5 Ingredients to My Perfect Day

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After having a terrible week with an ill household, Kate had been dreaming of a day without digital thermometers and sweaty dressing gowns, and therefore has come up with another corker!

What makes a perfect day? Many of the ingredients were present when we were just a couple, but are dim and distant memories now. Some of them would be boring without my little shadow to oversee the events. The first three are entirely possible if we get a decent summer! A girl can dream can't she?

  1. A lie-in: I am certain that many of us would choose this, but as parents to young children it's allowed! I'd ideally like The Boy to wake up at 8.30, chatter away to himself and then happily call us over the monitor. He'd patiently wait while we saunter in to see his happy, smiling face.
  2. A scrummy breakfast: Continental, buffet-style would be my choice here. Sat on the patio under the umbrella with the sun shining down from a brilliant blue sky and the water-feature trickling in the background.
  3. The Beach: Pop everyone into the car with all necessary equipment for fun in the sun and drive down to Rhossili on the Gower. Have a generally marvellous lunchtime and afternoon building sandcastles, splashing in the sea, flying kites, not getting sunburnt and no sand in any crevices please.
  4. Italian: Clicking the ruby slippers together and popping over to our favourite restaurant in Reading which no longer exists: Mia Beni. I would like the Tagliatelle Fiorentino (this version was cream, spinach and blue cheese), followed by coconut sorbet, and a rather stunningly gorgeous Chianti to accompany. The Boy would have been escorted home by nana, who also had ruby slippers by the way.
  5. The Theatre: click again and off to the Haymarket to view the wonder of Christine and Raoul's devotion thwarted by the evil, but desperately lonely Phantom. Final click of the ruby slippers and home to bed with a night that sees The Boy sleeping through without any teething pain.

Please?

Yes I have the song going through my head, but the Children in Need version not the Lou Reed version.

5 Things That Make You Feel Good

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I have been tagged by two lovely people in the past 24 hours; the original author Scottish Mum, and by Jennie at NairnNicuJournal. Seeing as though two of them have tagged me now, I'd better have a go!

The rationale behind the blog-hop is this: "I have seen lots of posts about what we struggle with, or things that we like to do, and I’d like to find out a bit more information about all of you. This is my way of doing it. I am looking forward to visiting some of you on the blog hop.”

Unfortunately, she's been cruel and set rules! I hate rules! Especially when they rule out things that I was going to choose! Ho-hum!

What you cannot choose.  The Rules are Simple

We all know that blogging/facebook/twitter is in our arena of what we like to do, so I am going to rule them out as one of the 5 that you can post about. They really are not very girly. Likewise, phones, computers, ipads are all out of the running. I am challenging myself to this, as I am really not a girly girly type of person, and I want to find that within myself. It’s not all about power suits, filofaxes, ipads and designer phones. If you want to pass this along, pick bloggers that you want to find out more about, and challenge them to write up their 5 secret passions that make them feel good. The idea is to lift our spirits this week. The fact that there is a linky added, just makes it all the more worthwhile in doing.

See? That's completely screwed it up for me: I was going to choose my blog, my phone, twitter, and my iPod. Quite frankly, bugger!

So having thought long-ish and hard-ish about it, I have come up with these as my top 5:

  1. The Boy: Simple really. He makes me feel good because he makes me happy, one look at his little face fills my heart with joy and happiness, and an overwhelming realisation that he is my purpose in life. I know that's corny, don't worry I'll balance it out!
  2. Spring and the approach of Summer: Glancing out the kitchen window and realising that the sky is blue and cloudless. Oh and look, the plants that have laid dormant all monochrome Winter are shooting. Popping out for a walk up to town rather than driving, feeling the sun on your face and having to take your coat off because actually it's quite warm.
  3. Chocolate and cheese: Not together, that would be grim! Basically any chocolate but preferably milk or white. Or mint. Or dark. Or orange. You get the picture. As for cheese; yum! I'm currently sat here eating cheddar on crackers with apple chutney, and Le Roule on wheat-crackers. Yum!
  4. Going out for the day with my hubby and The Boy: I love the Sunday Outing. They should be resurrected big time. We do try and make the effort to get out for a few hours and have a little outing as a family on the weekend. I can't wait for the weather to improve so we can pop to the farm centres and adventure parks around the area. And of course, the south Wales beaches and make sandcastles all day long!
  5. Reading: I'm not even going to pretend to be a 'War and Peace' girl! I am talking Belinda Jones (my favourite), Jill Mansell, Katie Fforde and Sophie Kinsella (but not the Shopaholic books, can't stand them). They take me out of myself for half an hour, and Belinda Jones novels in particular are invariably set in a fabulous location, which has quite often dictated our holiday locations. Hubby groans inwardly when he sees me reading another one of hers. However since having The Boy, our holidays are limited to this country, so she needs to write one set in Bognor or it's not happening anymore!

