Now, it should also be noted that the time I get up is NOT the time that the children should be getting up.

This morning, I heard Shira getting up to go to the toilet just as my alarm was going off. Here I was faced with a couple of choices:

1. Get up and start getting dressed, ignoring Shira on the toilet.
2. Stay in bed a couple more minutes and hope that Shira would just go back to bed (but run the risk of being late for work).
3. Get up and try to hurry Shira back to bed.

I went for option 3. Unfortunately for me, Shira is quite clever. She immediately noticed that I was up and starting to get dressed AND that it was starting to get quite bright outside. I tried to hurry her back to bed, but she was not happy with this. After all, it was getting bright outside. It can’t be bright at night, night is when it’s dark. (The only exception is when it’s bedtime. It can be light outside at bedtime.)

After much convincing, I got Shira back into bed and was only a few minutes late getting myself ready.

Unfortunately, Shira was pretty much awake by this point and I don’t think she went back to sleep at all!

Tonight, as the kids came out the bath and we came downstairs… Ooooops…. big flood again. Ugh! So I called the nice plumber chaps once more, and it being 7pm, they asked if we could wait til morning. Um, no, not really. It smells, and you fixed it less than a week ago, humph. So, at gone 8 in the evening Mr Plumber Man comes, with his jiggly thing, takes the lid off the drain, er, no, its not a problem here…. looks at the main drain outside and spots a root blocking the exit to the drain.

Now, we should have no more problems with floods (after all, G-d promised Noah) and have spent a small fortune in plumber bills. Hey, who needs to eat, huh?

Oh, and Shira has chicken pox. She is spotty.

We’ve got some pictures on our photo site:

http://photos.thekilners.com/Shira/3rd%20Birthday/index.html

and a video that you can access from our home page (requires registration):

http://www.thekilners.com

Also, Esther had her 5th birthday party at kindergarten. So even though it’s not her birthday for another couple of months, we have some 5th birthday pictures:

http://photos.thekilners.com/Esther/5th%20Birthday/index.html

One of the best of these kind of games is called “Where do you think the kids will be when we sneak in to give them a good night kiss while they’re sleeping?” It’s not as easy as it sounds. More often than not it’s quite boring because they are just laying in their beds. You can get creative with your guess though. For example, you might guess that Shira will be the wrong way up and under her blanket, but Esther will be the right way up and on top of her blanket.

There was one occasion where we would never have guessed. Shira was kneeling on the floor, resting her head on her arms on her pillow, fast asleep. Nobody won the game that night!

Last week, we put her in her bed for her afternoon nap. She didn’t actually want to sleep so after going in to her twice, we ended up putting her into the cot as a punishment. That should have been the end of it. On that day, it wasn’t. About half an hour after putting her in the cot, I heard a little voice saying, “Daddy… daddy… daddy.” Grrr. I got up from my work and stomped into the bedroom to find out what was going on. Shira had taken her nappy off and was wanting to be changed. However, it wasn’t quite that simple. She had climbed out of her cot up onto the set of drawers with the change mat on top and then taken her nappy off.

After being suitably annoyed at her and putting her nappy back on and putting her back into the cot, I told Ruth. We were both impressed at her climbing and escaping abilities.

This morning, the only morning in the last 2 weeks when they needed to wake up promptly, they decided that it would be good to have a lie-in until 7:30!

Kids, who’d ‘ave ‘em?

Anyway, as the title says, Despair is just off highway 613.

This wouldn’t be too bad, but if you have kids, you know that they just keep asking questions.  What are you doing?  What is that?  Why did you do that?  What does this do?  Can I press this?  Can I push that?

Hopefully, she’ll get bored soon enough and go and play!

Anyway…

As most parents know, when you put a child into a bed for the first time (after being in a cot/crib), they don’t always stay there for the whole night.  Shira was particularly bad in this regard and for the first few months of being in a bed, she would get up many many times before actually going to sleep.  We are fortunate to have enough space in her bedroom for her bed, Esther’s bed and a cot.  Because we had room for the cot, we used it as a punishment when she got out of bed, but it hasn’t been used in quite a while.

Last summer, Esther and Shira both wanted to have a bottle of water beside their beds overnight in case it was hot and they woke up so that they could have a drink.  Over the winter this hasn’t been so necessary, but we have not been able to wean the girls off this habit.

Last night at about 2 in the morning, we heard the pitter patter of little feet.  Shira came barreling into our room complaining that her bed was wet.  (She still wears a nappy at night so it wasn’t that she’d wet her bed.)  Time for action dad to stumble bleary eyed out of bed to find out what’s going on.  Fell pyjamas, yep, they’re very wet.  Take Shira back to bedroom.  Fumble around looking for clean pyjamas.  Find clean pyjamas.  Fell bed, yep, even wetter than pyjamas.  Ask Shira what happened.  Shira says, "I did spill my bottle".  Okay, fine.  Get Shira changed… d’oh, needs clean nappy.  No nappies upstairs.  Go downstairs.  Find new packet of nappies.  Rip them open.  Pull a few out.  Take them upstairs.  Change nappy.  Put clean pyjamas on.  Put her pillow into the cot.  Put Shira into cot.  Put blanket on (other way up ‘cos it’s very wet).  Night night Shira.  Back to bed for action dad.

And then Ruth remembered that she’d not put the fish back into the fridge.  Fortunately, action dad did not need to deal with this.

The house is still warmer downstairs than up, but we worked out why – upstairs is exposed on most sides, and downstairs is next to other peoples’ houses on most sides, so that removes the mystery.

I’m still working, and earning less and less as the dollar drops. But I’m on site once a week, and I charge for my travel, so that’s OK.

Ruth’s still being a brill mummy (even if she leaves Tehilla to cry in the morning for a bit sometimes) (but she’s normally busy doing something else)

Esther Pie’s getting bigger and bigger, she’s a big help and will offer Ruth to peel carrots or cut up peppers for supper in the afternoons. We’re slowly teaching her to read, she has a few words that she recognises, and she knows all her letters. She can count up to 100+ and she will, given any opportunity.

Shira Bira occasionally comes to planet Earth to visit, she still lives with the butterflies much of the time. She’ll sing all her gan songs in Hebrew, and when we join in, she’ll say "No, in ENGLISH!" She spends a lot of the afternoon (when awake) tired.

Deela Weela is also growing, and we’re STILL waiting for her to walk alone. She will zoom round the furniture, will favour cruising over crawling, but for a child who was rolling at 3 months, and crawling at 4, she’s being very stubborn about not walking. She was taking one step and then falling over, but since coming back from Glasgow a couple of weeks ago, she has no longer even been standing unaided. Well, she’s only got (approximately) 8 months to learn to walk nicely before Sara’s wedding… 

Anyhow, thats us up to date, better get on with work. Byebye.