OOoooooOOO

Just looked at the Sopwell House website and they do a traditional afternoon tea. My favourite!! I'll be doing that at least once this weekend. Weeeee! Getting excited now.

Cakes!

Well, Thursday went very well. I do find that most of the time my worry and insecurity about having someone over is really just all about me and has nothing to do with the person visiting. It was lovely having them here and the boys decorated loads of cakes and biscuits. Ate a few too! And of course, so did Marija and I.

The bake sale was today and it went very well. All of our creations had gone by lunchtime, which seems like a good sign.

Tomorrow I'm getting up bright and early and running away for the weekend to Sopwell House. Jenny and I are having a mums' weekend off and planning to do lots of gossiping, giggling, eating and drinking. Can't wait!

Sunshine and neurosis

The sun was actually out today so I took the children to the heath. I thought they could run around and I might get a chance to lay on the grass for a bit and soak up some sun. Wrong. The traffic seems to have some kind of gravitational pull on Rosie so I had to keep chasing her and bringing her back away from the road. We managed to get the kite up after untangling the world's biggest knot in the string. Now who could've put the kite away in such a mess? Hmmmm. It was a lovely afternoon though and I've attached some photos, mostly taken by Tobes. He's really good with the camera.

On Friday is the school bake sale and on Thursday we're having one of Toby's friends from school over with his mum to decorate cupcakes and cookies for the sale. I am so nervous about this visit. The mum is an interior decorator and her house is immaculate. I'm not talking quite nice and tidy. I'm talking IMMACULATE. Everything cream and placed just so. Beautiful cushions and curtains. Actual surfaces rather just places to put books and photos. Our place? Not so much. I do like to keep the flat clean, obviously, but it is quite lived in and rather full of stuff. It's also still only about 3/4 finished so not really a pulled together kind of home.

Having people over to the house is a much more intimate experience in England than it is in Texas. The homes are smaller here so we don't have the same separation of 'public' and 'private' spaces you often get in Texan homes. There's no living room, family room, play room, etc. Just the living room and that's where we hang out, watch TV, the children seem to keep half of their toys in here and it's where we have the home office. There's one bathroom so if a guest needs to use the loo, it's not a perfect little half bath that they go to, it's our bathroom. The one we showered in that morning. The one that Toby uses when he needs to wee (and leaves his mark behind more times than not). The one that holds all of our secret lotions and potions that keep us beautiful and regular. When someone walks from our kitchen to the living room they pass all of the bedrooms so the whole flat is on view. It can drive me crazy trying to get the place ready for a new visitor. You can imagine what I'll be doing between now and Thursday.

Boredom and photos

I've been feeling something that I haven't felt in a very long time... bored. I think it's partly since I joined myspace and I've been reading about what some of my old friends are up to these days. One is an actor and is currently making an action movie with Dolph Lundgren, one is racing bikes and just moved to Trinidad, others are just out there having fun. Now, I know that I'm not getting the whole picture. Myspace is not the place where you hang out your dirty laundry, it's where you do your best to shine because who knows who may be looking. But still, it made me stop and think.

I've been incredibly happy wrapping myself up in domesticity for the last five years. It's what I've always wanted and I've more than embraced it but I do miss fun. I'm not talking playing with the children, laughing with J kind of fun. I get a lot of that. I'm talking cut loose, grown up, dressed up, dancing your butt off, laughing your head off, drinking your ass off until the sun rises fun. I've been trying to remember the last time I did that and it was in Tokyo before I fell pregnant with Toby so it must've been before October 2002. That is so depressing.

The problem is that I've been out of circulation so long I wouldn't even know where to begin. Who to go with? What to do? Where to do it? It's not like when I was working and there was a built-in group of people to go out with on a Friday night. Ho hum. Something to think about.

Anyway, I've attached a few photos from the last few days. There's a couple of Toby and Rosie playing on the instruments at the Horniman Museum on Tuesday. Yes, those are little skulls and crossbones on Rosie's dress (Nik, I thought you would like that.). The scarf isn't just Rosie trying to be cool. She's teething and drooling like crazy so the scarf is a fashion statement with a purpose - soaking up spit. Then there are a couple of photos of Tobes getting his hair cut and a couple taken this morning at Costa. We bumped into Toby's friend James with his parents and sat and had coffee together. The boys looked so cute playing at the window that I had to nip outside and take their picture.

Tomorrow we have a fourth birthday party and a naming ceremony for Pete and Philippa's little boy, Joseph, so it'll be a busy day. I hope to get some photos of us together when we're all scrubbed up for the parties.

