A New Outlet

Hello, I've not written for a little while, I found another creative outlet for my life stories. I realised I always need to have one.  I got them out in my blog when I started it in 2009 and then when I started doing stand up in 2012 I'd save my best jokes for that. But now I can't even get out of the house to do stand up, I've found a new outlet....

This time last year it was the Liverpool Comedy Festival and I did my big one hour show, which was so much fun. I loved seeing all the other acts too and went to as many things as possible, even though I was really sick from being in the early stages of pregnancy. A year on and that same baby is causing more chaos by refusing any kind of routine or taking a bottle. Maybe he just hates comedy. I feel gutted not to be part of it this year and if you're a comedian friend of mine, I really do want to see your show :(

So this is what I started doing instead of stand up... sketches. It all started when I was eating some noodles while holding Baby Eric and he proceeded to puke into my bowl. It was very gross but also kind of funny and I wondered "how can I turn this into a positive?" Then I drew it:

And yes, if you're wondering, I really did eat almost all of the noodles left in the bowl. Then I thought maybe this could be "a thing", like a thing I did regularly that made depressing moments like this a little less depressing. I remembered a moment from a few weeks back and drew it:

Then a few days later I was in a play cafe with my two boys and some other mums and their kids, and they both told me funny potty training stories which I have now drawn. So now I've got a Facebook page and an Instagram account for Mum Sketch and a list of 4 or 5 more ideas that have been sent to me to draw, some by friends and some by strangers. I've also come up with some hopefully funny but possibly borderline offensive Christmas card designs which I'm excited to share at some point.

I'm going to try and get better at drawing too. It's not like I've never done art before, but this style is not really my thing. Slightly abstract collages of depressing but vibrant urban landscapes seemed to become my thing for a while. People is something I stayed away from (artistically): they're hard! Mainly because you can tell if it's wrong, unlike slightly abstract depressing but vibrant landscape collages. 

Hands and thumbs are the hardest, especially when people are holding things and faces, especially chins, they get confusing.

So if you want to see these sketches and laugh at silly parenting moments, or send me suggestions, this is the Facebook page and this is the Instagram page.

In other news Percy has finally started nursery! Wahoo! He's not going to get it free until January. Boohoo. But I really need a bit of a break in the week. Having just one baby is so easy... apart from when it's your first and then it's the hardest thing in the world. I guess the only way to make life now feel easy would be to adopt a 3rd child for a few months and then give it back. Kind of like the tale of the wise man who tells a woman who thinks her house is too small to take in a load of animals. Then when she gets rid of them her house feels big. It's weird advice really, I'd say consider an extension, or some ikea storage before taking in a goat but I am not a wise old man.

Percy loves nursery. He just goes a day and a half a week but he's already picking up new things...like I overheard him saying "sorry babe" to his duplo giraffe. He definitely didn't get that phrase from me!

This is him after the first day, he came home saying it was great. I am really proud of him, he's coped with so much change. Since February last year he's moved house from a massive house with a family of 5, another lodger and us to just us in a new bit of Liverpool, he's moved from a cot to a bed, then his baby brother arrived in May, his Godmother Rachel lived with us off and on in June and July, Auntie Sarah moved in in August and we started potty training him, and now he's started at his new nursery.

He's working hard to try and make sense of this confusing world we live in. He's just grasping the concept that he was once a baby and before that he was in my tummy. But he assumed that as he was once a baby like Eric that Eric used to be a big boy like him. He's also very confused about where he was before he was in my tummy. He's seen photos of me and Dan on holiday years before he was born and asked "If I wasn't in the tummy, who was looking after me then?"
I tried to explain that he was nowhere, he didn't exist and after a lot of thought (mainly about snowmen) he asked "was I melted?"

Love him.

End of an Era

I'm writing this on the M6 making my way back to Liverpool after saying goodbye to my childhood home and village for the last time. (Dan's driving by the way, just in case you're worried.)

In 1992 (when I was 6, my sister Jo was 3 and sister Sarah was yet to be conceived), we moved just a few miles from our previous house to what became our family house.

