If I have to diet the cat has to suffer too...

Holy Moly! My cat, Kit, who I have had since she was 8 weeks old just weighed in at 7kg....

That is over a stone and over double the weight of Little Brown Cat! I can't even think how fat she would be if she was human but Paul reckons housebound, he is probably right as the cat flap fit is becoming a bit snug of late! So time for a diet I think. As an extra precaution I have bought her this:

http://www.petsathome.com/shop/do-not-feed-cat-collar-by-pets-at-home-33944

I can't think who is feeding her under the illusion that she is a poor waif of a cat but you can never be sure can you. 

The shame of it came when I looked at the food limits on the side of the book to find out how much she should be getting and her weight wasn't even listed on there. I had to work it out and use my best guess! I have marked up weights on the pin board in the kitchen and we will review monthly from here on in I think.

Hopefully, as I will be doing, she will get lighter and possibly more friendly with it (ha ha ha)!

[rings bell] Unclean... Unclean....

Uff. Saw the doc, begged her for anti-biotics for my throat. She wasn't keen until I reminded her that being ill with children is like a fate worse than death. In fact, in that scenario I think I would consider death a favourable option in most cases! She also upped my ADs so now I rattle, still I would rather rattle and be sane than the other way around. That said Tonsillitis is very good for diets as a, my appetite has buggered off and b, I can't eat anything but ice lollies which are only 1pt per lolly! Result!

The title of this post reminds me of University, in the first year of halls. My friend, Cath, didn't believe me when I told her this is what lepers used to do when they walked down the street and we had a good few giggles about it. Isn't it odd what things remind you of days past? The song "Breakfast at Tiffinys" always takes me back to hazy recollections of hanging out in the Student Bar (hazy for obvious reasons... cheap beer!). There is one of Phoebe's reading books that reminds me of our first Halloween at Uni where my friends thought it would be funny to tip a tub of flour (that was out for playing games) over my head... a strangely nice sensation actually! And of all our male friends dressing up as girls... with fishnets... and very short nighties on. Actually I also remember it took age to get my nightie back from one of them...!

[sigh] Happy days!

Phoebe Vs Medicine.

Phoebe came down with a temperature on Saturday (not enough that she was going to miss out on her friend's party mind... man do I feel bad about that now!) and by the evening was ridiculously hot and it was only just being controlled by meds. Because I am a fairly relaxed mother and she had no other worrying symptons we just went with it and kept her medicated as much as we could. We had one attack of digestive pyrotechnics but I am fairly convinced that was because we had given her ibuprofen on an empty stomach.

Fast Forward to yesterday she started complaining about her ear hurting so I figured it was time to go to the docs. She has tonsillitis poor kid! Doc prescribed penicillin syrup which we duely got and tried to administer. Epic epic FAIL. She got hysterical despite us trying the following:

Putting it in Orange Juice
Bribery (4 mini eggs for every dose)
Force

So after I was wearing most of the second dose of syrup I called the doctor and asked for a new script for tablets. And a script for me too as I had a penny drop moment and realised what my sore throat was! Alas no script for me but I am seeing a GP tomorrow for depression related things so I can get some anti-b's for myself then. Took it over to the pharmacy and filled it only to be met with a pharmacist doing his best "concerned" face and did I know that these were tablets for a 5 yr old!

So home I came with tablets (1/2 a tablet 4 x a day) and chocolate spread and attempted to administer. Bugger me if the little sod couldn't taste the tablets through the ruddy spread! Still easier to get down her than the syrup I suppose! I think I will buy some smarties and start getting her to practice swallowing tablets as she is evidentally not going to permit syrups. Bloody pest! Still not bad getting to 5 yrs old before really needing oral Anti-b's either...!

I am not sulking. Nope not me.

1lb off. 1 poxy lb. Grump.

Ok it is downwards which is A Good Thing. And yes that makes 5lbs off meaning I only have another 65 to loose but still. Only 1 bloody lb when I have been positively ANGELIC this week. Especially considering this week included a trip to an All You Can Eat Chinese Restaurant and normally I take a Homer Simpson-esque approach to these places.

