Alive! I am here and waving (just about)

Still here. Just. Hectic is too calm a word to describe my life right now. Hanging on by a thread. We had a busy, stressful run up and then calm sweet Christmas. But illness hung in the air like fog and keeps on sweeping one of us up. Iona is in the poor little dreary spotlight for this now. Hacking cough, of which I am sure babies ought not to experience, and bursts of fever pitch crying. Wipe the world out crying where we are all so torn to shreds afterwards I know not what to do. She has been tugging at one ear and not even feeding which I suppose would make a sore ear worse, with the swallowing. Ended up in hospital with her and the dr diagnosed an ear infection. Ack. It is just pure misery to be in pain and to see such a tiny sweet little person in pain. And The man is in pain with a tooth abcess right now also. And we just de-registered Isaac from school. See what I mean about hectic? I have already sort of forgotten Christmas in the mayhem which has become life. There is a meter wide, meter high higgledy piggeldy pile of clean clothes (at least they are in fact clean, I can cling to that) right next to my bed that needs sorting and carting to rooms and draws. It is nearly midnight and children are asleep, do I feel like doing it now? The only chance I may get, hands-free, in which to do so? Or drag myself to a bathroom to clean that too? No. 11 pm is the available slot for doing. Anything. And here I am, on the laptop. And it is midnight. Because I don't like letting this place totally slide. It is a little bobbing raft of sanity which I can lash myself too. And stare up at the moon. Wolf like. Descended from which, the dog is perpetually in need of walking and someone always seems to be either walking it, just about to walk it or just home from walking it. And there it sits continually begging for more walks until I cannot bear to see it and wish it would go and walk it's self. Some days I'd like to shoot it. Kinda. Just so as I'd have one less thing 'to do'. When the baby is crying and some one is asking how to spell 'legionnaire' (I ask myself too how to spell 'involuntary dog-slaughter'). Someone else needs a drink and then in help yourself mode the glass gets knocked and smashed, and at the same time the postman arrives to find me in PJ's still and needing a parcel signed for. I ask the four year old to do it. She is good at forgery. Already. Everyone always seem to want food. And I find myself swinging a knife one handed in the kitchen while the other bobs a fractious baby. I mostly manage to chop things exceedingly well. I can in fact cook entire meals with one hand. I can fill a kettle with one hand. I can thread beads with one hand (and also floss my teeth) I cannot however do all these things at once. Which is a shame. Since they seem to all need doing at exactly the same time. Who knew life could get so mad? I could snort with laughter at my poor struggling self ten years hence with one (ONE!!!) little child. Ho ho ho! I'd boo at her in my best Father Christmas voice, 'this is as easy as it gets! Ho ho ho!' Then I'd cackle madly for quite a long time and vanish. Only I don't have time to time travel and laugh at the old me. Today I did not have time to look in the mirror which is just as well all considered, since I didn't have time to brush my hair either. A second spent glancing in the mirror may have been a second too long. A second better spent picking up one of the 280 beads my dd spread over the sitting room floor perhaps. Wouldn't want to waste that extra second of fun. And don't report me to the RSPCA you strange take-literally lone reader. I am not about to be cruel to my dog. I was just being.... funny. In a necessary sick way. And yes! Four offspring at home full time. Lets see how it goes. Poor big boy Isaac (soon to be 12) has not had a good Autumn term at his new school. From bullying and crazy random mean kids, to his belongings being ripped, to truanting (yes! he left school grounds when he was not supposed to). Then there were teachers who put off speaking to me and make me feel like some crazy over protective person for actually caring what my child experienced day to day. We both sort of had had it. And were tired of hoping that this next day, this week might be better. He has been miserable and flat and just plain not learning anything for weeks and weeks. You get to the point where you wonder why send him in? He's so unhappy he is not learning anything, he never smiles any more, he has no bounce in his step. And this was my super-bouncy-happy-go-lucky-into-everything boy. Where did he go? Who replaced him with the glum, sad, pale, tired shadow? He was up at seven and some days at the end of term in rough weather was not in until nearly 5pm. Homework on top of that too. He said it felt like prison. The bits of the school experience he