So that's it, I've finished waffling. I would like to tag the following people because I love their blogs and want to know something different about them!


Test-drive 2: Return of the Mac

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I've had the Techno XLR about a month now and it's fair to say that I love it! I have not used my iCandy Cherry once, which to be honest I am rather heart-broken about as I do adore it. However, the Maclaren is so much easier to use when getting in and out of the car, and because it is an umbrella-folding pushchair, it also provides so much more space for other essentials, like the shopping. Just look at how much room I now have in the boot of my Scenic for other items:

This is excellent news for us. We're going away for the weekend soon and will have to take the travel-cot with us for The Boy. I would normally be panicking by this point in the run-up, but not now. Usually, there hasn't been space in the boot as the frame of my old pushchair took up three-quarters of the floor space and once the seat part was laid on top, half the height of the boot had disappeared as well. The travel-cot usually had to go on the floor in the back, which meant that I had no space to put my legs (I sit next to him on long car journeys, while hubby drives). Now we can get the travel-cot in the boot too, meaning I'm more comfortable and it's a safer car journey with less loose objects to do damage in the event of an accident.

I've used the Techno XLR a fair amount around town, but also in off-tarmac locations. We went to a local country park in the squelchy mud and it more than handled the ruts and pot-holes. It was also a freezing afternoon and The Boy was able to tuck his arms under the apron of the foot-muff and was toastie-warm. The top of the apron is designed to fold back, and he's quite happy to rest his arms out, but the minute he thinks it's a bit chilly: "armies in!"

We popped to the beach last weekend and took the pushchair onto the sand with us. Down the slope, walk onto the sand and we had the usual anticipation of the pushchair getting stuck in. Not this time. It must be the way the wheels have been designed; they're far smaller than the iCandy and are what I'll call 'double-wheels' for want of a better phrase. They move better on 'unstable' surfaces and so we were able to push the Maclaren across the sand rather than have to drag it. And it did look rather attractive on the beach waiting for us to finish paddling.

The Boy love his new pushchair and finds it incredibly comfortable. Following a Monkey Music session a fortnight ago, I had to pop to a couple of the shops in the town centre. I knew I was pushing it for his nap-time, but I really had to get a few things and he ws quite happy chomping on his snack and observing the world. I nipped into the library and having picked up the information I wanted, I asked The Boy if he was ready to go home for his sleep. No reply. I glanced down and he'd fallen asleep! He was so snug and warm that the silence of the library had pushed him over the edge. The Techno XLR is so easy to adjust as it has four positions for the back, so I reached down and pulled the lever on the back which lowered him down to almost flat. He could have gone lower, but the change bag was hanging off the back so I didn't want to knock his head.

Finally this brings me to the last point that I wanted to make about the Maclaren Techno XLR. I had had a minor gripe about the size of the shopping basket underneath, in comparison to what I was used to. However, I also couldn't stand my change-bag anymore because it was an inconvenient shape; big but the wrong dimensions. So I bought a new one in the style of a messenger bag which fits in the shopping basket with room to spare for smaller items of shopping, but is far more convenient slung over the handlebars. I can get to my purse and his drink more easily, and it frees up a lot of space in the shopping basket for its intended purpose. Loads of space for grocery shopping in the town centre!

The Maclaren Techno XLR is suitable from birth to toddler as a 3-in-1 travel solution. It has :

  • a 4-position seat with single-hand recline,
  • extendable hood with sun visor and viewing window,
  • height-adjustable handles (I'm 5'9 and have them on the lowest setting, hubby is 6' and uses the heighest),
  • all-round suspension and linked brakes,
  • extendable calf-rest,
  • footmuff, and
  • raincover (which is really easy to put on & can store in one of the pockets at the back of the pushchair).

A soft carry-cot is available as an additional extra for use from birth, and it also take the Recaro Young Profi Plus car-seat, with adaptors. Excellent news for us as we already own that.

This pushchair was provided for the purpose of this review.

Sleep-deprived phonecalls

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The Moiderer has a rather fantastic competition going at the moment with a rather fabulous prize that I know I could use! I don't know how she's done it, but she has!

"Pampers are offering an hour's consultation with Wendy Dean, their sleep expert, as a competition for my readers. The consultation could be face-to-face or over the phone depending on the location of the prize winner. The winner will have the opportunity to seek advice on helping them get their little one to sleep, tailored specifically to them."

