October 08 - Toddling round the Christmas tree & Ooooing at the lights!

[50ftChristmasTree]

10th Sept (Due 1st Oct) - loulou33 - Boy - Joe Louis David - 6lbs 12oz
16th Sept (Due 8th Oct) - Ksal - Girl - Emma Rae - 6lbs
21st Sept (Due 5th Oct) - myjobismum - Girl - Naomi Caitlin - 5lbs 10oz
2nd Oct (Due 12th Oct) - star6 - Boy - Quinlan - 5lbs 15oz
3rd Oct (Due 26th Sept) - purpleflower - Girl - Rebecca Jill Erzsebet - 8lbs 10.5oz
4th Oct (Due 30th Sept) - Aubergenie - Boy - Stanley - 7lbs 12oz
8th Oct (Due 6th Oct) - ronshar - Boy - William Dexter - 7lbs 11oz
9th Oct (Due 17th) - Marthasmama - Girl - Martha - 7lbs 10oz - Elective c-sec
10th Oct (Due 1st Oct) - CantSleepWontSleep - Boy - Duncan Elliot - 8lbs 4oz
12th Oct (Due 4th Oct) - pistachio - Boy - Thomas Fraser - 10lbs 2oz
16th Oct (Due 11th Oct) - heather1980 - Boy - Alexander James - 9lbs 5oz
17th Oct (Due 10th Oct) - pepperrabbit - Girl - Jessica Rose - 7lbs 15.5oz
24th Oct (Due 29th Oct) - Ekka - Boy - Matthew - 7lbs 15oz
26th Oct (Due 20th Oct) - jenwa - Girl - Phoebe Jasmine - 9lbs 2.5oz
28th Oct (Due 23rd Oct) - RachieW - Boy - Jack - 7lbs 4oz
31st Oct (Due 20th Oct) - KnickersOnMaHead - Boy - Samuel Paul - 9lbs 11oz
5th Nov (Due 29th Oct) - Honeymoonmummy - Girl - Poppy Grace - 6lbs 15oz
5th Nov (Due 30th Oct) - MamaG - Boy - Harry James - 10lbs 9oz

I think you're right there!

'cept me!

I'm off to Blackpool tomorrow morning, back on 31st, see you then!

LOL at HMM still being awake

50ft I get the emphatic nod of the head yes with a pointed finger or shake that is a clear "no", too. But, when he's shaking "no" and we need him to do it anyway, he gets upset. And if he's nodding and pointing at something he really wants, but can't have it, he gets really angry about that as well!
Thanks csws, myjob and pistachio. Glad to hear he's normal... I feel so horrible because as I type this he's quietly and happily playing with a smile on his face. And there I was complaining about him!

I think he'll be out of luck with that food shop 50ft - it will pretty much all be gone by then ! Except a few bits that have ended up in the freezer to save them going out of date. (I didn't think it rude btw). We started Christmas with around 30 eggs, and now only have half a dozen left - can you tell what the most popular food is round here?!

I just found out recently that if I buy a box of mixed sizes free range eggs (15 of them) instead of my usual box of 12 of one size, it's cheaper

I am contacting you from my sick bed[cough][cough][groan]

It sounds like everyone has had a fab christmas.
Thank you Aubergenie for organising the SS. I still havent opened my chocolate.
We have had four days of very late nights and lots of nibbly bits of food. With a couple of roast dinners thrown in for good measure. Now we have to start getting the children back to bed earlier ready for school next monday!!

Star Q is very normal. He will scream and shout now until he is about 10. Then he will just sulk and growl at you until he is about 20. Only then will you be able to get a conversation out of him. I agree with Pistachio about the food. It isnt as if you regularly give Q macdonalds is it? Or do you secrectly sneack into the drive by when noone is looking and order a big mac and go large fries. And coke?
I had a look at that thread you linked. I dont really know much about the US healthcare so I couldnt really contribute! However I did think you put your point across very well and stood up for yourself well.
50ft I have heard that ebay is good for storage problems. You list stuff, people buy it and hey presto no more storage problem

Hmm. I would have just wished your bro a happy birthday and left it at that. If he wants to be childish then let him dont sink to his level. And dont worry about it. These things always sort themselves out in the end.

