Family Life

Good as our word, we took the kids out for the afternoon today. First stop was the Dublin Road on a bit of business. While there, the Ray and Jay saw a commotion outside the BBC on Bedford Street and we headed over to investigate.

Children In Need

It had totally escaped me that Children In Need was on this weekend. Whoops.

We got there way too early, so there wasn’t much going on - just a bit of face painting, balloon twisting and stuff. Pudsey was there - hooray! And so was the Elvis impersonator. Every single charity event I’ve seen, an Elvis impersonator turns up. Why? There was also a truly deafening metal band playing in the foyer of the BBC building. We had gone in to snaffle some of the free food, but ended up being driven out by Death Metal!

Christmas Lights In Lisburn

The Christmas Tree switch on in Lisburn was great fun for the kids. We went to the Bow Street Mall for a bite to eat before heading out into the street for the parade. Lisburn always seem to put on a good show at public events like this, and we weren’t disappointed.

Thousands (*apparently) of people lined Bow Street to wait for the arrival of Santa and the parade. Not sure who the MC was, but he did a good job. While we were there, the PSNI Women’s Choir ran through a couple of carols and then there was a short speech/sermon from a Lisburn minister - I didn’t catch the name - which was marginally more interesting than the speech from Lisburn’s Mayor, Jonathan Craig. Anyway, once the formalities were over, it was down to the wait for Santa to arrive.

In true local council fashion, the thing didn’t flow well at all, and the MC repeatedly assured us that Santa was en route. Didn’t matter, most of us were frozen to the spot anyway. After an excruciating wait - where we deliberated whether to hang around - eventually the parade began.

It was a beautiful, but brief affair, with children from local schools walking down Bow Street with lanterns, interspersed with costumed dancers and the usual array of cartoon animals! Not a bad night, but the organisers need to get the timing better. As always, Lisburn was well turned. The tree and the street were tastefully and beautifully decorated.

Saturday, November 19th, 2005 // Family Life

Christmas is approaching and it seems like the first thing anyone asks the kids these days is what santa is bringing them for Christmas!

Both Ray and Jay were faced with this question at mother and toddler group last week from a fellow playmates mother. Ray wanted an inflatable ball pool like the one at Caveman Capers and Jay wanted some new play dough. I felt we got off pretty lightly!

The other children then started telling us what they were getting and my jaw must have hit the ground at least 5 times! One little girl is getting ‘Baby Annabell’ with her pram, car seat, clothes and bottle, the other wanted Princess Alexa with all her paraphenalia threw in. The first girls mother told me when the children went off to play that she had spent ?40 on the doll ?20 per outfit (of which she bought 4), ?15 for the changing bag, ?15 for the sleeping bag and ?60 for Baby Annabell’s pram.

I was amazed! How can anybody justify spending ?60 on a pram FOR A DOLL! When Jay was born I got a double buggy for my two real life children for that! For ?20 I would be looking for two outfits for our baby, which he could wear many times before it was passed on to a friends child or a charity shop.

This whole concept riles me. I know it sounds cliched but people are starving in the world. There are children who do not have enough to eat or drink. Surely if people have the money to spare they would be better placed donating the ?200 to charity and buying their daughter a nice ?10 doll from argos that comes complete with 4 outfits!

Children at 3 or 4 are easily pleased. What they most want is your time. Buy them a cheaper toy and play with it with them and I guarantee they will appreciate it more than a ?40 doll that they are left to watch TV with. Over indulging children is not only wrong, it is detrimental to the child. It makes them materialistic and greedy and sets a pattern for life that is very hard to change.

I urge people out there to think twice this christmas when buying presents. Don’t over spend on your loved ones. If you have a bit of extra cash, or you have to buy a gift for the person who has everything, consider buying a Gift Of Hope. Wouldn’t they rather change a life and make a real difference to the world then receive another soap set!

Thursday, November 17th, 2005 // Family Life, Observations

I hated it the first time and now we find ourselves at that stage again. Jay has been showing signs of being ready for toilet training for a while now, I however have been doing my ostrich act and tried to ignore them. But over the last few days we decided to brave it and let Jake go bare back!

In some ways its been a good experience. Its lovely to see the wee man growing up and gaining his independance. Its nice not to have to clean poo from all his cracks and crevices (too much information I know!). And to be fair to Jay he is doing quite well. He has moved from peeing in every corner of the room every five minutes to holding it for up to an hour. Sometimes he makes it to the potty and sometimes he doesn’t.

The big downside (apart from the constant smell of bleach that eminates from our living room) is the fact that we can’t really leave the house. I don’t want to start putting him in a nappy again and undo all the hard work of this week, but if Jay does give us any warning that he’s about to go its a 5 second one at most, which would not be long enough to locate a toilet in a strange place.

The best thing about potty training Jay is the knowledge that in the near future I will only be changing one set of nappies each day instead of two. the worst thing is the knowledge that I will have to go through all this again in approximately two years time!

Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 // Family Life

So, Halloween’s over for another year.

I’m not a big fan of Halloween, but I do love the dressing up and the pumpkin carving fun. The ones above are my Three Amigos Of The Apocalypse, and great craic they were to create.

