Things

I haven’t posted for a while because now that voting for The MADs has closed, I feel like a tiny bit of pressure has been lifted. Like, I don’t have to pimp myself quite so much any more.

Not that I WAS pimping myself, of course, I would uh, NEVER do such a thing…

ANYWAY!

There’s been shit loads going, left right and centre, and my head is buzzing in both good ways and bad ways trying to deal with it all.

First and foremost, Noah’s potty training is going BRILLIANTLY. In the space of a week, he now only has an accident if he’s completely distracted or if I’m being rubbish and forget to ask in over a few hours. And even then, he’ll still hold on to it until he’s on the potty. I’m incredibly impressed he’s pretty much done all this himself, from telling us when he wants to pee, through to holding onto it and getting himself on to the potty when he’s ready. Yesterday we had no accidents.

Poop of course, is a different story, but come on! The kid’s only 2 and it’s early days.

We DID have fun with Mme HV this week however. Remember me hankering on about Noah’s speech? And they’re all “He’s fine, stop your whining, it’s too early blah blah mother fricking BLAH”? And everyone else is all “Yeah he’ll speak, Einstein learnt to speak eventually didn’t he?” And I pretty much told everyone to “shut the hell up?”

Yeah.

Turns out he’s speech delayed.

In fact, the HV’s words were “Good heavens, his speech really IS behind isn’t it? I do hope you’ve got him under referral! In fact I definitely would refer him RIGHT now if he isn’t. Have you sorted out a hearing test? Has he seen a therapist yet? This needs to be dealt with immediately.”

I wanted to take one of Isaac’s dirty nappies, mix it with one of my snot rags plastered with FOF and make her snort it until she could sing Yankee Doodle Dandy in the style of Gordon Brown.

He’s approximately 6 – 12 months behind, which I can deal with I already knew this. Sadly, I feel kind of justified in my worrying. I didn’t want this, OBVIOUSLY, but I feel a little more confident in knowing I wasn’t talking out my arse. On the plus side, the barrage of tests showed that all his other skills are at the level of a three year old, with his visual and social interaction skills being equivalent to that of a 4 year old.

Still? Of course I know he’ll be ok. I don’t doubt (and never ever did doubt) that his speech will improve; the whole point of me being a pushy pain in the arse was so that I could HELP him improve. I knew something was not quite right, so I wanted to HELP him.

Plus? When he says something to me over and over again and I have NO CLUE what he’s saying? And he’s trying his bloody hardest to tell me something and is getting more and more worked up because I can’t understand him and I’m getting more and more upset because he’s getting worked up and because I’m failing to understand him? I NEEDED to push this.

However, D and I were rewarded for our bloody big efforts in getting Noah to eat more foods. Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone opened a door and a shit load of light shone through it. Right onto Noah eating food in a restaurant, for the first time ever.

Where Worlds Collide

So close. And yet still so far.

I wonder if I’ll ever let go.

The Gallery: Still Life (and a teeny lesson in cameras)

A few people have seen my light art photography, and have assumed I’ve needed some ultimate fancy equipment to do it.

It’s actually REALLY easy!!! I mean, of course, uh, it’s bloody difficult and takes a er, special sort of um…

Nah that’s cock, it’s piss easy. Promise I will do some sort of tutorial on this soon. It’ll be a laugh.

Those who follow my flickr set closely will also notice there’s a whole set dedicated to my iPhone. And lastly, having fallen ridiculously in love with Hipstamatic, I’ve created a photography blog on Posterous to showcase my efforts with this iPhone app.

Incidentally, if you own an iPhone and don’t have this app, then WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???? *SHEESH*

I’ll just wait here while you go and get it.

In fact, here; I’ll even throw you a link: CLICK ON ME TO GET HIPSTAMATIC

Trust me, apart from maybe stuff you buy for your kids, and food, and maybe alcohol, this could be some of the best money you’d spend.

I have to say, you have no idea how thrilled to bits I was (in fact, MORE than thrilled to bits) when Tara Cain chose my Bacon Blip on Blipfoto as the inspiration and theme for this week’s Gallery!!

