Sleep Interrupted

I don’t have anything against advent calendars in general. As children my sister and I always had one, and I would have to admit this carried on into later life. Now with children it is a great excuse to carry on this tradition.

Over the years the advent calendar seems to have evolved from the typical 2D nativity scene, which to my sisters disgust was always full of pictures of angels, to 3D glitter encrusted hangings, to some really blatant advertising from the chocolate manufacturers. Most advents these days are chocolate, you are hard pushed to finding a nice one without it. (Unfortunately, heathen that I am, nice means one not depicting a nativity scene.) Some of the Cadbury and Malteser ones don’t even have a proper picture on them, just the company name and a bit of snow chucked on for good measure. Not very Christmassy.

But I think the absolutely worst advance in advent calendars I have seen this year has got to be the 32 window advent. Yep, 32 days of windows to open. For me Christmas Eve always used to be the day you looked forward to the most with the calendar, it tended to always be the biggest window for a start, and was, depending on he nature of the calendar, either a nativity scene (grrr) or a big jolly Father Christmas, reminding you that the next day was the BIG DAY. Now however, you go right past Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the final door being opened on New Years Day!! New Years Day. How many kids know the relevance of New Years Day? It’s not like many of them stay up to celebrate it, is it?

Like I said earlier, I am not against advent calendars in general, but I think they need to be kept sensible. I am quite happy for both of my children, 24 days of one month to have a small piece of chocolate for their breakfast. But it has to stop somewhere and Christmas Day is the perfect place, given that most people then eat their own weight in turkey, biscuits, chocolate and mince pies. Or is that just me?

Anyway, that’s enough humbuggery from me. Think that possibly made up word will bring a whole host of new blog readers our way, probably not what they were expecting though. Sorry.

For a very long time now Ben, and latterly Jessica, have gone to bed at 7pm. Or rather, that’s the time they go up and it regularly takes half an hour to brush teeth, read stories and get them settled down and off to sleep. For almost as long Ben has refused to sleep during the day, unless he drops of during a car journey. This is probably down a combination of Smith and Davis stubbornness genes. Jessica is slightly better and will at least take a nap. They both tend to wake up at about 7am, although this is often earlier during the week due to my inability to move with the silence of a Ninja when leaving the house for work.

So what of this? Well, it’s lead to Ben (particularly) getting very tired during the day. This has a knock-on effect when he’s at pre-school. Louise suggested earlier in the week that we put them to bed at 6.30pm instead. Now, initially this just seemed silly-early. But having tried it for the first time last night, it seems to be working out. So now, for the time being, we have an extra half hour in our day; today that time has gone into this blog post. Don’t you feel privileged?

On the topic of children, it would be remiss of me not to mention Jessica’s talking. Boy, is she coming on fast!? She passed the milestone of being able to say Ben’s name a couple of days ago and two syllable words (beyond Mummy and Daddy) are now within her grasp. She’ll attempt many words if you ask her and she’s also making huge efforts to join in when we sing songs. Great!

On the topic of songs — and, yes, I’ll have to find a better way of starting paragraphs than with “On the topic of…” — I’ll leave you with this song that Ben taught us a couple of days ago:

Twinkle, twinkle, chocolate bar;
My dad drives a rusty car;
Push the lever, pull the choke;
Off we go in a cloud of smoke;
Twinkle, twinkle, chocolate bar;
My dad drives a rusty car.

The kitchen refit has turned out to be a lot more work than we, or at least Louise and I, had expected. We’re finally back to a (mostly) working set up. Living for a week without a sink (or a hob, or an oven…) is not something I’d recommend to anyone, let alone if you have two small children. But we’re on the up now, thanks mainly to our two dads, who have been a pair of top-notch DIY troopers.

I have some time-lapse photos of the project, so I’ll see if I can get them up here once we’re finished.

Whilst getting dressed in his Superman vest this morning, Ben asked me “Does Superman play with his willy?”

“No, I don’t think he does.” I replied.

Ben : “Does he hold his willy?”

Me : “No, probably not.”

Ben : “Does he hold his willy when he goes to the toilet?”

Me : “Yes, okay, he probably holds his willy when he goes to the toilet, so that he doesn’t wee on the floor.”

Ben : “That’s alright then.”