Still onwards and downwards. I will not be a whale in the summer is my current mantra. Not least because it would be very bloody odd to find a beached whale in the Alps...

Weight Watchers is playing with my mind...!

I have been following the plan to the best of my ability for a week and a half now. Not doing too badly, although I haven't weighed in since last Friday. I have noticed a few things that just don't make sense to me... for example:

1, There is only a point value for Basmati rice before it is cooked. Not good for weighing out portions onto my plate when I am cooking for both Paul and me. Also I cook rice by volume and not by weight so am jiggered there too!

2, Egg - Poached without oil. Ok fine, but how in the heckers do you poach one with oil? Surely that would be considered frying?!

I am sure I will come across more as I keep going but these two are busting my brain at the moment!

Karma can be an utter bitch!

So, there I was sniggering at my friend KT's blog about her son Mr Jamie and his nipple kissing (can be seen here). Merrily thinking how nice it was to have my boobs to myself again now the girls were a bit older!

Ha. What a fool. It was just asking to happen wasn't it?

So there Clara and I are in Ikea on the hunt for the Lesser Spotter White Kritter Table and Chairs (today spotted and duly purchased... huzzah!). We got a trolley as she likes a ride and is still just about small enough to still fit in the seat so I put her in. Wandering along merrily I feel a little hand stroking the neckline of my dress, then suddenly I am yanked towards her at a billionty miles an hour and I have a small child's face between my breasts.

If that wasn't bad enough... she started flubberlubbing* them. In public. I swear I saw people going past with their eyes either on stilts or a bloody smirk.

That'll teach me for sniggering at others misfortune won't it.

Pesky childerbeast!



*this is not a technical term and I couldn't find one but she was rubbing her face between my boobs and making this sound.

Retro-tastic games!

I bought Phoebe some fairytale dominoes recently and they have been a major hit so I thought I might add to her collection and do a brief review of things for a bit of fun!

In our game collection we have:

Once Upon a Time Dominoes

A really excellent game, nice and easy to understand for small people and causes a good amount of giggling. Both girls can play it without much help from me (mostly when it comes to managing Clara and the argument about who has won and who hasn't).

Hungry Hippos

Horrendously disappointing now. I remember it being a lot sturdier than it is now, and I am not alone in my thoughts either. It is now flimsy, I presume because it can be broken into pieces for easier storage which would be great except the plastic is SO brittle that breaking it into pieces would likely end in it literally ending up in gazillions of unintentional pieces. Why not make the box a bit bigger to fit the whole game in?! Oh and the marbles get lost so easily... we are down to 2 now and have only had it since Christmas. I wonder if they sell extra marbles...

Toy Story Buckaroo

This hasn't actually seen the light since Christmas because the girls have been to busy or have forgotten it is in the cupboard (I suspect the latter) so I will have to bring it out tomorrow afternoon for a proper go over! It looks very like it always has... I will come back to this one.

Asda Mr Funny Face

Again another I haven't tried out on the girls yet (having only bought it today) but after seeing the state of Hungry Hippos I have sworn off buying the "official" games and embraced the own brand ones. Putting it together it seems as fun as ever and has suitable catipult capabilities of the features to entertain my girls! I had forgotten about the face cards so that was a good reminder. I predict a lot of fun with this game as both girls love to make faces!

Asda Guess Who

After discussing the disappointing HH with friends I was horrified to find out that the new official version of Guess Who has also suffered "modernisation". Comments from friends are: Only 5 girls to 19 boys, child has to pick character which makes the game hideously samey as child frequently picks same character over and over and over, why having it sat upright when flat on the table. So I had decided this game wasn't going to hit our collection. Until I saw that Asda had a 2 for £8 on games and their version of Guess Who reflected the, far superior, original. So I snapped it up! I am happy to report that there are equal numbers of boys and girls and you get to pick from a stack of cards for the character so that makes it much more random!

Disney Princess Memory

Bought to appease a small Princess obsessed child. However we lie them face up and the girls enjoy matching the pictures to put away. Nice thing is it is loads of different poses of various princess and characters. That makes it more tricksy rather than just matching Jasmine - Jasmine, Belle - Belle etc.