The house was built in 1908 the same year Vimto was invented. (But this is it in 1992)

 In 2010, five years after I left home my parents were watching the news. A new high speed railway was being announced and it looked like it would go really close to our village of Burton Green. My parents checked the map, it was going straight through their garden.

My Dad, being the kind of man he is, then read through all the legal documents, looked at the environmental issues and business case and decided it was a bad thing. HS2 action groups sprung up all over the country and then my Dad became the person who unified them all and was the media voice for the anti-HS2 cause. He was often on the news and several times interviews were filmed in our garden. One of those times it was filmed almost live, there was a 10 second delay. So I played the ukulele in the dinning room window and then went into the sitting room and watched me playing the ukulele on the almost live tv. A few years ago my Dad stepped down from that role, and now they are getting a pretty sweet deal for the sale of their house. Most people didn't by the way, but as we've all left home now it's not a bad time for them to claim the market value plus 10% and move to be nearer to us in a house on a river in Cheshire.

So this weekend was my Dad's 60th and the goodbye Burton Green weekend.

My first 6 years were spent in nearby Cannon Park on the edge of Coventry near to Warwick Uni where my Mum went and lazily didn't move far away from.

Me hoola-hooping outside the old house

We lived next door to Bex and her family. Bex was my best friend from 1986-2017 excluding 1999-2006 when she was too cool for me and then she went to Uni and we didn't see much of each other. 6 months before us her family had moved to Burton Green and then her Dad told my Dad he saw a house on their street that was for sale and hey presto we bought it. I think there was a lot of adult problems along the way, like a mean seller and rising damp, and wood worm but who cares about that? I was 6 and didn't have to worry about these things.

1992

2017

I did however have a bit of a shock when I had to start a new school. It was one of those idyllic village schools next to a farm where you did country dancing in the ruins of an old castle.

school

farm next door

My sister Jo performing a sword dance at kenilworth castle

There were 10 people in my year so we were taught with another year, and we had those old school folding desks. But if you're reading this and you've just moved to a nice area to be near the "good schools" you may as well not have bothered, because village schools are not all that if you're a newbie. Everyone in my class had been together since nursery and I felt like a weird outsider. That was the year I decided that I was never going to be in the 'in crowd' so I'd just have to embrace being the weird one. Is age 6 quite early for that? I remember one of the main issues was that in my old school we were taught to join our y's but in Burton Green you didn't join y's. I rebelliously joined my y's anyway in defiance. I also had severe dyslexia that wasn't diagnosed for another decade so that probably didn't help. Anyway don't worry I'm fine now it was all character building and now that I'm a stand up comedian I'm grateful for these experiences. Whoever heard of a stand up comedian that was popular and successful in school? My sisters both had much more positive experiences.

In primary school and most of secondary school I did love the village of Burton Green. At the end of our garden was the "railway line". It was a steep drop down to a pathway which used to be a railway line in the 40s and was now a mud track surrounded by trees on each side. Perfect for rope swings, tree climbing, den making, sneaking into other people gardens, etc etc. I remember by about year 4 I was allowed to pack a lunch for the day and just go out all day exploring the fields and woods that surrounded the area. That's probably the bit I will miss the most about Burton Green. But I have weirdly moved very near the Liverpool loop line, which is quite simliar except for the clientele which is a bit more scallies having splifs than horseriders.

2016

Other than that, all Burton Green had to offer was a Post Office that closed down a few years after we moved there, a pub, a village hall and a second hand clothes shop which has also closed. As an older teen it was an incredibly annoying place to live, especially when you can't drive and your mates live the other side of Coventry. A 2 hourly bus was all we had in the way of public transport. It seems like a lovely thing to live next to fields but fields really aren't all that compared to city parks.

Percy in the field behind my parents house 2016

You can't sit down in a field you can only walk round the edge. There aren't toilets or ice cream shops or skate parks in fields. I used to go the the memorial park in Coventry with my mates. I just had to walk 20 mins to a train station get a train, then get an overpriced park and ride bus which all in all took over an hour. Then I became good at cycling because I was rubbish at driving and my parents were stingy lift givers. I'd often do an 18 mile round trip just to see some mates. A decade after that cycle training I cycled to Kuwait ,so you know; everything happens for a reason.

