Growing Pains - The "Mummy Needs a Nap" Edition

Oh the sick, evil, twisted irony of growing pains, I remember them well! The irony being that I always was and still to this day am a short arse and now my poor wee girl is suffering with them too. She's as much of a short arse petite as I was and yet I remember those pains being absolute agony and Chloe doesn't seem willing to let them pass as "mildly uncomfortable" either.

For anyone lucky enough to be unfamiliar with growing pains, they're a pain sometimes cramp like in nature which occurs in the muscles of the legs and arms, usually in the evening or at night when the child is tired and probably already a bit grumpy, they can occur earlier in the day but often because of a fairly fast paced or "on the go" sort of day with lots going on and tons of places to be.

In short they cause almost no problems during the day leaving kids to run and skip and hop and jump and play all day long and crumple in "agony" almost at the very mention of bedtime resulting in most parents (my own mum and even with 20/20 hindsight me included) thinking their kids are faking or laying it on a bit thick.

It's been going on for about ten days now with it either keeping Chloe awake until almost midnight or she's fallen asleep a bit earlier than normal only to be woken out of a sleep in pain for a couple of hours at half past daft o'clock. She's not been at her most reasonable for the past couple of weeks, neither have I for that matter.

I'm actually dreading the next couple of days, tomorrow her class is walking to the library in town in the morning then on Wednesday and Thursday night Chloe's in her class play. She'll need to go back to school at 7.00pm both nights, the play begins at 7.30pm and then she can go home at 8.00pm, so that's two fairly busy days considering that 8.00pm is already a good half hour past Chloe's usual bed time routine. I know she's six now and most kids stay up a bit later than that, but I've said before that this is her bedtime routine and we don't mess with it. She knows when she wants her shower and jammies and to curl up for the night. She just never has been a night owl, the kid loves her bed. I just know both nights are going to end in tears by the time we get her home and ready for bed the pains will have kicked in and it'll be a rough night for all involved. Thursday will definitely be worse than tomorrow.

And speaking of her being six now, the whole lack of sleep thing meant that the poor child's birthday passed as something of a non event. She did go to soft play hell with a few friends in the afternoon but she just couldn't seem to be bothered with the whole thing and didn't want to go running around with her friends. I'm fairly certain it's the lack of sleep catching up with her, we're just hoping now to cruise into the weekend and she can go to the cinema with a friend on Saturday and have cake and popcorn.

I just hope these growing pains realise Chloe isn't destined to be some great six footer and clear off sometime soon because there just isn't enough caffeine in the world:)

Blasted Birds

I liked my little craft stall. It was nicely laid out, easy to assemble and it had a few different levels to display everything at it's best. I was happy with it, it needed nothing more.

A shame then really that I made things that need to hang up. Therein lies the problem, things that are made to hang look their best when hanging oddly enough.

I needed a stand of some description.

Or three in an ideal world.

Well in truth, in this ideal world I speak of, I would really need a bigger table to accommodate the three new stands without me having to faff around with the rest of the display.

I don't ask for much in life really!

The obvious place to look seemed to be my usual haunts, the charity shops, but I came up empty handed, new shops turned up even less options.

I needed something big up top but with a small heavy base to prevent it toppling, but the only things I could find seemed to be the opposite with some spindly little effort up top and a base the size of a hub cap.

With no other option I was forced to make my own. You may remember I've mentioned in the past that wire just isn't my things, but this is what I came up with.


I had some 1mm galvanised steel at home which would easily have supported it's own weight (the taller of the two stands is a little over 2 feet tall) but wouldn't have managed with the birds and charms in place. A trip to the garden centre turned up 3mm and 5mm wire.

If you're ever thinking of making something like this for yourself, I beg you, I implore you, go for the 3mm. I used the 5mm. My hands have yet to forgive me. I have nine extremely fine little cuts on my hands and another six on my left wrist, I didn't find most of them until I was washing a few dishes later and they hurt like you wouldn't believe!!!

On another note when I made the first stand, I cut the wire to the right length, held them all together and bent the bottom ends out to create a little base for the weight in the jar at the bottom to hold onto, I then wrapped the six lengths of heavy wire with the 1mm I already had. Don't do this, leave 'em straight, leave 'em straight, leave 'em straight until you've finished wrapping them because that tiny little base at the bottom turns into the spinning wheel of angry death while you're wrapping it, hence the six cuts on my wrist.

I live and learn:)