Gardening in the winter sun. 40-something mums Christmas thread

[somewherebecomingrain]

40-something mums with babies of all ages - please join us. The 20-something and 30-something mums will never satisfy you like this thread.

rosie have an amazing trip! How long are you away for? Hope there is wifi and 3G and we can get travellers tales.

eagle awesome metaphor for returning to work. Good luck good luck. You are so efficient (vanish bag, buckle sling, I might get an expedit now too) you must be a prize for any employer and will enjoy it.

Xx

Some drama but will get there. 3 weeks is a long time. .. I've had to pack full spectrum of clothes for rosebud accounting for growth! !! The weather is changeable and it's cold at night. At least I can leave what she grows out of behind.I'm sure someone will be glad of it. ;)
Dh has still not even started packing but that's his problem. He's still out buying! !!
4am start and dinner not started yet. Trying really hard to stay calm! !!
Still having panics. No car chair is so scary and wrong. Deep breath.

Stage 1 complete. Made it to the airport and evrone still smiling.

Bravo Rosie !

Last day before work!

Not a great day - DD throwing up everywhere, and my work clothes all look faded, bobbly and ill-fitting.

Good luck Eagle for tomorrow. Hope Baby E was just overfed and has nothing serious, fx.
Wanted to go in town to exchange cloth but no tube service, went home, could not be bothered with the bus.... So had a nap with DS !

Eagle have a fab first day back.

37 hours travelling and rosebud didn't cry once. It was so wonderful to watch her take in all the new experiences, sounds and smells :) i wish i could have got a pic of her as the plane landed. .. her huge eyes doubled in size and her eyeballs wobbled :)
Been on a bit of a roller coaster since, this is a hard country. I'm being reminded of all the reasons I don't like it. It's really gone backwards since the 'revolution' poverty and dirt are the most prominent features. It's less safe than i hoped and dd and I will be confined to the house for most of our stay. No way i would be able to go outside alone with her and even with dh it would be uncomfortable. For the first time EVER he suggested that I wear abiah (full length black dress thing) if we go out!!!! Feels very wrong and oppressive.
Mil stories that will have you weeping for my sanity but will indulge when i have more time.
Big waves to all xxx
Ps I'm glad I've got socks! It's bloody freezing ;)

Glad to hear from you Rosie. Try to make the most of it. It sounds scary and v oppressive. Hope you will manage to forget about outside world

Scarecrow, how is DD now ? Did you manage to entertain T ?
Eagle, hope thisfirst day went ok, v sweet from nursery to send you such a lovely update, poor DP after drop off, I cried a few times too with DS and feel v sad sometimes with A, especially after hols.
I am debating with myself whether I should try to find a part time job as an employee on top of being self employed a few days a month. I miss the social life but don't want to leave DS when on hols. I want to be here when he is. I should be thankful I can be a SAHM.
Projects for this year: make 2 advent calendars, sell unwanted stuff, baby toddler and women clothes and toys, make DS photo album (his last one stops when he was 2), make A's album, finish wedding album (! 7 years), find fabric for curtains, change 2 windows, draftproof 2 windows and a door, find time for friends and family, sit down and enjoy time for myself (I am the annoying multi tasking busy bee that gives headaches to people around me), read.

Oh ladies; might i suggest a whilst I amuse you with my cultural woos.
Yesterday was a day of horrors! ! I fucking hate this country.
nightmare stated about 3.5 mins after arriving! Not bad for Egypt. Immigration was a nightmare. I now have it hand written in my passport that i am 'married to an egyptain' and i am steaming angry. To quote eagle my piss is boiling! !! This apparently means i can be treated like an egyptain (confused). I will be getting a new passport when i get home.

