Photo Time!!!

So the time has come again for the travelling con merchants A.K.A Pixi foto to travel along to my local boots and entice me with their lovely looking perfect children adverts.  I can always hope that my kid’s photos will look like that, but sadly they look more like garbage pail kids by the time I’ve wrangled them into the basket or flower pot that the clueless photographer wants them to pose in.

I didnt actually realise the photo people were there until I was calmly sipping my costa letting Ryan run wild and the baby chomp on a chocolate muffin just for some peace.  Now I’ve seen the photo people I instantly want some photos, the normal sensible voice in my head was reasoning with me, that I never like the photos, Lexi-Nicole looks like shes been dragged through a hedge backwards, and they always make her look ginger.  I have nothing against ginger hair at all but Lexi isnt ginger shes blonde and brown.  The reasoning in my head stops and I come to and find myself standing first in the queue waiting for the girl to come back off of her break.  How sad and desperate do I look being first in the queue.

Up until this point Lexi-Nicole had been an angel, she had had a sleep and was happy and smiley, Ryan however was being a hell child.  I am just about to put Lexi on to the stage thingy when she errupts in this vile screaming  and pulling of her pig tails.  I laugh this off and the photographer looks nervous.  I plonk her down regardless and she manages to smile, I catch sight of one of the photos and realise that one of her pigtails isnt straight, I cant leave it I have to have straight equal ones otherwise it will bug me for the rest of my life and I will have to stop looking at the photos because of it.

Now a queue is forming of competitive mothers with their kids dressed in their sunday best and have beautiful hair.  Lexi now looks like an advert for the NSPCC, her hair is a mess, she has teething spots on her chin and a lovely green nose, cue baby wipes, I’m doing the best I can with the baby wipes but lets face it they cant perform miracles.

The stage is set for Lexi’s next pose and she seems ok and other mothers are looking at her and saying shes cute and I am so desperate to have a nice photo.  I sit her down and all seems to be going well, when all of a sudden she does a back flip off of the stage thingy and lands in a heap on the floor, oops im sure I was holding her tightly enough, the onlookers gasp and I grin Basil Fawlty style and pick her up and she seems to be ok.  My cheeks are burning and the pressure is mounting and I resort to making ridiculous noises and playing very silly games like the photographer just to get her to actually look at the camera, I look like a complete twit.  Ryan is screeching in the buggy because he’s seen a toy that he wants to play with, despite having it at home. My soon to be 12 year old huffer puffer son just stands there playing on my phone and huffing with embarrassment.

The photographer them puts some headphones on Lexi and I have to bite my lip not to screech at her about the pigtails, they are off centre and not aligned at all.  I have to let it go because the witch is actually smiling and we have a nice ish picture- I don’t really like photos with props in them but im prepared to let it go.  Then the photographer produces the basket, I know for a fact Lexi is not going to sit in it but I will give it a try.  I put her in it and she starts screaming and trying to climb out of it, I start singing row row the boat and I am half tempted to start shaking the basket, for effect of course, but manage to refrain.  The photographer is pulling out all the stops getting toys and teddies out but Lexi is not impressed, she is really going for it now and screeching like a witch.  The photographer tries one more time and just as she is about to press the button Lexi literally throws herslef out of the basket like some one jumping ship and the photopher gets a lovely picture of her bum and legs, just like her mother and oh definately one for the mantle piece.  I hastily throw her into the buggy along side her wild brother grab my paperwork and vaguely listening to the prices before making a hasty retreat.  I so want a private veiwing of these photos, I dont want to be humiliated in the middle of the shop floor with these photos.  You can imagine them at the developing center “oi mate come and have a look at these, you’ve got to laugh, only a photo a mother could love” oh the shame.

I would love to have a look at some of the photos though, just out of interest.  I mean some of them are gorgeous without a doubt but then there’s the ones where you actually shudder and wonder what their parents were thinking.

One last thing as I know my lovely husband reads these faithfully to make me feel better- Darling I got Lexi’s pictures done today but casually forgot to tell you until you have to pay for them 🙂 love you lots jelly tots.

Much love xx

It’s been a while!

I havent blogged in a while partly because we have been really boring and poor and not done anything, but also due to the fact that  my keyboard was on the the recieving end of a ‘top of the range’ orange squash spa day! People pay thousands for these spa treatments, Ryan does them for free.

In my blogging absence Ryan has had his birthday. I have very mixed feelings about this, the first reason is feelng a tad gutted, when people used to ask the ages of my children I used to enjoy the raised eyebrow and look of admiration when I mentioned that I had a 1 and a 2 year old aswell as an 11 year old. ‘wow 1 and 2’ they used to say ‘I dont know how you do it!’ I used to shrug them off with some ridiculous comment about something or other.  But now when I say a 1 and a 3 year old it doesnt have any effect at all, boo hoo.  My other mixed feeling is one of suprise that he has actually managed to make it to three given the things that he has ingested, (a toilet duck gel disc from the inside of the toilet, 3 ibroprufen tablets, food from the bin, my cooking), inhaled, (his latest habit  is emptying any aerosol he can) and touched (he was bitten by a monkey in a zoo, touched the hot grill that he turned on without me seeing) wow I’m a walking advert for good parenting-Not!

