Aaargh. I just wrote a post and 20six have lost it all for me. Anyway, we still don't have internet access at home. Scary as it is to think about the fact that 10 years ago I had never gone onto the internet, now the fact that I haven't been able to access it at will for the past 3 months is driving me to distraction. Apparently we are now in the final 2-week phase of joining TalkTalk. I'm not holding my breath as it seems I've been told that at least 7 times before but hopefully things might be progressing.

We had a great weekend away in Suffolk. We spent literally hours in the pool. Belle has turned into a little fish and loves swimming. She's a little over-confident and we did catch her one time slipping into the pool with no armbands or ring, merely clutching one of those long woggles. Once when I told her I needed to take Ned back to the cottage she replied blithely "That's fine mummy. I'll stay here and join you when I feel like I need to get out". Uh - no. Ned's a lot less confident and preferred hovering in the baby pool using the afore-mentioned woggle as his "hose" whilst pretending to be a fireman.

The children and I met up with our friend Katie who lives in the Philippines. She's been here for a couple of months but we only managed to meet up with her the once - and had barely any conversation at that. She's struggling to conceive and I think it's left her rather stressed at having to meet up with old friends and their children. We'd planned to go out for a meal with Best Friend but Katie pulled out at the last minute. BF looks very pregnant now and I think the stress might have been getting to Katie. Talking of BF, her younger daughter is back in nappies after 3 months of being toilet-trained. Whilst I do feel bad for her (I'm not a complete bitch) I did feel a tiny amount of smugness that I haven't gone there yet with Ned.

Oh and Belle had a birthday but I think that deserves a post of its own.

My little girl turned 4 last Wednesday. 4. That's nearly big enough to be at school. School. (And no, we still don't know which one she'll be going to. We find out after 20 April). The whole week turned into a birthday celebration. As I was off we decided to take them out for lunch on Tuesday - we asked her which restaurant she'd like and she picked "one where I can eat noodles with chopsticks". We went to Wagamama's where they had a really good children's menu and we all loved it. I'd not really eaten Japanese food before but it was great.

Her bed hadn't arrived for her actual birthday so we had to wrap up a picture of it. She was moderately impressed but presents don't seem to feature hugely in the birthday experience at this age. She told my mum that "mummy and daddy have bought me a bed but I won't get it till next year" and seemed completely unfazed by that. (It was actually meant to arrive today but so far it hasn't....) She had lunch with my mum and grandma, then tea with my sister and hubby's mother who'd flown in from the States that morning. Presents and chocolate cake and adoring relatives - what more could a girl want?

On Saturday we had her party. She was in heaven. She danced around, wore fancy dress, enjoyed the games, ate chocolate.... I made a Sleeping Beauty cake (photos when we have internet access) and we persuaded Ned not to go in his Snow White outfit (more photos when we have internet access). We were completely knackered and came home and collapsed whilst she opened yet more presents. She had a definite selection of "worthy" presents. Lots of books and activity sets that were slightly too old for her. She has loved playing with some of them, others we have squirreled away for use at a later date (when Ned is either not around or old enough not to destroy them), but her favourite present from her party was most definitely the Disney Princess Deluxe Ariel. Completely useless and of no educational benefit - but huge fun for a 4 year old girl. I'm wishing now we'd held fire on the bed and given her a £3 My Little Pony - she'd probably have been a lot more excited.

Belle is into kissing at the moment. Our bedtime cuddles in bed (will I be able to carry those on once she's ensconced in her cabin bed - still not arrived?) have now turned into cuddles where she insists on kissing me a hundred times, peppering my face with them. It's very cute. Even if I am definitely going to be catching all her myriad bugs now.

Ned on the other hand responds to every snatched kiss with a defiant wipe of the face from the back of his hand and a resounding "Yeeeeurch" followed by hysterical peals of laughter. Also very cute though less heart-warming.

Yesterday's trip up to see hubby's sister was partly an Easter get-together, partly to get Belle's birthday present (a My Little Pony Fantasy Island and her reaction was everything one could have hoped for) and partly to say goodbye to hubby's niece and nephew-in-law who are emigrating to Australia. Hubby and his niece had a desperately close relationship as children - he's 12 years younger than his sister and 12 years older than his niece; he spent hours by all accounts carrying her around and playing with her and occupying her. Even when he came to uni she'd be brought up to town and he'd take her out to the ballet and the theatre - I remember her first as a wide-eyed excited 7-year-old, long before hubby and I were even going out.

Lately we've not seen so much of her but still hubby remembers those days. [Incidentally it's made me a little anxious that in the future my children won't remember the closeness of their current relationship with my sister and it will fade into a somewhat dutiful response on their part]. Last night as we were leaving and having the obligatory group hug and photos, things became a little tearful. I was holding Ned and, thinking to help things along, I said to him:

"It'll be fine Ned won't it? We'll go and see them. [After all, they're exchaning their 1 bedroomed London flat for a 4 bedroomed Sydney house] Wouldn't you like to go and visit Australia?"

Fresh from a busy day following the most disturbed night of sleep we have ever had with Ned (and I include those early weeks of babyhood though I maybe just losing my memory; he was awake between 10.30 and 4.45am coughing and bunged up and increasingly frustrated and not being able to get back to sleep. And we were staying at my parents' house. And they were leaving at 5am to get to the airport for a holiday. Joy) he was grumpy enough already. He looked at me in horror.

"NO. Want go home".

I suspect this is true of most health professionals but get any group of doctors together and pretty soon we're chuckling over something unpleasant or crude. It goes with the territory. People call it a defence mechanism - definitely the worst culprits are mortuary technicians - but I think it's got a lot to do with the sort of people that pick these professions in the first place.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a course where we were being told about recent advances in weight loss surgery and drugs. The consultant was telling us about a morbidly obese woman who'd had some sort of procedure and had ended up on ITU for over a month. Of the 30 GPs present at least 8 of us snorted simultaneously:

"So she lost weight then".

Yesterday our friends came over for lunch and the afetrnoon. They live barely 8 miles away but we haven't seen them in ages. It was lovely to see them. L is pregnant with their 3rd boy and is blooming. Belle fell in love again with their eldest son, Little A (to distinguish him from his father, Big A). He's 18 months older than her and she's always adored him; he's always behaved brilliantly with her. Yesterday she was walking around the garden grabbing his arm, holding onto him. "Little A shall we go here?" "Little A shall we see what's over there?" as they wandered around chasing bubbles from her new bubble machine and generally having a whale of a time. Halfway through the afternoon, little A turned to her "Shall we go upstairs Belle and have a lie down together in your bed?" It was very hard not to burst into fits of apoplectic giggles as we watched them chase upstairs.

Big A set our garden up into an assault course, involving climbing over chairs and trampolines and under chairs and climbing frames. They loved it. Their son C is 6 months younger than Belle and a year older than Ned. The older 3 coped well but, as the afternoon wore on, Ned drooped more and more. He wouldn't give up but by 5 o'clock he could barely lift his legs to climb the steps to the slide. Hubby put him to bed at 20 to 7 and when I went in 30 seconds later to kiss him goodnight he was already fast asleep. I can recommend assault courses - preferably with a competitive 5 year old - to guarantee an awesome night's sleep.