Snow, poo and ECGs

You can tell I'm unbelievably busy right now, by the way I've managed to find lots of things to do while avoiding my official TO DO list. I have a list of 15 Very Important Tasks which Must Be Done in the next few days. They range from filling in the 40 page application for special needs assistance for Daniel's primary schooling, to creating a database for Aunt Emma, to writing a press release about the charity event we held yesterday.

Bugger it all. Why not start a blog instead. I've been meaning to do this for about 6 years or so - seems like a good time.

I got about 10 minutes into this tonight when Pete came sauntering in declaring he was having a heart attack and then refusing to let me call 999. Now that he's been safely shipped off to the local hospital for an emergency ECG I can roll up my sleeves and finish this thing. (My money is on heartburn.) I sound callous - but I did at least send him off with a box of sandwiches for his dinner and some cake. And money for a cab home.

Right. Where to start? I could fill you all in on the past decade spent here in Blighty, or just bang on about my day. My day involved teaching a couple of baby signing classes while losing my voice (the heart attack thing is clearly a ploy to out-do me on the sicky stakes). I dropped the kids off at nursery and preschool and both the little buggers refused me a kiss goodbye or even a backwards glance. At first Dan seemed sad to leave me until I worked out that the tears were over the fact that Lightening McQueen was stuck under the carseat. It's his 'thing' at the moment - we took 3 of them to NZ with us on the plane in January in case of loss: we arrived with 4. Some small child is now one car short due to my pilfering son.

At least I was able to teach my classes today. The theme was Weather, which is ironic in that the week we were supposed to cover that topic Bromley was over a foot deep in snow and no-one could get out of their house to come to class. We made a rocking good snow-person and turned the car into Lighting McQueen to Dan's delight.

Before I had children I was not going to have a telly in the house, not let them have sugar, and read to them lots. I read to them lots. They spent the evening arguing over the merits of Cars vs Peter Pan, and which child was most closely aligned with the main characters. I think it was settled that Dan was Lightening McQueen, Ellie was Peter Pan, and mummy was rubbish for not providing tea and cakes.

They've both been gluten and dairy free for 3 weeks now, and I'm ready to quit. Dan has the typical autistic gut which can't handle anything without a complete meltdown, and Ellie might be coeliac, but we've been waiting for the test results forever so I've jumped the gun and limited her diet. If tonight's poo was anything to go by, things are improving. It was all over both potties (bless her she'd really tried), down both legs and all over the floor before she called out "Mum! I think I've poo'd my knickers!". Nice.

As for the past decade: those of you who last knew me as Ms Sarah McKenzie will note the -Jones tacked onto the end. Dave and I split up way back in 2001'ish and I married my English boss in 2004. He's done the very un-English thing and become McKenzie-Jones too - his idea bless him. Ellie could say "Eleanor Rose Kenzie-Jones" by the age of 16 months, Daniel struggles with "Danny-Boy" on a good day. He did however do a wee on the potty over the weekend once he saw that the reward was a monster-sized box of Thomas Duplo trains. You just gotta find the motivator! Not sure where I go from there tho.....should have started smaller perhaps.

Right-oh. 'Spect I'll post here again sometime in Spring 2010, by which time we will hopefully have found a nice local NZ school for Danny and moved back home. Any ideas, let me know!