Grumbling Tummy

The Money Programme featured “The cost of kids” tonight, in which we found out that kids can cost up to £180,000 to bring up. I knew it; the little darlings are being spoiled and wasted these days… it wasn’t like that in my day!

For goodness sake! You’d be cheaper with a privately done vasectomy at a top end whack of £1,000!

Technorati Tags: BBC, Money Programme, kids, vasectomy

No it isn’t a cooking tool used in the Netherlands! See the real definition.

This entry is dedicated to my good old pal Davie Barr, who was the first person I heard using this definition many years ago.

Sing along with me:

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me….

Cash and cheques are acceptable gifts.

Please no cards as they are a waste of money and just go straight in the blue recycling bin! Now I’m not saying that this was the blue bin after last year’s birthday but ….

Wee Sis and I were discussing how she’d like to remodel her main family room. The talk turned to the fireplace, at which point she said,

“I’d like to get rid of the chimney, flue and fireplace!”

Well the Nephew was listening intently to our conversation until she made that statement. He made his way over towards us and with tears streaming down his cheeks asking questioningly,

“But Mummy how will Santa get in?”

It took a moment of quick thinking and much consoling to get those tears to dry up! In the meantime I was chuckling away to myself.

The Nephew was screaming his head off and generally being a right little brat for Wee Sis on Sunday past. In steps Uncle John with a cunning plan involving a mobile phone and a phoney call to Santa. The words went something along the lines of ….

“Hello Santa!

Yes, I’m contacting you to report the Nephew who has been pretty bad this year.

Oh! He has already been reported and you know about him.

Ah! You’ve already taken back some of the toys he was getting this year.

… And if he doesn’t behave you’ll not bother with any presents!”

After a little bit of drama from Wee Sis surrounding Santa and the call, and an appropriate delay, the Nephew transition from brat to angel. Mmmm! We’ll until he spotted some footballs he had to have!

This Santa things has some legs, me thinks! Don’t anyone dare tell him that Santa doesn’t exist. I don’t think he’d believe you anyway .

The Nephew went along to a theatre version of Humpty Dumpty. As in all good pantomines the baddie was out to steal Humpty’s yolk by cracking him open! When Humpty mounted the tall wall, the Nephew was heard to scream at the top of his voice:

Don’t do it Humpty! You’ll fall and hurt yourself!

Wee sis took me and all the family through to see Gran last week. Gran has rumbled the fact that The Nephew is now in the listening and repeating phase. Not to be outdone she devised a cunning plan to spell the keywords that function as triggers to him. She was quoted as saying:

“He knows everything you say! You cannae mention anything,
especially C-A-R-S or S-W-E-E-T-I-E-S, without having to S-P-E-L-L it!”

Didn’t realise “S-P-E-L-L” was one of the keywords but it did raise a chuckle with all of us, well with the obvious exception of the youngsters and Gran .

It is The Nephew’s birthday today. Happy 4th birthday Blair.

Eventually Wee Sis has managed to pop one out: a baby that is! Baby Rebecca was born at 00:29 on the 18th June 2004. She weighed in at 7lb 3oz or thereabouts and would appear to have mastered the subtle art of crying her lungs out! Glad to see she can master things so quickly.

Congratulations to Wee Sis and her partner Kenny.

Wee sis is still hanging onto devil-spawn no 2. She phoned me in the early hours of Sunday morning thinking, “this is it!”

I had to go down, pickup The Nephew and take him all the way through to my parents in Glasgow. Needless to say it was 5:30am before I got back. Got about an hours kip before having to get up for a full day of work at Kinross Market. I was less than pleased that the journey turned out to be unnecessary.

I’m now starting to think she has a bad case of wind. One big fart will probably sort out the big tummy, the pain and the discomfort .

Just been watching Malcolm in the Middle, when a part of the epsiode’s plot struck a cord: Rhys gets stalked and chased by a goat. So how did it strike a memory?

Our family went sailing on Loch Lomond for many years. Inchtavanach, one of the island of Loch Lomond, had all kinds of wildlife roaming the island, including mountain goats. Most of the time these animals went out of their way to stay away from humans. However, one of them had alternative ideas for amusement. You always knew when the goat was about as people would come screaming through the trees and jump straight into their dinghy, even if it was half way up the beach. A few seconds later the goat would appear and start head butting anything that moved. Sometimes this was accompanied by girlie screams, well only when I was the one being chased!

Seriously, it was pure evil. Even standing up to it was no good, since at some point you had to turn your back to walk away and that’s when he’d pounce – the bast&*d! It wasn’t even any good to climb up something as the sod could climb for Scotland. Probably had something to do with being a mountain goat. If only I could have found the local devil worshippers, they could have been pointed towards the island for a source of props for the next gathering.

D Day has finally arrived …

Today is the official drop, or is that pop out date, for the latest niece of nephew. Wee sis didn’t want to know what she was having so we will all be surprised. I’m betting on either a boy or girl, maybe even “The Spawn of Satan” .

Had to do a bit today! Went into Edinburgh this afternoon to restock on some products for the weekend. On the way back out I stopped off to get my hair cut. Wee Sis used to be a hairdresser before becoming a beauty therapist, before becoming a sales person, before becoming a mother. I need to be very explicit here, it was beauty therapist not beautician. She keeps trying to convince me that there is some big difference in the training but I’m not so sure.

While there I made the fatal mistake of asking The Nephew to pick some cars so we could take their pictures. Three hours later I was still getting cars thrust in my face with the command to take their picture. Inbetween times I was trundling down the path on scooters, kicking balls at the little darlin (and I mean at him) and generally expending life preserving energy. Eventually managed to convince him that the phone battery was dead thereby alleviating the request for more pictures.

… and oh yes, I got a hair cut: no 2 all over!

My wee sister had a physio appointment at lunchtime, so it was up to Uncle John to babysit the nephew. Perhaps “babysit” is the wrong word as he keeps informing me:

“I’m not the baby! The baby is in mummy’s tummy!”

Well he is kind of correct as she is knocked up and almost ready to drop. He even seems to know how it is coming out. To quote the three year old little darlin’:

“It comes out of mummy’s hairy!”

My gran will not approve of him knowing this type of stuff.

“We knew nothing in our day!”, is one of her favourite sayings.

Now I’m not going to say the wee darlin’ is mental or anything, but his obsession with all things motor vehicle is a little alarming: it is carrr this, carrr that; lorr-aye this, lorr-aye that; twuck this, twuck that. Actually for a while there “truck” was sounding a little like … well it’s a swear word that rhymes with truck!

Thank goodness wee sis was only away for a short time. She made us all a cuppa to go with some biscuits. Needless to say the biscuit in the nephew’s hand wasn’t going to remain that shape for long: he is now in a dunking phase. Unfortunately the biscuit decided it would rather be infused into his tea than gulped down!