Seriously, how has she landed that one?! I am up for entering it, I bet you will be. In order to do so, you need to:

"post on the Linky the story of the worst thing you have done in your sleep deprived state (frankly I need something to make me feel better about my car accident!)"

Mine is not a #badnightcoffeeclub mummy story, it stems from teenage years. Here it is:

The background to this story is that my childhood home was on the corner of a block. Behind our house, and taking up the bottom half of the block, was a L-shaped block of flats which was mostly inhabited by old dears. The other essential piece of information is that as my mum had been a home-help for a time, she knew many of these residents. She'd also been a hairdresser and used to do their perms, or do a bit of shopping. She set up a fruit & veg co-operative too. My dad was a car mechanic and a very practical DIY-er. So you get the picture that between the pair of them, they were like a little community resource? The phone would often ring with requests of "can you come & change my wheel?", "I can't reach the lightbulbs to change them, please can you help?", "Is there any chance you can buy me some eggs when you pop down town later please lovey?". My brothers, sister or I would often be despatched to whichever flat to help out if it was a minor job. We all enjoyed it.

Ok so… oh God I'm so ashamed to even write this! One of these lovely old dears was a real poppet called 'Miss Phillips'. Yes that's her real name, she's long-gone and didn't have any children, I'm not losing anonymity by telling her name. She was late 80s, rotund, proper old-school manners and charm. Fair to say, I was quite fond of her. She often called me 'Florence', not my name, but I was young and went with it.

One day, early in the morning, and I mean really early – 5am, the phone rang. My bedroom was next to the living room and I stumbled through to answer it. Now you need to understand that until my eyes are open, I am not properly awake, and it takes a long time for my eyes to open. I fumbled for the phone and gruffly muttered something that sounded like "hello" down the line.

Dear, lovely, sweet, Miss Phillips proceeded to put in a normal, everyday, mundane request. I never knew what it was because I wasn't awake enough, but I do know it wasn't life threatening. I replied and put the phone down. I went back to bed, and sleep, like everyone else in the house.

(Oh God, I've got butterflies admitting to this!)

Later that day, my mum asked me who had been on the phone that morning. I told her no-one  had rung. She patiently explained that yes, the phone had rung and I had indeed answered it. I thought for a second and my blood ran cold. Mum looked at me and repeated the question "Who was it?" but this time she also asked "What did you say?". At that stage I did not use vulgarities infront of my mother, so had to provide her with an edited version. But I can tell you now, that poor, innocent Miss Phillips got told "Oh for f***'s sake it is 5 o'clock in the bl**dy morning! Bl**dy phone back later like normal s*dding people do!"

My darling mother smoothed things over with the old dear by telling her it was a wrong number, and she was fine with me afterwards; I think she was developing memory problems. However, she never phoned again, and to this day I will not answer the phone until I'm sat up in bed with my eyes open.

(So ashamed!)

Flashback Friday – The First Time

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I do enjoy joining in with the range of memes out there in the blogosphere; The Gallery, Silent Sunday, Music I Want my Children to Listen to, and Listography are my regulars. So when CafeBebe decided to try her hand at one, I was eager to join in.

The premise is that everyone loves 'trawling back through the photo archives', and for me this is definitely true. So I had a good old think about my first post to this meme and came up with this favourite photo.The title of this post has dual-purpose: the first time I've done this but also, well you'll read why.

It's a rather personal photograph; I asked hubby if he minded me posting it and he replied that he would have thought it was the other way around. But I've not got a problem with this: yes he's right that it is personal, after all it's my uterus! However, this is also the first time that I saw The Boy. It's such a special memory. We were both so scared, but as she pressed down to start the scan the first thing we saw was him waving. I know it was a 'get the hell off me with that thing woman!' but we prefer to think it was a 'hello mummy and daddy, here I am!'

After the scan and before seeing the consultant, we sat in the waiting room giggling and pouring over the photos. Hubby made a phonecall to both sisters and I sent a picture message to my closest friends who didn't know yet. The memory of that excitement will never diminish.

To catch up with all the other fabulous Flashbacks, pop over to Cafebebe by clicking on the following button:

Friday 18th February 2011 – 'Tick-tock' (49/365)

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Tick-tock

This is the clock in the bathroom as photographed in the reflection of the bathroom cabinet. Every time I lift The Boy out of the bath, wrap the towel around him and cuddle him in my arms, he looks up and says "Tick-tock, tick-tock." He does a clockwork motion with his hand and giggles. It makes me chuckle.

But did you notice that I said this was the reflection of the clock, notice anything odd?

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