25 July 2006

2 down, 42 to go...

Well, we have just successfully completed day 2 of the summer holidays without any child killing any other child (or any parent doing so). The girls' task for this summer is to try not to argue with each other for no reason all day long - so far, I've only had to remind them of this about 10 times. Someone should remind me again why I thought it would be nice to have kids close in age... Oh well, it's not quite as bad as a friend of mine who has twin girls a bit younger than Olivia. I can't quite imagine two Olivias in my life.

21 July 2006

Vital questions number 12 & 35

Today's vital question: "So Mum, if you were going to name a penguin, what would you name it?". Important enough to interrupt a conversation between mum & dad, apparently. She didn't like my answer ("Alfie"), which I admit, wasn't all that inspired.

Paradox of Sleep

So why is that when you quit watching television in order to go to bed because your eyes are shutting every few minutes, that you then lie in bed awake for an hour?

16 July 2006

A trip to the beach



Had a semi-spontaneous trip to the beach yesterday (decided on Friday evening to go) - West Wittering is a beach a friend of mine told me about, totally sandy (unlike many of the beaches on the south coast), just south of Chichester. So we decided to go down for the day - the kids had a blast. It's one of those really shallow beaches, which is great when you have little kids - you can wade for a long way before the water gets up to even your knees. Even if you are only 3. It was a lovely day, though of course the entire house and car seem to be covered in sand now...

13 July 2006

Truth stranger than fiction...

So the other night I had some friends around to sort out the school fun day (sports day) and we were sitting at the dining room table with the French doors open when there was a loud thud. "Neighbour's cat," I explained. "It's called Dave." My friend Karin says "We used to have a cat called Dave". "This one's a girl, though," I said. "Oh," says Karin, "so was ours."

05 July 2006

World Cup Semi Final: Nits 1, Sarah 0

Among my least favourite aspects of parenting (right up there with diarrhea in a toddler and vomit, which probably will always be number one) is dealing with nits (head lice). They aren't really as icky in terms of absolute values of ick (although don't ever look at one under a microscope when your child has a microscope obsession - that's pretty ick) but they are just so incredibly tedious to get out. And despite the fine teeth of a nit comb, you still can't get all the eggs. So I ended up watching the football (uninspiring) because I had to do something while dealing with Sarah's hair. Luckily, Olivia seems to have escaped this time around.

OF course, while I was doing this, Alex decided to wee in the bed (he was asleep - don't get me wrong, he's not THAT naughty). Not something he does very often, but he's got a bit of a cold and probably isn't quite himself. Not a big deal, except that Geoff had let him fall asleep in OUR bed. Let's just say, he won't do that again in a hurry. At least it wasn't 3 am. He says "now all we need is for Olivia to throw up in the middle of the night" - as I said, whatever the opposite of "from your lips to God's ear" is; that's my response to that"...

Just like Washington DC Weather Blues

One of the things I was glad to leave behind when I moved away from DC was the weeks on end of weather and humidity both in the 90s. It's been over 30 here for nearly a week, which in a country of very limited a/c is pretty dire. Yeah, I'm sure it's worse in India and China and lots of Africa, so I shouldn't complain, but you'll notice I don't choose to live in those places - coincidence? I think not.

Luckily, today seems to be delivering the promised thunderstorms (though a brief one before I got up this morning did absolutely nothing except wet the pavement) so hopefully things will cool down a bit. The worst part is night, of course. It's been so hot, I've been letting the kids sleep on the sofa bed downstairs (the girls' room is in the loft and very very hot) which is fine, but means I can't spend nearly as much time on the computer as they have to be REALLY asleep before I can type without waking them. Shame really because that room is nice and cool at night with the back doors open (hence the kids sleeping there).

Oh well, there's the English for you - if it wasn't hot and sunny we'd be complaining about that instead.