Tearoom 25 - Benvenute a Venezia!

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YOu find us this time in a glorious palazzo in Venice, near to St. Mark's square, and on the water. With gondolas and vaporetti in abundance to transport us around to the various sights etc.

The palazzo itself of course has marble floors and fabulous murano chandeliers but aside of that we have the usual distressed chintz comfy sofas, assorted animals, bishops in their corner, priesthole for emergencies and a single solitary aspidistra in a bomb-proof glass cage to protect it from the ravages of a certain Canadian.

All are welcome - drop by for a cuppa, a glass of something stronger and a chat and relax in the safe and kind surroundings here.

Cin cin!

My grandad used to have whisky in his tea. It's rather a nice combo, especially if you go all "foodie" and put a nice Islay malt (which has a lovely smokey flavour) into Earl Grey. Although if you are doing Tetleys, Bells is just fine.

I shall join the complaints about the non sleeping tots. Gatita (now 18 months) is a terrible sleeper and last night she permitted me around 2-3 hours kip. The sound you can hear are the 3 gallons of tea sloshing aroung my innards. And even so I'm dozing at my desk.

Ok, Lapin. Next time we have a tea room disco we'll imagine that Sid is here strutting his very funky stuff with us!

I was always very proud that from the age of about 2 Girl knew which supermarket we were going to because she could 'read' Tesco, Lidl and Sainsbury's.

::Pushy mother::

*"is the three gallons". Oops. I said I was tired.

Yes, I was thinking we need a "pushy mother emoticon" too.

Catita - I feel your pain.

Sleeping Toddler!

I'm with you there, Scout! I'm on the red myself. Any other takers?

Maud - am pleased to hear that you are similarly promiscuous in the supermarket department. SBoy's vocabularly has long been enriched with the knowledge of Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, "the blue shop" (the pound shop), Aldi.... if it sells things, and most especially if it has special offers/bargains, I will go there.

Serpent, I remember a while back you said you can be either organic or fruit shoot in your approach, and that's us too. I try to get as much organic/free range as I can in our everyday shop (unless the price difference is really too unbearable) but we are great friends with our local McDonald's. Even KFC has the honour of our patronage on occasion. And SBoy can consume infinite quantities of Mr Whippy.

Yes please.

gallons of tea duely sloshed. "family Learning " sessions started today, was played with much tea and given guidance on reading to my child. hoping session 2 will be more... well, just more ,really.

Risotto for tea in chez Uni today, tomorrow shall be pizza I think. May I have a pushy mum sticker for the fact pizza will be cooked from scratch ( except the salami, I draw the line at making my own charcutiere.) Or is it cheating to use tin toms when making tomato sauce? and obviously I do not have own dairy herd so will be buying the cheese .

Congratulation Mistle on your stress fee morning walking teh dog.

here you go, Amber

and a nice pushy mother sticker for you, Unis - in the shape of a helicopter, perhaps? or in your case, maybe more a cath kidston pinny? Speaking as one who has never cooked a pizza from scratch in her life (the Italian down the road does a proper pizza for only £6 takeaway, which I fear disincentivises me), it's hats off to you, lady, even if you do fall at the making your own charcuterie hurdle.

lol at hoping that session 2 will be "just more" (lol at your phrasing I mean, not lol at the disappointingness of it). Sounds pretty uninspiring so far.

All went downhill - the 'accepted' norm is that whoever doesn't do bathtime sorts supper. Got down - nothing happening. Kitchen smelt of fish risotto (mini's supper) and lamb enough to make me (tearoom special) I gave up 30 mins later, fed the dog and got a tin of baked beans which I ate out of the tin, cold. Dh then said that he wasnt really feeling like any supper..... Of course, the lamb bone remains in the kitchen - in 'my' dish - where it has loitered since Monday when he cooked it for himself and mini.

So feeling again.

Suspect session may have been "more" if I had not already done umpteen parents supporting children's development type short courses thanks to sure start. I guess its inevitable, you provide a course on supporting childrens learning and the parents who give up time to come along are the ones who support their childrens learning.
Boy liked coming out of the classroom and me reading to him and then us painting ( jointly) a picture of something in the story.

Sorry to hear, MT

I know what you mean, Unis. Of course it's true. But that last bit you say about reading and painting together does sound really nice at least, so that's one positive outcome of it. I love those special shared times with SBoy. Usually! Whether it's supporting his development or not. I mean, I'm sure it is, but that's not the biggest point.

Am off to bed now. G'night all.

Cheers to amber's good news.

