Messy Kids

H has had a LOT of practise at being messy, so I guess it should come as no surprise to me that now she is 3 she is really pretty good at it (somewhere in my head I had imagined that she would become cleaner as time went on – I dread to think what her teenage years are going to be like!)

Until the 6th of February the lovely people at Appliances Online and Mothers Always Right are running a competition to win £75 of Amazon vouchers. Here is my entry to the Appliances Online messiest kid competition at Mothers Always Right. If you have a messy child too, why not enter as well.

I'm trying to make up my mind what I will buy if we win. Really I should probably buy something boring like carpet cleaner :P But most likely I can see it being a crate full of paint. Hopefully when she is as famous as Banksy she will pay me back by taking me out for a nice meal or something :) Or at least paying to have my greying hair dyed back to a nice shade of blonde.

Catch up

The past fortnight has been a crazy busy mixture of training, being “WOW”ed by H’s recognition of letters and words, creating a massive map of Italy (which I am yet to finish), arguing with the ‘designer’ about our new kitchen and encouraging F as she verges on the edges of independence and learning to crawl.

I’ve been remembering (a little too late) lessons about allowing the baby to chew my phone and wearing my favourite jumpers when said baby is learning to eat and throwing food around the kitchen with such ferocity that everything in it’s path comes to resemble a Jackson Pollock painting.

Training is getting better. I say that, but following last Saturdays attempt – it really couldn’t get much worse. As if the fact that I accidentally wore my running trousers inside out wasn’t bad enough, my Dad decided to join me to asses my progress. So there we were running around in MATCHING yellow jackets, as my running gear is a load of stuff that my Mum lent to me. On the up side it was blowing a gale and hail stoning so there weren’t many people out and about who saw us, and hopefully no-one who saw me run straight into a tree as I passed my parents house. It really is fortunate that I don’t drive!

(Not So) New Shoes

A lot of people assume that if you are slim you must be fit. For anyone under any illusions, this is not true, and I am testament to that. The last time I went anywhere near a gym was before I fell pregnant with my elder daughter, over 4 years ago and since then I have used my children and the "I don't have time" excuse, any time that exercise has been mentioned. So the following is as much of a shock to me as to anyone else.

A week ago Sunday, in a moment of madness I agreed to sign up to run a 10K race. It isn't until mid May but as I haven't participated in any competitive running since junior athletics club (around 15 years ago now) I am feeling somewhat apprehensive about the prospect of having to run 10K, possibly worsened by the fact that amoung the other entrants are my Mum who is uber fit, and regulary competes, and my sister who started her get fit plan a few years ago and now has a couple of 10K's under her belt.

Filled with dread rather than enthusiasm it took me until Saturday to go out for my first training session. Following a training plan devised by my Dad, that sees me taking things VERY easy to begin with, I am hoping to be able to run the entire distance in around 12 weeks time. At the moment I have only run the distance between 2 lamp posts! Wish me luck, I think I'm going to need it.

Benji

A few months ago we were lucky enough to be sent Animagics fantastic Benji - My Best Friend. This is what we thought...


From the first moment that she saw Benji, H was won over by his loveable face. Initially she was a little scared of the mechanical noise that he makes as he moves and she preferred to play with him switched off. Happily stroking him as she watched TV, pretending to feed him biscuits and playing "dog families" with him and her teddies.



Three days after he arrived H took Benji with her to her cousins house. When they returned she had overcome her fear/dislike of Benji's noisy mechanics and had fallen for his cheeky nature.

Having been desperate for a pet for quite some time now, Benji is certainly filling a space in her heart. I was unconvinced that this would last long as one of the first things that H asked about Benji was, "Why can't Benji walk?" and four weeks after his arrival she appeared to be losing interest and was playing with him much less than when he first joined us. However I am delighted to say that now after more than 4 months, Benji is still one of her favourite toys, he is played with daily and this doesn't look set to change.

H loves to cuddle Benji and when he is switched on this causes his mechanical legs to make a "click click" sound. I am worried that it may break him.

This aside H adores him and he is certainly a very special toy. As first pets go, he is perfect for us. All of the pleasure without the fuss or the worry.

And in the beginning there was... space.

I've been toying with the idea of writing a blog for a while now, but in my usual way always found another distraction that has kept me from it. That is, until tonight. so here it is. I will try to add some back dated content to this tomorrow and fill up some of this abundant space. There is a high chance that the only people who will follow this blog are my partner and my sister but if you happen to stumble across it, feel free to stay a while.

Night

CB