Classic Oliver Quotes

I don't like you Mama. I love Dada.
Oliver on his current affections...

Nonna: Oliver would you like squares or fingers?
(on offering him toast in the morning)
Oliver: Circles.

WE SURVIVED!

Oliver, Pip, Vicky, Hal and I all returned from a trip to Ikea intact and only a little frazzled. Are you amazed?! We are. Please also bear in mind that we went to the new Southampton store that had only been open a couple of weeks and was therefore rammed with all the good southern shore folks who'd never seen the blue and yellow confusing circular store at close range before.

We managed to cheekily bypass the enormous queue to the car park, only to find that navigating the store with two adults, three children, two buggies, food for everyone, nappies for most, and uncontrollable, squeaking trolleys was 'challenging'. And we hadn't even started shopping yet.

Pip wrestling with the trolleys.

Still we got what we went for and for some reason I had to prove a point - to who I'm not sure - by then building the shelves when we got home. The kids didn't get fed until gone 6 and I was too knackered to actually do anything that evening aside from collapse into bed at just gone 9pm.

But just look at the organisational magnificence that stills my beating heart whenever I go into the lounge...

One, two, three: Ahhhh.....

One very tired bunny....

Oliver is very tired little man these days.

He is suffering from a) nightmares - anything from trees falling on tractors to getting strapped in his car seat - b) being a wriggler so he wriggles his way out from under the duvet to get cold in his arctic room and c) insisting that he can only sleep when it's dark outside (boy, are we going to buggered when the sun doesn't set until gone 9pm and is up at 4.30am). I think he is also having a growth spurt and between all of the above, and a very full schedule, we are heading into dark waters.

Today he got up at 6am after going to sleep at 8pm, thus losing 2 hours of usual sleep. Uh oh. We had a tantrum over socks before breakfast, a tantrum over not taking a toy to school, a tantrum over how I dared to take a bite of his fishcake when he'd asked me to test how hot it was. You get the picture.

The piece de resistance, however, was on leaving school when I chucked a half eaten apple from his lunchbox into a field that he'd just refused. The world ended. He screamed blue murder the entire way home: the first half of the journey we had to go back to school to retreive the apple from the ditch, the second half was him begging to be taken back to Tigglets so he could stay the night. No manner of persuading from either Jeff or myself (yes, he was still banging on about the apple when Jeff got home at 7ish) would convince himself that the other children had gone home - he saw them all leave - and the teachers didn't live at school. When he finally begrudingly acknowledged that Mrs Head might live elsewhere, he still said he would be happy to sit in a dark, cold, empty school, just to prove a point.

The House of Pox

This week we've been out of action due to a very, very mild case of chicken pox.

Surprisingly, it was Oliver who succumbed. This will teach us to be smug about the vaccination schedule here being worse than in Australia. According to the doc there are different strains of pox which might explain the disappointing. Or we could just blame weak genes. Jeff's obviously.

Whether the mild case is due to the vaccine we're not sure, but Oliver didn't seem bothered about it, and was more upset that he couldn't go to school this week. He insisted that he wasn't sick and couldn't understand why I didn't give him medicine to "make me better" so he could see Ted.

Just waiting for Pip to get it now. Knowing Pip, it'll be the full-blown version. Still, the spots might cover up the vast bumps and bruises he's accumulating on a frighteningly regular basis.