December 2011 - they'll soon be one, put away the <haddocks> and bring out the bunting!

[seven77]

I loved kate's thread name but thought we needed a birthday theme for this one. We'll soon have 6 weeks of birthdays to celebrate!

I am making comfort food. Sugared gammon. Booya!

Happy Birthday Hope!

I saw every hour tick by last night... until I got up at 5.30am to get ready for work. Walking dead. Thanks Freya!

Afternoon all

Happy Birthday Hope!

Oh yes, Happy Birthday Hope.

I now have great visions of an amazing pirate cake for Seb's birthday. No doubt it will end up just being a round cake decorated with chocolate buttons....

Turns out I didn't need that kick. I registered on childcare.co.uk and 7 CM have contacted me already. I have visits lined up with 3 of them already. One of them is literally a 10 minute walk from home. Please let her be lovely.....

Thanks thecat we're seven hours behind, so yes, it's breakfast time. Not that Harrison ate much this morning.

I hope your local childminder is exactly what you're looking for

Off to a Breastfeeding support group this morning. Its nice to get out of the house.

Hi merry.

LMF hope everyone is ok and your day improved :)

air happy birthday to Hope! I'd have been furious about the cake too.

muffin DS didnt walk until he was 2 either. Glad to hear meeting the other boy with CP went well, I confess our fears about bullying were what initially drew us towards Home Ed.

DD done 16 steps yesterday, her most ever. She was in the front room with DH, and walked towards the window when she saw me hanging the washing out. She says bye bye, bottle, baby and juice. She also shakes her head when we say no.

Thanks for the sheet recommendations, I got carried away and spent £100 in John Lewis .

Hi all! We had a lovely, relaxing Internet-free weekend away, in spite of us both catching minimopsy's bug. Our lovely planned meals didn't happen nor did the copious wine I'd imagined but never mind, we still had a fab time! Will try catch up on thread later, back in work-work-work-must-finish-thesis mode!

lmf how's the hair? Has fb got a pic yet? Hope it's ok.
Happy birthday Hope! Your cake was fab air, well done!
figgy I also have a head-banger. BOi likes to sit against the patio door, lean forward, then bang his head back against the glass, gradually hitting harder and harder... Testing his skull thickness I presume. I'm sticking my head in the sand and denying that I've probably got a meathead, future rugby player, and will continue to believe that he shall be a brilliant scientist or some such intelligent super hero who will save the world person.
kat I registered with childcare.co.uk, I'll have to check my profile settings/ be more flexible with my requirements, because no one has contacted me.
Germany was ok. I am convinced that half of the team here don't like me. I'm too straightforward/honest (customer-oriented) and I upset their sensitive engineering male (technology-oriented) brains.
I'm not great at politics and saying the right thing. I'm not as diplomatic as I should be. But then, I haven't got the time to play games and pussyfoot about either. These boys need to mum up!

I also registered on simply childcare but not sure if they are london orientated. They do have lots of helpful info on what to look for, contracts holiday stuff and employment issues.

I found my nanny on a local forum where lots of local families advertise stuff for sale, chat about baby things and playgroups are advertised. The other thing i did was to ask friends where they found their nannies and if they had ant friends looking for work.

We just had our nanny for her first day and DS1 did not like the idea of me going out so we all hung out together all day - slightly awkward! She's back tomorrow and I'm off to get ng hair done so they'll gave to get on without me...

Hiya. Happy birthday to Hope!

Making xmas crackers for school fete with the DDs. So glad I'm not organising it this year, it's always a major headache getting enough helpers, sigh...Am trying to be supportive to my friends who head up the PTA, they are doing a grand job. My brain is now in what-needs-doing-next mode (that to-do list is depressingly long!!!)

I made the cardinal sun of going with the first cm we saw didn't even think about anyone else due to her being a 6 minute walk away and now she picks up, drops off and feeds him lunch and dinner for £3.75 an hour I will cry of she stops for any reason.

Urgh I shall say just one word: norovirus. You may remember I was moaning mid-last week about DS vomiting in the night? Well he then had no symptoms for 48 hours which brought us to Friday, the day we were having Thanksgiving dinner, so I washed everything thoroughly and thought we were ok (DH and I were fine). We had 8 people coming, including my dad flying from DC from the weekend and my aunt from Paris overnight. And - you guessed it - every single person went home after my slaved-over massive Thanksgiving meal and swiftly revisited it in the toilet between 24 and 36 hours afterwards I feel HORRIBLE especially as my dad had to get on a plane and my aunt on the Eurostar feeling like death Worst Thanksgiving ever. Everyone is being really nice except my mother who is saying we should have known and cancelled Thanksgiving. Well SHE knew about DS's vomiting earlier in the week - so why didn't she insist?? Grr...

Aaaanyway. Moving swiftly on. There will be other Thanksgivings in our future, although we will be talking about this one for years to come, oh joy of joys...

air that cake is fabulously pretty, good work!! Happy belated birthday to Hope, how fast has that year gone...

Oi we advertised on childcare.co.uk for a nanny and had loads of nice responses, but we ended up hiring our lovely cleaner's childhood friend/flatmate after she babysat for DS a few times. Also we signed up with PAYE for nannies who drew up a precedent contract - they deal with all the tax and NI and issue monthly payslips. I think a lot of nannies read the nanny forum here on MN too, they advised me when I was a bit confused about whether it would be acceptable to pay our nanny on a p.a. basis rather than by the hour (which would have bankrupted us).

moose welcome! Funny about the different words to the eensy weensy spider. My parents are from New England and say eensy weensy like the UK. However there are other US/UK differences that I have noticed - my DH's family sang DS a song about the "darkie bluebells" I can see why in the States the words to that one one have been changed to "bumping up and down in a little red wagon". Also different tunes to some Christmas carols - particularly "Away in a manger" and "O little town of Bethlehem" which always catches me out.

