Toenails and Jamtarts

It was a great weekend! Saturday I left the kids for the afternoon with a slightly panicked looking husband, and took myself into town to meet a good friend I hadn't seen in months. We lunched, drank fizzy wine and then treated our aged, gnarled feet to a girly pedicure. Accompanied by our newly painted hot pink toenails we succumbed to the lure of some more fizzy wine which then decided the issue of whether my friend should catch the 6.00 pm or the 7.00 pm train home in favour of the latter option. I was home and slightly tipsy by the grand old hour of 7.30 pm. Now that's living late-30-something-mother-of-two style!

Sunday, my guilt over the previous day's child abandonment manifested itself in a sudden creative burst of home baking, and my three year old son proudly made his first jam tarts!

Here he is enjoying the fruits of his labours;

and here he is realising that I wasn't joking when I told him 37 times that the jam really was very hot. 

Not to be outdone here is my one year old daughter caught red handed climbing up onto the tv table. 

Given that we must have got through about 7 tv's in the last two years (renting really is the only way to go with children of this age) she knows this is not allowed, but still the allure is hard to resist. Oh well. Looks like we'll be on the phone to Martin Dawes TV Rental again very soon.

 

A New Camera

I've been a keen snapper for quite a while with my little point and press digital camera but was getting very irritated with that annoying shot-missing delay between pressing the button and the picture actually being taken. Especially so when you are trying to capture small children with their endless fidgeting and ferreting about. 

So I finally decided that I was ready to take the relationship further and make a serious commitment by investing in a shiny new Digital SLR camera. When I say 'investing' however I actually mean persuading my lovely husband to buy me one for my birthday. Thank you lovely, lovely husband x

I did my research and a few hundred pounds (ouch) later I am the proud owner of a Panasonic DMC-G1K, my decision being in no way influenced by the fact you could get £50 cashback as they have just brought out a new model (exactly the same as mine with a few more run of the mill mod cons - teasmaid, sat-nav and nubile servant to peel your grapes, you know the sort of thing). 

Well the instruction booklet is the size of war and peace, and I really do not have the patience for it being more of a trial and error girl, so I have been pressing random buttons and snapping away. This is my favourite shot so far being an action shot of my son's beloved game of 'being thrown into the air'. I am looking forward to getting better, and in the meantime am loving the very satisfying click my camera makes as I press the button. Much better than the little insipid beep from my point and press.

What has a Blue Face?

As a 40+ father of two it is fair to say that my husband's clubbing days are disappearing fast in the rear view mirror of life, however every now and again he manages to ressurrect his inner disco kid, elbow the spotty youth's of today out of his path, brave the taunts of "what you doing here Grandad!" and hit the mean streets of nocturnal Manchester. Last friday was one such occasion as he went out to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday.

Not wanting to be woken up by fetid wine breath and post-dancing sweaty body I had suggested he stay over at a friends and knew he would not be back at any decent hour the next day and/or would be good for nothing, so I arranged with a friend to take our kids out for the day.

We decided to go to Eureka, the children's museum in Halifax. I've visited several times before and highly recommend it as a place that can entertain children of all ages for hours. The museum is celebrating it's 18th birthday this year and there were some little events put on at certain times during the day, one of which was face painting at 3 pm.

It had been a long day. Both kids had been up since 5 am, there had been too much excitement, sugar and sun, and it was time to take our leave, however I promised my 3 year old son that before we left he could have his face painted. Having a superhero fixation at present, he was determined upon having a batman face, and I was sure that was possible.

As we queued for the face painting a helpful lady from Eureka then advised us that it was not so much 'face painting' as a 'paint your own face' workshop. I started to worry. I am not blessed with any particular artistic skills. I tried to let my son down gently. 'Darling, I don't think that a batman face is a good idea. How about something else. Mummy is going to have to paint your face and I'm not very good..'

My son was sticking to his guns, and his bottom lip started to quiver omminously. The first warning sign of a possible tantrum. Some tantrums I can diffuse and cope with easily enough, but this was a possible tantrum against the background of having an already overtired and overwrought toddler. Dangerous territory.

We were at the front of the queue and at the allotted time were ushered into the 'paint your own face' area when the lady stated that as there were lots of people wanting to paint their faces and not much time, we all had to be very quick.

I ran to the painting area dragging my son with me. 'Quick, what colour is Batman's face?' I asked him. 'Blue' he firmly replied. I sponged bright blue onto his little face then froze. I had absolutely no idea what batman looked like and had to come up with an alternative. This was a highly pressured situation and I couldn't think of a single sodding thing that had a blue face. Apparently neither could anyone else as no-one replied to my panic-stricken cries of 'What has a blue face? What exactly has a blue face?'.

At this point the not-so-helpful lady from Eureka chirruped 'OK, 30 seconds left'.

Oh....dear....god....Nothing came to me. I grabbed the nearest paintbrush and without thinking painted onto my son some hefty black eyebrows, whiskers and a moustache which through some miracle just stopped short of being a passable Hitler impression. He looked at me, his little trusting eyes full of expectation and asked what his face looked like. I stammered something unintelligible. He grabbed a nearby hand mirror , looked at himself then wailed in horror at full volume 'Mummy - WHAT AM I?????!!!!!'

I thought a quick exit was best at this point and hurried to the car with my screaming toddler in full blown tantrum mode, who didn't stop crying until all traces of blue paint had been wet wiped from his face. Face painting is clearly a skill which should only be practised by seasoned professionals.

First Post

It has taken me three days to even work out how to use the suggested templates, and am none too happy with the one I've ended up with, but this is a minor detail and no reason to stop me from getting some writing onto this here blog thing.

I'm blown away by the mind-numbing wealth of witty, intelligent, interesting blogs there are out there, and so taking inspiration from the lovely blogging community, I am hereby launching this vessel of musings, ramblings and drivelling.

Where to start?

The 'living' part of 'Kerry on Living' is to me a combination of;
i) Family - husband, 3 year old son, 1 year old girl. I love them all without bounds.
ii) Work - personal injury solicitor, (and no, I haven't chased any ambulances for quite a long time. As a rule I do try to avoid running after emergency service vehicles. It can be dangerous),
iii) Friends - a few left. Some with kids, some without, all fantastic.
iv) Other.

As most working mum's will understand 'Other' is a very vague concept to me given time and energy resources which are pretty much exhausted by just getting the kids up and to nursery, myself to and from work, and then the hour from hell which is bathtime and bedtime, but I do have dreams, and very very occasionally I get to spend a few nano seconds doing other stuff.

I think that is as reasonably concise precis for this post. Am writing this in my lunch hour and the pret sandwich I am about to demolish is most definately a two-handed job.

Back soon x