This evening I was sitting in the office, talking to The Daddy with The Wictor on my lap. In came T-Bot and asked for apple juice. While he was explaining to me his cunning plan for drinking his apple juice with not one but 7 straws (”it’s an experiment, today I am doing experiments…”), The Wictor disappeared. His place on my knee was promptly claimed by the T-Bot, no longer so worried about apple juice now that he could claim a cuddle. 

Moments later I heard strange grunting, straining and wailing noises coming up the hallway. Concerned that the baby was stuck somewhere, I tried hard to remove T-Bot from his perch to go investigate. As I finally managed to boot him off (he has become quite heavy all of a sudden) The Wictor appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily and pointing urgently to the door. 

So I went to the door and looked. And there, just outside the office, was a full 1/2 gallon (1.89L) bottle of apple juice. Distance carried from the kitchen cupboard to the office by a too-small, underweight 22 month old? Around 35 ft.

He has the persistence but not quite the reasoning skills yet - he came the long way around. 

So, once we had sorted out the confusion over the reason for the surprise party (at least in everyone’s mind except Baby Sister’s - she persisted in thinking it was The Daddy’s birthday and kept yelling “Happy Birthday Daddy”) , there was more celebrating to be done.

First, a homemade pinata, decorated by Baby Sister and bashed very energetically with a broom. 

Then , inexplicably, story time. Maybe because The T-Bot had a new book from the school library and wanted to share it.

For dinner we had pizza, of course, because who cooks on their Third Anniversary of arriving in The States? With Champagne, cake and coffee. Decorations on the cake are courtesy of the T-Bot… 

And now, a couple more gratuitous patriotic photos, just because I think they are cute: 

Much fun was had by all. Thank you, good night. 

So as I was sitting in the car line with Baby Sister and The Wictor today, waiting to pick up the T-Bot from school,  I decided, totally out of boredom, to check my diary. Which is how I noticed that today was our 3rd anniversary! 

No, obviously not our wedding anniversary… OK, no obviously about it, but not our wedding anniversary. 

(BTW, Checking my diary is usually how I remember anniversaries, and this is why I didn’t actually notice until 3.45pm…). 

Today was our 3rd Anniversary of arriving in the States. 

We made a family decision that this was Cause for Celebration, and once the T-Bot had been delivered to the car, we made an urgent run to the supermarket for cake and champagne. Cake was easy - ice cream cake always wins the day - but then we had to wait 10 minutes for the Man with the Key, because at said supermarket they keep the champagne in a locked cabinet and the Manager of the Wine Section somewhere at the other end of the store. Maybe he does double duty as Diaper Manager or something but certainly he is never around when you need him.

End result,  we didn’t escape from there until almost 4.15. 

“Quick” I said to the kids, “Daddy will be home soon, we only have 30 minutes”. So we rushed home and started our preparations for “Daddy’s Surprise Party”. Because somehow it became about The Daddy and all the cool things we could do to surprise him. 

Unfortunately we didn’t have 30 minutes because he arrived home today at 4.30. As he zoomed up the drive, this is what we were busy doing: 

All was not lost, we had already managed a banner - a team effort which involved all four of us in a frenzy of lettering and coloring: 

And really, plenty of balloons to keep everyone occupied and amused: 

The Daddy’s first ” surprised” reaction as he walked in the door was a little tragic: 

So I asked him to try again like he really meant it. Five minutes and many photos later, after posing for posterity with a “surprised” look and a bunch of red white and blue balloons… 

…and a couple of american flags, 

He said to me, seriously he said: “So what is it, fourteen years?” 

Did I mention already that this was not our Wedding Anniversary? 

I bet you are wondering what life is really like in our household. When the guests are gone, the webcam is turned off and we are going about our normal business. I know I write occasionally about the mess and chaos but I am sure you suspect that those are stories constructed entirely for your amusement and entertainment…

Well, I am going to satisfy your curiosity now. I know you won’t be disappointed by this glimpse into our everyday life. This is so uncanny, it could be a film about us! Baby Sister and I especially enjoy changing clothes and fixing our hair before we prepare dinner for the menfolk. And when The Daddy arrives home, T-Bot and The Wictor always act glad to see him! 

