What is on my mind right now

Why wasn't I born Welsh? I don't think I've met any horrible Welsh people, for one. There's Tom Jones. There's Chazza Church (I *love* Charlotte Church!). There are daffs and that. There's Richard Burton (swoon! Dead, though.) And Dylan Thomas (also dead; not sure if swoonsome; brainy, at least, if brooding.) The pictures I've seen of it are really beautiful (I went somewhere in Wales when I was five. It was cold and we went on a boat. That's all I can remember.) It has mountains and the mystery of the Welsh language and the longest place name in the world, the one that ends in 'gogogoch.'

What's not to like?

10 reasons why my Elf is the coolest

1. She has a blonde, unruly thatch of hair. Like her mother.
2. She has a permanent snot candle attached to her nose.
3. In fact, she is always encrusted in filth, from head to toe. This is a fact I have accepted.
4. She eats olives
5...but still hates milk. I believe this makes her posh.
6. She is quite teeny-tiny, weighs 10.5kg and still fits into most of her "up to 12 months clothes." (Should I be worried?)
7. Instead of saying "bye bye" to her Daddy this morning, she yelled "Out!"
8. She likes to cling on to my legs when there are dogs around.
9. She likes lifting up her top and showing off her big tummy (though this is a contest I win.)
and
10. Just now she managed to drag her high chair to the cupboard, get my precious siroopwaffeln off the shelf and stuff two of them in her gob. Minxy elf child!

There is a Mrs Breakfast.
Of course there is.
But is there a Frau Fruhstuck?
A-ha!

I asked the internet "how do I poach an egg?" and they directed me to the fabulous Mr Breakfast
Is there a Mrs Breakfast?
Can I be she?
You can tell how busy I am today.

Updates

Emma's update: I have a new hobby. I take a glass, with a little bit of water in it and then with my tiny fingers I painstakingly crumble a stale piece of bread into it, forming a sludgy mass. Mummy tells me off and puts the glass in the washing up bowl, then forgets about it for 6 hours, by which time the sludgy bread has stuck to the glass like the devil to the soul of a condemned man. Then she uses naughty words as she tries to scrub it off...words that I will remember and repeat to her in front of her other mother friends (and their kids.)

Rob's update: I love my wife, she is so brilliant at everything. She made me a lovely album of Emma's first year for my birthday and a chocolate cheesecake which was delicious. It was a shame about the underpants she got me, which were all wrong. Every item of clothing she has ever bought me has ended up back in the shop, but it's not her fault. Apparently spinach is a hardy winter vegetable, I think I'll plant some.

Tomatoes update: we....are....dying....no....sun......or....heat anymore adieu (Lizzie cackles with unconcealed schadenfreude)

I am going through a Personal Improvement stage, and am reading - wait for it - The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoeyvsky. That bit of high-class literary name-dropping was to show you that a) I don't just spend hours on the internet looking for pictures of Jordan in her wedding dress (couldn't find any) b) to impress you with how clever and intellectual I am and c) to genuinely try and stop my brain from rotting away, especially as I read the other week that the brain is an organ also in need of regular exercise, and even my daily Sudoku habit has been on the wane of late.

Now can the bookish, boffiny types out there please explain to me what's going on? (In the book.) There is a lot of sitting around in aristocratic salons. There is a lot of arguing. There is some bad behaviour: drunkenness from the men, bustle-rustling hissy fits from the women. There are very long, Russian names. (Ivan Nastypersonalitch. OK, I made that up.) Some people have consumption. But I am struggling to 'get it', and don't feel very personally improved. Should I give up?

Gets through a standard doorway (just about.) 

What's green and red and cute all over? 

High stakes

It was my birthday on Saturday, and my Switzerhusband made up for weeks of tomato love with platinum-plated bells on. I don't mean to make you gag, but just get this for a list of loveliness:
- he consulted a very stylish female friend under whose expert guidance he bought me 3 items of very delicious clothes
- he drew and framed a picture of my Elf for me
- he baked a heart-stopping, hip-busting sour cream chocolate cake
- he organised a suprise tea party to which all my Swiss chums came.
C'MON!! Frankly, after such a display of lurve he can dance naked with his toms for all I care..at least for the next few weeks.

