Tea Room The 24th - San Francisco Painted Lady!

[Tee2072]

Welcome to the 24th incarnation of the One-Child Tea Room. Not that you only have to have one! Just so long as you enjoy chat, tea, coffee, cake!!

The usual rules apply - no bunfighting. If you like that sort of thing, go elsewhere.
Other rules: bring . Or .

Our ongoing voyage take us to one of San Francisco's Painted Ladies!

We've brought the Aga over, it's in the back in the cosy kitchen overlooking the back garden. The chintz sofa is in the front room, under the bow window! All of the pillows and duvets have come along as well!

What's that? The Priest Hole? It's just over there --> behind the bookcase!

Mellors is upstairs, preparing the bedrooms for naps and such.

The aspidistras are thriving as they overlook Nob Hill! The horses have found themselves stabled in the Garden, which is much larger than these places usually are in this city!

So come in and have a seat!

::tea hurries off to Powell Street to catch the Cable Car to Ghirardelli Square::

Aww.

[pom] [pom] [pom]

So the pom emoticon doesn't work then.

Oh, it does if you do it properly.

Awww. I love when JB does that.

(((((HUGS))))) to everyone going to hospital today or feeling I'll or looking after unwell toddlers. If a hug doesn't work for you, then by Tea Room magic, it morphs into whatever does work :)

I'm getting very used to real hugs now - getting lots off people and it's not too scary at all. Home, fine, yippee. Bit of confusion as to who my old female friend was that accompanied me, but I think we cleared up any confusion about whether she is my partner, lol! Thank you everyone

::hands Catita the tea room duvet in exchange for a bowl of trifle::

Hi all

Once again sorry to be MIA. Spent the day in bed with some sort of horrid achy/vomity/fevery bug. Better now although still a bit of a headache and major cold.

Glad it went well Amber.

Scout LCT often comes and puts his head in my lap but has never fallen asleep that way. We cosleep and he has fallen asleep with his head on my tummy though!

Big difficult dinner of fish, chips and peas tonight!

Catita, when Wriggle had an episode a couple of years ago of being frightened of ghosts, DH made up lots of stories about friendly ghosts, dressed them both up in sheets to play etc until for a while ghosts were her favourite thing. Could you do something similar with shadows? Have friendly shadows that come out to play at night and maybe bring toys/grapes/leave little drawings for Kittenito?

When I was a student and between courses I worked FOH in a theatre and got very keen on the idea of stage management. I got interviews at a couple of drama schools but can't really remember what happened ... I think it sort of fizzled out. I got to meet a few slightly famous people (like Johnny Morris and Rowan Atkinson) and made a couple of friends with whom I have now lost touch but occasionally see in episodes of Casualty. I do practically know several plays off by heart, including (my favourites) Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, A View From The Bridge and Caberet.

Oh no, no, oh no!!!

The day I was going to have Milk's birthday party is already taken by another child at school... I was tipped off by a Mother that Milk's afternoon had been nabbed early (fancy sending invites out a month and a half before, eh?). Sob, sob, sob!!!

I'm not sure what to do now... offering a birthday treat instead might be the way to go as Grandparents have booked eurostar over already to celebrate birthday with Milk. Will have to find out exact time they were arriving...

PHEW,eeeeek, shudder! The politics of being a Mum BLEEEAAAUUUGH!

Cat - I REALLY like unserps idea of nice friendly shadows. What about finding some v cute and v non-threatening shadow puppets?

Oh dear Tea: but does it have to be the end of the world if she has her birthday party on a day other than her birthday? K had his the weekend before. He was very pleased to have "two" birthdays in one week and not at all peeved that he had to go to nursery all day on his real one.

And UnSerpent: that sounds like an absolutely great idea. Thank you. I shall begin the "shadows are his best pals" routine right now.

Well... I think it would be best to do the birthday thaaaang while my parents are here.

