T-Bird Anni Rides Again

My PC needed to be rebuilt yesterday…. we’ve been avoiding the inevitable for far too long but finally got round to it.  Backed up EVERYTHING including a seperate back up of all my bookmarks (which include Sage feeds) etc and took the plunge.  Which is why I now have no Sage bookmarks.  Not a one.  Empty folder in my bookmarks    

So….. if I used to read your your blog and you are not on the BlogRing PLEASE can you tell me where you are?????  Off the top of my head I am missing Nic, Off the Path, Kath and a crochet woman (bittersweet?) that Jax linked to ages ago who does cute animals.  Loads others I suspect too but I’m too traumatised to remember them all!!!

Of course  the up side is I’ve had to waltz round the ring to see who I could find and "met" a few new families on my travels

we have this little trouble every yaer….

Duke’s teeth are just not up to really chewy toffees

I’m not all that fussed on them

Aprilia isn’t allowed them (cos I’m a MEAN MUMMY!) although actually they may be a good way to dislodge wobbly teeth I suppose.

So we always end up with all the tofees out of the sweet tins left languishing long after the strawberry creams have been fought over.  But not this year!  This year I chucked in a small bar of Dairy Milk for luck and melted the lot with a splash of milk to soften them off a bit then made cornflake cakes!  Very, very yummy they are too

Whilst we were on a roll there were also muffins and jammy tarts so I guess any resolutions that involve weight loss will have to wait a week or two  

it wasn’t long ago I was bewailing the fact that all the lovely clothes in her "too big" drawer were gone - all grown in and back out of again and gone to the charity shop.  I used to have a friend who passed on all her daughters clothes but she fell out with me when she finally realised that I was never going to convert to Goddess worship and vegetarianism…. or was it when she passed her driving test and didn’t need me any more, cna’t remember now…. 

 Anyway, the cupboard was bare, until Aprilia went out for a daytrip with Harley and Lola to see a mutual friend of ours whose sister has just had a wonderfully healthy little boy - the one I made the gown, hat and bootees for as he wasn’t supposed to live more than a day and they wanted him Baptising in something other than a hospital gown….. they donated the set to the local SCBU seeing as he was in positively rude health    This lady already has 2 girls, the younger one is 9 and just a size or two bigger than Aprilia so guess what?  She’s got 2 sets of pink satin PJs, 3 reletively modest bikinis, trackies, teeshirts, shorts….. 2 carrier bags crammed full of goodies!!!  But I did have to laugh… she also has a 30aa "bra" - basically 2 flat "cups" and a few bits of elastic - which she is ridiculously proud of owning

Meanwhile I was merrily sat trying to draft out an answer to the first part of my first TMA  on the course I don’t officially start for another 4 weeks.  I have 200 words so far…. only another 550 to go

Did you hear about the Texas teacher who was helping one of her
kindergarten students put on his cowboy boots?

He asked for help and she could see why.

Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn’t
want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked
up a sweat.

She almost cried when the little boy said, "Teacher, they’re on the
wrong feet." She looked, and sure enough, they were. It wasn’t any
easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to
keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this
time on the right feet.

He then announced, "These aren’t my boots."

She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why
didn’t you say so?", like she wanted to. Once again, she
struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet. No
sooner had they gotten the boots off when he said, "They’re my brother’s
boots. My Mom made me wear ‘em."
Now she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. But, she mustered up
what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet
again.

Helping him into his coat, she asked, "Now, where are your mittens?"
He said, "I stuffed ‘em in the toes of my boots."

She will be eligible for parole in three years.

link on the sidebar called the cast will take you to a quick round up of who’s who

it’s nearly 11am and I’ve just gone in to wake her up!!!!!  Mean mummy…..  So now she’s half heartedly playing on her PC in her PJs and I should be studying but keep finding really interesting things to do on the net instead

I nit combed her again last night and only got babies again so I’m hoping we are nearly done with that joy.  Mind you, all that conditioner has made her hair really glossy!

