"Toddlers and TV - the AAP says no!"

How could I fail to miss this headline?

I've been a parent for a relatively short time, and already had my share of conflicting advice. It was ever thus. Cast back a century or two and babies were considered passive creatures to be parked in their prams and ignored, no stimulation needed. More recently we've swung from crying is necessary and exercises their lungs to attachment parenting, and all shades in between... How times change.

The idea that television is bad for kids isn't a new one. And anecdotes are not the same as data, but I wonder whether the researchers are measuring the right things in these studies. "There are no known positive effects" they say, and it inhibits linguistic development. How are they testing this, exactly? It seems quite a limited list of criteria, to my untrained eye.

I took ToddlerGirl along to participate in a psychology experiment recently, looking into episodic memory in 2-3 year olds. The current theories state that children do not develop episodic memory until the age of 5. The researchers are investigating whether, in fact, children have epidodic memory capability at an earlier age. There is still much that we do not understand about the development of cognitive function. I would be interested to see the evidence that children learn nothing from the television, when I know for a fact that my two-year old (who incidentally, started talking at the early end of the spectrum ) learns phrases and concepts from things she has seen. Something Special, for example.

We love Mr Tumble, as I have said before. ToddlerGirl seems to have passed through the phase now of signing at the same time she talks, but she had a lot of signs at one point, and she'd only got that from the TV, from that specific programme. (Yes, we'd done baby-signing with her, but only 'milk', 'more' and 'cat'.) Even BabyBoy waves at Mr Tumble at the appropriate point in the "hello" and "goodbye" song. He'll also clap when people on TV clap, as well as when people in real life clap. Is he confused by what is real and what's TV? I don't know. If he is, he'll work it out soon enough...

Perhaps it helps that we often talk about what we're watching, how the characters are feeling, how they're affected by what's going on etc, but I hold my hands up and say we do sometimes use the TV as a babysitter. Particularly if it is one of those days where I just need to come up for air for a moment. I would argue it's better that they sit agog in front of Mr Tumble while I have a reviving cup of tea - in peace! - than have me harrassed and stressing out at them. Just the thought of how we would have navigated The Chicken Pox Month without televisual assistance breaks me out in a cold sweat.

Let me be clear that I am not endorsing the use of television as a substitute parent. I will be resisting any requests for the kids to have TVs in their bedrooms, as it then becomes a solitary and isolated experience, from a family perspective anyway. (From a social perspective, I can remember not being allowed to watch Neighbours because it was a 'bad influence' and I was excluded from the playground chat as a result - I'm talking primary school age, mind. Despite not being allowed to watch it, one of my most treasured possessions at the time was the Kylie and Jason wedding card from Topps. And I loved that song. That awful, awful, song.)

I've mentioned elsewhere that one of BabyBoy's first words was "Peppa". That may not be a good thing, but from my experience thus far, I wouldn't say that language is being inhibited. And if The Pig keeps him happy in his playpen while Mummy has to attend to the call of nature, where's the harm? It quiets his protests, I get to do what I need to do...

Hmm. Is there an analogy there, between how many adults sit happy watching X Factor or soaps or whatever vs how many actually protest about the state of society to those in authority? Perhaps I need to rethink my argument?! Are we all in playpens of our own devising? Beware bread and circuses...

Blog hop!

Blog hop, you say? Is it a new form of exercise? A dance craze? A prohibition-era party? No?

I'm pretty new to all this blogging malarky and my technical skills cannot be understated so it's always a gamble when I try and make code work in my posts. But the lovely Mme Lindor was kind enough to include me in her blog hop and I am delighted to return the favour. Even if her blog's title 'Salt and Caramel' always makes me faintly hungry.

For the uninitiated (i.e. me, a couple of days ago), a blog hop is a list of links that are shared on lots of blogs. All the blogs use the same code so the same list appears on each blog. Voila. And who couldn't use a few new blogs in their life? Feel free to add yourself, and get hopping!

