Friday 9th July

It was a very busy day for us today (again!) I knew that I had to go out first thing in the morning because Pen needed the car from midday and we had run out of some cruicial things – nappies, washing powder, cheese etc. We woke up late this morning (at about 8.30) and I didn't actually get out of bed until 9 because Abigail was happy playing in her cot with her new caterpillar toy and DJ still hadn't come through to our room.

We got ready to go out and Tyagi picked us up at 10 a.m. The traffic was absolutely horrendous and it took us nearly an hour to get to the supermarket! When we got there I knew I didn't have long to do the shopping as Penri needed the car for a meeting at 12 so I literally had to whizz around and get everything off my list as quickly as possible. Luckily, the shop was pretty much completely empty so there were no people holding me up. The great thing about there not being anyone else in the shop was I was able to push the shopping trolley and pushchair alongside each other. I actually got pretty good at steering them both together!

I grabbed everything off my list and managed to make it to the tills within 10 minutes of being in the shop. I even picked up one or two extra items that weren't on my list. I found a really cool t-shirt for DJ (the sleeveless kind that he wears every day here) and it was really reasonably priced! When I got to the tills, there were two open and both had a customer being served and one person waiting. I got in the queue and because of rushing around like crazy, I was gasping for a drink. I opened one of my drinks from the trolley and gave DJ one too. We got some very odd looks from the people who worked there, but because I was as thirsty as I was, I just didn't care! The man behind the till was taking ages! In my mind, I was willing him to move faster. When he did finally finish adding everything up, just as he got to the last couple of items, the lady's (customer) phone rang. She answered it and then turned away from the till to talk to whoever was on the end of the phone. I was getting a bit frustrated by this point and I really had to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying anything. She eventually paid and then there was another customer before it was our turn.

As soon as we were done, I tried to put my pushchair and trolley alongside each other again so I could walk back to the car, but the security wouldn't let me leave the supermarket with the trolley. I had to have a supermarket guy push my trolley, I guess to make sure I didn't steal it. We got back to the car and Tyagi was waiting for us. It was 11.20 and off we went to go home. I forgot to mention before – when we arrived in the car park, there was a man whose job it was, was to stand at the ticket machine in the entrance to the car park and push the button, take the ticket out and give it to the driver. It made me laugh! I wonder what he would do if someone lent out and pushed the button themselves? The lift guys (who I mentioned in a previous post whose job it is, is to press the buttons in the lift) get very upset if you touch the buttons. Anyway, got slightly carried away there. As we were leaving the car park, Tyagi paid and went to drive up the ramp out of the car park and he couldn't make it. He had to reverse the car back down the ramp and the car behind us who was paying to leave the car park had to reverse back and we literally had to have a run up to the ramp in order to get up it.

Leaving the mall, there was hardly any traffic on the roads and we made it home in about 10 minutes! Penri was getting ready to go as we got in. I unpacked all the shopping which turned out to be quite a bit. It's amazing how much stuff you can buy in a short space of time … I'd be brilliant on that TV show, Supermarket Sweep …













Anyway, I unpacked all the shopping, washed and changed the kids and then made DJ some lunch. He had pasta with vegetables and then a yoghurt. After which, I tidied up a bit, did some washing and pottered around. Raj Kumar turned up at 3 to clean and then half an hour later a plumber turned up to fix the water in our bathroom. It was really funny because about 5 minutes before the plumber arrived I had a phone call from Penri's office to tell me that there was someone on his way to build the shelves in the kitchen. So, when the plumber arrived both Raj Kumar and I assumed he was the carpenter and took him in the kitchen. It was only when he turned on the taps and said 'working madam' that I realised who he was. Oops. He was so confused with why we'd taken him in the kitchen in the first place lol.

I spoke to Debs on Skype and then to Sam but during my call with Sam, it was all go at this end and I didn't get to sit down for two minutes at a time to talk to her. With the cleaner arriving, the plumber, the carpenter, the kids interrupting me, it was madness! In the middle of it all, Laura phoned too and I promised I would ring her back.

The carpenters did arrive and set to work on building our kitchen shelves. When they were half way through, I realised they were only putting one shelf in each space when I had asked for three! I phoned the contact at Penri's office to ask him whether they had more shelves to put (as the carpenter didn't speak a word of English). He told me to put the carpenter on the phone, which I did and then I spoke to him afterwards. He said that was it. We were just having three shelves total – one in each space. He asked me if that was enough, to which I replied 'no, we agreed three in each space'. I was getting really irate now, more so because the carpenters had taken three hours to build one and a half shelves! The guy from Pen's office said he would come on Monday to have a look.

While all this was going on, Penri asked me to chase up our cargo and find out what is happening with it. I did so and after calling the woman three times, I finally got through. She told me that it has been through customs and we just need to make the payment for the customs clearance tomorrow morning and then it should be dispatched on Monday, which means we will probably get it on Friday or the following Monday. 4-5 days to get from Mumbai to Delhi. Madness!

At this point, I was beyond help. I was having a really bad 'I hate India day' although it's my first since we got here (which is nearly a month ago now) so I'm doing pretty well. Anyone who had been to India will understand why and how easy it is to have an 'I hate India' day because things here don't happen quickly. And nothing you do will make things happen quicker because it's always out of your control. Anyway, I did call Penri's mum back but unfortunately, I was in no mood to talk because I was just ready to melt down!

