Dilys came back to work today after three weeks in Spain; to say I’ve missed her help would be an understatement. You don’t have to spend ages explaining things to her or redoing the jobs she has done. She came bearing gifts as well – one very large bag of mini Toblerones to share. And apparently it’s 55 years today since the Queen’s accession to the throne, full of information is Dilys.

++++

Himself, whilst mooching through drawers came across a load of old photos. Did I remember this?

Oh, yes & so did eldest child. We’d been playing cat and mouse and we had to dress up for our roles. Thank God there was no pictures of me as the cat. The game involved me crawling after him on my hands and knees until I caught him. Then I tickled him until he screamed for mercy. What a lovely mother I was, child torture no less, no wonder he hadn’t forgotten. Poor kid, scared for life - it's little wonder he went through a black period in adolescents. If I hadn't tortured him like that he'd have never been a Goth.

And come to think of it there was a couple of times I took him to playgroup and school only to find they weren’t open. Half term or teacher training days, it’s a wonder the poor child didn’t get a complex – his mother didn’t want him. Although I only ever failed to collect him once – it wasn’t deliberate and I did have a back up in place, so it doesn't really count. I fell asleep in the chair; it was just after I’d given birth to youngest and Tracy brought him home.

At least with your second child you grab sleep whenever you can. You don’t give a toss what the Health Visitor thinks about the pile of ironing stacked up in the corner or whether you’ve bathed the baby before she arrives. The only important thing for the first three months is to sleep at every God given opportunity. Bugger being a perfect mother with a immaculate home and home made fairy cakes which eldest child will decorate - a functioning mother who is relatively compos mentis will do. This is the first time in your life that you change roles with your eldest child - they read you the bedtime story and you drop of to sleep sitting upright on their bed. They are then kind enough to nudge you when you start to snore.

And no way are you not going to breast feed the second time round because nature provided an easy option that costs nothing and the baby will learn to latch on whether it wants to or not. Failure is not an option. The only down side to this I found was the night feeds. I couldn't share them. I did try expressing milk once but after nearly an hour and less than an ounce I gave it up as a bad job.

++++


It’s trying to snow today – although I’d be hard pushed to say the weather was making much of an effort. I’m holding back on the ‘getting excited bit’ just for the moment, it looks like the sun is about to come out. Since Saturday, we've woken up to frost and I've a feeling that for this week at least it's the closest to winter weather we're going to get. Although if the weather should choose to proved me wrong I'd be OK about it.