I'm running away to join the circus

Oh, how I wish I was! I'm over-tired, over-stressed, bored, lonely  and just about ready to sit down and cry. Tiny has been sick with a cold for the last week and the Giant has been a . . . delight.

He's  lovely, during the week, until about eleven am. And then it's like flipping a switch. Suddenly he's crazily clingy, freaking out if I leave the room, crying hysterically (but also not very realistically) whenever anything goes wrong, claiming he's sick and needs to be tucked up on the couch every five minutes. It gets worse if I'm holding the baby. Everything he does gets more extreme, or he starts being very deliberately naughty, or he climbs on me like I'm a jungle gym. He gets even worse again if the Giant Husband is home.

I had a temporary lapse of sanity and decided to toilet train the Giant a few weeks ago. I've tried before but he's always fought it. This time it was extremely successful (except for a wet and harrowing first day) but it's given him another tool for his arsenal. As soon as I sit down to feed the baby, he starts shouting that he needs the toilet and you can bet he'll claim to be completely incapable of doing anything for himself.

And we don't get to leave the house anymore. We used to go out every morning. To the shops, or to the park, or to pop in and see friends. But now I'm always behind in housework, and not the silly stuff like sweeping behind the fridge or cleaning the extractor fan, I'm behind in the normal stuff like dishes and washing clothes. On top of which getting two kids, a nappy bag, a baby capsule, and myself down a narrow staircase usually seems just too hard. I never realised how heavy baby capsules are either. Those things weigh a tonne!

We're both bored and slowly going mad. I'm not really coping but nobody seems to realise I'm serious if I say that.

Moving onto more cheerful topics. Tiny is amazing. She was born inside her amniotic sack. Apparently that's unusual and good luck, which is cool. She doesn't have a single birth mark (I've looked more than once), which I wouldn't have believed was even possible. And except for two colds so far, she has literally nothing wrong with her. A lot of babies have some sort of issue, reflux or hip dysplasia or something. The biggest issue Tiny has is that sometimes she has trouble feeding because she's smiling too much!

I've been trying to get at least one decent picture of myself with each of the kids. Because there aren't many (even bad ones) of me with the Giant. I think this one of me and Tiny is quite nice.

For now I'm putting stuff like sewing and big doll projects on hold. I'm feeling too fragile right now to want to do anything that isn't easy and we're hopefully moving in January so I'm trying not to accumulate any more stuff before then. On the other hand, the other day the Giant found a big box of paper dolls (or fairies as he calls them) in a box in the laundry. A lot of them are unfinished but I've scanned them and plan on slowly processing them and putting them here. Most of them are uncoloured and I won't be colouring them, so it entertains me to think someday, someone might find them, print them and colour them. I'm also working on a paper doll making tutorial and I'm probably going to make more of them.

This is already incredibly long, so I'll leave this here. And unless I DO run away with the circus (it's tempting but I don't really have any circus skills) there should be more from me within the next week.