Posted 5 days late.....

When you have lots of children some things don’t get much of a reaction beyond “oh dear, chicken pox again, hey ho”, however some things are still exciting and new - Amos has finally worked out how to move forwards and I think he is just the cleverest baby on the planet (just as they all were when they finally worked out how to move). I hesitate to call it a crawl - he doesn’t get up onto his hands and knees yet, he only uses one leg and drags the other one behind him, almost as if he’s got a limp. Combined with rolling he can now get to wherever he wants to be (especially the plugs under the TV unit) It’s hilarious to watch, but don’t worry, I won’t inflict a video of him doing it on you, lol

Tomorrow we have another birthday, this time Sophie’s. We invited her friend from her old school to come over for the day and she had her birthday tea today. I got home from work just in time to see her blowing out the candles on her cake which I was glad about. I’m working again tomorrow so I won’t see much of her before she goes to bed.

I’m really enjoying the job. It’s nice to get out of the house and dare I admit that when I’m there I don’t think about the children (unless somebody asks me a question about them). It’s so nice not to be “muumuum” for a few hours and I think it probably doesn’t even occur to many of the customers that I have children (and certainly not 8 of them!!) I did get asked today if I have to do all the cleaning at home - here’s another terrible confession for you. I probably do more cleaning at work than I do at home.

Did I mention my electric blanket? If you haven’t got one then I highly recommend it. To get into a lovely (very) warm bed is just bliss. I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to get one. I think we’re going to have to get the children one each now.

Thank you to everyone for the comments on my last post and also for the ones on my post about depression. Unfortunately they disappeared when I changed the comments moderation settings but I did read them all. One thing I forgot to mention on that post was that when you have one of those bad days sometimes it can help to think “oh dear, I’m having a bad day today” rather than “oh no, my depression has come back, I’m so low, how long am I going to feel like this”? If you can accept that some days will be bad but not necessarily all of them sometimes it can help (I know sometimes even thinking positive doesn’t help, and sometimes you just cannot think positively at all no matter how hard you try). If you’ve been lucky enough not to have ever been depressed please believe me when I say it’s not as simple as “pulling yourself together”, if it was then there would be no need for psychiatrists and psychiatric units. The lowest depths of depression are not where we choose to be, honestly.

Changing the subject entirely, does anyone want some nappy patterns? I can’t remember exactly what I’ve got but there’s a Cuddlebuns, Poochies, Poopockets (2), Honeyboy home and some more that I have forgotten off the top of my head. £20 or reasonable offer for all of them. Email me if you’d like them.