Diary of a move: when life gets in the way

I think we've all woken up in Barbie's shoes after 6 too many cocktails.

I can't help but think that sometimes in life things happen in order to teach you important lessons about not being too lazy and disorganised and not to leave all the sorting through and throwing out until the day before you move. I believe this because this kind of thing happens to me quite a lot, and my personality type is aligned to just ignore it and carry on merrily surfing the internet without a care in the world. La, la, la-la, la!

Given that Hamish is still getting over his hernia operation, and I am utterly beyond tired keeping tabs on his movements like a Stasi agent with strong suspicions that he's up to no good; I was comfortable with the fact that I was pretty much incapable of doing much else. The dishes have pretty much sat in the sink since Monday night, though I have become more experimental in trying out non-dishwasher safe things in the dishwasher (who knew that Calpol measuring spoons melt in relatively hot water!?), while I have been dealing with the pretty much constant chants of "Mama! Mama!" (Hamish has decided to go German post-operatively it seems). So you can imagine the delight in my voice as I exclaimed "Oh. You. Are. Kidding!" at 1am when I heard a different voice whimpering "Mama! Mama!" from a different room. And ta-da! Orla had  a temperature.

Orla keeps in generally good health. A fact that always surprises me when I realise she hasn't missed a day of school through illness since she started. I like to pat myself on the back thinking that my general shoddy levels of household cleanliness have contributed towards a sterling immune system. Anyway, talk about hard work: it's been crap. I had to take Hamish back to see the surgeon at his clinic in the middle of nowhere yesterday and thankfully Stevie stayed home to look after Orla while I took him. I was really pleased that the operation seems to have gone very well, and Hamish was especially pleased to have the dressing removed and to get the news that he could now have a bath (albeit a camomile tea bath).

I am trying to be more organised about this move, and am taking the opportunity whenever I have it to sort through a cupboard, or clean a bookshelf or whatever while I supervise Hamish to make sure he's not abseiling or whatever in whatever room he happens to be in. So I decided to clean the world's most awkward corner bath before Hamish bathed in it - best not to allow the sediment that lingers under the bath toys that never get removed because they're too awkward to get to, to get into the wound. Anyway, given I had Stevie to take over child supervision, I went for it, and cleaned the giant tiled shelf behind the bath. It's like a metre deep and I can count the number of times I have properly scrubbed it on one finger.

Armed with my Cif with Bleach I scrubbed and scrubbed until everything was sparkling. It brought tears to my eyes to see it so clean, though I suspect that was the fumes from the bleach. Then I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed some more, before running Hamish's bath and boiling up a nice 4 bag litre of tea to pop into it. This is the second prescribed batch of camomile tea baths in our house in the past two weeks - seems to be far more popular here than in the UK. I imagine it is very soothing and gentle on the skin; ideal for after an operation. It was not camomile though that Hamish smelt of as I lifted him out of the bath, but the rather pungent perfume of bleach. God, I felt sick at the thought of it. Mind you, at least the wound was clean.... (arrgghh!!!!)

So terrible a mother I felt, that I did my utmost to make up for it, cooking favourite meals, letting Hamish play a little bit later than normal before bed, etc. Guilt makes me awfully productive. It does nothing for my prioritisation skills however. So instead of getting the dishes done, I stayed up late sewing sleeping bags for Barbie to go camping with. I knew Orla really wanted them and given how rotten she was feeling, I knew she'd be over the moon to discover them in the morning. Today has been a marginal improvement on yesterday, though Orla's temperature keeps going up every time the medicine times out, but we're getting there.

I'm still shattered, but what this has taught me is that things like illness could really put a spanner in the works if it had happened closer to the move, so I need to be organised and get things done early. The removal team manager phoned yesterday and told us that we have 50% more stuff than what we came here with. In my opinion that's utter nonsense, but nonetheless, I am now going through stuff ruthlessly. Or rather I would be if  I wasn't sitting here messing about on the internet....

Under a bush, down memory lane

When I was in primary school there was a boy in my class who ran away from home and hid and slept in a bush for two days before being discovered. As I recall, nobody seemed particularly concerned (well, we were only about 6 or 7 at the time), and it just seemed the kind of thing that he would do, and I suppose I just thought he'd be back at school within a few days. And he was. The thing about this boy was that he was a little bit of an oddball. A bit of a loner, a bit of a loser, didn't really talk much, oh, and often turned up to school wearing his pyjamas under his uniform. That's the bit that sticks in my head, and that's why I can totally recall this boy and his name and where he lived and what he looked like. Unlike most of the people I went to primary school with, I would probably recognise this guy if I saw him in the street.

