Winter at the seaside pictures

Christmas spirit

This year Jamie got me some lovely bits and bobs for Christmas which i really liked (in large part due to the fact that I gave him a list of things I wanted, compete with links to all the products so it was pretty hard for him to go wrong)

So on christmas eve I opened all my presents (we open Christmas presents on christmas eve in our family, so do the royal family, yet another thing we have in common) Anyway he said to me you have one more gift but it hasn't arrived yet. So I thought there had been a delivery error,  awesome a second Christmas! and then I said to him on Christmas morning 'what's my other gift?' and he said '£30 pounds of amazon gift vouchers' and I thought how nice, vouchers for my kindle what a great idea that wasn't on the list. What a thoughtful husband I have. Ha!

When the vouchers arrived via email they were in two lots, one £10 and one of £20, very suspicious and when I looked closer I noticed that he had got them as a loyalty deal for using sainsburys to do his shopping. A total re-gfit, for Christmas, for his wife! The cheek.

Then when I pointed out he was being a shameless re-gifter he threatened to take them back. Never mind that they had been collected doing the family shopping online, which I do every week. So really they were half mine to begin with.

I said to him it's not the gift I have the issue with, it's the deceit, imagine getting free vouchers and trying to pass them of as a Christmas gift to your wife! who you have been with for 15 years! who almost died giving birth to your child! (slight exaggeration) cheapskate.

And I bought him and awesome coffee machine for Chrsitmas. He hasn't heard the last of this, not by a long shot.

By the way this one bad gift totally negated the years and years of awesome presents he has given me. Wipes them out in one clean swoop.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Shoes

The other day I was lying on my couch and I heard  a shuffle, shuffle, stomp, stomp looked up and there was Mackay. In my shoes quite proud of himself so i made him walk towards me and viola! classic childhood moment captured on camera.

Also Mackay's first girlfriend natalie is moving back to the US to here they are at her going away party. Plus it's a nice picture of me and you don't get those very often. So here it is.

Also sometimes you just know bedtime is going to be a struggle, today is one of those days i have a very hyper child running up and down the hall being a dinosaur, well I think it's a dinosaur it could be a lion or a crocodile or a cat. Either way I sense I may be standing outside his door for a while tonight.

Mackay's adventures at playgroup

Above is Mackay playing around with his best mate Jamie at playgroup. 

Also when i played it back to Mackay on our camera he laughed like a loon, thought it was the funniest thing he ever saw, ever.

Mackay has a best friend called Jamie and from the moment they met 6 months ago they have loved each other. Here they are side by side.

Also they look a bit a like and some people think their twins, but there not, not unless there was some massive hospital mix-up conspiracy. Unlikely but not impossible.

Sick again

Before you have kids everyone tells you how they get sick so often but you don't realise how much they get sick until you have kids and no joke they are sick every other week. Mackay's latest thing is hand and foot virus (not foot and mouth cow type, it's a whole other virus)

Anyway he has it compete with blisters all over his body and I think Jamie and I have it too minus the blisters. Which explains why I have been feeling so crap all week. I have a real inner battle when I get sick, I lurch between thinking I making it all up and then thinking that this is totally not normal way to feel and i must google all my symptoms straight away to make sure I am not dying.

This comes from my parents who had completely opposite reactions to me being sick. My dad is totally ambivalent to sickness, Example: when I had chicken pox and a massive fever I said to him 'Dad I feel a bit hot' He said 'Don't lie in the sun then.'
And my mum is always overreacting and thinks I am dying when I get sick Example: once I had a massive hangover and she wanted to take me to the A&E, no joke.

So as soon as I get sick i constantly question whether i am sick and whether I am so sick that i should go to the doctor or just straight to the hospital.  Inevitably by the time I have almost reached a decision I am feeing better and forget how i was feeling anyway.

But as an interesting aside did you know that one symptom of hand and mouth virus is sore ears. I have never had sore ears in my life. Another symptom is loss of appetite, if only I was that lucky, my appetite has increased. i can not stop eating. It's a mega eating virus. That is definitely worth seeing the doctor about.

Mackay's new thing

Mackay likes to kiss goodbye when we leaves somewhere, he started off kissing people he knew, then strangers and now it's his favourite things in the room. When we left the house the other day he kissed his playhouse, his bumble bee toy, his cot and his nappy bin. You know just things he will miss when he is not in the room anymore.

