Naming Day

Yesterday (Sunday), we had Catherine christened. Trying to find the time and get round to setting the date has taken so long, but she was finally christened yesterday at age seven months.thankfully it was a lovely day . When we christened Hannah, she wore the christening robe her daddy was christened in and his father before him. Granny Furey keeps the robe, which is in very good condition considering its age, and family members that want to use it borrow it for the occasion.

Catherine wore the robe that my brother and I were christened in, we also used this one for Daniel also. The matching bonnet is still with it. Its very cute. It was bought in mothercare in London, more than thirty years ago. The little satin shoes I bought in mothercare in Tralee almost five years ago and now they are having their third, and for this generation their final outing.

Mommy (me) was wearing DKNY grey flannel dress , fall 08 purchased in Brown Thomas in a bit of a panic on Thursday last. I am aware that I still look more than a bit podgy, but again, the excuse that is still  breastfeeding, so a few extra pounds or not I was feeling good. The Gucci patent mary janes purchased in the sales at BT a few weeks ago gave me an extra few inches.

After the lovely church ceremony we had lunch at the River Run, a local bistro and then headed back to the house for desert of pavlova and gateoux and to watch the match – Kerry v Monaghan ( Kerry won – hooray).It was all short and sweet and hassle free.Alovely day indeed. Here are a few pics of madam in her vintage mothercare, and of course with her godparents Dawn and Liam. ( There is a photo album on facebook)

All square….at last

I finally finished a quilt I started making quite some timw ago. Though it is far from perfect, I really like it. The more I look at it , it is really growing on me. Once I had finished it I was somewhat inspired to start another project, so I immediately started a lap quilt for my sister in laws little girl, I havent quite finished that one yet but it is nearly .I am sticking with blocks that are comprised of squares maybe triangles if I am feeling a bit brave. I have been looking at lots of block patterns, but I am not quite that brave just yet.

 

The other crafty thing I have been working on is a little cross stitch sampler for Hannhas first day at school. I think I will be a bit more excited about that one than Hannha will, maybe in years to come she might like the fact that she has it. Kids!, ya never know with them.

 

Nothing Fawlty about Basil

I haven’t been around for a while. Had to go to Kerry in a hurry so have had over a week with no Internet and survived, scarred but alive. Anyway, I think I have a problem. I have suddenly got this overwhelming craving for Basil – the herb!. I just cant get enough of it.The aroma, the taste……..I am hooked. No , not pregnant, crossed my mind for about two and a half seconds, still breastfeeding Catherine, so thats out of the question.

No. I dont know what it is. I was at a friends house at the weekend, and we were having a mooch around her green house ( mooching, I highly recommend it). Anyway, I was having a very serious conversation with her partner Liam and as I was standing there I could get the aroma, which was positively intoxicating – in a good way. Then I spotted the little pot of Basil on the bench, I tried to resist but I found my head getting light, I was loosing bits of the conversation. I had to pick up the pot of Basil and inhale that wonderful fragrance.Then I was really in trouble, I kept finding my hand drawn to that little pot, to the point where I was almost inhaling the entire plant.

When we went back into the house, I told Dawn about my fixation with Basil in the green house. I left with a bunch of Basil in tinfoil.I have since purchased a Basil plant which lives near my kitchen sink for ease of watering in case of wilting. I am putting Basil in everything, salads, sandwitches, pasta, on my spuds. I am well and truley addicted. I suppose I should really consult a cookery book and get some receipes which include lots of the stuff. I should also check out how to look after it properly. I have managed to surpress the urge to walk around the house with the plant savouring the bouquet. OK enough, I really do have a problem.

Tone Deaf

I always say that Monday morning sets the tone for the week, not only that day but for the whole week. I dont know why I always say that because Monday mornings are always such a disasterand the rest of the week generally turns out ok. Theres the screaming and the crying, the stropping, the indecisivness over what to wear,the running late, the half eaten breakfast and the throwing of shoes down the stairs and thats just me, the kids are just as difficult to motivate on a Monday morning.I usually find that by the time we get to wednesday , things are better. Things probably havent changed all that much, I am just more relaxed into them. Monday is the first day after the weekend, so its understandable that we are all a little out of our routine.

