Baby Jake: Footprint fun

Have you seen Baby Jake? A relatively new addition to CBeebies, in that style of animation I find a little creepy with people but fun with cats. But one of the rare TV offerings both my under-1 and nearly-3 year old both like.

So: Baby Jake. A bit bizarre. Don't look too closely at the rabbit. The longer you stare, the freakier it gets.



It's fine, is Baby Jake. It's repetitively familiar, same basic plots, same characters, same songs (both my kids love the "goggy gia" one and that other one he always sings - I want to call it the "oggy oggy oggy" song, but suspect I am conflating my references). It keeps both kids quiet for 10 minutes which is a rare gift and not to be argued with.

Anyway. There was an episode which was a "snowy adventure" and centred on footprints which captivated my toddler. And so the following activity was born, the closest approximation I could manage in the circumstances.



Take:

Flour
A tray/dish
Toys

Add flour to tray. Stamp toy's feet in flour. Make footprints.

Get bored of making footprints. Add water to flour. Make playdough.

An easy way to kill an hour... And if you are super-organised, you can even then transform the playdough into papier-mache adhesive.

Which was a thought that only struck me as I made up the papier-mache mix later that day.

"Magic baby see, magic baby do", they sing at the end... Which always reminds me of a certain Nirvana song, which is as tenuous a link as I need to link to it.

"Mummy, what have you done to yourself?"

Is not the response I was hoping for to my new haircut.

Why feminism matters if you're raising girls (or boys, for that matter)

Someone recently told me that we didn't need feminism any more, and things were pretty equal now. As I picked my jaw up off the floor, I barely knew where to start in pointing out just how far there is still to go. Feminism should be about equality, and we don't have that. We have damaging stereotypes about women, and damaging stereotypes about men; although the former outnumber the latter, it doesn't make either right.

The arrival of my daughter really brought this into sharper profile, as I start to look at the way things are marketed, and what it means to be raised as a boy or a girl. Leaving aside behavioural expectations, and 'sugar and spice' vs 'slugs and snails' ridiculousness, look at the visual signals. (I'm not going to get into the sexualisation of kids argument here, I haven't got time - the Bailey Review seemed to flag up some of the issues without setting anything in plce to actually deal with them.) But let's start with pink. Trying to find clothes that aren't pink, or don't feature some girly pink detailing, is extremely difficult. Part of me thinks that this is just so you 'have' to buy twice as many clothes if you have a girl followed by a boy, or vice versa. My son will sleep in pink babygros, and his jeans have pink trim on as they are hand-me-downs. It's actually easier to put a girl in boys clothes, as you can get more 'neutral' colours, and in trying to mix up her wardrobe to escape the pink-purple colour palette, yes I've bought boys clothes. (And, by the way, have you watched toddlers try to climb in dresses? It is a good tactic if you want to slow them down, that much is true.)

But it's not just clothes that are so clearly 'gendered'. Today I tried to buy a water bottle for my daughter, for preschool. One brand offered me either "Mighty Fighters" or "Pretty Princess". Pick a side, while I sign myself up to the 'Pink Stinks' campaign...

It may seem like a small thing to be hung up on trying to avoid wall-to-wall pink and princesses. But I do believe there is ultimately a knock-on effect. For instance, there was an interesting article on "princesses and the patriarchy" on a blog (which is sadly now defunct, but try this instead) which was brought to mind on reading an article about divorce: boredom is now the most commonly cited reason (phrased as "grown apart" or "no longer in love") and 7/10 divorces are initiated by women. (Feel free to read the comments below that article for a taste of misogyny in 2011.) I can't help but feel this situation might be related to the "princess met her prince and lived happy ever after" message that starts out in fairytales and continues to be played out in films, novels and TV aimed at girls/women. Most men aren't perfect Prince Charmings, and I'm not a perfect Princess either. But that's what we're sold.

In so many kids TV programmes, the boy characters outnumber the girl characters. Shows with a lead girl-character tend to be home-centred, (Peppa Pig, Olivia, Miffy), while shows with leading male characters are set in a wider range of contexts. We love Octonauts, but how often do the two female characters get to go out on missions, rather than it just being the central three males? I do wish Peppa Pig could be the 'brave knight' instead of the 'sleepy princess' in their role-plays. What it is to be a girl is drummed into kids, and to us, from a very early age. Becoming acclimatised to it takes the edge off, and makes it all the more insidious.

