It was a pretty bad day.

I overslept (very tired from the leaky nose).  Woke baby up an hour later than usual, which meant his entire routine was disrupted.  Rushed to cook oatmeal for the big brother since he was coughing badly.  Managed to get Junior J to finish breakfast and baby J to nap.  Thankfully my mum popped by to help to cook lunch as we were sick, and Junior J's godma came by with her sister to pass me pineapple tarts from Taiwan.

We more or less made it through lunch (baby J woke up when I put him in the cot, and then got cranky from the lack of sleep).  Then the delivery/installation guys from Ikea popped up at 2 pm, when we were expecting them from 3 pm onwards after I've settled Junior J for his afternoon nap.  They were supposed to help fix up our new bookcase, as well as the down lights that were supposed to be attached to the top of the bookcase (after fixing up a whole lot of furniture from Ikea on our own, from a Pax wardrobe to Billy bookshelves, we thought this time we'd let their people do it since it looked a little hard to set up on our own).  Or at least that was what we thought, as initially we were told that the installation guys could only set up the bookcase, but upon calling customer service at Ikea to clarify, they told us that the lights would be fixed up as well, and they would make the necessary arrangements (it didn't make sense that the bookcase was set up and drilled to the wall, since we'd have to run wires behind it first for the lighting).

Never mind that I still had to feed Junior J his afternoon milk and settle him down (with baby J in a carrier) while they were setting up the bookcase and making a racket.  What made it really complicated was the fact that the installation guys told me flat out that they couldn't fix the lights as that was not in their delivery notes.  So I called the hubby at work.  He called Ikea.  There was a lot of calling here and there, and it got really messy, since it was the customer service at Ikea who had guaranteed that the lights would be fixed, but the delivery people (who were subcontracted by Ikea) were saying otherwise.  I didn't know what to do, since if they didn't fix the lights they couldn't fix the shelf to the wall, since we'd need to run the wires.  But the hubby said he needed them to affix the shelf, since it was a partition wall and he wasn't sure about attaching stuff to partitions instead of the usual concrete walls.

After all those phone calls, the delivery guys reluctantly said they'd fix the lights onto the bookcase (and wanted to charge us extra for that!), but would not run the wires, while adding that they would not be responsible if the lights didn't work etc.  Then they looked at the lights and said that we needed to have more screws to attach the lights to the bookcase, and those were not provided.  And they didn't have those screws with them.  I called the hubby.  Hubby suggested using our own screws.  Our toolbox was right at the back of the storeroom, and to get to it I would need to empty a quarter of the contents of the storeroom.  Baby was still strapped to me, and I was still trying to get Junior J to finish his milk.  Hubby suggested getting the delivery guys to help me get the toolbox.  Errr, looking at how unhappy the men were, it sounded like a bad idea.

In the end, the delivery guys drilled the bookcase to the wall, and taught me how to remove the screws, so that we could shift the shelf to run the wires when we install the lights on our own (after hearing how they were saying they won't be responsible if anything happened with regards to the lighting, I wasn't really comfortable letting them fix the lights anyway).

So the bookcase got fixed.  Junior J went down for his nap.  I had to bathe the baby, and wasn't feeling too good after all that had happened.  I was just chatting to Baby J (who was all sweaty from being strapped to me throughout the entire saga) while cleaning him up when he looked at me.

And this little boy smiled at me.  And went "ah goo".  And all of a sudden, I didn't feel crappy anymore.  Guess it doesn't take much to make this mama happy!

PS: Finally managed to get the photos of the Christmas ATCs up!  You can view them here...