liked were the actual lessons, or a few at least (one science lesson he put his hand up to explain he could not carry out his work as he is colour blind and was told to put his hand down there was no time for questions or talking - they just needed to get on with the lesson! WTF? You know?). He has really taken a shine to the piano lessons and guitar and cooking. Oh and Spanish. So we will keep these up. I am going to order curriculum in Maths and English and Science for him (and his brother while I am at it) just so that I know where to go to keep him on par with basic subject matter should he ever want to return to school (ha!). Or for my own sanity and likely home ed inspector people now we are official home edders, as opposed to the under the radar ones we have always been until now. Other stuff: Esmé and I were into a riot of craftiness pre-Christmas, cooking and baking and sewing and making stuff (with added glitter) every single day (by requested). Every time Iona would nod off to sleep in the sling we would rush to get our craft on. Results would be shown here if I ever had a minute to upload anything. I wish my dslr had a built in in wifi thing that magically uploaded photos to photobucket. Ohh.... what a nice day dream. In any case I can no longer really take photos, I have my baby in a sling, so I can either clunk her over the head with my big Nikon, or just not use it. The latter, yes. I do though take about a million photos a day on my camera phone (whoops I mean phone camera, although I am not sure I know how to make calls on it I do it so infrequently). The camera phone is magical. One because there is something known as Instagram which is like blogger and facebook combined. In an instant. In photo form. I am addicted. I can take a quick pic in a mini second with my feather light phone and shove it back in my pocket (no baby head cluncking) later (usually breastfeeding sit down pit stop I add a quirky filter and press and hey presto, it's both online/on phone and uploaded to photobucket and anywhere else online I so choose. Obviously not great quality for a blog but hey ho. I can either parent or take photos. I cannot however do both. I also cannot parent/home educate/baby mind AND keep my house 'neat and sweet' as Esmé likes to say (as in, 'lets make my room all neat and sweet'; she orders me to participate against my will to get this to happen. So every other Thursday when the boys are off all day in woodland magical Forest School (two children has never felt like such a holiday) I get my mop out and try to ignore the dog hair the rest of the time. Yes I am still obsessing over the dog hair. And said dog is due to come in to season any day now. Any day. Isn't that just thrilling. I'd have her 'done' but the vet tells me in order to make the operation less expensive she needs to weigh less (!!!). My god. So she is on rations. Although I can think of seventy five other things I 'd rather spend my money on than getting the dog's tubes tied. Like little fancy labelling stickers. Or random ebay stuff (last week I ordered borax, coloured lolly sticks, velcro sticky dots and food colouring). I bet you wish you lived such a high exciting life as this. My purchases alone could feature in some really exciting conversation. In fact if you could actually talk to me you might get sort of bored. I talk to myself quite a lot and bore myself with my incessant mind chatter, and not just in a things-I-wish-I'd-said way either. But oh, I won't tell you about that, I could probably squeeze another post from it. Or get paid and put it in My Column. Yes, I have one. Because I hardly have anything to do these days, I thought adding in another thing would be cool. It's on the last page in The Green Parent magazine. Like this I write it at 1am, squint a bit and just hope for the best. Cute non crying baby pics too will be along shortly. She is a sweet sweet angel baby when not in pain. So squishy and chubby. She stares at me so intently and with so much trust, sometimes I could weep. I want to go oh no, I may not deserve your adoration little one. Because I think these last few weeks with her crying so much, and my not knowing why I have felt pretty miserable, quite inadequate and questioning everything I have been doing with her. Wondering why I was failing her that she was so unhappy. Nothing erodes your confidence quite as quickly as a crying baby. I will have to trust though, as always that if she chooses to look at me this way then it's for a good reason. I will try and be worthy. And I also will try not to kill the dog. If you were wondering. I will try not to do that. As much as her waggy-tailed frickin walk-me persona compels me otherwise. Hopefully updates on our little life in this crazy muddy world might be more frequent. If I can make this midnight slot without falling asleep too. Miss blog land ever so much.