Without ever having consciously thought it, I suppose I have always wanted to make sure I never had a kid like this boy. I have no idea what his home life was like, I just assumed it was the same as mine. Normal. But who knows. I wouldn't have known at that age what might have been going on at home, and maybe things can't be ok if you feel the need to go and hide in a bush for a couple of days. I've been thinking about this boy a bit and wondering what he's doing now. (He's not on FB so maybe he's got more of a life than me).

Yesterday Orla came home from school missing her school sweatshirt which I discovered was in with all her soaking wet swimming things. According to her, her teacher told her to put it in there. Not anything at all to do with the fact that she hates wearing it because it's too big. Anyway, peeking out at the top of her polo shirt I caught sight of a pink t-shirt. My automatic reaction was to assume that we must be into 'hinting season': where teachers and Kita careworkers drop subtle hints to me to tell me that my kids aren't wearing anywhere near enough clothes. 'Bugger!' I thought. Is it that time already?

On closer inspection, it became apparent that it wasn't the teacher dropping hints, but in actual fact her father quite possibly being asleep when he started dressing her. For Orla was wearing her Minnie Mouse pyjama top underneath her school uniform. Oh the shame!! It wouldn't have been quite so bad except that she'd had swimming so there was definitely someone who saw it, but most often it's not the actual class teacher that takes them to the swimming pool. So to top it off Orla decided that she would like to show her teacher her Disney Princess knickers (as you do) so I can be pretty certain that she saw her pyjamas too. Oh, the double shame! Eek! Incidentally, her teacher said 'Nice...'. Though I would have thought a 'Wow! Cool! I've got those too! Gleiche!' would have been more appropriate.

And now I am wondering whether the boy in my class who sometimes wore his pyjamas under his uniform maybe just had to dress himself or had a really tired father.

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.

...way back, back into time...

If I didn't feel so nauseous I'd lick myself clean like a cat.

... to the days when being ill was nice, even a joy. Do you remember? It wasn't that long ago. Let me remind you: Once apon a time you could be as sick as you like, throwing up at your pleasure, lying in bed moaning and wailing and feeling as sorry for yourself as you liked, maybe even treating yourself to a wee cry just because you feel really crap, just because you can.

I could take you back even further to a beautiful time when there was someone to check you were ok, to see if you felt like eating some toast, or maybe a wee bit scrambled egg, and bringing you colouring books and comics in bed. But no, we don't need to go that far back to remember the simple pleasures of illness. Just 4 or so years.

To a time before kids. It's not that I don't appreciate that I now have a tag team of enthusiastic youngsters willing to hold back my hair, joyfully recreating the wretching noises, and even occasionally saying "It's ok Mummy, it's ok." accompanied by a wee pat on the arm. It's just that I'd really like to be in bed, reading magazines and books and drifting off to sleep as and when it comes up my humpf.

Today I am accompanied by two sick toddlers. I feel rocky, Orla has a temperature, Hamish is on the potty every 10 minutes, but the thing with toddler sickness is that they don't want to just lie in bed. They want to do stuff, make glittery pictures, grind Playdoh into the rug, make massive amounts of mess, make their mummy yelp in pain as a small plastic hippo is tossed into the path of her walking feet.

I want to lie still, drink tea, consume as much paracetemol as is possible without making my innards conk out to ease the razor blade agony living in my throat. I want a nice hot bath when I feel cold and I wouldn't mind watching some DVD's under a great big quilt. I do not want to go to the zoo and see baby animals.

Of course last night I made the mistake of not feeling tired and stayed up late pottering about with a German chocolate face mask on. From what I could gether from the packaging you could eat it if you were in desperate need of some chocolate and no harm would befall you. I would need to be stuck up a mountain with only the choice of that or some Kendal mint cake to keep me going in order for me to eat 'cosmetic products' (though god knows I bet you eat enough lipsticks in your lifetime, but at least that is more of a passive activity).

Anyway, come 2am I struck gold with Orla having a raging temperature and needing a hanky for her nose every 5 minutes. I'm feeling very tired, and I still have chocolate in my eyebrows. Times like this I wish I had a dog.

Eye spy something beginning with Aaaaaahhhh!!

check out that pupil dilation!

