Monthly Archives: July 2002

Raining – was glad to be rained on today. It is hot at the moment & a little water is pleasantly cooling. Work is exceptionally hot – a small room with computers running & a few people. Fans run, but they do not really cool.

Bit of a funny evening… It’s very hot at the moment & Jack has considerable trouble getting comfortable, & settling own to sleep. I eventually fell asleep with him. When Louise roused me it was half nine. I doddered off downstairs & put the kettle on, while Louise stayed upstairs for the moment. Jude woke up, so I stumbled back upstairs & took him to Louise, lay down on the bed a moment & promptly fell asleep again. Could see it coming & should have got up, but couldn’t be bothered. Woke at eleven thirty & thought… Ah! Better turn out the light & lock up the house. Putting the cover on the sandpit woke up Eve (as it’s below their bedroom window & it’s hot, so it’s open… Back upstairs & she wants her mum. Louise staggers over having woken up & I pootle off to lock doors & turn lights out again. Back to bed; back to sleep. Not very productive, but I do feel a little fresher this morning… I guess.

Jack has a guilty secret at the moment that I don’t think he realises I know about. Jack & Eve were play fighting the other day (Eve is usually the more antagonistic in these situations) & Jack bit Eve on the side. He drew blood. Eve was very distressed. It’s all getting better now healing already. I think Jack, from what Louise says, was very shocked that he had hurt Eve so, & asked Louise not to tell me. The big plaster was difficult to miss.
When I got home yesterday everyone was wilting from the heat. Our neighbour Caroline then turned up with a paddling pool for the kids! Wow! Much huffing & puffing & water carrying later the kids were wet & happy. Jack had his water pistol & Caroline had her watering can & they had a little duel. I would say that the watering can is more effective. Heh. She’s too good to us is Caroline

“Um…” is about all I can think of this morning.
A one-day weekend again – so not much doing. Jack & I cleaned the bathroom. Eve helped as well. Not terribly exciting, I have to concede, but it went surprisingly well considering it was me, & 2 young children & a lot of water. They were remarkably restrained… Actually, I think it was because Jack was good & Eve follows that lead.
Jack’s pals Jessie & Hamish were not about. Hamish is in London & Jessie must have been out for the day. Jack is worried as Jessie’s house is up for sale. He does not want him to go away & is afraid that he will move schools as well. As far as I can discern – they are not leaving the area & Jessie’s older brother & sister go to Jack’s school as well. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that they will be moving schools as well.
Jack takes his friendship very seriously. I’ve seen Jack trying to comfort both friends when upset. Jessie went off in a huff once & Jack was most disturbed, & ran after him asking what was wrong. I think Jessie felt aggrieved at some perceived slight. Hamish is the harder of the 2 as he does not seem to want consoling when upset (hmmm – that’s what Eve’s like). His elder brother had upset him & he went into his front garden to cry & sulk. As we were in our front garden Jack was most concerned & went to see what the matter was. Unfortunately Hamish just cold-shouldered & was probably more upset by the attention. Jack can’t really get his head round this reaction to being upset. When he’s upset he needs comfort from one of us (me or Louise). Big on contact & hugs, is Jack. I guess he expects others to need contact when they are upset. He wants to help.

As the tabloids are fond of saying; “Phew – what a scorcher!”. Bleedin’ hot outside.
Had one of my ‘migranes’ this morning at work. This basically means I have a little visual disturbance & feel a bit groggy afterwards. Something I noticed as odd beforehand was that I was in an annoyingly chirpy mood beforehand… bit like being a little tipsy. Quite pleasant until everything went a bit weird. No idea what causes them. Rare & largely undisruptive.
The party went quite well yesterday. I got there half an hour after the start (by virtue of not getting the earlier train & thus the earlier bus connection etc etc). Had fun – got chased around by the kids a bit & swung Jack around a bit & ate a great many pickled onions… Oh, I’m a sociable fella.
Jack has lost his 1st tooth. Bottom middle right. He’s had a wobbly tooth for over a week & we’ve been telling him not to mess about with it… but it’s been too much for him to resist. He managed to wobble it free yesterday morning. Louise has booked him with the dentist to check it out. It’s difficult to say, but he may well have lost his 1st milk tooth to an adult tooth. It sort of looks like there’s another tooth growing up, but I’m no dentist. I hope there is, as if not he’s going to have a gappy smile for a bit.
He put his tooth under his pillow as he went to bed. I sneaked up later to do the ‘tooth fairy’ bit. I left money, but I could not find the darn tooth. He shouted for me in the night to tell me that the tooth fairy had been – & was rather excited by the whole thing. He eventually went back to sleep.

