This and That

I haven't done a proper post in what seems like ages, and I like to think that quite a lot has happened but, um, it hasn't really, well a few things but, well, you know......!!

Daniel and Phil are at their dad's this week, started of as the weekend and has progressed into all of half term, and they are back tomorrow as we are of to the Biggin Hill Air Show on saturday where I am doing my bit for the school and spending five hours in what promises to be blazing heat blowing up inflatable hammers and the such like!! Still I get in for free, the rest of the family get cheap tickets being locals etc (bit of a sweetner much like they give the residents of Alton for all the upheaval the extra traffic causes).

We are now into Jack's 24th month, he will be 2 four weeks tomorrow (friday) how scary is that?!! The party is booked, for 3 weeks time, he will be having it with Jessica, the cake is almost ordered from The_Cake_Store they are the people that used to do all the baking bits etc on the Generation Game, the bakery in Beckenham is called Slatters and you go in there and they have the pictures of the bakers with Brucey on the show, I used to live just round the corner and they are one of the best I've come across, and I've been about a fair bit. Jackie and I were totting up the invite list the other day and it's quite monstrous, perhaps we should get a monstrous cake too!! We're certainly getting a chocolate one this year, I had a La La from them last year, just in the normal sponge but it was still quite a lot as it's about 16 inches long and twice the thickness of shop bought cakes. I can just imagine one or two people who are reading this salivating at the prospect of a 16 inch long chocolate cake!!

Last week I met up with Sally and Oscar for coffee and lunch. Quite funny as just after we met up both boys disappeared into different shops leaving some poor woman to look after our buggies and bags whilst we went of on a rescue mission! It amazes me I'm not a size 8 the amount of runaround Jack gives me and I'm sure Sally feels the same. Oscar is such a charmer, reminds me so much of Phil at that age, will talk to anyone who will listen and he kept pointing out that Sally was his mummy which was so sweet. Phil's trait was to tell people in supermarket queues he had 16 teeth, or that 5 and 5 were 10. Lord knows where he got it all from, he just knew that from about 18 months and that was it, by Jack's age I could hardly get a word in edgeways, thankfully Daniel was much more into meaningful looks than speaking, but that was his down to the problems with his ears and throat, Jack is the same, apart from "Oh God" "Oh Wow" "Oh No" "Oh Dear Dad" "Yesu Crust" (Jesus Christ we think!) and the word "Crash" at about 2000,000 decibels!! Anyway, had a fab day with Sally, took a few pics (of course!!) whilst we were lunching in KFC (never let it be said that the pair of us don't eat in style!).

Here is Oscar venting his anger at the whole John Prescott fiasco - Jack doesn't do politics........!

Here is Oscar demonstrating how he got bitten by friend Elijah and Jack can barely contain his shock!

And here - both all smiles!

Still nothing from work about returning, getting a bit irate now about it, Stephen is about to go permanent which means a drop in salary and with 2 boys starting secondary school in a few months I have lots of uniform to buy and at the moment I don't know how. They are of to France in two weeks for week, trying not to be worried about it, but you can't help it, they have a ferry crossing to make and some of the kids going are not that sensible and you just pray that they do as they are told and don't ruin it for the vast majority of the group who are. £600 the trip is cost - that could have sent the whole family on holiday, never mind two 11 year olds for five days!

My blood results came back ok, things are stable, in fact if you took my creatinine and my urea out of the equation (they are the toxins that build up in the blood if your kidneys don't work properly at draining them out which people like me don't) then I look like a remarkably healthy person, even my iron levels are only 0.4 below normal at 11.3 so that's good, although they were at 13 9 months ago, but they were 10.5 4 months ago. Thing that gets my goat is that I worked so hard getting my cholesterol down from 6.1 to lower than 5 and it's now 4 exactly, without the help of statins etc, just plain dieting and now the guidelines are that it should be 4 or lower, so I've got even more work to do - give me strength. AND I've got to lose another 10 kilos, about 1 1/2 stone, aiming for the anorexic chick look which apparantly equals good health yeah right. My bp was higher two weeks ago that when I was 3 stone heavier so I've no idea what's going on there.

Stephen has set the ball rolling to have a vasectomy, we aren't going to risk having any more children, it's not my health that is the main issue, it is the chance of having a successful pregnancy, which is not that high, I've given birth 5 weeks early and 8 weeks early, who knows how early another baby would be and the problems that would incur as a result. Daniel and Phil were only a bit early and haven't suffered any set backs as a result, Jack did a 4 week incarceration in Special Care, with nothing wrong with him other than low blood sugar, low birthweight and jaundice but again, hasn't suffered any setbacks as a result, another baby may be born 11 or 12 weeks early, maybe more and knowing that that is a real probability is just not fair on the baby or on the family as a whole. So we are going to try and adopt, we're not keen on adopting a baby, but then we don't want a child older than Jack either, so if it takes 2 years to go through the process then we would be looking at a 2 or 3 year old. Stephen would prefer another boy, and I hate to admit it so would I, but when push comes to shove I really don't give a monkeys. I was looking on a website today of children under our borough who are available for adoption and I quite happily could have taken them all in, no matter what their age, skin colour, background etc, many of them have developmental problems as a result of a really bad start in life but it doesn't bother me in the slightest, I have experience of being a mum of a child with specific needs and whilst it's not a walk in the park, it's the going through the diagnosis part which is the hardest rather than the dealing with the problem itself. anyway I have sent of for a pack etc and Stephen and I will look at it over the next few months before taking the next step.

I am going to sign of now because blogger is doing my head in, it's taking me ages to type all this, and about half an hour for the words to come up on the page because it's so slow, and deleting is even slower!!