Jo went back to work yesterday for the first time in nine months since the birth of Esmé. This brings in a new routine for all of us.

Esmé isn’t going to nursery yet – they’re building a new municipal nursery just round the corner from us which should be ready by September, so we’ve decided to try and muddle through until the summer holidays. As such Esmé is looked after by Penny in the morning, and by me in the afternoon when (the idea is) she has her afternoon nap. When Jo gets back after school I go back to work.

Yesterday was the first test and it went OK. Esmé slept for an hour after lunch which was OK although longer would be better!. She got a bit grumpy between 4 and 5 when we go to pick up the kids, but this was always going to be the trickiest hour as it’d be around then that she would have had a feed from Jo (she’s still refusing a bottle).

The hardest part is going to be managing everything else which Jo’s been doing while on maternity leave: shopping, cleaning,washing, organising etc. I’m supposed to be doing this in the afternoons when Esmé has woken up, but it remains to be seen as to how much I can achieve.

The other ‘problem’ is when anything outside of the routine crops up; it’s all so tightly packed that anything extra throws it out. As it was the kids didn’t get to bed till 9pm last night and so far we’ve all been awake before 7 am with Jo up and about.

I think we’ll all be exhausted by the time the summer holidays start…

It’s funny how the English come to Spain for their holidays and we go to the UK. We were there for 6 days with family. It was great to see everybody and I managed to get down to the pub for a few pints of bitter (the one thing I miss) – but we were freezing! I’m just not used to it any more. I do think it was a particularly cold easter with a fair amount of snow haven fallen in the last couple of days since we came back. Meanwhile it’s lovely here, not hot by any means, but we’re able to leave windows and doors open and it’s fresh rather than cold.

The kids didn’t mind a jot, they loved being with their cousins and didn’t want to leave.

I’ve decided that rather than post stuff about the kids here I’ll upload things onto their sites – I’ve just added a bunch of pictures Gabe’s done recently to www.gabrielandrews.com but am locked out of Olivia’s site for some reason. I’ll try and sort that as I have some pictures from her birthday to upload. I’m going to register a site for Esme, after which I’ll probably have very little to say on my blog!

It looks highly likely that Esmé is allergic to our cat, Mischa. The way the house is (not much outdoor space, relatively open plan inside, or least not many doors!) means that it’s not really feasible to keep her

She’s a lovely cat, good with kids, low maintenance – we often leave her for days at a time, she just eats the dry biscuits so as long as she’s got a big bowlful and some water she’s fine. She’s trained to use a litter tray although would have no problems using a garden if she had one.

She’s 4 years old and very companionable. Let me know if you’re interested.

Having made the mistake last time of underestimating the weight of our luggage I decided to up our baggage allowance – it was in the process of looking at this that I discovered that you can take a pushchair for free. I may be mistaken but the impression I’ve had when booking previously was that you needed to pay for baby equipment. The devil is in the detail when it comes to RyanAir, unfortunately the detail often seems to come after the event.

An extra bag comes in at 9 euros each way; if any of your bags are over the 15 kilo limit they charge 10 euros per kilo, per way, so it seems to make sense to err on the side of caution and pay up for an extra bag just in case.

When on the online form to pay for the additional bag I remembered to click on the link which shows you the card charges (they say on the home page ‘NO HIDDEN CHARGES’ and yet if you forget to click on this link the charge displayed is 18 euros). The charge for using my Visa? 32 euros!!

I decided to call their reservation center (10p a minute). After listening to their recorded message for what seemed like at least a minute I was told to ring their Internet support number ( ?1 a minute!). Given that I have no idea if I’d spend several minutes listening to their recorded message only to be told that there is no way around this ridiculous visa charge I decided to pay at the airport (12 euros each way).

The Visa charge incidentally is because they charge on a per person, per flight basis. I commented before that this was a complete rip off because it bears absolutely no relation to the amount they are charged by Visa (typically 3% or less) and this demonstrates the point perfectly.

Flying with 3 kids is stressful enough, so why do I book with RyanAir when they make my blood boil before I even leave my front door?

With 5 of us price is a serious issue and these were the best prices we could find – however I don’t believe that offering the cheapest flights gives them the right to treat their customers with a complete lack of respect.

Tuesday night I started the sleep program which we’ve used on the other two kids – the idea is that when the child wakes you go in, calm them down, then leave while they’re still wide awake. Talking/rocking/singing/comforting of any real kind should be avoided. They obviously cry immediately, but you leave them crying for a short period of time before repeating the process. Each time you leave her, extend the amount of time before going back in slightly. You’re not really supposed to do this till 7 months and on, but we felt she was ready.

Tuesday: I went in, came out and counted to 50 before returning. I then counted to 60, 80, 100 and 120, after which she fell asleep of her own accord in her cot. Roughly speaking about 7 minutes give or take.

Last night: I went in, came out and counted to 50. I wasn’t sure I’d get to 50 but went back in. I repeated the process and went in at 60. When I came out I didn’t bother hanging around – she was asleep.

It’s a fantastic program, it really works brilliantly. We just need make sure she stays in it.