Any my idea for poo shocker! has gained more momentum as we were waking down the road the other day Mackay picked up a dog poo, in his hand! and touched it! with his fingers! I gave them a good wipe afterwards and used a litre of hand sanitiser but still gross. Dog poo on my babies hands. Mega gross.

And another thing

Can someone explain to me spitting in the street? Why? Why? Why?

Actually this might become a regular section in my blog. 'Things Andrea has no hope of understanding in her lifetime'

Things that puzzle me

I know I am 31 and a pretty intelligent person but somethings in life mystify me. Here are two which I have spent way too much time thinking about today

How do they print photos on cakes? Do they have special icing printers? how can they get colour on there? Is it a transfer type situation? Do they iron it on and if they do why doesn't the icing melt?

What is a grill on an oven for? Who uses it (I try but fail) Instead of using the grill why don't you just use the normal oven and why do you have to keep the door open? What is the advantage of grilling over baking? i might be going out on a limb but i am saying a grill is totally useless.

Aren't you glad you subscribed to my blog now? suckers.

uh-oh

I just watched the video that i just posted of Mackay and my voice is so deep, when did that happen? i used to be squeaky and nasally like a good kiwi girl. now i have a serious deep voice, much like a transexual.

I am really really tired today

I don't know why but i am knackered i was going to write a post about jamie being silly but I can't remember what i was going to say. So anyway here is a video of mackay playing with bottle caps.

Also he has walked in dog poo twice this week and i have had to clean it off his shoes and it makes me want to vomit.

 People not picking up their dog's poo it my number one pet hate. So i have thought of a concept that should be implemented by camden council immediately to deal with the situation.

Each dog has to be registered and when they are registered they have a electronic chip put in them that links them to their owner. And their owner has a chip put in their  bottom area ( a totally painless procedure) Every time the dog poos in a public place and it is not cleaned up by the owner, the owner gets an electric shock up their bum. Now I know that technology might not be there at the moment but the concept is pretty solid.

It's called Poo shocker! (with the exclamation mark) Don't steal my idea.

I had an awesome birthday weekend

that's all

it's my birthday week!

I had a shitty birthday last year so this year I am going for gold. A day at a spa, dinner at an awesome restaurant, afternoon tea with Emily and a new jumper.

In fact this week is going to be such an awesome birthday week I am going to take many pictures with my camera.

I tried to get Jamie to buy me a pair of £300 boots but he just laughed, his birthday generosity apparently doesn't extend that far.

xxx

Today was a sad day

We got some bad news today, a friend of ours passed away unexpectedly and it has made me very sad. I'm not sure if it's because it is so close to Pop passing away or if because our friend was so young and it was so sudden.  It made me think that life is so short and l need to appreciate each day and it made me give Mackay about a hundred more kisses and cuddles that I usually do.

R.I.P Tommy.  My loving thoughts go out to his parents, family and friends.

Promotion

Last night I trotted off to my swimming class and the head instructor, who  I will call Mean Mark (because his name is Mark and he is mean) took one look at me swimming and put me in the advanced class, skipping the improvers class entirely. To be honest I knew I had outgrown the beginners class given that I could now put my head underwater and lift my feet off the ground. Also there is one guy in the beginners class who has achieved the remarkable skill of kicking his legs and looking like he is swimming but going absolutely nowhere, like Road Runner before he runs away from coyote. It really is an amazing thing.

I was shocked but i didn't want to cross Mean Mark because he is well mean, so now I am in the advanced class, we did backstroke last night and I was bad,  I did manage to do a backstroke turn but i got a lot of water up my nose and spluttered a whole lot. And when I say I am a  bad swimmer I am not saying it out of false modesty, I have seen good swimmers, my sister is one, my mum is one, good swimmers have lapped me in the pool, many times. I am a bad swimmer, only in London would I be in the advanced class.

Who knows what Mean Mark has up his sleeve for me next week? he will have probably entered me into the olympics.  I did ask for a demotion at the end of class, but he said to me 'Where are you from?'  I said 'New Zealand' and he said 'You should be in the advanced class, all you people can swim.' Totally racist and I hardly think an accent is an accurate measure of swimming ability.