1950s Dinner on YouTube

(I know, I know, April Fools was last week! But I was busy that day…)

The Wictor is getting all grown up. The Baby has become a little Boy, sob sob. 

So, three quarters of the way through painting the dining room, I have run out of paint. 

It was to be expected, really. I let the salesman at Sherwin Williams convince me, against my better judgement, that I would only need one coat of primer and one coat of paint. Or, maybe, “one and a half coats”. 

Actually, he was probably right. The paint went on quite well and under normal circumstances one or one and a half coats would have been adequate. But, leaving aside totally the fact that I have no idea how one applies a “half coat”, both he and I failed to take a few things into consideration:

1. Despite The Daddy’s promise to keep the kids out of my way so that I could paint in peace, I completed much of the first coat in record time while the baby played at my feet with a police car… and a balloon.  I was hurrying because I was nervous that one of the three would rub up against the wall I had just painted perfectly and it would then need a second coat. Which is, in fact, what happened. 

2. Generally, if you go to the hardware store and buy roller covers which then turn out to be not quite up to the job, you make another quick run out to the hardware store for the correct roller covers. Unless, of course, you have three children who are all over the place with sadness that you are paying attention to a wall and not to them, and an upcoming birthday party which needs to use the space, making it a necessity that you complete the painting in one weekend without dragging three whining children to the store in the middle of it. Then you tend to cut your losses and forge ahead with the tools you have. Which means that you end up having to apply that second coat. 

3. Perfectionism. The whole reason I was painting the room myself in the first place, rather than paying someone else to make the problem go away. Also the reason why my second coat went on as thick as my first coat - I wouldn’t want to miss any bits - meaning that the can was very quickly empty. 

4. And then the roller broke, and I had to paint half the last wall with a brush. There’s a reason why people use rollers and not brushes. 

Still, all is not lost. I am hoping that, given that the unpainted wall is a wall of windows, if there is any color discrepancy with the new batch of paint the difference in light will disguise it. I am leaving that job for another weekend.

In the meantime, I am very happy with what has been achieved. The color turned out greener than expected, almost psychedelic (Fun Yellow is not a color to be trifled with), but a few picture frames and some furniture will soon tone it down. Anyway, compared to the previous color - a shade of diarrhea which looked elegant with someone else’s furniture but just depressing with ours - anything would be an improvement. I consider it a job well done. 

Yesterday I experienced one of those feel-good moments :-) 

We were at the ENT’s office, finally getting the Wacks cleared out of the T-Bot’s ears. Yes, it did take us six weeks to get an appointment.

This was a new ENT for us. There was nothing wrong with our old ENT except for the fact that she was not a pediatric ENT and her idea of child-friendly was to repeat irritably “It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt” over and over while he screamed. So we decided to try someone else.

Our new ENT, our pediatric ENT, didn’t seem any more comfortable with the screaming - and let’s face it, who would be - but you did sort of get the feeling that he had been there before. At least maybe once before…

But I digress. At this point in the story we had not yet laid eyes on said new ENT, and were just going through the paperwork with his assistant, giving medical histories etc etc. It was going very smoothly, mostly because the assistant actually read through the forms I had spent 20 minutes filling out, rather than just asking random questions that I had already painstakingly answered. Oh, I am sorry, I veered off path again, there is just so much to be said about doctors’ assistants… 

So, to get to the point: there he is working through his list of questions, casually ticking off boxes while the T-bot chatters away in the background and without missing a beat he says “Well, there is obviously nothing wrong with his speech and language”.

To which I replied, nay stuttered: “n-na-n-n….no”

But really I just wanted to jump up and kiss him. 

Here is the photo I promised of one of the demi-tasse cups which sent me off on a nostalgia trip yesterday. Currently for sale as a set of two through my Etsy Store, where you can also see more pictures…