The last summer moon of 2013.

Goodbye Summer and Hello Autumn, I'm never quite sure whether I'm supposed to mourn this or celebrate this, but personally it's a celebration. I am not a Summer person. I love Autumn; the smell, the colours, the feeling of it.  I love the cozy dark nights and the vicious slash of colour against the grey days as if nature is ripping apart the grey at it's very seams with poetic fingers that draw the earths blood in pools of orange, red and browns.  Textures beg to be touched as they entice you into some illicit affair.  Things feel alive, the world is on fire, nature is the phoenix, as we dance upon that fragile line between birth and death.  Never has death looked so beautiful and rebirth so promising.  Winter is coming....

I love how ripe and swollen with delicious anticipation Autumn is as we count down to Samhain, Guy Fawkes night and then Yule.  As the leaves die in some macabre beauty around us and the branches lie barren for now, skeletal and brittle, we celebrate for we know it is not the end, just one end of many more which will lead to yet another beginning.  It's intoxicating.

I love the layers as we bundle up, the stews and soups with puddings and custard.....the splashing in puddles and kicking through leaves as we collect one of natures bounties, shiny conkers ripe for the plucking.

Autumn is when I feel most alive.

So how are we welcoming the equinox? well, Thing Two is full of snot and cough and Thing One and The Toddler are as always fighting like cat and dog, or more fitting for The Party of Five, like cat and kitten.  The Husbands temper is ablaze and I'm significantly useless.  With at least several hours of kip a day for a minimum of 5 days a week, I'm exhausted yet functioning...sort of.  Yet a week without daytime sleep and I can barely think straight.  Yet it is still somewhat more favourable than last week when I had my third evening out since  which resulted in me returning home to a bollocking from a furious Husband and a Thing Two in floods of tears followed by an impromptu two bus trip to a park last Sunday with Thing One running head first into a window at the bus station and The Toddler falling down the stairs on a double decker bus.  Joy.  Fear not though, they're terribly bouncy and have not a mark between them.  Yet another of those incidents that they'll likely never remember and yet we as parents will inevitably never forget.

The Kitten has been given free reign round the house in daylight hours now much to The Cats horror.  The days are punctuated by hisses and growls and The Cat finally grew a spine and decided to eat The Kittens Food.  The Kitten retaliated by shitting in The Cats litter tray.  It is essentially a pissing contest to see who's the cats bollocks, only not as they're both girls.  Happy days.

Things One & Two were deep in debate about whether The Toddler should be a boy or a girl with Thing One wanting him to be a boy and Thing Two rather convinced he should be a girl.  The Toddler however just wants to be a Power Ranger.  Fair enough.  Although I'm terribly impressed with their albeit oblivious belief that one can be whichever gender they so choose, I did rather feel duty bound to point out the somewhat obvious fact that The Toddler is a boy.  I say I felt duty bound, yet I never have been one much for duty so I left them be.  Not getting involved.

Thing Two has rediscovered her  inner photographer,seeing as she finally found her camera and we happened to actually have batteries for it, the moon must indeed have been blue that night.  Never one to disappoint in  predictability The Toddler wanted in on the action and commandeered the camera well on his way to needing his own Myspace and Instagram accounts if his penchant for photographing his winky and his dinner are anything to go by.

Sleep is still evading us, in this house in-between insomnia, illness and buggering demonology going on resulting in me sneaking lavender oil into the bath to try and knock at least one of the spawn out.  The Toddler refused to even get out of the bath last night as he did this amusing little ritual of floating whilst walking on his hands up and down the bath insisting he simply must do 'real fish' before he could even contemplate being extricated from the watery wonderland.  Who I am to argue with that logic?  It was an improvement on his earlier bath antics which made me exclaim 'please get your winky out of your watering can spout'  Upon finally getting the little bugger out of the bath the games commenced as I tried to wrestle him into his pj's whilst he laughed at me, forward and backward rolled at hyperspeed across the bed then farted in my general direction.  Such a charmer.

Oh but lest you be mistaken the fun indeed didn't end there.  Then commenced the epic 80 minute stint of singing, pretending to be a fireman, serenading me with Anthrax and nursery rhymes, demanding a towel to wipe his snot, burping in my face, attaching himself to my back, draining an entire beaker of water (this was after half an hour on the breast) and cuddling the orange cover of some sort of flashing light thing from a building site.

He then had the utter audacity to roll onto my side of the bed whilst I went moon hunting out the bedroom window which was rudely interrupted by a fog horn skank with a rather limited vocabulary consisting mainly of obscenities having a loud conversation with her young daughter across the street...in the dark.

Still, this morning soon arrived and despite a treacherous inability to go the fuck to sleep, I still had several hours in bed before being presented with a bacon and mushroom butty in bed ....and two bunches of roses!  The Husband evidently wants blowing.

Life of a nearly 8 year old...

Thing One's bedroom.  Can anyone guess his favourate band?  Answers on a postcard.

