We Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

Evening all, Wednesday wouldn't be Wednesday with a Baby Centre blog for you. http://www.baby.co.uk/mum_stories/anyone-for-a-chickenpox-party/. It's basically about everything I've been moaning about and everything I probably will be moaning about for the foreseeable future.

I wandered lonely as a cloud or perhaps that should be 'we wandered'. The quarantine continues and the wee man looks even worse than he did yesterday. The spots have now progressed to the face and in particular to his eye and let me tell you they look sore. I've been banned from putting pictures of it in this blog as it's actually quite mean and I don't want to embarrass him forever. I really feel for him and life must be pretty sore right now.

More than anything else at the moment we are bored. Some of our friends are meeting tomorrow and this weekend and we can't go. *Sad face*. There are lots of things I want to do, swimming for instance but any parents at the first sight of the wee man will go scurrying for protection covering their eyes. This however may be useful for swimming as it could clear the pool for me. I want to take him to a playground but we will be kicked out by overly concerned parents.

I now am looking for any strip of open land which has no children, is in the middle of nowhere and there's something to do on it. I think this is mission impossible and we're destined to wander the streets alone like the social outcasts we are.

We were told by the doctor that the spots will continue for a wee while before scabbing over and eventually falling off. Then once this happens we can see our friends again tough I imagine they will want to stay a good distance away from us for a while. Poor wee man.


jpr   

Play-Doh

With the wee man get spottier by the day The Chancellor and I have been finding new ways of entertaining him without interacting with any other children. Our newest idea is Play-Doh.

The Chancellor went a bit mad this morning and got not just Play-Doh but the kitchen set that goes with it. I must say that's all very exciting and I've already mad multiple ice cream cones and other weird shaped things.

However the thing I'd forgotten was just how strangely the stuff smelt. It has a wonderful chemical smell about it which makes you wonder just what's in it and how it's made. I seem to remember as a child eating the stuff and thinking it was incredibly salty, again I wonder what's in it and hope it's not human. Already I think the wee man has sampled its delights, the telling green speckles on his lips gave him away. Also the fact that he's just thrown up dinner is another clue.

I'll let him off though because he's having a pretty rough time of it. Every five minutes we find more spots and now he looks like...well I'm not sure what but it isn't nice. Poor little man. A week of this doesn't sound good and with The Chancellor going back to work tomorrow it's going to be a long week. Some of his spots have popped and actually look quite sore so we'll have a child covered in cream by the end of the night. Not even a Play-Doh kitchen is worth this...

jpr    

 

The Pox Attacks

The pox has hit our household, the chicken variety. As we want to keep our friends we have to now avoid them for a while or at least until the wee man becomes one giant scab. So picking places to go where the wee man won't spread his diseases is quite tough. Naturally soft plays and the like are out of the question as are most other things in the world seeing as it's the school holidays. My mental list of things to do has become very very short, so we decided today to go somewhere new. Today for the very first time I visited a retail outlet centre and let me tell you it really was a different world.

Now I'm not really one for retail worlds or retail estates as generally they're very busy and very loud but my snobbery lessened ever so slightly today.

The wee man did need new shoes after all and my friend Funny Mummy has been going on about the cheap prices of the shoes there for a while. And in truth she was right as we got some shoes for a fraction of the price as they are in the city! Wow, who would have thought that a). I would have visited such a place today and b). I get ace shoes for such a cheap price! Mind blowing.

Anyway enough from me about shoes, I have to remember that there are more important things like the wee man being his very own biological weapon. I know know why he was being such a mardy bum the last few days. Really should have given him some sympathy, The Chancellor certainly is giving him some now. Bad daddy.

jpr






   

Second Child Syndrome

It's good to know, for various reasons, that we're not the only people we know who are having a second child. In fact there's a small group of us who have decided that we're not that tired or financially ruined and that the best thing for all of us to do is have another child. We are the mad sensible ones.

Though for some strange reason we and about four other couples are going to be having our second child roughly at the same time of year as our first was born. Is there any science that says this generally happens or does it just look like we have sex once a year and more often than not it results in a child?

The really funny thing is that most of couples we know who have decided to take the plunge, including us, all roll our eyes and say it's going to be hell for a few years. So why do it and why hasn't common sense stopped us?

Well for one, I'm still fairly young so my logic is we can get all the tedious sleep deprivation out of the way early and by the time the children are at an age where they can make their own breakfasts, I will still be able to appreciate a lie in as a relatively young person. This may not make any sense to you but makes perfect sense to me. And why not get it out of the way early in life as when they go to university I can go travelling and I won't need a walking stick to get around.

