Yet it doesn't feel it.  Yes, i'm absolutely not feeling Christmas this year.  The tree has been up since the first as have the decorations, the turkey is in the freezer and the presents are finally all wrapped much to the relief of my back and remnants of frayed sanity. I'm blaming the weather, how terribly British of me, though to be specific i'm blaming the very distinct lack of snow.  I love snow.  Without it everything is just unforgivably grey and inexcusably cold.

It doesn't help that The Husband is an absolute Bah Humbug who'd probably quite happily delete Christmas from existence should he be able to.  I'm excited for the children yet i'd rather like to be excited, just a little bit, for me too.   It's awfully satisfying having spawn to be excited for yet it's not really the same as having an equal to be excited with.  It all feels fake and draining.  There's no immediate outside family nor friends to evoke any festivity. I used to be frightfully giddy with the sparkle, glitz and fun associated with Christmas yet now it's just all flat.  I confess I mourn the death of it's sparkle, of my sparkle.

The Parents with The Brother are finally in situ at The Motherships abode in Spain though the journey was not without it's detours, mainly a detour to a french hospital where my dad ended up as an inpatient for several days after breaking his nose, from falling on his face.  Yes, really.  Several days, an ECG, a MRI and a CT scan later and they were back en route.  Needless to say their Christmas photo's will be...interesting.

The Toddler has been recovering from the lurgy of doom with the aid of narrowly escaping a trip to the hospital, some  steroids, plenty of breastfeeding, plenty of naps, several tantrums and some antibiotics and is currently making up for not eating for nigh a week through eating 24/7 now.

After a discussion with a terribly lovely GP who i'd never had the pleasure of meeting before we mutually decided to wean me off my current meds.  Yes, near Christmas.  We apparently must have a dark sense of humour.

I've had allergies/a cold of doomy doom for several weeks now and am close to gouging my eyes out with soup spoon whilst punching my nose from my face.

We've had two excellent end of term school reports, a fabulous class assembly and an amazing nativity play and Things One and Two as of today are now officially off school for Christmas.  Oh fuck.

Add to this a myriad of woes and surprises many of which I either won't bore you with or simply can't talk about.

So yes.... Christmas. Bah Humbug ;)

Forgive me journal, I didn't mean to abandon you.

Where has the time gone? I'm guilty of digital neglect. My poor poor blog. Please don't divorce me. I need you.

Although less so then it was The Husbands back is still essentially buggered and not in the kinky way either. I'm not an overly sympathetic person at the best of times and I confess that I'm getting rather bored of being nice and helpful to him and am resisting the urge to issue a swift kick to his dimpled behind purely for amusement.

I seem to be perpetually on the precipice of a cold lurgy type  thing and am accordingly 50 shades of bloody miserable.  This isn't at all aided by The Toddler who has reverted back to waking 4-8times a night, again. I can endure the usual 2-3 wakings but this is dangerously breaching the borders of torture despite me often educating him in the many varied and indeed far quicker ways to kill me if that is his mission.  I'm fundamentally touched out and really rather beyond the realms of shattered and entering an undead state of existence or should that mayhaps be mere survival.

He'd better be learning something impressive like fluent Latin or quantum physics to warrant me being an all night milk bar.

Yet despite his rampant anti social night time antics he has worn the same night nappy for a week. Why? Because The Toddler appears to have bladder muscles of steel and is now dry day and night. Crikey.

Oh how frightfully unBritish of me, I nearly forgot to mention the weather, which has been renamed to simply 'rain' seeing as that's really all it appears to do lately, yet another reason upon the many others that have me sat writhing in personal insanity and scoffing copious amounts of stodge rather then walking off calories. Damnable self sabotage. I am now an extra half stone away from my ever distant target. Bother, Damn and blast.

Thing Two has finally lost her first wobbly tooth yet It's her second gap thanks to an incident when she was a young toddler and one of her top teeth came out, whole, root and all, bloody huge it was too. I've never been good with wobbly teeth, they send me dreadfully nauseous. As a child at the first sign of a wobbler I'd use my nails to sever the bugger at the root. Thing Two however is one of those children though, you know the ones.... they absolutely refuse to pull the blasted thing out and just leave it....hanging by an itty bitty thread of root as they push it around with their tongue inducing vomitous rage in me and ghastly revulsion. Inevitably it did quite literally fall out, eventually, at school. Typically on her special day so it was The Mothership collecting her. Apparently Thing Two's teacher (who is terribly fabulous) told her that Thing Two had found the ordeal somewhat traumatic and they all felt awfully bad as they as teachers weren't allowed to help her get the Damn tooth out so they just had to sit and comfort her until it quite literally fell out. Yes, it was that loose.

The Husband needs to go back to tooth fairy school... I mean leaving chocolate with the money? Seriously? Bad tooth fairy. Bad. I'd smack his bum but he'd rather like that a little too much.

He keeps threatening to teach Thing Two to spit through her gaps forcing me to use my wifey glare of husband thought paralysis on him. bloody husbands.

In a rare moment of being a real little girl, Thing Two picked up a small ugly little doll that The Mothership bought for her from Spain many years ago. It came in darling little dungarees and one of those abhorrent baby headbands with a bow on it which thankfully got lost. So, imagine Thing Two's shall we say 'surprise' when she finally got round to stripping It's kit off and discovered the doll has a Willy. Not just a Willy but one with a hole in the end. Who'd Have thought that all this time the doll was a tranvestite! The Toddler however is quite taken with 'her' and even let's it wee before him on the potty.

The doll playing ended quite abruptly and she was soon back to her usual self. She fell asleep with a silver chunky chain poised in her hands leaving me to contemplate which particular nocturnal super natural visitors she was trying to repel until The Husband enlightened me to the fact that she'd actually been seen earlier using it as a noose around Tigger's neck, suspending him from her door. Mystery solved.

We're still trapped in the perpetual and bitter war of trying to get The Spawn to tidy their jeffing rooms with Thing Two resorting to desperate measures such as The Note... Only she shot herself in the foot on that one as she used the word 'promise' a word she is often reluctant to say due to It's brevity. Ha. Sucker!

Thing One however still prefers to resort to good old temper tantrums, something he is extraordinarily good at, to attempt to delay the inevitable.

I should be sleeping. The Toddler is sleeping and will no doubt wake soon. Why aren't I sleeping?

Oh hello insomnia, I forgot we had a date tonight. Again. Didn't you get my Dear John.... letter? Poppycock.

Bleurgh.

Still ill.  Yes, still. So after the sore throat went, I got a vile cough and chest nastiness.  When that cleared off it got replaced with a jippy tum which has since given me several days of pain.  Awful nasty pain.  Then last night came puking.  At one point I was trying to die quietly on the bed when The Husband dumped The Toddler in the room so he could nip to the loo.  Predictably The Toddler immiediately latched on, I didn't have the energy to protest, not that it would have made a slight bit of difference anyway.  I had a carrier bag close then suddenly I just knew I needed to vomit.  I asked The Toddler politely and somewhat urgently to please move.  He blatantly ignored me.  I asked again and he gave me 'The Look', the one that means if I even think about making him he will throw the biggest tantrum ever.  So yes, I ended up leaning to the side, puking in a carrier bag whilst he happily fed.  Is that what they call extreme breastfeeding?

All I can eat is crap.  Sweet stuff.  the Thought/smell of real savoury food makes my stomach cramp and my throat constrict.  I'm hungry though.  I've lost 4lbs which will no doubt return as soon as this illness bugger off.  I'm exhausted with being ill though.  All the time.

I'm ruddy miserable.