On another note Esmé had her 6 month check up this week: she weighs 9 kilos 115 grams. This puts her way up on the scale of size for her age. A friend of ours has a 9 month who is pretty much the same weight and average for his age. All our kids have been big, right from the start.

I watched Delia on the telly last night.

Delia is known for her traditional English cooking and I’ve got one of her books which I have been using for the last 15 years or so. This latest series is a departure from her roots: she’s effectively trying to re-create her traditional style cooking but using pre-prepared ingredients, i.e. frozen mashed potato, mince and onions in a jar etc. The rational behind this is that she feels there is an audience out there who don’t have time to cook and don’t have the confidence to cook.

This is seriously flawed.

For the person who is struggling for time (3 kids and a business to run I should know) there are dishes out there that could be prepared quicker without trying to re-create a shepherds pie using frozen mash potato. Fresh pasta with a nice simple sauce, mexican wraps, a stir fry – none of these things takes more than a few minutes to prepare. If food is important there is always a way to find time; if on the rare occasions there just simply isn’t time then just make beans on toast, an omelette or anything simple.

For the person who lacks confidence, I actually don’t think Delia’s ‘recipes’ were simple or easy to understand. What was that (frozen) potato wedges, boiled eggs, olives and walnut sauce concoction?? It looked like something my kids would create if let loose in the kitchen and if I had a dog I think it would have turned it’s nose up.

The show was dated in it’s thinking and dated in it’s production. I felt like I was watching something from American telly in the sixties on the wonders of tinned/frozen foods. “Look how easy it is”. She fails to mention cost or nutritional value, both of which I can only imagine would suffer – not to mention taste.

I’m not adverse to shortcuts either, last night we had chicken baked in the oven in Campbells soup (chicken or mushroom is good) mixed with a bit of mayonnaise and served with rice and brocoli. It’s a really good, quick meal and tastes great. Tonight it’s baked potato with tuna and cheese, the kids love it. The difference is that Delia was trying to create her same signature dishes with shortcuts, and it just did not work.

All in all, absolutely dreadful.

Following Esmé’s bout of illness we’ve had a little regression with the old sleep training, so here we are again – only this time we also have to get her to take a bottle.

We’ve been making progress with the bottle, slowly but surely. Initially this involved a certain amount of pinning her down and putting the teat in her mouth while screaming (that’s her doing the screaming). I found that if I put her left arm ’round’ me and I put my right arm round her and put my finger in her hand she found it comforting and was also unable to escape from the bottle. It worked to a fashion, the main problem being that rather than actually drink anything she just fell asleep.

We’ve moved on from there with the bottle but last night I decided to use the same technique in getting her back to sleep – it works a treat. Unfortunately she’s got into this bad habit of waking up and screaming when she’s put back into the cot so we had to resort to serious sleep training: don’t pick her up, just keep going in, calming her down and leaving again; repeat the process every few minutes, lengthening the pause between visits gradually. It took about an hour or so, I’m not 100% sure of the timing, but eventually she went to sleep on her own, in her cot.

We’ll repeat the process tonight and I’m feeling reasonably confident it won’t last much longer than that. The nights of Esmé being breast fed back to sleep are numbered.

Happy birthday to me – for last Friday.

It was nice, the past few years my birthday has fallen on a week day and what with Jo being at work the last few years there didn’t seem to be much time for birthdays between getting the kids to school in the morning and then fed, bathed and in bed in time for the following day.

With Jo at home we went for a menu del dia in a very nice restaurant that we hadn’t been to before. The Passa something, I forget the name, but anyway it was good to get out.

I got a Jamie Oliver flavour shaker which seems good and will hopefully spur me to try out all sorts of nice herbs, a sun hat and a pair of Crocs. The latter are much lighter than they look, much more supportive and springy and seem good. The only thing I’m unsure about is whether they’ll be really sweaty when it gets hot. Time will tell.

Mum in America is sending me a FM transmitter for my ipod so I can listed to it in the car which’ll be good. It was up to me to organise the ipod attachment for tracking my running progress, something which I somehow managed not to do.

On Saturday night we went out to Sant Pere de Ribes with Nicky & Mateas, Rolf & Sara, Santi and Eva. Jo was supposed to come out but stayed in with Esmé. It was Nicky’s birthday on Sunday so we were both celebrating. After a heavy meal we ended up in a bar which was playing 60′s, 70′s and 80′s music very loudly. The bar was populated with old people acting like they were 18 and we came out feeling much younger than when we walked in.

She was six months old yesterday.

Did we have fun? Not really, she’s been ill for a few days and it’s not been easy. She’s been snotty, grouchy and with a temperature, and it’s all coincided with us trying to get her onto a bottle.

Jo’s just got a couple of weeks left before going back to work so Esmé has to get used to it, but it’s been almost two weeks and she’s still refusing. A couple of days back she was so thoroughly miserable that we relented and Jo fed her, something that has probably set us back somewhat.

She’s still been feeding her once in the morning and before bed but with her being ill it’s crept back into the night. Tonight we’re swapping roles: I’m dealing with Esmé in the night and Jo’s getting up to get the kids ready and out of the door in the morning. I’m already looking past tonight to my lie-in in the morning. A cup of tea in bed and a quiet start to the day, hmmmm.