I loved my local church, St. John's Westwood, where my parents met and also got married. Being your a-typical teenager I think my faith in some ways might have been strongest at that time. I think maybe I was rebelling against rebelling? Life is so crap when you're a teenager that I really needed God then. It was when things were going well more recently that I've found faith a bit more of a struggle. There was a while when my church youth group was the only thing I enjoyed in my week.

Once in a game of hide and seek I hid on a ledge just below that stained glass window.

My Dad had a BBQ for his 60th and invited the village people... not The Village People, you know, their nearby friends. I can't wait to be 60: mortgage paid off, kids all left home, no responsibility. I had to leave the party and go to bed early because I have to be up in the night to feed baby Eric.

Sandra and Eric

There were a couple there: Sandra and Paul who I've known since they moved to the village when I was about 10. I remember going round to theirs with Mum to welcome them. I went into their house and declared loudly "Wow your house is massive you must be really rich!" I then sat on their wooden chair that had vertical bars on the back and got both elbows stuck. At one point they were talking about sawing the chair up. Luckily butter worked. Sandra and Paul had 3 kids. The two girls were roughly the same age as my sisters and then there was a boy in the middle of them who I sort of made friends with because we were the odd ones out. So he was about 8 and I was about 12 and we used to dissect slugs together. Thats weird right? He also had a snake which I thought was very cool. And they had sheep and chickens goats and a dog.

Mum just loves snakes (at Sandra and Paul's 2001)

Back in the day (2001)

2017 Paul has a slightly different hat.

Sandra and Paul had us round on Sunday so Percy could see their animals. This is where country side comes into it's own. I don't need to pay £10 to go to a children's farm when my neighbour will give Percy a ride on a tractor from 1968 for free. Percy had a great time!

Farewell Burton Green. Sometimes I hated you, sometimes I loved you, but you shaped my childhood and I wouldn't change it. xx

House changes

There have been a few major changes in the Lee Vale house of dreams. When we moved in in February there were 3 of us, Dan, Percy and me, and the house was entirely magnolia. Now we have 2 extra people and 3 rooms less magnolia. Hooray. The first edition to the household was Baby Eric born in May, then we took in our semi-homeless friend Rachel for a bit but now we have our more permanent lodger My littlest sister Sarah.

I found these lovely photos to welcome sarah

Last time we lived together she was 10 and I was 19. This is the story of how she came into the world which I will take 90% of the credit for. When I was 8 I had 1 younger sister Jo, and I was desperate for a puppy. I asked all the time and, although Dad could have been persuaded, Mum could not. Around this time I realised that the amount of children you had was not entirey up to chance. That's when I stopped asking for a puppy and started asking for a baby sister. To my surpise it worked! One Saturday morning me and Jo were watching cartoons and mum and dad called us upstairs and said "we've got a surprise, guess what it is?" Jo said "are we having croissants for breakfast?" Dad then dropped a big hint "the surprise is in mummy's tummy" Then I went mental with "its a baby! it's a baby!" and Jo said "anyway what are we having for breakfast?"

Later on in the pregnancy me and Jo told dad we were praying for a girl and Dad said 'too late we've already prayed that its a boy'. But look who God loves best!

Me and Sarah back in the day

I was a lovely sister for 2 or 3 years: I played with Sarah, I dressed her up, I took her into school for my speaking and listening talk on babies. Then I was a moody teenager for a bit and then I left home and then she was a moody teenager....but now we're good friends and have a lot in common. except that everything I can do Sarah can do better and a lot more naturally, she's one of those really annoying people who's academic, musical, athletic and creative. I was really only good at art and I wasn't even that good at that, I got a 'B' at GCSE and an A at A-level. Whereas Sarah got an A* at GCSE but didn't do it at A-level as 'it won't lead to a job' but still continues to make money out of being an artist. I did however discover recently her one downfall. She can't do magic eye books! I know right, what a loser. That's literally my only comeback to her massive catalog of achievements.

