It seems that I acquired 3 extra bodies in my household, Another 7 year old, a 9 year old and a 5(ish) year old. None of which I am related to but were all quite at home with me and my own 7year old baking cakes and cookies ALL DAY!

I am exhausted but have enough biscuits and goodies to last a month.

Craig the eldest of the tribe at 9 and has ADHD and dyslexia. He loves the fact that unlike at his school we don’t care about he’s “difficulties/differences” however you want to put it and he joins with us with whatever we’re doing. But boy, I thought I could talk but I don’t have a patch on this kid, and some of the stuff that falls out of his mouth is hilarious, like the time he fell and broke his leg on an ant hill, and the other time he hit his head and it bled and bled till he was dead….obviously all untrue but said with such conviction.

Next there is Shannon, 7years and 9 months and the nine month makes a difference because that puts her nearly exactly 4 months and a WHOLE school year older than my Jordan. She is adorable but being bought up in a house with nothing but boys she also knows how to play the lads against each other really well. That girl is going to be a man eater when she gets older and fair play to her.

Then there is Jordan number 2. Jordan number 2 is Shannon’s little brother and he is 5 or there abouts, we actually cant figure out how old he is as every time I ask him I get a different answer!

Finally amongst all the new faces is “The Blonde Kid” or the newly christened Jordan number 1. Jordan is loving the fact that all these children have moved in near where we live and that he has a mom cool enough to let all the local waifs and strays spend the day in our house, and not only do they come and play we do cool stuff like make salt dough and bake cakes and paint stuff.

The blonde kid is also loving the fact that there is a “girl” coming to play. A real life girl who sings and dances and plays them all off against each other…

BUT she’s not his girlfriend..really she’s not!!

Did you know the Happy Mondays were called the Happy Mondays because all their giro’s used to arrive on a Monday. So that day was indeed, for them at least Happy. Bet you’re sitting there thinking “Gee thanks Steph I really needed to know that”. Well I knew it so I thought I’d share.

My Mondays on the other hand for the last two weeks at least have been a bit of a trial, In fact so have most the days in between, hence the lack of blogging activity from myself, It’s not that I’ve had nothing to write about, far from it, It’s just been a chore to find 5 mins to sit in front of the computer and collate my thoughts into any kind of order other than random!

Last week for instance it was one thing after another, the blonde kid managed to bang his face, fall off a wall, graze his leg, bump his arm, trap his finger under a rock and the most spectacular injury of the week happening on Thursday and resulted in me being called up at work to fetch him out off school he fell backwards on the school playground and cracked his head on a wall knocking himself sick in the process. I must have used up a months worth of Arnica and 3 days curing bruises and a years worth of tissues wiping away tears. Dealing with a clumsy 7 year old is enough on its own without the added issue an adjustment to my entire routine as James was bed ridden with the flu! And not man flu a runny nose and a few sneezes but full blown I’m too hot, no now I’m too cold, coughing, shivering, headachey Oh My God I think I’m going to die FLU, and I know it was genuine he went to bed and lost is appetite and trust me when my man don’t want to eat you KNOW something is wrong!

BUT then come the weekend things seemed to look up, Jordan went to his Dad’s and James although still not 100%, rallied enough to come to the Dickos 30th with me Friday night, which was lucky really as we were going as Meatloaf and Cher, it was a fancy dress karaoke not just because we felt like being “different”, And feeling much better on the Saturday to the Deciphers gig at the Jug of Ale in Moseley.

Then Monday came again and James was ill over again he went the funniest colour and was having the most chronic chest and back pains, He even went to the doctors and the emergency docs at that WHICH is unheard of so I suppose I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and not rib him for trying it on. So it looks like I’ll be spending the week caring for Mr Clarke again, I even missed swimming tonight to look after him, he should feel highly honoured!!

So not so Happy Mondays I think you’d agree. I hope he’s better for Thursday, Biffy Clyro is playing at the Wulfrun and we have tickets!!

WHOOP!!!

I’m so tired, the effort of looking after sick people for the last few days has taken its toll and now I’m fit to drop with a sniffily nose and shivers all of my own. This has nothing to do with me having caught whatever it was that infected the boys but more to do with me running around, over exerting myself looking after “the others” and a late night last night.

No I am not the worlds worst mother leaving my ill child to swan off on a night out without him, oh no, I’m way worse than that, I took him with me!! He’d stopped throwing up and seemed a lot perkier and after spending most of last week looking after James, and all weekend watching over James and Jordan we deserved a break, so I took him to his first gig!