Hannah is the main culpret for the strop on the Monday morning. Daniel is more your Tuesday morning kind of chap and usually its just an emotionally charged semi tantrum!which generally involves a situation such as a shoe not going on his foot properly or his sister telling him he cant go to nanas house followed by a bit of crying followed by snotty hugs and kisses, while all the time I have one eye on the clock and the other trying to avoid the inevitable snot on the cardigan sleeve ( see advantages to breast feeding).This Monday morning, the big deal was ‘Had I brushed Daniels hair first’. I LIED. I told her , there wasnt a chance, I told her we were so pushed for time, I had sent him downstairs without brushing his hair.Just to clarify something here, the routine generally goes that , Daniel likes a little help to get dressed, he doesnt argue about his clothes, that is to say he is usually easily convinced of a suitable outfit – barring the odd arguement over the sportacus tracsuit, but thats another post entirley. The last thing I usually do is brush his hair and he goes down stairs to put his shoes on.Hannah likes to discuss all items of cloting , their relavance to the day, their relavance to each other, where she got them, how much she likes them , whether or not nana and granda would like them and so on.This Monday, her biggest worry was whether I had brushed Daniels hair before I brushed hers!!.

I really feel that this is one instance where it should be ok to tell a white lie or a fib if you will to ones five year old daughter who usually has the tone for the entire week in her hands. Needless to say, she didnt buy my story and the usual strop ensued. It didnt last very long but it did put a large dent in our time budget which is always tight on the Monday morning.To round off the day beautifully, poor old Daniel slipped during his ballet class in the afternoon and split his upper lip. He didnt realise he had split it and had rubbed his hands to his face, so by the time I got him to the toilets to clean him up, he caught a glance of himself in the mirror covered in blood. The ensueing scene was not nice, the poor child nearly had a fit. The rest of the afternoon was spent waiting for the neurofen to kick in, trying to calm him down . Everything as he knew it was different, trying to eat was a nightmare, he wanted to clean the blood away but it hurt.The upper lip swelled a bit and must have felt twice the size,so with Daniel bawling for his sanity and Catherine bawling to be fed ( see some disadvantages to breast feeding)things couldnt have gone more disastrously. I feel as if I have been tone deaf for the rest of the week.

Here’s the thing………….

My husband calls me ‘Bucket’. Not very flattering I know. He calls me this because the things that annoy me most he feels are probably a bit superficial. He likens me to Mrs Bucket in ‘Keeping up appearances’.My retort to his teasing usually goes along the lines of my not being remotely like her in her quest to keep up with the Jones’ becuase I feel I am the Jones’. Not strictly true of course, I just like to do my thing and if others dont like what I do or the way I do it – not much I can do about that. I like to think I have standards though. I know that I sometimes get a bit obsessed with certain domestic habits. I like the kids to take their shoes off and hang up their coats when they come in after school. ( Nothing too tedious in that I would have thought).Neither do I think its too much to ask them to tidy their toys away after themselves!!, failure to complete this task has often results in the confiscation of said toys only to be returned when normal behaviour has resumed, again I would have thought that this is part of the course of day to day parenting.The rule where they have to knock before they come into the study is the one that has my husband in a bit of a tis. I dont make any apologies for it. The study is on the third floor of the house, there is no reason for them to be in there. The room was set up to house my books, there is a desk, computer, a comfy couch for reading and in my own case a quiet place to actually do some study.I explained all this to Hannah and Daniel and to be fair , they appear to have some understanding of it. They never go up there on their own, and once they know I am in there they ask if they can come in.Now if I can only get them to pick their clothes up after themselves!!!.

So, heres the thing. It is now obvious that I am fairly pernickety about certain things.People turning their cars in my drive way is what is transporting me to a state of total distraction at the moment. Let me explain…I live in a cul de sac, a beautiful spot. It couldnt be nicer,Murphy was smiling on us for a change when we found this house. The area is great and because it is the last house in the cul de sac it is entirley safe for the kids to play outside around the house. Lately though, people seem to be driving to the bottom of the cul de sac to turn and while there is a lot of space in which to turn for some reason drivers feel the need to practically pull into my driveway. I am not exaggerating here folks. A few weeks ago a guy in a van couldnt seem to turn on the road ( not sure why, he could have turned a truck out there). He appeared to get flustered and pulled right into my drive way and turned his van!!.Shortly after we moved into the house a car pulled up outside one evening, two ladies within squinting in the window of my sitting room, when I waved at them they pulled away. When the car went out of my view I assumed they were turning. I went into my utility room which happens to be at the front of the house unusually enough, and there they were sitting in the car in the drive way , again squinting in the window of my utility room. I turned on the light and they quickly reveresed out of the drive.

