"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...)

Waybuloo: paint butterfly

While we don't usually watch Waybuloo, chicken pox drove us to strange things. One episode we happened upon inspired this paint-fest:



Lest it be not obvious, to do this you simply:
Take your paper, fold it in two
Paint on one half
Re-fold and give it a good smoosh down (my toddler especially enjoyed this bit)
Unfold and behold!

It also works for faces, if you get bored of butterflies, and the big-eyed Waybuloo creatures were good subject matter.

It provided a bit of a diversion from the usual 'hand 'em a paintbrush and let 'em get on with it' painting. (When I say 'and let 'em get on with it', a truer reflection would be 'and try valiantly to contain paint to protective newspaper and intended paper'. Admire our technicolour floor.)

I'm not a fan of Waybuloo. I don't like the strange moon-faced Pipling animals, but I have no justifiable reason for disliking them other than personal taste. Perhaps it is that they subliminally remind me of alien 'greys' No? Just me that spent too much of my youth watching X-Files then... Give me the Clangers any day. (Oh lawks, am I really turning into one of those parents?)

What really irks me is the way they use the third person all the time. My kids are trying to learn to talk, so why are you teaching them that they should always speak like this:

"Yojojo love bananas!"

"Yojojo not eat bananas! Laulau paint bananas. Yojojo wait."

Mummy not like that. When kids acquire language through being immersed in it, it's not very helpful to be reinforcing the wrong patterns of speech, in my humble opinion. I can appreciate that the choice of pseudo-childish speech and made-up words are perhaps designed to work with the 'otherworldly' feel the programme-makers are trying to create, but as someone once said, you have to know the rules in order to break them. If you're still learning the basics, then I think a lot of that intent will go over the heads of the target audience. Then you're just left with badly formed verbs, traumatised pronouns and confusion.

As for the 'yogo', I don't have any time for the anti-yogo "religious indoctrination" argument. It's just exercise. But why not call it 'yoga' and be done with it? Is it because it's not strictly yoga? If not, why not? It's near enough, surely... I would have expected my daughter to enjoy the 'yogo' as she usually likes copying that sort of thing - witness her mimic my exercise DVD, feel the demoralisation of her managing the 'supermans' with complete ease - but it doesn't seem to grab her.

On the other hand, the 'Peeka' game (a.k.a hide and seek) is more engrossing. That's where the children, who are called Cheebies (again, why can't they use the proper word?) have to find the Piplings. To me, completely tedious; to her, mildly diverting. Fortunately, Waybuloo isn't one of her favourites. I don't think I could stand the linguistic abuse on a daily basis.

As I feel my blood pressure rise at the thought, it's probably time for a nice sit down, a calming cup of tea, and a reflection upon whether I am over-analysing these things, yet again... oh, the perils of being a former English student. Peppa Pig, all is forgiven.