Loving Terry Wogan

Wow, what a busy day. For some reason the house was just trashed this morning when I got up. It looked like I'd done nothing all week. Being Saturday I had to take Sam to his stage school in Belfast. That means leaving the house by 1.30pm. I got practically nothing done all morning, apart from getting Luke dressed (he then stripped himself naked and hid in a box). My new vacuum cleaner arrived. I got it on eBay for £35 brand new - in Argos it was £145. It has a hepa filtration system that is supposed to be good for dust allergy sufferers. Our old hoover was just terrible. It had no brush on it, hardly any suction - there was hardly any point hoovering with it at all. So this new one arrived in a box twice the size of Luke. The kids all opened it up and when I went to see it the living room was covered in packaging and paper. Luke was more interested in the box (I have no idea why he had to be naked to play in it - other than that he has just learnt to take his own clothes off and feels very clever about it).

Anyway, I made a deal with Steve that if he cooked dinner when he got home from work, I would tidy and clean the house from top to bottom. I should have offered that the other way round really. While Sam was at drama I took Jude and Luke to W5. Luke had decided that was where we were going as soon as he realised it was drama day. They have a level which is like a dream world to 2 year olds. It has a kids supermarket, kids cafe, more play areas than are imaginable. So we stayed there for almost 3 hours. But this time it was so easy for me. Jude was like Luke's little Mummy. She took him all round the place, played with him constantly and photographed him every 60 seconds! I actually sat and read a book! Unbelievable. What luxury. If Sam had been there things would have been different because Luke would have been left out. I am reading a book my Mum recommended called The Five Languages of Love. The book describes how people can speak any of the 5 love languages. Your partner will feel loved if you express love in his/her language. So the key is for couples to find out what their languages are. It works for kids too. We all have a love tank and when it is full we feel happy and when it is low we feel sad. Our partner may love us dearly but if he speaks the wrong language we can feel unloved.That'sts about the gist of it anyway. The 5 languages are; quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, physical touch. haven'tnt got to the chapters which deal with which language I speak. To be honest don'tnt have much of a clue. I suspect its not gifts or words of affirmation. Anyway, I'll give the book a go. I am presuming me and Steve speak the same language anyway as we have always felt loved. But I'm keen to see how it applies to children. Sam and Jude seem to feel loved in completely different ways. Jude is generally happy whereas Sam gets very down if he hasn't had enough cuddles.

So this evening, as promised I tidied the whole house. From top to bottom. Mostly the top actually. Jude wanted to hoover her room with the new vacuum cleaner. It was a novelty. I'm sure that will ware off. I tidied all the upstairs bedrooms and shower room, and I hoovered the stairs, landing and bedrooms. I felt like the woman from the old 'shake n vac' adverts! They were desperately in need of it as I had been holding off doing it until the new vacuum arrived. I couldn't believe the amount of dust in the cylinder! By 9pm I was finished tidying. Instead of feeling tired I felt revived. I really felt like going for a long walk or something, but that was crazy. The kids were watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I watched a bit of it just to listen to Terry Wogans sarcastic comments. That man is hilarious!