"Narabug" cakes

Waybuloo's back in the Bedtime Hour on Cbeebies. We mourn the passing of Charlie and Lola, but thankfully they're not messing with Abney and Teal or I swear we'd riot. Waybuloo is too long for the first half of the Bedtime Hour. Charlie and Lola was perfect, I could let ToddlerGirl watch that to the end before slapping on the mandatory Octonauts episode and we'd still be in the bath before 6.30. If she catches the start of Waybuloo though, we're stuffed.

The other side effect of Waybuloo now being on at 6pm is that my other half gets the opportunity to sample its wares. This meant that last night, marital conversation centred on whether or not the Narabugs were butterflies or not. I had always assumed that they were; caricatured of course, but still butterflies. I was scandalised therefore when a recent episode showed a Narabug laying an egg - and don't think insect-egg here, think hen-egg - in a nest, that then hatched into a fully-fledged Narabug. Did the Hungry Caterpillar pupate in vain?!

I relayed this tale of indignation and asked for the general consensus. ToddlerGirl insists that Narabugs are butterflies. My husband disagrees, and concludes that Narabugs are their own unique genus. I concede that the adults in this conversation are perhaps taking it too seriously. It's not like they are telling us something factually inaccurate, like snakes are slimy, but everytime I see a Narabug now, I think of that egg and it irks me.

But I'll tell you what doesn't irk me - cake.

Take:
A dozen or so fairycakes. Made or *coughcough* shop-bought.
3oz butter
6oz icing sugar for butter-icing
1oz icing sugar for water-icing
Food colouring
Cocoa (optional)
Chocolate chips

Using a sharp knife, cut out the centre of the cakes, taking care not to go too deep, but deep enough to get a good fix of butter icing wodged in there. Take the cut-out cake-section to one side and chop it in two to make 'wings'.
Mix butter and icing sugar, and colour as desired.
Use a teaspoon to dollop butter-icing into cake.
Wedge wings into butter icing.
Mix a few drops of water with icing sugar to a texture slightly runnier than paste. Colour icing as desired (here we added cocoa to make the brown colour).
Add body detail with water icing, using the edge of a teaspoon to apply.
Add two choc chips as eyes.
Let the icing set before eating (yeah right...)

Igloo fit for a penguin

We're ploughing the retro furrow a little further today. Pingu, anyone?

This igloo is all Pingu's fault. What can I say about Pingu, other than it was great when I was small and it still seems to fascinate both of my two today. The lack of 'dialogue' focuses things more on the tone of the interation and reactions of the characters to convey what's going on. BabyBoy finds it hysterical when I talk in "penguinese", although it could be the faces that I pull whilst doing so. (You try doing a Pingu impression with a straight face.) I'm not sure that me speaking penguinese at him is developmentally helpful but then I have another blogpost drafting on the report that hit the news this week recommending that under 2s should have no TV at all, lest it impact their development.

So we watch Pingu, and I worry that I may be making a 'rod for my own back' as regards making stuff. I'm not Harry Chuffing Potter. "Can you make me an igloo please, mummy?" Toddlergirl asks expectantly. Um. Hold on a minute...

Yes, yes I can!

Take:

1 pudding-pot (this one was a Cherry Chocolate Sponge Pudding. They're new from Cadbury, but not that highly rated here. Too dry and not saucy enough, matron.)
1 piece cardboard
1 piece A4 white paper
2 tissues (mansize for preference)
Some PVA glue

Cut a doorway out of the pudding-pot, filing down sharp edges with a nail-file if you worry about such things. (My poor nail-file has seen comparatively little of my nails of late).
Take a strip of cardboard, and snip a frill in one end so that you can fold the frill up inside the pot for glueing and sticky-taping down. Like so:

Cut rectangles out of the white paper, cover igloo in PVA glue and let toddler stick the 'ice' on.
Meanwhile, dilute PVA glue 1:1 with water and soak 2 mansize tissues.
Squeeze out excess, then shape soggy tissues into a penguin shape. Leave to dry (overnight or longer, depending on how soggy it is/was).
When penguin is dry use a felt-tip pen to colour it in.