Jokes aside it's been lovely having Sarah in the house...so far.

The other big house change is the death of the shower cupboard, R.I.P, a ridiculous shower that forced you to get naked on the landing. Goodbye wall that turned out to be a supporting wall, hello a toilet with a sink next to it. And a thing that makes it ok that you removed a supporting wall. I was in B&Q looking at paint for the new toilet I thought I'd go for pale blue, that seems safe, but with an impatient toddler and an baby I didn't have a lot of time to pick the exact shade I was imagining so I ended up with electric blue. It's sooo blue. I had to put extra yellow things in to distract from the blue, I like it now though. Every colour is superior to magnolia.

view from the loo

We've also had a major addition to our garden.

Tada!

When the boys were born they were each given £100 from their great grandpa. We could have opened up a savings account but seeing as there's Trump, brexit, global warming etc. £200 in 18 years time seems a bit pointless. So we blew it all on this. And yes I do have the same attitude towards a pension. Dan has one though and when we got married he vowed to share everything with me. It's only fair because most of his power tools are actually mine.

3 months

Eric is 3 months... it's flown by.

And looking more and more like his big brother every day.

Percy at 3 months

Percy got a bit jealous of the attention Eric was getting and tried to get in on his photo shoot

3 months is a pretty easy stage, comparatively. In general Eric sleeps well from about 10:30pm till 8am, normally with one get up at 3am, occasionally he sleeps through. He can't yet roll so he stays were he's put. He sleeps for about 1/3 of the daytime too, he's actually a lot simpler to look after than Percy. Which is why I was over the moon when Dan's sister and her husband offered to take Percy to the safari park on Monday. Great, I thought, most of the day just me and Eric. I'll get some quality time with him, when he's feeding I can watch Netflix instead of reading Percy stories and when he sleeps I will be free!! So they came at 10am and Percy was really excited, the first hour and a half me and Eric just hung out in a way that it's hard to do when you have a demanding toddler. Then I thought he might be ready for a sleep now if I took him for a walk in the pram. So I took a little walk down to the shopping centre to buy some brackets (exciting I know). Eric fell asleep easily, but when I got home I couldn't get the pram into the house without waking him up. So I had lunch we did a bit more hanging out and feeding and then he started to get really cranky because he was so tired. I managed to feed him to sleep and carefully laid him down in the cot where he slept peacefully for just long enough for me to get in my studio and get my paints out before he woke up. 

The problem was, I couldn't leave the house because I was waiting for a delivery which was coming between 12:20 and 2:20. I tried pushing the pram round and round the back garden but that didn't send him off. I tried carrying him in various different positions and feeding him. He was getting super cranky and nothing would make him chill out. At 2:53 the delivery came and then I did a last resort sleeping method, going for a drive. 1 minute later he was asleep and I carried him in in the car seat. That very second I got a text from Dan's sister Beth "just on the way back be there in 10 minutes" Noooooo! The crying emoji did not fully express my emotions.

Thankfully Percy had fallen asleep in the car too and I managed to carry him in and lay him down on the sofa and have a wonderful hour off.

Today I remembered the book we read to Percy to prepare him for having a little brother. 

I think they meant to say "When the baby sleeps mummy puts Paw Patrol on so she can have some flipping time to herself!!"

If you're on twitter and don't mind hearing more about my child, I sometimes tweet stuff Percy says 

Here's a few examples:

Thanks for reading, next time I'll be writing about our new lodger and what happens when you get distracted in B & Q while buying paint. Bye xx

The shower challenge

We've recently had our bathroom done. When we moved into our house we had this shower made out of an airing cupboard. We thought was a bit weird but no big deal, until day one of living in the house, when we realised there wasn't enough space to get changed inside the shower so we had to get naked on the landing, which is fine except for when you have visitors. And then when you have two kids the shower challenge gets even more challenging.