I had my proper eye clinic appointment this morning. I was meant to go when I arrived here as I had seen my own opthalmic surgeon the day before we moved here and he suspected that I might need some additional laser surgery. It has taken me 6 months to actually see a doctor. At first I went to find a GP and I got that crazy woman doctor that loved clowns. She seemed to be reluctant to refer me to anyone and as I didn't know the system here very well I just didn't really do anything about it. Eventually on my second or third time seeing her she told me that I could just go to any clinic and get it done, saying there was even one on the corner.

At that point I realised that she probably didn't know what she was talking about as the 'clinic' on the corner turned out to be more or less an opticians who also carried out laser vision correction surgery - not the same thing at all. The thought of letting some Saturday boy loose on my eyes doesn't really appeal.

Then I changed doctor (GP) and at the same time found myself a diabetes consultant. I asked my diabetes consultant for a name/recommendation and she gave me a card for a woman who she said was understanding (for those with phobias) and would be qualified to do my laser surgery. I made an appointment with her and then looked up her website. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? I found out that this doctor practised cosmetic eye surgery and acupuncture. Yes, quite. I do have massive bags under my eyes that need seeing to, but once again, not quite what I was really after.

Throughout all this I was having lots of appointments where I kept having problems with not having my passport with me, or my health insurance company wasn't being recognised as a proper health insurance company and of course the language barrier was a little troublesome. With my phobia I like to know exactly what is going to be happening to my eyes and I like to be able to ask to administer my own eye drops, and I generally like to explain that I am not mental, I just don't like people near my eyes and that I find it all quite difficult. So there was a bit of me that really wanted to delay the appointment until I could scream "Woah, what do you think you're doing to me???" in German.

So, I ended up going on the Toytown website and found a recommendation for a doctor at the eye clinic in the Red Cross hospital. So today was the day, and I managed to answer nearly all the questions in German despite being a nervous wreck. I assumed my German would go out the window when I felt so nervous, but I think I did ok. Luckily I recognised most of the equipment so I knew what tests were being done, and the words for 'vitrectomy' and 'retinopathy' seem practically identical.

The doctor when I eventually saw him spoke very good English (though when I made the appointment my number one concern was more that he was a specialist in the area that I needed him to be a specialist and not his language skills), and he had a really lovely manner and was very gentle around my eyes. The good news for me is that I got away today without needing to get anything done. The bad news is that I have a new problem at the back of my right eye where I have some liquid pooling that if it gets worse would require me to have a drug injected into my eye every 8 weeks. I go back in 3 months to see how the situation is, but as long as I take good care of my diabetes and watch my blood pressure then it should be no worse. I will be accepting donations of high strength valium and diazapam in the event that eye injections become necessary.

Thank god it's over for now. I am shattered with the stress of it all.

Deutsch Heute fur die Leute

I have lost my German-learning mojo. It was there one minute and then all of a sudden it was gone. I blame Friday. We had a hellish night on Thursday with the kids - so bad in fact that I was too tired to remember what happened. It's still all a blur. Anyway, I dropped the kids off at Kita in a daze and decided to give German class a miss thinking I would go home and go straight back to bed. Of course I didn't actually do that. My immediate thought was that I had some child-free time so I'd be better off spending it wisely at the shops and getting new boots.

I wasn't too concerned about missing one session, especially at the end of the week. The teacher had been telling us that we would always start the new stuff at the beginning of the week.So it was an easy decision to make. So on Monday I went in, and I swear it was like a complete mystery. They'd done a whole new tense, and suddenly all my verbs were different too. I hated it. The pace is such that there's not really a lot of time to go over things. By the end of yesterday's 3 hour session I can honestly say I could no longer be bothered trying. I just couldn't get the hang of it at all. I intended doing a lot of catch-up study last night, but as per usual procrastinated on the internet until finally it was time for bed.

Today was marginally better, though I was still in a 'can't be bothered' mood. If I never saw another German book again or had to write my sentences in two different tenses again, I honestly think I'd be a little relieved. I hope this passes, and soon, cause I am booked on till April.

(Deutsch Heute was the name of the German book we used at school. I was crap at it then, and I'm getting worse now)....(or so it feels)

On your marks for the Christmas sales!

I am feeling ever-so festive! It's not just the rumours that this winter is going to be the coldest for 50 years, with temperatures of -30 being cited, it's the window displays (I so want this Christmas wreath, but it's bigger than our door, and the neighbours might think we were being a little flashy!), and all the little log cabins going up along Tauentzienstrasse that will host one of Berlin's many Christmas markets. There looks to be about 100 of them (log cabins that is), and I've been walking past them for a few days now wondering what irresistible things (hopefully wooden) I am going to buy. I went past again a day or two ago and got a sneaky glimpse of wooden toy soldiers and angels peeking out from under one marginally opened shutter, and that was enough to set my heart racing at what other possibilities might be on offer. I'm hoping there's lots of lovely traditional things, and not just sausage.

