Samuel Beckett once wrote about Vladimir and Estragon waiting by a tree for their esrtwhile friend, waiting and waiting for hours. You never see their friend, all your hear about are the two discussing him whilst waiting. And for a moment there, that is how Girlpants and I felt as we waited and waited for over 6 hours in the waiting room for the pediatrics ward.

We thought it would be two hours tops as we paid for parking and made our way to the ward, but one sad turkey sandwich plus yogurt proffered to the non-impressed monkey 2.5 hours later clearly told us how little we knew. After all, we hadn't even seen the nurse then to take our details.

Don't get me wrong - I have nothing but admiration for the NHS. However our GP referred us at 4pm in the afternoon and whilst we had a store of nappys, rasins and water, we clearly hadn't thought ahead to pack a small suitcase, bottles for milk, milk itself or even some of the veg that Monkey is used to eating and wouldn't turn her nose up at, let alone bringing Monkey's jimjams. Nothing had prepared us for the fact that others had been waiting hours before us. A fact that dawned on us as bath, bed and milk time rolled past as the clock looked closer to midnight.

The Godot of pediatrics is not only the Doctor on call, but the Registrar. However such were the conflicting symptons that Mini-HD portrayed, that whilst running riot around the waiting room and taking people's ankles out with the VTECH baby zimmer frame that only played one tune when it went in reverse so that each adult in the room wanted to drop kick it out of the 12th floor window

that neither the Doctor nor Registrar wanted to take a chance on sending her home. Something both Girlpants and I so desperately wanted to do. Luckily enough, at quarter to ten, Godot did arrive much to both Girlpants and my relief, but clearly not an acceptable moment for Mini-HD, especially at the sign of a rubber glove. After being prodded and poked for most of the afternoon, she was clearly overtired and had enough and therefore made it know as she "tangoed" daddy full on in the face. Our little girl is growing up so quickly...

Monkey is fine - we're to keep an eye on her but we eventually (after much begging and promising to bring her in again at 8am if needs be) were allowed to leave. By this point, our little girl was overtired, shattered and really wanted her milk. And now that she's sated, in her cot and finally settled, I would drag myself to the long dusty drinks cabinet for a Sim special strength G&T.

Only it's been so long, I do actually believe that I've forgotten where it is...

Happy birthday wifey...

Happy New Year

As Sim is a little busy with Erika, I thought I'd share a few Christmas photos...  It was a wonderful Christmas with a very happy little monkey.

Yes, that is about all the snow we had.  As you can see, her monkey (named My) still makes an appearance, but look what she got in her stocking...

Yes, it's another monkey - and guess what we called it... yes, that's right, it's called Spank ;)

I'm sure there is something else in here...

By Girlpants...

Hello everyone, yes, it's Girlpants here...  Sim is still around, but has been unable to blog as her laptop died, I finally managed to fix it for her so you should be hearing more from her in the coming weeks.

Well, the last week has not been much fun, the HD household has been a rather miserable one with me full of flu - prescribed with Tamiflu..., Sim suffering with bad cold/flu and Erika with a cold and ear infection!  But, ignoring all of this, Erika is 1 today!

Happy Birthday Erika

Rather unusually for us, our forward planning meant that Erika's birthday card appeared on CBeebies this morning - Sim was very pleased when Alex showed Erika's card :D

So our little girl is one, lots of presents although she hasn't done much playing today, hopefully we'll have more photos etc. on-line as soon as possible...

Bye for now,

Me!

I was going to write a long lenthy post about how the last few weeks have flown and how on the two occassions I had two seconds to rub together, that I did actually write something but then bloody vista kicked me out, losing everything.

But on a much more important matter, I've rearranged the kitchen with a travelcot so that mini-hd can remain in the room without roaming to pastures new, like the wine fridge or the cooker. Which means Sim the barefooted chef met with one of the dining chairs tonight and stubbed her second in middle right toe.

And God - it hurts.

It swollen to the size of my thumb and I can see the beginings of a lovely purple bruise. Although you can't really claim you have a bruise until you have at least two different colours. On a good note, I did have a moment to paint my nails so the fact that I have to slum it around in sandles all week. On a bad note, storms are predicted this week so I'm going to look like a right pleb pushing a pram in the rain in flip flops.

It's that time of year again - reality tv has hit the screens once more, and whilst the cats nuzzle up to us seeking attention after getting over their banishment and flea treatment, Britains Got Talent has hit the screens again. And once more, sweet little childen have joined the masses. And unlike the Cheeky Monkeys last year, whom I found particulary irritating, some of the child acts this year did stand out but the one act tonight who made it to the final judge decision vote broke my heart, as I knew that this terrified yet hopeful 10 year old didn't stand a chance against the impecable dance group, making me queston why young children should be allowed on such a show. And as the vote came in and the judges made their final decision, you could see her hope fade into tears as realisation kicked in.

Then a voice chimed in from the left, quoting that famous South Park episode with the heartless words

"Can you taste the tears Scott??"

Scoot forward three seconds and Girlpants realised what he said, turned to me and realising that he was going to go to hell. Both that coupled with the strong possiblilty that I was most definately going to fulfill my threat of using henna to write the word "twat" on his forehead.

On a good note, it will take about three weeks for Girlpants to scrub the offending word off his head and therefore will have to go to work with a bandana on. And on a brucey bonus note for Keith and Bart, Peter Coghlan aka Mamma Trish will be performaning as Beyonce. And if you're really lucky boys, in a leotard!