Chickens in a box

Today Will, James and I went down the road for our induction into Bright Sparks pre-school. I registered William when he was only 6 months old in a sudden fit of organisation and now we have a place for April (if we want it). Will was absolutely amazing, playing with the other children, singing, dancing and when everyone else obediently sat on a big red mat for assembly, William perched himself on the head teacher's chair! Talk about maternal pride, I had a lump in my throat just watching him, so independent, confident and sociable. Then to top it all off, he asked to go to the loo in front of all the other children and off we went. It was the icing on the cake for a would-be Yummy Mummy :)

A busy time all round with my first baking lesson with Sonya taking place on Good Friday where I finally managed to produce a cake that didn't look like a frisbee - and a Simnel Cake at that. Hurrah! I KNEW my latent Hellings Baking Genes must be in there somewhere. Headed off to the Carnavon for a celebratory lunch with everyone and William surpassed himself; sitting at the head of the table holding court (as usual), the waiter came up to take his order and Will immediately came out with "Want fish and chips. And ketchup. And applejuice, please." Much taken aback the minion scribbled it down amd moved on swiftly. That's my boy. Then it was off to Sussex to see the family, and eat and drink as much as possible. Marvellous :)

Rabbit's unquestioned authority as Supreme High Being has finally been challenged, by 'Duck' no less. It all kicked off in the bath when Will refused, as usual, to share any of his bath toys with James, preferring instead to lob them as far out of the bath and across the floor as possible. To placate a squeaking James, I got him a supposedly neutral plastic yellow duck to gnaw on as an alternative which immediately enraged William even further. In an attempt to calm things down, I gave Will a big duck (as opposed to James' small one) to play with, and he refused to be separated from the creature for the rest of the night, even taking it to bed. Poor Rabbit. It was only allowed back into bed after Willliam's 3rd trip to the potty (his latest ruse to avoid bedtime), during which time he accidentally dropped Duck into the bath and was forced, extremely reluctantly, to leave it there. Rabbit Rules!

During a particularly horrific tantrum in Egypt, Eddie and I decided to attempt the Super Nanny solution to all 'un'ceptable behaviour' and sent Will to The Corner. It had the desired effect at the time, but the repercussions have been that both Eddie, myself and anyone else deemed 'naughty' by William, will also be routinely frogmarched to The Corner. 'Stand in The Corner Daddy!' is frequently barked out, accompanied by fully extended lower lip and finger pointing to The Corner in question, lest there be any misunderstanding as to what is required of the wrongdoer. I'm not sure this was quite what Super Nanny had in mind....

The day I don't have to clear up some unGodly secretion from one or other of my offspring will be a happy one. Between William's potty training and James' weaning it's total carnage. Last night William surpassed himself by appearing in the bedroom doorway sans nappy and announced that he'd 'done a poo in the bed'. We rushed next door to find he'd put his nappy and trousers in his chest of drawers before getting back into bed and basically smearing everything in range with excrement. Marvellous. So much for my chill-out in the bath. It took about half an hour to shower Will, scrape every stained bit of fabric from his room and replace it. 5 minutes later a caterpillar-esque William emerged from the base of his bedroom door plaintively crying 'Rabbit, My Rabbit.' Rabbit had been left on the toy box amidst the pandemonium. Reunited, peace followed. Positives? Well you've got to give him credit for trying, and because he had to sleep in his bag...