X posts Bbd. I love your list. .. I've been mentally preparing mine during my 37 hours of travel and will post when finalised. :)

Dh friend picked us up from airport (eventually) and i was deposited along the bags with the Russian wife of dh friend in her hotel room. Thankfully she was lovely. She has a geourgous 3 month old. She gave me a large vodka and everything i neededffor dd to bath, play, , sleep during our 6hour wait for bus. Dh went and met his friends and 'wet the babies head' at the hotel bar. < no suitable emotion>
The bus was awful the tv played constant Arabic films for 9 fucking hours. .. loud. My ears we're hurting. It truly was torturing. I also had to feed, change and amuse dd while dh snored and stank of beer. Oh ladies i forgot. ... We couldn't take the planned bus for some (egyptain) reason so had to take the bus dh has been saying for a week is to dangerous to take! !!

Cairo was a shock. I've not been since the revolution and it's a very different place. Very sad as it was an amazing city. It's filthy. .. really filthy. I didn't want dd breathing the air its that filthy.

Gosh Rosie you really are reporting from the front line. Sounds like your journey was rather trying, but am glad you had the Russian wife to help out. Please keep reporting back - it's nice to know that you are ok.

By the way, I found during my travels around Central/South America by bus that generally, the more women and small children on board, the more violent/sexual the movies they played were

Am home now and trying to decompress after my first day back at work. Everything is really ok, but my heart isn't really in it - yet. Office is nice location, people are friendly and helpful, but it's the whole returning to work thing, plus I am terribly, terribly institutionalised from my old job which I left when I had DD. It was a massive workplace in comparison but that made it so easy as it functioned like a small town. Plus, as time went by, it became smaller and smaller as I got to know so many people there.

Am reassured to find that my marbles haven't left me - my 'work' head is screwed back on and I feel like I know what I'm doing, but just feel a bit meh about the whole thing. I left 15 mins early today in order to get to nursery for 6pm but stupidly took what I thought was a quick route home and got stuck in a big queue of traffic. So then got to nursery 15 mins after pick-up time and burst into tears when I arrived. I think I was experiencing what DD has in the past - getting through the day without thinking about things too much and then being reunited you suddenly remember your loved one and it's just too much. Funny thing was, while I was sobbing into her hair, she was cheerfully waving at everyone heading out the nursery door!

Didn't get home til nearly 7 in the end and I'm now trying to get packed lunches done, clothes washed and everything packed for tomorrow then bed within the hour.

Sorry for long whinge - it all feels a bit overwhelming at the moment. I need but ought to steer clear tonight...

Have faith Rosie. At least you have internet ! We will try to entertain you.
Eagle, glad your first day was ok. You might need a bit of time to readjust but you will get there, don't worry. Baby Eagle is in good hands, this is the most important.
As for me, discovered tonight that the leak in DS' room has gone further down into the dining room as well. Please please stop this rain.

Eagle. Well done. Sounds like you nailed the first day. It will get easier and become a whole new normal.

Iovedreading your post. IIt's like a route map of what's to come. I hope i can achieve it as gracefully as you have.

Also get the downloading on here. .... This really is a fabulous place to off load :)

It's fucking noisy here. .. a whole new level of noise. .. 8 people in other room and at least 6 different conversion being had at competing volume. Constant beep beep beep outside and the odd wedding passing (all stereos on full throwing fireworks )Oh and phones going constantly. My head can't cope.

Eagle. Well done. Sounds like you nailed the first day. It will get easier and become a whole new normal.

Iovedreading your post. IIt's like a route map of what's to come. I hope i can achieve it as gracefully as you have.

Also get the downloading on here. .... This really is a fabulous place to off load :)

It's fucking noisy here. .. a whole new level of noise. .. 8 people in other room and at least 6 different conversion being had at competing volume. Constant beep beep beep outside and the odd wedding passing (all stereos on full throwing fireworks )Oh and phones going constantly. My head can't cope.

Eagle. Well done. Sounds like you nailed the first day. It will get easier and become a whole new normal.

Iovedreading your post. IIt's like a route map of what's to come. I hope i can achieve it as gracefully as you have.

Also get the downloading on here. .... This really is a fabulous place to off load :)

It's fucking noisy here. .. a whole new level of noise. .. 8 people in other room and at least 6 different conversion being had at competing volume. Constant beep beep beep outside and the odd wedding passing (all stereos on full throwing fireworks )Oh and phones going constantly. My head can't cope.

