Reasons to be Cheerful...a Bittersweet Post

I can't believe that the first month of 2011 is almost over.  Time is flying by, which is why I love pausing for thought to think of three reasons for feeling cheerful.  It punctuates my week reminding me to find the joy in little things.  This week however has turned awful and I am struggling to be cheery.

Little Freddy is poorly.  He is running a fever, won't touch food or juice and has two infected ears and an infected throat. He's been under the weather for a few days but the infections came on really rapidly and from 1am this morning until falling asleep a couple of hours ago he has screamed in pain.  Thankfully we had a doctor's triage appointment, thus the diagnosis, and we now have antibiotics.  Now although this is not a good thing on any level, I have found some things that I am mercifully happy about.

1:  The fact that I still breastfeed him has made me really happy.  I am able to offer him something that can help.  Last night he couldn't even feed because he was so distraught, but today he is back on the boob.  I know he is getting nourishment and fluids, as well as comfort.  I am so glad to be able to do this for him and it justifies my decision not to stop on his first birthday, which everyone expected me to do.

2:  My faith in "Team McDonald" has yet again been strengthened.  My husband stood and rocked his screaming son for hours last night.  Fred was inconsolable and lying down made him worse, so his Daddy thought nothing of standing up in nought but his boxers cradling his screaming son to give me some respite.  He came with me to the doctor's knowing how frantic I was and how, with crumbled nerves and no sleep, I would have found it hard to cope with holding Fred down as doctors probed his ears and stuck tongue depressors in his tiny baby mouth.  We are united in our dedication to our family and our parenting views are mirrored in each other.  I couldn't imagine parenting with any other man in the world :)

3:  I am so thankful that Freddy's illness is so easily fixable.  In a couple of days he'll be back to his cheeky, boisterous self.  I am so thankful for this. At 3a.m. my mind considered all the possible and much bleaker scenarios and gripped my heart with fear.  Although my little man is still feeling sorry for himself, and still hurting he'll be OK.  I've been overwhelmed by my lovely friends, family and neighbour's support.  I might not have a big social circle, but there are a lot of people who care about me and mine which is another reason for me to smile.  In the words of one of my friends:
"Today is the bottom of the curve.  The only way is up..."  a reason to be cheerful indeed!

He'll soon be up to mischief again!!

Memetastic Award...another joyous bloghop moment!

The lovely Heather over at Stay at Home Mum Loving It has been kind enough *coughs* to tag me to receive this most honourable of honours...it is indeed "Memetastic"!


Like her, I'm going for the copy and paste route (but I'm censoring the really rude words in case my 8 year old reads her mummy's blog!  Please don't judge me!)


1. You must proudly display the absolutely disgusting graphic that I have created for these purposes (put it in your post, you don't have to put it in your sidebar, I think that would seriously be asking too much). It's so bad that not only did I use COMIC SANS, but there's even a little jumping, celebrating kitten down there at the bottom. It's horrifying! But its presence in your award celebration is crucial to the memetastic process we're creating here. If you need a higher resolution version... I totally have one!!  

2. You must list 5 things about yourself, and 4 of them must be bold-faced lies. Just make some s**t up, we'll never know; one of them has to be true, though. Of course, nobody will ever know the difference, so we're just on the honor system here. I trust you. Except for the 4 that you lied about, you lying b******s! But don't go crazy trying to think of stuff, you'll see by the example I've set below that we're not really interested in quality here.

3. You must pass this award on to 5 bloggers that you either like or don't like or don't really have much of an opinion about. I don't care who you pick, and nobody needs to know why. I mean, you can give a reason if you want, but I don't really care.

4. If you fail to follow any of the above rules, I will  hunt your ass down and harass you incessantly until you either block me on Twitter or ban my IP address from visiting your blog. I don't know if you can actually do that last thing, but I will become so annoying to you that you will actually go out and hire an IT professional to train you on how to ban IP addresses just so that I'll leave you alone. I'm serious. I'm going to do these things.

5. This one isn't actually a rule, but once you do the above, please come back here and link up to the Memetastic Hop so that I can keep track of where this thing goes.




So, forearmed with that rather forceful list of instructions, I have no choice but to participate or incur the wrath of the creator of the Memetastic Award.  So I give to you five facts...only one of which true...feel free to leave a comment...I'd love to know what you think is true!




1:  I am a huge animal lover and we have three cats, four guinea pigs, eight goldfish and a snake called Courtney.  I'm hoping to add a puppy to the family when Freddy is a bit bigger.  I want to name it Buster after the Labrador I used to have as a little girl.


2:  I have five tattoos...one bracelet on my wrist, a dragon on the small of my back, five entwined love hearts on the back of my neck, a tribal design on my thigh and a butterfly on my ankle.   Each one commemorates special events in my life. 


3:  I am tee-total because on New Year's Eve three years ago I drank so much bacardi  that I ended up snogging a 19 year old friend of my niece and put a condom on my head and posed for photos.  The ensuing alcohol poisoning rendered me bedridden for three days.  I vowed I'd never drink again!


