The taste of homoeopathic dirt

My fluffy patch of hair is feeling a little under the weather.

Call me Captain Bronchitis! I have the power! The power to identify the first stages of bronchitis at 20 paces. Bring me a child, and I will diagnose them! Yup, Hamish is ill again. I am so bored of bronchitis already. I have lost count via all the sleepless nights I've had of the number of times he's had it.

So I had an inkling that it was on it's way again. Something funny about his breathing that I couldn't just put down to a regular sniffly cold. So I made a appointment for the following day, and yesterday we went to see the Kinderarzt. Turns out that I caught the bronchitis right at the beginning stages, and his oxygen saturation levels were still high, but I'd missed that he had a virus as well, and also a middle ear infection. Ah well, can't win them all. Just as well I'm not a doctor, eh?

We walked away with a carrier bag of medicine which cost 58 Euros. For that sum I got a new inhaler thing, which we've had before, but which I suspect is nearly empty because I use it with him every time I think his breathing is a bit funny, and I don't want to admit to the doctor that I am self-medicating him. Though he started talking to me about whether I had used any of the spare suppositories we had for him, but in my book that's taking self-medicating a finger up the bum too far. Anyway, he gave me 2 more suppositories for fun evenings in when his breathing is really bad, a nasal spray, some ibuprofen, and a bottle of homoeopathic medicine for the middle ear infection.

Keeping a check on the timings of all these medicines is an art. The last one, the homoeopathic one needs to be taken every hour up to 10 times a day. Just 6 drops on a spoon. I have no hang ups with homoeopathic medicine, my mum used to give me arnica when I was a child, but I do know that people say that the active ingredient is so diluted that there is no way that it can work. So seeing Hamish's face screw up and his whole body shudder at the first administration came as a surprise to me. He said " I think Dr ----- has made a mistake with my medicine. This can't be for me. This tastes like yucky dirt.". So I tried it. Jeez-us-CHRIST!!! Even I dived for a drink to take the taste away. So hideously intense! So utterly vile! I even triple checked the box to make sure I wasn't meant to put the 6 drops in his ear rather than in his mouth. If this is the stuff diluted I can't imagine what it's like in undiluted form. It better work, is all I can say. I have faith that something that tastes that bad must be doing some good. And now, wish me luck for I must go and administer the next dose.

Oh Fiona, is there nothing you can't do?

I blame Germany. Or Stevie. Or them both really. See normally I could do this. I am sure I could. But the evidence just isn't there, is it? You're not going to be putting in any orders for birthday cakes from me anytime soon. Frau Dietz sent me that link after my rainbow post which included the rather fabulous rainbow jelly on my other blog. But at least you can compare the two and have a good laugh. I certainly did. But it may have been slightly hysterical seeing as it was nearing midnight and I could see no end in sight that didn't include us all getting poisoned somehow by the amount of food colouring I was going to force us all to eat.

It was Hamish's birthday on Saturday and I really, really, wanted to make him that rainbow cake. Even though he wanted me to make him a Bob the Builder cake. I thought I knew better and he would be wowed by it's sheer utter amazing-ness. I also couldn't be bothered ordering coloured icing off the internet.I was just being lazy. So lazy in fact that I didn't actually read the recipe until the day I planned on making it, and then realised I needed gel food dyes. It's hard enough to get the ones I got, so I knew I had no chance of finding gel ones at my local supermarket. And that is why I blame Germany. I just can't get the things I need at short notice. (Ok, so I am also aware that my local Tesco doesn't carry gel food dyes, but they would at least get me out of this mess by selling me a Bob the Builder cake at 1am).

I had been so tired. Hamish was ill and just wanted to cling to me all the time, and Stevie wasn't being much help by being typically Stevie-ish and leaving everything to me, while he sauntered out to watch the tennis. And that is why I blame him. And Andy Murray. Because at least if all I had was a really dire looking blue shaded sponge that looked like the mildew had got to it, then I do know I wouldn't have made icing that sloppy, had it not been nearing 1am. God, I miss Tesco at 1am. It looks like I've thrown a bucket of chip fat at it. And seriously, I think I used about 4 blocks of butter and half a bag of sugar along with the 9 egg whites it required. (Though I used 10 because I reckoned I wasn't being very careful with them and had probably thrown at least one away when I was scooping out the stray yolks that escaped).

