Friday 1 August 2008

A busy week this week... and next!

It's been a hectic week here this week, I've been busy at work, and Lara's been keeping us on our toes at home. She's not had a great week for sleeping, but I think much of that is to do with the temperature and humidity at night, it has been hard to know what to dress her in while she's sleeping. I even took her for a drive on Wednesday night to get her off to sleep, which worked for an hour or two, but she still ended up coming to bed with us. We worked out last night that if we put her musical mobile on when we put her to bed, it calms her down, as she normally starts to cry as soon as we put her to bed; then once she's calm we put her on her side and sshh her, and that worked last night, as we often see her sleeping on her side, so figure it's OK.

Next week will be interesting, as I've been ordered to Houston at short notice, so I'm flying out on Monday morning and planning to return on Friday morning. I'd hoped to arrange a dog-walker to help Olga with Mishka, but as I write I'm waiting for a call-back. Olga of course insists she'll cope with Lara and Mishka!

Well, it's the end of the week, Pietersen has just got himself out in the 3rd test when he was going on perfectly well, so OLga, Lara & I are going to retire to the pub for a drink!

Monday 28 July 2008

Weekend Report

We made the most of the weather this weekend; Olga made the summerhouse presentable on Saturday while I built some steps into the lower slopes of the back garden, making it possible to get up into the garden without worrying about sliding back down again - important when you've got a baby in one arm and a pram under the other!
I'd spent the morning getting car MOT'd in Bicester, I'd left it till the last minute as usual to sort it out, and it would expire on Saturday. I'd booked the appointment online for 9am, I got there right on time, but the MOT tester was stuck in traffic, and still hadn't appeared by 10.15. After a rather threatening call from his manager, he turned up at 10.30 for my appointment. The car failed on the two front tyres, which wasn't a surprise at all, they wouldn't look out of place in the pits at the British Grand Prix, they were that bald. Anyway, by the time we'd put the spare on one side & I'd bought a new tyre for the other side, I left at 12.30. This was a pain as I'd planned to get a lot done at home that day.

Happy 70th Birthday to dad yesterday! It was a lovely day, and I waited until the sensible hour of 10am before annoying the neighbours by turning on the jet washer we've borrowed from Chris Rose and pointed it at the lower decking. This took two hours, and was possibly the dullest two hours of my life! The only consolation was you could see the impovement straight away, and there were times of excitement when I disturbed a family of frogs and they gave me a heart attack.
We'd just about finished tidying up (me outside, Olga inside while Lucy looked after Lara) when Simon and Arong arrived, then Ant'n'Bec and Eve came and we all spent a nice afternoon on the top decking with a few drinks and the BBQ. I'd set the hammock up and Anton and Eve tried it out for size:


After everyone had left we made the effort to tidy up and just about got ourselves relaxed and sat down in time for Midsomer Murders.