Sprog issues and more videogames

Couple of things that don't really mix this time round.

We've been having behavioral issues with Le Sprog, and they've come completely out of the blue. I'm not sure if its due to change in routine after going back to school last Monday after having 2 weeks off for Easter Holidays or not, but this weekend she was an absolute terror. Defying us at every turn, to the extent that she wouldn't eat her tea yesterday and ended up going to bed without. I felt incredibly cruel doing it but she seems alot happier after being at school today, she even ate most of Missus' completely home made Spaghetti Bolognese (which I adore!!), and was thus rewarded with some biscuits, a small bar of chocolate and a sticker to stick on her reward chart (8 "tasks" each day, all of which are things that she should be doing anyway, eating meals, brushing teeth, tidying away toys etc, when she gets to 25 stickers she can have a packet of Stickers for the Hannah Montanna sticker album she got today).

The only other major issue we have with her now is toileting, she goes for a wee-wee without any problem, washes her hands everytime etc etc, but we can't get her to do a number 2, she either has little accidents in the bath or in her knickers, or she holds it until she's in a nappy for bedtime (once we've tackled this issue, its then onto the nappies to get her out of them completely!). We've been told by our Doctor and the nurse at the surgery not to worry until she's 7, but its the last 2 hurdles before she's no longer our "little baby", we'll get there I'm sure of it, it'll just take time and some experimentation.




In other news, I've got a bunch of new games, we visited a car boot sale last weekend and I managed to pick up a couple of PC games dirt cheap (Company of Heroes, £2, and Project IGI, £1), then I bought Hogs of War on the original PlayStation for 80 pence, swapped Kameo on XBox 360 for the new Prince of Persia on the same system with a friend (I think I got the better end of the deal personally but he didn't like PoP...) and today picked up Amped 3 on the XBox 360 for £8, £7 of which was a credit note from a previous trade-in, so with my registration for Runes of Magic and the fact I've literally just got onto the Open Beta for Battlefield Heroes, I've got some new entertainment very cheaply to keep me occupied whilst waiting for new episodes of Heroes, Ashes to Ashes and Co-Op.

I've also, so far, kept to my Photo A Day challenge for the other blog, yes I know its only been 3 days, but thats more than I've ever managed before with any other project bearing any similarities to this one (hell, even my blogging is sporadic!). However, it was incredibly difficult to find a picture I was genuinely pleased with and found interesting today, gonna be more difficult as I've literally got nothing to do outside of the house and nothing of interest inside the house (that'll change when Missus herb garden on the kitchen window sill has begun to grow).

"I'm a horsey"

Children's imagination's make me laugh. After waking Sprog up this morning, she insisted on bringing some of her My Little Pony's down for breakfast before I took her to school, this was fine, its normal for her to do this, although I wasn't expecing a whole rucksack full of ponies.

So anyhow, after saying goodbye to them, and goodbye to her mother who had only just returned from work, we headed off to school, which is about 10-15 minutes walk away. Immediately she shouted out "I'm a horsey" and proceeded to half skip, thus creating a sort of trotting motion, down the drive and this continued all the way to the school, even when I was holding her hand she'd be doing this. If she saw another child from her class, or the class next door (who are in the same "year" as her) she would shout "Neigh" at them.

When we arrived at school, she also decided to declare to her teacher that she was a horse before trotting and neighing through the door to take off her coat...

Oh what a night...

Had barely any sleep last night, and there's only one reason for it. Missus was ill, really rather ill. Unsurprising really, she's developed an intolerance to fast food, which is great, kind of.

So anyway, last night she was watching Casualty, we'd been out in town during the day and had paid a visit to Pizza Hut. She had a Salmon Pasta Bake thing and a couple of slices of my pizza, plus a small bowl of salad from the salad bar (she hadn't had any breakfast, so yeah, she was starving). Around the time Casualty started we were both getting hungry again, Sprog had had her tea (after eating a rather large Chicken Wrap meal and salad she just wanted some sandwiches...) and was in bed asleep. There was nothing in the freezer that I had the ability to cook and Missus was resting her feet after doing a group of 12 hour shifts at the hospital during the week. So, I thought "hmm baked potato from the 'Baked Potato Shop'" which was all well and good if their last delivery time was 9pm but they'd taken the phone off the hook at 8:30pm leaving us with the choice of going hungry, me running out in the cold to Sainsbury's to find something to cook, which would of left us eating some time after 10pm or phoning Andreas Takeaway for a a burger and kebab (she had the latter).

Unfortunately, Missus' stomach deciced that, whilst watching the second Death Note movie, that it wasn't too happy with what she'd eaten, and she spent half the night sat on the toilet with her head in a bucket. When that wasn't happening, she was trying to sleep whilst having an emergency bowl at close hand, right in the gap between our heads, so I spent half the night awake in fear that I would be thrown up on. Luvvly Jubbly.

Suppose it serves us right for going down that route and wasting money on crap food...

Looking forward to tonights Bangers N Mash with Guinness Gravy (and yes, thats gravy with guinness draught in)

Pictures from Christmas

Heres a bunch of pics taken over the Christmas period.

First up are pics of our town centre's lights, these aren't all of them, just the ones that showed up best in the pics.