Pop Up Pirate

We LOVE this. Never fails to make the girls hoot when the pirate shoots out! Only downside is some of the swords have been lost and I have yet to source replacements. You would think if they sold games with lots of bits to small children they would do refill packs?! Can't be that hard surely... and better than having to buy the game over and over and over just because a few of the swords are lost!

Anyhow that is our game collection, what are your favourites... any we need to add?

In other news...

Since I last weighed in on WW I have lost 4lbs.

Now given that was in January I would ask you to remember that since then I have survived half term (just) and suffered a rotten cold (that I am only just over 2 weeks later). So given that I have been comfort eating to make myself feel better in my "meh" state I am quite pleased with that. At least it is downwards eh?!

This weekend hasn't been too bad with regards to the diet. I haven't eaten with Paul and the girls much as they like to have lardy things at the weekend. Yesterday I had a delicious meatball pasta concoction that I made for 11 points. I will be able to take that down lower once I find low fat cheese that works. here is the recipe:

1 packet of beef meatballs from Sainsbugs (hey, I am lazy!) so roughly 350g of meat formed into 12 balls.
1 onion
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
A healthy squidge of tomato puree
1/2 a glass of red wine
300g penne
80g grated cheese (I used cheddar as it was the only cheese we had in!)

Firstly I cooked the penne until just under al dente and put the oven on to about 200

whilst the pasta was cooking I started the sauce. Adding a little water to the frying pan I chopped the tomato and cooked it off a little, then I added the tomatos, tomato puree and red wine and bought that up to a simmer. Then I dropped the meatballs in and popped a lid on.

When the meatballs have been cooking for about 10 mins I mixed the sauce and pasta together, put it in an oven proof dish and then sprinkled the cheese over the top. I cooked that in the oven until it was bubbly and brown and then dished up. Serves 4

I love meatballs because they are portion controlled! I had 3 which is exactly 1/4 and that was plenty for me. Paul even has two take to work meals out of it! As I say I make that about 11 points a serving which is reasonable for dinner and it can, of course, be accompanied by a huge salad (but I didn't have any in!)

I am so tired

I am tired of feeling "meh" and sad without being able to pin point why
I am tired of being a parent. It is utterly relentless.
I am tired of being skint
I am tired of housework
I am tired of worrying constantly
I am tired of being fat and unhealthy
I am tired of the diet I am on (only been 2 bloody days)
I am tired of not being able to find / wear clothes I like
I am tired of how I look
I am tired of not feeling good enough for anything or anyone
I am tired of just being.

Sometimes I wish I could just let everything go and just crawl into a corner and sleep for a year. I wish I could offload reponsibility, get my head in a better place and start again. I took a picture ages ago and it is still relevant:

It was taken 18 months ago. I had a GP appt a few days afterwards and I have already booked myself in for a meds review, Venlafaxine has done wonders but I have hit a major plateau which is making me feel dreadful again. I am on the top dosage a GP can prescribe though so not sure where we go from here. I guess I will find out on the 23rd (lovely doc on AL and I don't want to see another one).

BDD is back.

I had my hair cut. YAY! I had to sit in front of a mirror for an hour and I forgot my Kindle: Boooo.

This means I had an hour to contemplate my visage and it wasn't pleasant. I have a huge zit trying to come out on my nose, my skin looks like leather and I have a HUGE double chin because I am so ruddy fat. By the end of the haircut my hair felt great but my heart was so sad and heavy and it was a massive relief to move away from the mirror.

The diet got delayed as I got sick (I am still producing industrial amounts of snot 2 weeks later... bah!) and I couldn't face it but I am back on track now. So I reckon I have at least 70 lbs to loose, sob (yes I really am that fat), although ideally I would like to loose about 98. However if I can get into a size 10 and not look too flabby I will be happy. I have always weighed more than I look so I don't want to take things down too far.

Dieting is pretty scary though as I know I do one of two things, I either obsess to the point of ridiculousness or I rebel. Neither is good so I think I will start up Mr McKenna on my iphone again and listen to that instead of Audio Books when I am going to sleep. Maybe a two pronged attack will help?!

