Revenge is a dish best served...warm and floating in the bath

We were in the car yesterday coming back from a frozen trip to the zoo when I happened to remark to wifey that we were really lucky that the wee lass hasn't done any epic car seat poo's like M'laddo had done.

Car seat poos were also better known as gurgle poos because they were prefaced by a gurgling sound like trapped air making its way round the central heating system. The gurgling was the preface to a thing of true horror, culminating it the truly unforgettable gurgle poo of Wells Next the Sea Square. Imagine slightly runny smooth peanut butter, covering all of his bottom, his boy bits, more or less right down to his feet. Covering a fair part of the car seat, and eventually up to both our elbows. It took most of a packet of baby wipes to sort that one out.

The wee lass has been a lot better. Partly because she's such a voracious eater, she tends to do lots of smaller, denser poos.

That's why I commented to wifey in the car. Unfortunately she was listening. And plotting.

The wee lass likes a good play in the bath, so I thought she was just sighing in contentment until I saw the king size Mars bar she'd produced drifting serenely towards the tap. There was a look of smug satisfaction on her chops as I hastily removed her from the bath...

One Last Day At Work........This Year

Due to holiday limitations I've not had enough holiday to take off the entire Christmas to New Year period. Basically I have to go in to work tomorrow. This is both good and bad in near enough equal measure.

Good points- it allows me to sort out the mess that is my desk before the new year and catch up on a few things before everyone else gets back to work.

Bad points- a whole week of "me want me dadda" is going to leave wifey with a fairly difficult day. I've been sitting on the toilet of a morning, listening to a wailing youth at the bottom of the stairs, hearing wifey explain "You can't have dadda at the moment, he's having his poo poos." so if its that bad when I've been out of the room for 5 minutes, a whole day is going to be an interesting preposition.

Wordless Wednesday- Peekaboo!

Apparently I am "Evil"

We were walking through the park minding our own business this morning. M'laddo was wearing his exciting new helmet as he tentatively tried out his new scoot(er) that his grandparents kindly got him for Christmas. After an icy patch, he decided discretion was the better part of valour and he was going to walk.

Then an over excited Yorkshire Terrier that was as big as he was and off the leash decided to jump up at him and scrabble at his face with its paws. Quick as a shot I scooped it up under its tummy and slung it away, making loud shoo'ing noises.

It's owner, a flat capped gent, was a hundred yards away, saw the size of me and decided against coming back for his dog. Shame that a couple of middle aged dog owner busy bodies decided to interfere really.

From my altercation with this reality challenged couple I gathered the following intel about what middle aged dog owners think:

• allowing a dog the size of a small child to jump up and paw a small child doesn't give that child a fear of dogs;
• parents who shoo dogs away that are attacking their children give the child an unwarranted fear of dogs;
• children should always be encouraged to pet strangers dogs;
• people who put the safety of their children over the well being of a dog that is attacking the child are "evil";
• it is possible to "un-see" drawn blood on the face of a two year old if it doesn't reconcile with your view of a dogs place in the world.

To be fair to this pair of middle aged morons, I did get over-excited at more than one point- after the woman called me "evil" I did call her a "deranged battleaxe" and her husband a "cretin". He must have been a cretin, because despite showing him the fresh blood on my son's face, it "wasn't even mud, let alone blood."

I'm not tarring all dog owners with the same brush by any means. There's a 30 something chap with a young collie who often walks her in the park. She's really well trained and excellently behaved- on the way back we saw them, and the dog ran up to us, sat down 5ft away and dropped the ball she'd been carrying, as if to say "here's my ball, you can have it if you want to."

It is now getting to the point where we're reticent to walk through the park with M'laddo because today's occurrence isn't unique by any stretch. People in this country have the right to own a dog but a two year old also has rights, and the right to walk through the park unmolested has to be pretty high on this list of his rights. If this had been done by an adult, he would currently in sitting in a prison cell. And as far as I'm concerned if a person can't control their dog, they shouldn't be allowed to own one.

Playing Nicely

One of the nicer features of this Christmas has been how well the wee lass and m'laddo have played together. Right at this moment, he's got her a book to read. Admittedly its in an attempt to stop her stealing his scoot(er) but still.

Its Christmas

You can tell it's Christmas (for another 4 hours at least) because all the key criteria have been met:

• no sleep the night before;
• over excited two year old, literally hoping for joy;
• River Cottage Christmas special, wassailing and all, been and gone.

So it's been a pretty epic day and one that I'll certainly remember. It's difficult to know what could have gone better to be honest. Maybe I could have not burned the parsnips quite as badly but other than that it was epic.

And my best present ever is the lovely family I have.

Christmas Eve, 9.40pm

Well, it's late on Christmas Eve and M'laddo is refusing to sleep, he's even begun insisting on getting dressed. Whether he's too excited about Christmas or scared of some bearded bloke invading our house in the middle of the night, I don't know.

All I do know is I can't sort out the camera for tomorrow until he's asleep, as the charger is in the room where certain things are stored...