I was 14 before my mom allowed me to see my first band “Terrorvision” at Wolverhampton Civic Hall! Actually if I’m honest my fist gig experience was 6 months earlier than that one when I took my younger sister to see “Boyzone” again at the Civic, she had won tickets and I had to be her chaperon, my mom wouldn’t let her go without me, *shudders*. I already knew I had superior tastes in music to her and trust me when I say that experience confirmed it!

ANYWAY last night, we went to the Bar Academy to see “The Deciphers” play. We knew most of the crowd and all the band so it was a safe option for the blonde kids gigging debut and oh how he enjoyed himself. He flitted around most of the people there wooing them with smiles and snapping them with his camera, whether they wanted him to or not. He enjoyed the music through the heavy duty ear plugs we’d adorned him with and sat on the bar asking every passing patron if they wanted a Jack Daniels and Coke so that he could order it for them! By the time we were ready to go home he was a very sleepy but extremely happy boy!!

I got him into bed about half past 11 and lay with him for a while asking him if he’d had fun that night, I think he did as the only response I could from him was, “The music was good, I like Steve’s band but now I can hear grasshoppers in my ears”

I knew exactly what he meant!

Today I will be mostly…

…mopping brows, cleaning up sick and supplying the ill population of my household with Calpol, Nurofen, hot/cold drinks and toast as required.

I am off work, feeling fine myself, caring for James and the blonde kid, The lurgy has hit!!

For the last few days James has been feeling under the weather, shivery and cold and then shivery but hot but all manageable with ibuprofen and plenty of loving! Last night at exactly 22:37 it struck Jordan. He appeared back downstairs after having been in bed for a couple of hours smack bang in the middle if House on channel 5.

“Mom,” *sniff* “I’ve been sick”

AND OH MY GOD HADN’T HE JUST.

It was everywhere! On his bed, under his bed, on the floor, all over his wellies, over his sheet and for the extra yucky factor on a teddy he doesn’t know about yet and I hope to get clean before he does and freaks out about it!

I am lucky and I know I am, I don’t have a child who becomes a screaming banshee at the first sight of vomit neither does he collapse in floods of tears because he thinks his world is about to end because if he continues heaving this way he will turn himself inside out! No he just tells it like it is…”I’ve been sick” and then lies wallowing in self pity, looking at you with puppy dog eyes willing you to give him all the love and attention a sick child deserves.

Unfortunately it is hard to sit cuddling him while I know that the contents of his stomach is sitting all over his bedroom, soaking into the carpet screaming to be cleaned up. BUT it is even harder talking myself into going to clean up the mess when I know the sight of it is likely to induce me to add my own touch of colour to the puce pile already all over the floor.

Once I’d prepared myself for the worse and tucked lil’ J up with the already sick big J in the living room I armed myself with rubber gloves, a bowl of warm water and a few plastic bags (see keeping all those old carriers comes in useful) I went to the task in hand. Mentally chanting “it’s only food, it’s only food” over and over in my head!

I am a terrible mother, I simply can’t clean my child’s sick without heaving my own soul up in the process!!

I was only sick once and only a very little bit and in the end. It only took me 20 minutes to clean the floor, strip the bed and such like and was back downstairs cuddling my poor little thing in no time, although I’m not sure who was comforting who as all he kept saying was “sorry”.

He was fine, I cooled him down when he got too hot and warmed him back up when he got too cold and made him sip water to rehydrate himself. Finally got him back upstairs an hour or so later where I’d made him a camp in my bedroom so he didn’t have to sleep in the vomit scented room of his own when…STRIKE 2

All over the bathroom floor…you can see where this story is going!!

I spent some more time cleaning carpets, bathroom mats and praying he’d already been as sick as he was going to be! Finally got him settled and everyone in bed some time after midnight and *touch wood* as to yet he hasn’t been sick again since!

At the moment both the invalids are both still in bed and have yet to venture further the bathroom, I on the other have been running up and down the stairs with drinks and foods. Backwards and forwards to the shop fetching medicines and juices of many varieties and looking around me with despair as how can one night of illness create this much washing!!???

But instead of worrying about I’ve taken this break in my nursing duties to spend 5 minutes with a cup of tea and to share my ordeal with you for the last 15 minutes all has been quite on the front lime with James eating toast and Jordan watch Harry Potter with no coughing shivering complaining of being too hot/cold,uncomfortable no request for well anything…

I’m hoping this lull in activities up stairs is a sign of improvement, a sign of recovery and NOT the calm before the storm!!

Sometimes I feel like a whingy whiney bitch, Complaining about my job, complaining about my bills and often (being a female) complaining just for the sake of it, but this weekend I discovered a whole new level of misery!

I spent the last three days up in Manchester in one or two bars, the cinema and sporadically in the group of neurotic, high earning, over ambitious, singletons. Now THEY can complain!!

