My bike trailer arrived today (finally... Interlink have landed them selves on my hit list for distinct idiocy). I put it all together, in retrospect the living room wasn't the place to do it. Especially when it didn't fit out the door without removing 2 wheel covers and 1 wheel lol! Anyway I got it hitched to the bike and off we went for a test drive. I decided to attempt the school run so that is a 3 mile round trip the way I thought I was going to do it.
Ok I had to push three times up particularly heavy hills and I had to have a sit down (it was sit down or throw up) but I did it! I haven't cycled since we moved away from Cheltenham 6 years ago so it was a fairly impressive feat! Wow my backside hurts now... I am going to have to admit defeat and get the lardy arse saddle for my bike aren't I!
On the upside the girls loved it and thought it was a fab adventure! I am looking forward to getting out and about more with them. Hopefully it will aid weightloss too so that is a plus point!
Friday, 23 July 2010
How to entertain 4 girls.
Aged from 2.5 - 10.
Bake cupcakes.
Make vast quantities of icing (PINK)
Pipe icing onto cakes
Allow girls to decorate liberally with PINK sparkles
We have negotiated eating one now, one for pudding and one for taking home. Muchos fun!
Bake cupcakes.
Make vast quantities of icing (PINK)
Pipe icing onto cakes
Allow girls to decorate liberally with PINK sparkles
We have negotiated eating one now, one for pudding and one for taking home. Muchos fun!
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Last day of Pre School.
It is official, Phoebe is no longer a Pre Schooler. Today was her last day, they had a party with their regular entertainer Mr Spotty and from Phoebe's excitable descriptions they had a fantastic time! I am not ashamed to admit I found it very difficult not to cry when I picked her up. She ran around and gave all the workers hugs and said goodbye. She gave them a big box of Thorntons chocolates and a lovely card. Then for Becky she chose a Momiji Doll, which we thought was right up her street. Phoebe chose the "Lucky" doll for her, and it is very cute:
and in the bottom of the doll there is a hole for a note and we wrote saying "To Becky, my first and best teacher". I believe I made her cry, twice... oops! She was, and indeed still is for Clara, a fantastically supportive Keyworker to her and a fab friend for me.
I can't believe that Phoebe is now a school age child! She is my baby, how has she gone from this:
to this:
in what feels like a blink?!
and in the bottom of the doll there is a hole for a note and we wrote saying "To Becky, my first and best teacher". I believe I made her cry, twice... oops! She was, and indeed still is for Clara, a fantastically supportive Keyworker to her and a fab friend for me.
I can't believe that Phoebe is now a school age child! She is my baby, how has she gone from this:
to this:
in what feels like a blink?!
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Six Weeks Of Summer.
I feel sick to my stomach thinking about this holiday. I am totally on my own this time which is making it worse. So far I have filled my Love Film list with children's movies so that we have different things to watch if the mood takes us. And I have written a little list of things we can do that are reasonably local to us:
Natural History Museum
Science Museum
London Wetlands
Deen City Farm
Boat Ride on the Thames
The Arc soft play
Corams Feilds
Brighton / Seaside trip
Aquarium
London Zoo
But a lot of those activities involve money I don't have so I will have to think of ways around it all or find different, free, activities. I have a headache thinking about it to be honest, I wish I could blink and it would be September.
I feel like such a horrible mother for feeling like this. But the truth is I am not coping as well as people seem to think I am. I am lonely but I am too shy to make friends from Preschool, I am frightened of getting hurt again I suppose. Call me stupid and over dramatic if you like but I am, events last year have left me feeling so wary of people. I am dreadfully paranoid of people's reaction to me, I just don't feel like I can do life "right". I am a perpetual outsider I fear, living on the edge of everything. I want to belong really but I am so frightened of it all. I feel like giving up on ever getting better, maybe this is the life I am meant to live and I should just put up and shut up.
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
A labour of love.
This is Phoebe's last week at Preschool. She has been there for 2 years and has loved every single minute of her time there. It is a wonderfully hap-hazard caring place, totally organised chaos and brilliant fun! In the time she has been there she has learnt to talk, she has potty trained, she has been in 4 of their concerts, learnt to write her name, learnt to count and so many more things!
She has had amazing support from all the workers there and so I wanted to give a little something back, something that I know Phoebe would have enjoyed playing with and summed her up. So I have made 6 bright red superhero capes and I appliquéd the school's initials on the back as an added touch.
I learnt a valuable lesson today about appliquéing. Short cuts don't work... I bought bonding tape instead of iron on bonding. All this did was gum up the needle and cause problems so I had to do a mad dash to Sainsburys to get wonderweb. Still, it is all done now and I am going to give them to school tomorrow! I hope they like them!
