Bad news, I’m afraid…

Sad news.

A bad day

I nearly had to strangle Amber yesterday.

It’s tempting to leave it at that, but I guess any statement like that deserves at least some explanation.

The Lovely Melanie and Millie were at a birthday party yesterday, in the paradise-on-earth that is Dartford, so Amber and I went on a guided Green Chain walk from Nunhead to Crystal Palace.  It was over six miles, which was pretty adventurous to begin with, and temperatures were hovering around 3-4 degrees for most of the day.

But I was feeling confident: some friends were also going, we were wrapped up warm and it was mostly around the area where we used to live, so I figured I knew what to expect.  There was a problem to begin with when we found out railway engineering works had – once again – almost stranded us in Bexley for the duration of the weekend, but with a little bit of forward planning I found an alternative route.  Happily the alternative route was actually faster than the usual one!

Things started fine – the transport (a bus and train) worked like a charm (although, a literally last-minute unannounced platform change almost caused us to miss our train).  Then, Amber started to try and take her hat off and gloves off.  After a five-minute argument about this I managed to persuade her to keep them on, but she cried for the next 15 minutes.

Thus the pattern was set for the rest of the day.

The walk itself started at ten, was supposed to take about 3-4 hours and would have been great if Amber hadn’t been there.  It was interesting and mildly taxing, plus it was nice to be out in the open air with friends.  It was even supposed to finish with a rare chance to get up close to the dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park – something usually forbidden to the general public.

So it was good, but it could have been so much better.  Amber, basically, had a massive tantrum pretty much every hour, and each tantrum lasted about 20 minutes.  I missed all the interesting things the guide had to say and became more and more stressed.  My thanks go to our friends Mike and Inge who, even though they don’t have children and don’t particularly like children, helped out so much with Amber.  Thanks, guys.

After about four hours, with a couple of miles still to go (over 80 people turned up for the walk, which caught the guide completely by surprise, and so it took correspondingly longer to organise), and following a particularly exhausting section where I had to push and carry and lift the buggy through the beautiful Sydenham Hill Woods Amber and I decided to call it a day.

Little did I know our day was far from over.  Amber started having a tantrum again while we waited for the bus.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And she cried and cried and cried.  She wasn’t too cold or too hot or hungry or thirsty.  She was getting cold hands from refusing (again) to keep her hat or gloves on, but otherwise she was fine.  She was just in a bad mood.

I actually shouted at her to “Shut up!” after about 25 minutes of this and turned her buggy to face away from me.

When the bus eventually arrived and took us to Crystal Palace (not my first choice of destination to get us home, but we weren’t overwhelmed by choices at the time) it turned out that Crystal Palace – normally quite a big interchange – had precisely TWO trains running from it, neither of which were of much use and neither of which were due for half an hour.

Pushing Amber back up the hill to the Crystal Palace bus station took me down to my lowest ebb of the day, I think.  I was almost at the end of my tether: exhausted, cold, unable to get home, ready to strangle Amber, legs aching, hungry, thirsty and so very aware that a journey home of at least two hours still lay ahead of us.

It turned out to be much longer than two hours, as the gods of public transport rained the contents of their bowels upon my head all the way home.

And now I want to put that weekend behind me.

Oh, except to say that we went swimming for (regrettably) the first time in months on Saturday, and both our girls had an absolute whale of a time.

Parents’ evening

Parents’ evening tonight, which all went well – and didn’t feel so weird; I guess you can get used to people mistaking you for a grown-up!

Millie’s doing just fine, apparently; they’ve no worries about her abilities.  She’s slightly behind some in her class and slightly ahead of others, so I guess you can’t say fairer than that.

Well done, our little girl – we’re very proud of you!

We were slightly more worried afterwards, upon reading the little book her class had prepared showing parents what they’d been doing, to see that not one but TWO local bible bashers had visited the class.  There were pictures of one performing mock weddings with the children and another performing a mock christening with them all using a doll.