If you want to waste a few minutes

A local resident has got fed up with the council not emptying the bins in the street so he has set up a camera to capture the council slackness and instead ha recorded such gems as lady falling over and man going for a pee. Cracked me up, he has a lot of time on his hands.

bin cam website

This bin is just up the road from me, what could i do to get myself on bin cam? It would somehow have to involve mackay. Maybe we could do some interpretative dance, we have quite a good routine we have been working on for a few weeks. any suggestions welcome

And the next one goes down

Now jamie is sick, and although most of the time i think he is a hypochondriac he looks like he has been run over by a train so he really is sick. But not me, I have SUPER IMMUNITY when it comes to viruses, it's the colds that get me.

Usually i am quite good at taking care of Jamie but I just couldn't be bothered so i just let him sleep in bed and bought him some paracetamol when I heard a groan.

it's a dog eat dog world in our house when you are on your sick you are on your own. unless you are mackay then you get the gold star treatment.

we need to talk about kevin trailer

freaky!



freakier!

Which are you?

So i have two types of friends, the type that will think this is awesome (I suspect Ida and my sister) and the type that think I am weird for thinking this is awesome (Jamie definitely thinks i am weird)

So anyway my friend Emily's friend Siobhan told her about the most awesome iphone app called Grindr. Let me paint you a picture, you are a gay, bi or curious man out on the town and have a need for a little ahem, action, you can't be bothered going to a club and picking someone up, so what do you do? You logon to the iphone app Grindr which will use your location to tell you where are other gay, bi or curious guys in your neighbourhood looking to hook up. And just when you thought it couldn't get any  better,  it sends you a picture of your intended hook up. It's gay cruising for the 21st century! It ends the need to hide behind bushes in the park (George Michael will be disappointed) this is definitely what Steve Jobs (RIP) thought the iphone should be used for when he invented it.

So do you think this is awesome? opinions please

xxxx
p.s in case you are wondering whether I have downloaded it or not, I am working on it

so this week

Mackay is sick with a fever and other related childhood illnesses so we are house bound for a little while. Jamie has been kicked out of our bed and Mackay has moved in.  Hopefully just for one night, poor little guy is not well so he needs his Mummy close. Also he just did a massive liquid poo in the bath. I sometimes wonder if in 20 years Mackay will be reading this and get embarrassed. But really, I'm sure we've all pooed in the bath at one time or another. I definitely have, but that's a story for another time.

Also i have deleted my Facebook account, so if you try to stalk me on Facebook and you can't find me i have def-riended you i have just severed my ties with social networking.  I can't be bothered with it anymore and I'm on it way too much so I have removed the temptation.  But this has a double bonus that now you will have to check here more often as there won't be any pictures of Mackay on Facebook and you won't get any information from my life from my status updates.

Also my swimming coach (the spanish James Franco) has quit as our swimming instructor I think we were to much of a hopeless cause. Anyway we haven't got a new coach yet and so my progress has been somewhat limited. As in I am making none. So my friend Aaron has kindly agreed to help me with the finer points of swimming (e.g. the basics) as all i know how to do is to blow out underwater and I thought once I mastered that the rest would come kind of naturally, well it hasn't so i need more one on
one tuition.

Lastly the pub up the road has a curry and Karaoke night which they call 'Wednesday Curryaoke' Every time I walk past the sign I laugh.

Call me crazy

There is a kebab shop up the road, which i pass at least once a day. Anyway they have pictures outside of the delicious food they serve, when I say delicious I really mean disgusting. Anyway for example chicken, chips and drink £4.50.

But the picture I most like is titled meat, rice and drink £3.00.  Now call me fussy but I would like to know what type of meat I am buying before I hand over my money, even if it is only £3.00. Who buys a mystery meat for £3.00? Answer, a very drunk person.

About my head

forgot to say when i went for my swimming lesson i put on my swimming cap and it snapped.  I tried to tie it on the side but it look ridiculous so I had my first swimming lesson with my hair in my eyes.

I came home and told jamie that my swimming cap had broken because it was old and the chlorine had made it distintergrate. He looked at me with pity and said 'It's nothing to do with your massive head then?'

cheeky bugger.

R.I.P Pop

We got some sad news on holiday our much loved Pop died suddenly from a stroke. He was a good friend to Jamie and I.

He was a surprising guy Frank, as soon as you thought you knew him he would pull a story out of his hat about a person, place or something he had done that you never knew before. He saw a lot in his life and made some great achievements of which I think his children, grandchildren and great grand children were one.  I saw him treat everyone with respect, even when they sometimes didn't deserve it and he had a quiet wisdom that comes with age and making a few mistakes.

