10th April 2010 (Saturday)

Hello all you lovelies out there, apologies for the hiatus yesterday... no, not dead-in-a-ditch - just out drinking with other mums and having a bit of a shin-dig. Sorry, absolutely no fit state to write once I came home.... was in the terrible position of just sitting there in the middle of a bunch of garrulous women (tautology that, I suppose) with a truck-load of delicious nibbles spread out in front of us and my wine-glass being continually topped up while my head was turned.... just awful. Someone has to do it, though, so one grins and bears it. Have to confess to a slight fuzziness this morning but considering the amount of alcohol I think I must have processed it's a wonder I'm awake at all. It's fantastic that everyone lives so close together here, it's practically round the corner from us (homes of one of the kids from Lara's school, of course). Anyway, hence the no-post.
Apart from that, we had a quiet day again at home until the Mr came home early as a lovely surprise. So there we were, 3:30 and an available car and Daddy so decided to go to the beach because the Littles was going a bit stir-crazy. Well, she was certainly driving ME crazy – into one of those moods where one gets about 3 seconds' hiatus between one insanely stupid thing she's doing and another. 'No, don't try and fall off your chair' (3 seconds) 'DON'T stick your finger into the jam you've just spilled!' (no seconds) 'NO don't wipe it on the table!' (no seconds) NOT on your front either, where's your napkin?' (three seconds) 'STOP FALLING OFF YOUR CHAIR' (three seconds) 'no, don't kick me' (three seconds) 'don't kick Daddy either' (two seconds) 'Finger out of nose!' (now of course she's got jam up her nose, go to get tissue to wipe her nose, return to find...) 'GET BACK ON YOUR CHAIR YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED' (five seconds while she climbs on) 'get your elbow out of the jam....'. What can one say. Life is short and then your vocal chords wear out and you're carted off to the loony bin in a straitjacket.
Anyway the beach was just the ticket after a day of this. Oh, and we flew the Pie's new kite – fantastic!!! Flies SO much better than our dragon one, we've never been able to get that one to fly properly, but the turtle was so well-behaved there was practically nothing to it, thank you! The Littles loved it, for once she was able to hold it and fly it properly without having to run pell-mell down the beach to get it to go up. Now it was quite late and I knew that under normal circumstances I would simply never get into the water, so I'd gone prepared in my wetsuit... god bless the person who invented neoprene, that's what I say. The stuff is WONDERFUL. Oh, so toasty warm! I could have stayed out there like a seal until it got dark and never got cold. I've found and bought a suit for the Littles (short sleeved one so she can get it on easily) and I'm going to look for one for the Mr as well, best bit of money I've spent in a long while. Of course, I get them all second hand so they're cheap-as-chips too. Ah, lovely. So we flew the kite, she wave-jumped and swam over a good few large waves, and then we went for a quick forray into Kmart to get an extra sheet set for the Non (we've still only got one single duvet cover and one sheet set – a bit tricky for washing sometimes!). Anyway, situation swiftly remedied and off we went back home. That's about it.
I think we'd better get going now because it's getting on and we've got a menu to plan and shopping to do – we've got Anna and her family coming over today for an early dinner and I haven't decided on a thing, let alone prepped anything or bought it. And there's the child as usual lying in the middle of the sitting room floor stark naked with her rump in the air chewing on a bit of paper.. it's deplorable. Lots of love to all and hope you're having a great weekend, Vxxxx
p.s. OK latest update on the absurdities of Naked Child on Floor. New Discovery: Novel Nose-poking Technique! Use your Toe! It has been shown that if you ram your big toe really hard into your nostril it will serve to some extent as a new and highly pleasurable nose-picker. It also has the added bonus of being so indecorous that critics will simply give up hope and move away, leaving you to enjoy your olfactory probings to the fullest extent. To achieve the best effect, do this while lying down, and by no means consent to wear any clothing more extensive than a hairband.