Hello my little possums. How are we all? One at a time please……. that’s better. In answer: J: the cream will clear that up. F: never mind, there’s always next time and S: well what to you expect if you do it twice a night! Any more problems, feel free to email me – the Doctor is always IN J

This week has gone by in a blur yet again. If we moved to OZ for a quiet life, we woz robbed and want our money back as so far, it ain’t happening! Sam and Darcie went back to school on Tuesday and Adam went into daycare. He cried (as was to be expected). I don’t know if it was through missing me, or his mates of the train variety…. He can now tell you which train is which, by name. His favourite is Toby, but he also knows Thomas, Gordon, Percy, Henry and James by sight and squeals with delight when Thomas comes on the TV. They’ve got a ‘Day out with Thomas’ at a local train line in May and we’re taking Addy along. I think he may burst a blood vessel with excitement though, so he will have to be closely monitored throughout the day. If his excitement level exceeds fever pitch, I may need to sit him in a quiet place with a drink and a brown paper bag to breathe into, just to get his thrill levels down to a manageable state. He upset Sam last week when his Hornby magazine arrived by grabbing it from him and carrying it round the house – showing everyone and anyone who’d look the ‘twains’. Sam wasn’t impressed. He always likes the ‘send us a picture of your model railway’ page and was less than chuffed when he realised Adam had folded the pages. He likes to keep his back issues pristine! OCD in the making if ever there was!

Darcie went to play with her NBF (new best friend) Amy after school and they have plotted sleep overs and days out together at the weekend. Resistance is futile, they are like the Gestapo. They wear you down. Sooner or later, we will give in to them for a quiet life. This they know. It is our weakness. They work like this: It is 9pm. We are sat in front of the TV with a glass of wine zombie-like with exhaustion after the 20th time of putting them to bed. They creep up to us whilst we are engrossed in ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (which I don’t know why we watch anyway, because we can’t tell who’s the star and who’s the ‘professional’ dancer!), and whisper in a voice so quiet that it can only be heard with a laboratory strength microphone ‘is it OK if my friend comes for a sleep over on Saturday’. You naturally grunt ‘whatever – just PLEASE go to bed!’ which then they see as victory as you didn’t say no! I don’t know who teaches them this technique. I blame Tony Blair As this is probably the tactic he uses to get his policies through Parliament.

Sam has a NBF also (of the female persuasion!). He has been round to her house, got me to speak with her Mum on the phone and he has invited her round on Sunday to ‘play’. They are SO grown up and sensible, it’s fab. Sam came home with her phone number from school, phoned her up and she invited him round to hers. The next day, she phoned here and that’s when they arranged to meet up on Sunday. I won’t say too much as Sam will get embarrassed. Of course, Paul and I didn’t help this by pinning him down and singing ‘Puppy Love’ to him four times in a row. I was up until midnight yesterday, sorting out all of his embarrassing naked baby photos to show her when she comes over. I’ll teach you for embarrassing me in Tesco’s for all those years mate!!

Sunday update: Sam woke me with coffee and toast this morning and asked when he could phone his friend. I said that seeing as it was Sunday, he should probably wait until at least eleven. He said OK and then set the oven timer for an hour, so he’d know when it was time to phone!! Sam rang her and she said she’d come over at 12 – then Sam panicked that he didn’t give her our address! I’ll give her til 1, then I’ll phone her back; just in case. As it was, she phoned at 12.45 to say could Sam come and get her as she didn’t know which house we lived in. Before you could say ’no worries’, Sam had his bike out of the garage, cycle helmet on and was racing round the corner. They had a good time and went to the shops to get some lollies (sweets). They went out on their bikes, and when it was time for her to go home at 4, Sam rode home with her. Don’t you think that’s just SSSOOO grown up – for 8 year olds! I’m very proud of him. He’s told her Mum and Dad to come over and meet us for a glass of wine next weekend and he’s looking forward to introducing us all.

