Ikea table.

Irritation levels reached an all-time high this morning. I thought that cumulative and continual sleep-deprivation makes you mainly tearful and emotionally-rollercoaster-esque, but it has actually made me... mainly irritable. It's as mundane as that. But maybe I'm thinking back to halcyon days when I wasn't grumpy and enjoyed mornings. When in reality I was, say, 6, and used to enjoy getting up before everyone else because I could watch cartoons. Maybe I have actually been grumpy for years. And what, I ask, is guaranteed to exacerbate irritability (even more than finding a spare, large car seat in your part of the wardrobe, like a few weeks ago)? A faulty space-bar on your recently-fixed laptop. Oh yes. This is partly why I haven't been blogging recently. When there is just a 4mm part of your space bar that works, typing is not much fun. The flow is ... somewhat faltering.

Anyway. Yesterday my wondrous Ikea children's table and chairs arrived. I was really excited about this. I had these delightful images of Montessori creations/activities, carefully laid out the night before, for Grace to come down to in the morning. I saw her, last week, sitting so gracefully and contentedly opposite her cousin Rose at her Ikea table. And it's something I'd been meaning to get round to buying for ages.

So I was excited yesterday. However, wondrous Montessori moments were not forthcoming. Instead, as Grace sat down to her 'tea party' at the table with Minnie and Mickey Mouse, Isaac came speed-crawling across the lounge and pulled himself up, determined to be in on the action (he is becoming less and less willing to be out of the action, of late). This elicited screams of 'nooooo Mummy, baby Isaac is SPOILING it. He's RUINING it.' At which I would rather frantically - not being willing to let go of the dream - try and occupy Isaac with, say, a toddler kitchen or a box of wooden blocks or (his favourite) a saucepan and wooden spoon. But this was somewhat exhausting and mildly stressful, both yesterday and today. And now I am wondering whether the table was such a good idea after all. Especially considering Gracie always, always wants to do the activity with me - but without Isaac - and I end up kneeling on the floor in a rather uncomfortable position doing jigsaws and trying to keep Isaac away and from putting the pieces in his mouth. Which, these days, always has something in it. (Yesterday it was a bit of twig and today it was a bit of plastic film, a small piece of onion skin and a little bit of green fern he had taken off the hedge whilst in the baby carrier. I don't know how he manages to find and pincer these tiny things. This morning he nearly got his jaws round a purple sequin but I managed to grab it from him just in case).

Anyway... on other topics, Grace seems to have returned to her theme of territorialism. Today she declared that her friend Chloe had not snatched her Peppa Pig phone from her. What a relief. This was, apparently, because Grace had just told her not to (!) and she will 'never, ever snatch it from me never, ever again.' Hmmm. An interesting confidence there. I thought the Peppa-Pig-phone-'snatch' was a long-distant memory, but clearly not.

Okay, signing off now. 10(ish)pm. Definitely bedtime.

Grace's sentence for the day: 'We are both lovely tinies, Mummy.'