The only thing is it's *his* birthday next weekend, and I just KNOW my effort will simply not be in the same league. I can't draw. My cakes sag in the middle (why?) He would sooner stick pins in his eyes than be the guest of honour at a suprise party. "It's not a competition," he coos soothingly. I am unsoothed and desperate.

Though I do have a few plots that might be worth hatching.

PS A message for Kaddy
WOWWWW-EEEE! Thank Youuuuuuu! Expect blog evidence soon of..how shall I put this...the Green Triumph xxx

Scantastic

Back from scan, Dr Happy Frankfurter full of supernatural enthusiasm as usual, and nothing but good news to report. Arms, legs, eyes, spine, stomach, kidneys, heart - all present and correct and apparently in the right place. At least whenever she exclaimed "Regarde!" I nodded like I knew what I was looking at, but most of the time it felt like examining the surface of the moon, underwater.

That didn't stop me looking for a willy, of course. I don't think I saw one. We prefer the surprise, but it didn't stop me asking Frankfurter afterwards if she was able to tell the sex.
"Yes, very clear!" she said and then looked mysteriously down at her paperwork. She kept saying "he" instead of "she" during the proceedings. Does that mean it's a boy? But then afterwards she said "I'm sure you'll have a baby as cute as the first one!" Is that code for 'it's a girl?' Is she messing with my head?

We had Emma with us at the time, who was on full-throttle, no-hostages cuteness attack. She kept pointing at the screen and saying "Wow!". Admittedly, she had some making up to do after savaging the tomatoes last night (tee hee!)

When R gets back from a hard day at the office, he walks in the door and says
"Hello, my babies!"
Sweet, eh? Only he is not addressing his wife, daughter and unborn. He is addressing his tomato plants.

"Emma, darling, not those," he says as the Elf stretches a pink fist in the direction of one of their green, spindly stalks. There is fear in his voice and infanticide in his eyes.

How was your day? I ask. "It's all about the compost, apparently" he replies. "R (his boss) told me."

I am calling Relate.

Squalor returns

..and I'm sure you'll agree that didn't take long.

In Emma's world:
- she has a severely short but very chi-chi new haircut, thanks to Daddy. We sat her in her highchair while I bribed her with teaspoonfuls of Nutella and R did the necessary. She screamed from start to finish anyway.
- she can say "wassat?", "ball", "yes", "no", "rice", "wow!", "yum yum" and go "hiss" like a snake. I was very proud of this until our friends told us about their little boy, one month younger than my Elf, who apparently can say 70 words. That makes me pig sick.
- last night she refused her dinner, before insisting on eating cold spaghetti off the floor. Naked.

In Switzerladyland:
- I go for my second scan at the end of this week with Happy Frankfuter
- also at the end of this week I turn 32.
- it is still very hot and summery here and with all the hills I am sweating like the fat lass I well and truly am.

Sorry for lack of postage, my mojo hasn't been working recently, blogwise. I think I am too fat and too tired to write.

This week I have been engaged in a cleaning FRENZY. A hoovering, dusting, toilet-scrubbing, bin-changing FRENZY I tell you.

I haven't had a complete personality transplant: it's because my cleaning-and -childcare person has left me to go to university in Italy. I mean, how selfish is that? Isn't mixing my morning vodka-martini ennobling enough? And my little Elf is heartbroken for one. Deborah was the only person in the world who could get her dressed without her screaming the house down, plus she had an impressive repertoire of cute baby hairstyles. And we were mates, too, in a country where matage is generally lacking. So now I have decided to live without servants, and clean up my own sty, like a Proper Housewife. If I can get over the discouraging fact that it takes Emma a matter of milliseconds to restore the reign of chaos.

I give it a week.