“Think it's my birthday tomorrow though can't be sure. To be sure I'd have to know what day it is today. Which I don't. #sleepdeprivation :-/ "
- www.twitter.com/slc84

I’m hoping you’ll forgive me, not only for paying you very little attention and not blogging for these past few weeks, but also for the inevitable lack of amusement or wit that I fear I will have to offer you in this blog post.

(And if this is your first visit to my little blog, you should know that normally I am obviously much funnier, wittier and generally more charming than the following ramble shall demonstrate. *Obviously. ;-) )

You see even with the addition of my brand new (very, very) smart phone, (which was an early b’day pressie from Mr. C – see, told you it was my Birthday sometime soon . . . ) I have yet to master the art of juggling my life into something a little more manageable, something that isn’t whizzing by in a haze of, erm, ‘blurriness.’

I’m not very witty at the moment, I can barely string a sentence together, my vocabulary is pants (for want of a better word,) and my brain is a little bit numb. So I ought not to waste too much of your time this evening.

My third and final Bambino, baby Mason Joshua, (or MJ as he’s known to us,) is, as you’ve probably gathered, here at last! And boy was he worth the wait. I’ve recorded you guys a little vid, by way of introducing you to the new man in my life, hope you like it! (Ignore the commentary by the way, I hadn’t realised how deranged I sound when talking to him. Lol)

His arrival was, thankfully, a very speedy one. Born here at home, on Mummy and Daddy’s bed at 1:50am on Jan 13th, Mj was a respectable 9lb 4ounces, back-to-back, and yet the labour was probably the easiest of the three. (Feel free to send medals, or shoes!) The whole experience of homebirth was everything that I’d hoped for, and much more! But I won’t rave about it today, (primarily because I’m typing this entry with a teeny-tiny person balanced on my knee and can’t type one-handed) – perhaps I’ll cover it at a later date? Or perhaps you’ll have to get your mitts on a copy of my new book for all the gory details!

Of course in order to read my new book, (The Real Girls Guide to Growing a Baby,) I understand I shall have to actually finish writing it. (I don’t know who’s idea it was to write a book and grow a baby at the same time, but clearly it hasn’t gone quite to plan.) So I’m being sensible. I’m taking a little official Maternity Leave, but I shall crack straight on again in a few weeks. I’ll make the deadline. I promise.

Juggling three children, too many animals, a small business and the biggest writing project I’ve ever attempted, is no easy task, so I’m discovering. Especially when one of my babies has been knocked sideways by a bug from hell. Poor Leo, I’d never seen him look so rough; pale, skinny, dark circles under his eyes. He was unable to keep anything down, nothing at all, and subsequently several trips and overnight stays in the Childrens Ward were made last week.

It’s heartbreaking to see children poorly, but thankfully he’s fine now, our cheeky charmer. He’s back toddling around the house, chattering away in his own little language and helping himself to all the food in the fridge whenever he feels inclined. God I love him. I love them all.

Lorelei goes to theatre school now every Saturday, and she loves it! She returns with new songs to add to her repertoire of tunes that she currently belts out at the crack of dawn for all to hear, (until I yell at her and ask her to sing elsewhere,) and she struts around in high heels (that’s my girl) and various home-made costumes, speaking in an American accent and saying things like, ‘Come on Leo, teeth-brushed, bot-bot and bed. Because that is how we roll.’

I think she’s destined for stardom. That’s where she appears to be heading anyway. Either way she always shines in her Mumma’s eyes. J

So it would seem, what with Jays ambition to become a TV presenter, (is 30 too early to experience a mid-life crisis?! Haha!) that I’m the only one in this household that isn’t destined for fame. And that’s fine by me. Except that it might be a little late to suddenly declare myself the shy and retiring wall-flower-type.

I just saw an ad for our TV show and nearly wet myself. I’d sort of forgotten we were going to be on the telly. Until I just sat getting my Fairy Gok Mother Fix, as I do every Tuesday, and suddenly saw a whole bunch of people I recognise, in HD on our tv in our living room. Oh god.

