Clever little girl

this is just a really fast post to say how quickly baby I is learning. She is now 16 months old and speaks quite well. She knows and says loads of words. Last week she surprised me by counting the ports on my computer! She counts to 5 regularly now.  She loves books and “reads” them herself by doing things like “eating” the fruit in the hungry caterpiller and saying butterfy at the end or doing or saying appropriate things with her different books. She can name many body parts, makes sounds for different animals – dogs bark, cows moo. I’m very proud of her. She is still a 24/7 little girl so I get nothing done now. We struggle getting her to sleep. If we’re lucky I can get her to have an hour in the day, but if she gets to late afternoon she is so tired she won’t stay awake but then will not sleep at all until midnight. She still sleeps with us and at night, has got into the habit of staying awake til I go to bed. I tried going to bed early but she normally wakes around 10 and won’t go back to sleep which is very frustrating as I’ve spent all night in bed.

I’m struggling with all of my kids at the moment. DDJ is always in trouble in one way or another. DSK just doesn’t come home when he should (he was 4 hours late home from school one night last week). DFS is still very temperamental and loses his temper over the slightest thing and I’m up and down with the rollercoaster that is my day to day life.

I keep meaning to blog it all but there are never enough hours in the day – maybe it will be my new years resolution for 2012!

Random post

Haven’t done any decorating today and as we’re doing two rooms at once, there is stuff everywhere!

Our electricity is going haywire. Since we changed to a pre-pay meter we’ve been watching our consumption and average £25 a week. There was over £30 in there last weekend so I was amazed when the power went off  yesterday and found we’d run out. I hit the emergency button and checked the weekly tariff (£3). DFS put another £10 in this morning which only gave us £2.46, I then added another £20 tonight at around 10 and it gave us £19.85. DFS checked it 2 hours later and it was £19.27 so it had used another 58p but nothing has been used. It makes no sense. There is no way we’ve used over £40 in a week (if the maths is right), especially this week!  With the hot weather we’ve hardly been cooking and we’ve been outside so haven’t been watching much tv either. Nothing has changed with our usage. In fact some things are being used less such as all the stuff in the kids rooms as I’ve restricted the internet until they tidy their rooms. We will have to monitor it.

My pregnancy drags on with 17 days to go. I want it over but am getting very nervous too. Healthwise,everything is the same: too hot, legs/feet too swollen, thirsty, heartburn, restricted nasal passages, sleep uncomfortable,  hypertensive and now… toothache. will definately ring dentist on monday.

playstation network, black ops, bt home hub and strict nat type. Fixed!

Ok so this is a completely random post for this blog but it’s something that’s been frustrating us for a while. We are lucky (or maybe not) in that we have 3 playstation 3′s in our house. My brothers and my DSL also have PS3′s and we have played online games in teams ever since we got them (the day of the release of the console!). Then came black ops and what a nightmare! No matter what we did we could not form a party and were constantly kicked from teh server. I looked it up and it seemed to be related to our nat type. Ours is type 2 which should allow us to play together but the game insisted we were on a strict (type 3) nat. I tried to put the main ps in dmz mode but that meant the other two were still unable to join, I tried assigning ip’s and port forwarding etc. I read page after page of people trying to fix it and tried most of the suggestions. Then today in desperation I tried this which was posted by the wonderful waddy007:

waddy007

Re: NAT TYPE STRICT ON BLACK OPS BUT TYPE 2 & WORKS FINE ON EVERY OTHER ONLINE GAME?
Options
on 14-12-2010 11:21 PM

Here’s what you do – (you will need a copy of MW2 for this to work, might work on world at war but I have not tried)

Put in your copy of black ops, go to multiplayer. Go into options and then hit select. The NAT type should say ‘strict’ (bummer).

Now quit the game and go back to the playstation home screen, eject black ops and put in your copy of modern warefare 2.

Load up the game and go into mutiplayer, go to ‘play online’ and find where is says NAT type. It should say ‘OPEN’.

Now while still on this screen eject the disc which will take you again back to the playstation home screen. Put black ops back in and again go to mutiplayer, then go to options. Now cross your fingers and hit select. Your NAT type will now say OPEN! I could guess at how this works but the most important thing is it works and its really easy which is awesome lol.

Guess what? It works!  It is open! Now to test a party which can’t be done till another time because I’m in the middle of feeding and caring for a baby, making bread, scratchings, mince pies and trying to get straight after putting up the yule decs. Try this though and let me know if it works for you too. I hope it does! fingers crossed…

decorating begins

Gutted, I’ve been saving a diary using onenote and I opened the program today and it’s lost the last few days! Stupid computer!

Slept bad again last night. Gone 4 am when I finally went to sleep; I haven’t managed to stay in bed for more than 5 hours for months. I don’t sleep longer than an hour either (two if I’m very lucky). Heartburn is driving me nuts so I’ve been taking ranitidine for a week or more but I’m not sure it’s doing much. I’m already taking fexofenadine hydrochloride to help me breath and you have to take those 2 hours either side of heartburn tablets. I often forget to take one before 10 which means I have to wait and they both only last up to 12 hours. Emphasis on up to as they don’t last that long at all. I’ve also been suffering with this tooth. I know it’s mainly my fault as I had it filled at the hospital over a year ago and haven’t been to a dentist since. I wish I could control this fear! It hit me today though that it’s getting worse as it’s painful most of the time and the last thing I’m going to want to do with a newborn baby is suffer toothache too so I rang a dentist. As it happens they were shut! After I built up the courage too! That’s it till Monday now but I must remember to try them again. I’ve temporary filled it again but the filling drops out again after a few hours.

