A day in the life

Warning - this probably won't be very interesting for most of you. It's really just for me to look back on in the future, when I wonder what I did with all that spare time I must have had when I only had one little monkey to take care of. So here's a snapshot of how K and I spend our days...

Although K sleeps in his own bed in his own room now, he has developed the habit of coming into our bed sometime in the early hours and (usually...) going back to sleep again. He likes to snuggle up close to me, which is lovely most of the time but has resulted in me almost falling out of bed once or twice. You see that tiny space between K and the edge of the bed? That's where I had been sleeping...


Also, he always brings his bedtime stories from the previous night with him. After being hit, poked and prodded by various giant hardbacks, we've now imposed a rule under which bedtime books must be small and paper-backed...

No-one in the monkey household is a particularly early riser, and K usually prompts me ('Wake up Mummy. Get up') to get up at about 7.30. If I suggest that he tell Daddy to wake up he points out, 'No, Daddy is sleeping'. Yes. Quite.

How quickly things proceed after that depends on what day of the week it is. Mondays have no particular schedule, so by the time we've gotten up, dressed, breakfasted and generally ready for the day, it's usually about 10am.


Then K and I are likely to go to the play centre if there's nothing pressing to do, often making a stop at the Post Office on the way. Home again for lunch at about 12.30, and then an afternoon of lesson-planning, shopping and odd jobs around the house that didn't get done over the weekend.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are school days for K, so we change up a couple of gears, leaving home at 9am, with lunch packed for K too.



On Tuesdays I drop K off and then go to a student's house for a private lesson from 9.30 to 10.30 before whizzing back to the community centre for a class from 11 to 12. By the time I come home again, have lunch and clear up after the morning whirlwind, it's pretty much time to go and collect K again at 2.15. On Thursday mornings I'm free so I've been scheduling doctor's appointments for then, and going to maternity yoga on the non-doctor days. After lunch in town I have a class from 2.15 to 3.15 and then collect K at 3.30.

Until recently, Wednesday was university day. I left home at 7.20 and had classes all morning, getting back home again at around 2pm. H leaves home at 8 each day, so his mum came over each week to look after K until I got home again. Meanwhile, Fridays are pretty low-key. I have a private student who comes here each week at 10 (actually 2 women who take alternate weeks) so as long as we're reasonably presentable by then there is no great rush.

What do we do in the afternoons? I'm not really sure, but the time soon seems to slip away. Of course there's often shopping or other errands to run in town, which take twice as long with K in tow. If H is working late we sometimes drive into town in the afternoon and leave the car for him, getting the bus back. K loves taking the bus, but wants to press the button at every stop... If we're just at home we might do a bit of drawing or painting or the like, or if K is playing happily by himself I admit to sneaking off to other rooms to try to Get Something Useful Done.



By about 5.30 we're starting to think about what we're going to have for dinner. K often watches a DVD (Maisy still reigning supreme) while I cook, or he stands on a chair at the kitchen counter and watches. H gets home at about 6 and we aim to eat at about 6.30, though K usually doesn't finish till close to 7.30. Time for a quick play, then it's into the bath for the boys while I have a nice little sit down.


H generally takes care of the bath/pyjamas/teeth routine, and then I take K upstairs at about 8.30 with a couple of (small, soft) books, read to him and tuck him in for the night. Until recently he was happily going to sleep alone, but lately he wants me to lie down with him for a little while ('No, a big while'), which is not really such a hardship. He still goes to sleep by himself though, usually still clutching the book he was 'reading'...

I'm usually free from about 9, and have great plans for what I'll do with the time. All too often though, it just disappears in chatting with H and watching TV. Oh, and in writing ridiculously long blog posts that will bore my poor readers (few, but very valued) to tears...

One month to go!

Can you believe that I only have another month until my due date? Where have the last 8+ months gone? This pregnancy seem to have just flown by. I suppose it's a common refrain from women having a second or subsequent child - the older kid(s) keep you so busy that you don't have time to focus on the new arrival. Still, I do feel a bit sorry for him (I did tell you it was a 'him', right?), neglected before he's even been born...

Touch wood, this pregnancy has gone very smoothly so far. Very little morning sickness and no real problems with backache or other common pregnancy ailments. Compared to when I was expecting K, I have been having less leg cramps at night but more heartburn, but really I'm feeling fine. I have to remember not to eat or drink anything after about 9pm though, or I can't lie down in bed without feeling sick...