It would be altogether easier to make a penguin out of Playdoh or plasticine but the chances of that getting eaten round here is high. The tissue sets hard, so is a little more durable.

If you have more than half a brain you might want to think about scale when making the penguin - unlike me. Fortunately Toddlergirl doesn't mind that the penguin doesn't fit through the door...

Tangram

Perhaps it was watching Abney and Teal that had me reaching for the Bagpuss DVD, or perhaps it was the nostalgia trip brought on by finding out Floella's now in the House of Lords. But you can't go wrong with a bit of Bagpuss. (Unless, perhaps, you are that girl from university who always insisted that Bagpuss was orange and white. Yes, you, with your tartan trousers! Pay more attention!)

There are fewer episodes made than you might think, only 13 in total. The tangram creation was inspired by the Frog Princess episode, where pieces of broken enamel are brought back by Emily. (Is that an accurate stage of child development that I have to look forward to, or is Emily a budding Hoarder?)

The bit in the episode where the pieces dance and make a cat and a mouse who chase each other gave me the idea of introducing the kids to tangrams. They're very simple to make, although I would probably get marks deducted for not measuring mine out properly. I just used a straight edge and estimated.

Take:
A square of cardboard
Some felt-tips

Mark out the square as shown.

Cut out pieces.
Re-arrange pieces to make pictures.

BabyBoy actually quite liked playing with the bits, picking them up and examining them, while ToddlerGirl made lots and lots of different boats. Cheap, quick, and good fun!

The what/pardon dichotomy

How I remember rolling my eyes at my mother as she chided, "Don't say "what?", it doesn't sound nice." Her ongoing quest to bring up children who speak 'properly' made me very aware of how I spoke, partly because of being in a permanent no-win situation. We moved house during my formative years, with my accent labelled 'posh' in my new surroundings, thereby setting the stage for ongoing conflict between the desire to fit in with my peers and my mother's desire to avoid us "sounding common". The what/pardon thing became a case in point.

Ironically, I think my mother's concern came from an awareness that, whether you like it or not, people often judge others on the way they speak. I can understand where she was coming from. For instance, it's not that long ago that regional accents were unheard of at the BBC. And you'd still struggle today to find many politicians with strong regional accents or dialects, especially outside of the 'working class' Labour party. It's just that the wider world happens to uses different yardsticks for judgement than that playground.

Even now, hearing the word "pardon" on the lips of others makes me bristle slightly. Sorry, 'pardoners' everywhere. I think the 'pardon/what' war of my youth was compounded by the tendency for the words "I beg your pardon?" to be delivered in outraged tones portending the dire consequences that surely followed any cheek muttered in the parental direction.

As an aside, I was interested to see a what/pardon debate on Mumsnet some time ago. For a snapshot of class-divides associated with otherwise innocent words, Mumsnet's great. There was a very heated sofa/settee/couch and living room/lounge/front room combo thread just this week. If memory serves, in the what/pardon debate, more supporters came out in favour of 'what?' than 'pardon?'.

However, now my daughter has latched on to 'what?', I have rather more sympathy with my mother. There is something about the word "what" that makes my teeth itch. It's not the word, it's the delivery and context. ToddlerGirl has mastered the glottal-stop, so it's delivered with a force I can't quite convey in text. Imagine a Mitchell brother yelling "what?" across Albert Square. Put that voice in a toddler. Put that toddler in the back of my car.

Example: "Look, ToddlerGirl, a tractor!" "What?" "A tractor!" "What?"
"A tractor!" "What?" "Tractor!" "What?" "Over there, a tractor!" "What?"
"TRACTOR!" "WHAT?" "Oh, never mind, it's gone now..."

I don't think "pardon" would sound any better.

I've tried suggesting that instead of saying "what?" it would be more helpful if she could say "what did you say?" or "what do you mean?", partly for the sake of clarity, partly as being a bit more specific in her 'whats' would make it easier on the ear... and it gives me something other to say in response than the phrase "Don't say what, it doesn't sound nice". I find myself choking it down as it starts trying to force its way past my vocal cords, like some genetic reflex...

