Latest Update from the Snot Control Centre

Today is day 9 for me, day 7 for Lara and maybe day 1 for Olga.
Yesterday Boots came to the rescue, I found the only product that you can use on babies under 3 months old to clear a blocked nose; it's called Nasosal, it's just a saline solution you drip into her nostrils, but whether it was a coincidence or not, Lara slept from 4am till 8am this morning, where as she almost always wakes up at 6am and 7am. Quite how many time she woke up in the night, I don't know, as my other find in Boots was a cough remedy similar to a potion Mum gave me last weekend when I first got the hint of my cold. You know how most cold remedies make a big deal out of being "non-drowsy"? Well, what good is that when your cough is worst at night and you want something to help you sleep?! This remedy contains chloroform (the chemical composition is shown above, I imagine you knew that already!), amongst other fun things! How cool is that?! Once my cold is better I can douse a handkerchief in it and subdue the guards if I need to break into or out of somewhere.
I have started to feel better today, just as Olga has reported a sore throat.

Lucy's birthday this weekend

The even this weekend is Lucy's birthday. I had planned to leave Olga in Reading with Lucy on Saturday evening then come and pick them both up in the wee small hours when they were ready to come home (Lara sleeps well in the car seat so it wouldn't really bother her regardless of the time).
However, I had a bright idea that would mean the girls get a nice girly night, and I don't have to wake up and do an hour round trip to pick them up - I've booked them a room in the swish new Novotel in the very centre of Reading. During the week this place is ridiculously expensive but at the weekends it's very good value. For £59 they'll get a nice room (to share!) and access to the swimming pool, sauna and jacuzzi. They don't get breakfast but hotel breakfasts are a notorious rip-off anyway, and there are a million cafes and even McDonalds just across the road if they need a proper hangover cure. They even get a free late-check out on Sunday until 5pm, so a big thumbs up goes to Novotel for actually offering good value for money! I'll come over with Lara and maybe Mishka mid-morning on Sunday and we might go for a walk. The Novotel in Reading even takes pets, so we'll remember this for future weekends.

St Valentine's Sshh-malentines

It was Valentines Day yesterday, and Olga and I agreed to say Bah Humbug to the whole commercial exploitation fest. We bought each other a big fat nothing, and I cooked us a huge stir fry with ingredients mostly from the Asda DSS counter. And Olga ate it and seemed to enjoy it. Now that's love for you!

Cough Cough, Splutter Splutter

Yup, I caught a cold whilst up in Radcliffe. This one was a good one too, by the time I got up at 5.30am on Tuesday morning to take Lara downstairs to watch the cricket and let Olga sleep, I knew there was no way I was going to work, I felt dreadful. I also knew there was no point trying to keep the germs away from Lara, she was going to get this cold and there wasn't really much point in trying to prevent that.
So I had Tuesday and Wednesday off work, and on Tuesday night Lara really started suffering, she screamed for a good two hours, almost non stop, in the late evening. She couldn't really feed properly because she couldn't breathe through her nose, and this made her irritable. Combine that with me still feeling crap and Olga trying desperately to clean the house before hosting the NCT Post-Natal meeting on Wednesday, and Tuesday evening wasn't the best we've had. It was 1.30am before I could get Lara off to sleep by rocking her in the car seat, then Olga took her to bed with her while I slept upstairs out of the way.
Since then Lara's not been too bad, now we know she has this trouble eating, so she is crying more than usual, but she's not really screaming in discomfort. Olga called the GP surgery on Wednesday morning for some advice, and they just suggested monitoring her temperature, and make sure it stays below 38 degrees, which it was. There's not much else we can do - we are trying to use one of those suction thingys to suck the snot from her nostrils, but even the smallest tube is still a little too big to fit into her nostril! We've bought her some Calpol medicine to help her sleep if she needs it, but we've not had to use it yet, if she gets off to sleep then she's OK for a good few hours, as usual, but it's just proving to take more time to get her to sleep.
The big thing for Friday is we hope to have her passport photos taken. The rules say that for babies under 6 months they don't have to look at the camera or even have their eyes open. We'll see how easy it is!

A lovely weekend

Time for a catch up - it's been a few days. We drove up to Radcliffe on Friday after I finished work - it was hard to believe we set off at 5.30pm on a Friday; we hardly had to slow for traffic all the way up and arrived before 8.30pm. It probably took longer to pack all the bags for Olga, me, Lara and Mishka than it did to drive up there!
The weather was lovely all weekend, we went for some nice walks with Mishka, and even went to check out a swanky pet "spa" where we probably will get him groomed in a month or two - it's considerably cheaper than daaarn sowff. Mum & Dad looked after Lara on Saturday night while Olga & I went out for our first "night off night out" in Bury; we went for a very nice meal in Bury's only Chinese restaurant (it turns out my three phrases of Chinese are Mandarin not Cantonese. I never knew that) then went for a few beers in the Two Tubs pub (for those who know Bury!). It was lovely to relax, and reassuring to know Lara was fine when I checked in by phone at 10.30!
Sunday was a nice lazy day, with another stroll with Mishka, and Cath & Lizzie, I washed the car (the first time I'd done that since the days when Dad paid me to do it) and we watched the footy on TV. It was a good idea to have Monday off work so we didn't need to drive home on Sunday night. It was an equally nice drive home on Monday in perfect weather, and we stopped off to pick up a rug for the nursery that we bought on eBay. Even when we got stuck in traffic, it was only for 5 minutes, and that was because people (ok, us included) were gawking at the air ambulance on the other carriageway of the M5 which had landed to collect the driver of a lorry which was being pulled out of a ditch at the side of the motorway.
The only blot on the landscape was my runny nose and fuzzy head....