I could tell you that in the end it tasted delicious. That the appearance made no difference to my lovely big 3 year old boy (who says that he's actually just turned 7 if you care to ask). But by god. One bite could kill a diabetic it's so sweet and if it wasn't so funny, I could have been terribly hurt by the chanting of "But I don't want that cake! I want a Bob cake!!. That looks yucky!". So, while our insides rot from all the E numbers, and our tongues remain blue for at least another month, I will not be beaten! Just wait! One day I will master this. Or maybe I'll just move back to the UK and get him a Bob cake and enjoy my sleep.

Late last night I learned that:

1. People like me should stay far, far away from the NHS Direct website. Apparently Berlin is not far away enough.


2. Making the decision to surf around the NHS Direct website is not a good decision, if you are looking for something 'cheery' to take your mind off the fact that you've just seen someone shot through the jaw while watching Fargo before bed.


3. When you are really tired it is quite possible to come away from such a website thinking you might actually be in danger of dying in the night from one of the 73 conditions you appear to have symptoms for.


4. You should take care in choosing the book to read to take your mind off all the illnesses you might have. Books about people rotting behind the locked doors of council flats strangely enough don't help.


5. I am better off watching Playhouse Disney all the time and only reading stories about Maisy.

Time flies when you're potassium-enriched.

My Orla, my Orla.

Isn't it odd how one minute you are up to your eyeballs in nappy changes and bemoaning the number of times the same shoulder has been puked on in the one morning, and then all of a sudden you turn around and you're signing the school bus contract for this September?

You'd think that by now I'd be getting marvellous sleep then, wouldn't you? Last night Hamish came through and joined me in the bed at 3am and wanted to chat. At 3:30am he eventually told me the reason why he couldn't sleep and had been chatting for 30 minutes: he needed a banana. At 3:31 I stood in the kitchen peeling a banana. At 3:32 I returned to my bed to find Hamish lying fast asleep in my place, so I sat on the edge of the bed and ate a banana in the middle of the night.

Then I went through to the spare bedroom and fell asleep and around 4:15am I woke up to the sound of Orla stage whispering in my ear "I've been to the toilet all by myself and I have done a wee-wee". For me, no news is good news. When do you actually get a good night's sleep? Will I ever get to boast to the other mummies "Yes, Orla was sleeping through at 8 years!"

The trouble with co-sleeping

This better just be exhaustion and not concussion. Do you snore with concussion?

The trouble with co-sleeping is that it's difficult to know when to stop, and if you leave it too late then it can be very difficult to get out of it without an awful lot of screaming (on your part) and crying (also on your part).

But generally there's some catalyst for change. And ours has come. Every day I wake up tired. Tired as though I haven't been to bed yet. Two nights ago Hamish woke me up at 3:30am thinking it was breakfast time, and to be honest I was so disoriented by tiredness that it might as well have been 7:30am because it didn't feel any different to me.

I've been having a bit of trouble getting the kids to go to bed and stay in it of late - it's non-stop requests, moans, complaints, 'ideas', and so on that in the evening not 2 minutes goes by without one of them at me for something. I'm finding it hard to get anything done. It's impossible to even concentrate on my German homework never mind anything else because I'm just waiting for the next interruption.

Last night Stevie arrived back from Derby at 10pm and both kids were still awake. Orla had decamped into our bed to wait for her dad, and Hamish was claiming he couldn't sleep on his own. So I ended up sleeping with Hamish and 'the guys'. The guys are made up of Tigger, Pooh, and Tiger. They seem to like to sleep with their heads on my pillow and take up a remarkable amount of space.

So we all went to bed tired and woke up tired. Then we got ready for Kita and left the house. Downstairs normally both of my children are lingering around pressing the lift button repeatedly and turning on the light and I open the inner door and call to them to hurry up. Today though I opened the door and Hamish ran full pelt into the edge of it, and bounced backwards off his feet with his head gushing with blood.