They complain about being single but then claim they couldn’t possibly go out with someone who earns less than themselves. They complain about stress at work and then proceed to tell you about the nth holiday they have booked for this year for the “Costa Del Wherever”. They complain about their jobs and then tell you how it is company policy to travel first class whenever they need to travel.

It started to grate pretty quickly.

After listening for a good few hours to them complaining about how good they had I started to feel like shit! No I don’t have a 6 figure salary and I don’t have any aspirations of work myself into an early grave to get one either. Hell when you look at my basic earnings I don’t even have a 5 figure salary yet and by god I wished all I had to worry about was where to book my next holiday or how much is it really necessary to pay to get your hair cut! I don’t jet around the world on my holidays with friends every couple of months and I am exactly the under-achiever that they describe as not being a suitable person for them to hook up with!

I started to feel really REALLY bad about myself, about who I am. I started to look back at what I always considered to be achievements and putting them into their perspective and then they look like not achievements at all, just me being under ambitious! I started to really analyze myself and I came up seriously lacking, but then in turn I started analyzing those around me and I came to the conclusion that for all the money and talk I really am better off already!

I don’t have the worlds greatest income, and I don’t thing it will be making any drastic improvements any time soon , But then again I don’t have the 10 hour working days and nothing but the bottom of an empty bottle to keep me company at the end of it. I don’t live out of a suitcase, I have a stable loving family and environment to go home to with realistic dreams about what I want not idealistic unobtainable fantasies.

So I left Manchester and the high flying socialites to their drinks holidays and microwave meals for one content that I was going back to a daily grind of minimum wage slavery. Knowing that although I don’t earn as much as I’d like or anywhere near as much as they think I should I already have a life so much more fulfilling than theirs, because for everything that they have and can have that I cant afford I have the one thing you simply cant buy….

…happiness!

I was going to update today and write all about me, Me at the moblog meet up mentioned in my last post, Me and my NEW CAMERA, Me at Ragley hall (where the blonde one exhausted himself on the adventure playground, the 3D mazes and I trialled my NEW CAMERA), Me and my work review, or in bullshit speak my “P.P.D.R”, Me and my extremely bad hair day, strike that bad hair week and just a bit more about me, Oh and my NEW CAMERA…sorry had I already mentioned that??

Instead I am going to tell you about why the title of this post sums up my child so perfectly, Jordan is ADORABLE, yes, I know, I’m bias but he is, really he is (when not pulling April Fools tricks on me, or hiding my dressing gown under his bed), He’s special, not in a sit in the corner rocking kinda way but in a “I’m a 7 and I see the world in a really innocent way” He still has so much to learn about life and things in is head are so simple. It’s one way or another and all the grey areas we have to learn to navigate as we grow older he has yet to realize they exist.

He is still a child yes I know I’m stating the obvious as he is still only 7, but with him it’s easy to forget how young he really is when he behaves so well, acts so grown up most of the time and much to my detriment understands sarcasm far too well, But also SO easy to remember when I get home from work and have a conversation that goes something like this…

Hey hun, had a good day?
We played piñata at school today.

Really? Who bought that in?
No one

You DO know what a piñata is don’t you??
(with a very indignant look) Err Yeah!

So how did you play piñata then??
Well I was the piñata and *insert random name here* and the others hit me with sticks.

YOU WENT TO SCHOOL AND LET PEOPLE HIT YOU WITH STICKS???
yes.

ROFL!!!

I should have been more diplomatic and NOT laughed in the kids face, I could have shouted, demanded to know what the hell the teachers were doing while my poor baby was being beaten with the branches from the nearest available tree by a group of prepubescent girls, I could have stormed the school gates and set up camp in the reception refusing to move until i had the heads of all the girls involved on a plate in front of me, But he was so matter of fact about it and so indignant with me as I picked myself up off the floor to his protests of “it was only a game” and “I enjoyed the girls playing with me“, I just couldn’t help myself but laugh.

All I could picture was my little boy, who’s greatest hero in the world is a cartoon character called Ben10 (until later this week when Spiderman 3 comes out and I’m sure he’ll switch allegiance again), Striking his best Karate kid Kid pose in the middle of a group of baying females and screaming “AYYYEEEE-YAAA, COME ON GIVE IT ALL YOU’VE GOT!!” and fending them off with a series of his ninja moves which (he believes) rivals anything the turtles have to offer because believe me knowing my son so well this is exactly what he would have been doing!

So thats my boy, he goes to school and plays with girls, and lets them beat him with sticks, more worryingly he seems to have quite enjoyed it!!

I love him so much he’s fantastic but as this shows he’s also very very weird but in a really special, priceless, adorable 7 year old kinda way!

Not surprising really considering he’s my son!