Started cleaning the paintwork on the stairs to decorate and dfs started the bathroom. Also scrubbed the whole kitchen with bleach solution and cleared all the nursing books from out of the bedroom. dfs has taken them to his sisters for his niece. It’s a bit gutting. They cost a fortune and nursing is a huge chapter (not intentional…) of my life I miss but can’t get back.

 

24 june 2010 (from memory, stupid one note)

Harvested our first potatoes! As the plants are starting to flop over. I read somewhere that it was because they are ready – they aren’t really and it will take 3 or more plants to make a meal but we’re looking forward to them! I think they’re falling over as they have grown so tall. Some people are saying it’s blight but I had that on my tomatoes last year and it’s nothign like this; the leaves are clean and i’msure blight has brown marks on the leaves.

We fed the plants tonight. We mixed the comfrey tea – 1 mugful to a watering can  – and watered most of the lotty with it except the potatoes. Might do those when I can get round to it. Also bought home the onions I’d lifted and placed them in the greenhouse on a the 4 tier greenhouse which we’re using as shelving.

Spent most of the day decorating – mainly dfs. The kitchen looks loads better even if it is almost the same colour.

Lotty may be in the paper

Didn’t’ sleep till 5:30. Feet swollen, too hot, uncomfortable – im hoping it will get better after Izzy is born. I’m watching every twinge at the mo waiting for the big day which is 3 weeks away today.

sorry it’s been a while… first news

Well it’s been ages since i last posted and lots has happened which I’ll probably post about seperately.  the first major thing is that on the 6th November last year I discovered that I’m pregnant!

Yes it was a shock for us too. We already have 3 children with large age gaps and I’m not a spring chicken but these things happen. Because of my age, previous miscarriage history and having twins before I’ve been monitored quite closely but it’s not been a fun pregnancy.  I’ve had vomitting (lost 1 1/2 stone), hypertension, kidney problems and suspected pre-eclampsia.  I’ve also got dysfunctional pelvic syndrome and been on crutches for some time. They’ve worried that the baby is too big and then too small – I think I have my name on a parking place at the ultrasound clinic! I’ve hardly slept for a few months and am now managing 2 hour stretches – at least we’ve worked it out so I can lie in bed; I was on the sofa sitting up and couldn’t cope with that! My feet and legs are so odematous they no longer look like my legs. I have heartburn, restricted airways, hemorroids and now they suspect pre-eclamsia again! Being my age, over-weight and unfit has meant that I’m worn out but we’ve now got to 35 weeks (36 on thursday) according to my scan dates so we’re almost there. My consultant wants me to be induced early because of my pelvis but we’re trying to hang on till the end! Oh and it looks like we’re having a girl.

this was the first test – sorry it’s blurred. I’ll post scan pics when I upload them.

Power out

We had a power cut today. We haven’t had one of those for ages and I was a little lost without my internet to pop backwards and forwards to. I spent a peaceful hour or so in the garden instead; without electricity I couldn’t hear the normal 3 different types of music blasting in competition across the back fences. I managed to actually clear one side of the greenhouse which I’ve been meaning to do for a few weeks now.

I’m pleased with how the moneymaker tomatoes are cropping and harvested a whopping 6 kgs. I’ve washed and dried these and then put 1kg of whole tomatoes into ziplock bags with the air sucked out ready to be dealt with in winter when the dark nights and cold days keep me in the house for longer. Then the smell of tomatoes can remind me of the summer and give a promise of whats to come as the heat from the cooker warms the house.  It sounds very poetic and simply means I’ll get into a mess peeling skins off toms as I complain about frozen fingers and water!

I still have about the same amount of tomatoes left on the plant so I’m shutting up the greenhouse and hoping that they turn red.

I also found this little chappy under the mess and very happy I was to see him too! He’s been very busy this summer as I only found one large slug in the greeehouse which the ducks were very grateful for!

After clearing the greehouse, I planted up my cheap onion sets. There were 25 in each net which were reduced to 20p in Bradley Nursery. As there’s still no where for them to go while we wait for the plot to be ploughed,  I put them into modules which I’ve left outside.  When I came in the house I looked at the moon calendar and today is a root day so hopefully, these should romp away!

As soon as the power was back on, the boom boom of rave music blasted over the fence and the fan kicked in from the “social house” that the neighbours at the bottom of our garden have built so I had pleasant wafts of au de lager and cigarettes drifting up the path. I pottered around for a while but gradually got more and more fed up and frustrated with my neighbours lack of consideration and came in to cook tea instead.

Flip-flops and photography foolery.