I only looked at the two nurseries at the end of the road figgy, and we lucked out with ours too! They were close by and looked like proper nurseries (big old Victorian house) so ticked the important boxes Still can't believe we're paying c.£9, 9.5k a year for it though, what the hell did we do with all that money before?! It's not like I drive, take holidays or wear designer gear, so I have no idea.....Good luck in your search kat.

Hope the sugared gammon is making up for the temperature and vom-fest of earlier LMF, hope the DCs are feeling better too.

Happy Birthday to Hope, and the cake looks fabulous- did she enjoy it air?

I'll slurp some of that caffeine aethel, looooooooooong day at work here and sorry the list remains lengthy. Still, I have used my flexitime to take Friday afternoon off. I'll take DS to the Doc's, just as the OOH Doc told us to post ear infection (and h, f & m too!) and then chill, possibly go up to the park if it's nice. Will be a lovely little bit of extra time with my boy.

Oh god Xiao you poor thing, that's a re-run of our norovirus experience, getting the family together for a big celebration and infecting them all! Your poor family though, having to travel with it.

Other than blaming you for your lack of psychic abilities, how was your mother....?

Happy Birthday to Hope

DH is making DS's birthday cake, he's made cakes once in his life...but wants to make DS's cake every year as a tradition.

A late welcome Moose!

LMF, never heard of sugared gammon (sounds lish!), is it easy to make?
Do people recommend gammon in terms of taste/easy to make etc? I've seen it in the shop, it looks cheap & decent but being a Jew I have no idea how to judge pig bits!

Xiao, sorry that everyone got ill, hope you're not feeling too crap about it. I'm sorry your mum is being a bit knowitall about it.

Northern you're absolutely right - I knew someone else on here had done the same I just couldn't remember who. I feel your pain.

Re my mother having 20/20 hindsight, I'm trying to be charitable and chalk it up to her all-night hurling in the toilet, so she probably isn't thinking very straight. Added together to the fact that she and my dad were staying on our houseboat and the recent high winds can't possibly have helped the queasiness.

We did have a funny/infuriating argument though when we were making Thanksgiving dinner. I was rolling out pie crust for the pumpkin pie. She asked if I had added sugar to the dough and I couldn't remember. She tweaked a bit off to try, I did the same (smaller than hers, may I add). She whips round and tries to bat it out of my hand, shrieking "STOP THAT! You're going to be the size of a TANK!!" I pointed out she was being a flaming hypocrite but somehow she tried to defend herself by saying I must have tried it before and so I was just eating raw pie crust for breakfast, lunch and dinner...or something. I am rubber, she is glue...

Testing festive namechange

Happy Birthday to Hope

Welcome Moose

Oh Xiao that sounds awful. I hope everyone's fighting fit again now

I hope there has been an improvement through the day chez LMF

Things aren't great here. FiL had a heart attack yesterday. He's doing pretty well though, is booked in for an angioplasty tomorrow, and could possibly be out of hospital Weds. DH has taken Thurs and Fri off work and we'll be heading up north Thurs-Sun.

What is it with all the illness?

My mums back in hospital her operation site is infected and she still has fluids of some kind leaking internally they don't know what the problem is, what they're going to do about it and I'm still 500 miles away

Oh god our troubles are so minor in the grand scheme of things - kate your poor FIL, I really hope all goes well there. And figgy your mum really has been through the mill, at least now she's back in hospital she's in the best place for them to take care of her. Are you able to go and see her soon?

DS has started moaning and groaning in his cot - he sounds like a squeaky barn door!

Glad to hear your Mum still reacts in a proportionate manner! So you and DH didn't get it, but everyone else did? It's amazing, in a weird way, how it works round everyone so quickly; normally one person just gets ill, perhaps a second if you're unlucky, but norovirus....

Kate and figgy, so sorry to hear that. Thought your Mum was out of the woods figgy, must be really tough for you at the moment. I know how you feel, so (hug).

Hope your FIL continues to improve Kate.

Gary (name change? Or have i missed an intro? ) Buy big bit of unsmoked gammon. Throw a cup of brown sugar into slow cooker. Plonk gammon on top. Put lid on and set to high. Ignore for a few hours. Turn gammon over. Ignore for another few hours. Rescue from pot. Try very hard to not eat all gammon to self. Fail, miserably:o

Xiao your mum is made of 'wtj?!' >_<

Figgy & Kate I hope everyone is on the mend soon:(

Also: pondering name change for Saturday. Do I roll out the humbuggery again?:o

Don't be humbuggered! LittleMissFestive?!

kate and figgy so sorry about your FIL/Mum. Hope that they the hospitals manage to get to the bottom of it, and wishing them a swift recovery.

xiao I got norovirus from going to a funeral when DS was newborn. Gah, I was so weak I could barely lift him to bf. Your mum sounds priceless! Has she decided that your homebirth was her idea yet?! My mum makes "fat" comments to me too and I'm a size 10/12 and don't want to be any thinner!

aethel thanks for the low mood warning. I'm actually really lucky to never really get mood swings or anything, never had pmt either. I just have so much on my to-do list at the moment and feel like I'm juggling so many things at once, and also worrying/feeling a bit sad about end of maternity leave. Wish my brain had an off switch!

Need to go to bed! Not sure who gary is either...

Hugs to those with poorly parents. That's really tough.
gary is awomancalledhorse who also has some news to share...