Last night The Wictor didn’t want to go to sleep. So I lay down next to him and promptly fell asleep until 9. And it’s lucky I did, because this is how my schedule for the evening turned out:

12.30: Go to bed

1.00ish: Fall asleep

3.30 am: Woken up by a loud sound, like a toad croaking but inside the house. It woke up The Daddy too. We traced the noise to our en suite toilet. Blocked and booming, apparently because it was attempting to unblock itself. I know, weird, I have never experienced that either. When we flushed the toilet it overflowed, but it was clean water and the noise stopped so we went back to bed.

4amish: Woken by the sound of a child screaming in the distance. I went out into the lounge to listen but couldn’t hear anything. Realized it was actually The Daddy, snore-whistling. Went back to bed.

Sometime after 4: Woken by the the sound of running back and forth upstairs. Baby Sister is not supposed to come downstairs at night unless it is “something important” and it seems she kept changing her mind as to whether this was something important. In the end I went up and she decided she had had a bad dream. Lay down in her bed and fell asleep.

Sometime after sometime after 4: Woken by The Wictor patting my face. It was still dark. Took him back to bed, lay down next to him and fell asleep. Again.

Around 7: Baby Sister came in and woke us both up.  I was so tired I kept insisting it was still nighttime, but my children were wiser and soon had the light on and every battery-operated toy we own up and running.

I know what sleep deprivation is, I didn’t really sleep much for six years.

But it turns out it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit.

I hope I make it to midnight tonight. In case I don’t - Happy New Year!

The Daddy keeps sending me links to this.

He says it is the best use of Flash technology he has ever seen.

I am not sure what he means by that.

But of one thing I am sure: if I ever needed an excuse not to do hard exercise, I have found it there on the Shock Absorber site.

(Of course, if I actually owned one of those scary looking bras, I would be obliged to go out for a run around the block, wouldn’t I?  But I don’t.  So I will sit here and eat chocolate instead).

Despite my very best efforts, The Wictor is the only one of my kids who is still truly bilingual. But he is at the age where he is muddling up the languages - mixing up the vocabulary and trying out grammatical rules on one language which belong with the other. This is a perfectly normal stage and they soon work things out by themselves. In the meantime, it can make for some cute little conversations.

Yesterday as we were leaving the supermarket together, it started to rain.

“Garde Maman!” he said, “C’est pleut!”

“Il pleut”, I corrected absently.

“Oui Maman! C’est pleut -ing!”

Apologies to non French speakers out there, usually I translate things my kids say, but this one doesn’t really work in translation.

Baby Sister still understands French but prefers to converse in English now. Unless she wants something or just wants to please. This morning she came to give me a “present” of a bow from one of her Christmas parcels.

“Maman! ” she said proudly, “Un cadeau pour toi! Une Beau! A bow!”

I hope everybody had a great Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or Just Another Winter Week!

This morning we are tracking Santa on Google Earth!

We celebrate the Hallmark Santa. He is a jolly, fat man living at the North Pole with his Magic Elves, who just loves to give out toys to children. He is not affiliated with any religion, which is why he is happy to come down our chimney 

Although I wish The Daddy had told me before last night that at our house Santa only brings the presents. For the last 2 weeks I have been telling my kids that Santa’s Magic Elves make the presents. They make them exactly the same as in the store. Because they are magic Elves.

I know, I know. Hopefully they will forget by next year and then we can get our stories straight.

(or: Obviously the Evil Mommy, Destroyer of Simple Pleasures like Playing With Fire, was Not Home)

(or: Please Don’t Call CPS, They were Sort of Supervised)

(or: It All Turned Out Fine In the End)

The Daddy: “I left them alone for about 20 seconds. And when I got back, there was a flaming marshmallow in the middle of the lounge.”

Oh, really?

QUESTION: Who’s that coming down the track?

(0 points if you said The Wictor with a beer box on his head)

ANSWER: It’s Thomas!

We are so classy…

But he really does believe he is Thomas.

Now do you see the ressemblance?

I knew you would.

PS The Cranberry Lambic is very nice.

I am having real trouble writing at the moment, I am not sure why. It could be that Christmas is approaching and I have done all my Christmas shopping (not to brag or anything … but I have) and so now I am just sitting here waiting for it all to start.

Of course, when I say just sitting here, that is my version of just sitting here, which involves things like walking up and down the lawn spreading fertilizer pellets because (at least according to The Daddy) our lawn is dying and/or being choked by weeds. It involves rearranging The Wictor’s bedroom, the TV room and clearing out all our closets. Updating my store even though hello! Christmas shopping season is over and did you hear there’s a recession on? So, not expecting a lot of impulse buys through January.

I have been on the go almost non-stop for months now and I’m not sure why, with things being more relaxed,  I can’t take a well-earned break. I am as capable of chilling out as anybody but I keep making busy work for myself. I think I feel if I just sit I might seize up and stop working or something.  Maybe my joints would rust.

