It feels a bit odd writing my diary post about the week before Christmas now that Christmas Day is done, but for the last week I have been enjoying quiet family time and I haven’t had the inclination to write, even at the rare times that Baby Boy has actually given me the time to.

As I mentioned last time, my mum stayed with us Sunday night until Tuesday morning. We decided that we would take Little to see Frozen 2 on Monday after nursery. She sat through it well and enjoyed it, but Baby Boy was fussy so I ended up standing at the back bouncing him. I also had to pop out to move the car, then left my phone in the car and had to go back so I missed a chunk near the end, the “punchline” of the film as it were where it all comes together. Nevermind, I’m sure we’ll get to see it again. Little was always going to enjoy it because she has been loving playing with the Frozen 2 products from shopDisney we were sent to review. 

The last few days of school before Christmas holidays are a special and busy time. We have already had the Christmas concert, Christmas fete, disco, present stall and other activities, but on the last week there were more celevrations.

On Tuesday Little had a Christmas party at nursery and M had one at her after school club. Wednesday was Christmas Jumper day and they had a special Christmas dinner. There was also a special assembly which they both got to go to and Little won a scooter! She got to go up in front of the whole school to be given it and she was very excited. Every day since she has asked to go on it, but it’s mostly been raining so it’s not happened yet.

The school try hard to make everything special for the children at this time of year, the coach they have to teach nursery PE even did the last session dressed as Father Christmas. This might not have worked as well as they expected because his normal clothes were obviously visible underneath resulting in Little coming home and declaring “Coach Kai is Santa!”. I tried to explain that Coach Kai might have been pretending to be Santa, but that he wasn’t actually the real one. 

All week I saw parents heading into school with gifts for the teachers and I felt a bit bad that we weren't, but we decided not to give them gifts this year. Little has 2 teachers, 2 teaching assistants and various other helpers, M has one main teacher and 5 or more other adults she listed which help out in various ways. Instead we gave them homemade cards. 

The last few months money has been pretty tight. I want to do nice things at Christmas, but we have had to seriously consider what we spend money on and spending money when it’s not necessary, not wanted or on items that will just get wasted has not been something I have wanted to do. 

On Wednesday morning I had a quick chat on BBC Essex. They had contacted me the day before because they were looking for a local parent to talk about food fairy tales and how parents use them to encourage children to eat eg “carrots make you see in the dark”. I was due to be on at 7.30 and thanks to Baby Boy I only got up at 7.15 so my brain possibly wasn’t as awake as would have been ideal. It went ok though.

On the way to school I briefly switched radio stations and told M “this is the one I was on earlier” (we tend to listen to music rather than the stations with more talk). M was unimpressed saying “You are always on BBC Essex” with the implication that it was pretty boring to be on a local radio station. Thanks kid.

G finished work on Wednesday for 2 weeks which has been lovely. As I haven’t been working much either we have had a chance to tidy the house etc and we have been feeling pretty organised. We have agreed that it’s basically 2 full time jobs: 1 to keep the house clean, the other to look after the children. What hope do we have normally?

As well as cleaning I did an Aldi shop on Wednesday and we finally got all the decorations up on Thursday ready for when the girls finished nursery and school. M was with us Thursday evening, but then she was away with her Dad and wouldn’t be back until Christmas Eve so I wanted it to be a special evening. We got party food for the girls and let them eat in front of the TV while they watched a film (they chose The Grinch). There was no fighting for once and we had a lovely evening. 

On Saturday morning Little’s grandparents came to collect her for a night away at their house. It’s the first time she has stayed somewhere without us and we wanted to do a trial run somewhere she was familiar with before anything else. We still had Baby Boy, but it’s strange going back to just having one child for a long period of time. I wrapped Christmas presents and we watched a couple of films during the day which we couldn’t watch with Little around and we attempted to have a relaxing evening, but Baby Boy decided to wake up every hour or so.

I’m used to spending time with just Baby Boy because that’s what I do every morning in school time, but it’s very unusual for G. He found it odd and really missed his daughter. On the Sunday we popped to the little Sainsburys near us for a couple of things, but it was pretty quiet so we ended up getting nearly all of our Christmas shop. Because it’s such a small store most people were heading elsewhere for their Christmas shopping I guess. It wasn’t planned to get everything, but the shelf life on the veg and meat was long enough so it made sense. It was also lovely that on Monday when we went to our local high street we only had to get a few things and there wasn’t the same pressure.