As soon as i met him I felt like he was my grandfather and we loved him so much we gave Mackay his name because we wanted to honour him and now every time I say 'Mackay Frank', which I say a lot because I like to use his middle name for discipline related issues,  it makes me a little bit sad but hopefully one day the sadness will go to be replaced with happiness. But for now we miss you pop and I wish I had the chance for one last conversation.

Fun times in italy

We had a lovely relaxing holiday in Italy, but man the italians are too relaxed and i found this a bit annoying which undid my relaxation somewhat. Apart from on the roads on which they turn into maniacs, have accidents and then make people almost miss their flights which makes some people (e.g. me) turn into a screaming maniac which is not relaxing for husbands.

And I ate so much I have almost put back on all my baby weight, so am back to the gym and the diet, hardcore, no mucking around.

so below are lots of pictures of our fun times, I won’t caption them because it’s obvious guys, get with the programme. Apart from to say Jamie’s particular favourite is the one of mackay with the tennis racquet and ball. He thinks we have the next Federer on our hands.

Also did I tell you that my goal before the next baby comes along is to do a triathlon. It’s a  great goal two things are preventing me from doing this, one I can’t swim, two I can’t ride a bike. Neither of which are very cool things to admit.

Anyway I have started swimming classes and the instructor, who is like a Spanish James Franco, said I was the best in the class and gave me a high five, which isn’t saying much as there was one guy in our class that needed five noodle things around his waist and he still wouldn’t take his feet off the ground. Also my sister told me that me nephew’s swimming instructor gives him high fives, which made me feel a  little lame.

Anyway first lesson down and hopefully by the end of the term I can do one of those turn things at the end of the pool, Jamie said a flash turn thing doesn’t mean you are a good swimmer. I said no but it looks cool and at the end of the day that is what I am aiming for.

I have no idea how I am going to learn to ride a bike, I don’t think they give classes in that.

xxx

he speaks

Mackay now says three words. Woof which sounds like wo, moo which sounds like mmmmm and no which sounds like NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

what, what what!

Look below

Is this an appropriate swimsuit for a 31 year old mother? If you look closely you will see there are diamantes on the top. And it's fluorescent yellow leopard skin.

Jesus, somebody save me from myself.

world breastfeeding week

It’s world breastfeeding this week and to celebrate I thought I would share two of my favourite pictures of me and mac. Don’t worry theres no nipple only a little bit of fat stomach.

also there was a time when my milk sustained him, can you believe it? all he needed was milk, now he needs a whole more then milk. his new favourite food is olives. weirdo.

also i read an amusing blog post today about covering up in public when you are breastfeeding for your own modesty,  for the babies modesty or to make people more comfortable or whatever.

the whole debate made me laugh, i used to get my boobs out anywhere and i mean anywhere, in the park, in a  restaurant, in the bus stop, on the bus and i remember i was with other mums who were breastfeeding and they would cover up and i just couldn't be bothered. I was having a hard enough time finding the energy to change nappies let alone covering up my boobs. and by the time i had enough cognitive ability to buy one of those cover up things, mackay was having none of it. He used to push it out of the way with his hands or his feet or just refuse to feed under it. So really mackay made the decision to show the world by boobs, it had nothing to do with me.

Also as an interesting side note by boobs have now gone down two cups sizes post baby, I like it.

dinner disaster

just made meatloaf for dinner and it was rank. We had to slather it in bbq sauce to eat it and mackay wasn't too keen on it either. Jamie said  he wasn't surprised it was the worst thing I have cooked in ages. Ever since i gave him the plate of orange (fish fingers and sweet potatao chips)

i am trying to get mackay to feed himself now, mostly because i am bored of shovelling food into his mouth. It's going well we have had sausages, fish cakes and disgusting meatloaf and he has eaten it all. he loves peas, carrots and corn. not to keen on broccoli and potato but i might try to make a cheesy sauce to disguise the taste a bit.

And today as we were sitting in the garden having some lunch the neighbours upstairs were having really, really loud sex. And she had a very interesting vocal range. And they are Japanese, and i thought they were a conservative people. Anyway we had to move indoors because we didn't want Mackay exposed to porno noises while he was eating his hommous and cheese sandwich.

Running in the sun

the most important thing

I am now into my pre-pregnancy jeans! Suck it baby weight.

