Child's Play

Didn't get up in time this morning to go to Little Fishes... Swept the landing and started cleaning the bathroom up for a shower (Hubby was lovely and reconnected it all last night!) before breakfast, struggled through doing laundry instead of getting breakfast (Hubby took over as I was clearly not functioning), gave up in a grump eventually and took myself back off upstairs to sit and look out of the window.

I couldn't even be bothered to think "I don't care" - it was like even thinking that would be an indication that actually you did care. It was more like a "so?" feeling. Soulless. Spent. Bean had woken up, noticed two great big blue ikea plasters on my face, said they were beautiful, said I was beautiful, then because he was hungry he ignored us completely and ended up being shouted at. Ugh. Love to annoyance in ten minutes, and not even out of bed.

Anyway he chose to have a shower when I had a shower eventually, and Hubby wrapped the Bear up and walked to the shops while we washed and got clean and found the moisturiser and dealt with all the Bean's rough dry skin and eczema-y patches. Poor boy. Was nice to spend time with him though, I don't get much specific Mama-Bean time these days.

And then an angel messaged me to say come round and play! We leapt at the chance and have spent the afternoon in a glorious imaginative play land at Ruth's house. We have sailed the ocean quilt as pirates in a woodbasket, been penguins and sharks hunting for beanbag fish, been dinosaurs building dens on the sofa, climbed, balanced, jumped and bounced, fed the degus, investigated the degus, watched the degus, snuggled under a blanket exhausted and tried not to fall asleep, and then joined by our hubbys and eaten chips and meatballs and potatoes and GORGEOUS warm fresh cake with whisky caramel sauce!!!

I had so much fun, mostly watching the boys having so much fun playing with Ruth, sometimes joining in, but smiling - and I needed that smiling :) Thankyou, Ruth! x x x

After putting the boys to bed Hubby and I spent half an hour or so decanting the stock into jars. Straining it, picking out the bones ready for a second batch tomorrow, sterilising a couple of jars, boiling the strained stock up, and filling the jars. Doesn't take much conversation, but it's a really gentle, companiable, positive thing to do together in an evening. I love seeing fresh jars of homemade stock there on the counter. I love that we're taking the time to do this, using up the bits that we would have just thrown out years ago, to make something so tasty and healthy and free from all the additives I'd love to be able to avoid. God bless chicken stock!!

Bean has gone to sleep on the other side of Bear again tonight. On condition that we can change places in the night so he can still have milk... but he was almost asleep before his head touched down tonight :) Ruth has worn him out!!