Oh, the funny thing is that Sams friend’s Dad works for Dentaway. Sam apparently asked him if he could have a look at his Nanny’s car as that’s got more dents that paintwork! Gotta love ‘em!

I’m already starting to realise what it will be like when Sam and Adam get girlfriends - no doubt Sam will spend more time with her family than he does with us. I know it’s silly, but I felt really sad about it in the week when he was at her house for an hour or so. Paul just said, ‘get used to it – that’s what it’s like for the mother of boys!’ I could have cried! I shall insist Adam is gay and never leaves home. He must have all his friends over to our house, where they can advise me on hair, make up and dress sense (gay men are good at that!). Sam’s got his NBF, Darcie’s got her boyfriend at school and Adam loves trains! There you go – problem solved! I think I’ll go out this week and buy him an anorak. It is getting chilly and they’re very practical.

We really need to get our fingers out with the house now as we are due for pre-start and have a date through of 23rd May. We’ve got an appointment with the interior designer who works for the builders next week (who says you can’t buy taste?). So hopefully she tell us what goes and what doesn’t. We went looking at kitchen appliances and tiles today. We want the whole of our bathroom tiled in an ‘expensive hotel’ polished porcelain look. We saw some lovely tiles, but when the lady gave us the price, we nearly keeled over. I only wanted to have some tiles laid in the bathroom – not pay off the National Debt of Papua New Guinea!! So we shall have to meet a compromise of form and function / taste and budget. It’s very easy for the budget to gallop out of control. A few grand here, couple of grand there, and before you know it, you’ve got the most expensive bathroom in the Southern Hemisphere. It all starts to become a blur after a while and you end up obsessing over the ‘right’ shade of beige! As the Ozzies say – ‘build a bridge……get over it!’ Once the flooring’s down, no-one will give a toss whether it’s from the ‘economy’, ‘budget’ or ‘FO expensive’ range. I’m sure it will all come together. I spent all morning Friday cutting pictures out of magazines of things that I like to give the Interior Designer an idea of my taste. Paul came in after two hours and berated me for my pictures of George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan and informed me that I was supposed to be collecting pictures of interiors we liked for the house. I had obviously misunderstood the brief!

We’ve got to get quotes for the air conditioning this week which will be expensive. We have to be able to tell the builders where the outlets need to go, so this is an urgent job. We are going for reverse cycle aircon, which also heats in the winter and heaven knows, we need that – it gets VERY cold here in the evenings. So much to do…….

Business is picking up slowly. Lots of enquiries, but most of them are over East which is a bit of a bummer. The radio ads start running this week, although they say they take four or five times of listening before the brain is actually triggered into acting on them (although this is Australia, so four or five may well be in the hundreds….. we shall have to see!). Our ads appeared in The West Australian last week and we had a few phone calls (admittedly less than we would have liked), but again, they say you have to allow for three of four editions.

Follow the link to hear the radio ads for yourselves.

As I write, Darcie’s first wobbly tooth is holding on for grim death! It has already turned grey, so I know it’s only the tiniest bit of gum that is holding it in. However she is torn between the pain of letting me pull it out and the fear of swallowing it and having to put the Tooth Fairy through the torment of searching through her excrement! I’m sure in the next 24 hours it will be out. I just hope she doesn’t swallow it – she’ll be SO disappointed at having nothing to put under her pillow. Knowing her she model a replacement from a piece of cotton wool, or write a long winded letter explaining what happened and why she still deserves the money!

I haven’t told Adam yet that he’s in daycare for the whole day on Tuesday whilst we go to see the designer. I’ll have to bribe him with something! On his second morning at childcare this week, he knew by my route that we weren’t going home and five minutes from the school, he started sobbing and shouting, ‘NO! DADDY! HOME! NOW!’ I tell you, he is not daft. He’s got a better sense of direction that my Mum! He did manage to give the young girl a wave goodbye when I picked him up on Wednesday – although if you looked closely, I think it was with his index and second finger extended in a V shape.

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