My doctor here is very big on walking, and recommends a brisk, daily, 60 minute walk throughout pregnancy, or at least in the final month. When I was expecting K, I was out there in all weathers, clocking up some major mileage. It's surprising how far you can get in an hour at a good pace; I remember meeting a friend in the centre of town on a snowy February day and giving him a real shock when I told him I'd walked there. Of course this time, I haven't walked a step, apart from 15 minutes to the nearest station to go to work on Sundays. On the other hand, the other big thing at the doctor here is weight gain. They are Very Strict and declare that no-one should gain more than 10 kg. The first time around I was very careful with my diet, walked my socks off and was constantly nagged by the midwives, finally reaching D-Day just the right side of the magical 10 kg. This time I've just carried on as normal, with no special attention to diet or exercise, and heard something from the doctor last week that I never thought I would hear - 'No problem at all with weight gain'. Wow. It rivals the other 'Never to be heard from a doctor' quote of a month or so ago - 'It's definitely a boy, no mistake'.

With just a month to go, I suppose I should be starting to prepare for this little one's arrival... A couple of weeks ago I did manage to go to one ante-natal class, for women at at least 30 weeks, where the midwife said she assumed we'd all packed our hospital bags, and got everything set up for the baby. I struggled not to laugh out loud. I've tended to think 'oh, we've got everything we need already', but I suppose I should dig out K's old baby clothes and wash them. And it occurred to me that we don't have anywhere to put things for the new baby, so we did go out and buy a chest of drawers on Saturday. That's a good start, right?

In theory I should have a little more time soon (assuming the baby doesn't come too early of course...), as I'm finishing work this week. University classes have already finished for this academic year and I handed in all the final paperwork last week. The 2 group classes that I run will meet with me for the last time this week and then Vivian will take over from March for 6 months. My little side-job of kids interviews has been wearing me out recently (yesterday I interviewed about 140 children, with 30 minutes for lunch and no other break), but there's only one more to go. I do have a couple of private students that I'll keep meeting with until I go into hospital, but that's just sitting around and chatting really. Oh, and I'm still working on those transcriptions too...

If I do find some time I'd like to fit in some walking, and Making Stuff! The baby blanket I'm crocheting (you know, the one I bought wool for extra early so as to have plenty of time to complete it) is far, far behind schedule. I'd like to sew a couple of things for the baby too (plus it's K's birthday soon and I'd like to make something for him...), but we'll see. Must write more blog posts too! Actually, I blame Lisa for my lack of free time, for lending me lots of good books at New Year's...

Busy days...

After all the inactivity of the New Year, things seem to be going non-stop now (as you can see by the lack of recent blog posts...). K is back at pre-school and H and I are back to work as usual. Actually, I'm working more than usual. I'm doing some work for a friend's research, transcribing interviews with Asian EFL students. I can only do it when I have some peace and quiet, which translates to 'when K is asleep'. Unfortunately that is also prime blog/crochet/laze in front of the TV time, but I can't do it all at once...

I'm also doing kids' interview tests for ECC again this year. Starting last week, I'll be spending every Sunday in January and February (and a couple of Saturdays) doing English speaking tests with kids ranging in age from 3 to 15, generally about 100 a day! They can be quite enjoyable really, but there is a lot of travelling involved. Last week I 'only' had to go to Matsue and Izumo, leaving home by 6.30am on both Saturday and Sunday. This Sunday is a 'late' start, leaving home just after 7, but the following week I'm supposed to be getting the 6:01 train from the main-line station. Unfortunately there are no trains or buses to get me to the station at that time in the morning, and I can't see H being terribly enthusiastic about getting up to take me. Seriously considering going the day before and staying overnight...

Oh yeah, and being 31 weeks pregnant, that can be a job in itself sometimes! H took the day off to take care of K on Wednesday while I was working, and then took him out in the afternoon so I had a couple of hours all to myself at home, a very rare event. I didn't know what to do: transcriptions? blog? lesson plans? TV and crochet? In the end, I fell asleep on the sofa...

Still here!

Once again I have got out of the blogging routine.

