the adlards

I’m back in my corner of the living room. More importantly I no longer have to squeeze between the drying rack and the wall to get here. There are also practically acres of visible crapet (a somewhat poignant misspelling with two little kids around – we’ve bought the tiles and soon the floors will be washable). We’ve been engaged in a manic two-day cleanup and rearrangement, which moves into its third and hopefully final day tomorrow as we tackle the loft. Having decided against the conservatory we’ve had to reclaim our living room from the tide of toys. Of course all that cool stuff had to go somewhere so both Josie and Sophie have new-look rooms with peg-rails and hanging storage that Dad’s had ready for months and hasn’t made time to put up. It’s always easier to talk in the third person when discussing these occasional but total lapses in responsibility.

Josie was very pleased with her room when she got back from a walk to town today (YES, she was accompanied). I’d cleaned and rearranged it while The Three were out this morning and she was so excited. When I woke her from her naptime she looked out the window and was convinced the garden had been changed too, “Oh look, lovely, my garden all finished! Lovely.” I love her to bits.

Michelle and Josie were very pleased with Sophie’s room too. Sophie acknowledged all the hard work with her first truly projectile vomiting episode. That extra little bit of effort really does make all the difference, don’t you think?

This evening while Michelle and I were eating dinner together we heard a strange thumping sound. It was pretty late, but we thought one of the neighbours must be fixing something (it wasn’t late enough for that but sounded just like it). It started up again a little later so I thought I better check on Jo and Soph and crept upstairs. Couldn’t hear anything, so quietly put the top landing light on and carefully opened Josie’s door to be met with a cheerful, “Hi!” (with big grin – I’m sure she’d been bouncing on her ‘new’ bed). She’d collected all her soft animals around her and launched into a detailed explanation of how her bunny was not, in fact, a bunny tonight, but a guinea pig from the farm (Willows Farm where we spent a couple of hours this afternoon). Too exciting a day, I fear, with too much sleep. No more of this “poor thing’s teething and got a cold, she needs her sleep” stuff …

The highlight of Michelle’s day was undoubtedly had on eBay. She’s just started buying; on Wednesday a pair of shoes for Josie, today a set of teak garden furniture (which I must say, looks beautiful). Yes, I know some of you have seen in our shed and there are two other sets in there, but this is in a different class altogether. We can entertain at this one. The plan is to string curtain wire straight from the front door to the back, putting a slight bend in to negotiate the living room entrance, then to hang tinsel over it to make a sort of shimmery tunnel so that when we have people round we can usher them past the kids and paraphernalia straight to the Garden Furniture Entertaining Set. It’ll be like arriving at Valhalla. We’re putting a deck in too and getting a patio heater. We’ll tell guests to dress warm and use it all year.

The best thing about my corner of the room is that our neighbour‘s on holiday for two weeks so I get to listen to whatever I like.

A few new pics in the gallery, including pics of Sophie’s first bottle feed yesterday.

• Listening to: nothing at all

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 6th, 2005 at 10:44 pm by james and is filed under House, Josie, Sophie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.