The carpenters left at 7.30 and by then I had to get the kids ready for bed so we didn't even make it to the swimming pool. I was disappointed about not going swimming as we haven't been for a couple of days now and I know both kids really enjoy it. I will definitely have to take them tomorrow.

On a positive note, it looks like Penri may have been successful in finding a car for us to buy (fingers crossed). He went this afternoon and seems to have found something. Just need to sort out finance now :) Please pray that we get it sorted soon. It'll be lovely to have our own freedom and independence. As nice as it is having a driver and not having to think about driving, I think we'll both feel happier when we can get in the car and go!

So, that's about it from us here. I do have a few photos to post but will do that in a separate blog post because it's easier than trying to add them in here. Yey, it's the weekend, Pen's at home so we'll hopefully go out somewhere fun tomorrow! Night night from me x

Sunday 27th June

Today has been another good day. I still can't believe it's two weeks since we arrived in India. Anyone who has been following my blog can probably guess what we did today … we went shopping and swimming!

We had a quiet ish morning, just chilling around the house. We had quite a few potty training incidents today though. Now that Dylan has learnt to take his nappy off himself, even when he has a nappy on we still have 'accidents'. I was changing Abigail's nappy when Dylan came in, having taken his nappy off, and said 'Mummy poo poo'. I thought great he needs to go, so I jumped up and said 'Come on then DJ, on the toilet'. As we started to walk through to the bathroom, he said 'no Mummy, poo poo' and took my hand. He took me to the kitchen where there on the floor … you guessed it … he had already been! I cleaned up the mess and went to get the mop to disinfect the floor. Just as I finished cleaning, I heard DJ say 'oh no'. I went through to the bathroom to find that he had done a wee wee all over the floor! It's my own fault because I hadn't put a new nappy on him straight away. So, I washed him and put a nappy and clothes on him and then cleaned and disinfected the bathroom floor. As I already had the mop out, I thought I may as well mop all the floors in the apartment, especially as the cleaner only comes on weekdays so they hadn't been done since Friday! That ended up taking me ages although it's kind of good that we have floors everywhere and no carpets because it does make it easier to clean up little accidents!

At 1 o'clock we all got in the car and headed to a shop called Spencers. It's a supermarket (probably the best and biggest chain you get in India). We did some food shopping; not a huge shop – just a few bits for the fridge. They have a luxury section which is all just imported items and at imported prices too!! So, it's things like … Robinsons squash, Tabasco sauce, imported meats and cheeses, peanut butter, jams etc. We bought only a couple of things in the luxury section because they were really expensive.

From Spencers we went onto a different mall where there was a TGI Fridays. Before we went in there, DJ went in the big play area that was there … it is much bigger than the other one he always goes to and they had different things so he spent nearly an hour in there. I had a wander around the shops and then we all went to TGIs for dinner (well, a late lunch really). It was about 3.30 p.m by this point and both children were really tired so Dylan started being really naughty and then Abi started screaming! It was completely manic! The food was OK. I was a bit disappointed because I thought I'd ordered a beef burger, but I hadn't – it was a lamb burger.

When we went to leave the restaurant, Penri realised his mobile battery was completely flat! It didn't even have enough charge to turn the phone on to get our driver's phone number. So, there we were standing in the heat on the side of the road outside the mall trying to decide what to do. We ended up going back into TGIs where I asked one of the waiters to put Penri's sim card into his phone so we could get Tyagi's number. It turns out that his number was saved on the phone, not the sim so we couldn't get it. We went back into the mall and looked for a phone shop where we could charge the phone a bit (just enough to turn it on to get the number)!

I was about to give up hope and kept saying to Penri, let's just get an auto rick home and then we can call Tyagi from there and tell him we don't need him any more. Pen said we wouldn't all fit in an auto. So, we kept looking for a phone shop. Eventually Penri found somewhere where they let us charge the phone for a few minutes and we called the driver and came home. We went straight down to the pool and swam for a bit and then by the time we got home, gave the babies showers and got their pyjamas on, it was bed time.

I got Abigail to sleep while Pen put DJ to bed. Just as she went off to sleep and I was laying her down, I saw something scuttle across the floor! OH NO! Another cockroach! This time though, it was dark in the room and he went under the bedside table. When I moved it, he was gone. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! They really creep me out. I'm going to have to ask our cleaner to move all the furniture in my bedroom to try and find him. Just the thought of it somewhere in my room … *shivers down my back*!

Abigail woke up at 1 a.m and I couldn't get her back to sleep. She was happily chatting away and wanting to wake up. At this point, I still hadn't been to bed so I was really ready to go to sleep, but she wasn't having any of it. So, we came on the computer and spoke to Sam on Skype, which was cool. It's weird that it was the early hours of the morning here, but it was only 8.30 in the evening in UK! Anyway, it was really lovely to catch up – thanks Sam!

At about 1.45 I tried again to get Abi to sleep but she was not wanting any sleep at all. She screamed every time I put her down. I tried feeding her, holding her, swaying her, dancing slowly – everything and anything to get her to sleep! Nothing worked! Eventually at 5 a.m after 3 hours of trying, both of us crying, her screaming … she finally went to sleep … for two and a half hours!!! She woke up at 7.30 and woke me up too. Then DJ came in at 8 to join the party! I am SO tired!!!! That'll teach me – in future – go to bed as soon as the kids are in bed!