Dan leaves the house around 7:30 and seeing as I'm now on maternity leave and I don't really have anywhere to be, it make sense that I shower after that. I have developed various methods of containing small children while I shower, from newborn the bouncy chair worked well. Then about 5-10 months the door bouncer was a winner. Then there was a stage where I couldn't contain them and I had to just shower when Dan was in, until about 20 months when they become more interested in watching something on Netflix on a laptop, than smashing your laptop on the floor. Till eventually they can, in theory, cope with playing by themselves and knocking on the door if they need you.

Then comes the multi-child-shower-lodger challenge. At the moment we're at the one child playing and one bouncy chair child stage. If that's all going well then you just have to worry about not flashing your lodger (because you have to leave the door open to see the bouncy chair child). Add potty training in to the equation and showering becomes a military operation, which if preformed successfully is the achievement of your day.

To try and make the situation easier (and the house less weird), we just had our bathroom done. So the shower cupboard and toilet room next door became one bigger room with a toilet and sink, and the bath (which is the other side of the landing) gained a shower above it. We had this done while we were on holiday. It was nice to be out of the way and the added bonus was we asked the plumber to feed our rabbit. Unfortunately we got a call half way through the holiday to say "that wall we took down ended up being a supporting wall so it's gonna cost you extra".

the shower cupboard with added duck tape so that I can watch Eric while not flashing Rachel

The new sink, where the shower used to be, which is now next to a toilet

Here is an example of a typical shower routine from this week.

7:30am Percy is playing quietly and Eric is asleep, I seize my opportunity and tell Percy I am going for a quick shower, he seems fine. I ask Rachel, our lodger, to knock on if Eric wakes up and I begin getting undressed.

7:35am I hear Percy asking Rachel (who is trying to get ready for work) to play jigsaws with him. I put my clothes back on and do a jigsaw with Percy, then I suggest he watches a bit of TV. That way he will stay still and not bother Rachel. I put on a DVD for him and make my second attempt at the shower.

7:40am Eric wakes up, he won't be able to sit happily in the bouncy chair now because he needs a feed. I reluctantly go downstairs and sit with Percy and feed Eric. I normally only let Percy watch tv once a day, so it's annoying to have used up the TV card this early on... and to not have got a shower out of it. Theres no point switching it off now as he'll kick off because I've only just put it on, and it's not like I can really do anything fun with him as I'm feeding Eric.

8am Eric finishes the feed and it's time to switch the TV off, cue massive meltdown.

8:15 after multiple time outs Percy finally calms down enough for me to contemplate another shower attempt. I get Eric set up in the bouncy chair, now that he's full of milk he's pretty chilled out. That is until I accidentally spray him with water, because we don't have a shower curtain yet.

8:20 my shower comes to an end when I hear Percy shouting me. He's done a wee, half on the potty and half in his pants. In my towel I go downstairs and get him fresh pants.

8:25 I attempt to get dressed. I eventually manage after several more interruptions from both the boys.

8:45 I am dressed! only an hour and 15 mins after I stared trying.

It's been a difficult week. Dan called me from work at lunch time to ask how I was doing, it wasn't going well and he asked if there was anything he could do. "Book yourself in for a vasectomy right now" was my response.

If anyone reading this has a morning routine where they jump in the shower and get dressed within 20 mins with no distractions count yourself lucky.

Although I don't want to fall into a grass in greener trap. Some people have to walk miles to wash in a dirty river and some people have to deal with all this, and turn up for work on time looking professional. The nice thing about being on maternity leave is my head is prrety clear of stuff.

My to do list looks like this:
1) keep family alive.

So far I have a 100% success rate.

I will end with an unrelated thought, which could be a competition. Today I was at Dan's parents church and the preacher was talking about "original sin". It made me wonder, What is the most original sin? e.g common Sin might be things like lying or coveting but what sin is unlikely to have been done before? I thought of "lusting after a slug" but I'd love to hear your ideas, leave me a comment. I might pick the best one and write a poem about it.