After a morning at A&E I've come to the conclusion that we all need our own beds. And I need to become super strict mummy and stop them constantly bombarding me with requests. Maybe when I am less tired I'll be able to work out how to do that.

Booking a guilt-trip through Easyjet

How can mothers make you feel guilty so easily? It's a life skill I really must learn.... probably should ask my mum, really.

I phoned her the other night and happened to mention that I was planning a trip back to Derby in April. Just Friday evening until Sunday lunchtime - nothing excessive. But of course I mentioned also that I am going without the kids. Not good, in my mother's opinion. According to her it would be wrong to "leave the children in a foreign country" (eh, with their father). She would "feel terribly funny" doing such a thing, and says she never left me and my sister ever.

I'm not entirely sure I believe that. I must check with my sister, but I do remember there were always 'dinner dances' throughout my childhood, and when I say I remember them, I don't mean because I recall my sister and I looking lovely in our long dresses sipping cocktails by the bar.

The reason I gave for going on my own is that I feel like I just want/need some time on my own. And also because if I took them we'd be sleeping in one room together, and to date my children have never been able to sleep in the same room, so I'd be awake most of the night and then I'd be even more shattered than usual and it wouldn't really be a break at all.

I had the option of going back last week when Stevie was heading back for a couple of days with work. But he was staying in a hotel, and we were going to be staying with a friend, and I weighed up no sleep plus constantly worrying about my children ruining this friend's child-free lovely house, and I just thought it wasn't worth it.

I don't think I lead a necessarily 'typical' life. I am never without the kids. I am a full-time mum in the fullest sense of the word. I live in another country from my family and even when I lived in the UK, I've always lived far away from them. So it's not like I'm working full-time and my only quality time with them is at the weekend and early evening, and it's not like I can drop the kids off at their granny's when I fancy going to the shops or have a doctors appointment. Nope, everywhere I go, they go. So I find it pretty unrelenting. Gruelling even at times.

In fact last night is the first time I have ever used a babysitter. Apart from once when I went to a wedding and they stayed at their granny's house. But with this trip, I feel like I am being perceived as doing the wrong thing and well, definetly it's like I am being really selfish. But really, am I? Doesn't everyone need a little time to themselves?

Of course my mother is somewhat fickle. Recently she (ok well, maybe not just recently. She has always thought it was wrong for me to put the kids in nursery, but recently) she has been saying that it's not really fair to have Hamish in Kita as he doesn't like it, and how my sister and I never wanted to go so she didn't send us. Of course I don't like that he's hating going but I need to learn German and so if we have any problem when I finish my course then I'll take him out. My mum has suggested that I maybe just do the evening course, but then you learn very little at any great speed and really, with hospital appointments and other things of importance I really feel like I need to know what's being said and so it's important that I learn as quickly as I can.


I don't think she agrees. I can tell she's thinking "JUST CHUCK IT!", and I too have my moments of thinking maybe I should. But then the next time I speak to my mum she'll have done a complete u-turn and will say that she thinks it would be a very good idea if I stick at my German and do the exams at B2 level because then that gives me further career options when I return to the UK as maybe I could "teach German to retired folk". Well, that's only another 24 weeks away, and while I would like to do it, in all honesty teaching German to retired folk is lingering somewhere around fairground ride attendant in my list of career aspirations.

So I can't win. And selfish old me is still planning to get on a plane alone and see her friends. Feel free to side with my mother and share your criticisms below. Go on, I'd enjoy it!

Pork comes to those who wait

Oh how refreshed I've felt today. I have stumbled through the day so tired that I can barely think. I tried to think of something simple to make for dinner, but I couldn't think of anything beyond pork. I am utterly sick of it, but still I made it. Pork loins in a honey and mustard glaze. The kids are also sick to death of pork. Hamish asked what we were eating, and so fearful was I that if I said pork he wouldn't eat it, I lied and said chicken. I think we're all sick of chicken too.

I am going to be inspired by this Julie & Julia film (if ever I get to see it) and am going to broaden my culinary repertoire---somehow---not sure how yet. It's taken me 30 odd years to get to pork with a honey and mustard glaze, and I feel I need to act fast before we have pork break downs. Stevie has warned me that if I make "meatballs with that bloody pork mince" one more time in the near future he'll lose the will to live. This from a man who claims "It doesn't matter what you eat, it's just going into your stomach to be churned up and made into energy". It's a recipe book tagline just waiting to happen.

