You win some, you lose some.. February 17, 2012

This week we’ve had a breakthrough, finally, with the potty training. I use the word ‘training’ in its loosest possible sense! I’ve been asking if the twins want to use the potty and they’ve been saying no, and that’s about as far as it’s gone to date!

However, with the 3rd birthday having been and gone last weekend; this week, I’ve used a new tactic with them. Mummy has made it clear that girls of a certain age definitely don’t wear nappies. 3 year olds are like princesses and fairies and they most definitely wear big girl pants. So far, it seems to have worked.

Obviously the transition hasn’t been 1o0% successful, but we’ve had a pretty good week and the ghastly Disney princess knickers have helped encourage the girls to discard the equally loved Dora the Explorer nappies.

I’ve dished out hundreds of thousands of chocolate buttons and smarties as ‘rewards’ and there’s been lots of clapping and cheering from the sidelines.

However, whilst we’ve been celebrating the (fingers crossed), permanent move to knickers, the girls have decided that their new-found grown up status also means they no longer need a post-lunch snooze. As any mummy will agree, the middle of the day sleep is the secret weapon in surviving a day at home with a small child. You just have to get through the morning and the lunchtime feeding session and then you can pack the little sweethearts off to bed for a couple of hours whilst you a) catch up with the household chores  or b) hit the gin.

Without the day time sleep, the day suddenly seems a LOT longer. And because we’re in a transitional phase of doing without the nap, tempers are a little more frayed by the end of the day, tears flow a little more easily, and petty squabbles escalate an awful lot faster (and that’s just twins mummy!).

But I’m not complaining… the thought of the number of landfill sites that my family must be responsible for filling, is really quite disturbing. We will embrace being a nappy-free zone and from next week, we’re going to learn all about the Continental princesses and fairies, who all LOVE to take a siesta….. It’s got to be worth a try.

 

 

 

 

Granny lives on! February 6, 2012

My dear granny on my father’s side had an amazing gift for finding a common link with every person she came across. It was a running joke that she could step into a lift on the ground floor of a shop, and by the time she stepped out two floors up, she’d have the life history of at least one other person, and had established that at some point, they’d shared a pharmacist or lived on the same bus route!

It didn’t matter where she went, she could always be guaranteed to find someone who lived in, or had lived in, or whose offspring lived in Ebbw Vale. Which is no mean feat when you consider that it’s a small Welsh town in the valleys, only known for its steelworks and then briefly for the garden festival of 1992.

In our family, random conversations with total strangers have become known as “doing a granny” and a few days ago, I became aware that the family trait lives on in me.

I made a brief trip to the UK last week, and at check in, found myself entering into the usual polite chat with the airline lady. I was booked from Dubai to Birmingham, that glamorous (!) destination of choice, and as ‘Kelli’ (Filipina) announced her sister used to live in Abergavenny, I felt a little surge of enthusiasm. Just a few seconds later, we were weighing up the pros and cons of Monmouth (where I went to school), versus Abergavenny.

It must have sounded more than faintly ridiculous to the people in the queue behind me. A British expat discussing with a Filipina expat, both based in Dubai, two Welsh towns that neither of us have ever lived in. I was amused to discover that for the entire time her sister lived in Abergavenny, Kelli flew into Heathrow to visit her, not realising that Birmingham was at least 80 miles closer to her destination!

But perhaps the best bit was when Kelli announced that she was particularly fond of flying to the UK with Emirates, as they always offered a great Welsh menu on board…

I’ve got to be honest.. I’m still pondering that one.