Spring Bank Holiday

We've made it to Spring Bank holiday, and I now have a timetable for teaching for September. At the moment it looks good. I contacted HC-MD a few weeks ago to explain my intention to return, then had some correspondence with HR which went surprisingly well, my annual leave was calculated, and I was given a return date of 16th June, with an actual return date of 18th August. I've got three AS classes at the moment, and feel quite encouraged about that.

Sazzle-Pear hasn't been sleeping at all well. After the conjunctivitis episode, subsequent antibiotics and string of colds she's been waking at all hours. Most nights she will wake up at around 9/10pm, then again at around 2am then again at around 5.30am. It is beginning to really get to me!! She is feeding far less in the day, typically:

5.30
9.00
11.45
1.45
4.45
7.00

She has porridge and toast for breakfast at around 7.30/8am, and eats a fair bit of porridge now. She has bagel/toast/oatcake etc for lunch followed by fruitbat, and for tea is just beginning to eat some serious yoghurt after her main course. She is as messy as Edward!! Still not sitting up, but spending a lot of time in her Bumbo playing with her toys in her little pink basket. Just started playing a sort of peekaboo game with her bath towel. Three teeth at the bottom in the middle. Hair getting a little bit longer now but nowhere near as long as Elizabeth's was at this age.

Elizabeth is writing - she can easily write her own name and Mummy, Daddy, Edward, Sarah without any prompting. She used to copy our letters but now just writes them straight off. She can also sort of guess how to write words e.g. today she wrote 'Monkey and me' and sort of guessed it all right. Behaviour iffy (again!). Serious tantrums, snatching things from you, hitting Edward, whining and so forth, not listening when you say no, e.g. yesterday pouring water from the garden tap and getting absolutely soaking wet when told not to.

Edward is saying more than ever, obviously. He sings his own versions of popular classics such as 'the wheels on bus' (Edward sings the diggers on the bus). Loves diggers, loves dumper trucks, loves tractors, loves watching me make tea (and reaching through and grabbing things, even though he knows the no grabbing rule!).

Sarah's third tooth!

Husband checked the 'Saz-banger''s mouth this morning and found a third tooth just grazing the suface of her lower gum, next to the two in the middle she has already got. Could explain the grumpy behaviour and disturbed sleep - that or the cold which she seems to have developed since the weekend!

Went to the toddler group in 'our' church on Wednesday which was fine - went to another toddler group this morning and was slightly panicky about Edward's 'boisterous' behaviour. He seems older than most of the other children, and is much more confident to charge about and get toys etc. Not necessarily a bad thing, just had to be 'on him' all the time!

Looking forward to a better weekend. Got the dough in the breadmaker for the buns, for the home-made turkey burgers which I'll have to attend to next. Then got a kind of fruit sponge pudding which will take a while to make and will have to go in after I've done with the bread.

and what a busy month that was!

Don't know where the time has gone since I last posted. Working backwards from this weekend, it has been more than a bit unpleasant after husband and I had a row following on from me going out on Friday night with the mummies. We're both shattered bascially, so both felt aggrieved and instead of sorting things out quickly it simmered on over the weekend, so not good all round. Last week was trying to say the least. Monday was the first day that the husband had been back at work for two weeks, and I had to manage the nursery run and get back to handling things on my own. Made good progress, but then on Tuesday husband took to his bed ill with man 'flu, and I reached the tipping point with Sarah's sticky eyes which meant I had to take her to the doctors. Sure enough she was diagnosed with conjunctivitis, and was given oral antibiotics and eye drops which she hated, but thankfully she's finished both courses today and her eyes have cleared up. Edward developed a perculiar nappy rash the same day, and Elizabeth came back from nursery with a headache feeling sick, so we were unsure whether or not that would escalate. Thankfully it didn't.

So the two weeks prior to that husband had been at home and we had a mammoth list of jobs to do including move Edward into a bed (having constructed said bed), move the wardrobe from the small room into the children's room, set up the cot in the small room, deconstruct the crib, set up the small room for habitation, take down the conifer tree in the garden, get the Summer duvet dry-cleaned, buy Summer clothes for the children, sort out child tax credit renewals, phone contracts and cashbacks, you name it. We got most of that done, with Sarah finally moving out of our room on Saturday May 7th to sleep in her 'big girl cot'. Still miss her, but she's a growing girl, and had definitely grown out of the crib. She's been rolling around all over the place, and spending more time sitting upright in her Bumbo with a basket of toys to pick from. Edward has been going 'crackers' - not settling in the evening, spitting, fighting, 'spitting fire' like a dragon, racing around in destructive mode, and everyone is rubbish - 'Rubbish Mum', 'Rubbish Dad'. We even toyed with dropping his afternoon nap, but think that we can manage for a little while longer as long as we pretty much sit outside their bedroom to ensure that they both calm down and go to sleep.

During that two week period we also went out to Powiss Castle for a picnic which was great, and also to the Safari Park which was in lieu of Edward's birthday. Not sure how much he took from it really as he didn't enjoy the animal enclosure, but he did like the toddler rides afterwards, and as usual enjoyed the picnic aspect of the day. We took Sarah and Edward to Birmingham for a day of shopping which was nice, we went back to our old lunch-haunt 'EAT' and Edward did really well there (as did Sarah) munching on a cheese baguette. We had an appointment with a bathroom consultant in Homebase, and have just shelled out £45 for the 'bee man' to rid us of mortar bees.

Elizabeth's writing is coming on in leaps and bounds - she is reading most letters, and can sound out some words, she knows the difference between capital letters and lower case ones, and can write lots of words from memory (Mum, Dad, Edward, Elizabeth, Sarah). All good.

As an aside I've bought three new cookery books in an attempt to get more organised in the kitchen. Going to try batch cooking, and am trying to keep the budget down and be more healthy. Week one wasn't too bad. Here goes week two!