For all those surly "whats" that assailed your eardrums over the years: sorry Mum.

Peso Penguin finger puppet

Toddlers are fickle things aren't they? You may remember how I was saying that pirates were the flavour of the month? Well, that was so September 2011. I mean, come on, we're in October now. October is all about the medics. If it's any indication of future career choice, then I'm all in favour... with the NHS looking in dire jeopardy, having a doctor in the family could be handy. (Do check out the 38 Degrees campaign to save the NHS!)

So, in a shocking bloodless coup, Kwazii's been relegated from pole-position and Peso Penguin is where it's at. I don't think I've a single limb that's gone un-bandaged in recent weeks. I'm a little concerned there's a touch of Munchausen by proxy going on, the way she's been inciting me to put my finger in her castanets (not a euphemism) and then shutting the b*ggers on my defenceless digit! "Does it hurt Mummy? Shall I bandage it?" Yes, and no. And no, I don't want to put my finger there again. Eejit that I was to do it the first time.

To make Peso, I stuck with my trusty hummus pot lid as the template for his head. Some of the process was replicated directly from the Kwazii finger puppet. The rest of the measurements are again estimated and adjusted in proportion to that. I don't know why he manages to come out looking a little sad, but I like to imagine it's professional sympathy for my multiple needle-pricks sustained during the creative process. This has not been a good week to be one of my fingers.

Take:
Some black felt
Smallish bit of white felt
Tiny bit of yellow felt
Some blue felt
Some stuffing (about an eggcup-full)
Cotton of appropriate colours
The all-important hummus pot lid

Draw round the hummus-pot lid on the black felt, and cut out a circle.
Use running stitch around the edge of the circle, draw together, stuff and then draw tighter. (Again, mine had a small gap in the centre where you can see the stuffing but it's not so far been a problem as it's hidden by the finger-tube.
Cut out a shape from white felt for Peso's face (sort of like the outline of a rounded capital B)
Cut out two black circles for eyes
Cut out a small yellow triangle for a beak
Stitch the eyes onto the white felt, using black thread around the edges, and then adding eye highlights in white thread.
Stitch the beak onto the white felt.
Stitch the white felt face onto the black head-ball.
Cut a rectangle out of the black felt, long enough to fit onto and around a finger.
Stitch rectangle into a tube, turn inside out and stitch top of tube to Peso head.
Cut out thin rectangle of white felt and stitch to front of tube, under Peso's face.
Cut a rectangle of blue felt. Stitch the top of the felt around the bottom of the Peso head, to cover the join between the tube and the head.
Cut a square of blue felt, and cut it in half.
Stitch the two short sides together, and turn inside out. Fold edge of triangle back on itself, to form hat.
Stitch hat onto head.
And we're done. Seeing as we have two Octonauts now, I may as well attempt Captain Barnacles in the near future...

Poc-Poc biscuits

I cannot wait for 5.50pm. It's love. The Adventures of Abney and Teal has cast its spell upon me, and I am smitten.

If Oliver Postgate (Clangers, Bagpuss etc) was still alive and making animation today, I'd like to think it would be something like Abney and Teal. They live on an island in the middle of a park in a city, exploring and having fun with their friends. There's no heavy-handed moralising, there's no conflict, it's just... lovely. It's that plus the soundtrack in particular, I think, that reminds me of Bagpuss, the way it is stripped down and simple, which in itself mirrors the idea of the characters all living in this oasis of calm, adrift from the rest of the world. It is innocent, joyful, and simply beautiful to watch.

It's from the same stable as Teletubbies and In the Night Garden, but has more of what we grown-ups would recognise as plot; perhaps due to its 10 minutes length as opposed to the half-hour or so that Teletubbies and ITNG have to hold tiny attentions. But there is something endearingly retro about it, and I find it so refreshing compared to the 'modern' animation styles of Numberjacks, Waybuloo, and the other wide-eyed, gawping, brashly coloured computer-generated characters that bombard us. Of course, I don't doubt for a minute that Abney and Teal isn't computer-generated, but it has the feel of an illustration brought to life.