Our A & E, Potty Training Holiday

We have just returned from a lovely family holiday to Anglesey. It was lovely apart from the bits that were not lovely (mainly a giant two year old's poo and a tiny baby having a big bump on the head) but lets start with the lovely stuff. We stayed in a very nice cottage with parents, my two sisters and my bother in law. We've been on holiday to Anglesey before when Percy was a baby. That was the holiday when Percy was sometimes up for the day before 5AM! That time the weather was a bit too cold for sitting on the beach and there wasn't much to do other than that. The highlight of the trip was going to Wilkos to buy pick and mix and eating it while playing monopoly and rocking a baby.
This holiday was loads better, a beautiful cottage with a hot tub and several other adults to hold/entertain our boys.

The holiday began with at least an hour and a half of driving just to get to Runcorn, (which should take about 20 mins) so we had to make two stops. We promised Percy an ice cream for being good on the ridiculously long car journey. He said he wanted a blue one. We eventually found a blue bubblegum flavoured ice cream- yuk.

Weeks ago we started joking about about starting Percy's potty training on holiday just so that everyone else would have to endure it too. But then we thought, actually that's not a bad idea. Lots of other people around to help and carpets we never have to see again-bonus! It sounded preferable to me attempting to pull Percy's pants down while breastfeeding Eric. We bought him exciting "big boy pants" (one pack with dinosaurs on and one with pepper pig on).

On the first day we went to the beach and Percy was wearing his tigger swimsuit (without a nappy). I was enjoying a nice swim in the sea when Dad (aka Grandad) came over and said that Dan was doing something really heroic. Then he described how the tail of his tigger swimming costume filled up in the shape of a tail.

Our nappy training strategy was to put him in pants when we were in the house (not when we were in public or in the car) and when he did a wee or poo on the potty go mental with praise for him. Unfortunately he found this very difficult, he seems to only realise he's weeing or pooing when he's actually doing it. We had to abandon the original plan and give him stickers just for a good try at sitting on the potty. If you spend enough time sitting on a potty it is likely that at some point some wee will come out. So, when a tiny dribble of wee did come out we decided it was time to go mental with the praise, even though in my head I was thinking 'this is just a statistical probability given the amount of time you were "trying" for'. Unfortunately he then kicked off about having to be wiped so we had to withdraw the praise and stickers.

One time he claimed he did a wee on the potty and to be fair, technically he did wee on the potty, but I think when you make no effort to pull your pants down and you just wee through them this makes your attempt invalid.

On the morning we left we sensed a wee was near, and the bribe of TV was enough to make him actually do a wee on the potty. It was high 5s all round, stickers and an episode of Paw Patrol. I wish people celebrated that much every time I did a wee!

On the Friday, which was our last proper day, we went out for galettes at a cafe. We were sitting outside on a table that had a bench on one side, I had been feeding Eric, but when the food came I wanted to enjoy it properly (not one handed while jiggling a baby) so I fetched the car seat put it on the bench and popped him in it. I was halfway through my meal when there was a loud crash and I looked down to see the car seat upside-down and Eric facedown on the floor next to it!

I reacted a bit hysterically, which I was later glad of because I must have that crazy mum instinct that mums should have. I scooped him up and cuddled him, it was so horrible to see him scream. But he didn't look badly hurt and the crying was a good thing really. We put ice on his head and the other customers tried to pretend that everything was normal. I could see that he was probably fine but I just wanted to get him checked so we drove off to the Holyhead hospital while my parents took Percy for a walk. Unfortunately Holyhead hospital doesn't have an A & E, just a minor injuries nurse who isn't allowed to give advice about children under 3 months. So we set off to Bangor hospital where we waited a really long time to be told what we probably already knew... he was fine. Phew! We might have had to stay in for observations but thanks to terrible NHS waiting times the 4 hour post accident observation time was coming to an end anyway.

While waiting I reflected on how unlike the programme Casualty, casualty actually was. You never see a kid wait 3 hours and then have a bead removed from their nose.

 I'll end with a highlight from a family game of articulate that I tweeted to the games company that makes articulate.

I got two replies and a retweet...it's practically gone viral.

P.S Since I began writing this on Saturday Percy has done 7 successful wees on the potty!