There’s a woman on the outside looking inside does she see me?

I’m fairly confident that today has been lovely, I just don’t feel like I’ve been participating in it much in spirit, although I was there in body.

Crap night with Tarly who arrived in our bedroom before 1am. 🙁 After about 15 minutes of her trying to engage me in conversation I snuck off to her bed and left her with Ady, which I believe meant she gave up and went to sleep too. I didn’t sleep well in her bed and Davies woke me about 7 I think. We had a cuddle and then decided to make her some birthday cards, so we did some drawing, some writing and some cutting and sticking. Quite pleased with the results actually and Davies’ writing was really good.

Tarly appeared downstairs then too so she joined in and decided what she wanted a picture of on her card – her choice was herself and our cats, so that’s what she’s got! I’ve left the sentimental wording inside to Ady to complete, feeling I’ve done enough of it with my blog post, making the card and the two cakes really ;-). I ran them a bath as they were both fairly grubby and Ady appeared downstairs so I left him to bathe them while I went and got dressed.

We headed over to my parents where I made a party food type lunch, looking back, rather dismally helped or supported by anyone else really but never mind! Then Chris and Julie and the twins arrived, followed very shortly by my Granny. The children all ate and played really well with only one accident or spillage (which was not down to either of my children so I had not part to play in clearing up or apologising for!) then they headed off home again. It was Julie’s birthday yesterday and her Mum arrived from Germany as a surprise so they were keen to get back and spent time with her.

The weekend before Davies was 3 we came down to stay with my parents (we were living in Manchester at the time) and Davies threw all his dummies in ‘Grandad’s’ dustbin. Not sure why we decided on that cut off point really although I know it had been delayed from being 2 because of Tarly being born, so we have talked for months about Tarly doing the same. She has duly repeated, like a little blonde parrot that she will be throwing her dummies in Grandad’s bin when she is 3, so this morning her and I collected them all up and when we arrived there we had the dummy chucking ceremony, exactly the same as 2 years ago for Davies. She threw them away, we all clapped and cheered and because the official line is that she is ‘not a baby anymore she is a big girl’ I had brought out a sparkly pink box with various bits and pieces of Big Girl stuff in it (some old nail varnishes of mine, a sparkly bracelet, some lipgloss, some body glitter etc) so she got that in honour of being a big girl now. Her and I sat at the kitchen table and she painted my nails, rubbed glitter on both our cheeks and smeared lipgloss on anyone who came within lip smearing distance (including my Dad!) – I’m probably the only Mummy (with the possible exception of Ros) who rejoices in such huge girliness but I loved it! 🙂

So Chris and Julie’s present of further lip gloss and sparkles was very well recieved. And Frazer’s present given when he got home from work of a dressing table and stool was fallen upon with true delight!

We had a pleasant enough afternoon, I played on the piano with Tarly for a while, we made up a story about a giant (left hand keys) stomping around trying to find a fairy (right hand keys) who was flying around and hiding, then Ady came in too so I played chopsticks and they had to dance according to the tempo. Everyone else watched Willy Wonka which was on one of the kids channels and then Mum brought out some dominos which her, Ady and the kids played with. That reminded me and Dad of the set of dominos we used to play with when I was a child which had been made my his father for him when he was a child, so Dad went and got them and we had a match going on too – all very Sunday-ish. Finally we had some jigsaw puzzle activity with Mum doing them with Tarly and me doing some with Davies. In all the day had a real feel of Christmas about it.

We hung on for Frazer to come home from work, by which time I was fading fast and was only really capable of watching football with Dad and Ady (I quite like watching football on TV, I find it very lulling watching the ball sail up and down the green pitch, I used to love watching it when I was a child, although I don’t actually follow the game as such, otherwise I imagine the lulling would be nullified if I cared about the result!). The kids had some tea there and then we came home.

Ady’s got out dinner on, I made the dressing table up and the children played with that for a while and now they are both in bed. Tarly did really well until Ady said ‘do you want to take your dollies to bed with you?’ she misheard, said ‘I don’t have my dummies anymore’ and then her little face crumpled and she started to tell me that ‘I’m not ready to be a big girl yet Mummy.’ with the saddest little look 🙁 I can hear her still downstairs although she doesn’t sound upset she is obviously going to take longer than usual to get to sleep without it. I do of course have an emergency one but as we’re away for a week and she won’t be having any sort of bedtime routine anyway this is an excellent chance to break the habit as by the time we come home she should have gotten over it. I know it was really easy when Davies stopped so I am tentatively hoping it will be the same one tough evening here and that’s it… fingers crossed!

I’ve not prepared anything for tomorrow or going away yet but as we don’t need to leave until about midday I will do all the packing in the morning. I need to wrap Tarly’s presents tonight, so I hope she goes to sleep fairly soon as they are all on top of her wardrobe at the moment so that will be tricky! All my Christmas cards are written and with the exception of the stuff still whirling round the tumble drier everything is pretty much ready to be slung into a holdall in the morning. Mum gave Davies the new Willy Wonka dvd as a Tarly’s birthday present so that’s the in-car entertainment sorted for the journey, I’ve given up on the idea of baking so it’s just copious volumes of wine and song sheets for the karaoke night still to organise! 😉