Do Children Sleep in Grow Bags?

My adorable cubs.

Today's job de jour is to clean out the temporary holding cell of Cubbage Clothing (the boiler cupboard). Sort the clothing into piles that fit and piles that don't. Then to Re-file in a more appropriate place.

I no longer feel that a stack of freshly laundered clothing is improved any by having a boiler drip onto them. I did briefly entertain the idea of cutting out the middle man. No longer putting them through the washing machine, and further reducing the energy bills by making the Cubs sit in there, fully clothed. They could have a wash and clean their rancid school uniforms at the same time.
However, I felt this was a little too akin to Chinese water torture and prefer to come up with my own ingenious ways of tormenting the kids.
I am finding that being a member of the PTA and just turning up at their schools is quite sufficient to cause maximum embarrassment to them and elicit cries of "Oh Mum! how could you?" I have attempted to blink out of existence at a moments notice. All in the spirit of saving them the soul crushing humiliation of admitting they were born of man but I just don't seem to have made much of a success of it as yet. *note to self, Must Try Harder*
They are currently missing in action (at their Dad's).
So I have thought this would be a fine opportunity to go through their possessions and remove any that I, as a responsible despot deem surplus to requirement.

I always find it a harrowing experience. Entering the lair of the Teenbeast is not to be taken lightly. You will find an array of pants and socks that could either save humanity from cancer or wipe out the national debt. (let's face it after a bubonic like episode the country would have less mouths to feed). There are the tangled bedclothes that seem to show he was wrestling with inner daemons during his sleeping hours. I ask you, dear reader, why is he incapable of keeping a fitted sheet on a mattress? Does if offend him in some way and he has to wrest from it's anchoring corners to be flung aside?
However, I shall do my duty as dotting Mummykins and reassemble his carnage and find a space to store his darling, precious garments. (What will be left of them after the refiling! mwahahah)

Next up will be the Abode of the Boglin Princess. Why is it that small girls permanently smell of biscuits? I may take on an experiment to feed her just cabbage in the weeks to come, and see if the slightly damp, vanilla scent diminishes slightly. I also have puzzled, over the years where all the glitter comes from. After a just ten minutes in her company you will go about your business, only to be told that you have a fleck of glitter upon your person. Where does it come from? Does she sweat glitter? Maybe it is an essential part of Boglin hair? Her barnet is often so boglinesque that I swear a mouse is in residence. Perhaps he is a Disco mouse and adorns his downy fur with multi coloured glitter for his disco nights?
Dear Boglin has a large array of garments. She is a fashionista extraordinaire and could wear a different outfit everyday of the year without having to use the same garment twice. However, around 80% of this wardrobe of delights is now far too small. It was only a couple of month ago I culled the Boglin's wardrobe, and yet here I am again.
I am aware she has a hearty appetite. I do wonder if she is allowed to eat as many servings of lunch at school as she does here. If so do they have an outside caterer just to fill her needs? Or are all the other children shadowy waifs, who have the grey pallid faces of the underfed. Sitting at her feet, begging for scraps from her plate, as she has once more eaten the whole kitchen out of food?
Despite her healthy and hearty appetite, I hasten to add, that I have seen more fat on a sparrow's knee cap. She is still clinging to the delicious shape of a small girl, although age is creeping in and turning her into a teen! She may eat for Britain but she has a the balanced diet nutritionists around the world applaud. She loves fresh fruit and veg and can easily put away as much as any full grown man.
If she is enjoying such a healthy and fulfilling diet it has to be going somewhere. She sure as hell is not overweight in any sense. She is a beautiful image of an eleven year old girl. The only thing that can be done to accommodate this consumption of good home cooking can be height. Ergo, this must be the answer.
With good health among children comes good growth. My two are certainly taking this as the rule.
In conclusion, they do not sleep in grow bags. They have a good and healthy diet!
NB. I may have to raise the door frames to stop them bumping their heads within the next year or so.

Intrepid adventures into the living room.

