Time flies and other ramblings

Girl Lacer starting nursery school on Tuesday has finally hit home, for me at least, (I know Girl Lacer thinks it’s exciting), I’m going to so miss having her around in the afternoons, yes I know it’s only 2 1/2 hours, but still! I know I’ve been moaning that I can’t wait for nursery to start because it’s been a long time since Girl Lacer’s been in playgroup (May) and she was driving me up the wall a bit but we’ve been having more fun in the afternoons recently (lots and lots of baking), I think probably because I knew subconsciously the very long summer break was nearly over. Still, I know she’ll love nursery, it’s an absolutely gorgeous nursery, every mum in K would give their hind teeth to get their child into that nursery and for a while we didn’t think she had any nursery place at all. She’s so ready for it to, she’s a bright, artistic little thing (I know, I’m biased) and needs more challenge and more outlets (she’s got an ‘artistic’ temperament to). Today she surprised me by copying out word for word, accurately enough for it be readable a sentence from her Thomas the Tank engine book. Time flies though far too quickly, next thing I’ll know she’ll be starting university!

Boy Lacer is growing up to, he’s not sleeping too well at night at the moment and I think it may be because his cot’s getting too small for him, everytime he rolls over you hear this big bang as he hits the side of the cot followed by a WAAAAHHH, needless to say, thank god for DVRs as I haven’t managed to watch any TV ‘live’ over the last few nights. He’s getting a cheeky little thing with his sleep to, I’ll leave him in his cot and go “Go to sleep Boy Lacer” and he’ll look at me and shake his head. In the end I had to leave him to cry it out, didn’t take long but poor Girl Lacer sharing a room with him. He’s in his cot now having a nap, been an irritable little man all day considering he didn’t fall asleep until gone 10pm and then woke up at a minute to six, yawn.

Today we had a bit of a chilled morning, me getting my Flylady tasks out of the way, still not convinced how dividing housework into three differently timed chunks with different names help, I used my 15 minute slot of tidying to do the kids bedroom, I actually surprised myself that in that 15 minutes I got most of it done (I had done 5 minutes the previous day), so when the timer went off I had just this little bit left to do, now according to Flylady when that timer goes off (you’re meant to actually time your housework you see), you have to stop what you’re doing but there didn’t seem much point considering I’d nearly done it, so I used my 5 minute ‘room rescue’ and finished the job. You can see the kid’s floor now and the top of their chest of drawers. Their shelves need a tidy and that’s about it. Feel a bit bad / embaressed that their room was such a state and actually it took a total of 25 minutes to make it reasonably presentable!

After Flyladying, went into town. Brought Girl Lacer some winter shoes, a lovely pair of brown boots with greeny blue hearts on, nearly had a heart attack when they told me how much they were at the till, at £32 that’s nearly as much as I feel justified spending on shoes for me! But I know from experience feet are very very important and cheap shoes are not going to look after young feet. Girl Lacer always looks nice in boots, but this will be the last winter we can probably justify getting some with school shoes to buy in autumn 08, sob sob, time goes bye so quickly! Took the kids to McDonalds again, I’ve been a bad mummy on that front, we’ve been so much recently we have a virtual colony of penguin toys (the toys being given away with Happy Meals at the moment), but that will change when nursery starts, won’t have time!

Also brought some art stuff, although for me this time, I have a book sale tomorrow (whenever I use the phrase ‘book sale’ to Mr. Lacer he always goes “What do you mean ‘book sale’, you never sell anything!”, which is true) at the children’s cafe we go to, my boss (who I’ve never met before) will be there and I’m not looking forward to it. We were in the cafe on Monday (a children’s cafe with a very large play area) and another bookseller from MiniIQ (not the company I sell for) was ‘selling’ there, I use the word selling here loosely because as far as I could see she hadn’t sold anything. We were there for an hour and a half and we were sitting pretty closely to the book table and in all that time the only person who went up to the table of books was wait for it, Girl Lacer, who’s interested in selling books after seeing me at least trying to do it. Selling her books at home to me is now one of her favourite games. Anyway, the cafe that day was really busy which puts a blow to my theory that the only reason I didn’t sell in my last two sales was because the first time it was too quiet and the second time there was a far more attractive Shrek activity going on. Still, we’ll see. I brought the art materials because I’m going to do a story time tomorrow and to try and make it more successful than last time I did a story (when even my own children walked/crawled off) so I’m going to make masks.

Finally, I am addicted to my blog stats and I know actually that seeing my posts that do get read, as this is not about food / TV or both, this is not that likely to get read but anyway I’ve been getting some weirdest and rather disturbingly pervy google hits against my blog and I’m debating right this second to write down the search terms that I’ve seen on my blog stats because I know it’ll only encourage more hits  but I think because I’ve used the phrases ‘old women’ (after moaning that old women can be really rude when it comes to lifts) ‘naughty‘ (I have a 3 year old, it’s a word I’ve probably typed countless times) and ‘knickers‘ (Girl Lacer went through a potty training regression when she went through quite a few), well with those 4 words you can imagine the sort of hits I’m getting, although I imagine they must be searching through quite a few pages of google to get to me, so to you pervy people this blog is not written by an over 40 year old for a start and you’re not going to find anything ‘interesting’!