The main reason this week was my not feeling at all well since The Air Show Drenching. I had a strange collection of symptoms including high temperature, fainting, sore throat, and aching neck but as of yesterday I am officially Better. The weather mirrored how I felt - the grey, wet weather continued from Sunday to Thursday, but today we have been back to sunny blue skies.

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week K went to nursery for the day. I was working as usual on Tuesday but, for once, had nothing on in the afternoon and I was running a teacher-training workshop on Wednesday with, again, nothing planned for the afternoon. I'd been looking forward to those afternoons for ages, with ideas of clothes shopping, relaxing at cafes and catching up on odds and ends at home running through my head. Instead I spent them congratulating myself on surviving the morning and lying on the sofa watching TV. It was good that I had that free time to rest, but it was still rather disappointing to spend it that way...

The previous week wasn't much better for Getting Things Done. K didn't nap at all on any of the days that we were at home alone together, or even stay in his cot for more than 5 minutes before escaping out and reappearing downstairs. He also figured out how to unlock the safety gate at the living room door, so I was spending most of my time chasing after him all over the house, trying to prevent him getting his little hands on things he shouldn't...

Now, however, we have a new fence to keep K out of harm's way (although the napping hasn't improved much) and I'm feeling fine again, so it's time to Do Stuff!

Did you miss me?

Just as I was regaining a bit of enthusiasm for doing things, I got knocked out by a stomach bug... It hit in the early hours of Sunday morning; unfortunately, the day I was supposed to be doing 120+ 'interview tests', in a city a 2 hour train-ride away. This led to me frantically phoning round at 7am (not surprisingly, not many people were answering) trying to find a) the mobile number of the woman I was supposed to be working with and b) someone who could take my place. I felt really bad about letting them down (as well as just really bad) and I'm not sure if I felt more or less sympathy for them when they called me at 10am to say they still hadn't found anyone and was I feeling better enough to just come for the afternoon?

In the end I spent all day Sunday in bed, and on Monday went to the doctor for a 2 hour drip to try to make up for everything I hadn't eaten. H joined me at the doctors since by then he'd got it too. Tuesday and Wednesday passed in a state of Doing The Absolute Minimum, and today I almost feel back to normal.

And what about K? Well it seems he had it first and we barely noticed. Last Thursday when H's mum was looking after him he was sick after breakfast. He didn't eat his lunch but he carried on playing and running around as usual and by the time I came home I wouldn't have known anything had happened. Once again he turns out to be the toughest and healthiest member of the monkey household :-)

One silver lining to all this is that I got the chance to watch some of the DVDs I had for Christmas; all of the BBC's Jane Eyre, the first few episodes of Mistresses and, possibly best of all, The Best of The Two Ronnies. Classic stuff...

Here're some I made earlier...

For several years I have been running a weekly English class for the local Friendship Force club. It's an international group that organises homestay exchanges between chapters in different countries. I feel that there are lots of opportunities for students and young people to do international exchanges but not so many for adults, and this group helps to fill that gap. The local group here makes a trip abroad and hosts members from overseas every year. In recent years they have been to Turkey, the UK, Australia, Germany...

The members taking my class are all ladies who have retired or work part-time and whose children have grown up, giving them the time and freedom to travel. I really enjoy teaching them and have got to know them very well. I'm hoping they'll let me join in their adventures when I retire ;-)

In the run-up to Christmas each year I try to do something a little different to the usual classes. This time, we made Christmas cards. I made samples of 3 different designs, and then gave them written instructions and the materials they needed to make them.

(Ignore the 'Merry Christmas' written messily on the tree)

I found a template for the 3D standing tree on t'Internet, but I'm afraid I can't remember where. The pop-up tree and the ornament cards come from a Japanese book I have on card-making.

We set up 3 areas in the room, one for each design, and the ladies were free to make whichever ones they fancied. It's only an hour class but everyone was able to make at least 2 cards. I noticed two interesting things during this class; one - rather than make their own card individually, each table set up their own little production line, with each person being in charge of one step in the card-making process. I'm sure it wouldn't have worked like that in the UK.


The other thing I noticed was that no-one even glanced at the carefully worded instructions I had made. So much for it being an English class. Instead, they just looked at the samples and the materials and worked it out from there. I can't tell you how many times someone asked me 'How do you .....?' or 'What do I do now?' or some other question to which the answer was always 'Look at the instructions....'

The lesson I learnt? No samples next time ;-)