The series starts next week on Channel4. That means that next week people will be able to add it to their Sky+ planners if they wish. And they’ll be able to series link it. And then people, all sorts of people, will be able to watch it. And people that I don’t even know will probably see me cry on telly. Bugger. It’s going to be like that scene from Bridget Jones, when she slides down that Fireman’s pole and knocks the cameraman out with her arse. Oh the shame.

Of course our episode isn’t on for a few weeks yet, and it’s the only one I don’t want to watch. I’ll definitely tune-in to see the experiences of our fellow contestants, we made some wonderful friends of both the other families and the villagers of Grassington, so I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces on our screens. Yet when it comes to our own episode I’m not so keen. In fact I’d quite like to forbid family and friends from watching it, to save us from the embarrassment. Alas I know they won’t pay any attention. Naughty bunch that they all are.

Instead Jay and I have decided to throw a little Premiere party and invite a bunch of our nearest and dearest over to watch the show with us. That way, we figured, they won’t be able to poke fun at us behind our backs, and we can get the whole ordeal over and done with nice and quickly, like pulling off a plaster.

I’d love to tell you that I’ll write again before the show airs, but that’s probably not true. Not unless I receive a maid for my birthday or something. I’m just not able to find the time at the mo. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you, sweet blog.

Please do keep in touch with me though. I’m a twit. That is I am a Twitterer. You know, I tweet and stuff. So you can follow me if you like? (Go on! I’ll tweet funny stuff, i promise!) and of course you can catch me on Facebook too!

I’ll be 27 by the time I blog next. So expect very mature stuff in the future ;-) Haha or perhaps not :-/

Love and best wishes to all,

Steph x

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Never mind airing my own dirty laundry, what I really wanna do is tell you all about my best friend and her sagas. Seriously Katy's life is so much more exciting than mine. Hers is a never-ending twisting tale of woven plots, peppered with more characters then Eastenders, it would make a fabulous novel which one day I shall pen, but until then, despite receiving permission to use her life as blogging material, from Katy herself, (when she's drunk, which is probably about 70% of the time) I am keeping schtum and proving myself a loyal friend with very good secret-keeping skills.




Besides which I am saving the dirt for future blackmailing ammunition, should I ever require it :-) (Hear that Kate? You really should buy me more presents to keep me quiet ;-) lol)




It's odd really, how very different our lives now are. It used to be that I was the troublesome one and Katy the sensible friend, forever coming to my rescue and bailing me out and always on hand with good advice, (which of course I would never listen to.) Oh how the tables have turned.




I've married and had babies and learnt how to be a home-maker (lol Not that I actually 'made' our house, but, you know what I mean . . . ) and Kate has gone travelling, joined a women's football team and learnt how to drink any respectable man under the table. (Meaning she has learnt until she has, herself, fallen under the table. Literally.)




Yep, she's a bit of a wild-child is my best friend, alas so long as she is happy then so am I.




Despite speaking almost everyday on the phone, I don't get to see Katy that often these days, in fact I don't get to see many of my friends since we moved 'up north.' (technically we live in the Midlands but anywhere north of the Thames is classed to most of my London and Surrey buds as North.)




My social interactions lately have been conducted mostly via the wonders of Facebook and the World Wide Web and thus have been, 'virtual.' - (i.e. We've drunk virtual champagne – (and gotten virtually drunk) have virtually poked each other (Oh god I hope you know what i'm on about or i'll sound like a right odd-ball) and we've commented on each others status' and it's got to the point now where I spend such a lot of time socialising on Facebook that I 'think' in status' now . . . ('Stephanie is walking up the stairs,' 'Stephanie is switching on the bathroom light, 'Stephanie is running a bath . . . ') - Does that make any sense? I think i am slightly insane. Or should that be? 'Stephanie thinks she is slightly insane.'?! Lol




I love the net, for many reasons, not just because you can chat to ex boyfriends about how fabulous your life is now, whilst you sit in your spotty pyjama's with greasy hair and not a scrap of make-up on, (not that i do this of course, honestly Jay darling i don't lol) but also because it requires very little effort. Yet I don't want to be idle and lazy. And now that I can wear my heels again i owe it to them to get out and about once again in the real world.