Yes, I can see that birthday party with grandparents would be better, but she doesn't know the date of her birthday yet, does she? I presume that they are not coming for a single day? Couldn't you do the day after or the day before? Alternatively, I think at that age a treat is far more fun at least for the parents.

Perhaps Tea could be like Girl (and Oxeye HM The Queen) and have two birthdays? Girl shares a birthday with another family member, so there's always a family celebration then, and then a girlie shriekfest with her friends shortly after that.

All went well today :)

That's good to hear, Mary. Are you sitting with your feet up?

::Sends Mellors to minister to Mary's every need::

Glad things are positive for amber and Mary!

Will read back but just to say, Tea, last year Oxboy had his party a month before his actual birthday because Oxbloke was off Limpopoing on the actual birthday. Oxboy loved it, on his actual birthday we did something else- family day out (well boy and I day out) and he ended up with about four cakes!

Mary and Amber glad things are going well for you

Mistle, well done on teh singing - saw a bit on tele to try and spot you

am interested in the readjustment of relationship theory -Tea I wasn't meaning to be unsympathetic re Beer by the way

I wonder if it is always a point of adjustment and difficult when the adjustment in your primary relationship is due to the endlessly complicating process of parenting? I wonder also if at the period of birth and early childhood mothering tends to come to the fore and mums will often totally sideline father (perhaps because of practicalities of bf or co sleeping etc) and be very much baby focussed and perhaps that focus begins or changes or shifts as the DC gets a little older

I am tired, but interested and pondering on this

(I still can't find my way back to the other TR by the way....nothing comes up - I used to get alerts when people posted but not even that now....)

::drowsily::

Oxeye - Yes, I think that's it. I think it's about adjustment, about coming out of that phase where everything is about the baby and other aspects of life/relationship have perforce to take a back seat, and about what happens if partners emerge from that phase at different times (or not at all). That's why, speaking generally, I think the age of the child might be significant, in that things like starting pre-school or school - and things associated with them, like going going back to work - might be triggers for some of these relationship gear-changes.

i wwill continue to ponder this.

Oxeye, on FB go to the search thingy at the top and put in the word Groups. It will shows you a Groups App. Choose that, and your FB groups will be revealed. Weird but true. It doesn't update our main pages much because of the security settings, so a determined trek to it is required.

I also agree with the thoughts re adjustment and children. In the very early years it had to be 100% focus on ds for a lot of the time - and it nearly drove us to distraction because we 'lost sight' of ourselves as a couple, through exhaustion and stress. Once we had a bit of time to ourselves, to rediscover our own marriage, things settled down. But it took a lot of communicating and a lot of effort (especially given our particular communication challenges if we're stressed!). Was it worth it? Oh yes.

Hmmmm... very interesting re relationships!

I will contact my parents to discover their exact date of arrival as they have been foggy about it. In the grand scheme of things when birthday party takes place isn't important at all, the Mother said "Oh no, you can't have it on that day it is ....'s party! Everyone has the invites already." Quite stiffly. I think the delivery of the information sent me into Chicken Licken in his panic pants mode!

I am now feeling quite ZEN about the whole thing!!!

Very pleased to hear that Mary and Amber have both got through their procedures without too much bother - hurrah!

Tea - bum to the other mum hijacking Milk's prospective birthday party date but I'm sure you'll find an appropriate alternative.

Went to Sydney by myself for the day today - although I was only actually there for 4 hours, the other 4 were spent travelling - had a good time wandering around "Paddy's Markets" and bought a few bits, then saw the osteopath (who is fanTAStic) and came home.

In addition to eyes oozing gunk we now have high temperature and cranky TS to deal with. He's pale and an oven and miserable. Calpol and summer pjs and (oh the shame) tv with cuddles are our friends today.

TS fell asleep on my lap as we cuddled and watched cartoons. I've just put him down to bed -- he woke up as I stood up but he hasn't protested being put down.