Disjointed observation

Small Son: "Mummy, tree stars"

Small son being shown the lights on the Christmas Tree in an otherwise dark room.

Yummy food and good conversation.

The exuberance of 15 Guides singing carols on a cold and drafty railway station.

The sheer delight of a toddler watching trains come and go.

Friends who love to help out with my toddler.

DH being able to spend some time with said toddler in between job hunting.

A week ago I went to turn my computer on and lights flash then... nothing. Not a squeak.

So now instead of a nearly 10 year old w98 box I have a shiny new laptop with winXP (not touching Vista with a barge pole until it settles down some more!). It's amazing how much faster everything is when the limiting factor is the broadband and not the computer. Local fix-it shop diagnosed motherboard failure and put some of the stuff from the hard drive onto disk for me but weren't exactly over helpful so R bought an external box for the old hard drive so we have been able to recover all the data we wanted not just what the computer shop interpreted my instructions to be.

I also have a shiny new portable multi-region DVD player so T can watch without taking up my screen (previously he would watch such things as Thomas the Tank Enging or Pingu or The Wombles (yes really, he's totally fascinated by the original 1970s Wombles) on my computer if I needed to do anything on the computer when he was around). I was surprised at just how difficult it was to get a multi-region player at a sensible price.

I have, I think, only been to two car boot sales. One in mid-August and one this weekend just gone.

At the first one I got an Aulos tenor recorder at a reasonable price (£8). It's not a great instrument but then I'm not a great player either! I also got a toy London Routemaster bus for Theo for 50p. It has become one of the "must have" toys.

This weekend I got a toy for Theo that I was too tight to buy for him new. My nephew has one and T was very taken with it when we visited last Christmas but I wasn't spending £36 on this battery operated toy. Got it for £7 at the boot sale at a local garden centre which we only went to because they also had a "country show" with a local viking era re-enactment group present.

Aaarghh. How to explain to a two year old that he can't watch Hairy Maclary, or Pingu, or Playschool or Thomas because there is a power failure?

Last weeks words for the week - goat and peacock. What every well adjusted Tudor child needs to know about.

First thing Monday morning I thought I was going to be posting a "woe is me" type post but we seem to be coming through. This may get a little long!

On Sunday morning T came into bed for his usual feed and tried so hard but just couldn't manage to latch on. His mouth was clearly still sore and by then was also bruised and quite swollen particularly the top lip - made him look very "pouty"! During Sunday T didn't ask for a feed again at all.

On Monday when he woke up T came into bed but wouldn't even try to feed, which had me very upset. The guilt trip about the fact I'd left the pusher where he could climb it to tip it over and the fact that I'd really wanted to get to 2 years and we were so close but so far was pretty overwhelming. On top of the PND it was almost too much - I really just wanted to sit in a corner and cry.

Mid morning I was sitting in the kitchen and T was playing around when he suddenly came up and pointed vigorously saying "sa, sa" which is his way of asking for a feed. I figured there was nothing to loose by trying. It took a bit of perseverance but he did manage to latch on - standing up facing me with me sitting on an upright kitchen chair. He also had a short feed mid afternoon.

This morning he came into bed and asked for his feed. He did manage to get latched on and fed pretty well. For the last few months he's done a lot of swapping back and forth during his morning feed but this morning I had to stop him after a while as I was getting quite sore. Unfortunately the angle the upper tooth is now on means it was digging in to the base of my nipple. I suspect that I'm going to have to be a lot more precise about feeding positions than we have been recently!

Monday morning I rang our dentist to ask what, if anything, we should do about the tooth. The advice from the dentist is that since the tooth feels firm and T can still close his teeth together we should leave it. Obviously if it changes then we'll have to re-assess. The dentist says that in that case T would have to go to the dental hospital as probably the only thing that could be done would be to remove the tooth and that would almost certainly have to be done under general anaesthetic so we hope that doesn't have to happen.

My aim on the b/feeding front is to get to two years, which is coming up far too rapidly! I'm going away for a child-and-DH-free weekend (otherwise known as a Guide region arts advisers training weekend) mid-May which I rather think will be the end point of our breastfeeding journey. It will be interesting to see how DH copes with T for a weekend without me.

Following on from yesterday's camp crisis this morning we pitched tents on our lawn. Having brought home three tents from the store labelled "icelandic" "galloway" and "12' patrol" I was really expecting them to be all the same size. Turns out that we have one 4 person, one 6 person and one 8 person tent. And the 6 person tent is a much heavier canvas. Ah well, at least they all were complete, the canvas hadn't shrunk so it didn't fit the poles, the only damage we could find was the newest of the tents has a plastic sod cloth which was ripped in one place - easily fixed with duct tape, and we have enough pegs, ropes and poles.



T ended up having a rather scrappy tea today. The plan was to give him fish fingers and vegetables. During the summer (what summer I hear you ask, well what passes for one anyway) we don't have the range on all the time but use the microwave or the grill function of the microwave. I was grilling T's fish fingers and managed to hit the wrong button so they microwaved instead. The fish fingers ended up as small lumps of charcoal! I don't appear to have destroyed the microwave although it does need a very thorough clean and the house smells slightly of burning! So instead T had vegemite toast and a yoghurt.

Theo's surrogate grandmother collected him and took him to her place for the morning so I could rest while Robin did the weekly shop. Robin checked with me about which supermarket to go to. Because when he was in Sainsbury's last they didn't have the toilet paper we usually use, I said he should go to Sainsbury's in March and then also to Lidl. While that happened I went back to bed and slept for over two hours.

When Robin got home I checked the shopping list and asked him whether the fact that he hadn't crossed it off meant that he hadn't been able to get the toilet paper. He said that they hadn't had it and there hadn't even been a blank spot on the shelf where it should have been. Robin put away the chilled/frozen items and we then went out and collected Theo.

After we got back I started on putting away the dry goods. The things from Lidl were fine. In putting the other items away I discovered that the reason Robin had been unable to get the toilet paper was that instead of going to Sainsbury's in March he'd gone to Tesco! Not unreasonably Tesco don't stock Sainsbury's own brand recycled paper toilet paper!

MEN!

Does anyone have a round tuit I can borrow? I keep thinking of things to post here and then when I next get near the computer I just can't be bothered. The can't be bothered feeling is still applying to lots of things.

Robin is basically out of work again. The final agreement hasn't been signed but he's getting a reasonable package. He's been at home since lunchtime on Thursday and is driving me up the wall! I wish he would give rather more help with Theo, although I'd have to admit it's basically what I expected. For the next few weeks he's going to have to give more help though as I have to have hernia surgery tomorrow afternoon which will mean I'm not allowed to lift for the next six weeks. With a one year old in the house!?!

A friend is looking after Theo for the day tomorrow. I've been trying to express so there's some milk for him but in the course of three days have only managed to get about 50ml which won't be enough. Partly this is the round tuit problem again and partly just that I don't get much at each time. Oh well, we've been trying to get him to drink water for a while. Thankfully I don't have to hold off feeding him after the anaesthetic so when Robin picks me up I'll be able to feed Theo.