Last night while The Daddy was cooking dinner I pulled a closet from one end of upstairs to the other, because he had been promising to help me for days and never found the right moment and I had a spare timeslot right then. There was nothing to hold onto on the darn thing so I had to kneel on the floor and pull 6 inches at a time by its little feet. That was a total workout of my biceps by the way, and next time I start up the Wii Fit and it throws me that snarky little line about how it hasn’t seen me for 70 days and I should really be working out every day, I will sneer “Wii Fit, you are an arrogant *&$%#! Do you really think you are the only workout on the planet? I don’t need you, I have my new friend closet!”

Busy, busy, busy. It’s all stuff which kind of needs doing, but the world won’t stop if I don’t. Today I even decided that my children lacked puzzle experience. It’s true, they do. I dislike and distrust puzzles, with their blotchy colors and weird shapes that you think should go one way and then they go totally the other way and upside down and usually not even on that side at all. But I also live in fear of my children failing some random IQ test somewhere down the line because it includes puzzles and they only know a puzzle as a random selection of colored bits of board which their mother throws back onto the shelf while swearing profusely. So, we got out all the boxes of bits and sat together peacefully for about 10 minutes, until The Wictor got jealous that I was helping his brother and sister and with one sweep of his little skinny arm swept the T-Bot’s 100 piece masterpiece onto the floor. At which point I gathered it all up and, swearing profusely, threw it back on the shelf.

Actually, I didn’t. But I really, really wanted to. Instead I made soothing noises and we slowly, painfully, stiched that sucker back together. And I believe I aged at least 3 years in the process. The instant that ordeal was over I was bouncing off again to organize my magazine collection.

But before I turn into the Energizer Bunny, I am making an effort to slow down. This afternoon we rented Prince Caspian on DVD and all sat and watched as a family, an experience as memorable for the kiddy comments as for the movie. And later, I managed to coax a few almost-in-focus photos out of my poor dying camera:

Baby Sister: “I saw the commercials for this! I saw the commercials! When do we get to the lion that talks?”

Mommy: “T-Bot, are you enjoying the movie?”

T-Bot: ” Yes Mommy!  …   Mommy? I need someone to give me a foot rub”

Mommy: (Amazed he even knows what a foot rub is) “Why?”

T-Bot: “Because my feet will like it Mommy. Very much. ”

Mommy: “Wictor, look at that funny mouse on TV!”

The Wictor: “I a big M&M! Eat me up! Yumyumyumyumyum!”

This is how sad we are right now. We are sitting at our desks, facing each other, typing on our respective computers.

“More wine”, I say, “Your turn.”

“No”, says The Daddy, “I’m good.”

“What are you doing?” I ask, “obviously not loving me.”

“You may have similar genetic makeup,” says The Daddy, “but you are not Dido. I am watching Dido. ”

(Here we go again)

Me: “Yes, but Dido’s soulless”.

Him: “If by soulless you mean perfect.”

I have a lot to live up to. My husband is in love with Dido, and he would totally marry her if he wasn’t already married to me. What? Of course she would have him. All women want him. After all, he once saw Linda Evangelista  as he walked past a photo shoot and she totally gave him the eye.

Me: “Are you sure she wasn’t posing?”

Him: “No, she wanted me”.

So, Dido. he is watching her in concert right now. She has no faults.

Him: “Dido wouldn’t leave loading the dishwasher until 4pm … Also Dido wouldn’t be in a bad mood when I got home from work. She would waft up to me wearing something light and floaty and rub my feet while crooning a love song”.

Me: “Yes but Dido has no children. Children, as you know, are a distraction. ”

Him: “Well, she just hasn’t found the right man yet. She would have lots of children with me.”

I resist the urge to remind him that he used to call Dido dildo. (Am I allowed to say that on public internet?). Until one day he saw this concert. And in the intervening years, he has shown this concert to every male friend who has ever expressed reservations about Dido’s (ahem) music. And I swear that every single one has been converted.

Him: “Those shorts? Make your backside look huge. Dido would never wear those. Well, you did ask me”.

And they say romance is dead.

Back to Dido. She does have one failing. She gets her hair cut (probably at £300 a time, but I digress…).

And The Daddy doesn’t find short(er) hair attractive.

Me: “Dido doesn’t have long hair…”

Him: “She’s allowed not to. But only because she is Dido“.

(Sigh)

I had this great idea where I would do a “Twelve Days of Christmas” thing and blog about it.

Except, instead of “my true love gave to me…” it would be “my true love looked after the kids while I accomplished this long overdue DIY task…”.

Because D.I.Y. -  I am D.I.Y!