I've been trying to stave off buying all my Christmas presents in preparation for these Christmas markets, but I've found it quite hard. One year we hardly bought a thing until Christmas Eve and when we went into town we discovered that quite a few of the sales had started and we managed to get great savings on quite a lot of things. I remember it as being a very successful shopping trip, and not so busy as to make one want to throw oneself under a passing bus, but I might be kidding myself and there is a real possibility that I just bought everyones presents from the Disney Store where they had the most tremendous sale.

I am not really a big 'sales' shopper. I really hate the general crush after Christmas and I have no patience for having to wade through racks of disorganised, ransacked clothes looking for a bargain with a million other people elbowing me and being all shov-ey and pushy. Having said that though, I do like to go to the Next and Monsoon sales in Christmas and summer to stock up on clothes for the kids for the following year.

Last year I surpassed myself by getting up on Boxing Day and going to Next for 5am or whatever hellish hour it was and had convinced myself that I would be the only madman doing this. Patently the other 600 people already in the queue had thought the same thing. I was prepared though (and really quite sad come to think of it). I had gone in to the store late on Christmas Eve - though I would like to point out that really I was going to the M&S Food Store next door and thought I might as well just take a look and see what was what. Anyway, they had begun the task of re-racking the clothes up into their sale sections, so I had a good look to see what things I really wanted to buy for the kids and memorised their locations. So then on Boxing Day I managed to swoop in, albeit behind 600 others, and went straight to the sections where I knew there was things I wanted. This year I want to be the guy selling coffee to the cold, tired people waiting in the queue. Now that was strategic thinking!

This leads me up to the other source of my festive excitement. Tomorrow is the start of Amazon's Black Friday sale where they will have numerous items, though potentially limited quantities of stock that they will drop to loss-making prices. I've been compiling a shopping basket of things that maybe, hopefully, will be slashed in price tomorrow. At the moment, while I should be doing some German homework, I've been trying to decide on a new lens for my camera, and am hoping that I might get an amazing deal. I'll see you there at the crack of dawn tomorrow with all the other slightly mental shoppers. Sharpen your elbows!

Just a small piece of fun please.

Mr Potato having a well-earned rest in the living room.

Crouch down so we can get more of the strangers in!

I'm starting to really embrace the idea of 'not having too much fun'. My friend Fiona and her husband and little girl are over from New Zealand having a European and Brazilian honeymoon. I've been really thrilled at them coming over, especially them stopping off in Berlin just to see us (and maybe a few sights as well). I had imagined us taking in the sights and going loads of places I hadn't yet been, but so far this week the kids have managed to scupper my plans. Kita is really taking it out of them. After a hard morning not understanding German, they are both pretty tired.

Orla who is struggling with the whole Kita thing anyway has been having the most horrific tantrums which start as soon as we leave the Kita building and build up a good deal of momentum during the day. She says she likes Kita, she just doesn't like everyone speaking German. Anyway, she's not much fun to take places when she is screaming like a banshee. Yesterday after Kita the kids managed to have consecutive naps so we ended up not meeting up with Fiona, Carlos & Keira as they roamed the city. Today, I thought would be a better day as everyone had a really good sleep last night.

We decided we would go to the Reichstag after I dropped the kids off at Kita. A great plan, as we had Keira with us in her buggy which allows you to skip the hour long queue (isn't that great?). Anyway, Fiona left Carlos to plan our journey across town. Sadly, Carlos's trip planning is only matched in brilliance to my own dreadful sense of direction. We left him to decide where we get off the U-Bahn. We ended up having a lovely extraordinarily long walk through not very interesting Berlin streets to get to the Reichstag. We made it as far as Brandenburg Gate before I had to leave as I had already noticed that I was going to be late getting back to pick up the kids. So we kind of saw nothing of any interest all morning. By the time we got to Brandenburg Gate there was no way I was leaving without actually seeing it and taking their photo in front of it along with 1000 other tourists. So that was that. A little fun and then I ran for the underground.

