29th May in crawling into 2014.

I really need to make a new box - we are no longer crawling into a new year!

I keep wanting to write but feeling too fed up to do it. I keep looking at houses on the net but I'm not doing anything because I'm still in job limbo. Although I did an internet search on how much our house is likely to be worth and was nicely surprised with the result - quite a lot higher than I expected even at the lowest possibility.

The job at the local special educational needs school has its application closing date next week and nothing else has come up yet. I'm getting quite angsty about it. I really have to get out of childminding.

Lila has done me a favour though. I really don't want to work in the school holidays and Tally really can't stand Lyf. It's causing us great distress because when she knows she has to spend time with him she gets into a mood fouler than a hungry hyena. The thing about him is that he's really lovely. He's kind and caring, he's thoughtful and gentle with the little ones. In four years I've never known him behave maliciously. However, he is four years old, he loves dinosaurs and guns, he's loud and excitable, he gets carried away in the game very easily. For a quiet, eight year old coming home from school this can be very hard work. I also think there's a certain amount of jealousy as his big sister, who is ten, now wants to hang out with her mates rather than come to our house and poor tally feels rejected because they grew up together, from when tally was one and Nia was four. But Lyf and Lila (Lyf was six months old and Lila was two) also grew up together and still play together all the time.

So, how has Lila done me a favour? By vomiting all over her bed on Tuesday night. I have to be closed for 48 hours following the last instance of vomit which, at this point, was Wednesday at 11:30. And we weren't having Lyf on Friday so she handed me a get-out-of-jail-free card and has helped tally have a much more relaxing week off school.

Poor Lila, she doesn't complain much so if she says she doesn't feel well you know she really doesn't feel well. Even when she was sick she didn't call us until afterwards. She has been an odd grey/green colour and curled up on the sofa, quiet as a mouse. Her temperature has been consistently above 38 degrees so we've cuddled and watched movies and nothing else.

Tally, on the other hand, is the world's biggest drama queen, she comes to us with terrible, bleeding gashes, crying her eyes out but we can't see anything!! If something is bad, it's exaggerated to make it even worse. Therefore, when Lila is ill she really does get more attention than tally does, and when we discover that they're really is something wrong with tally we feel kind of bad.... she broke her wrist last summer and the only reason we took her seriously straight away was because we actually saw it happen!

On to a happier note, on Monday we were driving back from Yorkshire (where we spent the weekend with parents) and dropped in on Mrs Long. The aim was to give her the fabric I cleared out in my big clear out of February, of which I still haven't shown you the photos! We had a lovely couple of hours, laughing and chatting. I love how well we all know each other, and that first meet-ups always feel like a conversation carried on :-) I have to tell you that Mrs Long has the most amazing giggle, and wicked sense of humour, and I love that she met Rich who, unfortunately, got a migraine half way through the meeting but he threatened to show her photos of me on our camping toilet which he had promised to delete! Unfortunately we didn't get to meet any of her littlies, but my girls enjoyed all ethan's toys :-)

Ah well, I'd probably better get up. I can hear tally pottering in her room, Lila woke up crying because she was hungry at 6am so I gave her a banana and took her temperature which is back to normal so she's asleep again now.

But I love my bed, and it's so comfortable :-)