What got me thinking about this this morning was a feature on the news about how female contestants on University Challenge are likely to have abuse aimed at them online, in a way that just doesn't happen to their male counterparts.

And then there was some American businesswoman who had been invited on to comment (I'm unsure exactly who she was or why she in particular was on), and she says "In the nicest possible way, men are children". Frankly, that's just patronising to all concerned. It's not an excuse, and it shouldn't be put up with, just because "men are children". Men are not children. Men are adults, and responsible for their own behaviour. If they're not, how come they've got the right to vote?

There are so many ways that we don't have equality, and this woman's attitude of "keep your eyes on your goals and ignore it" whiffs of an "I'm alright Jack" attitude. Ignoring it doesn't change it, and things need to change.

Just look at some of the facts:

The gender pay gap in the public sector is 11%; in the private sector it's still more than 20%. That gap is unlikely to close in mine or my daughter's lifetime.

Neither I nor my daughter will live long enough to see equal representation for women in parliament.

GirlGuiding UK shows that girls under ten are linking body image and appearance to happiness and self-esteem.

Combine this with the fact self-esteem and happiness amongst girls are lower than ever, while eating disorders and body image obsession are starting younger and younger

Meanwhile you get pink products which say "I'm too pretty to do math" Hilarious, no? Why, in this context, am I surprised that female University Challenge contestants are getting abuse?

So yeah, there's a long way still to go before equality arrives on the horizon. Now excuse me while I get off my soapbox, I'm getting vertigo...

If you're interested, these people do good work and are worth supporting:

The Fawcett Society: The leading campaigners for equality between men and women in the UK
Pink Stinks: A campaign to challenge the culture of pink aimed at girls and promote positive gender role models
Object: Campaigning for a vision of a society free of 'sex object culture'

Feeling like Jeremy Paxman

"Daughter, where's the box for that game you were playing with?"
"Where's the box please? It's time to put it away."
"Where's the box?"
"Daughter, I need the box, please."
"The box, daughter. Where is it?"
"Where's the box?"
"Can you find me the box please?"
"Where's the box?"
"Where's the box?"
"Where's the box?"
"Where's the box?"

And still not getting an answer.

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.

First day at preschool

It was my eldest's first day at pre-school today! So I can add 'making packed lunches' to mummy-duties now...

I may have oversold the 'packed lunch' part of pre-school. My daughter hated her last nursery, so I was keen to make the distinction between preschool and what had gone before. She's always had a thing for picnics, and a packed lunch is close enough to make her happy. We made biscuits yesterday, figuring I may as well start out with good domestic goddess intentions (although there are Mr Kipling cake bars are in the cupboard - and I almost needed them, as I accidentally overcooked the biscuits by 15 minutes).

So, as I had told her that the biscuits were for preschool, my daughter was somewhat outraged when I picked her up that 'we didn't have biscuits mummy!'. I checked her lunchbag, and it was still sitting there in its bag. It turns out that while I need to send her lunch, their snacks get provided. Who knew? Hopefully that's the only preschool faux pas we'll make.

Anyway, while I spent an anxious day, fretting how she was getting on, her day - despite lack of biscuit - seemed to go well. She seems to be quite keen to go back... which is possibly the upside of being confined to the house for three weeks while we dealt with the chicken pox...

Peppa Pig: The Scarecrow

Or perhaps that should be 'bearcrow'. Either way, it's going to give me nightmares.



"Mummy! I love it!", she says. I feel a curious mixture of pride and revulsion towards my creation. This must be what it feels like to be Dr Frankenstein.

Look at it. It's like an extra from a Slipknot video.



This hat used to be cute. Now it's just freaky.

This is what comes of watching too much Peppa Pig. There is, of course, an episode in which Peppa and her brother George make a scarecrow with Grandpa Pig, which is the only thing that I can think which may have inspired my daughter's request to do the same. (Although there is the dingle-dangle scarecrow song too, which is an occasional favourite, if not for some time.)

The clothes which Baby Boy has outgrown are sitting in what we shall call a well-ordered pile at the bottom of his wardrobe. So it seemed a sensible plan to use those as the basis for construction, but then I realise I've basically made an unsettling baby-sized effigy.

My daughter's reaction of delight and wonder contrasts sharply with my husband's. "What is THAT?" he asks.