But not to worry, as I figured I could get the kids and meet up with them in the afternoon. We ended up going home so that Orla could get some lunch and just as we were heading out the door she announced that she thought she might just need a little nap. As Hamish was also pretty tired I gave in. One thing I can't manage is climbing up and down underground station stairs carrying two sleeping children and a pushchair. I phoned Fiona a couple of hours later and they were back at Brandenburg Gate. So I didn't miss that much at all!

Meanwhile, in other news...

Mr Potato (our friend from the potato festival) has become such a firm favourite in this house with Orla and Hamish that he is starting to look a little bedraggled. He also looks as though he is developing lesions on his back which surely can't be a good sign. Last night I found him cuddled up in bed with Orla quietly roasting on a very low heat. I'm starting to worry how they will react when Mr Potato has to go in the bin. It might be easier to have a little burial out in the garden.

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...

The moth effect

We found a moth in Hamish's wardrobe. Orla said we should "set it free using Daddy's shoe" , but I managed to blow on it several times and encourage it out of the window. Not before it had batted it's little wings and set off a chain of events that added up to one of my best days yet in Berlin.

The day started off uneventfully enough. Just the usual: kids going mental, me going spare, them not listening, me thinking I AM GOING TO LOSE MY MIND. So it was, that I decided to just get them out of the house before they knocked anything else over, broke bones, made their mother have them adopted. My thoughts turned to the play place at KaDeWe. A little creche of sorts where you can leave your children in their care for up to 3 hours for FREE as long as you don't leave the shop. They give you a nice mobile phone and promise to interrupt your calm-regaining browse, should anything happen.

So as I rushed to get us ready for this, I had all the usual interruptions to contend with along with a new one - Hamish's new love of brie. 3 minutes from departure I have them both fully covered in sun lotion. 1 minute from departure Orla knocks over a crate of our friends belongings "just because", which has been standing on top of 2 other crates. 30 seconds from departure Orla appears out of the naughty corner, naked. Race, race, race. We finally leave the house. Dor closed. Hamish requests more cheese. Flappetty, flappetty, go the wings of the moth. I realise I don't have my keys.

I go downstairs to get a signal on my phone and ask Stevie what time he'll be back from work. Of course this is the day he chose to take his bike instead of the car so he'll probably be later. Fair enough, I have my new bank card anyway, so I can go and get money out and we can just spend the afternoon somewhere. Flappetty, flappetty, go the wings of the moth. I turn to look at the kids who are in the sand pit. I let out a (possibly) external scream as I realise that the sun lotion has adhered them with a good even coating of sand. I try a wipe on a leg. Much squealing and also I don't have the lotion out with me to reapply so I give up and hope that it will fall off of its own accord before we get to KaDeWe and they will accept my grotty children.

First the bank. I got one card, two pin numbers. I figured that I would go into the bank and ask them about this. But of course the moth has flapped it's wings and the bank is already closed for the weekend. Never mind. I figure the latest pin number they have sent me will be the most likely correct one. Flappetty, flappetty, I put the card in, look for the (no) option for English language, and put the pin number in. End of transaction is what I guess it tells me. Either way my card has been swallowed. Not even a chance to try the other pin. I am close to tears. I phone Stevie. He offers these words of comfort - "Didn't you see the option for English?"

I have a few Euros, but I am going to have to be careful not to spend them too frivolously because I might have to wander around Berlin for quite a few hours before Stevie comes back with the keys. But wait, I'm forgetting! I have KaDeWe! I take the kids up, and it's different people from the last time I used it and they want either my passport (which I didn't bring) or my bank card for ID. Oh, that old thing. Well...

So once again, I have to present my Berlin Zoo Card as my only form of ID, and once again it is accepted, though grudgingly. I explain that Orla might ask to go for a "wee wee" and I show Orla the toilets so she knows where to go this time without them having to phone me. I take myself off to the 6th floor to check out the food and start to relax. Then the phone rings. I hear a babble of German. To my ear it sounds fast and a little frantic, and I say "Ein minuten! Ich komme!!". I race down the escalators and get there in under a minute. Orla has done a wee wee, and they explain has managed to do it all the way from the front of the creche through to the toilet area. I find her sat on a toilet looking quite happy. "The wee-wee just came". Fair enough. These things happen. But how am I going to spend an afternoon in Berlin with a child who is naked from the waist down and definetly doesn't have lotion on her bum?

I haven't got enough money to buy her anything from KaDeWe, but still they come to my rescue. They give me a loan of a pair of trousers in exchange for 5 euros. My cash is depleting. I am thankful that I didn't have time for a drink. It seems that it is time to leave the KaDeWe. Stevie phones. I am going to leave early so I can get back to help you. GREAT!!!!

