The One and Only TEA Room: Everyone Welcome (bring champagne and muffins please!)

[Jacksmama]

Wow, we're on our third thread!!!
Previous (second) incarnation of the tea room.

A warm welcome to everyone, whether you have one child, none, or ten. This is a tea-and-muffin or booze-and-sofasorcanapees sanctuary for all. But certain standards of behaviour continue to apply - anyone engaging in fisticuffs will be ejected by George Clooney, ably assisted by Mellors the Gardener.

Cheers all!

Goodness me - second hand baby clothes - I had never even thought about it! Daisyboy is about 8 years younger than my contemporary friends DCs so they all plied on the stuff
my only thought was
(1) gosh, don't they smell lovely - other people's washing powder always smells so nice
(2) I should have given them much nicer presents as clothes when their DCs were little cos I'd get them back now

I now have hand down clothes, toys, books the lot in fact poor old DaisyBoy I was a bit shocked when I actually had to go into a shop cos he had no tights!

We have a circle at work - nice man with shopaholic wife brings in sacks of clothes (his DCs are old) I use them then bring them back for colleague whose DS is smaller....

all very happy and no money at all

racing give WS a bottle! I only do milk in it - worry that sugar drinks stick on teeth too much - but I think they are so little and so much changes why not do something comforting?

Sitting on the sofa with floppy DS sucking his bottle and rubbing my shirt (real baby comforting) count as some of our best moments - then he's up and at it as a Busy Big Boy again.... life is so short I'm not big on making them grow up....

Of course, if you don't want to that's fine to = this is the Tea Room not Active Convos/ Ebay? the rest of MN etc etc

oh Bocca, in response to your suggestion the other day,

i shall start the ball rolling

55

Ha! Don't believe you Daisy!

73

I've already outed myself elsewhere as Bocca knows but

41

32 and at my peak

Mistle, I'm sure Lady Grey will catch up eventually, probably when she's finished eating the rest of the shrubbery.

Goodness, are we revealing ages?

That calls for a cup of tea. Anyone?

yes please Amber!

Right, I am going to have another go

22

PUT ME DOWN YOU OLD BAT!!

She is 55 you know

I'm glad to report that Lady Grey acted like the perfect lady and didn't pull either way on the lead rein - so we had a lovely ride along the beach that all 3 of us enjoyed.

I'm furtively on MN whilst I hear regular 'DS'..... 'DS'..... 'DS'!.... 'I'm not laughing' from upstairs. I'm leaving dh to it. It was his fault that ds's supper was so late (he thought we'd all eat the same - its just ours wasn't ready until 6.35, so at 6.10 I decided to intervene and find something else - dh left him to it so ds ate the slice of toast and avoided the stew...)(dh will almost certainly eat the stew himself later as it was venison).

I'm somewhere between 29 and 74 (you'd probably guessed that!)

I'm not proud re clothes - if I see some good quality clothes that would be good for MJ in a charity shop, I buy them. I have to get school uniform which costs an arm and a leg - but then you get to holidays and you suddenly realise that the 3 pairs of trousers that have been doing fine for weekends can't cope for 3 weeks... I do sale shop too - often buying next year's clothes. Trouble is I'm a bit fussy re some boys clothes - I don't really want my 3 / 4 yo going round with nasty skull and cross bones, violent cartoon characters etc - and I do wish that not all boys clothes were blue, black, brown and grey and combinations of those. I like orange, green, red, yellow too, and ds even likes pink in moderation. We got a fantastic bundles of jumpers from Ebay a long time ago - I think it had 8 jumpers of various sizes - onto the last few now, but probably paid the equivalent of 1 jumpers worth for the wear of 8 that you really wouldn't have considered at all worn.... I was a bit when someone said that she 'threw' out baby clothes that had been passed down if they didn't have their labels on ie only kept things that hadn't been worn. Perhaps she doesn't have a washing machine??? That's the only explanation I can think of . Anyway, stayed clear of any posts on that thread. Seems to be attracting rather strongly held views that are expressed rather too firmly....

I think that we need this screen to be erected in the tearoom when Mellors gets a bit carried away - may save some blushes (Amber) and remove the need for quite so much of the smelling salts (Daisy)(Daisy - I can see where you're looking. Stop it at once or we'll have the tearoom shut down by the mnpolice)

Its about time for a glass of something isn't it?

36

MT - there is still a bottle of chablis left... want to join me?

I am really (blush] at my complete vanity on the surname front... So the story goes like this...

My maiden name is really really ugly sounding.

DHs surname is rather lovely and with my first name and dds first name has the quality of a movie star's screen name or popular fiction author's pen name....

Urrrrmmmm....

....So I let go of my feminist principles in order for me and dd to have pretty names!!!

To be fair DH said if he had a nasty sounding name and I had a nice one we would have definately all changed to my name which would have made us v 21st century!

Why not Tea ? DH has a not precisely ugly, but not terribly nice surname, and can't understand why anyone would change to it.

MT - we have the same skull/cartoon issue. JL do really nice bright colours, and we got a fab bright green t shirt with white stars this week, made by Moby

Can I have a G&T tonight ?

I'm glad to see that Daisy has been revived and even racingpig seems to be recovering. I'm thinking that Amber should also be our resident first aider, as she is so good at ministering to people's (and horses') needs.

I have given up fighting the fight against cartoons and TV tie-ins but now try to confine it to underwear and pyjamas.

BabyBocca doesn't know it but I have just - promise you won't think less of me for this - bought her some High School Musical vests. We try to buy her clothes abroad, where there seems to be far less of an assumption that girls should be clad head to foot in sugary pink at all times.

Anyone else want a refill?

Mitle, what a coincidence! I too am between 29 and 74. Obviously closer to the upper end, or I wouldn't be a Miracle Of Modern Science.

Had a good day at work today. Got home after a day with never fewer than 32 at times challenging children in front of me, no other adult, feeling quite energised, to find dh totally collasped and helpless having been in charge of two small girls and one guinea pig.

He then lost the guinea pig and I spent half an hour lifting the sofas and peering under cupboards with torches, only to stumble over RacingPig neatly parked in the bathroom in the back of WS's new tipper truck.(£1.99 in a charity shop - am I a totally tight loser?). Oh how we laughed.

DH is now comatose on sofa, having been quite unable to lift a finger after his strenuous day.

Taaaarrrr daaaaarrrr....

G and T for you cmot!!!!

Oh so clothes...
We are often given clothes for milk as presents. We are very eclectic. I love seeing her in her fairy skirt, stripy long cardi and spotty welly boots! I often dress her in - spots and stripes and purposely mismatch her tights!!!!

As a rule, due to milk's toddler poppy belly and tiny bummy trousers just don't work! She has a few boys pairs that work (handed down to her by her future fionce who is a few weeks younger but much much bigger than her) but even one of those pairs fell down while we were waiting for the metro at peak time a few weeks ago.

My Mum has a friend who has a daughter just over one year older than milk so we have quite a few of her dresses, plus ones I bought - urrrmmm - a few over-priced hippyish handmade ones and her prize dress is a rather worn out Moroccan one from a Moroccan friend of ours.

Someone did hand us down some of her daughter's clothes when dd was born.... but I hardly used any - because they were too pink, pink ouch pink and fashion conscious, and some could almost be described as sexy, for my liking!!!!

oooops - It took me so long to chat about clothes that I didn't notice you already have a drink cmot!!!!

Justa - I've met quite a lot actually and heard gossip about several more.