and it takes me months to re-discover the floor afterwards

She has had another very lovely haul this year, "Jessie" bought her the latest Fairy book (Paige the Pantomime fairy…. very sparkly and festive) Santa brought pink satin ballet slippers which she has been hankering after for months (and he told me where to get more from when tehy get too small   )  We got her various bits - Tumble Tots DVD, Bill Oddie wildlife DVD, hama beads and her main pressie was a CD/MP3 portable stereo in sparkly red (God Bless Asda!)  the neighbours bought her the most wonderful dressing up gown (Pirates of teh Carabean) which she wore all day.  Harley and Lola, as usual, "spoilt" her with loads of Princess stuff and a care bear jigsaw half of which she is leaving there to play with when Lola looks after her, the rest are in teh melee that I laughingly call a living room here!  Other fab stuff she got from family included a pink chair from granny and grandpa, Mucky Hands  indoor garden set  from one of the "in law" side of the family (but I’ve no idea who cos  she got swamped with  stuff teh minute we got to  Grandma’s and most didn’t have labels!) and various baking bits and a baking book from Grandma.  So once more she’s a lucky little girl!  She also got 14 free posters and a fistful of free DVDs/CD-ROMs as her gift from Duke’s bro which she likes but I sort of feel is a bit cheapskate for someone with a £25k mortgage, a £30k wage and no responsibilities but then he’s just generally odd (in a nice sort of way) and it beats the plastic crap he got last year that broke in seconds!

 Probably the best moment though was when said Duke’s bro gave a gift to our smallest niece who has severe disabilities.  He gave her a jingle bell stick and half an hour later she was still shrieking with delight waving it about and stomping her feet.  I have never seen her interest held by anything other than chocolate for more than a minute so it really was a wonderful sight and probably the moment I’ll remember.

I was going to dig out my aims from last year (sets of 5 wasn’t it?) and review them as it’s the end of the year more or less.  Luckily for you all I can’t find them so they must be on the blog I’ve lost access to!!!!

Okay, if I EVER find out WHO has told Aprilia that she is fat I will personally force them to live with her in her current frantic state for LIFE!  Then I will beat them to a pulp for good measure.

I mean, I know she’s not thin, she’s certainly not the same build as, lets say, Big or StringBean but she’s  not in the same league as I was at her age either!  Clothes that fit her width fit her lenght too so she not out of proportion (unless Asda has started adding inches at the waist for our obese genreation?) In fact she has some teeshirts that are not much more than "boobtubes" these days as they are so short on her but still fit her width.  She has muscular legs, can’t deny that but they have shape.  She does have a small pot belly but she always has, I suspect she is probably still a bit sensitive to lactose but enjoys milk and it doesn’t make her ill anymore so I’m not going back to soya if we don’t need to.  She gets "doughy" just before she shoots up (again) but that melts away with each growth spurt.  She is at the top of "normal" for her height, so yes, given all the choc and biccies she could eat she would easily tip over into overweight but for now she’s in "normal.

 So why am I telling you this and how does it relate to the post title?  I bought her the Tumble Tot keep fit DVD for Christmas so we could have a bit of variety in our "PE curriculum" (becuase quite franckly I’m bored of the Kid’s Yoga!)  and she opened it with the declaration "oh good, now I can stop being fat" and promptly insisted we play it.  Being told to wait until lunch had gone down was just barely tolerated.  Being unable to do every single move as well as the instructor (but aquiting herself easily as well as the kiddies behind) got her frustrated until the point where she melted down completely at not knowing where her middle was.  A full hour later she was still sobbing that she would never get thin if she couldn’t do it right and whilst I know this is partly Christmas boom and bust looking back I can see it has been building up for a little while but just chose yesterday to come to a head.  At bedtime she asked me how many times she would need to do the video for it to "work" and I suggested that either 1 section a day (it’s in 10 min sections) and maybe a full run through the lot once a week would be more than enough added on to waht she already did.  She didn’t look convinced.

 I’m trying to get my head around how to deal with this.  Obvoiusly I’m happy for her to work through the video a few times a week, it won’t do her any harm, and as the weather isn’t condusive to charging round outside it should help tire her out.  I’m sure I can find some sort of "unit study" thing on the web on healthy eating and it wouldn’t do ME any harm to work through that, adding a bit of variety into our cooking sessions.  But how do I get her through this mind set?  Should I?  or should I leave her to work it through on her own and hope that she gets a bit more slender as she grows?  Agh! 

Ah, um, let me see……. oh, yes, that would be the Hama beed stuck over the them.  Have you ANY idea how dificult it is to even keep a guinea pig still to look in it’s mouth let alone get near it with tweezers to get a bead off it’s bottom teeth