Ten on Tuesday: catch-up time

I'm determined to manage a ten this week! The last few Tuesdays seem to have passed in a blur.

1. Since I last blogged, Westbaby & I have both had a virus. His landed him in Alder Hey for 3 nights, with suspected meningitis/tonsillitis/
measles. It highlighted how WONDERFUL it is that: a) the boys are generally healthy, b) we have an amazing children's hospital nearby, and c) dry shampoo & iPhones exist.

(obviously feeling MUCH better!)

2. Westboy had his 4th birthday last week! He had a full brass band play "Happy Birthday to You" in Southport Botanic Gardens, where we were having a church picnic. I attempted to use "proper" cake decorating gel colours for his birthday cake: a Spiderman face/mask that he took into nursery. I was really pleased with how it turned out, but the gloves I was wearing split while I was colouring the icing, so my hands ended up a vibrant shade of red.

3. Westboy and Daddy went to London the weekend before his birthday. The trip involved buses, trains, boats, underground trains, dinosaurs, a playground, and ice cream, so was pretty much perfect from an almost-4-year-old boy perspective. Tom's started this tradition of taking each of the boys away on their own for a weekend around their birthday. So very sweet!

4. I spent that weekend with Westbaby, who was missing his big brother and daddy, and cutting a new tooth. Ouch.

5. One morning while they were away, I came downstairs and found a trail of ants industriously filing from the front door to the kitchen. When I opened the kitchen door, I discovered that the floor was covered in thousands of ants. It looked like something out of a wildlife documentary. In my kitchen. So I did the predictable thing: stood on a chair and phoned my husband. We both thought we had some ant poison somewhere, but I couldn't find it, and it probably wouldn't be much use against the crawling swarming masses. So I mopped the floor with vinegary boiling water. (Joseph was strapped in his high chair throughout this, objecting noisily). Happy ending: no more ants.

6. Westbaby destroys iPhone chargers. Our house is full of them, but I can never find any that work when I need one, so my phone is constantly teetering on the brink of battery death.

7. The boys have recently been introduced to Lego, and LOVE it. Westboy is great at building multifunctional vehicles (e.g. an aeroplane-train), while Westbaby prefers walking on the bricks (must be a bit like fire-walking!)

8. Whenever I ask Westboy who/what he'd like to pray for at bedtime he says Fireman Sam... ...so the emergency service workers who look after us all are getting well prayed for here!

9. Someone has abandoned two rather nice cars outside our house. They've been there for several weeks, without moving. We live on a terraced street and everyone parks outside their own house, so having 'our' space filled is really quite inconvenient. Especially with two small children. Especially when it's raining. Hmph! (The tax disc on one of the cars has expired. Some days I'm tempted to report it and have it towed away. Except that there's always a possibility that it'd just get clamped, which would probably just compound the problem!). Any advice???

10. Westboy told me there was a dinosaur in the living room this morning. I had to pretend to catch, wrestle, and shut it in its cage. Quite a dramatic way to put away an ironing board!

Linking up with the Ten-on-Tuesday crowd: Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah, Esther & Laura.