To shoe or not to shoe…?

We are in the same situation as pretty much every other penniless parent at the moment, unpaid maternity leave is not fun, I remember the first month I stopped being paid it came as a massive shock that the bank still demanded payment of my mortgage!  RUDE!!!  I may be back at work but the deficit is still felt, we now manage on only my income and the lack of funds is one of the reasons the rennovation of the

Anyway I’ve been investigating other ways of making money (successful ways – ie not playing the lottery) and one of the things I have had some success with is selling unwanted things on eBay.  What things you may well ask?  It started with unwanted building materials, things we had bought in error and not been able to return, then I started hunting round for things we don’t use but have had for ages.  Then I expanded it to my wardrobe (1 year rule…not easy to apply strictly when you’ve been pregnant or recovering from being pregnant for over 18 months).  This worked well…but I became addicted, what else could I sell?

Whilst putting up our wardrobe (Freecycle – thank you again!) and debating whether to buy shoe racks from Ikea the answer became clear…I must part with some of my shoe collection.

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Now I’m not obsessed with shoes, I just like them and at 5ft tall finding clothes that fit and suit me is difficult, but let me tell you there’s always a bargain pair of size 3s in every shoe shop sale.  Yes my son’s wardrobe is full of my shoes in boxes, but they’re all “pre-pregnancy shoes” so I can’t wear them.  Cue confused look from the Turk “why can’t you wear pre-pregnancy shoes – your feet didn’t change”.

This is true, they didn’t, but pre-pregnancy I was a 4 inch heel girl, I managed to maintain this through a good few months of pregnancy but eventually just couldn’t take the judgmental looks from other tube passengers when I asked for their seat to rest my pregnancy weary feet…clad in heels.  Eventually I broke and resorted to a smaller chunky heel…then flats.

Pregnancy has completely changed my shoe life, quite recently on a trip to buy a new sleeping bag for Jem I bought 3 pairs of flat shoes – see, I’m growing as a person rather then just wearing heels!

I always thought that post-pregnancy I would simply slip straight back into my heels, but I seem to be broken…they make my feet hurt; they make my knees hurt; I can’t walk properly, in fact it’s not so much walking as staggering (although give me a buggy to hold onto and walking is significantly easier).  What to do?  Well the answer is staring me in the face, so here I go, my finest 2 pairs of heels have already been dispatched to their new owners and all I have left are the photos to remind me…sniff sniff.

Note to self:  In future head directly to the handbag section of TK Maxx rather than shoes.  Can’t grow out of a handbag 🙂

Haiku to pregnancy tests

Ok so the tests I use have pink lines, but when I thought of lines I thought blue…maybe expensive tests have blue lines and you will think I am classy rather than buying Poundland pregnancy tests….anyway, here it is:

2 blue lines… I wait,

Carrying precious cargo?

Patience will answer.

The power of lines…

2 is the magic number…

1 line; chance has passed.

Unfinished business

So in June 2012 we moved to the money pit, work started in earnest in January 2013 (…at 5 months pregnant) and the loft extension was completed on my due date, excellent.

Work progressed, with external walls going up, interior walls coming down, kitchen and bathrooms were fitted, curtains went up and there was some painting done…that should really have been the end of it.

However the trouble is it still isn’t finished.  When I went back to work after 14 months of maternity leave it hadn’t occurred to us that the work still wouldn’t have been done, but naturally whatever wasn’t finished then still isn’t finished as being a SAHD doesn’t really lend itself to house renovating at the same time!

I don’t want to moan, but my view is that the real issue why it’s not finished is that the Turk has an aversion to completing a project.  The Turk is of the view that it is my fault because I insisted on doing irritating things like using rooms (ie rather than confining the 3 of us to a 10 meter square area of loft I insisted that we used two of the bedrooms downstairs, kitchen and living room.

Whichever one of us is right, the bottom line is it’s all a bit….well…unfinished.

Yes we have a living room, but there’s a patch of plain plaster on the ceiling which hasn’t been painted, no coving, the whole room needs painting and other than our sofa all furniture is cordoned off one half of the room which we don’t use because it’s too unfinished and therefore unsafe for the boy.

Yes we have a kitchen but it only has around half it’s work surface and a huge damp patch with no sign of either being completed in the near future.

