It has been a long time since I posted anything, and I think that is largely down to the fact that having four children is tiring. Come the evening, my stuffing has been yanked out and I am limp, grey, collapsed onto the couch with some form of evil cakey/biscuity/Green & Blacks-related foodstuff and perhaps a sneaky glass of wine in my shaking hand. But Mr Ned is now the ripe old age of six and a half weeks and he has been sleeping in longish stretches and so things are returning to normal. I am hoicking myself into my old clothes, cooking proper dinner, doing the odd bit of work. Because One Must Get On With It. And here I am with a round-up of sorts. You can judge for yourself whether the sleep-deprivation is having an effect on me or not.

So, yes, today, my other baby, the Big Baby, the Son of Shenanigans, the Boy of Badness, the Child of Unnecessary Breakages and High-Pitched-Ill-Timed-Screaming, had a birthday. I branched out and made a cake from Nigella’s Feast and it was a cake disaster – dry, brick-like, and simply not worthy of being a product of the shining, hefty, glorious KitchenAid. I blame Nigella (not my somewhat unconventional weighing techniques which involve googling of gram measurements conversions, quickly abandoned in favour of some very slap-dash unscientific estimation) and her seductive way with the text, which fools me into thinking that I too can have sexy cakes atop my kitchen counter adorned with accoutrements bought from Dean & DeLuca’s New York. Anyway, this is how her Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake carcasses emerged from the oven:

Burnt, sunken, sad and shameful. Luckily the chocolate ganache and sugar flowers did transform it into something more seductive to gaze at, if not to eat, and the children were entirely clueless and shrieked with excitement when the Cake of Shame #2 was presented to them. Maybe that was the point, after all.

Anyway, Custard did have a lovely day with lots of presents and pizza for dinner. He has been feeling a little bit sad lately, what with being usurped by the baby and all, as you can see in this photo. Simply put, we all love the baby, and Custard does not.

And today I refrained from being cranky with him, and telling him off poking the baby’s eyeballs/brushing the baby’s scalp with the Mason Pearson bristle brush/pulling his own nappy off and weeing into any available corner like a common dog and was instead unusually kind and spoke in a gentle voice and attempted to be patient all day long. Tomorrow, however, it will be business as usual. Custard, you have been warned.

Other things of note

1. My new £2 polyester dress. It is a bit scratchy, and has that spicy smell of other people’s body odour, but look at that line!  And it fits, and I can get my boobs out quick-smart. Win.

8. I discovered I am a gifted shield-co-maker. Mark and I made this for Barnaby for Literacy Week at school – he was King Arthur. Mark cut the shield out, and painted it, and I made the dragon. Yes, I am a free-hand-dragon-drawing GENIUS.

3. The NZ model who lives a few doors down is a bit sniffy and I no longer have a crush on her. I am Above That now. She walked past today in a leopard-print coat and Chanel bag and did not give me any eye contact. I was momentarily crushed, but am putting it down to some weird anti-NZ thing. I thought my charming NZ-accented witty comments made to the children and  yelled out at a loud enough volume to reach her lovely ears across the road would have beguiled her, but apparently not. So I will offically leave her alone.

3. My hair has begun to fall out (again). I forgot about that part of post-partum-ness.  Soon I shall have an accidental fringe from the wispy bits that grow back in order to cover my newly naked forehead. Really looking forward to that one.

6. Notting Hill is better than Acton. Case in point – on Saturday, on a routine trip to Portobello Rd markets via Carluccio’s for coffee we came across a big Harvey Nicks advertising thing. They were taking photo booth pics in black and white with a glamour-inducing wind machine – and here is the evidence of my one-off photogenic glory. You wouldn’t get that in w12, I’d wager.