She has had amazing support from all the workers there and so I wanted to give a little something back, something that I know Phoebe would have enjoyed playing with and summed her up. So I have made 6 bright red superhero capes and I appliquéd the school's initials on the back as an added touch.
I learnt a valuable lesson today about appliquéing. Short cuts don't work... I bought bonding tape instead of iron on bonding. All this did was gum up the needle and cause problems so I had to do a mad dash to Sainsburys to get wonderweb. Still, it is all done now and I am going to give them to school tomorrow! I hope they like them!
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Weekend fun!
On Saturday we drove over to see our lovely friends Doug and Piper to attend a celebrate their birthdays and engagement. Unfortunately there was an accident on the M25 rendering it a parking strip for a considerable amount of time, what was meant to be a 1hr drive took almost 3! Still we got there and had a lovely BBQ lunch with our friends. The girls terrorised their cat and chickens and paid back the neighbours kids by shrieking a lot! They were so well behaved in the car whilst we were stuck that frankly they could have gotten up to much worse and we wouldn't have minded too much. Thank heavens for the sainted invention of the in car DVD player, it has been an absolute Godsend since it arrived from Grannie for Christmas. Now we just need to work on them using the headphones to listen to the movie so we can listen to our tunes in the front!
Today we decided it was Bike over haul day. After having gone to the meeting at Phoebe's primary school we realised there was no sensible way of me taking the girls there every day. It is too far to walk (and there is only so much moaning I can put up with) or scoot for the girls. I don't want Phoebe riding on roads and I don't approve of bikes on pavements even for her. So the only option left for us is a trailer attached to my bike. Erk. Today I purchased one on Ebay and it should arrive in the next few days. Meanwhile my bike has been living in the shed for the last 5 years so it was in need of some TLC. 2 new tyres and inner tubes, a brief go over with a brush and some oil and it is a happy bike! I have so far done once around the block on it... I must get a new saddle, ow! Because Paul's bike was 20 yrs old we decided he needed a new one so we bough a bargainatious one from Halfords and he rode it home. So now we are all set to take the girls out on bike rides at the weekend. I have 6 weeks to get up to a level of fitness so I can pull them in the trailer to school everyday and we live in a fairly hilly area. This is going to be fun! I am excessively proud of myself though as I have now learned how to change an innertube and a tyre on a bike, I have never done this before and now I have done 4 (Phoebe's bike needed new innertubes too). Woo, go me!
Today we decided it was Bike over haul day. After having gone to the meeting at Phoebe's primary school we realised there was no sensible way of me taking the girls there every day. It is too far to walk (and there is only so much moaning I can put up with) or scoot for the girls. I don't want Phoebe riding on roads and I don't approve of bikes on pavements even for her. So the only option left for us is a trailer attached to my bike. Erk. Today I purchased one on Ebay and it should arrive in the next few days. Meanwhile my bike has been living in the shed for the last 5 years so it was in need of some TLC. 2 new tyres and inner tubes, a brief go over with a brush and some oil and it is a happy bike! I have so far done once around the block on it... I must get a new saddle, ow! Because Paul's bike was 20 yrs old we decided he needed a new one so we bough a bargainatious one from Halfords and he rode it home. So now we are all set to take the girls out on bike rides at the weekend. I have 6 weeks to get up to a level of fitness so I can pull them in the trailer to school everyday and we live in a fairly hilly area. This is going to be fun! I am excessively proud of myself though as I have now learned how to change an innertube and a tyre on a bike, I have never done this before and now I have done 4 (Phoebe's bike needed new innertubes too). Woo, go me!
Friday, 16 July 2010
And now we get the pay off for the Dummy Fairy visit.
Clara is in the "why" stage [wail]. Everything is "WHY?!" or "BUT WHHHHHHHHHY?". No answer will satisfy her.
This is our first proper time out with the why stage as at this age with Phoebe she wasn't talking. Wow, I just realised that, seriously when Phoebe was this age she had 10 words and preferred the point and shriek or just tantrum to attempting speech! Anyway by the time we got to the why stage with Phoebe she was much older and is easier to answer as she asks sensible questions instead of just "Why?".
This is our first proper time out with the why stage as at this age with Phoebe she wasn't talking. Wow, I just realised that, seriously when Phoebe was this age she had 10 words and preferred the point and shriek or just tantrum to attempting speech! Anyway by the time we got to the why stage with Phoebe she was much older and is easier to answer as she asks sensible questions instead of just "Why?".
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