4:  I have a collection of pigs.  China pigs, plastic pigs, pigs on tea towels, pig T-Shirts, pig jewellery, pig crockery, pig topiary and most recently a stuffed leather pig door stop.  They are so cute.  I even own the Nat West piggy banks that I collected as a child for saving at the bank.  That was the start of my collection...I was hooked from that point :)


5:  I was a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 2003.  I didn't make it into the chair because I failed to put the order of four Dustin Hoffman films in chronological order quickly enough.  The woman who did went on to win £64,000...grr could've been mine!  




Now to tag some other lovelies and force them to bare facedly lie in a public forum.  Ooh we are naughty!!!


Qwerty Mum
Not Met Megan
Bloggomy
Carole Finds her Wings

You turn your back for a moment...

You know that moment when your boisterous toddler suddenly goes quiet.  There you are preparing lunch whilst your little one pulls the fridge magnets off of the freezer door.  You become momentarily engrossed in arranging mini sandwiches, cucumber slices and satsuma segments on a plate, when you realise the clatter of Magnetic Letters being used as projectiles has stopped.  You instinctively know something is amiss and set off at speed to locate said toddler, knowing they couldn't have got far!  That's when you see your mini-escapologist/stuntman sat on top of the dining room table having stolen your unopened box of Thornton's Continentals that you were saving, ripped off the lid and commenced consumption of a Marc de Champagne Truffle.  Knowing he was safe and sound I did what any self-respecting Mummy Blogger would do...grab my camera!  

Mmm truffles!

Have a little nibble.

If I put the lid back on I might get away with it!

Uh-Oh!  That scuppered that plan!

The Gallery...Children

The Gallery's theme on Tara's blog this week is children.  I've thought of different interpretations for this, but at the end of the day, it's my own precious children that I want to honour in the Gallery by posting one photograph of each of their childhoods that I think best represents their personalities.  Here is my entry to the Gallery week 43.

Joe 1988...cheeky chap

Megan 1991...wide eyed 

Ella 1996....wistful

Kizzy 2002...adventurous

Freddy 2009...fun filled

                                                 

Music I want my Children to Listen to...

I've enjoyed reading all the posts about music that has been influential to fellow bloggers.  How music provides the soundtrack to our lives, evoking memories of people, places and times that are important to us.  I have thought really hard about what music I'd like to be influential to my children.  They really do already show signs of having great taste and I am learning from them as much as they are learning from me.

There is however, a type of music that I would be devastated to see excluded from their repetoires.  That is Disney Songs.

As a child I was given the Reader's Digest Box Set of Disney LP's.  Each of the six discs had a full coloured cardboard sleeve which showed a scene from a Disney film.  I vividly recall studying the covers depicting Lady and the Tramp, Mickey Mouse as The Sorceror's Apprentice and The Jungle Book.  The tactile glory of a 12" album cover has never been replicated by a CD box.

My stereo was one of those portable record players in a box.  It had a blue lid and a cream base and I thought it was utterly precious...my prize possession!

The songs on the albums were originals from the films.  My particular favourites were "Ugly Bug Ball" and "Everybody wants to be a Cat".  I made up dances to both songs...literal interpretations of the lyrics with dramatic mime-esque movements.  My bedroom was tiny and the space was so limited, I used to whack my hand against the wardrobe or the bunk bed.  But in my mind I was performing on the West End.

The Rescuers song "Someone's Waiting for You" didn't have a dance.  Instead I sang it with intensity and sincerity whilst gazing wistfully out across my bedroom floor.  These were my special moments in our over-crowded childhood home.  My escape.

My love of Disney songs has never diminished.  My niece sang "Beauty and the Beast" at my wedding during the wedding speeches, which was a beautiful moment.  (I just hope I wasn't the beast in her mind!)

Pixar films are wonderful and I love the Randy Newman soundtrack to the Toy Story films, but the classic songs remain unbeatable. I hope the wonders of "The Bare Necessities", "Baby Mine" and "Be Our Guest" live on in our family for generations to come.  I still have my box set and my husband converted it into MP3's on my laptop, but it's just not quite the same as playing them on my precious crackly little box.

Buggy Tug Launches in UK

We were all horrified when we saw footage of a pushchair rolling off a station platform into the path of an oncoming train.   We all felt the mother's panic as we saw her frantically attempt to grab the pram as it rolled out of her grasp.  She had only released her hold for a moment but that was time enough for the buggy to roll across the platform out of her reach and fall onto the tracks. Thankfully and amazingly, the baby survived.

We've all had moments when we have inadvertently let go of our buggy handle.  Most of us have experienced that heart stopping moment when we realise that our pushchair is rolling away from our grip.  We don't apply the brakes every time we are stood still and sometimes we misjudge the gradient of where we are stood.  A split second mistake could change our lives forever.


In the recent cold snap, walking with a buggy was treacherous.  If we were to slip over, we could easily lose our grip on the handle which puts our baby at risk from rolling away.  It really doesn't bear thinking about.  The consequences could be tragic. 


