Urgh I have a cold, and I’m not happy about it! They just annoy me so much, I hate having to blow my nose every 5 minutes, I hate that my nose goes all red and I hate that I’m sneezing six thousand times an hour. Although it is very cute to hear ‘bless you’ six thousand times an hour from your toddler. However, earlier today I offended her by putting her in her cot for 10 minutes while I had a shower and she was so annoyed that when I sneezed from the bathroom I heard ‘no bless you’ shouted down the landing!

Talking about noses, we just had our first ‘item up the nose’ incident just before bathtime. Polly had her finger up her nose (not an uncommon thing) but something about her cheeky look made me look closer. Good job I did. I’m still not quite sure what she’d stuck up there- it looked like a bit of potato but I’m not sure how she got hold of it as we had them for tea last night and I’d supposedly hoovered the house since then. Luckily she blew it out but I’m thinking I might have to check more regularly now in case she does it again!

Tonight for tea we didn’t have potato, we had one of my pastry fridge surprises. I basically chuck some of the fridge contents onto a sheet of puff pastry and trick the toddler into eating tomatoes as she apparently doesn’t like them anymore. Although she did throw a chunk at the cat who apparently likes avocado…

I’ve also found it’s a good meal for Polly to get involved in making. She loves sitting on the side stealing the cheese and flicking tomato purée at me.

We had great fun last week with a trip to the zoo up at Bristol. It was all flat (perfect for little people and a mummy whose been eating too much chocolate on mat leave so cries a little at walking up hills) and there was plenty there to keep us all entertained. Polly quite liked seeing the ‘dinosaurs’- big lizards and ‘cows’- pretty much anything else that moved. Might need to get the animal books out at home again.

Last week we also had a funny moment during our weekly visit to Henry’s Nanny & Pops’ on Tuesday. Polly was finishing up her lunch when Pops arrived home and she gave him a cheerful greeting of “hello Pops!” He then replied “alright my darling” and of course our little parrot replied straight back with “alright darling”! Since then she’s being saying it several times a day mainly to the cat.

Although today did have a couple of nice moments including this walk back from town where I caught Henry looking like the pack-horse I normally impersonate

The picture is slightly blurred as I was jokingly running away as I felt so liberated with no child strapped to me or hanging off me!

Sadly though we were walking back from my ‘back to work’ chat which I knew was coming but wasn’t looking forward to. It just makes it a bit more real when you pencil it in on your own calendar. I mean I haven’t cried about it today but I have just under 5 weeks for plenty of waterworks as I feel so sorry for myself about it. I’m just not quite ready yet. Neither is Seb. Neither is Henry- no matter how much he tells me he is! But we will all just have to suck it up and get on with it as that’s the decision we’ve made. It’ll be alright when the day actually comes but that doesn’t mean I can’t get a bit emotional about it before it does- so apologies in advance to all who get the blubbering mess, and thank you to the someone who’ll be putting up with my grumpy arse at work who made the meeting a lot better by making me a hot chocolate!