Not whispering – shouting actually

Honestly some days even if the sun is shining and you feel it would be good to get out into the fresh air,you should just stay the hell home.

Lucie slept through and she slept in - two events worth celebrating. We started the morning dilly-dallying in our PJs and it wasn’t until 9.30, with 2 hours till Lu’s next nap, I came up with the genius idea for the family to go out to brunch. Idiot.

Ok it then took an hour before poor visiting Nanna was ready to go and by 10.15am the baby whisperer who was due at 7pm that night was on the phone balling me out because I mentioned Lucie had a cold. Her lofty reply: “I simply cannot give her the ‘gift of sleep’ if she’s unwell. “She’s a busy woman I should have called earlier…” Well frankly maam she gave herself the gift of bloody sleep despite the runny nose for that last few nights.

Anyway needless to say by the time we got to the restaurant at 10.45 Lucie was losing the plot. The waiter was hardly on fire and by the time we’d had breakfast (sans cutlery- go figure) while Laurent was outside on the phone in a bullocking exchange the Baby Whisperer, Lucie tipped a baby-chino into her lap. time to abort -we asked for our second coffees, which must have been travelling from Brazil, to go.

No sooner had I sat in the car, my takeaway sprung a leak right at the bottom of the cup.

Why KFC is not listed under 'baby's first solids'

One of those really great days: I finished all the washing and got it all put away – I cooked up a batch of Baby Bolognaise and packed it into freezer containers, I hoovered, I washed the floors, cleaned the bathrooms and changed the mats – I even washed and dried Buddy’s bed.

I drove out to Dee Why to that phenomenal butcher I rarely get to these days and stocked up before stopping at the park with Lucie and Bud. Lucie napped well and she ate really well both meals I even shared with her my afternoon treat – 2 cooled pieces of KFC popcorn chicken which she scoffed with a smile. I even managed to do a wee bit of work on my book – I was feeling like super mum. For exactly four and a half hours…

9.30pm: Mother and child are having a vomit and runs contest (food poisoning?) Dad’s upset because he’s stepped barefoot in one of the hallway’s many vomit puddles while mum is scraping vomit from the kitchen floor into a dust pan between running back to the loo every few minutes with shouts of ‘Oh God”.

All the bathmats and floors are splattered in vomit and the stores of clean cot sheets and teddy bears are getting mighty low.

Next morning Lucie slept in which gave me some time to let Bud out and hang out more wet sheets. Coming back in the house I see brown footprints all over the floor. Buddy who had obviously stepped in his poo walked it all though the house and seemed to have done laps on the rug and his clean bed.

While I’m wrestling with him trying to find the offending paw to wash it Lucie decides its time to wake up.. :o(

KFC called a week later,explaining their extensive hygene procedures and apologised for any inconvenience caused. They offered two meal vouchers
to make it up to us.

N.B update, in fairness to KFC the doctor says this was more likely a bout of gastro and I did collect the bonus meal. I continue to this day to be a popcorn chicken addict - although I only give Lucie the chips.


OK, now if you want to read a really scary KFC story check this out:

Infant Overdoses on KFC Bucket:A Health Report

by Delilah Sheraton
 
photo and story care of gou-rou.com

I will never starve. .

 

I will never starve. I have biscuits, dried fruit and/ or teething rusks in all of my pockets - in all of my jackets and even some of my looser fitting cargos. They are protected (albeit not hygienically) by wads of balled up tissues in various states of freshness.

Trying to resume a life involving just a few things outside the toddler rodeo circuit, I decided to take She-Who-Worships-Pink with me to an author reading.

Well actually, I didn’t so much decide, I had planned to go alone; however She-Who-Worships-Pink is a bit sick and can’t go to day-care. A noble sentiment perhaps but one obviously not favoured by the parent who sent their sick child to day-care the previous week infecting mine and many others in turn.

The author is Emma Jane, author of Attack of The Fifty Foot Hormones, and I worship the paper she writes on, keyboard she types on, the screen her text resides upon? Anyway I know her and love her and she’s an inspiration to my writing, so I decided to go anyway.  This is despite the fact that She-Who-Worships-Pink also just had her chicken pox vaccination and was not in a particularly generous or forgiving frame of mind.

(Ominous music plays)

Problem number one – the event and therefore the seating is at the top of a staircase.

Problem number two, is Number Two’s.  Just as the author is being introduced there is a sudden overwhelming and awful smell and She-Who-Worships-Pink becomes uncharacteristically hyperactive for a sick listless child. With a sinking feeling I realise it’s ‘the poo dance’ and my little performer looks like a rapper on speed as she staggers around the gathering wafting  her scent in everyone’s’ general direction.

As the traditional poo-performance finally ends, the first thing that piques her interest is a mighty fine staircase - actually plural that. She finds another one behind the lectern as well.

As if on cue, my phone rings. I didn’t get a minute to turn it to silent. So I am madly punching buttons trying to shut the thing up, (why won’t phones switch off when you really need them to?) still in a half crouch, chasing a cranky toddler between two staircases. At which stage, the author, my hero, and her audience seem to have become MY audience.

Finally after moving my chaos-road-show down the stairs till the crises had passed, I returned to find the book reading was over.

I was however in time to catch a woman moving through the group proffering a tray of biscuits. My auto-pilot took two and eagerly stuffed them into my shirt pockets.

Have a Laugh on Me linky

High noon

Juggling a dog and a pram is easier on days when its not raining. Adding a wind-blown umbrella creates too many moving parts.

Buddy’s pretty good, he rarely pulls at the lead and he’s almost go the hang of ‘single file’ when there’s other foot traffic but sometimes that’s not enough. 

High noon style, I was being stared down by a bottle-blond in a tight black pencil skirt who’d come out of the Mercedes dealership lighting a cigarette. 

With obvious effort, I wrangled the dog and the pram over towards the grass so it would only be the pram on the footpath giving her plenty of room to pass.

Watching my effort ,she drew on her cigarette slowly and swayed like a catwalk model coming straight for us. Was it my imagination or did she adjust her trajectory slightly in our direction? Obviously this was her runway.

I kept moving, surely she wouldn’t expect me to jump out of her way to the other side of the footpath, with my road train.

I think that was the whole point as I did eventually need to swerve out of the nasty cow’s way while she shot me a victorious sneer.

She was elevated in her platform stilettos but Buddy’s a Doberman cross - he’s quite leggy too and the sneer turned to something else as a big, black, wet, golf ball of a nose jabbed her square in the crotch. 

Even better, as she squealed and spun away from Bud, I saw the lovely large dog-snot smudge across her skirt.. Like chalk on a black-board.  Like a big long smear of ...something else entirely.  

Let her explain that to her colleagues. 

He doesn't often get it so right, Good Dog!