Weird child logic

Littl'un has taken to making grand statements of late. His latest?

"When I am a dad, I can drink beer...and coke"

I have tried explaining that he doesn't actually have to be a dad, just a man, but it isn't sinking in. I really hope he doesn't try to get a girl up the duff at an early age just to have a lager! But what intrigues me is that he thinks drinking coke is worse! The fact that his dad drinks lager like it is coke probably has something to do with it...

Bzzzzzz

Doing the crossword in the free paper Mr Babs brings home for me (the easy one) I actually learned something.

A beekeeper is called an apiarist.

There you go, I don't think I ever knew that before! I loftily announced to Mr Babs that "oh whatever it is, it must be based on the Latin". And it was, the latin for bee is apis. But I didn't know that either. We had to google it in the end, the dictionary was extremely unhelpful! And you don't know how hard that was for an ex-librarian to admit!

Big boy!

Today an advert for a soft Iggle Piggle toy was on the tv.  It was so cute, he had his own pyjamas and you had to get him ready for bed and then tuck him in with you when you went to sleep. Littl'un LOVED In the Night Garden, but apparently now he is a whopping 3 years of age this is now "baby stuff" and he is a big boy and won't be watching it anymore. Neither does he want the cute Iggle Piggle toy for Christmas. Shame, I quite liked the programme. I have great hopes for #2, he will be initiated!

Still here...

If anyone was worried, I don't think it's carbon monoxide poisoning!

Were you?!

Duh...

How do you know if you have carbon monoxide poisoning from spending too much time in your front room near the boiler or that it is your brain slowly shutting down due to spending too much time with children? I suppose if it is the former I'll find out first!

Equality for women?

In one fell swoop, Katie Price aka Jordan has dragged women's rights back about a hundred years. Convicted of dangerous driving in a bright pink horsebox - she veered into other lanes causing other cars to nearly crash as she was busy texting - she said it was not due to her phone but because she was a "woman driver". Gee thanks Katie. The suffragettes would love you. And sadly it is mostly due to women's rights that she is allowed to prance around making ridiculous tv programmes/perfume/records/"novels" or whatever takes her fancy and make loads of money from making us all suffer! I'd have her stuck at home wearing lots of brown looking after her husband and kids and being totally downtrodden if I could, it would be fairer on everyone!

New shoes!

Littl'un starts school next week and we went out and got him some new shoes this morning. Then he wanted to try his uniform on. Bless, he looks so grown up but so little!! He is so proud of his new shoes, it's a shame they won't last the first morning without getting scuffed. I looked at mummy shoes while we were in there, there are some beautiful shoes around at the moment. But all VEEERRRRYYY expensive! £79.99 for some boots?! £69.99 for some shoes??!! Man, those days are LONG gone, and I don't think I would have paid that if I was a millionaire anyway! My £6 bargain trainers will have to do the winter.

Just call me Scrooge...

Lightweight

It's Sunday afternoon, I have indulged for once and had a glass of red wine while I'm making dinner. Half a glass down and I feel wrecked! These bloody kids have ruined my alcohol tolerance.

If I drink the rest nobody is getting any dinner...

Green fingered? Erm, no...

I have been trying to get to grips with my garden so it is all nice and tidy for winter. I chopped down my buddleia yesterday, and am now considering the conifers. But I have no idea what I am doing, I work on the principle of chopping bits off till the plants are much smaller. But in deference to my lack of knowledge I did a bit of online research, admittedly after I chopped the buddleia down. Apparently it will be ok, but in the spring I have to really go at it till it's a metre off the ground! No wonder it went wild this year, I only chopped off the big bits last year! Conifers, however, are a different thing altogether. Loads of sites give very detailed descriptions of how to prune them, with warnings about what would happen if it was done wrong. We did it last year on the "chop randomly" principle, and they seem to be ok. But they have grown back twice as much this year - I really need a gardener! Or someone to give me a crash course in gardening. It is a wonder my plants aren't all dead already.

And in my dream house that I will be living in sometime before I die, I will have a nice square garden with 6ft fences, a nice square lawn, and lots of pots on a patio that are easy to look after, and perhaps a greenhouse. Not a 100ft garden filled with flower beds that are weed magnets and trees that go mental!

And then...

the mechanic takes the car back again, spends all morning on it...and it still leaks! I'm just not going to look next time!

Don't you just hate it when...

...you pay out the last of your money till pay day to get a leaking car fixed, and it still leaks when you get it back. Bloody cars.

Liar liar

Littl'un has developed a new habit recently. Lying. I have no idea why, and most of the time I can tell, but yesterday I couldn't and it's worrying. He was at his cousin's house and came home crying, his aunt said that he punched his cousin and admitted it and said sorry. When she left I asked what happened. He swore blind that he hadn't hit him, but it was the other way round. This was more plausible as his cousin can be a leetle (well a lot) violent, so I was inclined to believe him, but something niggled. So a while later I said "so why did your cousin hit you then?" to which Littl'un said "well he hit me first" - and I was all "A-ha!! You did hit him then!" - caught out in the end! 

It's no good though, we have explained loads of times that lying is much worse than whatever it was that he did, and he always agrees wholeheartedly but continues to lie. 3 years old and dishonest?! He'll be in the nick by 5 at this rate!

Fact or fiction?

We watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie last night, despite my initial scepticism after reading some reviews it was actually really good. Well anything with Robert Downey Jr in it gets my vote anyway! After it finished, Mr Babs asked how they knew so much about Sherlock Holmes, and I said "well it's all in the books" and we proceeded to have an argument about whether Sherlock was originally a real detective in London. Mr Babs couldn't understand how the address in Baker Street could be so famous and have people visiting it if it wasn't real. I had two words for him. "Harry Potter". That shut him up! But he had real trouble understanding how a book could have so much influence that a fictional address in a story could take on a real life of its own - Sherlock even has his own museum in Baker Street now! But Harry Potter has gone one better - a whole theme park no less. It is interesting though, I wonder in the future how many people will think Harry Potter was real? Or is he?!

Nurse Barbara

This week I have discovered that I would be a terrible nurse. Mr Babs has toothache, it is a bad one, but honestly, I can't take the moaning! I'm doing all I can for him - making the dentist appointments, going with him to the appointments, sorting out his painkillers and stuff, but if he tells me about how much he is suffering one more time I might pull the tooth out myself! And he keeps showing me the abscess he has and telling me what stage it is at, I really don't want to see it. I had two kids and I didn't burden him with all the gory details about the stitches and the pain and the blood! 

That might be my problem actually. Once you have gone through childbirth you think no other pain can compare and the person is just being a wuss! Unsympathetic? Yes. But I'm a librarian by trade, not Florence Nightingale. I'll sympathise if you tear a page in your book, but break your leg and I'm looking the other way with my fingers in my ears! God help the littl'uns if they ever do anything serious, they had better go to their dad :)

Oooohhhhhhhh!

Last night Littl'un woke me up insisting I sleep in his bed with him. Which was fine. Until I realised he was wide awake and staring over my shoulder into the bedroom. "What's that behind you?" he asked. Scared the life out of me! Luckily I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary but then adults don't always do they?! 

I'm not sleeping in his room again!

Dirty boy!

We were eating dinner the other night at the table all civilised like when Littl'un let off the biggest fart I've heard in a long time. Instead of his usual "pardon me", he laughed and said, "it's ok, it's just my talking bum bum!".

Honestly, with 3 boys to contend with, I have no chance...

An apology

I take it all back. My card turned up today - it was held at the Post Office as it hadn't enough postage. And it was unsullied, cash and all still there! It restores my faith in humanity. But it has taught me not to be so quick to assume the worst, I do feel bad for my rant Mr Postman. 

But not that bad, I'm off shopping now! I am going to do something I haven't done in years - buy a proper cd and listen to it the whole way through! And maybe some shoes...

The Post Office - a rant

So it was my birthday last week, less booze and high heels and more dirty nappies this year, but it was very nice anyway. One blot was that I didn't get a card from my dad. I went through all the options - he decided he hated me and hadn't sent a card, he forgot, it got lost. I steeled myself to ask him if he had sent one to which he cheerily said "oh yes and it had cash in it, didn't you get it?" Of course I never bloody got it. And this year I really could have done with the money. He usually sends a cheque. Why in the name of god did he decide to put cash in it?

To people not familiar with the Post Office of the United Kingdom, these days you cannot trust it with anything of value. Tickets for concerts, cheque books, money, presents not sent by recorded post - in fact anything that takes the fancy of the person entrusted with it. Mr Babs bought some tickets to a horse racing venue the other month and the only options were the normal post or collection on the day. We didn't even consider the post. Whenever I post anything I have little faith it will get where it is supposed to. Some postmen even just decide they can't be bothered to actually post the mail and leave it in their car or dump it somewhere. Do they not vet postmen these days?! Apparently messing with the post is a criminal offence but that never stops them. I am so cross. I do mourn the days of writing letters and getting mountains of post but these days email is so much more reliable. Imagine if you wrote a love letter to someone and they never replied as they never got it, but they thought you were ignoring them and you thought they were ignoring you. I could have fallen out with my dad as I thought he'd forgotten my birthday!

I am going to complain, I know it won't get me anywhere, but it might make me feel better. Hopefully next year Dad won't be so silly! Ha by next year the Post Office might even be no more and we'll be back to messengers who run up and down the country for a fiver :)

Barbarians!

So they want to allow adverts on the Colosseum to help raise money for its conservation? I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Is nothing sacred? It'll soon be looking like Piccadilly Circus with hundrends of neon signs hanging off it, and a big M for McDonalds coming out of the middle. You watch.

Dinner Date

A new program has hit daytime tv - Dinner Date. It's actually quite entertaining but a leetle bit unsettling. The premise? A singleton picks 3 out of 5 menus prepared by potential dates and then has 3 dates at their houses where they wine and dine them before picking their favourite date to take out for a meal and perhaps more! It is a cross between Come Dine With Me and Blind Date. But at times it seems to be a very old fashioned test of a partner's skills - how is the cooking? Is their house nice and clean and tidy? Did they provide drinks all night? Check! Next! The next series will be "Washing and ironing date" where the potential dates wash and iron the singleton's clothes and they judge them on the results. Then "Looking after children date" followed by a late night "Rumpy pumpy date". Hehe.

And how can you judge a potential partner by their cooking without even meeting them first? Surely it is the other way round, you meet someone you really like, then they make you burnt beans on toast for tea, then the romance fades away as fast as your appetite! If I was doing it, the sure fire way to a man's heart is steak and chips and lager for pudding. I'd definitely get picked :)