Jan 09 - weaning,smiling,laughing and chatting and loads more fun to come:)

[stripeywoollenhat]

there.

dog- that study will be freezing come winter I reckon- flat roof and external door... which also means you'd have to sleep there unless you put bookcase in front or something.

garden is gorgeous though
Is it really hard where you live to get houses (because of holiday homes/lets)?

morning all! Have been up since 5...arghhh...but have managed to de-nit the whole family, dp wasn't all that enthusiastic about being covered in nit lotion at 7 in the morning, he'll get over it.

Good luck with the house dog. How are your pox ?
Off to see George the musician at sure start this morning, dd and ds loved it last week and its free!

Hi dog, hope Arlo has calmed down - at least you know he will be down for his 3 hour nap in a couple of hours.. that must be lovely! Your new house looks great - have you looked around it yet? (sorry if I missed something and am being dim). You are doing so well with 3 babies and chicken pox etc...

Lenni dinner sounds lovely - did DS sleep through it all? The other night we had people round and DS just wasn't buying the idea of staying upstairs when there was obviously much more fun to be had down... so we ended up bringing him down. I don't like doing it but I felt that it would be rude to spend all night upstairs trying to soothe him. Anyway, he was only up for 45 mins of fun and then went straight back to sleep so prob a good decision.

Thanks for the book Spink - have fb-ed you.

Hkz awful about nits - are you still on for meet-up next week? and elkie? Will fb you. Have to start packing today as we are leaving early tomorrow morning. My Mum is coming for a couple of days too, so between my Mum and my sister I intend to do some major palming-off of LO .

tree glad you are OK - I really hope it turns out to be a change for the better in the long run. Hopefully with your mortgage covered, you can exist on that budget - at least with a LO you don't spend much money going out (at least I don't), although you'll have to stay away from those nappy sites! Are you and H still co-sleeping? Was thinking of you in the middle of the night when LO decided feeding was not enough and he wanted to play. We are very strict though and ignore him, but when he is chuckling away it is very difficult .

Can hear him waking up now so better go...

pat yes, he's a whopper like yours!

eppm love that swing and bookshelf especially. Great site. Am going to see if Ikea do a cheap version of the bookshelf.

Hope it's sunny for you all x

HKZ, sounds like no fun at all.

Dog, I can't advise I'm afraid, if this happens to us it will be my worst nightmare. Can I send hugs? How old is Arlo again?

MissJ, yes re meeting up, did you not get the email I sent you yesterday? Will try sending another one.

hi

luv funky moose stuff

dog - luvly house luv cornwall

cloudy and sunny here

No emails elkie. I wonder if you have got the right address.... It's emily j hogan at gmail dot com or facebook me.

After skim-reading Spink's book last night, LO has now had a good hour from 9am-10am, and back down at 12 - fingers crossed he will stay sleeping for a while. I think I have been making the classic mistake of waiting until he's over-tired before putting him down. The rubbing eyes stage is too late apparently. So looking out for early signs. Thanks Spink! Hopefully our trip to London tomorrow won't be too disruptive.

Hi tink!

Yey, have your email elkie. Really hope it all works out and we get to properly meet each other next week

LO still sleeping! Nearly 2.5hrs. Am not waking him up but going into his bedroom to start packing so he will probably stir. Interesting to see what effect this will have on bedtime... but have to stay up fairly late tonight anyway as we have a BBQ to go to.

Have done 2 loads of laundry and lots of cleaning, so feeling very smug. Was looking forward to new posts on the thread , where are you all?!

hi

so glad that it is last day of half term

Elkie MissJ Got the email...have replied! Have a good BBQ missJ.

Dog Hope you're not scratching. Am sure you are doing a great job, I would be going stir crazy stuck indoors all pox ridden withmy kids. Fish and chips sounds like a good plan.

Have got new neighbours from hell. Have been really lucky so far as we live in a row of terraces and have two large blocks of flats to one side. Well our new neighbours have been BBQing in the garden all afternoon (which I have no objection to, obviously) and playing Choice FM non stop at a ridiculously loud level (Hardcore R&B, garage etc) whilst their dog has run around the garden going mental and winding our dog up. Just wish thier taste in music matched mine a bit more! Am hoping this is just first night enthusiasm. DD's room backs onto the garden so there is no way she is going to sleep in this noise. Might just crank radio 4 up to full volume, don't think it will have the same effect though

Ok, the music's stopped now...I am seriously turning into a hardcore middle aged woman. Right, time to go and sit in the garden and maybe subject them to some 80's nostalgia, or perhaps a little Mark.E.Smith, the Fall always do sound thier best at top volume

hong sorry about neighbours... my good news about the neighbours with the incessantly barking dog is that i just watched them roll out here with 3rd wheel and have clearly gone on their month long holiday! yeah!!!!

in other good news here... DH and i have finally found a couch that is comfy, in our price range and fits in our living room space! it arrives in 2 weeks! yeah, again!

must get out to the garden and get this massive dirt pile leveled for the grass. will catch up later. have a great weekend everyone.

Hi all!

Utterly beautiful day here. Visited a friend in the morning, then another set of friends in the afternoon so basically just sat in gardens all day drinking tea, eating and gossiping. DD and DS both very well behaved and got to catch up with all tyhe work gossip. Started having a serious career rethink as well, more to follow on that one I think.......

books could it have been the heat? DD also tired today and very calm (unlike her!)

HKZ- aarrgghhh to nits and noisy neighbours. Chill out in the garden this evening.....I'm just about to have a well deserved glass of wine.