As for my skin, back to forcing myself to take care of myself. It is so so easy to think "why bother" when it comes to skin care etc. I don't wear make up everyday so it isn't like my skin suffers from that application but equally I suppose it doesn't have the same protection as someone who wears it daily.

Sigh, Being a grown up is so hard sometimes!

Worries about Phoebe.

I love my big girl so much, she is so like me. But for this reason I worry about her all the time. She is very sensitive to criticism and getting things wrong and is a total perfectionist and she strops when she can't do something the first time she tries it. She likes things to go to plan and worries and stresses if they don't.

What worries me most is that she is quite a slow burner where friends are concerned. Last year all the old friends she has came to her birthday party but none of the school friends we invited came. Ok so it was snowy but when people made it from Chelmsford and Worthing it makes it a bit rich that people who live locally didn't bother coming. I worry that she is a slow burner on that one like me, but once she has a friend she loves them dearly (also very like me) and stays loyal. It makes me so sad at swimming when she tries to be friends with one of the girls who doesn't, for whatever reason, want to be friends with her. She just wants to be liked for who she is!

I predict that once she cracks reading she will devour stories and books just as I did. She already LOVES listening to stories when we are in the car (Harry Potter is her current favourite!) and so we are planning on buying her a ipod touch for her birthday so we can load a whole load of stories on for her. I hope she doesn't become as much of a loner as I have though and I REALLY hope that her schooling doesn't go the same way mine did. Granted she is unlikely to suffer a bereavement at 10 which will affect her badly but also I hope she doesn't suffer under any bullies like I did for so long. They destroyed my confidence and it is only now, almost 20 yrs later, I am starting to get it back.

Being a parent is the hardest job I have ever done. I just hope I am doing enough to protect them and their wonderful innocent spirits for the cruelty in the world.

Buy a fancy dress costume?! BUY?! NEVER!

The girls have been invited to a friends Star Wars party. Fancy dress is optional (ha ha ha!) but of course I had to rise to the challenge. I can't help myself, it is like an inner need to rise to the challenge so no sooner than I had heard of the party and it's theme I was on google looking for characters for the girls to go as. They had right of veto so alas R2D2 and C3PO bit the dust (something about how they couldn't be robots because they couldn't do metal poos and wees...) and they poo pooed the idea of going as Ewoks once I showed them what they were.

Clara then applied hands to hips and declared her want, nay NEED, to go as a Princess so she is going as Leia with the obigatory chelsea buns on side of head and Phoebe can be her Mum (I will not be telling them this gem of information as it is bound to be misused) and go as Padme. Phoebe as Padme is rather apt as I am fairly sure the Birthday Boy will be going as Darth Vader and they were apparently b'friend and g'friend at Preschool. In fact I believe they were planning on marriage at one point so it seems fitting all in all.

Anyway back to the costumes. Clara's will be a long white dress with a polo shirt underneath it, a silver belt and I will make her chelsea buns from a hairband and, probably, some brown wool. Phoebe's has been a little more complicated, she is going as the fighter version of Padme rather than dressing her up in some strange over the top dress and face paint (I have neglected to tell Phoebe this is an option also...). So I have bought some white leggings and a white polo top from ebay and will go at them with a Silver Sharpie to make them more in line with what she wore. I have emailed Granny to see if she has a cream pashmina or similar we could use for her cloak and I have even bought her a pair of beige boots to complete the ensemble. The only thing left is a holster and her blaster... which is causing my head to hurt as I don't like the idea of her playing with guns or weapons at only 5 years old. I suspect I will have to cobble something together out of a loo roll or something.

Why can't I just go into a costume shop and BUY what we need?! Because that would be a lot easier but a lot less fun and a lot less of a challenge for me! I will do some pics when they are all done up in their costumes!

I don't have children! I have fish!

As a treat we decided to take the girls swimming today. They each have a lesson in the week and have been swimming regularly since they were around 3 months old! Any way we got there and they were both bouncing to get in the water and swim and once they did they barely hit the surface to breathe.