We're Still Snow Bound

Or to be more precise, we're now ice bound. I saw a gritter the other day. No one in the office believes me, nobody has seen one and there's been no evidence to suggest they've been either. The snow has come, the follow up snow has come and a couple of days later the thought you'd seen the last of us didn't you? snow arrived.

Now its melting fairly rapidly in places. The pavements are still obviously icy death, and our road resembles an ice rink but patches of grass are still showing.

We're venturing out to the Carol Service at St Stephens later, wondering how many others will be out on what is still a chilly day. I had the difficult job earlier of explaining to M'laddo why I couldn't provide more snow. He's enjoyed himself when he's not got too cold you know.

No Words Wednesday

Competing for the Lime Light

Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that our attention is something that must be won at all cost. Often when Fifi is getting a cuddle, M'laddo is rolling around on the floor in a paroxysm of woe and doom because his sock has fallen down or something equally pathetic. And because he's only two and a half, he hasn't really got the hang of lying or manipulating people yet (he is a boy after all), so if you ask him if he is attention seeking more often than not he'll say yes.

Of course it doesn't stop M'laddo jumping into any photo opportunity that presents itself, especially if his Mummy and sister happen to be posing for it. Fifi is well used to having whatever toy she's playing with wrenched unceremoniously out of her hands but this is really the final straw!

Missing the point somewhat

We took delivery of the local Church's Travelling Crib on Friday and passed it on to the next family on Saturday morning.

The travelling crib is a Mexican idea whereby representations of Mary, Joseph and the donkey on their way to stay at Bethlehem spend a night during advent at a different house in the local community. In theory it's a way of all the local families getting to meet.

I say in theory because what the Church suggests and what the congregation actually do are two entirely different things. This is the first time we did it and the instructions say the Curate will do a little 5 minute sermon, we're to provide mince pies etc for the family dropping it off and so on- a real chance to get to know other families with children in the community.

What actually happened was the "family" (mother) dropping it off, literally did just that, ding-dong, doorbell rung, open front door, here you go- merry Christmas, goodbye! And it was worse dropping it off- we ventured out in the ice and snow, Wifey rung their doorbell, the door opened a crack, the travelling crib was passed through the crack and that was that.

It depresses me that as a nation we can take a great idea and manage to remove the one thing that makes it great from it, rendering it pretty damn pointless.

I'm going to speak to the Vicar about it and try to make sure it's done properly or not at all next year.

At least it gave us a chance to talk the Christmas story through with M'laddo though, which, combined with the carol service we're off to on Christmas Eve, should give him some idea that the Christmas Story isn't exactly the same as Disney's Santa Buddies.

Not FAIR!!!

And I'm stuck in a blooming office all day long :(

People Don't Really Understand the Recession

A lot of people (me included) have never really worked through a proper recession. I was in gainful employment during the dot.com crash a few years ago but that just really irritated people that thought the facebooks of their day were worth billions of times their annual earnings, which was silly to start with. The last proper recession before that was the early nineties when I'm guessing most of my readership were still at school/university.

So obviously people don't really understand what a recession is about, they seem to be going about their business in much the same old fashion. I've deduced this from the fact that I see an inordinate number of under 30's strolling around in the morning clutching their latte or mocho-choco-cappa-latte-doo-ron-ron's from Starbucks or Costa or wherever.

Part of me wants to scream at them, "Two and a half million people are unemployed, 21,000 people lost their jobs last month and the 2nd big round of lay offs is expected soon. Stop drinking your sodding coffees, put the 3 quid a stryroform cup of coffee costs you in a jar and prepare for the worst."

The part of me that is forever England wins out though, and I just sneer internally at them for their shortsightedness.

Snow Joke

I'm one of the offices early starters (so I can get home and see the little ones before bed) and since I'm a walk from the office, I'm usually the first of the few in when it snows. As I am today.

I can tell you to the day the last time it snowed too, it was my first day back after paternity leave. But things are different this time round, M'laddo is 10 months older and is probably at this moment desperate to go outside and play in the snow with his dadda.

And I'm stuck here taking phone calls from people who are staying at home all day :(

Wordless Wednesday: What's That Dadda?

"It's a B52 Bomber"
"No, that!!!"
"Nope, still a B52 Bomber I'm afraid."

That Makes Sense Then

When M'laddo says "Hold on a minute, me got idea!" I tend to roll with it as the end results can be interesting.

Last night was no exception. Teeth had just been brushed with the enabler of tooth-brushing, the Spiderman electric toothbrush*, when he decided to forgo the normal trip to bed. All I heard was the notorious phrase, and he disappeared off to his bedroom. Glances were exchanged with wifey and I followed him into his room. Drawers were rummaged and over 3 trips back and forth, he built a huge mound of his clothes onto our bed.

Eventually I caved in and asked him what he was up to:

"Me build pile, climb to ceiling, like robot."

Well, that's sorted that one out then.