Not much

You know, I walk around all the time and think "That would be good in the blog..." and "Mustn't forget to put that in the blog..." Then I sit down to write an entry and my mind goes completely blank. Ah well, I'll just start typing and see what comes out.

Here are a couple of photos taken yesterday. It was Mother's Day here in England and we went to lunch at Carluccio's in Canary Wharf. I had made reservations for the cafe in Covent Garden but was very grateful to Elizabeth who reminded me that it was the St Patrick's Day parade that day. Another time and that might sound fun but after J being away for a week it just sounded exhausting. So we had lunch and looked around the shops a little instead.

Toby and Rosie have been fighting colds/viruses/the lurgy lately and have not been happy chaps. I think I'm going to have to take Rosie to the doctor because she's producing astonishing amounts of snot and coughing a lot. Poor little thing. The good news is that J cancelled his trip to Beijing which was scheduled for this week so at least there's another pair of hands to help out in the flat.

I know there are so many things I want to say but my mind really is totally blank. I think I have a touch of the cold too but then the weather has been so crazy that I'm not surprised. Two days ago we were going out without coats and talking about spring and today we were bundled up again and actually had snow flurries! Amazing weather.

Education and otherness

I got the information pack from St Margaret's today. There's so much to learn! School uniforms, packed lunches, milk money, book sales and fruit snacks. Not to mention all the forms to complete. I love it!

I can't wait to get Toby's uniform. It's not a very exciting one - grey trousers or shorts in the summer, white shirt and school tie or polo shirt with the school badge, black or grey socks and black shoes. They do have blazers but the children don't wear them very often. It's all so exciting and so different to what I wore to school. Tobes is going to look so cute.

It hit me recently how different Toby and Rosie's educational experiences will be compared to mine. Toby's preschool has been studying the continents. They do one a week and last week it was North America. On Fridays the children dress in a costume representing the continent they've been studying and their lunch is traditional food from that continent. Last Friday Toby decided to go to school as a Power Ranger, well I guess they are American, but the other children came as Native Americans (still called Indians here), eskimos, Mexicans, cowboys, baseball players and one was dressed as a moose. For lunch they had hot dogs, fries and ice cream for dessert. It felt very strange to actually be a North American and hear my child talk about it like it's some exotic foreign place.

And then it hit me that Toby and Rosie won't be learning things like the preamble to the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance or memorising the presidents and state capitals. It'll be the prime ministers, the monarchs, the Commonwealth. I'll have to learn these things too because I still don't have a clue half the time.

I have a new friend who is Croatian. She came to London during the war and is now married to an Englishman and has a little boy at Toby's school. She and I were talking today about not really feeling wholly a part of our birth nationalities and yet not wholly English either. Just hovering somewhere in between. A kind of 'otherness' that I think will probably last a lifetime.

A Hard Day's Night

The top photo was taken yesterday. I was planning to get out of the house while all of the workmen were here but Tobes started running a fever Monday night and stayed home from school yesterday. We had to stay in so we camped in the kitchen, the only room without someone working in it. It turned into a real campsite when Toby started feeling really rough and I made him a little bed with the dining chairs. Of course Rosie then wanted a bed too so I got some more pillows and blankets for her. They were quite happy to rest, watch Cbeebies and have me wait on them hand and foot. Funny that.

All of the work went quite well. The builders were very nice and tidy and even put their mugs in the sink at the end of the day. I made 14 cups of tea and 1 coffee yesterday. In the end I started using a wipe off marker to write how each person took their tea on the side of their mug to save time. It was chaos with the builders, the cleaner, the delivery people but it was all done by about four o'clock. One of the deliveries came in a big cardboard box and we turned it into a race car for Tobes using paper plates, plastic bowls, markers and lots of tape.

Tobes was feeling better by bedtime but woke up at midnight with a high fever. I got up to get him some medicine and Rosie woke up too. The bottom photo was taken at 1.00am this morning. Since we were all up we decided to go ahead and make a party of it with drinks, snacks and stories. Thankfully, we were all in bed with the lights out by two and slept through til seven this morning.

I took Toby to the doc and he has tonsilitis so no school for the rest of the week. That's fine except I was supposed to go to a meeting at St Maggie's tomorrow morning. This is one of those times when I wish we had family nearby. With J away there's no one to watch Toby so I had to call the school and say that I couldn't make it. They were very understanding and will send me all of the info and I've arranged to go in next week for a chat. Disappointing, but I'm sure it'll work out.

On the other hand, it's quite nice to be forced to wipe the diary clean. We went to the chemist in Sainsbury's today to get Toby's meds and it was strange to have nowhere else we needed to be. So often I'm checking the time, calculating how long we have until we need to be somewhere else. Very nice just to dawdle with no expectations. We ended up hitting Starbucks while Rosie napped. It's nice to be with just Tobes a little, especially when he's poorly and needs some extra TLC. Such a sweet boy.