The Tinyholding has been home and hearth to DD for around 10 years.  He has lived here, and worked here with moderate success.  I say moderate because when the rest of the team moved in the dining room looked like a building site.  The oven and the washing machine were out of service.  The children's room(s) were being used as a storage area and DD lived between the rooms he needed to function. These rooms, that he has lovingly decorated and restored are a testament to his creativity, tastful eye and perfectionist nature. I don't think he has been too shell shocked by the difference a whole family can make.  Indeed, I think he shares my belief that a family can make a house into a home.
There have, however, been one of two problems arising from our installation. How exactly we thought we would fit two households full of STUFF into one (smaller) house is beyond me.  We are still tackling these issues one at a time. Slow and steady wins the race. We are both fully aware you cannot fit the contents of a transit van into a shoe box. Sacrifices have been made and we will continue to do so.  DD has removed all defunct items from the storage (oops I mean children's) room(s).  We can now look to making them into two separate rooms on a more permanent basis. Instead of partitions we can aspire to walls, and doors!

The thing that has spurred us on to get things done is the imminent arrival of some spanking new dining room furniture. Soon it will be the season of goodwill and good food.  We are having a house full and do not wish to have to seat them around our picnic table that currently serves us as our dining suite. As I'm sure you can appreciate, we do not wish to place our lovely new furniture into a building site. The subsequent decoration involves DD having access to his tools without the aid of a mountaineering pick and crampons.  So operation declutter has commenced.

So far between us we have cleaned and reorganised child burrows (ew ew ewwwwwwww) This involved the discovery of many micro bacteria growing on pants and in cups. Making a certain Nesty Boglin's burrow look less like a reject pile from a Sally Army Shop. Donning a bio hazard suit and slicing through the teen fug of  Teen Beasts Lair.  Removing long dead DD technical gubbins and a general spit and polish. I am pleased to report that the Boglin Burrow has remained tidy and she has even folded her Pjs. The Teen Beast's lair has remained minimal in it's fallout. And DD's nerves are calm.
The chest of draws that will go toward housing my extensive wardrobe have been emptied and are in the process of being restyled with an eclectic collection of ceramic knobs.
The office has once again become a haven of gizmos and tranquility.
My task for the day was to excavate the living room. I have a vivid memory of it being a light and airy room of grainy wooden furniture and thriving plants. A place where DD and I could entertain guests, or sit and relax of an evening. A room to indulge our joint love of music and TV dramas.
Our haven of tranquility has turned into a youth club. Indeed, I am considering installing a revolving door to accommodate the teen population of the village. Our adult, peaceful living room has turned into a gaming den for Teen Beasts. It is the home of xbox, wii, Ds's and laptops. The terrain littered with empty crisp packets, sweet wrappers, juice glasses and other child detritus. The sweet, scent of the household flora is masked by the general child odor of sweaty feet and biscuits.
Well, no more! I have primped and polished. I have trimmed the plants into happy foliage. I have swept and dusted. I have reorganised wires and put away controllers. The room now smells of beeswax and lilies.
The lamps shed a cozy glow over our tranquil family room once again.
Or at least the did at 3.30pm. Since then there has been a steady stream of marauding children, three cats and a dog in there.
Woe betide them if it is not left as it was found!

Dog School!

The brainless wonder, how we love her!

