the adlards

Yesterday Michelle and I celebrated seventeen years together. It’s been fun. We had a rare evening out together on Saturday night to mark the occasion. We’re all sleep deprived and fighting off various viruses so to an observer it might have been a somewhat bizarre anniversary weekend, but it was good!

We also celebrated with Mark and Sarah (at a distance) the birth of their second daughter in the early hours of Sunday morning. At last, someone who’s birthday we’ll remember!

It snowed heavily on Sunday too. Well, ice-stormed really – the point is Josie and Michelle got to make a snowman on the deck in April. I particularly like the courgette nose.

“Daddy, I made a mask.” And so she had. A monkey mask and she’d sewed a little bunny purse all by herself. Michelle had got a whole box full of cool activity stuff and they spent a good deal of yesterday sticking and sewing and other good things.

There’s nothing like seeing your kids developing and discovering new things – Josie’s really starting to collect knowledge now while keeping up her gruelling climbing-jumping-running-swinging routine. Sophie’s desperately wanting to crawl and throws a mean tantrum (at 10 months mind) when Josie has cool stuff she wants. Sophie’s also talking intelligibly (to us that is), which is mindblowing. She calls us all by name and says words like “kiss”, “cuddle”, “noooo!”, “juice” and a host of others. Sophie frequently echoes words we say in conversation.

I’ve spent most of the week waist-deep in a morass of, well, waste really. I think I’ll reach an edge at about lunchtime today and clamber out. Roll on weekend!

Tonight I’m meeting up with friends I made on a course in Feb. Tomorrow the Three and I are all going to a birthday party, and on Sunday MGW and I will have been married 10 years! She is a marvel …

Our car came back from its recall with a little piece of paper saying that Fiat had changed the battery in one of the keys and charged us 12 quid for the privilege. Did they do any work on the recall problem? Dunno. Does it need checking regularly? Dunno. Does it affect the warranty? Dunno. Should we be practicing our tricky-self-extraction-from-a-crumpled-wreck technique? Dunno. Is Fiat’s service shite? Ab-su-loot-ly

Thanks for all the concerned comments you haven’t posted over the past few days. A certain amount of bleakness is obviously leaking out into my perfunctory digital scribblings.

Life is, in reality, good. I thrive in situations of challenge. MGW will tell you that boredom depresses me. At the moment I have more boring things to do than you can shake a stick at. If that’s not a challenge what is? There are, of course, the fun bits too – the house moving, the negotiating, the decorating (especially the buying of power drills 😀 ).

I’m looking forward to getting home. Josie’s learning has ramped up incredibly with her verbal skills and, yes, “Oceans and Seas” has become one of my favourite books. I don’t make up the story anymore, Josie tells me all about plankton and whale sharks and food chains and undersea volcanoes. Very cool.

It’s a crystal clear spring morning. The streaming sunshine belies last night’s frost and might, by mid-morning have taken the chill off the cold air. Pretty soon the season for using the car boot as a drinks fridge will be over.

So began Wednesday. The day stayed beautiful and crisp as my mind quietly melted down into a sort of irridescent green and pink goop that trickled down the back of my neck to hide nestled in the small of my back. If you’d been there you might have noticed a slightly vacant air about me. It’s been a taxing day. It’s been challenging to remember that it’s Wednesday. I’m looking forward to getting home to the Three.

No, I’ve had a haircut. At last. I was starting to look like Rambo (from the adam’s apple up and without the ridiculous bandana) but I still thought Andrew’s question unreasonable.

I’ve been up norf today. It was actually trying to snow as I was being driven back to the station this afternoon. One big snow cloud right over me in an otherwise blue sky.

The girls seem to be much better as of late yesterday. After a few hours on the train home this evening I probably shan’t see them for a first-hand update today. We had two more negotiators from the estate agent round to see the house this morning. We’re working on the – no doubt naive – assumption that they’ll sell it better if they’ve seen the place. We shall see.