Of course this is the day he decides it would be best to see what it's like getting the train back with his bike. Do I need to tell you that it takes longer? He phones as I am feeling a little better. I have found the Hugendubbel (like Waterstones) that I have been wanting to go to, and have found that they also have a great English book section and an English book group that meets once a month. I am going to go to that I decide. Stevie phones again. He is back and has checked the mailbox and there is a new bankcard for me. He will walk down to meet me with it and we will try it together. I tell him I will walk up to meet him as I have nothing better to do. I walk and walk and I am nearly home, literally round the corner from the apartment when he appears. I have dark, secret thoughts that he has probably been having a nice lie down with a cold coke, in a flat that he has keys for. He hands me my keys and we head back to the Ku'Damm and the bank. We try my card and my second pin and this time I get money. But there is no option for English. Stevie is adamant that I have got it wrong and tries his card. Same, but I was half expecting his card to get eaten. It was that sort of day, but it didn't.

The kids are getting fractious and feel they have been out for far too long. We race home and Stevie notices that they are both coated in sand and starving. Up in the lift he starts getting frantic as the noise coming from the kids is getting increasingly loud, whiney, and annoying. Just get the door opened and get them straight into the bathroom, he demands. Right, right! It's funny. He always thinks that it's incredulous that I should get frustrated and annoyed by the kids when I have them all day every day and usually through the night, yet it's perfectly normal for him to be the same after just an hour in their company. I open the door, hustle them in, run a bath, strip them off, get them cleaned and make the dinner. Then ready for bed and then I can relax and moan to my mum about my horrible day on the phone.

Saturday comes. It takes us most of the morning to get ourselves organised enough to go out. Stevie starts making a song and dance about me making sure I have everything. Do you have your keys? Actually, as it happens, I can't find them. Flappetty, flappetty, Stevie opens the front door while I am frantically searching the flat. There's a clink as he does so: I had left my keys in the lock on the outside of the door.

We found another moth in the bathroom on Sunday. This time we helped it with Daddy's shoe.

Road trips for the sleep-deprived

I am in dire need of sleep (I think). I nearly crashed the car this afternoon on the way back from a farm. Kids, animals, slides, swings. It's becoming an increasingly frequent cocktail in our social life. Anyway, the car is making a funny noise and shuddering in a slightly worrying way. It's been doing this since yesterday, so it's not like I was distracted by it. But on the way back I was just thinking about it, and wondering about what bit might have gone wrong, and whether we would get the cat replaced, and whether if we did that 'engine management system' message would finally disappear, and whether the car would conk out if Stevie drove it to Berlin, and how I'd be concerned about it making it to Belper at the moment never mind Berlin and all of a sudden I was vearing off to the left towards the verge and Stevie was adjusting the steering wheel. Daydreaming or half way to falling asleep?

I'm struggling these days to know if I am tired or not. I have a secret belief that there is a possibility that I could probably sleep for about 48 hours straight if I was just left alone. I just never get a chance. Orla wakes me up in the middle of the night to let me know she has done a wee wee in the potty and Hamish has various calls to me to let me know he has lost his dummy, needs his mummy, wants juice, or just wants up. We decided to try and ignore the whole clock change thing in an attempt to fool the kids into sleeping in an hour longer in the morning. It's all going to pot though as things like nursery and playgroup and meals surrounding these things get in the way. Hamish is determined that we get up at 6 and after a night of being up and down it's a struggle. Especially as I find it really hard to get to sleep once I've been woken.

Stevie tells me to go to bed at the same time as the kids, but I never want to do that. I resent then that all my time is 'mummy time' and I don't get any time to myself to do things without being constantly interrupted. Stevie argues 'well, go to bed and you'll get time on your own'. NO, THAT'S NOT THE SAME! and I still get constantly interrupted!! So I stay awake all day, force myself to stay awake in the evenings, and have quite a lot of awake time in the night. Still. After 3 years. How much longer will they keep waking in the night?

(please don't tell me the answer. It could send me into a spiral of despair).

My birthday

It's my birthday. I got a teensy lie in after being out last night with my friends. Teensy, as Stevie my beloved had said 'Drink as much as you like and stay out as late as you want, because I won't play football so you can lie in and get a good sleep.' Then this morning 'Oh, the football manager called me last night and they really need me so I'm off to play football. You better get up.'