MissJ at all the sleeping! Lucky you. Zach always has about an hour in the morning about 9.30ish but getting him down in the middle of the day is a nightmare, particularly if we are out and about. So fraid he just catnaps the rest of day, usually having another hour about 4.15. Cot not going too well, up at 1.30 and 5.30 last night, after a feed at 9.30pm. Letting him off at the moment as his teeth are really bugging him, in as much as he isn't doing long feeds at the moment just wants little and often (although strangely hardly fed at all today and yesterday when we were out all day- too bloody nosey )

Dog next weekend is DD's birthday party and stuff so very busy and not going down south till possibly end on June/July now. Have a fab time thoug! You are doing a sterling job there, I would be in pieces with 3 and 2 poorly ones at that! Hope F&C went down well

Chef glad you are getting some peace from the hounds, bet thats a relief!

Tink I have loved this week with DD but she is such hard work I am really pleased that pre-school starts again next week. Although rudely they have decided to close on monday for staff training, the cheek of it!

Big wave to everyone else, tree hope you and DH ok today.

Right.....glass of wine!

Gorgeous day here too - went to the beach and got the UV tent out and DS had a great time rolling around underneath while DD and a friend made sandcastles and got very wet splashing. Shame I didn't slather myself in as much suncream as I put on the DCs and rather embarrassingly boobs were quite full when out and now they are less full I've got a big white bit in between them where they had obviously squiched together a bit during the day anyhow...

Siena - how lovely. Went there Pre-DCs with DH and it was gorgeous. Very jealous of the location of your apartment Stripey might be enquiring about what it was called since looked perfect with that view over the Piazza. Looks like you had a good time too from fb. Think you are right to wait until she is older for warm days again - DD was wiped out most of the time when we took her to Greece last year and that was in late May, dread to think what it would have been like in high season.

Dog don't be so hard on yourself - you are a fantastic Mum. Hope CP not too bad and Arlo coping with being cooped up. Can't imagine Arlo in a contained area is a good recipe! Far too much energy!

Back up to speed once I've finished these job applications...

I'm here Dog, dropping in occasionally to try and keep up but had no time to post - run off my feet with it being half term. Had quite a good week really, no major meltdowns and relatively few cross words. Am exhausted though and looking forward to Monday. Although come to think of it, poor ds1 has his SATs for the next fortnight, we've been doing practice papers for his holiday homework - bloody ridiculous to be doing this sort of thing in infant school!

Have been thinking of you though, why is that sometimes kids seem to get hyper rather than tired when they are poorly? You have my most sincere sympathies, hope you are all better really soon.

HKZ you also have my sympathy re the neighbours. That happened to us when we lived in Lancashire, we loved our house but first ray of sunshine - BBQ city, accompanied by much loud music and obnoxious drunken behaviour. We used to come back to the Midlands for the weekend whenever they predicted warm weather or else we would be kept awake all night. I will never forget when the people who were side on to our back garden moved in - they had an all weekend party which was ridiculously loud and ran from Friday night to Monday continuously without the stereo once being turned down let alone off! (We moved shortly after that.) Hopefully in your case it will just be a housewarming and they will turn out to be lovely neighbours. If not, you could always retaliate with some Jello Biafra and Dead Kennedys. I understand Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth are also quite useful for getting the point across.

Also, a quick tip for the nasty nits, mine caught them off their cousin for the first (and last) time last summer and we discovered them when we were in the middle of a wet muddy campsite in Pembrokeshire. We used Lyclear at the time, but as I was pregnant I couldn't be done as well. I did tonnes of research and found out that apparently coconut oil kills the little buggers creatures. We now wash our kids hair in Inecto shampoo and conditioner and comb through with a nitty gritty comb once a week using the Inecto conditioner and despite having no less than 5 nit alert letters home from the school so far this year, my boys haven't caught them since.

Anyhoo, am off to scoff some Kulfi while I can still eat sugar. Mmmm, pistachio, almond and cinammon.

Wam holidays even...

Or should that be warm holidays

Lost brain in the birthing pool

Pat - BLW easy - ask away

Moose - our local school is recommending coconut oil conditioner as a nit preventer too - much better than that awful smelling stuff we got when I was at school.

I lurve the smell of coconut as well - reminds me of the body shop coconut perfume oil I had in the 80's.

I too have caught the sun, completely forgot to put lotion on myself having slathered it all over the dc's. I now have a beautiful pair of freckled googles around my eyes - nice!

Pat I've been reading the BLW threads over the past week or so. Don't know why I'm so worried about doing it, as it makes perfect sense, but a little voice at the back of my head keeps telling me I need to read a book about it before we start.

My two also have a day off next week and one the following week - one is for the election, I think the other must be an INSET day.

I'm still panicking about what to wear and still haven't bought anything despite my nights out being next weekend. Will be first time I've left dd for any length of time as well and am feeling ridiculously anxious about the whole thing really.

Oooh, body shop perfume!! Nostalgia alert! The BS HQ was in my home town so me, my family and basically everyone I know used to work there in some form or another. One summer i worked on the production line, it smelt lurrrvvvely. All staff also got 50% off all products, I used to reek of Dewberry, white musk and Ananya. In fact my gran and aunt still work there!

Moose How long you leaving DD for? I still havn't left Zach for more than an hour, really need to do it soon before the dreaded work thing (6th July-ouch!). I too need a BLW book I think, it seems like common sense but I just keep thinking, what's the catch? Can't be that simple can it?

Lenni beach sounds lush, having grown up on the coast and now being stuck inland (my nearest is Weston-super-Mare about 50 mins away) I suffer from severe beach envy whenever the weather gets warm. Trying to talk DH into visiting the open-air swimmimg pool tomorrow, don't know when we'll get the chance again this summer. Still, competing with Everton in the FA cup tomorrow so don't fancy my chances .

LOL at the squished boobies!