It's been a long time. . .

  The last two and a half months have been tough. Continuing staffing problems meant I spent eight weeks working twice as many shifts as usual, we all got sick with various things and everything has just been crazy busy. I thought I'd still get time to write here, but whenever I had a quiet moment, I just collapsed into a puddle.
  Of course it did not help that the Giant Husband tends to forget everything he's told as soon as he hears it. (He's not horrible, just thoughtless sometimes.) Which meant I spent a lot of that time feeling like I was taking care of everything at home or like I was the only adult in the house. But we all managed to survive.
  I'm back to working my usual amount but for the time being all of my shifts are when the Giant Baby is at daycare, so I'm still not getting any time to myself. And when I do, mostly stolen from sleep time right now, I'm working on my costume for my work Christmas party.

  We finally got the Giant Baby a big boy bed. I liked his cot because he couldn't get out of it but the side of it was only up to his crotch and he was nearly as long as it. But I really like his bed. Mostly because it means I'm not having to lift close to twenty kilos over the side of a cot. And he hasn't actually realised that he can get out of it by himself yet. On the downside, while he was in the cot he always wore sleep bags. They're convenient and they meant he couldn't kick the blankets off or lift his legs high enough to climb out. Now he's in a bed, blankets are safer. He's less likely to hurt himself falling or climbing out of bed if he has all his limbs. Unfortunately he hates blankets apparently, and refuses to use them which meant we had to relearn how to dress him for bed if we wanted him to be warm enough.

  The next Giant Baby project (besides continuing to try to trick him into either bloody talking or eating his dinner) is toilet training. Don't worry, I'm well aware that toilet training is both boring and disgusting, so I won't be writing about that here. But if all my pictures start looking rushed and damp, they probably are.

  I've had a few issues with the LOL Surprise dolls lately. Dolls coming with only one shoe, or the wrong outfit and accessories, or accessories that have been caught in the bag seal so they're melted and wrecked. The first two I actually contacted the Australian importer about. I would like to say they were great but they weren't particularly. Yes. They mailed me replacement parts but they also said that "due to the secret surprise element, the production process of these dolls leaves no room for error and mistakes like these simply don't happen." Which is a giant load of bulldust. If these mistakes simply didn't happen MGA wouldn't have set up a dedicated email address to deal with exactly that issue. Seriously, that exists, but it only services the US. But I'vealso found the failure rate to be roughly fifty per cent! One doll with something missing or broken could be a fluke, two could be bad luck. But when it's three and then four, in a month, that's a pattern. That's a production issue. I also can't help but wonder how many kids out there have gotten one of these with a missing shoe or something and their parents have said either "Oh well. Don't worry about it." Or "Don't be silly. They're so small, you probably lost it." But for the price that they are, I expect better. Especially since the fancy pantsy packaging means you're ostensibly paying twelve bucks for what is at best a seven dollar toy.

 I hope I can make more of an effort to write more now that crazy time seems to be over. We'll see. Meanwhile, if anyone reading this knows of any other doll blogs that might be worth reading, could you please leave a comment so I can have a look? A lot of the ones I used to read don't post very often anymore and I need my dolly fix!