But That's MY Book...

Book Reviews

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

A must-buy! Kids love the predictability of the story and the repetitive text is excellent for encouraging young readers to recognise words. Board book. 4/5

That's Not My Puppy...

A very popular book in this household with both a 23 month old and 3 year old. E.M loves the textures while J.R is starting to remember the clearly printed words. A board book with nice glossy but tough pages. 5/5!

Shopping List Code

I can't shop very well at all without a list.

If I forget to take the list with me, I've been known to pause as soon as I enter the supermarket, stare, and every item I pick up I consider for far too long. Sometimes going back to things time and time again.

My memory suddenly gets quite bad in supermarkets and I frequently forget what i'm looking for. (Mind you, two moaning kids in a trolley doesn't help)

I'm also one of those people who would never abandon their shopping list in the trolley when they're finished. I just get this thought - what if someone picks it up? I don't want them to know what i'm buying - so I always take my list home and bin it. Daddy thinks it's all a bit ridiculous, but I have my reasons.

I really don't like the idea of some stranger eyeing up my personal shopping list and often walk round the shop with it folded in my hand, only unfolding it to take a quick glimpse. For this reason I think it's a good idea to come up with some shopping list abbreviations. You know the sort...

• MLK, BTTR, NUGS, CHSE, NAPS, K ROLL

That gives you milk, butter, chicken nuggets, cheese, nappies and kitchen roll.

It just feels less personal if someone were to get an eyeful of your list as you picked a product off the shelf. They wont have time in those few seconds to decipher the whole list, after all, some people can be so nosy.

Tuesday's Fly On The Wall

In an effort to get J.R more involved in the grown-up world of Mummy & Daddy, I quite often ask her if she'll help me with the dishes or putting the clean clothes away. Easy chores like that. She enjoys it, makes her feel that bit older than her sister "You have to be a big girl to do this, babies can't do it..."

And recently I said to her,

"J.R you wanna help Mummy make dinner?"

"Oh no," she replied "I'm far too busy!"

We're A Complete Set Again Soon :)

I am up insanely early today. It's just gone 3am, the girls are with a babysitter and i'm meeting Daddy at the airport. It's a surprise meetup, me and two other girlfriends. We've got to be there for the 05:55 flight from Palma Mallorca, which i've now found - thanks to the magic of teletext - is now expected at 05:39! Argh! Better get moving...

Nuts

I've just had a long and in-depth conversation with a three year old about things squirrels eat. How random!

Talk To The Hand - Literally

I drew one of those faces on my hand where you move your thumb up and down to make it "talk". The girls were amazed. They were shoving each other out of the way to talk to Mr Hand, and J.R made polite conversation with him. They shrieked with laughter when Mr Hand ate several small items like pens, and freaked out when it kissed them. Thing is now they wont leave me alone... J.R has shouted at me "No Mummy not you! Wanna talk to Mister Hand!"

I'ma go scrub this damn thing off.

So Far, So Good

Maybe i'm freaking out less because Daddy will be home in a few days...or...I dunno. But so far today has gone by without too much hassle. Ok, so it's only like 1 o'clock now, but on an average this week, I have lost my temper about 3x before lunch! So it's looking pretty good don't you think?

J.R is in the front room happily dancing around with her cheerleading pompoms and baby E.M is napping upstairs, and she went without a fuss.

Ooh, it's like a freakin' Twilight Zone in here...

I had a look on here today and realised that i'm getting behind with my publishing...just the publishing though! The posts are written, but where I don't have time to preview and edit them etc. they end up saved instead of published!

D'oh!!

Girly Night Out!

Looking forward to hitting the town having finally found a babysitter - which was a mission on it's own, five people ended up on the shortlist, with a lot of people volunteering themselves to help only to drop out at the last minute... In the end Auntie Stace came to the rescue (i'd already asked her daughter who was sorry she couldn't help and so she asked Stacey instead) Stace was so excited to have them for the night and already had a few activites planned for tomorrow morning.

We then had to work out how to fit the carseats into her car...

which took about fifteen minutes 'cos neither of us knew how!

But once that was done they were away! I had a really strange moment before they left, I swear I had to really force myself to walk away from the car when I said goodbye to my girls. It felt really lonely, I walked back into the house and it seemed so big and empty. It was then that it really hit me, I had no boyfriend and no kids :(

But I reminded myself that it's only for tonight...then did a bit of a tidy up and went to get ready.

J.R's Potty Training: An Update

Forget the little potty...

Since monday (20th), i've been helping and encouraging J.R to use the "Big Potty" aka the toilet, by lifting her up and holding her there, she still seemed quite worried that she'd fall down the hole! But yesterday I went into Mothercare and bought one of those toilet seat - adaptor things, basically a normal potty-sized seat that fits under the adult toilet seat, allowing the child to sit there unaided. You know what I mean! And wow, it's been a hit with J.R. First of all there's the thrill of actually sitting on the grown ups toilet without my help, then add to that she has her own special toilet wipes (I can do it too with Kandoo!) she's loving every minute of it...and the attention of course. And we've had no accidents yet either!