What a day today. DFS woke me by ringing half an hour before my alarm was due to go off and it was raining. I’m fed up of the rain. The kids wanted to go swimming so I dropped them off and when I came back I popped over to the neighbours. I only meant to have a quick coffee but that turned into almost two hours leaving me only 15 minutes to get ready to go collect the kids.

I want to save some seed off the hollyhock so when I went home I  thought, despite the rain, that I’d nip out before I had to go and collect the kids to take a photo so I remember what the flowers were like. I grabbed my fleece and a rain hat, slipped on my flip flops and ran outside. It was hard taking pics with my left hand but because of my right wrist, I couldn’t use it properly. I  couldn’t get a picture through the fence anyway so I went around to get closer. Getting soaking wet, aware that I would be late to fetch the kids if I didnt hurry, I stepped into the overgrown grass and felt a sharp pain in my right foot. Looking down I saw the end of the plank of wood in the grass and I knew what I’d done. I went to pick up my foot but the wood lifted too. I tried to pull the wood off with my one good hand (remember my bad wrist that’s been in a support for two days) and realised avplanter of sweet peas was on top of it. So I had to try to balance on my left leg,without moving the right, put the camera in my pocket and lift the planter off the wood with two hands but without bending my right wrist nor taking too much weight with it. Achieving this, I had to pull the wood off my foot. The nail that had pierced my flip-flop and foot was very rusty and bent. I semi-hopped (have you tried hopping in flip-flops), semi-limped, and semi-skidded in the rain up to the house. Then I did my best to clean it but there was now mud that had splashed from the downpour mixing with the blood trickling out of the tiny hole and I now had 3 minutes to get to the sports centre to fetch the kids. Typically, the plaster I put on wouldn’t stick so I had to tape it on! I limped to the car, pulled off the wrist support which was now soaked and tried to get in the landy. Not fun with a right hand I can’t bend – hence can’t pull myslelf up – and a right foot painful to weight bear. And guess waht? The wet floor must have caused some type of suction with my foamy flip flops becuase as I lifted my left foot up to get into the landy, the bottom pulled off the bar that goes between your toe leaving the sole hanging off and getting wrapped around my foot! In frustration I flicked it off my foot and drove bare foot up town in a rush as I was now late. The kids were even later and I sat outside (couldn’t go out with only one shoe and a limp on the other!) for another 10 minutes.

When i got back I realised the khaki cambell drake had escaped and was wondering arounf the garden. I left him out. It was still raining and I wasn’t in the mood to chase ducks.

By this afternoon the rain was coming down in gallons and we had our annual eye tests. I took them up and the same as last year, we were split up – I don’t like that. I should have asked more qestions but wanted to get to see what was happening with the kids but the short version is that I need glasses for both reading and driving. I’m not sure why I need some for driving. I know reactorlite will be usefull for me because I really suffer with bright light but prescription glasses? My reading ones i was expecting because I find myself pulling things further away to focus on them – it’s my age they told me. I will research my prescription to see what it means. It seems I also have astigmatism.

I will put my results here if anyone wan’t to explain then (when I can be bothered to go and get  them!)

My foot’s throbbing now. As my nan used to say. I am in the wars!

I think I’ll save seed from these too:

Hairdressers

Am I the only woman that hates going to the hairdressers? I leave it that long that it’s always a major event and I never know how to have it styled. I’m going tomorrow and I’m dreading it. I’m only going becuase we have a family do to go to – which I’m also dreading.

Beans

I don’t really like beans. It’s probably not a fair statement as the only beans I’ve ever really tried are baked beans from a tin but I’m not keen on those. Trouble is, I’m reading all these blogs and forums and when people talk about them and describe themthey sound lovely. Perhaps someone can recommend some good recipes. I’d also appreciate someone explaining about what I think are different stages (which I used to think were different beans) shellies, haricots, driers, green, snap, flagelot etc etc?! How confusing is that?

I’ve also discovered the many types of beans there are to grow! There are lots of colours; green in varying shades, orange, brown, red, black and white, yellow and even blue. I want to grow them as much for the variety in the beans and the flowers. Again, I’d need to learn. Can I plant them all in my garden or plot and have the beans breed true or do I need to isolate and hand pollinate as I’ve read you need to for cucurbits such as courgettes and marrows?

On a forum recently I was reading about beans and they were discussing different types. When I said that I’d never seen one type of bean they were discussing, one member (TS) pm’d me and offered to send my some in exchange for the stamp and an SAE! Aren’t some people lovely!

I wish I’d been growing my own for years. I feel like I’ve wasted all this time buying and eating supermarket food and I should have been learning how to make our food from scratch and showing the kids as I did. There are so many skills that are being lost. I vaguely rememebr being a little girl and watching my great gran when she had a baking day. We were shoed out of the way but I remember bread and pastries covering the tables in the dining room and she seemed to just throw it together and it came out gorgeous. Sadly these skills weren’t handed down and most of what I cooked and served as an adult was “ready” meals. fish-fingers, chicken nuggets etc . Over the last year or two, that’s changing and I’ll learn but I wish I’d done it a long time ago when the kids were little. Oh well, it’s never too late to learn and hopefully the kids aren’t too old to want to help in the kitchen…