Over the last few weeks Henry has mastered the levels of mouse control needed to operate the CBeebies Website unaided. Daisy is excitedly discovering the wonderful world of the CBBC Site, Horrible Histories is a particular favourite, and Ruth and I are fully paid up members of the Simultaneous laptop, TV/Radio club.

The only problem last week was we ran out of computers! Henry was on the PC upstairs, Daisy was on my laptop and Ruth was on hers, so I was computer-less.

I then spent far too long resurrecting the very old laptop with the dodgy power supply – which now much to my nerdy shame is running Ubuntu.

So yes we are terrible parents and there are times in our house when the house falls silent, as we all stare blankly into our individual screens; but you know what it’s quite nice.

Today I did some working from home and it was the first time I got to seriously work in my new study, with it’s nice clean desk and window with at least some sky for me to gaze at.

My New Study - Still clean and full of computers

I actually prefer the smaller space, when you’re working quite intently at a computer screen having some walls close by is comforting.

I am however coming to the sad realization that if I have to do any significant amount of writing at a computer that I’m a desktop man not a laptop boy which is a bit sad considering how many laptops we have floating about.

Both my main home and work computers are laptops, and despite one running shiny windows 7 and being vastly superior to anything else, I almost always find myself sitting at the creaking windows XP machine typing g away – and enjoying it.

I don’t know if it’s the keyboard comfort or the mouse over the touch pad (i suspect a bit of both) or indeed the big old monitor. but it just seems easier some how – even the thinking about what words to type bit.

we are woefully bad at decorating, and after 10 years in the house we still haven’t decorated every room, in-fact we’ve done 6  rooms – so we’re not even managing one a year. It’s mainly inertia coupled with the knowlage of our own DIY failings with a pinch of old house, so it’s taken quite a while for us to organise and motivate ourselfs into action.

First things first – the moving of what is probably the most cluttered room in our house into the rest of the upstairs, and when you have two children this actually  means the hallway and your bedroom; at least we won’t have a cat making noises under the bed for a while – and I am sure there are some advantages to having easy access to stationary in the middle of the night.

The room it’s self isn’t going to be pink – we’ve been lucky on that front when we decorated Daisy’s first room (come to think of it, it was actually her second room – she’s nearly had them all!) she was in a orange is my favourite colour room, so we gave he a yellow room with an orange wall; in between then and now – we’ve had quite strong pink phases but not for this room – it’s going to be blue (light) with blue (dark) bits.

As I type we are mid decorate – we’ve stripped the walls, had a massive chunk of plaster fall off, patched it (with help obviously) – filled all the holes, and done the wood work ; now if the big patch will dry out we can wallpaper, and then paint – hopefully all before Daisy explodes with excitement and Ruth has a nervous breakdown from all the clutter.

This year, in a reflection of the current economic climate, we are going for a much more produce-based garden. We’ve bought a strawberry plant, three tomato plants, some carrots (baby, to grow in a window box), and a blueberry bush. It’s not a big yard, so we’re not going to get a bumper harvest, but it’s a start, and we’re seeking the smug feeling of growing stuff, more than the actual food.

I have a bit of a master plan to use guttering to make more space – but I don’t think I’m going to make it this year. For now we just have the three window boxes and the raised bed I made (that is still standing!).

Daisy loves worms – and snails, as well as putting here hands in the dirt. Not sure she gets the growing bit yet.

I, inspired by this piece of frugality, rang British Gas Services, and cancelled their extortionate gas appliance insurance cover, thereby saving £23.37 a month!

*bows*

That means in the last half an hour, we’ve saved £516 a year – after tax.  The equivalent of something like a £670 pay rise.

For what seems like an age, the only clock in our living room has been the spare bed side alarm clock, which sat at one end of the TV, and for most of the day was unreadable because of the reflection of the window. So last week we did what we typically do in these situations (well what we typically do, is nothing for huge spans of time), and went in the complete opposite direction and got the biggest clock we could find.

So now we have the big ikea clock that you usually only see in school halls or caf?s, on the wall directly above the TV. and for at least 3 days we just sat grinning, because we could see what time it was. Either not knowing the time is a huge lifestyle problem or we just need to get out more… no comments please!

To be fair, a lot of the stuff has just been cluttering up the house for a while now, but there is nothing like another person in your house to actually make you realize just how much clutter there is. So despite being offered the opportunity to go back to bed, I’ve opted for the trip to B&Q and sort the loft out option, which I’m sure I will pay for later. For now It’s caffeine in my veins that’s keeping me going.

I’m not 100% convinced I’ve actually achieved much, there are around 18 extra things in the loft that weren’t there this morning and most of them have come from the study, but the study doesn’t look much emptier! Maybe once the clutter in the way takes up the spaces filled by the clutter now in the loft it will all look nice.

And, with the benefit of his insight, it does now seem to work fine. Still, he considered me too stupid to charge the full call-out rate, and only took twenty quid off me. It was a pity gesture, but I accepted it.

I’d like to point out that I have two degrees. Honestly, I’m a clever person. I am.

Kevin is laughing at me quite a lot.

That may speak significantly of our relationship. Apparently, I’m much worse pregnant, so there’s light at the end of the tunnel for him, in that sense.

Anyway, I’ve spent most 0f the last two to three months strongly suspecting that I was anaemic, but desperately trying to avoid nasty horrid iron tablets. I have eaten iron-fortified snack-bars for England, along with apricots, brown bread, and spinach, and lots of orange juice (the vitamin C helps you absorb it, apparently). It helped a little, in the sense that I stopped feeling the urge to pass out if I stood up too quickly, but not enough, apparently, because when the midwife took my blood last week, she declared it substandard, and put me on the tablets.

I’m sure the effect takes a good few weeks to be noticeable, but I have actually had a great deal more energy in the last two to three days than I have managed to muster since… well, January, come to think of it. And as a result, the almost physical pain of being in the squalid hovel that we’ve been calling home has suddenly become something I could see a way to solve. Kevin and I have worked very, very hard, this afternoon. We have Tidied the whole of the downstairs of the house: entirely cleared the dishes backlog; cleared all forms of homeless clutter from the mantlepiece, dresser, microwave and other flat surfaces of the kitchen area; put away a stack of things that were lying around the dining room; and put away ALL the toys in the living room, including the ones languishing under the furniture. Then there was extensive hoovering (again, including under the furniture in some places), followed by mopping, and a couple of bins got emptied for good measure.

I am very proud of us. We even got carried away and cleaned a couple of windows, after tea. I am exhausted, and the baby is doing somersaults at the excitement of so much exercise, but the downstairs of my house is a place I don’t mind being, for the first time in months. So I’m going there now – the less said about the upstairs, at this point, the better, but celebrate the successes, I say…

We want to make the change a bit before the baby is born, so that Daisy doesn’t associate getting chucked out of her room with it, So last weekend we took our other small room, and in a total departure from the norm for us, stripped it, prepared it, glossed it (with two coats of undercoat and one gloss!) and then wallpapered it, all in just four days! of-course other things have taken up the rest of the week (like work, and a very awake child at night) so it’s not finished, but Daisy has chosen the paint and it’s sitting there waiting.

When it’s finished Daisy is going to have a ‘big’ bed, some new furniture we think and one very bright orange wall.

Being two and a half, and very inquisitive, she does of-course know what’s going on, and she spent most of the weekend asking me if had finished her room yet, only to be told that I had lots more to do.