It offers less for BabyBoy, but ToddlerGirl is also pretty smitten, and has taken to declaring "That was an adventure!", Teal-style, at various intervals. Picking tomatoes, is an adventure. And why not?

So we had a biscuit-making adventure. The Poc-Pocs appear to be made of wood, so to try and get the 'woodgrained' appearance, I marbled my biscuit dough with cocoa, although I did overwork the mix a bit, which is why it isn't as streaky as I would have liked. They taste nice, though!

Take:
2oz flour
1.5oz butter or marg
1.5oz sugar
A teaspoon of cocoa
Half a dozen raisins or so

Chuck the flour, butter and sugar into a bowl.
Give toddler a fork and stand back.
When toddler has finished 'mixing', give it a bigger mix until the mix turns into something resembling breadcrumbs. Keep mixing a bit more after that until it forms a dough. If it is being especially stubborn, add a couple of drops of milk.
Next, add cocoa, and mix just enough to streak the mixture.
Get toddler to help you roll out the mix to about a 4mm thickness.
Give toddler spoon to lick while you cut out Poc-Poc shapes with a sharp knife.
Cut raisins in half, and push into Poc-Pocs to make eyes.
Bake around 180 degrees Celsius, or Gas Mark 3, for about 10 minutes.

Sock puppet

Show Me Show Me reminds me a little of Playschool, the TV programme I used to watch when I was small. But where you had Big Ted and friends on Playschool, presenters Chris and Pui have a robot-doll called MoMo, Miss Mouse, Teddington, Tom the rag-doll, and Stuffy the cube. It mixes up stories, songs, and a series called Penelope, a bit like a magazine show for pre-schoolers. Not forgetting the random and mischievous sock puppets.

It might as well be called the Chris and Pui show, and in fact they tour periodically as 'Chris and Pui'. I recognised Chris' face when I saw the programme, and - thanks Google, for making me feel really old - it turns out that he is the same Chris Jarvis that was in The Broom Cupboard on Children's BBC (was it CBBC back then? I think not...) that I remember watching as a kid. He hasn't aged badly, has he?

It was a bit of a shock to realise it was him. Although to be fair, it was definitely in the twilight days of my childhood that he did his stint in The Cupboard. It's odd to see the presenters of my youth popping up today...

For instance, I was watching something recently when Andrew O'Connor popped up. (Not literally in my house, that would be plain weird. It was some documetary vox-pop - I'm going to hazard a guess, for whose veracity I shall not be held accountable, that it was Stephen Fry's 100 Best Gadgets.) Andrew O'Connor, I thought! I remember you from... something on Saturday mornings. No 73? On The Waterfront? Both, as it turns out. These days though, he's a producer on Peep Show as well as most of Derren Brown's stuff. (Were you messing with our minds, back in the day, Andrew? Is this how Derren Brown's routines work? We've all been brainwashed back in the 80s, via kids TV?! Explain yourselves!)

And fellow Broom-Cupboard veteran Andi Peters is now of course a reknowned producer, creator of T4 and occasional guest on Radio 1's breakfast show, as well as still presenting in various places (for 'grown-up' things like Heat Radio). He's ageing very well too.

And - bringing us nicely back to the start - the inimitable, indomitable Floella Benjamin. Heroine of my Playschool days, she's only in the bally House of Lords! Voting, I trust, in the next week or so to save our NHS. (I 'adopted' a Lord through the 30 Degrees campaign, such a shame I didn't get Floella!) And she looks EXACTLY the same as I remember. Is there a wall of Dorian Gray presenter portraits somewhere in White City?

I wonder where the kids presenters of today are going to end up? Mr Bloom as Agriculture 'Tsar'? Justin Fletcher for PM?! Curious times we live in...

And if you really need instructions on how to put together a sock-puppet, not even Derren Brown can help you, but here you go:

Take
A sock
2 googly eyes
Some paper

Put sock on hand
Use thumb to create mouth
Stick eyes on sock
Cut out eyelashes from paper and stick to sock. Or use the sticky bit from a Post-it note and save yourself some glue...