So i've been on a mission to meet some new people and make a few new friends in the area. Specifically a few pals who, like me, spend their days watching Peppa Pig, changing nappies and wiping snotty noses. And where better to look than the Bumps and Babes session down in the town?




Bumps and Babes, contrary to what my friend Corny expected, is in fact a mother and baby session, aimed at pregnant women and mummies of babies, (Pretty self explanatory unless you're a young man with a one-track mind and thus imagine that the 'Bumps' part probably indicates boobs and the 'babes' part means sexy women.)




Sure there are breasts on display, (behind the heads of hungry babies, so not exactly sexy) and of course there are yummy mummyies there too, but the group mainly exists so that we Mummies can form new friendships.




Except making friends isn't that easy when you're grown up. Not unless you're drunk. And they don't allow drinking at Bumps and Babes, (actually I don't know whether that's true or not, perhaps i will ask next week?) - Making friends is especially not easy when you're ordinarily a shy gal, (what do you mean 'Bollocks?' it's true! I am! Lol) So considering it's now Summer holidays I decided to take my lovely Lori with me today to show me how it's done.




At five years old my Lori has very little inhibitions. Almost the minute we walked through the door she was peeling her layers off (rain mac, cardigan etc) and yanking off her wellies before chucking it all in a heap on my lap. And then she was off. Constructing a tower out of soft cushions, dressing up as a fairy in the dress-up area and then riding around like a lunatic on a little car meant for a two year old.




Within about 5 minutes she had shacked up with a little blonde-haired boy. Whom she made friends with by sticking her little face close to his, her eyes twinkling with excitement, and giggling, 'Chase me!' before setting off in the opposite direction.




I eyed the room as I settled down on a chair with the baby. I spotted the only man in the room and toyed with using Lorelei's friend-making tactic but concluded that the man's wife might not have been at all impressed by my gesture.




We spoke to a few of the other Mums, Leo and I. (I say, 'we' because I'm ashamed to admit to being one of those people who constantly refers to her baby as though he is involved in the conversation, 'Oh we've been there too, haven't we Leo?' lol (baby, meanwhile sleeps peacefully on my shoulder, oblivious to the conversation he's participating in.) - We also had a cup of coffee and a bottle. And then we said goodbye at the end of the session and headed out in the pissing rain to trek on over to ASDA's.




Oh yes. I am quite the social butterfly with engagements that Paris Hilton herself would be envious of ;-)




We're going again next week and I'm full of optimism. There are plenty of new friends to be had, we just gotta keep at it :-) (And if all else fails I will sneak some vodka into my handbag for next time! Haha, Just kidding!)




Love to all





Steph x `

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Virtual Insanity 16/05/2009
 

Warning: The following blog has been posted by a nutty woman with barely a brain cell in her vacant mind. The content of this post therefore could very meaningless indeed.

My social life is currently being conducted in a very 21st century manner. That is to say virtually all social interactions i am having lately have been via the wonderful world of the world wide web. My fingers are officially doing the talking and my brain is feeling a little numb today. I am so uber modern and chic ;-)

I've always been a Net junkie, (confession: I am secretly a bit of a geek too, don't be fooled by the rocks that I got - cos this diva even knows a little HTML - shocker! lol) - I usually begin my day with a cuppa (two Weetabix smothered in way too much sugar - accompanies my this whilst I am pregnant and trying to combat Morning Sickness,) and Facebook is officially my homepage and therefore the first port of call as soon as I fire up my trusty laptop in the mornings.