The morning passed in a sleepy, mildly hungover blur. We played in the garden, and I got to play with my new camera. The kids played on the trampoline and wanted in and out of it like yo-yo's and every time they got out I got a massive electric shock off of each of them. I'm starting to go right off that trampoline. I don't remember it ever producing so much static.

We rounded off the day by having a wee jig to some nice ceilidh music. The kids loved it! And now I think I shall rest.

The International Puke Festival

It seems that this weekend we are hosting the regional finals of the International Puke Festival. Bit of a surprise for us as we hadn't expected it, but obviously the original hosts decided they had far better things to do and fancied a nice sick-free weekend.

Of course, our venue wasn't ready, especially as the festival started very swiftly after Stevie and I had finished the during-the-night-request-filling-relay (which I won filling 5 requests to Stevie's 3), but things didn't really get started until after Stevie escaped off to football, and I spent some time upstairs with our two competitors.

The event: synchronised puking. Orla obviously heard the silent start whistle just milliseconds before Hamish and threw up on the spare bed (other hotels are available close to the venue), and Hamish followed suit possibly in response to the clear winner (bonus points taking her ahead for volume and surprise).

Further events are scheduled for this afternoon in spite of the bad weather. Both contestants are keen to press on with the improvised puke vessel extravaganza ( what has Stevie done with the buckets?? Ebayed them? ). Our current gold medal contender is lying down with a stainless steel pot on a little stool, while the small gentleman in the silver medal position is busy selecting his own container from the kitchen cupboards as I type (...mmm, silicon teddy bear cake mold, we could have a new gold medallist here!).

All catering has been cancelled, bring your own bland fare (and maybe pots if you need anything cooking), and possibly avoid the teddy bear cake at any future functions in this house.

Right, well I'm off to hand over the commentary to the lovely Stevie...

Sshhh! Loose lips, and all that malarky

Let's just all have a nice cup of tea and forget about it.

I think it's fair to say that most women don't always tell their partners everything. I'm sure I am not alone in taking 30 - 50% off of the price of fundamentally everything that I buy, and then can't explain why I have no money left. See the Tesco-no-money-to-pay-scrabbling-around-on-floor-behind-till-for-pennies blog entry.

Sometimes it just makes life easier. There's no moaning, no shouting, no harking back at the past for misdemeanors thought long forgotten. Sometimes it's better to just not say anything at all and everyone's happy.

Could you imagine what someone might say if they knew that you had been out at the shops in the morning, and then maybe later, say 6-ish hours later, your neighbour came to your door to tell you that you had left your car with the rear passenger door wide open and the whole thing unlocked, and a whole bunch of stealable things inside??

I imagine that their first comment is not going to be "Wow! We must really live in a great neighbourhood that nobody has touched a thing.". So I think we should maybe just keep this between ourselves, ok?

If something has to go wrong today, please let it be...

...my bankcard getting rejected at Tesco with a massive queue of people behind me including a mummy from the playgroup who will no doubt pass on this little incident to all the others when we as usual don't make it on Wednesday. Ok, check.

There is no joy to be had in this situation, especially when my only other 'form of alternative payment' was scrabbling around in my coat pockets and purse to find £30 in change and having a shopping bill of £55. Yuck.

I had the pleasure of having to unpack the bags to find things to go back. All with a background chant of 'I want my daddy' sung in tears from Orla who wanted me to get the red nail varnish, not the green and this caused a 20 minute chanting meltdown. Well, I wanted daddy too, cause he always has cash and multiple forms of alternative payment on him, and then I wouldn't have to put the green nail varnish back along with the cake (even though I was thinking I'd need some of that when I got home to recover) and multiple other items that I quickly deemed as non-essential.

Anyway, the point of all this is that it was a breakthrough moment for me. I have often felt that I am surrounded by a peculiar bunch of people for whom nothing ever goes amiss (in the day-to-day-things-that-just-generally-are-quite-rubbish-and-embarrassing category). These people fit into my venn diagram titled I CAN'T QUITE RELATE TO YOU, and often share a little segment with the people who have perfect children who look blankly at you when you mention lack of sleep as though this is an unknown concept for them.

Now the ones that I really have no clue why I am even friends with them are the ones who fit into the even smaller segment which includes both these categories and the additional section for those who have children aged 3 and under and manage to straighten their hair, have perfect clothes and make-up, and be places for 9am. How do they do that??? The only way I could manage that is if I gave each of my children half a bottle of Medised and stuck them in the car at dawn so that I could get myself ready without 2 people helping me to lose my makeup, burn my hands as they tug the cable of the straighteners and if I wasn't a magnet for childrens food. Actually, in order to be places for 9am the kids wouldn't be eating breakfast so my clothes might be ok.

