Gremlins...

It's been a while.

I never meant to stay away for so long, but hey, life is never straightforward and is always happy to throw me a few curveballs.

First of all, Dave was working in a crazy-demanding job which saw our routine with work and kids and childcare and house stuff go completely to pot.  There were simply not enough hours in the day to complete everything.  Needless to say, any spare time was spent catching up with stuff we didn't have time for; piles of washing, dishes, school notes, appointments...life was crazy.

Thankfully he has a new job now and so far  (touch wood), it seems to be a much smoother ride.

There's a lot to be said for work/life balance.

While this was going on, we are also house hunting.  We are hoping to buy our first house in the very near future, so I have been trying to use free minutes perusing house-buying sites, hoping to stumble upon something cheap and cheerful.  Needless to say, it's a terrible time of year for it!

While scouring various domains, my poor wee laptop managed to pick up a few Malware gremlins.  It took a long time to get rid of them - in fact I am still sorting stuff out after having to restore my computer back a few months...grumble.

Add on to this the other pressing gremlin we discovered one day a wee while ago...

They always look very odd in the first photo - although, look!  Tiny wee hand!

Yes, check it out!  Turns out there's a wee guy/gal hiding out inside of me!

I have been feeling horrendous these last couple of months - hence the lack of blog - but I have to say, I am feeling a lot better now, even more so after going to the hospital and actually seeing a real-life baby on the screen! Paranoid-me likes to imagine I was imagining it.

So, I missed a couple of things; my 30th birthday wasn't quite as intense as I'd planned, but the way I was feeling, that was okay by me!  I had a really great meal with my family and had some really lovely gifts given and even delivered!  I certainly feel very loved indeed.

I've had a great time keeping this a secret from real life people too.  Some I told, knowing I'd need support as I felt so rubbish.  Some I told accidentally.  But others, as I have discovered this week when I told them, already knew.  Apparently the bump which I didn't think I had much of gave me away. Ha!

I am going to be huge.

But hey - it's (most definitely) the last time I am going to be doing this and I am determined to enjoy every last second of it.  Pregnancy hasn't been a positive experience for me, but now I am that bit older and wiser, I seem to have a different attitude towards it.  Things are so very different from when we had the boys, it's kind of nice to just not worry quite so much.

We told the boys on the day we got the scan - they were both ecstatic.  Tom really wants a sister.  And you know, sod's law, Ethan really wants a brother. One is going to be sorely disappointed!

So, yeah!

Bear with me - I might not be around so much in the next couple of weeks (although the sickness is fading and I'm getting some of my energy back - hurrah!) but I shall do my very best!

Playcuters, Tick Tock Frocks and Dead Time: My Favourite Mistakes

The best mispronunciations of anything have come from my own children's mouths. They keep me laughing and giggling throughout the years, and they add to the crazy, lovely, funny and rich tapestry of the lives we share together.

Of course, the kids grow, hiccups are corrected, and all too soon it's easy to forget about the small turns of phrase that really kept you going through the tumultuous early years.

Reading threads like these on Mumsnet really make me laugh, and I reckon that we've coined up enough from our two Blethering Boys to get you giggling.

Here are some of my favourites - it's good to have them all written down so I can remember them!

Thinking about Dead Time a bit too much...

Thomas

Dip Dip - Tomato sauce.  Now this is what we always call it in our house - from adults right down to kids.  You can't have chips without dip dip!

Not-Nots! - Octonauts.  Borne out of a very frustrating morning when Thomas was 2 years old and really wanted to watch 'not-nots' on television and I couldn't work out what the hell it was he was screaming for.  He got very frustrated, I got really wound up and there may have been a few tears shed.  I can laugh about it now, but when your first-born is shouting so vocally for something and neither of you can communicate to each other, it's pretty stressful!

The Den End - No matter how many times we try to tell him, whenever he is doing a maze puzzle, or is actually in a real maze, he is always on the look out for 'den ends'.  DEAD end, son, DEAD end. Which leads me nicely onto...

Dead Time - Yup.  Apparently it's not bed time.  It's dead time.  No wonder they are both always so against going to bed.

Mimit - 'Back in a mimit' is something I still say to them now, usually quite seriously.  That was one of those cute things that sticks.  Tom spent an entire summer when he was just over a year old telling us that he would, or I would, or Dad would be 'back in a mimit'.

Efin - This is the way that Tom spelled Ethan's name when he first started to write.  Like my 'efin' little brother.  Thank god for grammar.

Bother - Wee Efin wasn't just a great addition to our family, but something Tom spoke about constantly to strangers and anyone who'd listen about his 'new baby bother'.  Accurate.

Missisefes - Mississippi. What Tom counts to, like in the Lego Movie, when Emmet is counting 'one missisefes, two missisefes...'

Stanleeinpurl - Stan Lee, In Peril.  Tom is obsessed with Lego computer games.  This time last year he was extra-especially obsessed with Lego Marvel Action Superheroes on the Playstation 3.  It's a great wee game and we totally recommend it for your 5 year old. (I quite enjoyed it too)
A great wee feature in the Marvel Superheroes game is that the great comic book writer, Stan Lee, is a character who is trapped.  Indeed, he is 'in peril', and you get bonus points for 'saving him'.  Tom was obsessed with Stanleeinpurl and just said it all the time, as if it was this poor Lego man's full name.

'Just softing it, Mum'

Ethan

Ethan has very recently had grommets inserted, so is still learning the lingo.  While he does struggle with some stuff and we do take our time to correct him, he is very often still feeling his way around the English language.  I would just like to iterate here, I am in no way worried about his language - he has come on leaps and bounds in the last four months alone and shows us new and amazing speech every single day.  He's a clever wee bugger.

