Moving house - aged 2 3/4

Apropos of nothing, while on the loo (her, not me), about ten  minutes ago (after bedtime, procrastinating):

L:  Mummy, in my new house there will be a bed for Molly.

(Note: Statement of fact, not a question. Molly is 4 1/2 and role model, best friend, potty training inspiration and god in L's eyes.  Quite how Molly sees L is less clear).

L:  And Ellie can sleep in the tent.

(Ellie is Molly's younger sister.  Actually closer in age to L than Molly is, but clearly a lower class of being.  The tent, for the avoidance of doubt, is actually a travel cot.  Even L isn't planning on putting Ellie in the garden).

Me: Yes lovely girl. Of course there'll be a bed for Molly and Ellie at our new house.

L:  Mummy, are we going in the car to our new house?

(Note: New house as yet to be found, much less bought.  Logistics of moving not something that has yet crossed my mind).

Me:  Well, we might go in the car, but we might go on a plane.

(New house in Scotland, so that's not as ridiculous as it sounds, at least for moving children, if not stuff)

L:  Yes! A plane! And I'm going to take my plane, and Mummy Sheep and Dingle Sheep and Other One Sheep (yes, that really is his name) and Chick.  Because they're my favourites.  And my white blanket.

Me:  Ok. You can take all of them.

L:  And somebody nice is going to live in this house.

Me: I hope so.

L: And Daddy is going to stay here.

Me:  Well, actually I think Daddy's going to come with us.  Is that ok?  Do you think Daddy should stay here or come with us and live in the new house?

L: (Thinks).  He can come with us, ok, Mummy?

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Aside from the comedy potential of leaving B here for purchasers to discover when they move in, and I think her logic was that it would be nice for them to have him rather than that she didn't want him, I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to post this conversation.

But I did. And I think it's because somehow it made me feel sad.  Sad that we're leaving this house (eventually) and sad that she sort of understands, but doesn't, that everything's going to change...And how do you explain that to a 2 3/4-year-old, when this is all she's ever known?



 

Lots of loose ends (featuring the Book at Blogtime)

There are all sorts of things I've been meaning to blog about recently but somehow time/children/sleep/having a million people looking round our house because the people who were supposed to be buying it can't sell their flat and so we've had to put it back on the market have got in the way.  So here goes...

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L's new favourite song?

There once was a deadly duckling.

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I finished reading Grow up Cupid by June Oldham. (Sadly no image available, even on June Oldham's own website) I'd like to say it  made me laugh out loud, but that would be a lie.  In fact it made me snort unattractively.  Lots.  I picked it up because I was told it was an antidote to the Twilight series, and it certainly lived up to its billing.  Mog is cynical, witty and doesn't believe in men.  Very not Bella Swan, and highly amusing.  Although of course it all comes right in the end.  Mog is, among other things (studying for her A-levels, setting up a creche at her college, carrying on a vendetta against her former headmaster), writing a Mills and Boon style novel, and her thoughts are interspersed with her own commentary written in that inimitable style.  As someone who read A LOT of Mills and Boon while incarcerated at boarding school (no creche there.  No headmaster either), I loved this.   In fact I'm feeling rather inspired.  Watch this space for a post in the style of Mills and Boon...

Now on to Conspirators by Michael Andre Bernstein. Finding it quite hard going so far...

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Further update on the ongoing "another baby" question:

I met a woman in the supermarket today whose sister had three children and went for a fourth.  And got triplets.

I'm not telling B.

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Ages ago the lovely Muddy no Sugar tagged me for a meme (read her interview with her daughters if you want a fantastic laugh too). I've been rubbish about doing it, but here it is, ten things that make me happy:

1. My girls giggling at each other.  It's happening more and more these days and it's just magic.
2. Being alone in my house with nothing to do, a good book and a box of chocolates (doesn't happen often)
3. Falling asleep every night while being cuddled (in a totally non-too-much-information sort of way) by B
4. My millinery course.
5. Losing those extra pounds.  I'm working on this one!
6. Coming home after a day at work and finding that B has tidied up/washed up/done the ironing/put a load of laundry on.
7. Sunshine.  Wasn't it a beautiful day today?  Didn't it just lift your soul?
8. New shoes.
9. Georgette Heyer.
10. Watching A & S, naked, crawling to the bath.  Makes me smile just thinking about those bottoms.

