A partridge in a pear tree

It's the week before the whole December thing and already you can feel the hysteria levels rising in our house. It doesn't help that One Direction have chosen this particular week to release their CD and a documentary, which I feel I have lived every minute of.

Next week, there are two Christmas fayres [have washed teddies ready for the jumble sale and this weekend we are apparently making decorated jars full of bath salts. Oh joy] to look forward to as well as the closure of daughter one's school on Wednesday and an inset day on Friday. The baby appears to have some sort of diarrhoea thing which I am hoping is tooth-related, but I fear is not as daughter three complained of stomach pains earlier today. Oh, and in addition, I am currently wearing eau de Derbac.

We have the advent calendars primed and various people are keen to put up the Christmas tree already. I spent Wednesday night sewing red tinsel onto a t-shirt for daughter three aka Angel Gabriel and ordering various Christmas gifts plus devising a list of what presents various relatives should get the kids. Yes, it's the beginning of the season of goodwill to all men [note the emphasis on the men because, as I read in the polls, it still apparently falls to women to "do" Christmas].

Daughter two is in the choir, which involves dropping her off early before school. This effectively means everyone has to get out the door 40 minutes early on rehearsal days and hang around in the damp playground and hopefully not fall over and get all muddy and wet before school/nursery starts. It is a bit of a tall order for some very small people who have suddenly developed a penchant for climbing everywhere. Daughter two has been rehearsing the 12 days of Christmas. "Test me, test me," she said as we drove to drumming [I've got the drive down to eight minutes now. I seem to spend a lot of my life saying things like "We've got four minutes to get to x. I think we can make it if the traffic's good"]. She was so enthusiastic indeed that she decided to test me back. Now, I have not been sleeping very well of late [due to teething-related episodes] and I knew a lot of birds were involved in the first stages of the 12 days of Christmas and some milkmaids in the latter stages. Trying to recall the exact placement of all the various days of Christmas when you are very, very tired is not a good idea. What use in a French hen at Christmas? What you need is a 24-hour crack back-up squad.