Softing - To 'soft' something is to stroke it a wee bit.  So when I say 'DON'T TOUCH in my best scary foreboding voice when he is raking around my jewellery box or touching something he shouldn't in a shop, Ethan sweetly replies 'My not touching it, my just softing it'.  And he gets away with it, adorable wee bugger.

Frissmiss - Christmas.  Cute as hell.

Frockodile/Tick Tock Frock - Ethan is a massive fan of Peter Pan and Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so he constantly talks about the 'tick tock frock'  (tick tock croc) and is always on the lookout for 'frockodiles'  I never want this to change.  I have tried to correct him, but this is one in particular that's just not budging. He's adamant!

Playcuter - Computer.  Yup, it's the computer and you play games on it, thus it is a playcuter.  I have stolen this for my own use.  It's friggin' genius.

Santa Plaws - He comes at Frissmiss.

Keeojeon Wahnd - Nickelodeon Land.  Where we went in the summer holidays!  He loves Keeojeon Wahnd!

Cunting - Cutting.  A perfect example of him using this particularly joyful mispronounciation was when he was 'cunting' his Playdough with his cutter and repeatedly shouting 'cunting! cunting! cunting! cunting!' while caught in the moment, completely oblivious while we struggled to breathe through laughing so hard.


Ah...sweet, sweet memories!
 

The Price Of A Stamp

Do you know how much it is for a book of 12 stamps these days?

Letters Live was a rather interesting event held on 23rd April this year where various famous writers and faces read letters from themselves to other famous people, or even family members in order to show 'the enduring power of literary correspondence'.



In a digital world, it is rare for me to receive mail these days.  The last letter I received through my letterbox, the last real hand-written, letter that contained proper real-life information and feelings and wasn't just from the bank telling me I'd gone into my overdraft yet again, was from my auntie, on the birth of Ethan.

In it was a small note of how she was doing, what her family have been up to and expression of interest in me and mine.

Her handwriting was neat and joined-up, with personal touches and couple of ad-lib sentences added last-minute to the paragraphs to imbibe more meaning, in order to carry feeling and emotion.  It's a real joy to read because it's personal and warm, with a real sense of link between family.

We used to correspond often in this way - I'd write a letter to her, she'd respond with a letter or a card back.

The feeling of receiving a letter through the post is great.  A personal thing which has winged it's way to you and only you, written by someone you love from somewhere far away.

A postcard from a relative on holiday.
A get well card.
A note of sympathy from a friend on the death of a loved one.
A quirky note left by a flatmate on the kitchen table.
Notes passed in class between giddy teenagers.

All of this has been nearly wiped out completely by smartphones, Facebook, Twitter and Instant Messaging.  There's no more hanging around or waiting weeks on end for a reply to a question about family life.  Everyone and their grandmother is online now, and with that comes the fact that we can be contacted anywhere, any time, day or night.

If you can't message someone on Facebook, you can send them a quick text message.  You can give them a call, or send them an intimate photo of daily life on Snapchat.  You can Skype with or without cameras. Google has made sure that photographs are available to view by millions of people all over the world at the click of a button.

We are sharing information at a phenomenal rate; our everyday emotions from one minute to the next can be documented if we so wish.  Emoticons for sadness, happiness, loneliness, drunkenness, shyness, rage, fear, empathy, love, laughing and fear can be found and we can create emotions as we see fit.

You can speak to anyone on any subject, anywhere, any time.

And in a way that's completely awesome.  It's certainly connected me to a wider number of folk whom I would never have even known existed before now.  I can talk to people instantly about problems I'm having with my children, queries I have about school places and dog food and what everyone thinks about poverty.  I can lend my voice to petitions for causes I may or may not care deeply about and I can comment on current news and media as soon as it is published, in a public sphere.  I can make my own voice heard.

Literary correspondence has evolved at an amazing rate.

My fear is, however, that the art of handwriting will be lost.  The ability to spell without autocorrect will disappear.  Emails get discarded in bulk deletion folders and auto-dumps and we will lose a sense of history and time as correspondence has become, like so many things in our age, disposable.

Have we lost meaning?  Are we doomed to lose a whole literary medium which dates back through time?

Letters Live highlighted intimate details and moments about people's lives which could not be replicated in the same way via Facebook or email.

With pen in hand and a blank piece of paper, away from the glare of the screen, the author is forced to draw inspiration from within.  The great letter-writers of the past looked to the moon in her starlit sky for deep inspiration.  They raked their souls, searching for seeds to plant in imaginary soils, to grow and flourish in the light of another mind.  They sought out details from their day, hand-picked to have just the right impact and dug deep into feeling and temper.  They spoke not to a huge audience of strangers, or someone who was going to read the message in five minutes and dismiss it, but to someone who would, in turn, sit down and read and absorb what they had taken the time to write.

Letter writing is so much more than bashing out an email on computer keys.  Your handwriting changes depending on your mood and who you are writing to.  The small notes you make in the margins annotate and shed light on your quirks and phrasing.  The doodles which accompany comedic stories are rare and personal and unique to you.

I keep all of my letters in a box.  I have not added to their number in some time.  I failed to write back to my auntie 3 years ago.  After the birth of a new baby, looking after two babies under 2 years old, moving house and going back to work, I not only fell out of the habit, but we both moved into the realm of the internet and social media.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to do more handwriting, and importantly, letter writing.  Even if it's just notes around the house.  Handwriting was always something I took pride in, and I'd like it to stay a common thing in our family.

I love how the internet has connected us, but I do feel we are in danger of losing our intimate moments to it.

When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter and who was it to?  Do any of you still write letters now, or is it better to write electronically?

Maybe I should get a pen-friend!