I'm fine ... maybe

I was reading another blog yesterday and i saw a post which got me thinking about motherhood (i would link you to it but i can't find it now)

Anyway it talked about our standard responses and how really we are not very honest with each other. I think this is especially true of mothers.

When people say how are you finding motherhood, people say 'Oh I love it' 'He is my joy' 'I'm just so lucky to be a mother' And sure all these things are true for me and I'm sure lots for other people. But when someone asks me this is what I really want to say

'I find being a mother hard, it's like every other job some days are awesome and some days suck. I have been doing this for over a year and I still find it stressful and really, really, really hard. Did I say I find it hard? Some days I think I have it all figured out and then it changes, and I hate it when it changes.  I have so may joyous moments with Mackay but I have some pretty boring ones too. And even now I still mourn for the person I was and I miss that person. Oh and I really miss sleep.'

Now I don't mean for this to sound angry or ungrateful but guess what? some days I am angry and ungrateful, other days I feel on top of the world and like I have all the blessings one person can handle. But what gets me through those hard moments is talking to someone who understands, who I can be honest with and who is honest with me. I want more of these people!

I guess I hope that one day, as mothers, we can cut the crap a bit and when someone asks how are I am instead of saying 'Oh you know fine.' I can say 'I am shit, this motherhood thing is far harder than I ever imagined.'


xxxx

shopping post baby

I had a free afternoon last Tuesday so I took myself off to the shops to see if I could find anything to splash my cash on. And this is what I have realised. All the shops I used to shop are now far too young for me and by young I mean the clothes are too short, far too short.

I never had a problem with short in the past (pre-mackay) I used to trot around london in all manner of mini's. But now I find it rather unseemly and desperate. (But I am still okay at showing a bit of cleavage you will be relieved to know)

Also mini's are very impractical, you can't pick up a child with a short skirt on. It's just not possible, and believe me when mackay was first born, I tried, not very successfully.

When my sister was over cleaning out my wardrobe she picked up one of my favourite dresses and said, 'this is a nice top' I said 'that's one of my favourote dresses.' That's how short my skirts were, they were tops.

Anyway so when i was looking round in the shops I realise that I am a 31 year old woman who mentally still thinks she is 25 and perphaps I should change the shops I frequent. So it was good bye topshop and hello Monsoon, which is a store full of sensible dresses that are middle of the road, middle aged and overpriced, because they know that old woman are desperate to buy a dress that doesn't make them look like mutton dressed as lamb. Anyway now I am middle of the road, middle aged and willingly to pay exorbitant prices not to look slutty because I bought two dresses from there and worse when I wore them everyone told me how good i looked. In middle aged women's clothing. Dire.

lazy, lazy me

I'm too lazy to write a blog update so i am taking the easy way out and posting a picture of Mac. People keep on stopping me in the street to say how beautiful and incredibly, incredibly good looking he is. Jamie gets all overwhelmed and flustered, i'm used to it so I just stroll on.

Anyway here is a picture of him i actually took this because he was having an allergic reaction to something he ate and i wanted the doctor to see it. So it's not zits on his cheek, just a rash.

Also I have no idea what colour his eyes are, I thought they were blue but now I don't know sometimes i think green or hazel. Anyway it says blue on his passport so officially they are blue, in reality though who knows.

That reminds me of a story about my austrian passport, i got it when i was 17 and when they said fill out your height, I kind of lied a little. Because i read somewhere that you need to be 172 centimetres to be a catwalk model and I am 169 and i thought I might grow a bit, soI  lied and officially I am 172 centimetres and now i can't change it because it' too embarrassing to admit that i lied about something as superficial as my height and that i thought i had the remotest chance of becoming a catwalk model. Also i don't speak any german so there is no way i could explain any kind of reason why I need to change the height on my passport. So I am a big fat passport liar and this skill i have passed on to my son. Excellent.

admin

i forgot I m deleting some blogs from my homies because no one seems to be updating there blogs much apart from Amber so no update in over a year and your out.

Also game of Thrones has finished, if you watch this please bear the following in mind
1) there are ten episodes in series one so don't prepare yourself for 12, like i did and then shout at your husband that 'you are owed two more episodes'
2) it is based on books of which there are 7, so far,  so it's a long road to any kind of resolution
3) be prepared to be very angry at a lot of characters for a very long time
4) shit loads of people die that you don't think should die but die anyway because the guy the wrote the books like to annoy me
5) series 2 won't be on our screened for another year, this will really piss you off
6) also it will give you crazy dreams

over and out xxx

diet, sun and boobs

I haven't written in my blog for ages and i did have something to write but now I have completely forgotten what it was, it has totally left my brain. So you will have to make do with boring updates on how my diet is going and our old favourite topic the shitty london summers.