Paul hasn't seen them swim since, well, I don't remember but it has been a  while so he was amazed to see Clara propelling herself towards him under the water, Phoebe backstroking passed him with ease and then flipping over to swim on her front. Then we let them do a bit of jumping in and they put the older children to shame with their ability! Clara was in water that must have been 3 x her height in depth and didn't bat an eyelid and kept jumping in, swimming to me and then pushing off to go and swim back to the side to jump again!

A really good improvement was that they both thought the wave machine was ace, this is a breakthrough for Clara as last time we were in Greece she took umbridge (in the way onlyt she can) with the sea and refused to go in at all. Hopefully this year she will be in like a shot and enjoy herself in the water the way Phoebe does.

When it was time to get out (after an hour!) we had to bribe them with a snack and a drink. Phoebe wanted to know if we could do that then go back in the water! I think come the summer they are going to be more in the water than out in Greece! I can't wait :D

Oh and when we got home Phoebe wrote in her book about it:

her writing is getting there slowly and it is getting better!

I should not be allowed into Supermarkets unaccompanied.

Well, when I say unaccompanied. I mean I should take a proper grown up with me, not a child (dear GODS not a child... that is the way to madness I tell thee!). I dropped the girls off at school (hurrah!) and headed over to Sainsburys with the simple plan of buying enough Ginger Ale to last me for a while as they don't sell it in Little Tescos (tsk tsk). So I was very good, got my trolley headed over to the ginger ale and picked up enough (12 bottles... well they are small!). Then I had a little wander, herein lies my undoing. The following fell into my trolley:

1 packet of pancakes
1 bottle of lemon juice to go with the above
1 Hello Kitty Notebook (for Phoebe)
2 Jamaican Ginger loaves (BOGOF... it would be rude not to)
1 box of cheap crunchy nut cornflakes.
A starter kit for growing Sunflowers

Oops.

I am considering it my reward for managing to a, walk to the Little Tesco with the girls yesterday b, buying only what we needed and c, not murdering the smallest child who insisted on going out wearing her Cinderella Dress and pushing her pushchair with a fairy puppet in.

Good Enough... It's an evil goal

Who defines when something or someone is good enough? I worry all the time about this goal, am I a good enough mother, friend, daughter, photographer, writer, cleaner, cook etc etc. I look all around for proof, but instead of looking for proof that I am I seem to look and find proof that I'm not. It is so easy to find evidence and think the worst of myself that I have almost given up looking for the proof that I am good enough.

I wish life came with a manual sometimes. A nice book to figure out my mind would be bloody fantastic sometimes!

A glimpse into Clara's imagination!

A few people have commented that this advert reminds them of my girls:

Well people, Clara uttered the immortal line of "I don't like boys!" yesterday, in response to another video I was watching. Apparently she only likes girls... hmm.

That said she does have a passion for the Disney Princesses and that now includes Rapunzel after I bought them the book. She likes to pretend to read said book to anyone who will sit still for longer than 3 seconds. She doesn't do a bad job of telling the story either. She surpassed herself yesterday though, although before I tell that story it is important to realise that Clara's preferred state of being is naked. Preferably all but definitely partial. Usually this manifests after a bathroom visit... she often comes down naked from the waist down. I would like to think this is merely a 3 yr forgetful state but when she pounces into the living room and screeches "Look Mummy my BOTTOM!" and wiggles it at me, well...

Anyway, yesterday she came down semi naked so I told her to go and put her skirt and knickers back on. Which to her credit she did. Only her skirt was now on her head:

It took a little while but eventually we established that she was Rapunzel and she was trying to let her hair down over the side of the sofa! She was quite happily playing in her own little world for ages. Then when I retired to the kitchen to clear up a little I next saw her waltzing past me (and yes, I mean waltzing!) wearing nothing but her top, knickers, a big pair of tinkerbell wings, a pair of cinderella play shoes, a hand bag and her sisters bright orange swimming hat. I didn't ask what she was doing then and she had stripped it by the time I could find a camera.... dagnamit!