At first I just thought, wow, that’s really quite weird, but I’m getting more and more annoyed – probably not unrelated to having just seen this load of nonsense on TV, a programme I was quite looking forward to, but which blatantly does not do what it says on the tin.

I agree with the Lovely Melanie that we don’t want to make a big screaming fuss about this, but at the same time – as I said before – this is not something we’re at all happy about.

It may be time for a very carefully worded letter to the school.

A valiant return

Sorry for the breakdown in service here; in my defence we have been fairly busy, but mostly I’ve not been very well.

Saturday night I went out to see Richard Hawley at the Royal Festival Hall, but first met up with a friend from my previous job.  We had a few drinks, I then saw a marvellous performance from Richard Hawley and just managed to catch the 10.30 train home (although, buses were involved as well due to engineering works that left non-car-owning denizens of Bexley effectively marooned for the entirety of the weekend).

Got home safely, had some toast and a cup of tea and went happily to bed

A few hours later I woke up thinking, “Crikey, I feel rough – surely I can’t be hungover, I didn’t have that much to drink!” before running to the loo to vomit.

I did this a few times and woke the Lovely Melanie up.

“I thought you weren’t going to drink much at this gig?” she said.

“I don’t think it’s a hangover,” I replied from the bathroom.

Today, finally, I’m feeling a bit better, thank goodness, and have probably lost most of the weight I put on over Christmas, but I really don’t recommend this diet to anyone else.  Plus, I’m expecting my appetite to kick in with a vengeance fairly soon – having eaten nothing but a few water biscuits and cheese for almost three days now…

But enough about me.  Amber had quite a nasty fall last night and has gone to nursery this morning with a bump on her forehead and a lurid looking graze under her nose.

It was just after bathtime, she was bouncing on Millie’s bed while the Lovely Melanie was combing Millie’s hair (which is now quite long and needs conditioner using on it as well as shampoo).  I was next door being poorly when there came an almighty THUMP! as though some particularly heavy books had fallen onto the floor.  You could tell it wasn’t books, however, because the Lovely Melanie suddenly shouted, Ooh! Amber!

The way she described it made me smile, but it was a nasty knock.  Basically, she says Amber was bouncing behind her and suddenly bounced over her shoulder and off the bed, landing face-first on the floor.  There were many tears.  Millie was also quite upset by the whole thing, but she was an excellent big sister, stroking Amber and fetching some tissue to wipe her nose.

Unsurprisingly, it took Amber about ten minutes to recover.  I was struck by the fact that you could tell this is our second child because if Millie had done that we’d probably have phoned an ambulance.  With Amber we matter-of-factly checked nothing was broken, wiped her (only-slightly) bloody nose and gave her lots of cuddles.

She went to Mummy first, but Mummy was unable to make everything immediately better, so she then asked for Daddy, who was similarly incapable of fixing everything, so she ended up going back to Mummy again.

Downstairs afterwards, she’d occasionally stop drinking her milk, look at one of us and say, with a serious face, “Bed,” and we would nod seriously about the bed.

Still, on the bright side, I think her grasp of basic physics has significantly improved!

Op date

Very quickly, as I’ve got to run for – coincidentally – an eye examination, we’ve been given a date for Millie’s eye operation (to correct her squint) – February 24th.

I shall probably muse some more on this when I get back.

Dawn chorus

We were woken this morning, as we so often are, by Amber singing.

The song goes something like Loving You by Minnie Ripperton but with different lyrics – Daddydaddydaddy Mummymummy Daddy Work Amber Mummymummymummy Daddydaddydaddy, etc.  It can get quite epic, with some versions lasting for almost 20 minutes!

When we finally rose we found Millie dressed in three pairs of pyjamas with her pants on top of them, Superman-style – which may partly explain why Amber’s song then switched to No no no no no no no no no…  This time with a more military marching beat to it.