The pumpkin on the far left is Nipper. She started life as a vampire, but one of her teeth fell off! Thus Nipper was born.

The middle pumpkin is Evil and the figure inside his mouth is supposed to be a man trying to escape! Unfortunately, I cut the arms too thin and as the pumpkin dried out, one broke. Not having much luck this year, am I?

The final pumpkin was actually done this morning (a bit late..), but is my favourite at the moment. I call him Mungo. I cut out some small holes and then filled them out by punching through with a rolling pin which gave the eyes and ears a really round, smooth look.

Anyway, you can see more pictures of my pumpkins on my flickr photo feed. I’m pretty sure I did better carvings last year, but I can’t lay my hands on the photos (if there were any). If you’re looking for more inspiration for next halloween, try Extreme Pumpkins, Pumpkin Carving or Pumpkin Masters.

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 // Creativity, Family Life

Took a wee run over to Craigavon this afternoon for a spot of shopping. I think this must’ve been the first time the entire all-new Levee line-up has been out together on an excursion like this.

We managed to squeeze in nearly four hours of shopping (not that we bought much) and the kids behaved impeccably the whole time! That said, the baby was asleep. Jay was confined to the front of a double-buggy, and Ray was the only one who needed to be shepherded.

Since we’ve had kids, shopping has been a chore. They don’t like it. We don’t like it. A day shopping with young children inflicts a trauma upon you too terrible for words. Less civilised countries could use it as a form of torture. I don’t know if today was special in some way - sometimes planetary alignment affects the children - but Rushmere is a nice spot.

It’s a very well laid out center, with an impressive roster of big-name chain stores. I don’t normally notice these things, because I’m an old-skool bloke shopper. Start at the music shops, end at the music shops. Maybe get a magazine along the way. Grab a super-sized Chicken Royale meal before heading home. I did a bit of that today at Rushmere, while Mrs Levee hunted for garments to show off her stunning post-pregnancy figure. The whole trip was very relaxed - I was able to browse bookshelves in Easons at my leisure with the boys, and Mrs L was able to add to her new wardrobe (she’s becoming a bit of a clothes-horse…)

I’m not being paid by Rushmere to say this (wish I was), but we had a great day’s shopping. We tend to head Belfast and Lisburn, and when I was younger, Ballymena and Coleraine were the big shopping centres. Just goes to show that there are better places away from the usual haunts. Anyway, enough of that.

On the way home, Mrs L and I had a lively debate about whose fault it was that she got pregnant. My slant was that she got in the way of my sperm. Her story is that my sperm attacked her eggs. I didn’t hear her eggs complaining at the time….

Saturday, September 24th, 2005 // Family Life

As most of you will know we recently had a new addition to our household in the form of Baby D. And for the last week Mr Levee has been back to work full time and I have experienced life with three children properly for the first time.

At the minute its not too bad as Baby D sleeps ALL of the time. In fact I have to change his nappy and wash his face to make sure he wakes for his feeds. If I don’t he will sleep all day and then feed all night.

The biggest problem at the minute is trying to keep Ray and Jay off of him. They seem to think he is a wee doll and so far the novelty has not worn off as I hoped it would. The poor baby is incessantly poked and squashed as the children try to ‘love’ him. If he cries Ray will pat him and tell him “mummy’s here”, I feel cruel breaking it to her that she is in fact his sister not his mum. Whereas Jay will lean on him, hurt or scare him then pat him on the back not so gently chanting “its ok baby”!

I have had some crazy moments though. It seems that any time I try to eat one of them needs me urgently, in fact one day during the week I didn’t eat for four hours after getting up as there just wasn’t the time. I never seem to get anything finished, it could take me 3 attempts and a few hours to do something as simple as loading the dishwasher. As soon as my attention turns to anything not child related, one of them falls, escapes, needs fed or needs their nappy changed. In fact the dirty nappies seem neverending, it must be all that breastfeeding poo!

At the minute I am just trying to take it all in my stride, not panic too much and not worry what the house looks like. Anyone who knows me will think thats not much of a task as I could never be described as the perfect housewife. But absurdly, now that I am spending so much more time in the house I actually care what it looks like. A few years ago I wouldn’t have given a toss if the dishes were piling up whereas now it definately affects my mental wellbeing. Weird how life changes eh??

Saturday, September 17th, 2005 // Family Life

I’ve taken the final straw in a shitty week. I’m throwing my dummy out of the pram!

Mrs Levee and the adorable Sister In Law are heading out this evening to a bridal fair in the Odyssey Arena. As she mentioned last week, Sister In Law is planning on getting married next year to her long-time boyfriend, DJ.

The sneaky wife also agreed to babysit her little brother tonight. But she’s not home. So who gets to mind our eldest two and this extra one? That would be me. Dammit!

For my part, I’ve had such a stressful week at work, I’m tired, grumpy and now my eyes are starting to twitch. And rather than have a relaxing evening at home, I’m sole babysitter to three kids who will talk incessantly and possibly damage my mental health beyond repair. Arrrgghhhhhh!