I need to tag some people, but I'm so behind the times on this one that I imagine everyone's already done it. If you haven't, and want to be tagged, let me know!

And the really lovely thing about this meme? It made me realise that there are so much more than ten things that make me happy.  I'm so lucky, I really am.

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And finally.


I had my first, well, I'm so new to this one that I don't know what the proper name for it is... but anyway, for the first time someone got in touch and asked me if I wanted to review some stuff for my blog.


And I'm not sure how I feel about this.  Clearly free moisturiser would be nice, if not essential, but I'm really not sure I want to go down the reviewing products route.  Lots of the blogs I love do it, and lots of those I love don't.  I can't presume that those who don't aren't offered the products, so I must assume that they choose not to take up the offers.  If that's right, I'm wondering why not.


So what do we think? Is there an etiquette on this sort of thing?  Should I do it? Would you think more or less of me if I did/didn't?  Do let me know. I'm genuinely interested.

Good day for a media star (with a sting in the tail).

I have, today, made my debut in the national press!

I (and this blog) get a mention (albeit brief) in an article by Gaby Hinsliff (about whom you may remember I raved a couple of months back) about the age-old, same-old, yadda yadda, yawn, but somehow can't stop thinking about it question of balancing work and kids.

Which is funny because it (or at least my buying of the magazine - available at all good newsagents, and less good: given that I bought it from one of those funny little shops in the tube) came at the end of one of the rare days when I've lurched from exasperation to joy and ended up feeling as though I have actually got the balance right. 

This morning was, as is often the case, faintly horrendous; nothing dramatic: S has a cold and is miserable, L didn't want red tights, ice skates more appropriate than going-to-work-must-still-look-like-a-professional-woman shoes (although I was very grateful for my zimmer frame/pushchair), tube full of sweary people cross with the weather and taking it out on each other.  Same old, same old.

Work was fine: nice to see everyone after Christmas, glow of generosity at giving them all the (obligatory) maple syrup candies, stuff to do but not too urgent, actually knew the answer to a technical question when asked.  Just another day at the office.

But the thing is, I was out, I was free, I could banter with my boss without having to interrupt myself to wipe a nose, or break up a fight, or find a missing sheep (or child).  I could have a cup of tea.  I could wander (aka shuffle, remember those shoes) out at lunch time and peruse the sandwich shelves of three different emporia before settling on a slightly unsatisfactory wrap, rather than wolfing down the leftovers from three different plastic plates.  I could just be me. Not someone's mum.  Me.

I had to leave early to get the girls so that the nursery staff could get home, and when I got to the nursery all three of them were in splendid moods (A and S's first day in separate rooms - huge success all round), and we had a lovely time shuffling back along the road home, singing. Literally.  The residents of West London know me as the local loony...

And I know that what made me happy today, and what, by extension made me a nice person to be around at work, and a good, happy, relaxed mum rather than the crotchety, short-tempered, no I haven't got time mum that I can also be (and am, more often than not, if the truth be told) is those six hours I spent without them.

Which is why they're important.  And that's why I realise that if this two day a week thing doesn't work (you'll notice there wasn't much actual work in my day (don't think my boss reads this fortunately)) and if we do find the perfect house in Middle-of-Nowhere, I do still need that Plan B. 

Which is why it's a bit of a b*gger to come home to an email saying that the millinery course might have to be cancelled.

Picture copyright Red Magazine, clearly.

Revenge is a dish best eaten innocently

Once upon a time there was a house.  It was a beautiful house, in a little village just on the outskirts of Middle-of-Nowhere.  It had been built many years ago in a time when, maybe, houses were a little more elegant than they are these days, and it wore its age with grace.  It was a white house, with roses growing over the door and it had lots of rooms inside for guests to come and stay in , for Middle-of-Nowhere was not the sort of place that people tended to pass through, and just drop in.  If they came, they came to stay.  Children loved the house, and especially its garden; full of flowers and vegetables and secret hidey-holes.

