting each other up as the girl (overweight and dressed head to toe in skintight white clothes so that she looked like the Michelin Man) simultaneously chatted with various people on her mobile - including her boyfriend so that ChavvyMan (who got on board with a can of Special Brew... if you're not pissed by 11am you're obviously not trying hard enough... and twice 'went to the toilet' for 5 minutes, during which time the whole coach mysteriously smelled of fag ash) ended up having a loud, sweary argument with Phone Boyfriend that 'they were only sitting next to each other on the fucking bus, for fuck's sake'. Actually, I was quite glad of Chavvygirl as she stopped Chavvyman from trying to talk to anyone else - apart from taking a few moments to ask the foreign students behind him some random questions and then take the piss out of them for not being able to understand his weird, slurred ramblings while Chavvygirl laughed her arse off. Having sworn that there was nothing going on they then kissed as the coach pulled up and exchanged numbers, Chavvyman leaving her with the immortally romantic line 'Just put me down as "Paul Coach". Now I've got to get off. I've got to get one of them... fucking... things...' He pushed me in the back several times as we were getting off. He was a CHARMER.
c, braving Victoria's alfresco ticket 'office' (aka the worst ticket booth in the world) for five minutes, then discovering that the Viccy line was closed so what should have been a quick hop to St Pauls ended up involving three different tube lines. It was quite fun playing 'how long before somebody offers me a seat', though - and impressively I was offered a seat on every tube I got on on the way there. None on the way back, mind.

But as I say, it was all worth it. I had a lovely escape with Miss C, la Nunn and 'Brickwork' Kahn, who we only invited to look more multicultural but impressively ate with a knife and fork and didn't even try to blow us up once. She did have a bit of a headache since we were eating in the shadow of St Paul's and everybody knows that Cathedrals are built out of Muslim Kryptonite. Jokes were made. Fun was poked. Plans were planned. Some children stared at La Nunn in a Village of the Damned sort of a way. Two old people pressed their noses against the door of the restaurant like tramps in a silent movie until our mockery of them caused them to move on. We saw two brides and compared their tits. I got terribly hot, but that might have been a Preggo thing.

Vi's illness these last few days seems to have turned me into my mother. I fretted and phoned a lot, but was happy to see that she was in a far more cheerful mood by the time I got back. Fingers crossed for her being more back to normal tomorrow.

Right - washing up and laundry to do! Saturday nights are a blast!

Ugh. Was tired and stressed by the time I went to bed anyway last night. The Parade Of Twats at God-Knows-What -Time in the night really didn't help - it was like an unending river of honking, braying, bawling, drunken fucks. Went on for about half an hour, and I slept very oddly after that. Then Violet was sick, at about 6.30 in the morning, so I spent a lot of the early morning cleaning that up. Decided to take her to playgroup for a bit to stop her just moping in front of the telly, but that was, of course, when whatever's upset her tummy went from being vacated from the front end to coming out of the back. Spent the majority of playgroup changing her nappy. She then passed out in the pushchair. She's in bed now, hopefully she'll have a nice, long doze and wake up feeling better. Nothing else we need to do today, thankfully, and I've bought a new desk fan in the hope of the white noise drowning out any more 2am crocodiles of fuckwits.

Oh, and we got rained on, too.

Not a great day, so far.

Due to lots of little jobs that needed to be done last night, plus various interruptions, we only managed to watch Monday's Stewart Lee last night and didn't get round to Charlie Brooker's new show. However, this clip gives me the feeling that it's going to be well worth catching up on.



I'm starting to wonder whether young Charlton might actually be the Second Coming. He's always right. ALWAYS!

Vi *still* not her old self, 24 hours after getting home. Only wants to eat dry, plain carbs (dry Rice Krispies for brekkie, a plain toasted pitta for lunch) and still very reluctant to drink anything, which is the main worry for me. She *has* had a couple of good drinks today, but still much less than she usually drinks and still goes through long phases of bursting into tears if I even offer her her cup. She's much sleepier than usual, but I don't know whether it's that she's sleepy so she won't eat or drink properly, or that her starving/dehydrating herself is making her drowzy. Poot.

Stressed. Always get very stressed out when Vi's ill, and worrying that this is going to start happening every time we go away. Can't concentrate to write, which is annoying, and I don't want to take her out this afternoon if she's poorly.

Any attempts to cheer poor FretfulMother!Scriblet would be much 'preciated. So far the only thing that's distracted me suitably today has been another of Peter Sarah-fanny-wedge's Twitter Games (today: Tired Actors. Didn't get retweeted, but I was still pleased with my offers of Kevin Achin', Gerard Deparduvet, Ovaltine Newton John and Matt LeBlanket.)

ADDENDUM - She has just wandered in from the front room, grabbed her cup and taken it back in with her. Possible good sign.

Haven't been posting or replying much recently... not actually due to Twitter this time (although that's still great fun... I think The Spine might be a Witch. That, or he's been in the Industry so long that he knows exactly what kinds of films and performances - and what level of lobbying - will guarantee an Oscar win. Either's equally likely) but due to Prince of Persia. I finally spent the Amazon Vouchers I got for my birthday the other day on the game, even though warrior Within put me off the franchise so soon after I'd fallen head over heels in love with Sands Of Time. Needless to say, I'm really enjoying it. We have a new 'Prince' who, while American accented (I still miss the English accented voice from SoT) is at least back to the cheery, cheeky, wisecracking kid who we lost in WW. Unfortunately, this new guy isn't as agile in battle as the old Prince was (that or I'm playing it wrong, which is quite likely) but you don't actually fight that much. There's lots of running, jumping, climbing and whatnot, which is the stuff that I love. And he has a little Speshul Sparkly UberSue who is bound to die at the end and make him hold her limp body in the rain and shout 'NOOOOO!!!!' - Anyway. I'm having fun. It's very pretty and easy enough for a spoid like me to play.

Have watched Lost S5Ep6 now... thoughts on that later once we're back from Playgym.

Looked at our first Nursery School yesterday - really, really nice, but quite a walk... have to bear in mind that I'll be taking her there, then coming home, then walking there again to bring her home a couple of hours later. Considering I'll have a 2 month old by September, I don't want to be hiking too much.

Anyone else with little kids know the Hairy Maclairey books? Vi loves them! they're her new favourite thing! If I have to read about him chasing all the cats again I might go mad.