Lately as well as FB (and of courseTwitter, which is still fairly new to me but highly addictive nevertheless) I am also a big fan and a regular virtual visitor of a pregnancy and parenting website Babycentre.

Ordinarily I love my trips to Babycentre - they tell me all about my bod and baby and the homepage is customised to match my specific stage of pregnancy, and furthermore there is an enormous community of ladies to chat to, all of whom are expecting their bubba's in the same month as me!

It used to be that BC was a haven of serenity whereby one can ask questions on all manner of subjects and will recieve lots of advice and words of wisdom from others. We discuss highly important subjects, such as what we've had for breakfast and what we're going to have for tea and in the middle of the night, when we're up with heartburn, braxton hicks contractions or mad cravings for cheese there is always someone else online ready to offer sympathy, advice, virtual hugs or just plenty of "rotflmao"'s.

But that was then. Now it seems BC has been transported right smack bang to the middle of the set of the Jeremy Kyle show.

It's so complicated, and so frustrating. And I'm sure I don't know exactly how it all kicked off, not every single fact or anything but I do know that lots and lots of us have become victims of bitches on power trips and I'm not happy about it.

We had a troll a few weeks back, not a lovely little cute troll with whippy hair and a wrinkly face (although this description could be quite apt, i'm not entirely sure) but a mean Cyber Troll. - 'She' (or 'he' or 'it' - again cannot be sure) began posting horrible messages that left many of us vulnerable and hormonal women feeling devestated, worried, anxious and powerless - posts about how she 'was suicidal,' and 'had taken lots of pills to kill herself and her baby,' etc - I read lots of them, i genuinely believed they were true, (I was quite innocent to the crimes of Cyber Trolls) and I got quite upset by all that i read, as most of the other ladies did.

When it became apparent that we were victims of a lying freak and we tried to complain to the BC authorities we were pretty much ignored. So some of us posters decided to warn other members by subtly pointing the troll out and suddenly all hell broke loose.

The moderators and admins in control of the boards on BC decided that 'Freedom of Speech,' should be a thing of the past and they began to closely monitor everything that we were discussing. If any of us dared to mention the troll our posts were automatically deleted, without any reasons or explanations at all. Later journal posts were deleted, this of course provoked a strong reaction from us hormonal (and therefore occasinally nutty - i'm speaking for myself here) mummies-to-be - as it became apparent that we're not allowed to share our opinions on being lied to by a troll, or indeed being governed by a power-happy admin. We were allowed to discuss nipples, nappies and water works, but mention being disgruntled by missing posts or journal entires and you run the risk of having all conversations erased.

People began to wonder what was going on, but nobody could tell them, not unless you typed in some kind of code and just hoped they'd be able to translate before the admin team, and when people starting to defend each others posts, (i.e question why a post had been deleted) the admins and moderators began to get even bigger for their cyber boots and progressed to deleting peoples entire profiles. You are an opinionated link. Goodbye.

We, rebellious (and by 'rebellious' i simply mean with minds of our own,) ladies have been discussing these actions in our secret FB group where a very nasty message from one of these admins, (in which she states how 'scared she is by the thought that we will all soon be responsible for new life . . . ') was published for all to see. I bought it to the attention of the other ladies on BC and for that I sneakily suspect my own profile will be amongst those on the banned list.

Why I am allowing myself to be so frustrated by something happening in a virtual world is beyond me, yet I have been following the antics today with such intensity I feel as though I have been in court on the jury of a murder case or something.

I'm so tense and pent up with stress that my shoulders have gone stiff and my finger hurt from such violent typing, (I type very loudly and incredibly fast when I'm pissed off) -  I'm definitely in need of a massage, will need to work on powers of persuasion and bat my eye lashes later at the boy ;-)

You made it this far and for that i salute you! I shall also put you out of your misery by stating that I'm done ranting now. And breath. ;-)

I love you for listening!

Steph x

(Nutty and hormonal - yet fabulous neverthless!)

 



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