Next up are the only shots that didn't blur from Sprog's first Christmas show, she played a star and sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, unfortunately we didn't arrive as early as most of the other parents so ended up at the back.




Some pics of the carousel that was in town for the Christmas Market, Sprog and I are in a couple of these. We went on this after she finished school on her final day before the Christmas break and we'd taken her to see Santa, unfortunately not got a picture of her with Santa on the computer as they now only let you have a picture from the professional photographer. We got one, but as I've mentioned in a previous post, our scanner is now a glorified photocopier.

The visit to Santa was rather funny though, when asked what she wanted for Christmas, Sprog simply replied with "presents". Santa tried to get more information from her and she pointed to the sacks of wrapped gifts he had by his side and said "Those ones", the photographer found one that was labeled for her age group and put it on the false mantelpiece, and when pressed for more information again, she ended up describing the wrapping paper of the present that was set aside for her.

Still it was more succesful than previous years. Her first two visits involved screaming and or crying, whilst her previous two visits resulted in her standing nervously next to the big man and refusing to talk to him. Luckily we'd already picked her presents, which were already wrapped and hiding away in our bedroom.






Lastly, are photo's of Sprog opening up her gifts.













Lastly, before we headed off to bed on Christmas Eve, we had some wierd powder stuff that you add water to and it makes fake snow, so we put false footprints coming from the back door right upto the Christmas Tree and told Sprog about the "Magic Key" Santa has for house that don't have a chimney, and said the best place for him to park the reindeer was in the alleyway out the back which is why the lights don't work out there (obviously, that has more to do with hooligans than anything else). This is how it looked:




You can see our two dogs in that pic, the black one in the background is Jet, she's a crossbreed of near on everything, Mimi, the one closest to the camera is a Spaniel/Beagle cross who's parents were registered with the Kennel Club.

Christmas Eve!

Wow, that was easy! Sprog went to bed with no trouble whatsoever. Mind you, she did go over an hour later than normal...

Everythings done and out of the way too, Mince Pies are made, as are Cookies (Missus keeping Sprog entertained there) All the presents are under the tree, minus all the chocolate ones because of the dogs, there in the kitchen, as are the dogs presents. The Rats have had new hammocks made and Missus has strung freshly popped (plain) popcorn across their cages, and I'm happily drinking HobGoblin that was left out for Santa.



All that is left to do is hang Sprog's stocking on the back of her bedroom door to enable to have an extra five minutes in bed in the morning and its time for Missus and I to see in Christmas Day in our usual way.

Tomorrow will be less stressful for us than today has been, we're at Missus' Grandads, he'll pretty much have dinner all prepared and cooking away slowly when we arrive, she'll help dishing up and Sprog's Uncle will keep her entertained, that or she'll be in the garden on her new scooter.

I'm looking forward to it more than I have previous Christmases, which haven't been the most fun in recent years, however, there shouldn't be any problems this year and the three of us have a nice number of gifts each (of course, Sprog's outweigh ours by about 10:1). So all thats left is for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

The Devil in disguise...

We do alot of charity shop shopping, its great for picking up cheap books and Missus likes getting old material (usually bed spreads) from them in order to make into various things such as hammocks for her Fancy Rats. So whenever we're in town we pop into a few different charity shops, take a look and normally end up buying something, very rarely spending anything more than £5.

So yesterday we popped into Shelter, and Missus picked some material, Sprog was with us and she, as kids always do in shops, wanted a toy. She picked up a Firby, I began to cry inside, bought we bought it anyway, it only cost a £1 and it'll keep us happy.



Unfortunately I seem to be having a spell of bad headaches that won't shift just recently, so despite the fact she's had Coco (what the Firby has named itself) for less than 24 hours, I feel like throwing her (Sprog has stated its a girl) in the bin. Still, the person who had it before obviously took good care of it as its not really rude (Missus had one as a kid, her brothers taught it to swear) and has provided a couple of humourous moments, such as it burping whilst Sprog was having some supper before bed last night.

Ahwell, its Christmas Day tomorrow, so with all the stuff she's got waiting to open, maybe Coco will stay in her room like her other noisey toys. At least Mimi (one of our dogs) will be happy then as she seems to hate (or is at least scared) of it.

I'm sooo good at this blogging malarky!

Yup, after another lengthy break (ha! over a year!) I've remembered this existed and have come back.

So whats happened in the past year?

Stuff thats what. My little girl is now in full time education, and loving it! My missus is a Student Nurse proper, and is mostly loving it! and I'm trying to find a job, with not alot of luck to be honest.

We're in the build up to Christmas, and its feeling rather Christmasey for the first time in a long time, probably because the sprog is properly getting into it this year. She's had her Christmas party, play and fayre at school, she's visited Santa and we've been trying to hide all the presents around the house with, so far at least, quite a bit of success. The closest call so far has been a parcel arriving from my Dad at the weekend, she saw the big box, asked what it was and settled for the answer "nothing for you" and carried on doing whatever it was she was doing at the time.

We spent Halloween at Gulliver's Kingdom in Milton Keynes with my Dad, Step Mum, older Sister, her bloke and my two nieces, and despite the appauling weather, a good time was had by all.