Tuesday 20th December

After our late night last night, the kids were up ready to go at 7am, so in total about 6.5 hours sleep. Nowhere near enough for kids who need at least 12 hours to function.

Adam cant just sit still, so he headed into London to continue his mission to get photos of the complete monopoly board.

We had no food in the house, so the kids and I decided to head into Kingston to grab something to eat. It took almost 2 hours to convince Xavier and Stella to get dressed, and ended up in me dressed and walking out the front door without them before they realised I was serious about putting some clothes on.

We bused it into town and ended up at McDonalds, where else would you end up with our kids? The kids had a lovely chat to a woman on the bus and her teenage daughter, the woman was a nursery school teacher, so was wonderful at getting them to share. After lunch I suggested that perhaps we could go and listen to some story reading. Here in Kingston during Christmas they have like little wooden sheds set up throughout the town and people in costume read stories to the children. It's free, but you are encouraged to make a donation to a local charity. The shed is all warm and has cushions and soft lighting and looks rather inviting. I thought story reading would be awesome, but Xavier pretty much laid down on the footpath at the suggestion wailing "I'm too very tired, I must go home and just have a little rest right now". So we came home. Of course once we were on the bus, Stella declared "Mum I thought we were going to story reading? I wanna go to story reading. I wanna hear stories, mum, mum, mum, mum why aren't we having stories?" etc etc. Of course at that moment Adam called to tell me Dave was coming over to collect his suit so it was handy we were on the way home anyway. All the while Stella continued on with the story reading complaints. By the time I got off the phone to Adam the kids had decided that one day Xavier was going to stay at home with Daddy and Mumma and Stella were going to get on the bus for story reading. I did suggest that they both stay home with Daddy and I could go and do something alone, but Stella matter-of-factly informed me "that just not going to work for me mumma." *sigh*

They did come home and crash on the beanbags and watched a kids movie about Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. Which reminds me, we still need to take them to Richmond park (walking distance) to see actual deer. Although at one point Stella got rather upset about Rudolph 'not being able to do anything right' and there were tears when the abominable snowman dropped a log on Rudolph and knocked him out. But all was well once he got to lead Santa's sleigh. *phew*

Despite being so tired, they still both farted about for a good hour at bedtime. I just keep reminding myself that Xavier was just as hard to get to sleep at Stella's age and it will pass.