It's a dog's life

Who came up with that phrase? As far as I can see the dog gets to sleep a lot, enjoys his food (and everyone else's), is excited about visitors to the door and likes to chase cats. It seems pretty perfect to me - well the sleeping bit anyway!

Sleep is a big deal at the moment. Both kids have a cough. Isabel has also taken to randomly throwing up so my nights are spent tending to coughing children, being kept awake by coughing children and dodging sick. There's nothing quite like that moment at 2am when you realise that the warm bundle of child who has come to snuggle on your head is actually about to barf...

In between times the kids are fine (but snotty) but I feel like the walking dead. It makes it worse that before this they'd both been sleeping pretty well (well for my children means not waking EVERY 2 hours but eeking it out to roughly every 3). I've been lucky to get an hour of consecutive sleep in the last few days. It makes it hard to summon up the effort to do much in the day and means I don't take well to small people climbing all over me. One at a time I can just about manage but I feel crowded when it's both of them at once. Problem is they're both a bit under the weather and so both want cuddles.

There are times when I would happily crawl into the dog's bed and sleep - well ok maybe not as it stinks! Something has to be done...

Isabel bounces a lot. She spends most of her days having milk, bouncing, running randomly around the house and being upside down. Often with a 'baby' too (baby can be the calculator that has hands or a doll, she's not fussy). She's rather likes dressing herself at the moment which can be err... interesting....

Dog heaven! A mattress that's miraculously appeared in a sunny spot.

The definition of optimism - setting up the marble run for your not-quite-2-year-old

with the obvious results.

Matthew took the kids and dog to the park this afternoon and I went to work on making the dog's bed a better place - the old duvet was chopped up and used to stuff some Ikea fabric that has been hanging around waiting for a project. There are two cushions and they will fit in the washing machine more easily which may mean the bed gets less stinky. Obviously the new bed was shunned this afternoon as it didn't smell quite right....