OH HELL YEAH.

Well I noticed lots of people were starting to freak the hell out about not having a good enough camera to meet this weeks task. Hell, I’M not sure I can meet this weeks task, I mean, what the hell can beat bacon?

(Seriously, I ate around 20 – 25 rashers of bacon in the three days we were at Centre Parcs, the majority of that being on Saturday and Sunday. And yes, I ate it so fast I couldn’t even be arsed to get my camera out to take another pic of it.)

I had a look at some of the pics already submitted for the gallery – shit me you guys are awesome. Which hopefully makes me work even harder. Which is obviously a good thing, especially if it means I’ll work off all that bacon. It’s so brilliant and satisfying when people see that you DON’T need fancy pants equipment to get a good picture. I do not have any of that shit. I’d have to sell my kids AND my soul to afford that stuff.

Anyway, I put down my trusty little camera and went back to my iPhone, which has repeatedly been slated for it’s camera which I’m now thinking is quite a shame.

(Huh…my space bar is dented?? …or is that just bacon grease?)

And then I couldn’t help myself, because quite frankly, I’m addicted to my camera.

(The following are also straight from camera with no special effects applied.)

And food.

And of course, bacon.

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Like the use of photography in this post? Then please feel free to vote for me over at The MADs awards, under Best MAD Blog Photography. Only 4 days left to vote!!! Many thanks

Pee-Pee in the Potty

Noah has officially commenced potty training. Without any prompting from myself, so of course, I’m IMMENSELY proud.

Because you know, I worked so hard to get here. Heh.

He’s been asking to use the potty or the loo for some time now, and quite happily goes without fuss. Of course, I’m talking pee here. Poop is another story. We’ve caught one or two, and he’s happy to do it in the potty or on the loo, but it’s only day one without nappies, so let’s just take one step at a time, eh??

D and I bought approximately 28 pairs of briefs for him yesterday. And by approximately, I mean EXACTLY. That way he has 7 pairs for nursery, 21 pairs at home, meaning roughly 3 pairs a day.

Oh how stupid am I.

He’s doing pretty well I have to say, first accident wasn’t until 11:30am when he walked over to me with a “cowboy” walk (legs apart, swaggering slightly) and a slight whimper. But he was ok, we whipped them off, sat him on the potty and he finished off.

We’ve had a further 2 accidents, and it occurred to me to put together a number of Potty Training Tips, which personally, I’m finding IMMENSELY useful. I suspect I may use these when Isaac potty trains.

Um, some of these may be from personal experience with Noah. Possibly.

1: If he’s happy in just pants, then just leave him in just pants. You’ll change his outfit 17 times.

2: Buy plenty of soap powder. You’ll be washing a lot of pants.

3: Buy a shit load of pants.

4: Don’t let him sit on your lap.

5: Spare clothes for both of you might help.

6: Buy a shit load of spare clothes

7: Carpets are not that great.

8: Get carpet cleaner.

9: Laminate flooring. Leather sofas. Um, downstairs loo.

10: Do not let the potty out of your sight. One in every room should suffice, 2 or 3 if you’re lazy.

11: Ask every 30 seconds if he wants to go.

12: ASKING if he wants to DO a poo is very different to CHECKING if he’s DONE a poo.

13: Every kid farts. Farts also smell.

14: Don’t let him stand over his brother’s head.

15: If you ask your friends for help, sometimes even the well meant advice isn’t for all.

Getting There

I had to have a time-out. It was all too much. I don’t cope like I used to.

Or, I cope differently now.

And it’s ok.

D’s family took us all to Centre Parcs in Longleat over the bank holiday. I went, I stepped outside, I took a deep breath, I listened, I stopped everything.

I’m not quite back up to par, but I’m getting there. I feel like I’m trying to start all over again. So just, you know, thanks for bearing with me. I’m still listening.

In The Words of "Queen": I Want It All

A rage. A jealous rage.

I didn’t see it coming, but oddly enough I half expected it.

