HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC DISGRACE

And this is why I'm learning to drive:

2012-02-16T11:48:00.004Z

Until about 6 weeks ago I had never driven a car. I was too busy to learn when I was 17 while all my friends started their driving lessons. (Not too busy with A-levels you understand. No, I was far too busy combining kissing unsuitable men in rock bars, working in the local pub, not eating enough and all the associated counsellors and psychologists that I had to see as a result and sitting in my room listening to John Peel, feeling misunderstood. That I passed my A-levels at all is a complete miracle). After that, I didn't have enough money to take driving lessons. Then I lived in town so I didn't need to. Anyway - I didn't really mind not driving. I like walking and it keeps me on the right side of curvy, and I am really good at public transport - catching connecting buses and hurling myself through the closing doors of a train that's about to pull out like Indiana Jones.

2.5 years ago, something happened to change my feelings towards learning to drive though. Allow me to explain.

Person With Car Goes On Journey To Unspecified Location With Toddler:

1. Place toddler in car seat.

2. Get in car.

3. Drive to destination.

4. Be at destination.

5. Come home.

Person Without Car (Me) Goes On Journey To Unspecified Location With Toddler:

1. Two hours before needing to leave the house, start planning route with military precision.

2. Think I've got it sorted, then realise I have no change for the bus so I'm going to have to walk the 20 minutes into town to change some money before I can go anywhere else. Swear a bit.

3. Re-plan route to take account of walking into town.

4. Get dressed. Have crisis. Last remaining pair of jeans have developed an indecent hole overnight, so can't wear jeans and trainers.

5. Have NO other clothes that are compatible with trainers. Will have to wear a dress.

6. And tights because it's cold. Last remaining pair of tights have a hole in the toe. Ignore, ignore, put them on anyway.

7. Oh crap, have just remembered that the only pair of boots I own have high heels. No flat shoes remain apart from trainers due to poverty. So much walking to do today. Feet are going to be in agony after 15 minutes. Never mind.

8. Explain to Rory what the plan is for the day. Rory wants to leave immediately. He does not understand the concept of "in half an hour". What's more, he wants to wear only one sock and a Spiderman t-shirt and take his scooter.

9. Ponder the wisdom of taking the scooter.

10. Come to the conclusion that this would be foolhardy.

11. Oh. He's going to want to walk isn't he? Do I let him walk and add an extra half an hour to the plan and spend all day trying to keep him out of path of steamrollers and the like or take the pushchair and risk decapitating self when trying to load it onto the bus. (flashback to horrific memory of pensioner maiming last time I attempted this).

12. Ah, feck it, we'll take the pushchair.

13. Attempt to get Rory dressed and ready. By now he's decided that he doesn't want to leave the house at all and instead will run laps of the ground floor of the house whilst sticking pieces of toast and jam to the walls.

14. Capture and dress him.

15. Haul pushchair out of the cupboard under the stairs whilst trying to avoid injury. Kick it a bit and call it a bastard.

16. Meanwhile, Rory is gleefully unpacking the neatly packed bag in the corner.

17. Re-pack bag, strap Rory in pushchair.

18. Rory decides he needs a "just in case wee". Unstrap him from pushchair and sit him on the potty.

19. Strap him back into the pushchair. He wants to take a toy car with him. Fine. "Which toy car would you like to take, Rory?"

20. Oh, the one that you just threw into the urine filled potty. Of course.

21. Rinse off toy car and ineffectively dab with a disinfectant wipe.

22. Leave the house, frantically re-calculating route in my head as we are now too late to catch the first bus.

23. Five minutes down the road it starts to rain. Jesus. Put rain cover on pushchair which makes Rory shout at me as if he is being abused. Have no hood on the coat I'm wearing so put umbrella up. Lurch down the road like slightly lame hunchback due to having to steer pushchair with one hand and one elbow while the other holds the umbrella. Rory kicks a hole in the rain cover then complains that he is getting wet.