Space rocket

I am, or was, a self-confessed control freak. Then kids happened and blew all that out of the water. I like plans. I like things happening to plan.

In some respects, the toddler and I are alike in that. She likes plans, and doesn't always understand that plans can't happen because mummy's been a bit impetuous in suggesting going swimming without first checking that the pools have any public swimming sessions on a Saturday morning. Not that she respects my plans any the better for all that, with her outrageously ill-timed nappy requirements etc... I swear sometimes the pair of them gang up on me. ("In the doctors waiting room for 10 minutes? Can we both manage pooey-bums before Mummy's called in? I bet we can!")

Some days, I indulge myself in the delusion that I give off the impression of being a rational, cool, kind and patient person, who would never ever get stressed or shout, but maintaining that illusion in the face of, say, random and unreasonable dashes for freedom in the middle of Tesco is a challenge. It's a white-knuckle ride, this child-raising lark.

So, with escape artistry at one end of the spectrum, I am learning to take many things in my stride. Or even to side-step them altogether. Such things like arguing blue is orange, for instance. One person's inaccuracy is another person's interpretation: that's why this Hamsternaut rocket is blue. (We've watched so much Baby Jake I can't believe it was even an area of contention, but there it is.)

Relinquishing control is liberating in some ways, except when your fingers look like you've been doing unpleasant things to a Smurf afterwards. Crayola Washable Paints may be washable, but they take a heck of a lot of scrubbing to remove from skin... Please guys, can you work on that formula? My baby looks like an extra from Braveheart.

Anyway, the rocket, right?

Take:
1 squash bottle
Some card
Some foil
Some masking tape
Some clear plastic (optional)
Some paper
Some flame-coloured tissue paper

(These are the precise measurements I know you're coming to expect from me...)

Start by cutting out 3 fins for the rocket. I cut them in the sort of 'fat scythe' shape, with a tab at the end for glueing to the body. To make attaching it easier, I cut the tab halfway down so that the top half can fold left and attach and the bottom half can fold right. I used glue and sellotape to attach it.

Next, cover the rocket in papier mache. I used newspaper for a couple of layers, let it dry, and then did a final layer of plain white for better paint coverage.

Then, paint rocket the colour of your choice!

I made portholes by cutting rings out of card and covering them in foil. I then drew hamsters on plain paper, and stuck clear plastic over the top. I then glued the foil ring over the top of the plastic.

Next, stick portholes onto rocket.

Add detail of metal panels and bolts in felt tip pen.

Cover base of rocket with foil.

Colour masking tape in with felt tip and wrap around base of rocket to secure fiol in place. Wrap small bits around fin-tips for extra detail.

Add tissue paper flames.

Hang from cotton, attach to ceiling!

I also made some stars and a moon out of card, and covered those in foil before threading them onto some cotton and attaching to the ceiling around the rocket. Everybody's starry-eyed! (Any excuse for a gratuitous link to a song...)

Don't Enjoy The Silence

With apologies to Depeche Mode, every parent knows the moment things go quiet is when you need to worry. That's when they've got the lid off the Sudocrem, or discovered how to take the remote control apart, or decided to start climbing the bookshelves, or, or, or...

(If you don't know the original song, the following probably won't make sense. I'd suggest you check it out here first. Or on Spotify, or something. It is awesome.)

Anyway, ploughing on regardless, here's my alternative lyrics:

Don't Enjoy The Silence

Noises you make
Gives me headaches
But I wouldn't swap
Loudness for silent fun.
So suspiciously
Panic floods me
Can't you understand
Oh my little ones

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is you, safe from harm
When the noise stops, oh how my heart drops
All I feel is alarm

Toys are broken
Harsh words spoken
But you're up to things
When there's quietness.
You are so cute
But when on mute,
Walls get made a mess
In indelible.

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is you, safe from harm
When the noise stops, oh how my heart drops
All I feel is alarm

Mr Tumble Sandwich

You know how they say "if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again"? And you know how they also say the definition of madness is "repeating the same actions and expecting different outcomes"? I'm not sure which camp feeding toddlers falls into.

