He's playing in the water feature again, that child of mine. If even the sit in toy car fails to amuse, the water feature does not. Simply turn it on and check to make sure that the water in it is still reasonably fresh. He'll sit there for hours if I let him.
Right now I'm tempted. I'm tired, quite tired. It's taken me ages to pull up from this stomach bug, probably due to the fact that one of its side effects has been to dramatically shrink the amount of food I can eat in one go. I have for a while been living on a reduced calorie diet, mostly because it aids my digestion, but this is something else. My main meal has become more of a light lunch and any attempts to cram more in there results in quite severe pain and nausea. If I eat till I feel full at lunch time then I stay feeling full the rest of the day and it's all I can do to manage a cup-a-soup in the evening. Since Sunday, when I started trying to eat more normal sized portions I doubt I've averaged much more than 1,000 calories a day.
Were I still overweight I'd go with the flow, but I'm not any more and it's beyond exhausting chasing after a mad toddler when you know you're low on fuel. Sometimes, at least, I have a trouble free nap time by dint of leaving the radio on low in the bedroom. If I know I've got a couple of hours in the middle of the day to totally relax and unwind then I do better. If Joseph feels I am neglecting him by not playing with him enough and just flopping on the sofa to watch something easy on the brain then he lets me know.
That's why I've given in and put the water feature on. I can clearly see him from the living room and he'll spend a long time poking little stones in the hole in the top to make the water spurt out in different ways.
He's coping quite well with people coming to view our house. Male visitors still make him nervous, but he doesn't cry on sight. Mostly he just gets a little shy and becomes very clingy. He will hand on tight when I stand up and he will be glued to my lap when I am seated. I don't mind, I like the extra cuddles. We've looked at a couple of places so far and I think at least one of them presents as a real possibility. It needs a bit of work, but we can cope with that.
Something did puzzle me, though. If you're trying to sell your house, what's the best thing to do?
Option one - thoroughly clean, tidy and de-clutter. Redo a little paintwork to freshen up and generally try and present your house as best you can.
Option two - don't do any of the above and leave stuff all over the floor, washing up in the sink and give the impression you can't be bothered.
Option three - rent out your house to the laziest, scummiest tenants in the world and never bother to check on them. Let them actually bash holes in the bathroom, ruin the carpets and generally destroy all the fixtures and fittings. If the house reeks of cooking, BO and other nasties, all the better.
We visited three houses and two of them thought options two and three were the way to go. I couldn't help but think that those tenants had probably knocked a good £20,000 off the asking price, if not more. Who wants to buy a house that you wont actually be able to move into for several weeks as you need to rip out all the carpets and replace them and also hire an industrial cleaning team. I saw things squashed onto the walls that do not bear thinking about.
Joseph didn't like it much in there either.
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