Well i have been on the post baby diet for 3 weeks now and have lost 4 kilos! and then gained back 1 kilo, how the hell this happened I don't know. But then again my scales are a bit dodgy and when i read the numbers my head is quite far away form the dial and I don't wear my glasses so i might have only lost 3 kilos in the first place, who knows. My clothes feel a bit looser but I still have the back fat situation happening.

How has the weather been in london? take a guess, shit. It's always shit. But the good news is there is a heatwave coming! but in typical british style it will last for two days which is barely long enough to lie out in the sun and burn my skin before the sun buggers back off to spain.

That's what i was going to tell you, I have stopped breastfeeding. I did my last feed on Thursday, to be honest i don't think there was much milk left in there anymore. It was a long hard road to breastfeed my little monkey, but I got there in the end and i am really proud of myself that I lasted over a year.  And proud of him that he was so patient with his mother. Also a shout out to my sister , my doula Mars and Jamie who supported me in the difficult early weeks and who without I wouldn't have lasted a week let alone a year. Anyway now he is on cow's milk, which he loves. I was a bit sad to stop  because it feels like he has stopped being my baby but also excited because my doula said the fat you need for breastfeeding is stored on your lower back, that's right stopping breastfeeding may get rid of my back fat. Well i live in hope.

xxxx

sometimes you forget

I live a pretty middle class life in london, nice flat, lovely baby and i interact every day with mummies and nannies and children so sometimes i forget I live in London, which is can be one giant big stinking mess of a city .

last Wednesday the crapness in London really smacked me in the face. In the supermarket, the fruit and veggie section, there was an almightily fight because one man who thought a lady had pushed past him and not said excuse me, his reaction? to spit in her face. Her reaction? to scream at him until the police were called. My reaction? get me and my baby out of there asap before they stated throwing the lettuces.

Then on my way to the post office a crack head, I don't use this term negatively, they were a stinking, rotten toothed, dodgy old crackhead, asked me if i could help her, meaning could i give her some money or at least stand still long enough for her boyfriend to mug me. I kept on walking, very quickly.

mackay has been getting up at 5:30 every morning because he has sore teeth so on thursday morning I was woken up at 5:30as usaul but not by Mackay but by a drug dealer on his phone outside my window. it was so loud I thought he was on my front door step. Basically he was telling the guy on the phone he couldn't 'vouch' for him because 7 houses were raided last week and no one new is allowed inside 'the circle' the conversation had so many specific details I thought about calling the police. But i didn't know quite what to say. Something like ' there is a man (jamie thought it was a woman so already I wasn't being very specific with the details) outside my window having a conversation about drugs' I'm sure they would have gone on full alert and sent out the whole of scotland yard. Anyway the conversation stopped abruptly (Jamie thinks they moved onto a different location to stop from being traced) and I went back to sleep.

i guess the point of this post is london is dodgy and i have forgotten how dodgy but now i am on my guard.

After all the criminal activity I seem to be attracting Jamie has put me under house arrest and banned me from visiting certain areas of our neighbourhood, draining.

xxx

Laughed until I cried

http://www.someecards.com/2011/04/06/the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook

Watch it!

I have a new favourite TV show called Game of Thrones, it's awesome and i can't watch it before i go to bed otherwise I can't sleep because it winds me up. it's a fantasy but way better than lord of the rings because it has incest, beheading and all other types of funky shit.

Also it's very complicated with characters and plot so i have to really, really concentrate to watch it and i still don't understand it. i think i will have to take notes when i watch it and make some type of family tree diagrams so I can remember who is who.

watch it!

Also i get confused and keep on calling it game of thorns and Jamie has to correct me every time, also i said to him 'I am surprised i like it because i don't really like sciene-fiction' and he said 'it's not science-fiction it's fantasy.' I don't really know the difference, it's all made-up geeky stuff to me. He explained to me that science-ficiton involves aliens and science and stuff, whatever i still don't get it.

covered in vomit

Jamie and Mackay got sick on the weekend, like vomit, dodgy pooes, sick, gross. I didn't get sick because I have super immunity, this means i don't get sick when other mortals do (my sister thinks she has it too, it might be a genetic thing, Jamie thinks I'm full of it) My stomach did get a bit queasy but no vomit. Awesome.

