July 2010: now they're all 1, some me-time has begun [huge feck-off sarcasm emoticon]

[CakeandRoses]

am bf A and telling F off and have still come to the rescue.

Memph ! I never realised you were married before! How old were you?
We want to get married but I don't want the expense of a huge wedding but iy cant be small either as we both have loads of aunts uncles and cousins and friends

kk he was a fraudster and got me in to lots of shit I shouldnt have had to deal with, the stress made me ill after he left and a few weeks later I had a stroke, but I sold out house for double the price we paid and spent a year after recovering by travelling all over the uk going to gigs as he thought he would get the money back when he had half of what was mine when we divorced so my solicitor said spend it and have fun so I did! I was 19, I got caught up in a whirlwind of interfearing family so what should have been a loooong engagement ended up being a year. We have got aunts and uncles but I wont invite them to the day, none of my dads family will be informed at all, My friend had a wedding last year £25 grand it was vile, a week later another friend got married in a little hotel in a recession friendly package 45 people to a sit down 3 course meal (which was lovely) followed by disco and buffet for 100 at night and it was the best wedding I have ever been to so nice and small! her dress was amazing worth 2 grand and got it at a wedding fayre for £300. I did suggest just changing my name by deed poll but he wasnt having any of it!

oh dear just been reading the judgy pants thread it appears im a chav, my punctuation is bad, I have tattoos...one that says Lyndon too , L has a mowhawk (although natural as he has no hair on the sides!) im going to hide on here from now on I clearly dont fit in anywhere else on mn!

My punctuation is better than great, I have no tattoos and neither of the dcs have mowhawks. It appears I can stay

Seriously though, I have no desire to speak to anyone other than you lot, and only stuff I wouldn't care if anyone knew - private stuff is for facebook only (at least our group is secret so not party to all the mess that's going on with privacy atm)

In other words they can pull their judgey pants up their arse memph, who needs 'em? :)

Feck 'em and the horse they rode into town on memphis I have tattoos I changed the way my dd's name should be spelt and apparantly caused her problems for life, I speak like billy connelly and would be classed as a ned not a chav (non educated delinquent) and as mlisc says I'd rather be her speaking to you ladies than anyone else on here.

Is that what ned stands for stac (non educated delinquent)? I never knew that. I know the word cos we have Scottish friends. There's a wine over here called "Ned", always makes me laugh when I see it.

Oh and I don't really post anywhere else on MN (apart from Living Overseas sometimes), I find it all a bit repetitive and sometimes quite judgy. Some of it does come over as quite snobby compared to here. Not that there's no snobbery here at all because it exists everywhere I suppose, but people are much less aware of class etc here I think.

Well thats me feel a lot better!
I went bed at 7 last night, I felt so ill, really sick and shakey, I was writhing around in pain all night and have woken up fine today I dont know what it was but also dont know how L slept as dh dealt with everything! I ordered a swimming costume from next for my day trip to CP tomorrow and need to collect it from store today...I didnt realise its the big 2 day sale there this weekend so its going to be hell!

I can't make him sleep any longer than half an hour, whether he's fed to sleep or not it's always half an hour 40 mins tops.

I'm going to a Jamie Oliver party tonight, I've never been to one before but know people that have. Good luck to dh tonight

I have done most of the food today for the buffet. There's tonnes! Oh well it won't go to waste.

Glad you're feeling better today memph

What's the job then cake?

kk couldn't you just have a really small wedding but then invite all the family to a big party afterwards? Keep everyone happy?

We were eating party food for the week after E's party mlic to make sure it didn't go to waste!
We could have a small wedding like you say and party afterwards but a lot of people would be travelling quite far so it nearly has to be worth their while! dp was asking the other day how many people would we have to invite and I told him when he proposes we'll worry about that! I'd love to do something a bit different but don't know what!

mlic I did loads for L's party and it all went I was gutted I expected to be able to eat buffet for the next week!
kk I wanted to go to lapland and get married there and they people who wanted to come could come for one night, but I know it wont happen soif we do it here 45 max to the day then I would need a venue that holds around 200-250 to the night do! and there arent many that big around here!

Well we have had our laptop 18 months and L pushed it off of the coffee table with the charger in and damaged the charger point, laptop repair shop say the motherboard will need replacing and they suggest going to samsung for them to fix it! I have enough charge on it to get all of my pictures off, I just need a memory stick big enough to hold them all, so for now im on the old relic I bought years ago.
I picked up my swimsuit, its awful its a halter next and the pit that is suppost to go under the boobs is halfweay down my ribs as I have a long body, so im going to cp tomorrow and have no costume! fuckity fuck

memphis some friends of mine got married in Vegas and invited people, not expecting anyone to come along, but quite a few did.