The NCT affect

Feeling slightly nose out of joint today, you see had an e-mail a while ago from a ‘friend’ who I hadn’t seen since Boy Lacer was born and only then really I’d met her a few times (she posted on the same bulletin board I posted on, a board neither of us really post on now), anyway this e-mail was an invite to a birthday party. I replied, politely, said nice to hear from you and yes I’d come. Didn’t hear anything back for quite some time, then got another e-mail back yesterday saying ever so sorry, she’d got my e-mail address muddled up with someone elses, the party was as I guessed initially (and so was surprised to ‘get’ the invite anyway to be honest) an NCT (antenatal group for anyone who doesn’t know) party. Anyway she was polite and said it’d be nice to meet up, I deleted the e-mail. To be honest I wasn’t that keen on the party idea anyway and it was equally me as her who didn’t maintain contact after Boy Lacer’s and her child’s birth, we didn’t have much in common, I remember going out to dinner with her when we were both pregnant, we both already had one another child and neither of us were working or planning on working afterwards but she goes to me “Oh, are you planning on getting any ‘help’ in after the birth?”, I nearly choked on my noodles, christ if I even suggested getting any extra childcare in (not that we could afford it anyway) to Mr. Lacer he’d probably give me a swift boot out of the door and tell me to get back to work! Which I agree with as well, I don’t see the point of getting someone else in to do your childcare unless a) you’re working b) you’re long term ill c) you’ve already got quite a few children and then go and give birth to twins!Anyway she got an au pair. So, no party, which is as I said not that bothered about the actual party but it’s like my nose has been (unintentionally) rubbed into the fact that in my rather friendless existence, other people get to go to parties but not me, which is actually from me rather inexcusable wallowing as I do have friends (we went to the park yesterday for a start), not many in the area I live in now  but I have good friends elsewhere to, in fact we’re going to a large joint birthday party on Saturday for Girl Lacer and my online friends who all have 3 going on 4 soon year olds which will be nice, I meet up with my online friends probably two times a year at least, which is not bad going considering we all live across the country. But onto the NCT (grrrhhh) affect, as you may have gathered from this post and some of my others I am a bit of a loner and quite a bit shy, I have one proper ‘real-life’ friend in that we go on playdates with our kids and several aquaintences in my area who I’ll stop and have a good natter with if we bump into each other in the supermarket and I consider knowing me, that considering we’ve lived in this area for 3 years now is actually pretty good going. But through nearly four years of being at home with the kids I seem to have not yet escaped the NCT affect, it started pretty much after Girl Lacer was born, the only antenatal classes I had were two very boring NHS classes in a hospital in central London. I went out new into the world of baby groups and classes with Girl Lacer and came across the same phenomenon consistently, the ‘NCT clique’. You see a lot of women have their antenatal classes at NCT, which are pretty comprehensive, pretty expensive, hard to get into classes, the main point it seems with the NCT classes are to make friends, fair enough. However, these groups of friends then go on to have their babies and then go out enmasse to the baby and toddler groups of this world together and as they are already happy in their cosy little group of mates they’re not actually that interested in talking to anyone new. So a mum on her own with her baby or toddler, just not that interesting. I’ve come across the NCT affect so many times (I’ve done alot of groups with Girl and Boy Lacer over the years), I had hoped with the approach of the school years I’d escaped it finally but not yet obviously. Which is all now tapping into my school-gate anxieties, forget about Girl Lacer being nervous about making new friends when she starts nursery (she isn’t, Girl Lacer can make friends 5 minutes into walking into a room full of children she’s never met before), it’s me! Although Girl Lacer is only starting nursery, it’s the nursery attached to the school she will almost certainly be going to and her nursery mates will be the same kids she starts school with in the same class, so the mums at the school gate will all be the same. So, I’m worrying whether I’m going to make a good impression and actually make some more friends, as living in an area with no family, friends are what get you through. I’m worried that I look too much of a scruff ball with my frizzy hair and horrible glasses, I’m worried that everyone will already know each other (probably from NCT lol), but no actually I am worried that they’ll already know each other because to get a first born into this nursery is extremely rare because it’s such a popular nursery and to get in most of the children will have had to have an older brother or sister at the school, so see what I mean, everyone will already know each other. Ugh ignore me I’m a worry wort.

Flylady day 10 – ’15 minutes’

Ok, now getting more confused, as well as doing hotspots for 2 minutes, room rescues for 5 minutes, now we’re doing ‘tidying up a room’ for 15 minutes as well (which I thought the former two exercises were as well), isn’t it just the same as 22 minutes of housework? I know, it isn’t because you’re meant to spread those three tasks over the day. I think what confuses me at this point is that even in my chaotic state I almost certainly will go and clear something off somewhere for 2 minutes (a.k.a the hotspot exercise), will ‘room rescue’ at least the kitchen everyday and most days do at least another 15 minutes of housework and yet I still live in chaos. So am I going to still be living in chaos, just tieing my head in knots trying to remember these three seperate bits of housework? Yes, I know I have to write them down, I’m going to go and stick them on a post-it for the fridge now.