Just wanted you all to know.

Update: The Bridal Fair was aborted due to the recent craziness in Belfast. Much as we don’t like letting these cretins disrupt our plans, it’s not worth risking our personal safety for either. We all took a trip out to Antrim instead and had a little walk around the grounds of Antrim Castle Gardens and Clotsworthy Arts Center.

Friday, September 16th, 2005 // Family Life

Well the Levees have just booked a holiday to Rome, Mr and Mrs Levee will be going along with myself and my other half DJ. This is on the condition that Mr Levee doesn’t ruin my holiday by commenting on everything I say and turning me into a grumpy mad women! He has promised to be nice (whatever?!!!!)

On a lighter note, we are going for an unbelievably cheap price, around ?67 each for 3 nights accomodation and flights!! The internet is a fantastic creation!! Can’t wait to get away from this mad place.

Thursday, September 15th, 2005 // Family Life, General, News & Media

One of the distant auntie-in-laws offered us the loan of her caravan this weekend, so with nothing else in the diary, we saddled up the motor and headed for the seaside!

I’m not much of a caravan person: cramped conditions, close proximity to other human beings (especially obnoxious caravan-loving escapees from Belfast), and paper-thin walls are all reasons not to like mobile homes.

Anyway, this morning was a minor miracle - the kids slept in for the first time since they were born. When we eventually rose, we were greeted by clear blue skies and the warm and cancerous glow of the sun. After getting the troops fed, watered, nappies changed, etc, we decided to head for the beach walking along the coast from Waterfoot to Cushendall.

We had a leisurely stroll over to Cushendall, accompanied by the Sister In-Law and her intended, DJ. When we got there, we decided to have a spot of brunch (Mrs Levee and I had somehow missed out on breakfast and it was by now around midday). A couple of fries were ordered and the kids settled down for a little treat. Because it was such a nice day, we decided to eat outside and enjoy the sunshine.

After about half-an-hour, we were almost ready to go when Ray and Jay started getting restless. I was catching up with Jay (who had filled his nappy and was reeking up the place) and Mrs Levee was feeding Baby D. Looked round and there was Ray, tilting one of the outside tables. One of the glass-topped outside tables!

Every muscle tensed. The table was at tipping point. Before anyone could say another word, Ray gave me a defiant look and gave the table that extra push to knock it over.

It was one of those slow-motion moments, time almost stood still as the table overbalanced and hit the ground. It hit the pavement hard, then gave a little bounce. Didn’t break. I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the table seemed to suddenly register the shock wave and the glass top shattered.

To cut a long story short, the meal ended up costing us an extra ?40 and Ray got a severe telling-off. I was raging at the time, but we managed to salvage the rest of the day by going on down to the beach.

As we were driving home, Ray piped up in the back seat, reminding me about the table-breaking incident. She said “I just want to say I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Who are you saying sorry to?” I asked her, thinking she wanted to apologies to the cafe owner as I’d threatened earlier.

She replied, “You Daddy. I’m sorry for breaking the table. I won’t do it again.”

And in that moment, the broken table was almost worth it. To receive an unprompted apology from my four-year-old daughter was like pennies from heaven! She had realised what she’d done wrong and seen how much it had upset her parents. Better still she had the courage to apologise.

Although I was driving at the time, I reached back and gave her hand a squeeze and Mrs L and I both told her how much that meant to us.

Sunday, September 11th, 2005 // Family Life

Phew! Not even a fortnight after the birth of baby #3 and life’s good. Baby is healthy and well, Mrs Levee’s pelvic problem seems to be easing and her post-pregnancy figure is looking yummy…

Ray and Jay have their moments. They’ve been bickering a fair bit recently, and we’re not sure if they’re having trouble adjusting. Overall, they’re still lovely and we’re trying to make sure everybody gets equal attention.

So why am I pissed off?

I’ll tell you why: since the baby’s been born, I’ve been at work almost more than I’ve been at home. I’ve only managed a few days off, and during those the office has either called me up or requested that I come in.

For example, on Tuesday, Jay started to ride a bike for the first time. I was knocked out at how well he was doing, but while this was happening, I was called into the office (again). This is my bloody holiday - leave me alone!!!

I’m wanting to spend time with my family - Jay’s learning to ride the bike, Ray’s starting nursery school and we have a two-week-old baby that we’re getting familiar with. Yet this office seems to think because they’re paying the wages they can call me anytime?

To add insult to injury, I requested a salary review this year. For the first time ever. Guess what? They didn’t even have the decency to give me a decision!!! Grrrr. Submitted a very reasonable request. In writing. Outlining what I’ve done for the firm in the past year - money I’ve saved them, efficiency measures I’ve introduced. In triplicate.

Nope, my request was met with radio static. In March. To this day, I don’t know if my request was even considered.

Yet with this complete lack of respect for me, they still expect that I’ll come in and bail them out whenever at the expense of my family time?

Screw them. More than ever, I’m determined to go out on my own. Start a business. Gain some (more) self-respect. Grrr.

Friday, September 9th, 2005 // Family Life