It's a scarecrow, obviously. Want to make your own? Here's how:

Take:

1 wooden spoon
Newspaper
String
Old clothes (suggest a hat, a long-sleeved bodysuit and trousers for ease of assembly)

And:
Tie off the ends of the legs and sleeves of the clothes with string.
Insert trousers through leg holes of bodysuit.
Stuff trousers with newspaper.
Insert wooden spoon into sleeves of body suit.
Stuff body suit with newspaper.
Stuff hat with newspaper.
Tie bottom of hat off with string.
Tie hat to wooden spoon with string.

Ta-daaaah! Now I just have to work out how long I have to keep it in the house before I can get rid of it without daughter getting upset...

We don't do matching socks in this house

It's reached the stage where people expect our kids to have permanently mis-matched socks. Clean socks, always. Matching? No. The above is a triumph, as both socks came from the same pack. That's about as close as it gets.

I did hear a rumour that the wearing of odd socks is one of the warning signs social services looks for, but I've been assured that's just a myth. (And if anything, parental wearing of flares should be judged more harshly.)

Tiny socks. Before you have kids, they look all cute and small. After kids, they're just a pain in the ass. (It would be unkind to say the same about the kids themselves. And mostly untrue, chicken pox tetchiness notwithstanding.)

My sofa is insatiable

What's my son's favourite toy? Could it be any of the carefully selected age-appropriate toys, such as the push-along fire engine (which is quite popular and in my view rather marvellous - doesn't need batteries, comes with a fireman and firelady, and is made in Britain!)? No, it's not even one of his sister's toys either. It's the remote controls.

I don't know what it is about remote controls, but my daughter was the same. We went out and bought a 'baby mobile phone' for her, which I figured was roughly equivalent, nay, even better than the real thing. It had rubbery buttons, was roughly rectangular, and bits lit up and made noises when you pressed the buttons! (So many things in my life post-kids light up and make noises. It's a bit like living in the Blackpool Illuminations.)

Of course, she would have no truck with it if there was a real remote control to hand, and nor will Baby Boy. A boring old remote control, that doesn't do much, unless you press the right button which makes Mummy go "Aaargh! No! I need that back now please!" as the TV comes on/goes off/gets very loud/opens up a menu I have never seen before or will again.

The upshot of this is that finding the remote control at any given moment is always a bit of a treasure hunt. To complicate matters, there's one remote control for the PVR, one for the DVD player, and one that makes the TV come on (and can make a DVD play, but only if it doesn't have a menu you need to navigate). So not only do you need to keep track of where one roving remote has been deposited by Baby Boy, you have to keep track of three. Or else witness me howling with frustration as I try to do my DVD workout without the DVD remote, thereby trapping me in an eternal loop of Intro > Medical recommendations. So near and yet so far, never able to move the menu selector down to 'Workouts'. It's a trial almost worthy of Greek tragedy.

Which is the situation I found myself in the other day. Daddy had the kids, it was a rare moment in which I had the house to myself. And could I find the remote contol I needed? Of course not.

I spent 30 frustrated minutes going through the living room trying to find the damn thing before giving up in a fit of pique.

Husband comes home and lends a hand with the hunt. Now I'd already looked in the sofa, shoving fingers down the sides and giving them a good wiggle to try and make contact with anything remote-control-ish, but it wasn't. And while there was a fair quantity of gubbins skulking in there, I didn't have time to clean it out. Boy should I have done.

Husband industriously retrieves the pile of clothes that had managed to migrate under the side panels and down the back of the sofa:



That's half a washload on its own.

Whilst taking joint-responsibility for not keeping on top of the situation - out of sight, out of mind - how has the sofa managed to absorb that many items of clothing?! Personally, I'd like to blame poor sofa design, as the side panels are wide enough for things to wedge themselves down, but not wide enough for you to stick your hand down to retrieve said stuff without leaving most of the skin off the back of your knuckles down there too.

Baby Boy is no longer allowed to play with the remotes. And the remote control I needed wasn't down there in the end. It was sitting on the other sofa, in plain sight. Where I'd looked three times already. Whoops.

Slummy mummy, out and proud...

The Scarlet Letter for the 2010s would be an S for slattern, surely? Yet I am a slattern. I am coming to terms with this, and deciding life would actually be happier if I stopped beating myself up over having a house that is more sideshow than show-home.

We don't live in filth, per se - my filth-tolerance is lower than my other half's. Or at least, I get more upset about it than he does. If only I had known than "fondness for housework" should have been on my wish-list for the ideal man. (No, really.)