The hallways and stairs are in a complete state of disrepair whilst we argue over floorboards v carpets so I frequently loose items helpfully posted by Jem between gaps and trip over the loose floorboard at the top of the stairs…

The main bathroom and guest en suite both leak, have cracked tiles and need work on the ceilings.

The spare room would be ok if it wasn’t for the tools dumped in there.

The loft has become a dumping ground for everything that can’t be put in the unfinished rooms…

It’s all getting a bit frustrating.  The Turk has suggested that a second maternity leave would be an excellent opportunity for him to complete the work…I’m not enthused about the prospect of another 12 months of looking after a new baby almost completely alone whilst he rennovated…

The battleground of snot

I know all children are snotty, I knew this before I had a baby and it was one of the things I was least looking forward to (nappies, birth and vomit were also high on my dread list), but I hadn’t actually appreciated what the worst bit of it would be.

I knew that an immunity to snot would develop because even though I as an adult cannot stand looking at either runny or crusty noses there are so many of them around that I assumed parents became ultimately indifferent, but I have discovered that’s just not true.

My son constantly has a crusty nose, and often can be found with a river of snot waving it’s way towards his mouth.

It upsets me, I find it disgusting to look at, but it’s still there.

You may ask why…and you would be right to ask.

The simple answer is not that I don’t notice or don’t care, but in the crazy battle of attempted nosewiping I realise that before I get the tissue anywhere near the little snotrag said snot will first find its way onto my shoulder, trouser leg, the rug, the sofa and probably somewhere on my skin…

…you have to pick your battles.

I am starting to come to terms with the snot, I flit between blaming it on his fortnightly trip to playgroup, teeth and the lack of manners in society (ok so the last one is unlikely but it’s a real problem).  In the same way that I came to terms with poo after I got sprayed by one…who knew I would become a cloth nappy user.

PS I do notice that although the boy won’t allow a tissue near his nose if he can find a box of tissues, loo roll or tissue anywhere within reach he will immediately hone in on it.

Priority seat pressure…

 

Priority seat pressure –

Riding on the tube;

Priority seat pressure –

Should I make a move?

Priority seat pressure –

Riding on the train;

Priority seat pressure –

Must I stand again?

Old infirm unwell and bump,

If I don’t offer they’ll get the hump.

No badges here I must decide –

If they stand or sit on this bumpy ride

Been there myself so I do know,

The ache of tired standing woe.

Pondering til my journey end,

Did I do the right thing or just offend?

Spiderly issues

I don’t really like spiders, I never have and if you ask me I can’t explain to you why.

I notice that when most people write about these horrid arachnids or post about them on facebook they frequently put pictures of the little horrors.  I have opted not to do this.  Primarily because I detest those pictures and find myself immediately unfriending anyone who conducts such an act of cyber terrorism.

My cat disagrees, he likes spiders, in fact they are his favourite prey.  When we first moved to the money pit we found mouse traps all over and the cats were a real bonus as we didn’t spot a mouse at al during the building work.  Recently we found a couple of mice but our cats seem to spend most of their time simply looking at said mouse and waiting for me to move it.  That’s fine, I can cope with mice.   I can’t cope with spiders.

It always happens at the end of summer that for some reason there are literally* thousands of spiders.  As I have aged I have come to terms with even the massive spindly ones, but these are substantial “real” spiders, with big bodies and they bleed*, they cannot be squashed and they move so fast they can escape my Dyson.

I hate these spiders, I really hate them.  The Turk can’t understand why, but it’s not really been an issue for a while, we never seemed to get spiders until last autumn.  We were living in the loft of our house at the time and I couldn’t work out where these blooming massive spiders were coming from, and why they were up on the third story of our house.  I would get up in the night, bring the boy into the living room for a feed and there would be one, lurking, in the middle of the room (usually dead).  Luckily because I am a grown up and the need to not freak out the baby became my highest priority I managed not to scream blue murder, but to place a container over the dead spider so it was out of my sight while I nursed.

One night a live one ran out from under the fridge….that wasn’t a good night.

I worked it out one day many months later, when I caught the skinny cat bringing a large one in and dropping it on the kitchen floor, the two cats then pranced around looking at it for a bit and tapping at it when it stood still….before romping off outside and leaving we and spider to it.  This year after I flipped out at the ginormous creature brought into (and then lost in) the kitchen my cat tried to appease me by bringing the next one up to my bedroom…and the one after that as well.  During the spider month I no longer go to the loft (where the cats sleep) alone.