The darkest hour is just before dawn

Sleep problems. I have brought it on myself I suppose. Last night Orla fell asleep at 6pm and slept through the night and Stevie & I were both over the moon that for once she seemed to have had a good sleep and would be lovely and happy and refreshed today. I was especially pleased as we had a visit to the Kita scheduled in and I could do with having nice, well-behaved children with me. But today is day 1 of Stevie's latest work trip back to Derby and when this happens I always know better than to think that things might go well.

It's the same if he goes out for the evening. It's a cast iron guarantee that either one or both will play up, not sleep, start screaming wildly, or any combination of those. I usually find myself counting down the minutes until he gets home, but this time he won't be back till Wednesday night - late Wednesday night.

I haven't yet mentioned the current thing that Hamish is doing which is dragging his bed out from the wall a tiny sliver and then jamming himself down the back. After a while of sleeping like this he wakes up, presumably because it's seriously uncomfortable. I went in one time he was having (or meant to be having) his nap and he was down the back of the bed with the leg of the bed at his neck practically crushing his throat. Another time, at night I went in and I couldn't see him as he had squeezed himself under the bed, following presumably the path taken by his pillow and covers. It's not easy to get under Hamish's bed; it's one of these cotbeds that are about 3 inches off the ground.

I wondered whether this might be something like trying to find a small, dark space to sleep in, like a little den. The ceilings here are outrageously high, though his room is not enormous. Anyway, today we had (yet) another trip to IKEA where I bought one of those green leaf things that you can put above the bed to make a little canopy. It's got to be screwed to the wall which is a bit of a pain, but I'll get on to it tomorrow. Oh, and I bought an igloo. It's a tent and I thought I could put it in his room and fill it with quilts and things and he could maybe even nap there if he hates his bed. Desperate times and all that.

Needless to say, he still wakes at around 10 or 11pm and wails to be allowed into 'mummy's bed'. I may be the one sleeping in the igloo by the end of this week. Tonight though, I thought with them both being tired, I'd get them into bed relatively early and have a nice evening on my own. I planned to maybe do some reading, then get the dishes done, then put the light shade up in the dining room, build some bookshelves, have a cup of tea, tidy up all the toys/crap sprayed around the living room, and maybe watch Julie & Julia which I have wanted to watch for a while and which I managed to buy quite cheap in one of the supermarkets here.

A fantasy perhaps to do all that, but what did I get done? None of the above. First there was Hamish who now uses whatever he can to climb up and open the door handle of his bedroom. And if I leave him with no little 'step stools' then he finds something like a fire engine to bang at the door until it is opened. Tonight there was just no keeping him in there, plus he has grown so I think he can reach the handle, and there was no Daddy to really frighten him into being good and just going to his own bed for 3 hours. So I let him up thinking maybe he could watch the film with me. Instead what happened was that after about 10 minutes Orla started wailing. I went to see to her and asked her if she needed the toilet. She nodded 'yes', I took her and then got her back into bed. 3 minutes later she'd screaming. I go through and she seems to be in the midst of one of those night terrors. Brilliant. Hamish didn't help by standing chanting 'Orla crying!'.

I decided to just give up and go to bed. Hamish came into bed with me and fell asleep straight away. Then Orla started crying again and I went through and lay down in the single bed and just kept saying 'It's ok, mummy's here' every time she started up, which made her quiet again. Then Hamish realised I wasn't in the bed with him and started crying, so I went through and made sure he was ok. I checked his nappy and realised that there was no way it would make it through the night it was so full. I managed to change that with him still sleeping, so that at least gave me a sense of having achieved something!

So since then I have lain in bed afraid to go to sleep because I know it'll probably be no more than minutes before I have to see to a child again. What better time to blog and moan about it. I blame myself of course for this mess and have utterly decided to get Hamish out of the bed when we come back from our holiday at the beginning of September. It's going to be one big, long day though through till Thursday...ugh.

Send your thoughts on the Hamish behind the bed problem and packets of Pro Plus to the usual address...