I am currently sat at the laptop composing a few blog posts for my own entertainment. If, readers, you are also amused, then that is a wonderful bonus.
I am having a bit of a rest after being an intrepid living room explorer (more about that later). Even though I only whispered to DD about my back not hurting, it clearly heard me. I, as always, thought "yay, no pain. Time to clean the house for all I am worth".  I see you shaking your head, reader.  I hear you tut tutting, but no, I will never learn. I do have a shiny, clean, beautiful living room out of it though.
During my short sabbatical I am listening to The Tinyholding going on around me. I can hear DD, chatting on the blower to a client. Little tweets making their musical selves known as they flood into his machine via tweetdeck. (How long until they gets old? Ooh about five minutes ago I should think)
The high pitched whine of the essential life machine cleaning daily grind out of the laundry.
The occasional shuffle of a Teen Beast hard wired into his gaming essentials.
Best of all, and certainly most entertaining, is listening to Nesty Boglin "Training" the Uber Ginge that is Porge(Georgie aka Georgianna aka Chestnut Cherub aka Pooch).
Bless her, She is the sweetest beast (the dog that is) There is not a mean, snappy bone in her body. She love cuddles, people food, running and her ball. She fears cats, chickens, geckos, sprongy cat, boxes, sock puppets, any toy that makes a noise, and pretty much everything else.  She has the IQ of a gnat. The memory of a goldfish and the learning ability of a log.  In short, dear reader, she is thick.  Lovable, but thick.  Eager to please, but thick.  Giving and eternally affectionate, but thick.
Frankly, I adore her!
As you can imagine from this description, she isn't the most trainable of dogs.  I consider it a boon that she knows sit, lay down and stay (not that she remembers them and which command is which)  Due to this I do feel Nesty Boglin may be fighting a loosing battle.
Armed with a bag of "treats" ie cheese and dog biccies.  She is attempting to lead the happy, yet dozy thicky through a home made agility course.  Expecting her to keep her nose at the right level and complete said course in police dog style.  Not stopping to investigate her own feet or the shadow she has just passed.  She does not want her to walk backwards or sideways.  She would like her to weave through the obstacles and not just knock them over to sniff them.
Just yesterday she put on such a performance.
SHOCK! She has, in fact taught her to SIT, LAY DOWN, ROLL OVER, BEG, REACH FOR THE STARS and BOW.
What poor Ms Boglin has, in the past, failed to take into account is the memory of the pooch in her new found genius.  She did not factor in another person entering the room to watch.  I sat down ready for the grand unveiling.  Nesty Boglin grinning in anticipation of hers and Porge's great success.  The starlight of their glittering future at dog shows, country shows, village fetes and, hell why not, even the West End, flashing before her eyes.  She talked me through the whole show.  Explained the principles behind each trick. Discussed the merits of her training methods. Then...
Drum roll please.....
Georgie decided she would much rather run around in circles, have her belly scratched and play the fool.
Poor Nesty, dreams of the West End dashed.  She did manage to get some sort of performance out of her beloved Pooch.  But best of all she was showered in love from the adoring Ginge.
It's a good job we don't have anything that needs herding on the tiny holding, eh?

Cook-along-a-boglin

Nesty Boglin

The latest tinyholding venture is to get the childerlings cooking. Not such a problem with the Nesty Boglin, as she has always loved to cook. She adores making cakes and, to be honest is rather good at it. One of her ambitions for a future career (and there are many) is to become a Chef. Of course, in true Boglin Style she does not want to be a boring, ordinary Chef.  She will be a TV Chef, with a chain of cake shops that will make her wealthy.  The idea being to fund her life style of rescuing the worlds neglected hounds, pooches and mutts. She also wants to be a zoo vet, a singer, an actress, a teacher, and a world renowned eccentric. That's my girl! She's clearly going to be busy.
Well, to encourage (or exploit) this desire it has been decided that the Boglins will cook once a week. As you probably know already, dear reader, we are nothing if not meticulous about the provenance of our food. We are fussy about our ingredients and we cook from scratch. Not for us is the world of ping food. Y'know, into the microwave (popty ping) for two minutes and you get an unappealing bowl of slop with all it's phytonutrients zapped out of existence. In fact we do not own a microwave, and we will not in the future. (Being a bit of a phytonutrient fanatic that I am)
Last nights fare was a heap of Spaghetti bolognaise. Delicious, it was too. I had planned on cooking it myself. But Nesty Boglin had asked "when is tea?"  The unanimous answer was "when you cook it, madam".  This rather sarcastic remark was greeted by a very excited Boglin, who then insisted she was to cook.
So, armed with the statutory, onions, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes and the left over homemade tomato and basil soup as a sauce, she set too. We had one or two worrying questions from her, such as  "do I use a whole garlic or just one clove?"  I thank my lucky stars she asked.  She made a sterling effort. She also seemed amazed at the amount of mince required to feed four.  Good quality mince, procured from our local butcher, Simon/Jason (one day I'll get his name right)  A jolly and chirpy chap who now greets me with "Shw mae". A wonderful addition to an otherwise typical Derbyshire village, The farm Gate.
Of course, in an ideal world we would have a freezer full of meat from Rob Rose, but we can't always have everything we want, and Simon/Jason is a wonderful local business. With first class service and products.
Upon my casual saunter into the kitchen, just to look you see, not to interfere. I was sent with my tail between my legs from HER KITCHEN!  I see she is practicing the stroppy chef persona already.
She even laid the table. Napkins and pepper mills at the ready.  With a chorus of "compliments to the chef" and "cheers", a fine meal was had. Even Huck Boglin couldn't find a reason to complain. And lets face it, if the 12 year old boy can find a way to torment his 11 year old sister than it is good evening!
It's his turn sometime this week. Frankly, I'm a little more worried about that meal!  As for Nesty Boglin practicing her chef skills once a week. Bring it on!