CSWS. I meant to ask do you drink alot of diet drinks? Wasnt there something in the news about the sweeteners used in them being really bad for you?? Only because you mentioned about the Asda drinks. Or was that someone else? Pants I must post when I read.

DH has just come in to me to say that W has found the chocs on the tree. He let him eat one and now W is going mental because he is trying to climb the tree to get some more. Not6 bad for a child who is supossed to be allergic to dairy.

Step away from MN Pistachio.
Dh has just done the hoovering

Ronshar let's arrange that meet up at your house in January. Send me your address now, though, so I can kidnap your dh make sure I know how to get there.
On the other thread I was just wondering about what you thought of NHS and the working conditions...etc. and if you agreed with ltc's opinion that not all people deserve healthcare (because I have a strong feeling you don't). I just feel she paints a horrible picture of health professionals!

Good luck studying pistachio

I can't believe my manners
Thank you so much for organising SS aubergenie. That was quite fun

Q loves his cleaning trolley. He's "cleaned" every room in our flat this morning

Ah well Star.
Some nurses are lazy, good for nothing dangerous fools. Bu that is the same in all professions dont you find?
I do have some quite contradictory views about healthcare. I do feel that everyone should be entitled to free basic healthcare.
I do also feel that it should be means tested and if you earn above a certain level then you should pay for it. Not a queue jumping system just you get a bill for your care. But you go ont he same list and see the same doc as everyone else.
However I am a big fat conservative and feel very strongly that you can be given only so many chances to get the same treatment. Eg Alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts etc only get so many chances to quit before the are refused treatment. I mean with proper assistance and support. Not the usual, here's a few leaflets get yourself clean.
When I worked on the wards it was so frustrating to try your hardest to get people well only to find them back in with in months with exactly the same problems. All self inflicted.
Obesity is another thing I cant get my head round. Why do people, like my own dad, not care enough about themselves that they are happy to keep shovelling crap food and coke down their throats and then expect people like me to go into their homes to pick them up off the floor because they are too fat to not fall over in the first place.
I know that is very simplistic and things always have reasons behind them but still. We seem to live in a world where it is increasingly acceptable to not take responsibility for anything

Sorry but you asked.

Working in the healthcare profession eventually makes you a depressive or cynical. Lucky for me I was cynical before I started.

Yes come on down. And anyone else who wants to. I shall put my address on the SS facebook thread. Sundays are always the best for us because DD2 has Gym on Saturday but only until 11am so still most of the day free.

Now you know how horrible I really am
Also now you know a big reason why I stopped working for the NHS. It has to be one of the most soul destroying places to work.

I don't think that sounds horrible at all ronshar. I agree with you, in fact.
In terms of working conditions, I found the same with teaching actually. I used to work in a public school system in NYC. 35 kids and me - no assistants anywhere to be even thought of. A principal and asst principal, but 5 classes on a grade level K-6, so 35 classrooms of 35 kids each, overcrowded, lots of violence, lack of resources... it was very very very hard (especially for rural born naive stupid me - at the time!) I now work in a completely different place. I thought I would never work in a place like this because I strongly believe in free education and doing what I can for all children not just those who can afford expensive schools...etc.... but circumstances have put me in this school, and I do feel fortunate. And I consider myself extremely lucky for all of the resources, small class sizes, ability to give to so many charities and make partnerships like that, planning time...etc. I just wish that all children could benefit like that.

What I didn't like about that poster's comments was that (I think, if I'm reading correctly) that she thinks the way a national health system is set up is wrong because those that are "hard working" (from her perspective - meaning those that make more money) have to still pay for people who are "lazy" (now, some "lazies" like you have described are a different story, but people who work really hard but don't earn enough to pay high health insurance costs..). But I think they still deserve healthcare.

It's just that as many complaints as people (including myself) have about stuff that happens in the NHS, it's extraordinary to have free healthcare. In America, if you use up your lifetime allowance (easy to do in an accident or serious illness) or can't afford great cover or don't have a good enough job to provide good insurance for you (I have always been lucky to have it, fortunately), then you get slapped with huge medical bills that often times force people to lose their homes...etc.

