Im so thirsty I could eat a chicken...

I said to my husband tonight as we were brushing our teeth before bed, "I need to start writing down the things our kids say, before I forget everything". As I got into bed tonight I reached over for my notebook and began to scribble things down, but as I was doing it I realised that I may as well start a blog. Now although I'm only 27, I'm a bit of a technophobe. In fact, only the other day did I get that sinking feeling, the one that told me I had achieved "out-of-touch-mother status", as my only-just-turned-4 year old daughter snatched the camcorder out of my hand and showed me how to work it. It was with a feeling of pure resignation that I sat and watched her whizz through the settings menu to find the desired recording of herself on the beam at gymnastics. Thus said, it is a miracle that I am actually typing away now since the laptop was a mere mouse-click away from being thrown through my bedroom window onto the gravel drive below. Feelings of smugness and notions of technological genius have now replaced aforementioned resignation. I bet my 4 year old wouldn't be able to set up a blog ha! 1-0 to me. (Will be googling her name as soon as I've posted this just to make sure though).

Anyhow, I will be using this blog (I don't even know what blog means...) to record family life as I know it. As I am sure there will be millions of other bloggers... or are we blogsters...blogettes??? writing about their children I shouldn't imagine mine will differentiate itself in any extraordinary way but, I find my children very amusing and I feel I would be doing them a severe disservice if I didn't share their anecdotes with atleast one other person outside my immediate circle of family and friends (I say this praying that just one person, somewhere in the world will read this, even if they log on by accident, like I did earlier during the registration process to the blog of a strange man in Japan who still sleeps in the same room as his teenage son??).

I have 2 girls: I'll call the oldest O, as mentioned earlier she has just turned 4 and is good at everything. My youngest is A, she is 15 months and took her first steps a week and a half ago. She isn't very good at anything (yet).

I had a hernia operation a week ago and have spent a considerable amount of time in bed, so I suppose the main motivator for the blog is sheer boredom. I have annihilated 2 Desperate Housewives boxsets, watched countless re-runs of Friends and Sex and the City, and have been forced into the pits of despair and logged onto Channel 4 on demand to watch "Wife Swap" and "4 Weddings" (a programme in which 4 scrags attend each others weddings and slag them off continuously to the camera) There's no coming back from that. You know that you've reached the bottom when you start to care about  which chavvy wedding dress gets the highest mark out of 25. It's the TV equivalent of a Pot Noddle: it seems like a good idea at the time, it tastes like crap but somehow you just can't put the fork down, and afterwards you feel dirty, ashamed and in need of a shower. So, in an attempt to distract me from "Pot Noodle TV" my thoughts turned to more wholesome activities such as journalling my family's activities. Over the past few days I have realised just how amusing I find my children, since every giggle at the moment feels like my stomach is going to tear into a million shreds. Post hernia op is not a good time to laugh, but unfortunately I laugh at everything. My husband has always said I'm an easy audience, and even after 6 years of marriage a trump (the word fart is banned in my house) has me reeling. I cannot envisage a time when the breaking of wind doesn't raise at least a titter. Unfortunately, being told by a nurse that I am not allowed to laugh had the same effect on me as a teacher telling me to stop laughing in school assembly. It just makes everything funnier. So I have been banished to my bedroom (by my mother who is staying with us for 2 weeks to look after the kids) on more than one occasion over the past 2 days. I'll give you a couple of examples:

1) It's lunchtime. O is sat at the kitchen table, A is in her highchair whinging. Granny (my mother) is preparing food. I am sat trying not to move or use my stomach muscles in any way that would cause the staples attached to the back of them to pop out. O asks Granny for a drink. Granny is otherwise engaged trying to prepare scrambled egg as quickly as possible before A loses the plot completely and throws herself out of her highchair; all the while desperately trying not to let the egg stick to the bottom of the pan (what is with that?? do chickens lay eggs with superglue inside them? It is physically impossible to remove burnt egg. In fact, am having quick daydream about appearing on Dragons Den with disposable Scrambled Egg Pans, that can be used once and then thrown away... SORRY RECYCLED (God forgive me, I wouldn't want to put something in the WRONG bin) A few minutes later O turns to me and puts on her "grown-up voice", the one that she uses when she is regailing stories of her "mates" at school, and says "Oh mum, I'm so thirsty I could eat a whole chicken". Cue uncontrollable laughter, indescribable pain and banishment to the bedroom. I am guessing she has heard her father say "I am so hungry I could eat a horse" and decided to use her own version. Somehow I think it will stick in our household. Food served, 2 seconds later, Peppa Pig plate flies across the kitchen and scrambled egg sticks to the kitchen wall.