Our dog did that to our laptop (ran past and tripped over the lead and pulled it onto the floor). We now keep everything vaguely expensive/fragile etc way up high out of the reach of dogs and small children. Dh is convinced G has taken his wallet and watch (he has lost both in the last few weeks) - I keep telling him to put them up high out of reach.

Clocks went forward for spring here last night so even though both of them were up at 5-something the clocks said 6-something so it didn't feel as bad .

HOpe the christening goes well mlic

sorry for my unintentional cliffhangers re job and homework! have been reading but no time/hands to post - not least cos babygirl has been up for the last 2 evenings

had a lovely day in london today - went to choose a watch for my birthday present from dh. very excited now as he won't let me have it til my bday!

homework - i'm really against enforced homework, particularly for the primary years. a) they're in school being taught for enough hours, it really isn't necessary to do more afterwards imo - learning stuff you're interested in is actually remarkably quick b) the 'rules' are made around the lowest common denominator - ie the few parents that don't do stuff with their children whereas the rest of us will be reading etc with them anyway c) if my children and i want to read together then we'll read what we want to read and not what someone else has dictated. i could go on.... i know of parents who stated at the outset that they didn't want their child to have to do homework and the school were ok about it so we'll see.

keen to hear all of your views.

job - nothing might even come of it - it was just an email convo between a director and i but if it did then it would be a promotion and it's technically full-time but that's not an option for me so would have to try to make it fit part-time hours i;m kinda half hoping he doesn't take it any further so the decision is made for me!

hope the christening goes really well mlic. cake sounds great!

memph buy an external hard drive - they don't cost that much and are good for regular backups

dh how did the party go?

Hmm, I've never actually had a view on homework really. I actually don't know how little or much they get here.

I don't think tiny children should get loads but I do think there are benefits to children (gradually) learning to work independently at home. I suppose they will have to do it eventually (secondary school and probably at some stage work preparation outside of work hours) so it's not a bad habit to get into early. I'm not really anti it at all as long as there's not too much of it at a young age.

I have a feeling they don't get loads here though.

I don't know specifics re how much they get, but I'm not opposed to homework in principle. My next door neighbour's dd1 is 6. She adores school, loves learning, loves doing homework and is forever telling me what she's learnt/asking me to give her words to spell etc. She hates school holidays and can't wait to go back. When I did my placement in a school when pregnant with ds2 I used to mark the spellings - you could tell the kids who worked outside of the classroom (with or without their parents) and those who didn't.

In a similar vein I have ishooos with home ed. I have seen a few documentaries involving kids being home educated and they seriously did hardly any 'academic' stuff. It was all, colouring in, going to playparks, planting trees and shit. Which is all fine and well for 6yos but these were 14ish. One family pretty much let their children work their farm with them under the pretence (imo) that is was education

Well I dozed on the couch last night then come bedtime couldn't sleep for worrying about food/seating/ds2 screaming in church etc. Then he was up at 5am. He went back to sleep, but all in all I haven't had a restful night.

Super-shit night here too. Smallstuff is getting a top molar and its driving her mad.

I reckon I'd feel much more comfortable with the school process there wss. Tis interesting how they start later and it all seems less rigid and yet I bet outcomes are similar.

Yes but mlic surely, any decent parent wouldn't dream of not supporting their child's learning out of school? its one of the most important parts of parenting imo. It doesn't need to be called 'homework' and dictated by an education body tho. Formal schooling is by no means the only or indeed the best way to learn.

The way its going F will probably be reading before he starts school as he's started sounding letters and tries to read signs, packaging etc wherever he is out but he shows little interest in numbers (can barely count to 20). I help him with whatever he's interested in, later on if that happens to be spelling or formal homework then that's fine. Broadly speaking that is the concept behind the autonomous home ed you probably saw in the program. There's different types and obv good and bad within them. Some home ed is as academic and structured to the nc as schools. Home ed has similar/better academic outcomes than schools afaik.

i am back from Grannys....

I do agree that perhaps a combo of both prepares them better for life in the real world tho - like you say wss getting them used to working independantly and even having to do stuff they don't want to. I just feel that there's no rush for that.

Welcome back the husk-formerly-known-as-ph.

How did it go....?

Have you forgiven me yet?

welcome back tsc! bet you're glad that's over...

J appears to have dropped the bedtime feed. I was expecting that to be the last to go. DH is going to try doing bedtime for the first time tonight. It's quite freeing really - I might actually be able to do things in the early evening occasionally now. I've been so used to having to be there for bedtime every night for 14 months, it's going to be weird that it doesn't always have to be me!

wow woodlands really? was he just not showing an interest? congrats and good luck for tonight!

my bet it's the latter going by some of her previous stuff. not that that helps you. I think you're a saint for putting up with her the way you do.

so you gonna let rip on here or do we need to drag it out of you?