I know too many instances where someone worked really hard 8am-5pm every day for $7/hour and paid into insurance, then had an accident and had fees in excess of $25,000 for an emergency room visit because their insurance didn't cover it. +++ thousands for treatment afterward to correct the problem. Unfortunately, this means that people often just don't get things treated that they should.

Ok, rant over. Sorry for the post natal hijack.

Ronshar - No you're not horrible. Working in any public sector role allows you to see the very worst of humanity. I am a big fat lefty but..... when I worked for the Home Office and to a greater extent the CPS, I could feel my views being tugged right on a number of occasions. In my area and I suspect it's the same where you are Ronshar, there is a small group of people of a certain type who commit about 80% of all the crime. It becomes very hard not to be judgmental of this group when you see the evidence every day that they are causing people pain, misery and even taking lives. It's a similar situation to you seeing the same people with their self-inflicted pain, I saw the same group of people inflicting pain on each other and society as a whole. Not nice at all. What you said about obesity made me smile. Every day when I was down at court I would pop out for a couple of fags. I used to smoke about 5 a day so not a huge number by any stretch, but obviously not ideal. Every time I went out for a fag one of the security guards would comment that 'smoking kills you know'. The guard was the size of a house, he was the second fattest man I have even seen in real life, yet he felt he was entitled to judge me about smoking a couple of fags. Even though I smoked, I could run to the top floor of the court before he had managed to puff to the first! Grrrr..... Oh and the comment that about people not taking responsibility for themselves, I totally agree. I learned from the CPS that no criminal actually ever has control over their own actions. It's drugs, or alcohol or their up-bringing.....

Eek at your views on obesity ronshar. I don't shovel crap and coke down my throat the whole time, but I'm still obese .

I would utterly hate means testing for health services. Fucking everything is means tested in this country, and it doesn't enourage people to save when it results in them not being able to access public services as a result. (I'm not at all pissed off that we weren't entitled to anything from the state when dh was out of work for 8 months just because we'd been forced to invest in his parents company to stop them from going broke a few years ago. Oh no I'm not ). We pay a shitload into the state, and it would be nice to think that we could get something back once in a while when we need it - ie when we're ill.

On the diet drinks thing, I haven't seen anything recently on the sweeteners, no. I know obviously that aspartame is a bad sweetener (hence me limiting my coke intake), but I thought that the alternatives (sucralose in particular iirc) were not too bad. I tend to go through phases of drinking a lot of them, and then drinking nothing much but water for a while. And normally I'd have a phase of drinking blackcurrant hi-juice, but I can't do that now because of the sugar.

Oh yeah, I was going to tell you all about my day!

We went up to London to see Alex's aunt and uncle who are over from Canada. They treated us to lunch and a trip on the eye! DS had never been before so they wanted him to have the experience. DS loved it, but M was the real surprise. She LOVED it! She screamed and cried when it was time to get off. It was very amusing. I would recommend it if you're in London as they can get down and wander round the pod with no problem.

hello! just popping in. Had a good Christmas here, Devon with the inlaws was pretty much as expected.....
Kids were in their element - boys slept in barn with their cousins and DHs step sister & her husband. We just had DD in our room, and I had no sleep at all, DD was still very poorly and coughed all night.
Thankfully the antibiotics have now kicked in and she's like a new little girl
Glad everyone had a good christmas.
Anyone else have a house with just way too many toys in it???
DH is in shock. and we still have one more famile event to go to!

Awwwwwww that is the only day I can't do as we are having a late Christmas do with my mum's family.

Hello and Merry xmas sorry been rather busy so not had chance to come on here. Had a lovely xmas though, spent the day with in laws and had my parents over for boxing day and yes I was at Next Sale in the morning It started at 7 this time though but I was up just after 5 as could not sleep. I got afewt hings for the girls and me and am popping to town tomorrow as a dress I got for P is the wrong size, the hanger and label of the top said 12-18 but the dress label is 9-12!

Hope you all had a lovely xmas. csws and pistachio your xmas pics on FB looked lovely.

DD1 had a great xmas and had loads of pressies. P enjoyed it all too and loved all the pressies and food!