*prior to this, it was a nightly fight with dread threats and so on, just to get his teeth even vaguely clean

Sainsbury's: At London Colney Customer Service is Unimportant

They might as well have that title in a large banner merrily drapped over the entrance to the store. Quite why wifey continues to shop there when Sainsbury's treat her like crap every single time she goes I'll never know.

I've never understood why the number of disabled bays outnumbers the parent and child parking by a factor of about 3 to 1, are there really that many more disabled people in this country than people with children under 5? Not that it matters of course, as disabled people will often park in parent and child spaces if it means a reduced walk to the store.

It's not easy shopping with a baby at the best of times but we'll always go if possible at a time when the shops aren't rammed with people. We're considerate like that. Unlike the vast majority of middle aged arseholes who see weakness in mother and child combinations and exploit this ruthlessly to push in front of people at the checkout.

Of course these people can only get away with this because Sainsbury's let them. All it would take is one checkout operative with manners to say, "excuse me this lady was first" to make things better but they'd probably be sacked. You see, Sainsbury's seem to think it's more important to have 3 or 4 people with snazzy looking headsets on chatting to each other at a badly named "customer service" booth than actually opening tills or, you know, actually providing customer service.

Wifey has this to say about the latest response she got to an astounding piece of queue jumping:

At that moment the till supervisor comes over, I explain what has happened and how cross I am and how this seems to frequently happen when I shop here. It has never happened at Tescos. 'It this time of year love, nothing we can do'. Well actually, yes there is something that you can do. YOU CAN OPEN ANOTHER TILL.

Fortunately we are blessed with an Asda, a Waitrose, a Morrisons and a Tesco only a 5 minute drive further than the Sainsbury's at London Colney, so I would heartily recommend to anyone reading this in the St Albans area that they consider shopping at one of the other stores over this poorly managed shambolic mess. Because oddly, even given the different demographics of customers, we've never had this sort of trouble at any other supermarket.

And there you have it, if you are on the board of Sainsbury or are a large influential pension fund manager bemoaning the declining market share Sainsbury has, drop me a line, email address on the right, and we can discuss appointing my wife as an executive director because she knows why £11m of shoppers money has fled Sainsbury's in the 3 months to November, and she knows how to put it right. It's not going to cost millions, it's just about making sure the staff look after customers and treat people fairly.

Wordless Wednesday- (Don't) Just Do It

Phew!

Wow, we've had a busy weekend: a childrens party at the local university, a trip to see my brother and his missus, dinner at my parents, a trip to High Wycombe for lunch, too much Buzz Lightyear, an incredibly early start and a good (7.38am) lie in.

And breathe!

I can't believe it is Sunday evening already, but we've certainly not wasted a moment this weekend. Back to work to recover then :)

Technorati, what hoops must I jump through?

ADUZ9FNZNGUV

I want your attention dadda!

The wee lass hasn't been sleeping well. In fact she hasn't been sleeping well since she was born but more specifically in the last 3 weeks she's seldom managed more than 3 hours without waking up and making a brother-waking-fuss. In the last week she has determinedly decided she simply has to get up at just gone 5am, when it's cold but too early to put the heating on in case it wakes her brother up.

So we've been downstairs, me under a duvet and her doing her thing, which usually involves pulling all of M'laddos nappies out of the packet and waving them around in a self satisfied manner. This has been all well and good as it's allowed me to plough on with Wolf Hall for my Book Group but this morning she decided that I must simply give her all my attention and if I wasn't playing with her, there would be trouble.

So this morning was a bit different, it involved a lot more drool than normal and a little less book but was satisfying anyway.

Can We Fix It?

As M'laddo inextricably heads towards his 3rd birthday, the prospect of him being all nicely potty trained is seeming as far off as if it only happens in those adverts where everybody is in soft focus and a stinky crap filled potty elicits smiles and applause from everyone.

I partly blame Bob the Builder for this. When he was younger, the wee lad had a real Bob fixation, helped by a huge vehicle playset we got him for Christmas last year. He'd wander round the house "fixing" things with his toy hammer and screwdriver. He's well advanced, he know after a couple of turns with a screwdriver on a troublesome screw you should lose interest and just hit it with a hammer.

His favourite nappies apparently aren't nappies you see, they're Bob Pants. (Although they are perilously close to being surpassed by Spiderman pants you know- goodness only knows how he's latched onto Marvel Superheroes though). I've barely lowered him into the bath before the demand to be taken out and have his Bob pants on is raised.

Thankfully he has stopped pulling his trousers down to proudly show people his Bob Pants, which is something we can all be grateful for!

Anyway, this leads me nicely on to those purveyors of Bob'ness, Huggies. They're currently doing a treasure hunt with some rather nice prices:

Solve 1 riddle….You could win one of 7,000 free samples of a Huggies®
Super-Dry nappy.
Solve 5 riddles…You could win one of 200 great Golden Ticket prizes
Solve 10 riddles…To be entered into the prize draw to win a family break at
Disneyland® Paris.

All you have to do is find honeypots on peoples blogs....