Tuesday's Fly On The Wall

Another bedtime escape attempt, I heard some rustling coming from the girls room so I decided to check it out, and found J.R slowly lowering herself out of bed. Very carefully, really making the effort to be quiet. She didn't hear me approach the doorway, so when she turned to find herself face-to-face with Mummy, she almost hit the ceiling!

Mummy "What are you doing?"

J.R "[J.R] can't sleep..."

Mummy "Why can't you sleep?"

J.R "I gotta go to work."

The things these girls come out with...seriously!

I can't sleep tonight. Knowing that Daddy is getting on a plane and leaving in a couple of hours is too depressing I guess LOL :(

Just Me, Myself & I...

...and my girls, for a whole 9 days.

Daddy leaves for his lads holiday tomorrow...9 days taking it easy in sunny Magaluf.

When I say "taking it easy" it actually means surviving on alcohol, Pot Noodles and fry-ups for breakfast everyday.

What can I say - they're male!!

Success At Last!!

This afternoon the four of us went into town for a bit of shopping and some lunch. When after about two hours we found we'd run out of pull-ups for J.R.

She was err, sagging a bit, shall we say. So I decided i'd have to pop into Boots to buy some to use now, in the meantime we were walking past BHS and I had a thought. Maybe if J.R needed to go wee enough she'd use the proper toilet (when she had no choice)?

So I took her into their baby-change toilets and sat her down on a child size toilet to do her business. And she did!

I was so happy, I showered her with praise. There was our own mini celebration going on in that tiny cubicle. Then we got sorted, I showed her how to wash hands and we made our way out to tell Daddy the good news.

H&M, I love it so ^_^

I've found some brilliant buys for E.M. To complete that 'Grunge' or 'Emo' look that Daddy so wants her to have LOL

I personally find it funny that he actually wants to stereotype her at this young age, but the real reason behind it is that J.R is old enough to have found her own style already - she adores skirts - and she looks best in ditzy prints and very femme victorian style tops. And since she wont wear anything else, Daddy wants to reflect a bit of his style in Baby E.M... so i'll allow it. Bless.

Anyhoo, let's get down to business.

I've found some great clothes in H&M, on the high street. In the Girls 1 - 8 Years section they have some really nice stuff right now:

Skinny leggings (black, pink, dark purple, grey, leopard print) £6.99

Japanese Anime Tee's (inc. Hello Kitty!) £6.99

Hello Kitty elastic-waist skirts (pink, grey leopard print) £7.99

Denim Skirt (bright pink) £7.99

There's also Hello Kitty reversible jackets in pink/purple, along with dungaree-style denim dresses and tonnes of accessories to choose from, starting from around £1.99.

And the best thing about all this stuff is that because of the colours you can mix and match things so easily - brilliant!

I think we both know where i'm heading on payday...

Tuesday's Fly On The Wall

While we sat waiting at the school yesterday, E.M surprised me.

"Triangles!" She exclaimed, pointing to the ceiling.

"Yeah..." I replied - not really paying much attention.

"Triangles!" She said again, so this time I had a look. There above the window hung some red, yellow and blue bunting. Triangles. O_O

Boo's BooBoo :(

I suppose a baby wouldn't be a baby without some bumps and bruises along the way.

This morning the girls had a tug of war over a Happyland house...let's just say E.M won it.

Had a parent-teacher meeting at the school today. We went through various papers from the governments books outlining pre-school development etc. Most of it was hi-lighted so J.R is well up to scratch in most things, she's polite and obedient and i've been told her speech is quite good for her age. Ha! Take that Health Visitors!!

Beware: Children's TV in the mornings!

I can actually feel my IQ dropping.

I've just watched a woman dancing around in a studio, dressed up in pink and yellow, donning fairy wings and a bag of glitter singing "If I were a fairy with soft fluffy wings, i'd flutter about and do fabulous things..."

What like get a grown up job? HAHA

And now it's...Captain Puffy Pants? I'll leave that one to your imagination.

Making: A Charlie & Lola picnic!

We love Charlie & Lola on dvd, and one of J.R's fave episodes at the moment is "The most wonderfullest picnic in the whole wide world"

So since today was looking to turn out another rainy sunday, I decided to put together a Charlie & Lola style picnic for the girls! Sausage rolls, sandwiches of ham and shredded cheese, carrots, cheese straws and a few extra goodies...

It kept them occupied for hours (no lie!) and J.R insisited on watching the picnic episode over and over just so she could see that the food she had in front of her was the same :)

It was a brilliant afternoon, and knackered them both out - with little effort!

So, as they used to say on Art Attack:

Try it yourself, a Charlie & Lola picnic.

Update: Mickey & Me

It's been a week now since J.R first came up with Mickey Mouse. His appearences have been few and far between, but J.R has been including him wherever possible by pretending to do something e.g clean his hands or give him a cuddle when there is nothing in front of her.

And it gets a little confusing. She refers to it as "he" but when asked if Mickey Mouse is a girl or a boy, she replies neither, he's a mouse.

So far this week Mickey Mouse has dawdled in the bathroom, gone downstairs to watch tv in the middle of the night and slept in J.R's room every other night. It's getting a little creepy...

Mickey & Me

To say i'm worried about this would be a wrong choice of words, but it does make me a teeny tiny bit uncomfortable...

J.R has conjured up an imaginary friend.

And his name is Mickey Mouse.