Olympic-tastic

am quite getting into this Olympic malarkey now.  Just watched Rebecca (good name!) Adlington win bronze and saw the women's cycling road race earlier today which was very impressive and got GB a silver.  good stuff....

watching t'lympics..

Watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony and it's impressive.  Let's face it, they could never beat the rigid uniformity of Bejing's so to go for nutty manic chaos is inspired. Go Danny Boyle!! The bits that stuck out for me was the industrial revolution chimneys, the 7/7 tribute with Abide With Me, the Queen and 007 and the montage of flame runners which did bring a bit of a tear.  I now have the dilemma that they are on the section where they bring on the athletes by country and they are only on "C" - could be a while......

late night shenanigans

I've been awake now for an hour, it's 3am and I'd like to go back to bed but I fear I will not be able to get to sleep quickly as my nose is dripping due to hayfever  and I don't want to wake Paul or Becca by constantly blowing my nose. We have Hugh, Jo, James and Morven staying tonight and so we have Rebecca asleep in our room, and I can't go and sleep in the spare bed.  It's a really warm night and we have all the windows open, and i was woken by a bloke talking loudly on his mobile to someone, declaring his undying love loudly  Actually not quite loudly enough at times for me to be able to keep up with the saga, it seemed as though he was walking in circles round the junction outside out house, as I could only hear his conversation clearly intermittently.  Very frustrating,  if you are going to wake me up and keep me awake, at least let me in on the whole drama.
Still, it was a fine evening with Hugh and Jo, catching up and trying to deal with 4 kids under 4.  Carnage. We failed in synchronised bedtimes, with Rebecca and James being the ones last up., Rebecca took well to chewing on a pizza crust though :-)

Slightly thrown by the amount of time my kids are sleeping, so have decided that if I start to type a blog-post there is a high chance one will wake.  Not that I particularly want them to wake just yet, given that it is only 2.30pm and the afternoon looms large and slightly dull.  Of course, I am truly grateful for the sunshine which makes hanging out at home an easier prospect, especially now that I feel comfortable leaving Ben to simply play away in the garden, and he is great at amusing himself.  Rebecca is more hand work, obviously, and has a tendency to whine a lot at the moment, probably teeth.  it seems the only thing that is guaranteed to placate her is small food that she can feed herself with,  So the kitchen floor is usually covered in Cheerios, bits of grape or Shreddies.  I fear we are teaching her to comfort eat....  That said, I weighed her the other day, having been concerned by her gigantic appetite since stopping feeding, but she was spot on her line, so I'm less worried about her guzzling for now!
So back to the weather - it's hot, damn hot!  A little bit too hot if I dare say but clearly I wouldn't say that given the crap weather we have had up till now, I am merely grateful not to be wearing gloves....  I just hope it stays as nice as this for the Olympics and for Sagga camp.  We are planning on going to camp only for the first weekend as I can't really subject Paul to more than a long weekend just yet, and doing it on my own with the 2 of them seems a task too big at their current age. Perhaps I am a wuss, but frankly I don't care what anyone else thinks, we work well as a team and I like it that way. So here's to sunshine, paddling pools, sunbathing teddybears and factor 30.

a tiring week...

We bought Ben his first proper bed last weekend.  To be honest we'd have been happy to keep him in his cot for quite a while longer as he had shown no real inclination to climb out and "if it ain't broke don't fix it".  but Rebecca has been in the cot we borrowed from Paul's parents since we decided to try attaching it to our double bed for co-sleeping right at the start (once we realised she was having none of the Moses basket).  This cot, we think, is probably at least 45 years old and, whilst it has served us well, once she was capable of standing up, we were a little nervous of it's strength, so we needed to transfer Ben's cot bed to her.
So Ben has a lovely new toddler bed, and Rebecca has the cot bed.  We were mainly concerned with Ben, given that he would now be able to get in and out of bed himself....  But actually in the main he has been fine. He had a wobble one night this week where he declared "I don't like my new bed" but given that the phrase "I don't like" has been his favourite all week and he was generally in a state of mind not to want to go to bed in general, that seems to have been temporary and he was back to accepting it the next day at nap time.  He does call out when the duvet/toys/books have fallen out of bed which can be frustrating,  But so far he's not ended up on the floor himself.
Rebecca, however, has reverted to he teething approach of waking up in the night and not wanting to be left alone, despite our best efforts to creep out.  It may be that this has coincided with more teeth but whatever the reason it has made for a sleep-deprived and frustrating week.  We are knackered.
Last night, however, seemed a little bit better (at least i think, I may have been so knackered that I slept through Paul dealing with her).  Fingers crossed.....