Train Strike day. Sitting on the ‘turn around’ to Southport – that, of course goes through Manchester. They also seem to have laid on coaches today… That’s a 1st. Surely nothing to do with the Commonwealth Games starting today…? Noooo…

Louise, her mum & the kids went to Hebden Bridge yesterday. I think the plan was to look at a shoe shop there, but it has ‘intermittent’ opening hours – so as nothing has been said on the subject, it may not have been open. Eve is in need of new shoes again. She has a pair that seem too small for her; her 3rd toe has a tendency to hide under the 2nd toe if there’s not ample room.
Back to Hebden again today for Harvey & Flo’s birthday party. Not sure why it’s in Hebden bridge tho – but that’s the way it be, so that be the way it is (they live in Tod, & like us do not have a car). I will be late, & will have to spend longer on a bus that I’d like. The trains back home only get as far as Rochdale today, & thus I get a bus from there all the way to Hebden – bleh!

A feeling there’s much to say & a brain that still can’t get past the rudimentary. I guess this is what all parents are like… Too tired to think too hard.
Louise thought the 1st day of the summer holidays went quite well. The kids played well & the day went surprisingly quick. Jack was starting to act up a bit by the time I got home – an accumulation of petty things & ‘that look’ (I know it all – I’m better than you). Not something that sits well with your 5 year old.
Louise went off to the shops & Jack & I stayed a home. Eve is very willing to go with Louise & the pushchair – essentially as we now have a buggy board. We went off on a great trek on Saturday to John Lewis in Manchester. It’s in Cheadle; we needed a train, tram, train & 20 minute walk to get there. All for a retail outlet with a buggy board. It was not something that was really planned. Jude woke us early on Saturday (as mentioned) & Louise piped up that she thought it might be a good idea to try to get there… Heck – why not! The train etc went well to get us to Cheadle Hulme, but it was a little odd when we got there as we had no idea where we were & where Lewis’ might be. Got direction & started the hike. Jack coped well, but got truculent because he kept missing the planes that were coming into land, & blamed us for not pointing them out to him well enough… He was not actually listening when we were trying to point them out. This made the journey there more difficult. When we finally arrived, it was a tad busy… We do not get along that well with busy shops… but never mind. We managed to stay together for the most part & get the new buggy & buggy board. We had arrived there with no buggy/pushchair. The stock collection computers were down, so rather than have our crazy kids running back & forth through automatic doors to the ‘collection point’ outside, we opted to try to get some food. Cafes crazy busy. Supermarket sandwhiches, then. Jude does a poo, Louise goes off to change him while the kids nearly sit down to eat. Eventually we get back to the store & still have to wait an age for the buggy & board. Assembled & homeward bound. There may well be mac computers in this store for me to drool over & Rowan wool for Louise to muse over, but we cannot get out of there soon enough.

Just woke from a snooze on the train. Closed my eyes on the platform & found that I continued as I got on the train. Feel a bit better for that, actually…
Jude was up early again this morning. Saturday & Sunday he woke at 05:00 & started burbling on happily as he does. This morning he awoke at similar time, but this time it was caused by Eve waking up & crying for a cuddle. It probably doesn’t take much for him to wake up at that time anyway. So, Louise is going to be jiggered today.
Jude is sitting up. Sunday morning I had him sat down & he was holding himself very well, & by the afternoon when Louise sat him down, he was almost confident about it. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to take him long before he’s figured out crawling now. He gets himself onto his tum & shuffles about at the moment, & he’s getting to the point where he’s lifting himself very strongly.