Anyway on sunday jamie did a massive vomit which I had to clean up, because instead of getting it into the bowl I had put in the bedroom he managed to get it in the bath, in the toilet, half in the bowl and on the floor. That was at 3:00.

Then at 8:30 at night Mackay woke up and vomited all over his bed and himself. He was really scared and so was i, but i didn't show it. You know you are a mum when you child is vomiting and instead of being disgusted you are hugging them trying to calm them down, while they vomit in your hair. So I had to clean up his vomit and did i mention i was feeling queasy? well cleaning up vomit did not help the situation.

Because i could smell vomit every way I turned I had plain boiled rice for dinner. Which was actually quite nice and then I thought if I have this for dinner for a week will i loose my baby weight? see we are talking about my weight again! boring.

And i slept on the floor of his bedroom because he had a vomit bug a while ago and i was talking to my sister and she said to me 'I always sleep in Louis' room when he has a vomiting bug because i am afraid he will choke on his vomit in his sleep' This had never occurred to me! until she said it, so now I am afraid Mackay will choke on his vomit in his sleep so I slept next to his cot. And man Mackay is a noisy sleeper, heavy breathing, moving around, sniffling that guy gets up to all kinds of high jinks in his cot. His floor is also on a slight angle downwards so my head was lower than my feet and I think I have compressed my spinal cord. The things you do for your kids, honestly.

xxxx

groundhog day

I am really stumped about what to write this week, I could take the easy way out and post pictures of my child, but really you all know what Mackay looks like by now.

I could talk about how my diet is going (badly) and how I am frustrated with being just a little bit overweight so i can't fit any of my pre-pregnancy clothes, but I talk about my weight so much I even bore myself.

Everyone is healthy and happy, but the thing about my life is although i love being at home with Mackay it does kind of turn into groundhog day, each day is the same, each week is the same, we try to spice it up on the weekends with some type of family activity (last weekend a birthday party and the primrose hill markets) but really it's kind of monotonous. So nothing new to report in my life.

I did book our trip to Rome and Tuscany in September, which took ages because i had to book two plane trips out of different airports, a train ride, an apartment in Rome and a hire car. It took a lot of googling.

Also as I am sitting here I was thinking how a lot of my friends are having babies, which is awesome. But lots of babies and not many weddings actually. Which leaves me a bit pissed off and i have never been a bridesmaid (I was once for my dad and stepmother, but totally doesn't count) I sat next to a lady at a wedding reception who had been bridesmaid 6 times! it would have been 7 but she had to turn one down. Lucky sod. Two thoughts occurred to me 1) she must have a lot of friends and she must be really nice for everyone to want her as her bridesmaid. 2) I don't have nearly enough friends and must not be that nice.

In other less bitter news the chelsea flower show is on television at the moment which is no big deal I hear you say, WRONG! because the BBC have moved bargain hunt (me and mackay's second favourite television programme, the first being deal or no deal) earlier to 11:45 rather than 12:15 which means we miss the first 15 minutes as we are at the park at the time. Disaster! We can't wait for the flower show to be over and programming to return to normal. Just a little fact did you know that £2.4 billion pounds are spent on the gardening industry every year in the UK, more than the music industry. Which strikes me as odd as people don't have very big gardens in the UK, maybe they are buying expensive gnomes.

The English summer is doing it's typical 'get really sunny in April to get your hopes up that it will be a nice summer, then get slowly worse through May and so by the time June comes around the weather is terrible but you haven't noticed it's June then you do notice and then you get pissed off because really it's June the weather should be better by now.'

Is the weather better in New Zealand? Or have I remembered it being better? i haven't lived there for so long I forget.

I'll pop a photo of Mackay at the bottom of the post just to cheer everyone up because the weather in London is forecast to be shit over the long weekend. xxxx

ugh sensible footwear

I bought a pair of Birkenstocks last week. I am disgusted with myself. But i had to buy them because all my awesome pre-baby strappy summer footwear is not compatible with pushing a pram uphill or walking long distances with a pram or walking quickly with a pram so basically the pram has screwed up my whole style sensibility.

i know some people like Birkenstocks (eg my sister) and i agree they are comfortable and last a long time but man they are a ugly piece of footwear that does your leg no favours. The last time i had Birkenstocks i was 19 and it was the late nineties and I thought they made me look alternative and grungy, in reality they just make you look like a lesbian.