Josie and Sophie were dedicated at church yesterday along with ten other babies and toddlers. St Albans is infant-rich. Many people move here from London to breed, like salmon swimming up the Thameslink. It was a wonderful service despite my embarassing Josie by asking her to introduce herself. Disa and Peter threw a great party after.

We had a couple of positive-sounding viewings of our house on Saturday so wait to see whether offers are forthcoming today. Everyone who’s visited or viewed over the past couple of weeks has made the right noises but this weekend’s were the first potential buyers, so we shall see …

The girls are still off colour and both are waking at night so we’re all starting the week feeling pretty knackered!

For the moment it’s a bright sunshiny day. And it’s FRIDAY!

Jo visited her nursery on Wednesday for the first time. It was supposed to be for an hour but it proved difficult to leave. “We did painting, Daddy.” Her coat hangs on the peg with a butterfly and her work and letters go in the drawer with the butterfly. She’s going to have a lot of fun I think.

Jo and Soph are both a bit poorly. We think (again) that it might be the chicken pox as it’s doing the rounds at the moment. I do feel desperately sorry for them when they’re ill, living so much in the moment as they do.

I shall spend my day working through financial year end issues and negotiating with estate agents.

Oops, there goes the sunshine. Well, while it was there it gave me a boost. Or was that the latte? Things are so confusing. I got a sample of Deep Regenerating Cream with a magazine the other day but couldn’t find my soul to rub it on.

It is a well known fact that homebuying, like marriage, is something best avoided unless you’re very very sure you want to do it or are one of the Zarkoidese from the Outer Rim who have no concept of responsibility and are therefore incapable of both caring and feeling at all stressed. Which, incidentally, is why there is no demand at all for recreational narcotics in that sector of the galaxy.

You would think, given the crushing reality of a life-long encumberance taken together with the enormous numbers involved, that no-one would really bother to do it, letting the practice drift peacefully into cultural history. There is, however, something about homo sapiens, milling about on their blue planet, that compells them to take on the seemingly foolhardy cheerfully and with gusto. We keep buying and selling houses too.

The Adlards have, on consideration, decided not to move to Hatfield and so the hunt is on closer to home for something with space and opportunity for development in a good area. Not asking for a lot, then. And there is, of course, the small matter of selling ours …

Next time we visit the Coxes there’ll be eight of us! We had fun this weekend and Josie and Elspeth played together beautifully.

On Saturday we visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which is set in beautiful countryside. Once she’d got over not being able to climb the sculptures Josie had a great time running and exploring. There’s a wonderful area at the bottom corner of the park with lots of workshopped sculptures that feel like they’ve not yet been ripped from their environment. Well worth a visit.

On Sunday we took the girls to a soft play area and did some shopping then all had lunch together at Doncaster’s excellent Vietnamese.

We roared home down the M1 and this morning received a recall notice for our car. Apparently the front suspension could give way at any moment …

It’s Friday and as a gesture of extraordinary magnanimity I shall write about the girls instead of the superficial workings of my mind.

Sophie has made remarkable progress as we’ve concentrated more on exercises advised by the OT in Cape Town. She’s eating lumpy food and throwing herself (rather than just the contents of her stomach) about quite vigorously. We have a referal to a local physio practice and it’ll be interesting to see what they advise on the low muscle tone issue with the progress she’s making.

Josie has found a basket/occassional table that she can completely fit inside. Great delight. She’s also very adept at swinging by one or both arms from her trapeze swing or any shelf that’s just out of reach. Her climbing ability and natural sense of balance continue to amaze me. Her favourite book at the moment (discounting Don’t put your Finger in the Jelly Nelly) is about oceans and fish. It’s deadly dull so I make up the story.

That’s it on this grey, wet Friday morning, next station stop is mine. We’re going to spend the weekend with Mark, Sarah and Elspeth. I hope Yorkshire’s sunnier than London!