Toddler Diaries 'A cranky day'

I am extremely cranky this morning. The troops woke up shortly after 6am, far too early for a Saturday morning and then started tickling our toes and tunnelling their way up under our duvet. Which eventually resulted in pulling the duvet off. This may sound funny but believe me it was not. It is not even 6:30am and I am already downstairs, rather this than trying to have a lie in with a bed full of chimpanzees. (I don’t mean Daniel of course - he's more of a gorilla!) Peeps has already dressed himself in his Incredible outfit and he even has pants on. We have a daily battle to convince him that the black pants incorporated into his suit aren’t real pants and that he needs to put pants on as well. Bethany has dressed herself as a princess, or so she says. In reality she has on the dress she was wearing yesterday, which unfortunately is dirty and on backwards and inside out - nice try though!!

Josh’s obsession with Disney Pixar characters is at its height at present. Aside from wearing his Incredible’s outfit continually (Oh we managed to buy a preowned version of the Incredibles in Blockbusters last week. He doesn’t know about this yet so please don’t mention it if you see him!) he is obsessed with the Toy Story films. This week he has asked me to move the houseplants around, so they are in the same position as the plants in the house in Toy Story 1. He wants Caleb sleeping in his room because Andy, the boy in the film has his baby sister sleeping in his room. Yesterday he moved the chair out of his room. When I asked him what he was doing he said “but mummy Andy doesn’t have a chair in his room.” He has also asked me to call him Andy, presumably when he’s not Mr Incredible, which isn’t often.

We haven’t had a great couple of days and this has contributed to my crankiness. I was ill on Thursday and Daniel heroically took the morning off work. I have to say it was quite amusing to observe him getting Bethany and Joshua ready to go to the shops in their usually inimitable style. I felt better on Friday morning so we went to Rainbow kids. Bethany did five marble paintings and Joshua spent most of the time playfighting with Joel, his fellow devotee of Toy Story. Friday afternoon was very difficult. It was one of those afternoons when three children seems way too many. Joshua kept wiping his nose on the furniture and Bethany was well into her striptease routine, which goes something like this: she takes all her clothes off, including her nappy (she takes her nappy off every time she does a wee or a poo - lovely!!) I decide, OK she can wear pants and we’ll give potty training a go. She refuses to go on the potty, and wees etc all over the carpet. I get fed up and put her nappy back on, she takes her nappy of and then we start again!! As I type this Bethany is removing her nappy!!

Caleb continues to be a lovely baby. I know I don’t mention him very often but that’s because he’s so good and there’s nothing really to say. This morning Daniel has put Caleb in the highchair and given him a few toys to look at. He’s smiling away to himself and just loving it. I should say that he can’t sit by himself yet, we’ve just propped him up with pillows.

Not sure how to finish this, so I think I'll just stop. Feeling slightly less cranky, hopefully will feel better tomorrow!!