This evening,I was upstairs doing my evening routine of pulling down the blinds in the kids bedroom before they trudged up the stairs to brush teeth and pick story books. Anyway, I was in Daniels room about to pull the blind down. A woman driving a large black people carrier came to the end of the cul de sac, she attempted to pull into the drive of my neighbour across the way, on seeing his car out the front she abruptly stopped – I even noticed the car jerk as she hit the breaks ( my neighbour doesnt usually park his car there and it often looks as though he is out – incidentally , cars turning in his gate or drive way send him silly also and it doesnt bother his wife in the same way it doesnt bother my husband). So, she changes her mind and swings her car back around as opposed to just reversing, on seeing me at the window she starts to manouvre the car in the wide area of the cul de sac. I decided the close the doors of the wardrobe that had been open from tidying way laundry and low and behold as I turned and looked out the window again, there she is in my drive . By this I mean more than half of her car was past the pillars of my gate . I decided to keep looking at her, though usually I dont like to embarrass people too much, annoying and all as this practice is getting. She looked up at me and made a face. She actually made a face at ME, as I stood in MY own house as she turned her car in MY drive.

I relayed this incident to my husband with great animation, as you can imagine. There was a raised eyebrow, but other than that not much reaction. So , perhaps I am a Bucket, or a Jones or just an obsessive compulsive. Or maybe I just like some manners and people I dont know from Adam keeping off my property. And thats the thing really……

 

P.s. My camera is out of action at the minute, so I am inseting some random photos from my folders. This is a close up of a rose from a bunch I recieved on mothers day – so you see, I am loved even with all my oddity.

Things that make you go ..mmm…

Well hello there. the first post of my new blog.I expect I will be very enthusiastic now that I have started and will possibly tire after a while and coming towards the end of the summer I will find my time decreasing. I am a distance education student and so college will be starting back again in September. I find that even the laundry has to be scheduled in. Its important to keep a sense of normality in the house. I would love to be able to go around saying ‘ I just need another two hours and then I will be finished’. Doesnt work like that I’m afraid and children have to be ferried to ballet and there needs to be quality time and drawing and games and story reading ( otherwise what is the point in staying at home with the kids if its all about getting rid of them). Dont get me wrong, time to ones self is vital – makes us better moms I think.

Anyway, I happento be home alone with the five month old girl this afternoon.The two eldest of the brood are on a playdate and not home for another half hour. I would love to say that the house is now spick and span and dinner is simmering away, ironing is all done. I did manage to take out the ironing board today. It bagan to get in the way so I put it away again. I dont want to give the wrong impression here, I am a total neat freak and I get a kick out of house work and keeping the place immaculate. Ironing is my downfall – will happily clean toilets in place of doing the ironing.I think I am having a bit of a slow day and in one respect I have probably squandered my free time, but no wandering about the house with nothing in particular to do, or rather no inclination to do anything constructive hasnt been a total waste.

It has been very conducive to lovely relaxed breast feeding.Baby Catherine has had the benifit of this lazy afternoon. Normally her older brother , who adores her, doesnt realise how strong his three year old frame is and so very often when she is feeding is a chance for him to hug her and kiss her using all of his body weight.Sometimes when in her bouncy chair if he leans on her to kiss her, she smiles at him through her tears ‘ I love you, but your squashing me!’.

I was talking to my Dad earlier. Both my parents are retired, Mom is currently in Italy and Dad is home almost alone, theres the dog who has a sore paw. Anyway, the television in the den broke. So Daddio went to town to look at replacing it ( getting a repar man to look at it???!! an idea perhaps). there is now a 42″ Panasonic flat screen ensconced in the den. I have been instructed not to tell my mother if I am speaking to her its a ‘surprise’.How nice!.HIs heart is in the right place and he doesnt do things by halves my dad.

I hear the moses basket twitching, so it looks as if its almost feeding time again.Isnt it funny how we relish time away from our kids , and sometimes cant even remember the last time we had time to ourselves and now here I ma missing them……mmmm..