There was a man who lived in the house.  He lived there all alone; but the house didn't want to be lived in by just one man, so it spoke to him and told him to find a family to live in it.  So the man went and talked to another man, whose name was Malcolm, and asked him to find a family who could live in his house.

But Malcolm didn't do very well and so the man got cross with him and told him to go away, and decided that he would find a family to live in his house himself.  This was a good thing because anyway, if Malcolm had found the family, the man would have had to pay him lots of money and he didn't really want to do this.

As if by magic, in the height of Summer, a family appeared.  There were five of them and they loved the house but they weren't sure that they could buy it because there weren't any jobs for the Mummy in Middle-of-Nowhere and she wasn't yet ready to decide to leave the job she already had in Big Smoke.  They said that they would make a decision in the Winter, and the man was happy with this, because if he sold the house before the snow came he would still have to pay Malcolm, and he really didn't want to do this.

Summer passed, and Autumn came, and the Mummy and Daddy decided that they did want to move to Middle-of-Nowhere.  So they talked to the man and he said he would still sell them his house but that there were some people from across the sea who might want to buy it.  Now the Mummy and Daddy wanted to go and see the house again before they decided to buy it, but Middle-of-Nowhere is not easy to get to so they couldn't go straight away.  And the man said that that was fine, and he promised not to sell the house to the people from across the sea (we will call them the Van Hoobie Doobies) in the meantime.

So the Mummy and Daddy went to look at the house, and the man was very kind to them and very keen that they should live in the house.  And the house was just as beautiful as they remembered. So they said to the man that they wanted to buy it.  And he went all weird on them and wouldn't say anything.

So the Mummy and Daddy went back to Big Smoke, very sad and confused, and did everything they could think of that might make the man stop being weird and sell them his house.  They rang their bank, and they talked to their work, and they found a friend for Malcolm who could sell their little house in Big Smoke, and they telephoned the man and said all this and he still wouldn't say anything.

So they found a lawyer, and asked him to find out what was going on.  And he spoke to another lawyer, who spoke to another lawyer, who said "Oh, well he's sold it to the Van Hoobie Doobies already".  So the Mummy and Daddy spoke to the man and asked him why he had let them come all the way to Middle-of-Nowhere if he had already sold the house to someone else and he said that he didn't realise he had.  The Mummy and Daddy weren't entirely convinced by this but they had to accept it and go sadly on with their lives in Big Smoke.   They wondered about telling Malcolm that the man had sold the house before the snow came but didn't.  Instead they consoled themselves with strolling on a nearby hill, Moral High Ground, telling each other that it would all turn out for the best.

But... the Mummy and Daddy had liked Middle-of-Nowhere, with its beautiful scenery, its good schools and its big houses very much so they decided that they would telephone all of Malcolm's friends in and around Middle-of-Nowhere, to see if there were any other houses.  And so, eventually, they talked to Malcolm himself. And they said to themselves that they wouldn't mention the house to Malcolm, but Malcolm mentioned the house to them and said that he would call the man and see if he might still want to sell the house to the Mummy and Daddy.

And the Mummy and Daddy thought about lying to Malcolm, and not telling him that they already knew the house, and already loved it.  But Malcolm is, despite his profession, a nice man, and they decided that this wasn't fair.  So they told Malcolm the whole story.  And the thing is, Malcolm knew the Van Hoobie Doobies too. In fact, he had introduced the Van Hoobie Doobies to the house, and to the man.  And in fact the man had agreed to sell his house to the Van Hoobie Doobies in the Spring, long before the Mummy and Daddy had even heard of the house, but he hadn't told Malcolm, and he hadn't told the Mummy and Daddy. He had just lied to them all throughout, and told them all that the house had not been sold, and was still looking for a family, and that Malcolm was a nasty man, because he didn't want to pay Malcolm his money.

But now Malcolm knows. 

So the house is still sold, and the Mummy and Daddy will have to find somewhere else to live, but the man will have to pay Malcolm his money which will make him very cross.  And in the meantime the Mummy and Daddy will continue to stroll on the (lower slopes perhaps) of Moral High Ground.

Oh, and if the twee fairy tale version irritates, believe me, it's much better than the expletive laden one I wrote first...