Single Mum

J is in the States this week. He's in Vail, Colorado skiing. He says it's work but it sounds awfully suspicious to me. On Friday he comes home for a few days, just in time for British Mother's Day on Sunday, and then flies off to China on Monday. I'm actually OK with all of his travelling. I do a lot of work on the flat in the evenings when J is away or I rent movies I know he's not interested in seeing and make meals that I like but he doesn't. It works out fine.

We do have a busy week. It all hinges on tomorrow. I've got builders coming in to repair two windows, replace the wall lights in the hall and a few other bits and bobs. I've also got a man coming to steam clean the furniture and rug AND the new TV cabinet is being delivered. My Valentine's Day present is also arriving, a bay tree for the front of the house. I was out today painting the masonry work in preparation so it all looks lovely when J gets back.

On Thursday I have a meeting at St Margaret's, Toby's 'big' school. This is where we get all the details about school uniforms, lunches, activities, etc. I'm really excited about it. I can't wait to see Tobes in his uniform. I know I'm going to be such a silly ass and cry my eyes out on his first morning, but hopefully only once he's in class and I'm safely outside. The years go by so quickly now.

Then we've got the Easter Fair at MC's school on Saturday which sounds amazing and Mother's Day on Sunday. I've booked us in for lunch at a cafe in Covent Garden (that's the pic at the top). I'm hoping the weather will be nice so we can stroll and shop afterwards.

And that's my week ahead.

Addendum to previous post

Just tidied up the hall and had to add the folloing:

You know you're parent when your umbrella stand contains any or all of the following:

• an unbrella decorated with Spiderman, Barbie or any other children's character
• a plastic sword, light saber or other weapon
• one of those sticks with a horsehead at the top (what are they called?!)

You know you're a parent when...

You can change a filthy nappy and think about what you want to have for dinner at the same time.

You've ever wondered what sex would be like with any of the following: Sportacus, Miss Hoollie, that Welsh guy on Doodle Do, the pink Power Ranger or any of the Wiggles.

You know at least three of the following: the name of Marv's dog, the names of all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the sale seasons at Gap/Next, your doctor's emergency number by heart, the time it takes to get from your home to the local A&E, the relative merits of all the schools within a five mile radius of your home, how best to get the smell of vomit out of a rug.

You have done at least three of the following:

• massaged a child's anus because they're constipated
• sucked snot out of a child's nose
• arranged food on a plate to look like a face/space ship/the Taj Mahal
• removed a pea or kernel of corn from a nostril or ear
• made a costume out of a pillowcase
• baked cookies or cupcakes past midnight
• changed a nappy with your coat on
• eaten fishsticks for dinner over the age of 30
• hidden pureed vegetables in a pasta sauce
• applauded for a poo
• realised that the cool new song you've been bopping to in your head all day is actually the theme tune to a children's programme

These are from my own personal experience but I'm sure you can think of lots more!

Last week

A couple more photos to liven things up here. The top one is Rosie taken in Costa yesterday. It's not the greatest photo of Rosie but I love that it captures the current wildness of her hair. Believe it or not I had actually smoothed it down that morning with a damp brush but it has a mind of its own. I should probably get it trimmed but it's taken so long for her to get hair that I just can't bring myself to start cutting it off yet.

I call the bottom pic "Look! New Shoes". After I took it I realised that it's a very Elizabeth kind of photo so I must give credit to Ms Dunne for inspiring the quirky view. I'm very happy with my new Converse. The last pair were cream. Who buys cream canvas shoes in London?? They spent more time in the washing machine than on my feet. You can see that I've opted for more sensible black this time and, though they are what we called stoner shoes in high school, I am loving them.

We had a pleasant week last week and managed to keep busy while J was away. The highlight was having Elizabeth and MC over for dinner one night. It was great to eat and then let the kids play while Elizabeth and I had a chat. Just the kind of thing I'd love to do more often.

J came back a day early from Delhi so he arrived yesterday just after lunch. He arrived with stories of monkeys at his hotel window and cows causing traffic jams but no presents. No chance to shop he said but he did manage to deposit a little something from India in the loo this morning. It was like a bomb had been dropped in the flat. We literally had to open the windows to air the place out. Nice.

Things are back to normal today. Tobes had French this morning and I went to pilates then we all had lunch at the gym. Now Rosie is sleeping and J and Tobes are in the village. Life resumes.

[I don't know what is wrong with the spacing on blogger at the moment but I can't get spaces between the paragraphs!]