Picnic in the garden

We had lunch as a picnic in the garden today, in beautiful warm sunshine with hardly any breeze at all. It was a stroke of genius on mum's part, it was the only thing that got Ben to put trousers on. His picnic lunch consisted of half an apple, 4 bites of ham sandwich (a bite out of each one), a pile of cocktail sausages, a box of raisins and a milky way. Not so bad really. Here's some more, the first one is the same as this but there's 5 more brightly saturated pictures from the picnic! My montage-making skills deserted me this evening, I couldn't get anything to work together. But I like this one, it's one I actually tried to get rather than just snapping away.

We've needed a "nothing" day today after yet another bad night. Ben doesn't seem to be settling easily in other houses at the moment - I wonder why that could be, hmmm - so he was clinging on to me a lot last night which meant in turn that I couldn't drift off to sleep properly. And then the final cuddle this morning before he got up I noticed his pyjama bottoms were damp :( I guess he's stressed and tired again, this happened last time he was stressed and tired. Hey ho. He won't let me put him in a nappy though. Hope he sleeps better tonight. Hope I sleep better tonight! I am not a great mummy after so little sleep. At least he's not had a spikey temperature the last couple of nights so that's something!

Am trying to think of positives to write...

He had cauliflower for dinner. JUST cauliflower. I just stared at him!! Admittedly he was very tired having not had a daytime sleep again, and wasn't particularly hungry having had a smallish bowl of cereal during the afternoon, but still. He saw the moussaka and the bowl of boiled vegetables and asked for "the white one" and ate it all and kept asking for more! Wouldn't eat anything else, even though he does like potato and broccoli (on occasion) and minced meat and cheese sauce.

How odd. How very very odd.

Stephen and Dad on the other hand have had a true "unsupervised men" gourmet meal tonight of cold ravioli straight out of the tin. They did say they were going to have this at least once this week. Ah well. At least they're having a productive time finishing the re-wire at home!

Ben has helped Grandma mow the lawn, he helped push the mower around and mum said he also helped by keeping out of the way ;) but I got a whole 15 minutes peaceful lie down out of that. I heard Ben come in, and run back to mum saying "need to go 'shhhhh' grandma, mummy sleeping!" and dragging her to see me sleeping, so she could go "shhhh!". And then, about 2 minutes later, he was back, shaking me by the shoulders and head saying "wakey wakey!" Grrrrr.

I have simply been too tired to be a happy mummy today. I have tried, I really have, but the tiredness has just been too much and I've spent a lot of time pushing Ben away from me which of course backfires and makes him even more like my little shadow. Every time I disappeared he would ask "where's mummy?" and come on a mummy-hunt. He had to play in whatever room I escaped to. He even came and played in the loo with me, because he needed to find me.

Ben finally made space for fresh food this morning. He'd not poo'd for two days so had been saving it up. Once that was out of the way he was absolutely ravenous and ate a bowl and a half of porridge faster than I've ever seen him eat before. It just vanished!!

And that was the day.

Tomorrow is a new day. I might see if Ben will let me pop down to the hairdressers to get the hair on the back of my head fixed how I want it. We might bake some carrot cake. We might do some colouring and painting. We might actually not get dressed.... And Ben might have a bath. That would be nice. Let's see how things go. Let's not actually plan anything, but have things to do if we have the energy for them. I am determined not to stress myself out tomorrow. If Ben wants to play in the garden in just pants and a teeshirt, then he can play in the garden in pants and a teeshirt....