Some people have called us mad and crazy for going back to the start especially with a toddler as mental as the wee man but chosen the path we have. There's no getting out of it now...


jpr

Part Child, Part Goat, Part Nokia Phone

Crash, bang, wallap. The wee man is not one for risk assessment. I don't know any other child who is as haphazard with their safety as he is. If it didn't look so ridiculous I would probably have him running around dressed in bubble wrap. Because he is so unfazed by life he doesn't stop, literally, at the water's edge. This kamikaze lifestyle has The Chancellor and I on tenterhooks constantly. There seems to be nowhere where we can relax with him.

Today he had an almighty crash in the park where his head met concrete at a pretty alarming velocity. You know with him when something really hurts because he scrunches his eyes up, holds his breath, opens his mouth for five seconds then lets out a ungodly cry. The breath holding bit is quite useful as it gives you time to cover your ears in preparation. In truth we were expecting blood today as we picked him up off the floor. Luckily for all concerned he was fine after a few minutes of crying.

But it makes you think, how the hell don't these children hurt themselves more? I know the bone structure of toddlers is slightly different to that of an adult and the bones bend more than ours do but still. They're almost indestructible like those old Nokia phones that no mater how or where you dropped them they would still be fine. Though I'm not going to be going around dropping him here, there and all about to test this theory, Social Services would have something to say about that.

When the wee man is scaling something that is far too high for him, I often think of those mountain goats that stand, for some bizarre reason, on the edges of cliffs. Why on earth they do that is anyone's guess. The wee man is the same, he just climbs to the point where he can't climb anymore and sod getting down. It's nice to know though that he's more goat than child.

jpr

      

The Wee Man The Mardy Bum

We've had nothing but trouble from the wee man today. Since we've returned home all he's done is winge. And I mean really winge. There is a certain noise he makes that is just awful and really really annoying. All day all we've heard is this noise followed by crying followed by the noise followed by crying...It really makes mine and The Chancellor's blood pressure rise to dangerous levels. Everything has become hard work but the thing that has pissed us off the most is when he gets frustrated he gets naughty. He's been deliberately doing things that he knows are wrong after he's been told off. It's all a vicious cycle and we're about ready to sell him to any bidder not even the highest.

I think we've had a culmination of maybe the last tooth coming through, a developmental change and the back end of a really unsettled stage. I hope after a night's sleep he will return to his old ways, if not we're taking him with a megaphone to the local car boot tomorrow. The Chancellor joked today that someone would take him but come back half an hour later after having second thoughts. I've had second thoughts one or twice but unfortunately I'm biologically tied to him so I can't go anywhere.

It's been a while since we've had such a rubbish day and even at half past four in the afternoon I'm looking at the clock to see if it's bath time yet. Next week The Chancellor goes back to work and the wee man and I go back to spending our days together, if he's still in this mood then it's going to be awful. Let's hope the amalgamation of things has stopped by then or else...

If you're wondering by the way the word mardy is a yorkshireism which means grumpy or surly and it pretty much sums up the wee man today. Even after dinner which is usually his best time of the day he is crying because I'm not letting him do something or other. I'm such an awful dad, apparently.

I need to have a lie down...


jpr
 

Back For Good

Just over a month ago we set off for our holiday to Devon, today we finally got home for good. We will finally be able to unpack our stuff and get back to a type of normality. The Chancellor isn't back at work until next week, so we might be able to get back to some of those jobs that still need to be done. After all that has been going on we still need to move house and we may get back to some painting but we are no longer in as much of a rush as there are still jobs to do back down in Leeds. Until they're done we're probably not going anywhere.

Child #2 is growing nicely and there is even a little bump now. Though The Chancellor can't tell if it's the meal we ate last night. Taking advantage of being around family The Chancellor and I had a date night last night, the first in...well a while. This consisted of a meal out, at a restaurant we used to visit regularly when we just 'going out', followed by drinks in a bar. Seeing as The Chancellor is pregnant I was doing all the drinking but I think this was the case before we got pregnant again. Naturally being parents the night finished somewhere before ten but still we enjoyed ourselves and we know that after #2 is born we won't be doing this...ever again.

It's amazing how quickly you can slip back into a former life when you are away from your children. We found this last year when we went away for a couple of nights. You quickly stop looking for the high chair at dinner time or wondering where and what your child is doing. You can actually sit in a chair and close your eyes without having a child screech at you or poke you in the eye.

I know some people don't like being away from their children but I think that it's a really important thing to do. They need to get used to you being away and we, as parents, need a break from the insanity. We are lining up a nights break later this year and I already can't wait. A nice hotel, a great dinner, some nice wine and a lie in in the morning, who's with me?

jpr