Well done, SBoy, on his spelling.

mistle, on your behalf. I have enough stirfry from tonight's dinner for almost a large portion if you're interested. Won't take more than a minute or two to warm it up for you.

UniS, I know what you're saying about giving up time -- it's the same people over and over. TS is only 18 months and I've already seen it.

TS watered his seeds today. He seemed so proud of himself with his little watering can full of water. And walking back and forth in front of the house, pushing his lawn mower.

I struggled today and fear we had more tv than I would normally like/allow.

'Lo all
Amber am delighted with your news all round

Mistle, so sorry DH is being unfeeling - is he working again? Does he notice that he is acting this way or are you just feeling infuriated and he's blissfully unaware?

I've never made pizza from scratch. Oxpoppins used to and I feel intimidated to try and emulate....I did make fish in breadcrumbs though....

Scout, love image of watering toddler... we have a sunflower seed that Oxboy has high (misplaced) hopes for. I think it's rotted already....

::Clasps Oxeye to her ample bosom::

Hello, my dear. Long time no see.

Sunflowers - Guard against snails and slugs at all times. They can climb to great heights. When I was almost Oxeye's next door neighbour, we used to find snails on our second storey roof terrace.

I wondered whether Amber would have any advice for this MNer. It sounds awful for her but I have no idea what to suggest.

Morning Tea Room.

LCT got out of bed again this morning. Luckily it was 6am this time!! I think it's time to close the baby gate on his room at night.

MT I think it's time for a serious discussion with your DH.

Looks like a lovely day in Belfast. Off to the farmers market this morning. Later!!

Poor TS. He just stood at the top of the stairs wailing and calling for his Daddy (complete with stretching arms and full-body sobs) as MrScout went off to work. MrScout is usually well into his commute by the time TS gets up so we don't normally have the separartion anxiety (but MrScout was late this morning).

Morning all. Tee, agree with you on need to close the stairgate thingy and see what happens.

Scout, eek re separation anxiety - hope he settles..

Maud, you suffered high flying snails when living next to Oxeye? I shall make an extra note in the health and safety instructions for the tea room saying "Thou Shalt Not Fling Thy Garden Snails Onto the Balcony" with a picture of Oxeye next to it

I'll follow that link.

I should be packing for our wild weekend. I'm not. I'll build up to it.

available, as ever.

::sits down on the distressed chintz sofa, narrowly avoiding a Rabbi and a couple of tea room chickens::

TS was easily distracted with Bunny, Creamy (the new bunny the Easter Bunny brought him who he loves almost as much as Bunny) and Cheerios.

Do I go to Toddlers or Soft Play this morning? I want to go out for a bit and let TS have a good run around with other kids but can't decide which is the lesser of two evils today.

The greatest evil today is my Tax return. not recommended for toddler scout to run around in. Soft play, you can ignore all the other adults there. Unless adult company is what you want in which case go to tots.

Doing my tax return has flagged up that one of my savings accounts don;t seem to have sent me a statement of any sort in a year, AND I can;t get through the telephone security set up to do any thing about it AND the nearest branch is 25 miles away. ARRRRRGH.

Ho HUm, move onto teh next task for eth day....

Unis whistles as she puts teh kettle on , mashells NMBs for a bath and puts all teh teeny tiny gondolier driver suits in the wash.

Amber - At the risk of sounding like an utter creep, may I say that your advice on the other thread was so kind and compassionate (and constructive and practical) that it made me feel a bit ::sniff::

Thanks. So hard to cover everything in one bit of advice, but with a lifetime of experience sometimes I can think of a few things that might work.

Right, last of packing, off we go!

Have fun Amber!

I think I'm probably feeling rather low. Went to see Dr a bit ago about heavy bleeding - she advised scan - got that done - said go and see a consultant - did that - he said (after doing a test) that there's nothing actually wrong, but if things left to themselves, the chances of something going wrong will be increased significantly... So, options for treatment - the first was ibuprofen family so ruled out immediately - the second would deal with the obvious problem but wouldn't actually do anythign to stop it, the 3rd was Mirena. So I've had to finally accept that MC will not have any siblings, come what may. Realistically, there's nothing actually different from what it was anyway - because it wasn't going to happen. However, that's rather the final nail in the coffin ifyswim.....

Anyway, glad its been raining a bit this week - won't have to water the garden this week, although the grass REALLY needs mowing (of course, that's one of my jobs )

I see that the NMB bath was very enthusiastic, but as their uniforms are all drying, they're all posing as statues around the room.... some slightly more effectively than others too