Coughs and sneezes

Well, another week begins and another cough/ cold is tailing away. I can't tell you how many coughs and colds we get through in our house, and once Scarlett succumbs she is almost invariably sick too. They seem to last forever and just when you think you can't cope with one more sleepless night, or one more disturbed evening, you do. You have that one more, then two more and then it miraculously goes away for about three weeks before it returns again. When does it end? Can anybody tell me that the light at the end of the tunnel will eventually appear. I do get stressed out when she's ill, is it normal? I always think 'I can't cope with this' but I do and I get through it, but I feel on edge about 99% of the time. Surely I should be more chilled out than I am?

Anyway onto the good things - we're off on our holidays this weekend to North Wales. We went when Scarlett was only a few months old so hopefully this time she'll be able to remember some bits of it and have a good time. She doesn't go to playgroup or nursery so seeing other children really excites her, she can't wait to get to the caravan site and play with other little boys and girls.

We've bought her a Trunki for this trip and I don't know who's more excited, me or Scarlett? We've gone for the original pink Trixie one and it's currently living in its cardboard shed in her bedroom. I'm curious to see how much they hold, although for this holiday I think we'll just fill it with books and toys, when we go abroad in September we'll be packing it out with her clothes. I'm hoping too that this is our last holiday with mountains of nappies. They take up so much room. I'm not sure when the potty training is going to begin, she likes to use the toilet now but isn't yet at the stage of telling us she needs to go, although she does let us know when she's done a poo :-) The joys of parenthood!

We've also been trialling some lovely products from Child's Farm - I received a big box in the post to review and they are fab. My daughter has lots (and lots) of curly hair which is always knotty - hair brushing time in our house is not a happy one, so I was delighted when I received the hair detangler to try. We did a few spritzes over her hair and it worked a treat, and smells lovely. There were no tears this time. We've also tried out the hand and body lotion, she has a few patches of dry skin and gets areas of redness with some lotions that are too strong, but this one was lovely - perfect for delicate young skin. We're going to take the sample size bubble bath, nappy cream and shampoo with us on holiday so I'll review those next week. But overall so far - well done Child's Farm your products are great.

Last weekend we visited Thomas the Tank Engine at the shopping centre I work in, I wasn't convinced she'd pose for a photo with the Fat Controller but she loved it. I've said the way to go from now on is no characters dressed up as Peppa etc, real people or stationary objects are to be the order of the day. She happily got aboard Thomas too and was waving at everybody. She really is a happy little girl and I have no idea where she gets her confidence from - it's certainly not me or her Dad, we were really shy as children. I'm glad she's not like me though, I remember being painfully shy around everybody.

We've so much to do this week before we go away as we're still doing a million and one jobs on the house, the plasterer is coming tomorrow night so we're in a makeshift bedroom as of last night and surrounded by boxes. I can't wait for it all to be done and then our weekends won't consist of DIY.

Next time - The holiday!