So my breakthrough moment: I started reading mummy blogs and discovered a world where people have crap things happen to them that are just like (if not worse than) the crap things that happen to me. So in Tesco I remembered that this situation happens all the time and wouldn't even make for a unique or funny blog and I thought 'ah well'. Still wish I had held on to the Madeira cake though.

P.S. the children were not dressed as elves (thankfully) during today's trip to Tesco, but it is my only Tesco-related photo, and I like it!

eBaying my life 7 items at a time

So following the Valentine 'lie' thing (not exactly an incident, though it's tempting to call it such) I was standing at the sink washing the non-dishwasherable dishes when Stevie lovingly suggested "Shall I help you get things on eBay?". - This is because with the decision to move to Berlin I need to get rid of the mountain of clutter that I have accumulated and which makes me feel like me. Admittedly, the Avent bottle bag and the 2 juicers don't really give me that warm sentimental fuzzy feeling inside, but you get my drift. Stevie after 8+ years together is still the minimalist I met, and I am still carting around a transit van of 'personal belongings' (and I'm not even allowing myself to think of the personal attachments I have to some of the larger pieces of furniture).

- So, where was I? Yes, 'Shall I help you get things on eBay?'. For once, I actually took a moment to think about this one, and my first response was "Mmmm, that would be great. You can write the descriptions!", to which he said "Oh well, I'm not very good at that kind of thing". "Ok, well why don't you take the photos?". "Well, you're better at that than me". You can see I was starting to run out of tasks for 'getting things on eBay'. I KNEW IT!

Why does he do this? I utterly despise when he speaks to me like I am someone he is 'project managing' at work. It's not like I am not familiar with the techniques required to get people to do things that they don't necessarily want to do with a little gentle persuasion - my day job is getting toddlers with wills of steel into trousers that they do not want to wear when we have 10 minutes to get to an appointment. So, yes, there was no intention on his part to help it was just his way of telling me to do it. Why can't he just ask me straight? Well, I asked him that and he said that he doesn't like to because I am always on his case. He wants to just come home and have an easy time of it, and he thought I would complain if he asked me straight. So I won't go into all the boring bits but it boiled down to that in actual fact he wants to do what he likes and not have me say anything about it, while he is free to say anything to me and I should not complain, question, or anything - just do what he wants.

Now it's not like he wants to go off to the pub the second he comes home or stay out all night with strange girls, nor do his requirements of me extend to being a mousey little housewife who has the place neat as a pin and his dinner on his table for him coming home. No, no, no, what he most desires to do is leave the toilet seat/lid up and the door unlocked so Hamish can go fishing with his bare hands and post my make-up to the sewer system; and leave toothpaste all over the sink upstairs. For clarification it is Hamish, not Stevie who wishes to drop my make-up down the toilet. As for what he wants me to do with out question or complaint, well, he would like me to put the washing out and not leave it to him all the time.

It sounds really petty, but aren't these the things that drive you mental? Anyway, that was a big digression. So I have started the mighty eBaying task. I am getting as much as possible on on a Wednesday and covering 2 weekends with a 10 day sale. Unfortunately though I am only able to get 7 things on a day so it will take me forever to get rid of everything I need to. I also had made enquiries with the NCT about doing a sale in March in Mickleover and I only managed to get on the reserve list! I have so much baby stuff to sell our house will look empty when its all gone. I am starting to realise just how lazy I am too. I thought I should add the baby monitor that we have not used for at least a year into the pile of things that must go, and it was still plugged in. Admittedly I have been tired over the past nearly 3 years, but too tired to even unplug something we haven't bothered with for a year??

n.b. Don't read this if you are particularly 'green', but I have just realised we also have a Humax box that doesn't work still plugged in and on in the living room. Right! I am off to sort it out, possibly get side-tracked by a child and end up doing something else entirely leaving the Humax box where it is guzzling electricity and only able to entretain us with its little blue LED display.

Hiding from the day

It's now been three long days and itchy nights of chicken pox and I am struggling with the lack of sleep. The kids seem intent on playing up. Within the last two lines Hamish has thrown a chocolatey hand on to my trousers and then thrown himself to the ground by tripping over a fire engine and now is having a good cry. I am counting down the minutes until Stevie comes home and just wish the kids would watch tv and not make a mess...

I n e e d m y b e d