Made the most of the small bit of sunshine today and hit the pub with Bonnie for a Pimms - oh and 4 under 3's as well which meant the whole experience wasn't quite as relaxing as the phrase "afternoon in the pub" once meant.  However I still appreciate that others were in their offices working away whilst we sipped our drinks.  Maternity Leave rocks, well, theoretical maternity leave in my case, but it still rocks.
Talking of "maternity leave", I may have the possibility of some part time work starting at the end of the year covering a maternity leave.  It will be at a lower level and I am not sure what the days/hours/salary will be but hopefully will find out on Tuesday when I go and talk to the HR Manager, who I know from my days working in Stonehouse.  It's certainly got my hopes up anyway, as a way of getting back into working, but without the full on responsibility.  The only issues may be practicalities.  I recognise that pay will be significantly lower but I think there is a lot to be said for simply keeping yourself employable, and I do really miss working in a team, which is something I talked about with the HR girls last Friday night when we all went out for a meal.  Whilst I can earn good money doing this "consultancy" thing, it doesn't really bring about that sense of team working.  That said, it may be that money talks when it comes down to the cold hard sums.  Time will tell....

I'm busy playing with my new phone this evening, a Nokia Lumisomethingorother 800 which is a smart phone.  My last one was an HTC Desire which was also a windows phone, I like to be a little bit different and like their Live Tiles design.  I had to get a new phone as my HTC was packing up slowly, mainly I think due to Rebecca's saliva.  Luckily I was able to get an upgrade even though I think it's only about 15 months old.  I guess they do that in the hope that I will get a more expensive call plan, although in reality I use hardly any of my text/call amounts as I have no life.....

nice weekend

A much much better weekend than last weekend.  Had a lovely evening on Friday with the old HR gang from work, where we gossiped and ate - what more can you ask for.  I do miss working with them all so much, but then again you only ever remember it through rose-tinted glasses!  We didn't really appreciate how good it was at the time unfortunately.  hey ho, sounds as though they are coping OK, although Kirsty will be leaving to go and live in Australia in a few weeks so poor old Sally will be the last one standing.

Yesterday we donned out raincoats and headed to the farm park.  In actual fact the weather was pretty ok, but it was very quiet as people obviously expected it to bucket it down.  It did rain heavily at one point but we were inside the animal feeding bit at that point, and the later, when Ben was playing on the playground bit, but Rebecca and I stayed inside.  Anyway he kept nice and dry in his new all in one raincoat thingy that I bought from Burford Garden centre on Wednesday (that I still haven't owned up to Paul how much it cost).  Today we chilled out a bit, but the weather, when not raining, was nice and sunny so we made the most of those moments and did a bit of gardening.  I took Rebecca for a walk to get her off to sleep and ended up diverting into the Royal pub for 15 minutes.  It was a bit surreal, sitting in the sunshine in the pub garden in total peace and quiet, not something I get to do any more!
Oh, and a final note on the boobs - finally they don't hurt and I'm not wincing every time one of the kids go near me.  Becca is drinking a little juice but not much formula from a cup - but am mixing it in with anything and everything she eats.  She is wolfing food down like there is no tomorrow, and minesweeps the kitchen floor after each meal to hoover up the bits she threw away.  I think perhaps she takes after me more than Paul in her attitude to food!

hoping for a slightly less hormonal evening...

A good day today, being a normal person rather than a mum and attending a Law Update.  I really enjoy them anyway, and even more so now that they form the basis of my social life!  Paul had an OK day with Rebecca although she was a bit grotty by the end of the day, her teeth are clearly still causing her gip.  My boobs still hurt but I think we are hopefully over the worst of it and they will start to reduce, and I will start to feel a little less like Dolly Parton.  Sat in the bath last night and sobbed.  Geez these hormones are a killer.  This evening I am drinking red wine and thinking of new bra sets from Bravissimo.

So I think I hit a bit of a metaphorical wall yesterday, felt so unbelievably down, couldn't stop crying and had the sorest boobs imaginable.  It felt like I'd been trampled on by a herd of cows (although on reflection,I think that may be a slight exaggeration...!).  Looking it up today online I think there's every chance the hormones are to blame, thank goodness for Google (as always).  Still struggling a bit today but trying to get back to my realistic/common sense approach which tells me that all is fine, she is now drinking OK from her cup, the world is carrying on turning, and I should focus on the potential new bras I will buy and the prospect of a night away in the not too distant future....
The good thing is that tomorrow I am on an Employment Law update, and given that "working" seems to improve my mood that will hopefully do the trick to snap me out of this.