The discovery of the sardine tin

Hello, well, this is weird. Normally it's my mum writing the posts. Anyway, hi my name is Harriet but you know me as thing 2, DD2, number 2 child, etc. In a nutshell I am the youngest of the two children. I am almost 13, which I think is important because when the last blog was posted I was 10. In one word I would describe myself as weird, so would everyone I know. I'm that kid who likes chocolate fingers and ketchup. I told you I'm weird.

In this covid 19 crisis I have been doing work from my mum's tablet. Today I was scrolling through the camera roll when I came across a screenshot of this very website. Of course I've seen it before but I never thought about searching it. My curiosity got the better of me and next thing I know I am scrolling through these very posts. They made me laugh a lot and remember those moments. I particularly enjoyed the letter to shoe companies and got very excited of when there was a picture of my brilliant year 3 shoes. Man, saying that makes me feel old.

A lot has changed around here, we have a new kitchen and a fabulous bathroom. Pretty cool right? 

Covid 19 has given me a lot of free time. Which makes this even more boring. Especially because I'm an extrovert. I have to go places and the furthest I have been recently is our local pharmacy. I don't like having loads of homework but I can't just complain about that because it is my only form of education. The worst part is I might have to have my 13th birthday in lock down, however I'm kind of looking forward to it. One thing I am sad about is we had a whole list of what we were going to do and now we can't. 

I really like the name the sardine tin. One time I thought of a slogan: we are the sardines and the world is our tin can. So what's the moral of the story? Don't tell your kids you have a blog or this will happen. Heheheheheh. 

Stupidly proud of my handiwork

I have always loved baking. My cakes normally taste great. What I am not so good at is cake decorating - despite my best efforts.

DD2 was 3 over the weekend, and she had seen a giant cupcake mould in one of the catalogues I had through.

To cut a long story short, I gave it its first outing for the birthday party, and I think it turned out rather well for one of my efforts!

Is This The Ultimate In Working Mother Guilt?

My current working pattern involves 3 days in the office, and 2 days from home worked in around the school run. However, from June/July onwards, I'll be doing 2 days office, 3 days at home, as the company I work for is moving buildings and trying to encourage as many people to hot-desk as possible in a quest to save space.

It was therefore high time to reassess the working arrangements. Up until now, I had been using a desk in corner of the "family room". However, this is slowly no longer a family room, but a room full of children's junk, so it was really time to come up with another option.

As I have mentioned before, we live in a Victorian terrace, and the layout of the bedrooms is a little unconventional by today's standards. We have four bedrooms in total - three on the first floor, and one on the second floor. The third bedroom on the first floor was originally very small in comparison to the others, and is now even smaller, due to the fact that previous occupants took a chunk out of it at some point to enlarge the bathroom. Up until this weekend, this was DD1's bedroom. There was enough space for a bed, a small wardrobe and a small bookcase - in fact, the perfect size for a study. However, what were we going to do with DD1?

The top floor has one extremely large bedroom that, eventually - funds permitting and if I can ever work out where to squeeze a shower room - I would like to divide into two bedrooms for the girls. However, at the moment they are really still too young, and need to be on the same floor as us. The only feasible option was therefore to put the girls together.

Since the Easter weekend, they have therefore been sharing a room, which they both seem to love (it is great to see them getting on so well). Unfortunately, it has also coincided with DD2 developing a really awful cough that gets much worse at night, so I now not only feel guilty for kicking DD1 out of her bedroom (even if we did give her plenty of opportunity to object and it meant making more room in the playroom), but I now feel terribly guilty that they are both not sleeping well due to my laziness. As you will no doubt point out to me, I could just have moved my study into the spare room on the top floor without too much additional upheaval. You would be right, but it's just too far to walk to the kitchen when I want to make myself a cup of tea!