It's so pointlessly futile: the constant battle for order against the forces of entropy. Clean against kids.

I clean the floor under the dining table, a proper on-your-knees-scrubbing job, three times a day. I have to: Baby Boy spreads his food liberally around the general area of consumption. My daughter often encourages this by blowing raspberries at him while he's eating. He, of course, imitates and sprays a fine layer of porridge/spaghetti/rice pudding across everything. Including me.

So following on from that, I don't see the point in making that much effort in my appearance, if all I am doing is child-wrangling. (When I am working, it's different. I have, to my knowledge, only turned up to work once with baby-snot on my shoulder.)

My nails are short, as I don't want to scratch my little ones, and there's the small matter of the washing up, which wrecks any attempt at encouraging non-flaky growth. I know I could put gloves on to do it, but it's rare that I get to stand at the sink and focus on washing up. It's usually a case of rushing a couple of plates through while making sure the kids stay within line of sight. There's the washing up from breakfast, lunch, kids tea, grown-up dinner, plus sundry drinks receptables that gets done.

There's all the washing of clothes to get done. That's about ten washloads a week by the time you take into account the bedding, the towels, the kids clothes, my clothes. Kids get through a lot of clothes - paint, food, other stains you don't want to examine too closely... Husband does his own washing as he doesn't trust me not to wreck his clothes. I don't know how this state of affairs originated, and it annoys me that he thinks I can't do it, but I'm quite happy not to have the extra washing, all the same.

My hair, like my nails, is short for practical reasons. It's not that hard to untangle baby-fingers when they clamp down on two-inch lengths of hair. As my daughter knows, let them get tangled in anything longer and it'll bring tears to your eyes. I'm quite happy with short hair though, it suits me and I am in and out of the shower, dried and dressed within 10 mins, or the length of an episode of Squiggle It. It baffles me how my husband seems to require so much longer. I think I've lost the knack of taking over an hour to get ready these days...

As for shoes, there's no point in wearing ones you can't run in when you're out with toddlers. My daughter's pretty good, but I wouldn't like to guarantee she'd not bolt off at any given moment, with me in hot pursuit. (Last time it was in Waitrose. That'll teach me to get ideas above my station for supermarkets!)

There's another reason wearing heels isn't really an option at present, which is due to ongoing back problems endured since Pregnancy The Second. It is no fun having a dodgy back, even less fun with two kids. I really feel Victoria Beckham's pain. But at least high heels aren't at the cornerstone of my persona.

I love my trainers. I am more attached to my current Punkrose than I have been to a pair of trainers in years, but I'm mentally preparing myself to part with them. They're getting a bit (whisper it) stinky. And with a suede finish they're not going to wash well. They've been the most comfortable shoes I have had in ages, accommodating my wide great-for-yoga-not-for-shoe-shopping feet. And I love the star motif, it's what called to me from the shelf before I bought them. They're not doing too badly either, considering they've been worn pretty solidly for six months. Look:



It's a shame they're just not as fragrant as could be desired. And I do feel a bit slovenly as I slip them on to leave the house. Like I should be wearing 'grown up' shoes by now, or something.

I have a mixed relationship with shoes. I buy them, and then somehow on the way back from the shop, the stylish yet comfortable footwear I tried on morphs into some torturously uncomfortable instrument of pain. (I admit there may be an element of self-deluding optimism that I will 'break them in', some kind of temporary insanity that overwhelms me at point of purchase.) But life is too short for painful shoes. Shove 'em to the back of the wardrobe, they won't be lonely...

Which brings me back to the subject of heels. On one hand, I do think they look good, on the other I'm aware of the feminist argument against heels. But the bottom line is that I don't have the patience to be bothered with shoes that hurt my feet. Harking back to Victoria Beckham, bunions are something my life can do without. (And it doesn't always stop at bunions - my feminist bosom heaves disapprovingly at the idea that right now in the 21st century "some women are even going under the knife to shorten their toes or inject padding into the balls of their feet to allow their feet to fit more comfortably into a pair of stilettos (Sherr). While these may be oddities of fashion, they gesture toward an exciting array of fashion choices women have today." "An exciting array of fashion choices"? I can't really get excited about foot mutilation...)

So here I sit, in my stinky trainers, food covered jeans, looking at cat-hair tumbleweeds roll across my floor and I think should I be making more of an effort? And then I think, nah, Baby Boy will be up for a feed in an hour or so, I'm off to bed...