Rosebud would like the other babies to know she's having a wonderful holiday and her tita is lovely. She gets picked up all the time and gets to stay up really late!Lots Iof new faces make odd loud screeching noises at her a everyone wants to touch her face. Her Mummy had a bit of a meltdown in a taxi today while i was on Buba's knee in the front when the driver kept stroking my face and playing with me in the traffic jam(s)
Oh and I also taste something really yummy today :) it was cold and sweet and tasted of sunshine. Mummy would only let me have a few licks though in case i am lergic to it. It's called mish mish.
My mummy worries to much so I'm being really good which is making her very happy.
She's just finished her milk and going to let hmummy have lots of sleep now.
Xx

Reading your posts with huge interest. rosie so fascinating. I can almost smell the place.

eagle it's like the plates of the earth shifting all that going back to work/leaving your child. Well done.

bbd I'm gonna get my list up. Why is there not a social network based entirely round women's to do lists?

Xxx

Much better here today thankfully, no matter how much I try to prepare myself it always gets me. Lol the cultural change from being a British woman in England to an egyptain wife (grrrr) in Egypt is tough. All my personal boundaries need reset and I always struggle. Does feel like lve done it

Although it's not comfortable. Accepting the change is hard. Being stared at Is hard. The idiots that drive past over and over to stare at the White woman piss me off. Went shopping with sil today which was fun. We will go again with mil and without dh. I'm getting used to being shaperoned but it still bugs me i can't go out alone.

Cultural shocks, I know what you mean Rosie. I get that in my birth country, they can spot me from far although I am VNese, probably by my body language. First time I went back, I was travelling with a fair tall hairy boyfriend, kids in villages followed us as if we were Santa Claus and young people stared at us, older generation is more used too Westerners, they had seen French and American in the past. Did not enjoy my trip at all. Had an identity crisis when came back to France.

I completely understand Bbd i went to Vm in 2004. Here is very similar. I want to wash all the children and brush their hair. Dress them in clean pretty clothes. They are so beautiful. Is so sad to see them playing in street dirt, barbed wire and armed soldiers in the streets. Burnt out government buildings and angry graffiti on every wall. We are so privileged that are babies have such a clean safe country to live in. Our first world problems seen so disrespectful here.

Today is the second day of voting on the new constitution. Even from the balcony of the apartment i can feel the tension has ramped right up. It's a big day for the country. There is huge divide in the people. 12 million people 1/2 for 1/2 against. All angry. It's a lose lose situation. I pray it passes peacefully.

just had a long catch up on news. Rosie it really is like reading live reporting, fascinating, though I feel your frustration. Long may Dd continue to thrive on it though. I would also find the chaperoning claustrophobic too.

I agree somewhat about first world problems. But I also think we should not be too hard on ourselves about some issues we struggle with. Most obviously because we all live in our own time and place, but mist importantly because some dilemnas are in their own way very tough and more likely to occur in the first world - pertinently for us the pressure to work, whatever form that takes. having a choice can in some ways be tough, as there is seldom an obvious right/wrong so always room for doubt and guilt. I am not at all dismissive of the practical differences, so hope I do not cone across as lacking compassion for what life must be like for most people in Egypt - and frankly much if the world.

Lucy had high temp again today. Basically unless she is on maximum Calpol her temp is over 40. She did perk up again though so hope that we are coming out the other side. She even ate sone supper. I feel ghastly and fantasise about being admitted to hospital as I long long long for just one day not responsible for the children - for Stuart to say go to bed and I'll deal with it. As he flies to S Africa for two weeks on Friday this is not going to happen unless I am hospitalised.Which obviously I won't be. Am trying not to be totally overwhelmed by return to work after he cones back: feel totally exhausted, want to sob when I Thu knot leaving Tom, feel overwhelmed by all the chores I've not done and fighting a horrible sense I've wasted my last ever chance to spend all my time with the children. I've never even done baby classes with Tom. Hardly taken him swimming. In fact um going.to have to stop this as I need to switch off the panic before bed time!!

and,