Spuds & Tantrums

Wednesday night was what one can only describe as abysmal.  The Toddler was feeding hourly due to pesky teeth so as a result I was dreadfully tired.  The Husband was kind enough to let me retire to bed in the morning yet I must confess, rather then sleep I read.  Still, it was nice to be alone and not be mauled and pawed for a while.  The Toddler appeared to be on a poo mission yesterday and rather then nap, he poo'd, several times in fact. Neither The Husband nor myself were particularly impressed to say the least.  Subsequently I then had to spend the rest of the day ensuring he didn't fall asleep and make bedtime even longer then it already is.  Hence The Toddler walking up the tree tunnel home from the shops, he looked rather too much like he was dozing off on my back in the sling so I evicted the wee fellow, mean mummy that I am.  However tantrums were rife when towards home The Husband handed him over to me as only daddy's hand will do, apparently.  I don't really cater to tantrums.  I figure he has a right to feel whatever emotion it is he feels, however it doesn't mean his way of dealing with it will change anything.  So I let him get on with his little tantrum, yes the full lie on the path and cry type, watching over with him until he was ready to accept that yes although he doesn't have to like it, that's absolutely his prerogative but he must hold my hand regardless should he wish to get home any time soon. 

Unfortunately The Toddler isn't the only tantrummer.  Thing One spent his pocket money on a plastic spud gun (I know I know, we point blank banned gun toys when he was younger much to his  utter dismay however, now he's old enough to fully understand what a gun is and what it represents...c'est la vie.  I played with a gun and I'm not quite a homicidal psychopath, well not all the time at least. He was given one rule with regards to playing with it, do not aim at anyone or hit anyone with the spud ammo.  Within five minutes I felt one on me.  He could have aimed at the floor, to the sides, behind him but no, he aimed at me and he was smirking.  Cue a huge tantrum when The Husband confiscated the offending item as Thing One simply refuses to accept responsibility for his actions with a complete inability to hold his hands up and say 'i'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it' First he blamed the maker of the gun, then he blamed Thing Two and finally blamed....the weather.  Needless to say the discourse only served to infuriate The Husband even more into a state of complete exasperation.  Then there was tea time last night, The Toddler did another impromptu poo, this time during tea, whilst we sorted him out I clearly heard Thing Two shout 'NO' at Thing One before the familiar stampede of Their feet to the stairs blathering and arguing as Thing Two accused Thing One of stealing her chicken and Thing One clearly denied it till he was blue in the face (or red actually) However I had a trick up my sleeve, I knew all he had left to eat was sweetcorn which he was dutifully eating when I went upstairs so I asked him to open his mouth.  What did i see on his tongue? The remnant of a mouthful of chicken.  His story then changed to 'She gave it to me!' to which I rationalised to him that if she gave it to him that suggests she wanted him to have it so why would she then shout no, burst into tears and grass him up?  Once again, half an hour later he admitted she was right.
 

The mystery of the missing book bag has been solved.  The Husband had phoned the taxi rank and the shops they went in and no book bag had been handed in.  However, yesterday Thing One jubilantly skipped out of school with his book bag in hand.  Apparently one of the school's dinner ladies has a friend, who had evidently used the same taxi that The Husband and Thing One had, found the book bag and gave it to her Friend to take into work who then in turn found Connor and handed it back to him.  It's the small things that restore an element of faith in humanity.

The Toddler remarkably went to sleep incredibly easily last night with the usual 3-4 wakings as opposed to the recent 10+.  Now I know The Husband would commit the relationship faux pas of saying 'I told you that you shouldn't let him nap so he'd sleep better at night' which is all very well in theory but he does need a nap most days otherwise he gets beastly tired then manic not to mention I need the nap too.  So although I rather enjoyed the better bedtime, I'm putting it down as an anomaly as opposed to a direct result of not napping.

After a shocking nights sleep the night before I should have made the most of it and slept, however, I finished my third book in as many days instead.  Oops.

Daddy wears too

Taking advantage of the lack of rain yesterday, The Toddler and accompanied The Husband with Thing One and Thing Two on the school run today then did the two mile round trip for some shopping only to have to set out yet again to deliver Thing Two's packed lunch to school seeing as we had run out of bread pre-shopping, oops.  Although the thought of Thing Two professing that she has no lunch as 'we have no food' is amusing in a mortifying sort of way. Due to a sore shoulder resultant of contorted positions whilst feeding the toddler all night long The Husband wore The Toddler for a nice change whilst I annoyed him greatly by insisting on taking lots of pictures.






I made some sweet and salty peanut biscuits today despite the fact that none of us actually like nutty biscuits, yet the desire to bake them was there all the same despite The Husbands growing frustration at all the extra pots it creates for him to wash, I do fear he's becoming a tad exasperated in a way. However, The Grandparents were very grateful when I palmed the biscuits off on them. gifted the biscuits to them.



Thing Two had his Special Day with The Grandparents yesterday and I received a phone call from The Mother o'mine to ask if he could possibly have anything else to eat as he was awfully hungry despite having two burgers, four chicken nuggets, fries, a chocolate cake, fruit bag and a pack of Rolo's knowing that he has hollow legs and we limit what he eats as he really would eat and eat and eat.  I asked to speak to Thing One and when I gently told him he'd had more then enough (far more then I'd ever have allowed) he proceeded to burst into tears wailing down the phone line 'i'm so so hungry mum!' gulp.  I swear that child has hollow legs.  They match his sometimes vacuous brain at times, take for instance him losing his book bag (again).

Thing Two came out of school with four, yes four, stickers taped to her dress and two prizes.  Apparently she wrote two awfully good stories and even had to go into the nursery class and a year 2 class (she's in Reception) to show other teachers and have them read them out in front of their classes.

After a 6 months drought in reading which is quite extraordinary for me seeing as I usually average 80-150 books a year (yes books, I like real paper books) I finally have found my reading mojo and have read two and a half novels in as many days.  I don't know if I should be amused or ashamed that it's the notoriously popular '50 shades of grey' trilogy that has broke the literary starvation.