2) It is mid-afternoon. A is taking her afternoon nap and O is dragging Granny around the garden. I am sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of tea, in the peace and quiet, no danger of laughing. It was O's 4th birthday 2 weeks ago and I spent weeks trying to find something to buy her. I mean this girl has everything. I don't know how she has managed to acculumate so much stuff over the course of 4 years, but she has. I racked my brains, I trawled through the shops, but nothing. No inspiration. 3 days before her birthday I was searching the internet and she came up to me, looked at me very seriously and said "I think that I fancy a slide for my birthday" and walked off. I stared at her and shouted "Couldn't you have fancied one 7-10 days ago??", because that's how long they take to deliver. In a panic I searched every outdoor slide retailer in a hope to find someone who would deliver within 3 days. Nobody would. And then, as if by some miracle, the wonder that is JohnLewis.com offered delivery on Saturday. In a few quick clicks and the entry of my husband's card details I had a slide ordered and I was officially the world's best mother.

It arrived at 7am on Saturday morning (don't even get me started on allocated delivery slots) and dear husband T, with the help of my father, constructed the slide while I kept all the curtains and blinds shut to prevent O from seeing it. Now if I were to tell you that my husband is useless at DIY you wouldn't be anywhere near understanding how terrible he actually is. My father lives 2 hours away from us, but we have to wait for him to come and visit before I can get a picture put up on the wall. T's answer to everything is "Get a chap in to do it". But even with his lack of skill in construction I thought that the 3 hours they had been outside building was quite a long time, so I went to investigate, and then I realised why. In my hasty bid to get my daughter the present that she so desired, I had ordered the world's LARGEST SLIDE. It was enormous. I wouldn't go down it, it was terrifyingly high. T just glared at me and told me to make him a cup of tea... with sugar (in our house, tea...with sugar means that all is not harmonious in the nest).

So as I am sat at the kitchen table I am watching Olivia slide fearlessly down this 4 metre high monstrosity that now occupies a huge portion of our garden. Forwards, backwards, headfirst upsidedown. "Come on Granny" I lipread through the window. I see Granny shake her head. "Come ON" O persists. I see Granny shake her head again. Now O is nothing if not persistent. Again I see her try to persuade Granny, this time with a little tilt of the head. Granny knows she has lost. She walks, with obvious trepidation, toward the mountain of steps. Tentatively she mounts the first step, gripping the handles for dear life; she takes another step, looks down behind her. I want to open the kitchen door and shout "never look down" but I fear I may scare her even more. Slowly but surely she takes one step after another until she nears the top of the green plastic skyscraper. The sound I heard next, even through the double glazed glass is one that will stay with me for a very very long time. I have heard my mother in labour (I have a 15 year old sister and a 12 year old brother) and the scream that came out of her mouth was louder and more frightening than those uttered during even her worst contraction. All the while I had been watching Granny carefully climb the steps and building up the courage to sit at the top, O had removed her shoes and socks and was sneakily climbing up the actual slide. It is so big that Granny couldn't see over the top and was blissfully unaware of her creeping closer and closer. As Granny's hands appeared at the top of the handrail and her head popped up, O shouted an almighty BOO!  Frightened for her life, Granny momentarily let go of the handrail and in that split second O lurched forward up the slide, grabbed her hands and with her body weight dragged Granny head first down the slide at about 60 miles per hour. The whole senario seemed to happen in slow motion, and her scream continued long after shehad reached the bottom. When she finally sat up, O was beaming down at her and said "That was fun, again, AGAIN!" Cue uncontrollable laughter, indescribable pain, banishment to the bedroom and this time morphine. Ouch.

My dear mother did survive the experience, and after a cup of tea (...with sugar) she had regained composure and eventually stopped shaking. Although her voice is decidedly croaky. The only other thing she had to tackle later on in the day was a small breakdown in the swimming changing rooms when O's swimming teacher handed her a hat to wear in the pool. Look of shock, tears in eyes and mumblings of it ruining her ponytail, followed by the buckling of knees and a downright refusal to enter the pool area. Swimming teacher gave in, hat remained in locker and O enjoyed her first swimming lesson. Ponytail in tact.

Whatever will tomorrow have in store? It's late. I'm going to make a drink. I'm so thirsty I could eat a whole chicken.