All around me, people are doing amazing things. I have admiration for all of them, I really do. Every day, I learn about something awesome that someone else has done, or is doing, or whatever. I see the tweets, I read the status updates, I check my emails, I see the messages.

And I feel rage. A horrible, jealous rage.

It’s pathetic.

In fact, if I just got off my lazy arse and tried to achieve something myself, I wouldn’t have anything to whine about.

If I just got off my lazy arse, it would be a start.

If I just stopped saying “IF” and faced up to procrastinating like a dumbass, things would probably be significantly better.

I wonder if much of this stems from growing up trying to be the best at everything I can do, whilst never being good enough. The things that mattered to me, that counted, I worked so incredibly hard for. But it was never enough. So somewhere along the line, I started doing everything I could to please everyone else; to show them all that actually, I can be someone. Look, I am someone.

So what’s holding me back now? Why don’t I just go out there and say “Hell yeah, I can do that, just watch me.”

I don’t like to be competitive. But I want to be up there with the best of them.

I don’t want people to think I’m arrogant. But I want to show the world what I can do.

I don’t want to be in people’s faces all the time. But I want recognition and respect.

I don’t want to be dictated by everyone else. But feel like I flounder without help.

It’s all so stupid it doesn’t even make the slightest bit of sense. I know what I want, but don’t see how it’s possible without being really awkward.

I hurt this week. For some reason, I’m feeling more and more like an epic fail, with no particularly good reason. Once again, I set standards astronomically high, way beyond a place where I could ever hope or even dream to reach them. No one else puts this pressure on me, I do it to myself. And every day, I wish to god I could stop.

Because for once, just once, I’d like to be really happy with what I can actually do.

Secret Post Club, with not an innuendo in sight.

I only posted about the Secret Post Club yesterday, but I have another one to do today because I had May’s gift arrive this week.

It’s a beautiful gift, which I will treasure immensely, and was clearly very well thought out by the delightfully sweet Laura, over at Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy.

I obviously had no idea who my gift was coming from, but I suspected I might have a tiny clue when I saw the label slapped on my box.

The lovely Laura and I had had many a discussion on baskets of fruit on twitter, wondering what makes an effective basket of fruit, and whether we would be able to get a basket of fruit from our respective partners.

One of the gifts inside took my breath away.

It’s a teapot.

Made to look like a Basket of Fruit.

See the beautifully protruding banana? Isn’t it admirable?

Although Laura drew my attention to the touching plums. Personally, I couldn’t take my eyes off the protruding spout. I thought the hole at the end was rather large.

And was also a little nervous that the tip looked a bit crusty brown. But that’s ok, I’m not too fussy, I think.

Needless to say, I was keen to give it a test run, and see if that spout could pour it’s juices out of the large hole like every good large spouted teapot should.

Since we rarely drink tea here, I had to fill it with an alternative hot creamy liquid, so as to fully appreciate it’s abilities.

I chose my favourite mug; I call it “The Pussy”, for obvious reasons. And for this Basket of Fruit teapot, it seemed completely fitting. I was pleased that the spout poured hot fluids into “The Pussy” really well, although I was a tad distracted by the growing bush creeping in over the spout.

I must have been a little in too much awe of the hot spouting creamy fluids into “The Pussy” because looking at the picture now, I see there was a little spillage. See it? That tiny little dribble on the bottom? I would have licked that drop off, but I don’t much care for the taste of creamy fluids in my mouth, so there’s creamy mess all over my surface.

I’m thinking I might accessorize it, but I obviously don’t want to hide it’s sheer beauty. And, as if this gift wasn’t enough, Laura was most kind to send me a little book to read, perhaps while I indulge The Pussy with hot creamy fluids.

Someone said something about toilet humour, so I thought perhaps I would put it in the bathroom to read when I’m otherwise engaged?

In any case, I’ll just say a huge THANK YOU to Laura for my beautifully innocent gifts and go back to admiring them in all their glory.

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Like the use of photography in this post? The please feel free to vote for me over at The MADs awards, under Best MAD Blog Photography. Many thanks