The Turk has real issues about killing spiders, and I have real issues about not killing them.  This started when on a couple of many many many occasions he would attempt to pick them up in a tissue, drop them, find them, pick them up then drop them but walk over to the window and pretend to throw them out.  I’m not stupid, I know they’re still there.  I now have to be satisfied (from a reasonable distance) that they are well and truly squashed before I am happy.

*not literally, but definitely inside my own mind

London life

Running on the left;

Running on the left;

Save 2  minutes extra then we won’t feel bereft.

Standing on the right;

Standing on the right;

Sometimes slow and steady is all you need at night.

Running on the left;

Running on the left;

Makes us feel important look at our speed and deft.

Standing on the right;

Standing on the right;

Taking time to savour the joy of morning light.

 

 

Shoe crazy

So the boy has a thing for shoes…I can’t imagine where he gets it from…

We first discovered this as an obsession with my trainers became dangerous.   You see whereas most people wear shoes on their feet, Jem likes to wear them on his hands. It’s not so bad but his ragged determination to wear shoes on his hands at all times does cause issues when on stairs.  He has a fair few bad falls so I decided it was time to invest in some big boy shoes (*sob* how did it come to this, my tiny  baby?!)

Naturally we headed to Clarks, 3 times to be precise.   After being told 2 to 3 different sizes and not finding any nice soft crawling shoes I took the plunge and invested in a lovely pair of half price loafers.

£20 might not seem like a lot to you but it’s 2 pairs of shoes to me and the prospect of having to pay the same for a new pair every month or so filled me with dread!  We headed straight to Sports World and bought a £3 pair of sandles next, they’ve already been a great investment and he loves tl bring them to us to put on!

Next we were lucky enough to get a generous giftcard for Mothercare from some wonderful friends so when I went to the Mothercare Outlet to buy vests I checked out the massive shoe range.  Now we have a Mothercare at the end of our road but I honestly have never really seen shoes in there so didn’t think about it as a place to look for first proper shoes.  The range at the outlet was huge and the prices even better, all £3.50 to £4!  So I admit I went a bit crazy!   Jem is a size 5 at the moment and I found this comfy pair that he loves, they’re much more flexible than his leather pair:

So I got a couple of size 6 shoes as well:

…and sevens:

Oh and an 8:

Then I found these in the tragedy that has been the Kiddiecare closing down sale:

Darn you Paul Hollywood

Now there’s only one thing I like more than The Apprentice, and that’s The Great British Bake Off, I like to think that it’s the type of programme that I could actually be in…I’m not sure why I think this,  because the boy’s first birthday cake was a bit of a disaster…

The cake itself was just fine (carrot…counts towards your 5 a day…FACT) but my icing pens just dissolved into the moist cake…as did the later attempt to sprinkle it with icing sugar…

I have all the tools, but none of the skill…

After vowing never to attempt it again a couple of years ago I foolishly decided to make my own bread rolls again.   Mistake…big mistake…well actually not so bad, they did taste good even if they bore no physical resemblance to bread rolls.

A few weeks ago I broke out my new bundt pan and managed to create something that was burned on the top and raw at the bottom…that’s a special kind of skill 😉

Dealing with a SAHD

It’s been strange adapting to life with a stay at home dad.

Whilst I am generally happier at work, I do feel like things are slightly the wrong way round, and it’s hard not to be a control freak about things.  You know things like:

• Yeah I got locked out today when the baby was inside;
• I just left him with the neighbours for a few hours, he likes it;
• He was asleep so I left him in the car and powerwashed the pavement;
• I can’t watch him all the time, sometimes he’s in a different room

*sigh*

I have to let things be sometimes, but it is a challenge.

I also know how difficult it is to be at home by yourself, so I don’t go out much and struggle to leave work on time so that I can give the Turk some relief at tea time and beyond.

I definitely think that he finds it harder than me in some ways, multitasking isn’t a skill he has so he is really struggling to get anything done, which means that his default position tends to be making sure that the task is done at the expense of supervising Jem.

The upside to this is that the boy is definitely more independent than he used to be, his tolerance for entertaining himself has increased massively, as has his love of CBeebies.

There are some things he finds easier, he is much more patient than me, he takes the time to enjoy play when there isn’t housework to be done, I always feel that there’s something ‘better’ I should be doing.

There is no right answer, there are just words.