(Ahem. This does not mean I am overly good at it. Just that I do it. If anybody is tempted to express surprise at this, just know that in this day and age that makes you a sexist dinosaur, oh yes it does. Also, I do have minor control issues and won’t let The Daddy do anything involving household tools, because I just know he will do it wrong. Except the pressure washer. He can go crazy with the pressure washer. I hate that thing. )

Then, when I got to thinking about it, it became clear that nobody was going to hang around for a blow-by-blow account of resealing the shower, for example. So I have rethought.

But, just for posterity, this is how I plan to spend The Daddy’s two weeks of vacation this year:

1. Reseal the shower before the supports underneath rot through and the whole bathroom collapses.

2. Finish touching up the moldings and baseboards in the dining room I started painting back in April.

3. Oil the family grandfather clock which was delivered to us in March, so that hopefully it will start working. The Daddy is very agitated about this one. Every time I ask him the time he looks balefully at the clock and says sadly “2:05″.

4. Finish pruning the crape myrtles. The aim is to stop those “ghostly hands” tap tap tapping on Baby Sister’s windows.

5. Replace the one crumbling board at the back of the house which is solely responsible for giving it an abandoned look.

6. Turn some funky vintage train wallpaper I just bought into a mural for The Wictor and make some cool stuff out of the rest.

7. Move the guest bed into The Wictor’s room and rearrange his room around it in a way that doesn’t encourage anyone illicitly jumping on the bed to jump right on out the window.

8. Rearrange the TV/Guest room so it is also a computer/Wii room. Put a lock on the door so I can keep the children in there.

9. Replace the following on my car: rear left indicator bulb, windshield wiper blades, key fob battery. Might make driving a little easier.

10. I haven’t thought of the others yet. I may be so tired by this point that I will want a rest. And lots of wine.

And after all that, don’t even think I am going to tackle the ironing pile.

My birthday was nice. When The Daddy got home at 4.30 we ate birthday cake, opened our presents and then had dinner.

(The kids: “Dinner? Again?”.

Yes kids, because we served you cake for dinner and then a second dinner later. )

I showed The Daddy the famous flowers. I had picked out mixed roses on a whim, even though lilies are my favorite, and I am very pleased. This birthday was kind of … quiet. And nice.

Yesterday was The Daddy’s birthday, and I went on a Girls Night Out. You read that right. We always celebrate his birthday along with mine anyway, so last night I went out and kicked up my heels. While being the designated driver, but you know, sometimes that can be the most fun. Hearing everybody’s secrets and then actually remembering them in the morning.  This was actually my first Girls Night Out since I left the UK 3 1/2 years ago, which is quite shocking to think about really. So let’s not.

We ate at a Japanese restaurant. The food was good, but it was also very business-driven, and not in a good way. I mean, we hadn’t finished our appetizers before they were trying to make room on the table for the entrees, and then suddenly the bill appeared on the table. When we hung around, our waiter started clearing the table while chewing his own dinner. Also, maybe I am naive, but I have never experienced the used-car sales technique as practiced by a waiter before. He knew his wine list - at least the ones which were 20% off. And he tried to upsell all the dishes, claiming this one was too small, that one didn’t have enough tuna, you would need at least 15 of those. They stopped the music at 9.30 which was I guess our cue that they wanted us out of there. The place was empty.

But the location is secondary on a Girl’s Night Out, right? What you really want to do is have fun. So we went on to the bar of the restaurant next door where our table proceeded to entertain all the patrons, and me. Actually I think some of the patrons may have walked out, but others seemed to be enjoying listening in. One gentleman even said as much. There was all the inebriated gossip you might expect - relationships, bitches, relationships, sex, relationships, preschool - but this year there was also a new topic of conversation. Money, or the shortage of it.

Wait a minute. Let’s stop and go back a sentence.

Seriously? It was easy to pick up men because you had your own caravan????  Seeing you in a whole new light.

Ahem. Money. Now, there’s a sobering thought. Not that any of my party got sober (although I should point out here that I am talking tongue-loosening levels of insobriety, nobody got close to dancing on a table. I was mildly disappointed.) The great thing about getting drunk with the girls - or in my case, not getting drunk with the girls, is that you find out things about people that you would never have expected. Women who you see in a casual setting during the day, who may even seem very upright, very prim and proper, take on a three dimensional aspect once you hear a little about their lives, past and present. That’s why we all like soap operas (admit it, you too) and that’s why we all like Girls Nights Out.

But then the bar closed at 11 and they ejected us into the chilly suburban Houston night. My car was the last one left in the carpark, but I suppose we were doing well for suburbia on a weeknight. Everybody grumbled about how their husbands would already be asleep, but when I got home The Daddy was still up and, even though his alarm was set for 5.45 this morning, he opened a bottle of wine and we sat up talking. So he did get to celebrate his birthday after all. Or at least, drink wine.

And then, suddenly, at about 1 am, we heard snoring. I went upstairs and there, curled up on a chair overlooking the front door, was The Wictor. He had obviously woken during the night and fallen asleep again waiting for me.

Its fun going out. But absolutely the best part? Coming home to my family.