I do have to go briefly back to the toilet duck incident because the conversation between me and NHS direct was quite amusing, I first ring them and go through the meningitis questions even after me telling them what has actually happened.  I then get on to the issue in hand and tell her that he’s swallowed this thing and her first question was ‘what colour is it?’ what colour!!! what is she doing on the other end of the line filling out a lifestyle questionnaire on my behalf? or comparing notes on what colour she buys? Anyway I tell her that its green and she informs me that the green one is harmless and that at worse he may foam at the mouth, at this point I turn to look at Ryan who is drinking baby bath, so if he wasn’t foaming at the mouth before he certainly will now.

Ryan’s birthday passes without incident i.e. me not daring to take him out because I don’t want to end up telling him off- not on his birthday!  The following day we go to the zoo, where we are very privileged to be invited behind the scenes and are able to feed and touch animals that members of the public aren’t.  This because my sister is a zoo keeper.  I am very much looking forward to this day but am very nervous about Ryan,  I mean what if he goes on the rampage in one of the cages, or gets bitten because he is being a bit over zealous  with an animal, or has a massive tantrum and refuses to leave the cage- I’m willing to leave him in a cage but not sure the zoo keeper would cook for him in the evenings, he would be great entertainment value and may attract millions of people from overseas…oh Lord! I’m running away with myself.

We get to the zoo and are let in through a side gate which doesn’t go down well with the big queue of people that have obviously been there a while.  We look around the zoo and I make lots of ooing and ahhing noises to try and keep Ryan interested for more than a split second, I have to say the zoo is amazing.  We are then invited to feed the lemurs, very exciting until I ask the zoo keeper whether they spit or not, she is very tactful and reminds me that they are in fact llamas, oookay moving on.  I really wasn’t very sure how Ryan would take to these very excited animals and I find myself holding my breath and running through all sorts of situations in my head and wondering what  I would do.  We enter the cage and told to sit with our backs to the gathering crowds outside of the cage.  I’m sure I feel some knives sticking in my back but I can’t be sure.  The Lemurs are wonderful and prance around enthrallingly and climb on our laps like cats and are very accepting of the poking, prodding and stroking that they are being subjected to, anything for a grape, and Ryan is being amazingly good and he is feeding them how he should be.  Behind us however, people are shouting things at us, one man was asking what they felt like and one woman asked how we got in there and silly me just looked at her and said I didnt know! Of all of the things I could’ve made up, I could’ve been a russian princess that wipes my bum with 50 pound notes, I could’ve been a lottery winner, but no I’m a gormless wally that didnt know how she got into a highly protected cage!

We then go on to feed the Giraffes who were So lovely but very slow in Ryan’s eyes, they were taking too long to come over and eat our carrots and branches, so Ryan starts launching the carrots at them which suits them perfectly as they don’t have so far to walk! Another twit, who is watching us do this  shoves her unsuspecting child into our area and gives him a random twig to try and feed the Giraffe.  After a lot of polite  telling her to shove off by the keeper she finally gets the hint and claims that she is being racially abused by the zoo because she has the wrong colour skin! Good luck with that law suit love.

Ryan by this point is showing signs of strain and  fortunately for me he falls asleep in the buggy alongside his sister.  We go into to cuddle the penguins which is wonderful and I’m sort of glad Ryan was asleep because one of my imaginary scenarios was Ryan going for a dip in the penguin pool and me having to wade in to get him!  We then go and  look and hold the tarantulas and i almost turn blue due to not breathing through fear in case this spider decides to jump in my hair- well its does look like a bird’s nest so I couldn’t blame it.  I was also scared of dropping it because their abdomen is filled with fluid and it would burst open if it would drop and die- no pressure there then!  We are just leaving when I notice a door that says ‘Ops Room’, given my latest obsession with Call of Duty Black Ops I had to have my picture taken with this door, two words- sad loser.

The rest of the visit passes without incident and Ryan hasn’t caught Rabies or Mange or anything else from his wild behaviour so I consider that a success.

Apart from the usual floor mopping incidents in supermarkets I have nothing more to report, I know I’m boring.

One last thought though before I sign off, there’s the ‘Terrible Twos’ which is a great excuse for wild behaviour and the ‘Fearsome Fours’ another label to mutter at astonished memebrs of the public whle you are dragging your child away. But what’s the name for the threes? I was kind of hoping that once the clock struck 12 on his Birthday he would turn into an angel and the ‘terrible Twos’ would disappear- silly me. So what do I call his behaviour now, I could still say terrible twos and hope they dont question me. Answers on a post card or even in the comments box below please lol.

Much Love xxxx