So i tried to make them sexier buy buying a patent black pair but really everyone knows they are Birkenstocks and no amount of glitz is going to take away from the fact that they are an ugly piece of footwear.

Anyway they arrived and they were the wrong size because in my Birkenstock free years they have totally changed the sizing structure and now make two widths regular and wide and can i just say that if your foot was too wide for a Birkenstock you must be a hobbit because Birkenstocks are really wide. That's part of what makes them so un-sexy you just can not be delicate in a Birkenstock you have to clump around like a troll and they make your calves look huge, i don't know how but they do.

And i have just remembered another drawback to Birkenstocks they have a weird odour, not an unpleasant one just a bit weird. A bit like hay.

xxxxx

My baby is now one!

I look really pissed off (i was not)

Store bought birthday cake, it was kind of dry but it looked good. Also I gave Mackay some, he wasn't into it.

Inflatable cow! If only they made adult sized ones.

I was going to up load way more pictures but it took me about 2 hours and 300 failed attempts to do these three! My patience can't take adding any more photos, I am too old to fight with technology.

A year ago today...

i was in labour, I think or i was being induced or eating dinner or something. I can't really remember to be honest but i was definitely less than 24 hours away from becoming a mummy. And tomorrow Mackay turns one and we are having some friends over for champagne and cake. To celebrate mackay's birthday and to celebrate Jamie and I surviving the first year of his life with most of our sanity.

so pictures coming tomorrow and the great thing about him being one is that he doesn't know it's his birthday so tomorrow he will just wake up, make a mess with lots of wrapping paper, play with some new stuff, have his first ever bit of cake and then fall asleep. The perfect day I reckon.

Spot the difference

One of these people is Mackay and one is jAmie? can you tell which as which? That's right you can't because the backs of their heads are completely identical. Eye colour, hair colour all those things you think you child will inherit, but head shape, it never crossed my mind.

April showers? not in london my friends.

Mackay happy in his pushchair because i gave him some food, otherwise he would have been kicking off, big time.

Mackay checking out the flowers, this picture makes my bum look bigger than it's actual size. well at least i hope it does.

What an awesome month April has been, two four day weekends one after the other in brilliant sunshine. i don't think this has ever happened in london ever, I'm pretty sure it's a sign the world will end. We have been doing family activity all over london (of course I mean all over north west london, as mackay gets antsy if he is in his pushchair for more than 10 minutes) we have been to the zoo, a farm and so many parks and playgrounds that we all have tan lines.

Mackay turns one next week and we are having a party! no kids, just adults as he doesn't have any friends his own age, he's mature like that. To avoid all the cooking dramas I am hiring caterers, (a cleaner, a nanny and now caterers, I live a very aspirational lifestyle) Well i say I am getting caterers but i haven't heard back from anyone because everyone is away on the long weekend breaks. So we will just be drinking booze at this point. I am making Mackay a cake from the Australian's woman's weekly cake book. Not sure which one yet, I suspect the one that is easiest to make and hardest to screw up.

We have made a rule that he is only getting three presents from us, a fire engine, a scooter beetle thing and an inflatable cow. Awesome! Although what he would really like is my laptop, a pair of scissors and his dad's blackberry, none of which he is getting.

Also on Tuesday Jamie has the day of work and we have the nanny for the afternoon and we have booked her to babysit that night as well. Jamie and I will be completely alone from 2-10:30 (with a breif time in the middle when we come home and put the baby to bed) We haven't spent that much time alone together in about a year! For all those people who don't have kids this is no big deal but for anyone that does have kids (and doesn't live within driving distance of a kindly relative who loves to babysit) you will know that a big deal this is. We are going shopping and then bowling, it's a date from 1956!

In other exciting news a lady rang today and I did a phone survey, and it took half an hour. Jamie thought i was a fool, little did he know that someone asking my opinion these days on something urelated to Mackay is quite a rarity so I was happy to chat away for 31 minutes to Sarah from skyTV.

Okay better go Aaron and Emily are coming over for a bbq and I haven't prepared anything, lucky they are good friends and are pretty tolerant, I also haven't shaved my legs and am wearing a skirt. I am embarrassed but at the same time don't have the energy to remedy the situation.

xxxx