Perhaps I should subtitle this "The continuing quest to get ToddlerGirl to eat tomatoes"? Not that I force them at her at every opportunity or anything, but I keep offering them with no pressure to eat, to see if she eventually decides that she likes them again. She'll thank me when she's old enough to know about lycopenes and stuff. Maybe.

So tomato ladybirds failed, and Mr Tumble sandwich... Well, it failed in the tomato stakes, though the rest was eaten happily. BabyBoy was more than happy to find a home for the unwanted fruit-masquerading-as-veg.

To recreate your own Tumble-tastic open sarnie, take:

1 slice bread
Some cheese spread
1 sliced olive
6 raisins
Some grated carrot
1 cherry tomato
1 normal tomato

Spread the bread with the cheese spread.
Add two olive slices as eyes.
Chop the cherry tomato in half, and use 1 half as the nose
Chop the normal tomato into four (half and half again), and use one wedge as a smiley mouth.
Add raisin freckles/spots on cheeks.

The likeness is uncanny, no?

No...?

Treasure chest

As I pondered the plethora of pirates in a previous post, I'll skip the agonising about modelling unhealthy materialist and capitalist traits, and cut to the chase: what does every good pirate need? Treasure!

Lotta and Lola make an excellent treasure chest in a bid to reunite Marv and Charlie over their shared love of Captain Squidbones. (I haven't raved about Charlie and Lola yet, but I really should get around to it, it is wonderful. Charlie is the ultimate long-suffering elder sibling; if only my maternal patience were as enduring! Mind you, Charlie and Lola's mother is unhealthily hands-off, if you ask me.)

This treasure chest is fast and easy to make, and can be similarly decorated with sparkly bits if desired. We've not got around to that bit yet, being a little distracted by the chocolate coins. (You won't catch me moaning about Christmas stuff being in the shops early!)

Take:
1 washing tablet box
Brown paper
A black marker pen
Optional decorative bits and bobs/chocolate coins!

Cover the box with the brown paper
Add detail of lock and nail-heads with pen
Decorate if desired.

To make an added game of it, hide the coins around the room/garden - the kids can go find them to add to their 'hoard' in the box. If they last that long, and don't get eaten straightaway...

Mummy's feeling old...

I finally parted with my beloved 'ghetto blaster', given to me when I was 11. It was over 20 years old and finally packed in. They really don't make 'em like they used to. I now have an excessive amount of music cassettes and nothing to play them on. Which got me thinking...

When Mummy was little:

* We didn't have mobile phones
* Email and internet weren't around
* Computer games came on cassettes and took 10 mins to load (Remember the noise? I played this to my kids; their baffled faces showed only confusion and pity.)
* There were only 3 channels on TV - and no CBeebies!
* No shops opened on Sundays
* Pluto was still a planet
* We had a half-penny piece
* Petrol only came in 'leaded'
* Children didn't have to use special car-seats
* If the car was full, the kids travelled in the boot (or was that just me?)
* Gay people couldn't get married
* All your rubbish went straight into binbags, no recycling
* My husband's job didn't exist
* A university education was free...

This makes me feel ancient! And I only grew up in the 80s!

I think on balance the world is a better place now. (Debt crises, pollution levels and university fees notwithstanding). I look out of the window on a glorious autumn day, and it looks pretty similar to the world I grew up in, yet my children's experience of life will be so wildly different. I feel hopeful and scared in equal measure when I think about them growing up in it.

What are my main hopes for my kids? That they will be healthy and happy, that they will respect themselves and others, and that they will make a positive contribution to society.

What are my main fears? Too many to mention! I listen to the news these days and it is so doom and gloom, with the Eurozone crisis, budget cuts and the like, most of which is so far beyond my sphere of influence that I really don't see the point in worrying about it. I'm more than happy to do specific things, like petition Lords (via the 38 Degrees NHS campaign), but the chances of me affecting whether or not Greece or America default on their loans? Aint gonna happen.

I'm not religious, but I like the sentiment of the Serenity Prayer: 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference'. I hope I am getting wiser as I get older...