Birthdays

Littl'un turns 4 tomorrow, bless him he is SO excited! This morning he said "I can't actually wait any longer for my birthday". Hee hee! As he said he was into pirates, he has a lot of pirate related stuff - I just blew up 18 pirate balloons and feel a bit sick. But last night when I was taking him up to bed I said "what do you really want for your birthday?" and he said:

"a green twisty frog thing"

to which I said "where have you seen one of those?" and he said "I haven't. You have to find one".

I hope he is ok with pirates still :)

Zumba

So I went to my first Zumba class last night. It was an experience. Firstly, when me and my friend went to leave  the house the car was frozen solid. Once defrosted we got there and I reversed the car into someone else. Thankfully he was fine about it, bless him. Then we parked up, and the class was full. All the women from miles around seemed to have turned up. So we went home and had to go back again an hour later, as the instructor said she would do another class afterwards, bless her. It was bleeding hard work, but fun, so we will go back. But I can feel it today, it is the first proper exercise I have done in I don't know how many years! At least I didn't keel over!

Glee

The new series of Glee started last week and I was really looking forward to it. Until I watched it. It seems it has fallen victim to the "Successful Show Gets More Money" syndrome. When they sing the voices are so doctored it doesn't actually seem like it is them singing anymore. It is ridiculous. Surely they could sing last season, they are even doing it live (or are they?!) on stage. It is SO irritating. It put me off watching any more of it, but luckily Sue Sylvester is still really evil so I will watch it for her and just mute the songs. Why do they have to do it? It's like watching an episode of the X Factor with the voice machine they use to make them all sound better. Glee, I am ashamed of you.

Pirates treasure!

Littl'un turns 4 next week. Don't ask me where the last 4 years have gone, I have no idea. Anyway, he's into pirates at the moment. We have got him a brilliant pirate ship and I did a blinder on ebay and got loads of Playmobil pirates, monkeys, parrots, treasure chests and all kinds of stuff to go with the ship. And sadly in my excitement to see what I (well he) got when it came in the post yesterday, I broke a bit. Already. I can't be trusted! I was trying to see what was in a treasure chest and didn't realise it has a nifty catch so you can lock it. So I wrested it open and broke the catch. Crap. The lady who sold it and her kids looked after it all so beautifully, and 5 minutes in my possession and I've broken it. I can't say anything to Littl'un if he does anything to them when he gets them!

Hopefully daddy can fix it in time for the birthday. I am more excited at playing with it all than Littl'un will be probably! It is so cool. I was going "look! monkeys! parrots!! treasure!!" and Baby Babs was just looking at me like I was crazy. I should have been a boy.

Doggie

This morning Baby Babs (1) decided he was going to try climbing up the sofa like it was Everest. His brother (3) sighed like a long-suffering father and said "That baby is worse than the dog!". Then we all did a big sigh as we don't have a dog anymore, maybe we can have an imaginary one to go with Pretend Jacob! Pretend Max! That works for me!

Droll expectant fathers

And the best bit of One Born Every Minute was the odd boyfriend of an 18 year old girl who was waiting to give birth. They were listening to a woman in the next room screaming like she was being murdered, and the poor girl said to him "if she's a grown woman and she's screaming like that, how am I going to cope?" Without batting an eyelid he said, "she's probably only 14". Genius!

One Born Every Minute

So series 2 of One Born Every Minute started the other day. Considering the subject matter (women giving birth, with ALL the gore and stuff you really don't need to see if you have never had a baby and were thinking of doing so) it really is compulsive viewing. But maybe it is more so if you have been there and done that, so you can scoff at the woman who screamed like a train, or go "it never happens like that!" at the girl who just breathed and the baby popped out.

The thing that gets me is why these women agree to have the experience filmed and shown to the world. When I was having baby #2, at a critical moment a smiley nurse popped her head in and chirped up with "Would you mind if I bring a bunch of medical students in to watch?" and was given a lot of cursing in reply. Which basically meant "yes I would mind". I couldn't imagine it! It's bad enough having your bits on show to the midwife and your husband, never mind 10 goggle eyed students! And what would happen when the baby finally showed up? A round of applause? Photos on their blackberries?! And I bet one of them would have been sneakily filming it. No thank you.

Pretend Jacob turns nasty

The other day Littl'un breezily announced that Pretend Jacob was going to be living with us from now on. "Oh?," I said, "what happened to his parents?"

"They died"

"How did they die?"

"Pretend Jacob killed them"

Uh huh? But it was all ok, the next day he announced that they weren't dead, they just had broken arms.

Remind me not to cross Pretend Jacob! And you would think Littl'un was playing violent games unsuitable for his age the way his imagination is going! Peppa Pig isn't THAT violent is it?!

Doggie disaster

So over Christmas (which was lovely, went too quick, I am now depressed) - I accused Mr Babs of being boring and never doing anything. Which looking back now, was a REALLY stupid thing to do! This led to a catalogue of events that swayed from excitement, happiness, shock and then heartbreak. The repercussions may last for years. So what happened?

1) Mr Babs suggested visiting an animal rescue centre for something to do in the holidays. 

2) Of course we all fell for a lovely dog and decided to bring him home. Mr Babs has always wanted a dog, this dog needed a home, be good for the kids etc etc.

3) They came to visit the house, announced it was fine for doggie. Much excitement as we went to buy doggie accessories in preparation for the new arrival.

4) Max Doggie as he was christened arrived on Friday afternoon. 

5) Max Doggie was VERY boisterous. Fine outside,  but in the house, a little whirlwind. Baby Babs (aged 1) reacted very badly to the new family member, cried constantly, was very averse to being humped while crawling across the floor, and generally without being able to speak let us know he wasn't happy.

6) Toddler Babs (aged 3) while being generally enthusiastic about getting a dog was fed up after about an hour when every time he moved the dog leapt on him and he was bigger than Toddler Babs.

7) We realised very quickly that we were not going to be able to keep him, with 2 kids I couldn't train him by myself, he needed a lot of training, and the kids just weren't going to be able to cope.

8) 24 hours later he was back in the kennels.

And we were all heartbroken. Even after just 1 day we had bonded with Max Doggie and it was so sad to send him back, we cried buckets. I feel guilty still, and wish we had known what we were getting into. But as Toddler Babs wisely said to his broken hearted Daddy: "next time Daddy, we should get a VERY SMALL DOG". Wise words indeed llittl'un.