Eve took a jolly long time to go to sleep last night. Teething is suspected. Unfortunately she was also up before I left for work this morning. This does not look like an easy day for Louise.
It occours to me I might be more tired that I thought I was as I seem to have difficulty thinking this morning.
Jack brought home a lot of school work yesterday – books & pictures & writing. No word as to whether we are allowed to keep them or not, but logically, I guess we must be able to. After all it’s the end of term… hang on.. is that this week??
Blimey

Hmmm having whittered about the run in with Jack on Friday, I would like to point out that Jack is usually an exceptionally good boy. In writing down the times when bad behavior does occur, I don’t want to give the impression that this is normal. I write it down because it is exceptional. He may even remember such run ins as he gets older, but he won’t remember all his little acts of kindness & being so lovable.
Jack called out in the night for me. I staggered to his room barely awake & he told be that he had a sad dream. Something along the lines of ‘We were at a bus stop’ – ‘You & mummy got off the bus, but I didn’t’ – ‘I should have got off the bus because I got lost’. He told me this; before I knew it he was sound asleep again. To be honest, I think that sounds quite frightening. Louise thought that it sounded like an anxiety dream & I have to concur. So, did I write the previous paragraph because I’m feeling guilty about Jack one way or another? It’s a distinct possibility, I guess.
“Friends Reunited“. Well – I spoke to one of my main cohorts at ‘middle school’ the other night, for probably over an hour on the phone. There were 3 of us that used to be very into art when I was – um -how old? – 11 to 13 or something… Anyway – One of these best friends of mine turned up on the Friends Reunited website. I was rather excited to actually see the name ‘Simon Francis’ there. Cor! I looked at it for a week, & then thought, bugger it – & stumped up some money to register myself on the site to get the ability to send him a mail to say, “Hi”.
Over half a life ago…

Eve woke up in a good mood on Sunday; chirpy, smiling. What a difference it makes! She’s been teething of recent, & has been in a sod of a mood; always whingeing & carrying on. It wears you down, grating at the nerves so much it makes you physically tired. Louise copes extraordinarily well with it all. One main tactic was to just get her out of the house, really so that she has distraction other than complaining. She’s got our sense of humour though… Louise says that she was on her shoulders on her way to playgroup when she did a massive burp, “Pardon me” she said. Louise must have chuckled as she repeated with fake burp all the way through the park. Louise burped yesterday as she was relaxing in the house & apparently Eve jumped on her & wanted “Again, again” – thus the game continues.
Sunday was not all good. We had a run in with Jack, or should that be Jack had a run in with us? We were just in the Co Op car park, after doing some shopping. We were going to go back to the park & see what was happening. There looked to be the music event for the end of the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival with a fair attached. This is what it looked & sounded like from the playground anyway. Not too loud… Could be fun. In the car park, Jack noticed a small light bulb. He picked it up, much to my concern – it being rubbish & glass rubbish. I told him to put it down, he did. Whether I remonstrated for lack of care, or whether he just got the idea, he picked it up again & threw it down… He wasn’t successful in breaking it – so he did it again – by which time I was nearly shouting at him. He did break it – to which I exclaimed “JACK!” very loud. Louise had cottoned on to what he was doing & made the swift ‘right – that’s it!’ decision. We were going home NOW! Jack immediately burst into tears. How could it be fair? Well – if he had listened to us & not messed about… He cried & denied that it was his fault most of the way home on the bus. Only getting into town did he calm down. He later even conceded it was his fault for being naughty… but that was only after another smaller incidence (stone kicking, “don’t kick that stone Jack… No… Stop that Jack …JACK!) & punishment (not going to the bike shop for a bike stand) & another flood of tears. It’s hateful to see him so upset & to have caused it, but… but he really does need to listen & have more respect for things. Having said all that – he has been very good since then. He’s come back to more his normal self.
Jude was a ball of energy yesterday evening. Louise says that he hadn’t really had a proper sleep all day. He was asleep when I got home, but I probably disturbed him. He was kicking his legs & waving arms like mad – not in a frustrated way, he was happy & burbling most of the time. Just energetic & happy. He wants to be off & crawling I’m sure… I’m also sure he’ll probably be doing it sooner that we imagine. Not immediate – but soon.