Never, ever, risk asking this question - I just had to share this video - illustrates my point perfectly!

I hope you all had a good Christmas? Mine was ok, except the girls both failed to eat more than a few mouthfuls of the food I'd slaved over! Hence my title! It's always so disheartening when you've made an effort, isn't it?

It's fairly normal for Sophie to lose interest in roast dinner as she is very time sensitive and anything later than about 12.30pm will result in her being "full" - past hungry. So I served up at 12.30, and still she eats a couple of carrots and that's about it!

But Emma - you can usually count on Emma to eat everything - decided about half way in that she felt sick and left the table & sat looking miserable, so it probably was a valid excuse.

So that just left DH & me eating alone. Not quite what I had hoped for! IMO it did taste nice (and they ate it reheated for their tea, coz I am such a mean Mum!).

They hadn't even gorged on sweets - just one or two a few hours earlier. Emma feeling sick may be down to us all having coughs & colds, or down to Dad's inadvertently shutting to door on her fingers yesterday (she was trying to open the door through her sister's prostrate body, so he tried to stop her - a bit too effectively!). 

Anyway, I hope your efforts were fully appreciated! Better to vent my frustration here than in moaning at the kids, eh?

 Merry Christmas!

Mostly for Pauline, but I'm sure you'll all enjoy this if you haven't encountered it yet!

Emma had her best friend over to play today. Problem was, Sophie wanted to join in but they decided they didn't want her to join their game, so they shut the door on her. Much screaming ensued! Poor Sophie just couldn't accept that she wasn't welcome - after all, she loves both of them and plays with both of them, and she loves board games! It took a long long time to calm her down, with much cajoling "they wont want to play with you while you're screaming" etc. I tried promises of everythign from cooking with Mummy to painting, but all she wanted to do was to get at the two nine year olds! Finally I managed to talk her downstairs and decided, with a guilty conscience, that a chocolate bribe was needed - it's hard to cry with chocolate in your mouth I reasoned! I managed to get her to sit in the kitchen and gave her a chocolate penny from Santa's secret stash, and said E & K would be so jealous! Then I started to waffle on about the batter I was about to make for the Toad in the Hole. Fortunately the restorative powers of two chocolate pennies and the opportunity to do some cooking won out and she broke the eggs (didn't lose much LOL!), helped me mix the batter, cut the sausages in halves with scissors (she has discovered that raw sausages feel very funny), and then we moved onto fairy cakes (more eggs!). By the time half the cake cases were filled, E & K had emerged to ask her to play (at last!). However, by dinnertime, she had gotten back in her strop and refused to eat any of the lovely things she'd helped make! E & K admitted that they may have been unkind excluding her and that was why she was acting up at dinnertime. So at least they may have learned something! Emma and Sophie were so tired that they were in bed more than an hour earlier than usual. Hope they're not going to get ill at Christmas!

Oh, DH just discovered that work has him lined up for 15 weeks of working away in England and two in North Carolina between the end of January and mid May. IF you get your calendar out and count, you will be able to guess that I am not happy at 4 continuous months on my own Mon - Fri! Emma is not happy either. I have not spelled it out to Sophie yet.