Just launched in the UK is a product that offers a solution to this potential danger.  The Buggy Tug.  It is  the UK's first wrist pram strap.  Made out of neoprene for comfort, the strap is connected to the buggy's handle and to the pusher's wrist.  It has been safety tested so you can be sure it won't let you down in your hour of need.  It is discreet and you'll forget you're wearing it...unless your buggy starts to roll away, then you'll be glad to have it on!


I have been lucky enough to have won a Buggy Tug, which I agreed to review.  It is such a simple idea, but the potential to save lives is priceless.  For less than £4 (less than the cost of a latte and a muffin in your local coffee shop) you are protecting  your baby from a host of preventable accidents.  In Australia, pram straps are now compulsory following the deaths of two infants who drowned after their buggies rolled into lakes.   So many unforeseen tragedies could have been prevented with this simple device.  This product is an absolute essential!

Check out the Buggy Tug website for further details and stockists or to buy directly.
Go and say hello on their Facebook page...don't forget to say you came from 'Inside the Wendy House'!

Listography...5 things I wish I could do

  This week Kate Takes 5 has got us thinking about things we wish we could do.  This is a tricky one...do I go in glibly and wish I could pick those six numbers that would make me a millionaire?  Or do I dig deeply and profoundly reflect upon my earlier failings, wishing I could turn back time and rewrite my wrongdoings in some way?   Tricky indeed!

1:  Have a grasp of Spatial Awareness...I am so spatially challenged it actually handicaps my functioning in everyday life.  For example...my husband has actually found me sobbing, unable to complete a 32 piece Beauty and the Beast Jigsaw puzzle.  I can not read a map, work out directions or even understand a Sat Nav ( all that talk of left and right is way too complicated!)  I am the butt of family jokes when the Tangrams come out and I struggle to make a rectangle out of two triangles.  Most humiliatingly of all was trying to teach Symmetry to my Class 4 children in my role of Teaching Assistant...oh the shame!

2: Exercise...I have taken part in many an exercise class.  I have tried yoga, pilates and holistic training.  I've done a dance class and I've joined a gym, which I was attending three times a week at my peak.  However, I am rubbish.  Firstly, the left and right thing raises its ugly head.  In one particularly energetic dance class, I was  going the opposite way to everyone else and causing chaos (much to my sister's amusement!)  I ruptured my groin on a thigh press.  I put my back out and couldn't walk for three days doing a Pilates Spinal Curl (meant to strengthen the spine indeed!)  Walking hurts my bunions and my cartilages pop out of my knees with the least encouragement.  Some people are better off as sedentary social media addicts!

3:  Dance:  I guess this carries on from point 2, but has a whole new set of reasons.  My sister can dance...she belly dances, waltzes, foxtrots, tangos and pole dances.  Me...I goon around in a comedic, David Brent style, in a literal interpretive fashion, going purely for laughs, knowing full well that if I actually tried, everyone would laugh even harder.  My sister loves her ballroom dancing and constantly tries to teach me but to no avail.  I waltzed at her wedding and crashed into her new parents-in-law who, up until that point were floating elegantly around the dance floor.  At a family party, my husband dumped me as a partner to dance with our 6'4" nephew who was more elegant than me. My sister once tried to teach me to belly dance...my dad said it looked like an ironing board trying to dance :(  In my mind's eye I am elegant and graceful.  In reality I look like a six foot, uncoordinated version of this dancing cat!

4: Be Crafty:  I am quite the academic.  I collected A Grade A'Levels when I was a SAHM to my first two babies (in the days before Social Media!!)  I love essay writing and producing spreadsheets and collating evidence. I realised I was not testing the creative side of my nature and took classes in pottery and drawing.  I had visions of unleashing my inner Picasso.  Instead, I made a clay pinch pot and failed my shading assignment.  Seriously, in pottery everyone was making lamp stands except for me who never progressed beyond nursery level pinch pots.  I once tried to make curtains.  All I had to do was stitch up a hem in a straight line, but I didn't put the foot down on the sewing machine.  I wondered why my line was so wonky and hard to control.  I once knitted a toy lamb for my first born...it looked like a holey carthorse on steroids!  I so want to be able to do these things and I know I should be able to...but my hands just do not do what they are told!

5:   I wish I could be less obsessive!  I've given up alcohol and caffiene because I can not moderate.  If I'm eating I binge.  If I diet I starve.  If I take on a challenge (like blogging for example or my Graco Advocate Competition) I simply can't do it by halves.  I have to throw my self into everything 100%.  I avoid starting a book unless I have a whole day free ahead of me because I know I'll be unable to put it down.  However, I'm a slovenly housewife...until I get an urge and am taken over by the desire to scrub the entire house with a toothbrush and end up pulling everything out of cupboards to sort it all out.  I'm glad I'm not vain because I would spend hours and a fortune on hair, nails, clothes and make-up.  I'm glad I'm not 12 because I would probably chain myself to the rails of R-Patz or Justin Bieber's hotel (OK, maybe not!!)  luckily, my husband and family are my obsession and I wouldn't have that any other way!!