"I Need A Cuddle"

This morning i woke up exhausted. No surprise there. Ollie has had a bad cold for over a week now and this means that jay and i have had to suffer nightly through constant snorting, snoring and all the auditory repurcussions of his little blocked nose. Combined with our nightly visitation (Egg usually sneaks in our bed in the middle of the night...crawls in on jay's side with Bacon and we are momentarily disorientated upon waking up to a rather crowded four-in-a-bed situation) this means proper deep sleeps are firmly relegated to the past. Why not put the babys cot in Egg's room you ask? Well, quite simply we fear for the little fella's life.

Bacon the bear has now become Eggs 'baby' and he wears Noah's best clothes, sits in Noah's chair, and has claimed the babys swing as his also. We have to ASK Bacon's permission for Noah to use any of the above accoutraments, or we fear that 'Bacon' will usurp Noah from his position and end up on the floor. In all fairness Bacon is a pretty decent bear and usually moves aside when politely asked (notice i say 'politely'. this means bending down and addressing the Bear like one might address Her Royal Highness. This does NOT mean whipping the bear off the seat and flinging across the room. This is NOT a good idea.)

So you see we fear that if they were to share a room, Egg might decide that the cot is only big enough for one little fella, and we know which little fella that would be. Not a risk we care to take at the moment. (NOTE: as i write this i hear the scream from downstairs of a baby having just been woken from deep sleep by an enthusiastic and bored toddler. In all likelihood Egg has just tried to kiss him and cut off his air supply (this happens a lot), or perhaps its that he's pulled out little Ollie's fists from his mouth and told him to stop being 'disgusting'. Ollie derives great comfort from gnawing on fingers and fists and flesh these days. Either he's starting to teethe, trying to sustain himself until his next 'snack', or he's started developing a taste for human flesh...something we'll have to keep an eye on.

Every few days Egg comes up with a new 'catch phrase' which he incorporates into his 'Sound of Music repetoire, his 'I only two and a half' malarky, and his various other lines. A rather recent one is

"I need a cuddle!"

This is usually said pleadingly, arms held aloft, mucus dripping down his tear-stained face, and i defy any of you to deny him this one request. Even if he has:

a) emptied the entire contents of the Johnstons Baby Powder on our freshly hoovered carpets...

b) piled the contents of his newly folded chest of drawers onto a huge pile in the middle of his bedroom

c) helped himself to the remaining chocoalate chip cookies in the cookie jar

If he dares to use both the cuddle ploy and the 'i only two and a half years old Mama' then i'm a goner. Especially if there are tears involved. I'm a sucker for cute children (who isn't?) and it doesn't help that he has a cherubic countenance and big eyes. I am putty in his hands and he bloody well knows it.

Everyone likes to cite 'The Super Nanny' as a model for good discipline instillation in children. Some things i agree with, but to be fair we've not had a lot of luck with her classic 'Naughty Step' technique. It has in effect backfired on several occasions in that Egg actually enjoys sitting on the steps and watching the chaos (that is our life) unfold. He'll happily sit there for ages whether you tell him to or not. In fact he often does something naughty and the first you know of it is him running past you yelling, "I go Time Out" (which is what we call the 'naughty step'). Then the impetus is on us to solve the mystery of what he has done -as he is often (understandably) not inclined to share this information with us. But hey- at least he self-disciplines... (We are also pleased to see that he is incorporating a discipline regime in the raising of Bacon, as the bear can often be found slumped dejectedly on the step in a prolonged 'Time Out'. Not sure what he's done, but surely he's deserved it. Our son is nothing if not fair.)

Well i must sign off now as it's getting terribly hard to concentrate with the sound of the 'hoover' behind me. In case you do not know, Egg is a huge fan of 'hoovering'. Where once he was frightened of it and would leap sobbing into our arms everytime it was pulled out (which to be honest, was probably not as often as it should have been), he now insists upon it several times a day. He tells me that we MUST keep the house clean and he helps by constructing various impromptu hoovers out of plugs, his potty stool, my computer mouse and whatever other implements he needs, and then proceeds to make the sound effects of a vacuum while crawling along the floor. Our downstairs neighbour Dan is not terribly enamoured of this practice...especially as its our kitchen that most needs 'hoovering' and it just so happens to be the ceiling of his front room.

Next time he complains I'll just offer him Eggs services...at a discount of course.