24. Change money and arrive at bus stop just in time for bus. Only the driver won't let me on because there's someone else with a pushchair already on it so no room for ours.

25. Smile politely at driver and say "not to worry" safe in the knowledge that I will track that stupid bastard cockwomble down and defecate on his doorstep. Or BURN him. Can't decide which.

26. Re-calculate route in head again.

27. 20 minute wait for the next bus in the sort of rain that prompted Noah to build an ark.

28. Next bus arrives. There is space for us, so I un-strap Rory and threaten him with a fate worse than death if he dares to run off while I fold up the pushchair, trapping my finger and knocking over a bin in the process.

29. Struggle onto bus with demon pushchair and similarly afflicted child. Sit down.

30. Spend entire journey a) trying to stop Rory from repeatedly pushing the 'stop' button and b) shooting apologetic glances to every passenger that he insults. ("Oh look mummy, that man is extremely fat.", "Oh, two men getting on bus. No...no...that one's a lady. That lady looks like a man."). Bus gets stuck in traffic several times.

31. Get off bus taking spring loaded weapon of mass destruction (the pushchair) with me. Rory refuses to get back into it but we have another 20 minute walk until we get to where we're going. End up pushing empty pushchair and trying to control spring loaded weapon of mass destruction (Rory) at the same time.

32. Big toe being forced through hole in tights with every painful step. Agony.

33. Feet really really hurting now. Stupid heels. Maybe could have worn flip-flops. Stupid tights.

34. Still raining. Wind picking up now.

35. Abandon umbrella, which keeps blowing inside out and resign self to getting soaked.

36. Arrive at destination looking like a bedraggled tramp. Rory very wet also and whinging. I can see passers by looking at me like I'm an unfit mother. Pushchair sodden. Left the house over two hours ago. Entire journey would have taken 15 minutes door to door in a car.

37. At destination, steaming gently as we warm up.

38. Leave destination.

39. Repeat the entire process again in reverse.

40. Gin.

And that is why I am learning to drive.

The Risk Assessment

2012-02-06T14:29:00.001Z

A risk assessment is a pointless thing. I was taught how to write one when I trained to be a teacher and very swiftly realised that it had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping your pupils safe and everything to do with covering your backside, should anything untoward happen at any point. I got marked down in a lesson observation once for failing to point out that there was a risk of pupils stabbing themselves in the eye with their pencils. Now, I've taught some kids who have done some pretty stupid things in class before, but poking pencils in their eyes is not one of them. Poking their fingers down their throats to see how far they could get them down there before vomiting* - now that's something I've dealt with. Emptying the contents of a pencil sharpener into someone's ear - I've dealt with that too ("Quick, turn your head on one side and give it a bash with your Numeracy book."). Not pencils in eyes though.

The thing I've come to realise over years of working in schools and a couple of years at home with a small child is that you can never be fully aware of all the risks. You childproof everything only to find them scaling the curtains one day. You remove all small and pointy objects from a grab-able height only to discover them under the computer desk clutching a dismantled ball point pen, a biro spring protruding from one nostril.

My technique these days is to worry about the big stuff - heights, poisonous things, road safety - all that jazz. I don't panic about the little things. Rory got hold of a box of cocktail sticks earlier. I continued to check my emails and let him get on with it in a "Meh, he'll be fine. He's not stupid enough to impale himself on one of them" sort of way. And he wasn't. He did, however, create a lovely scale model of a porcupine by sticking them all in a nice fresh turd in his potty. Assess the risk of that, OFSTED.

*not very far, apparently.

On Duvet Covers & Sleep

2012-01-28T20:49:00.004Z

I'm not materialistic. I'm really not. I don't care about what I do or don't have. But there is one service that I am certain would make my life a happier one if I could afford to pay for it: I would like every single item of bedding we own to be made of high thread count Egyptian cotton and for somebody to wash it and iron it for me and change the beds every single day. Can you imagine that? Every night would be a clean sheets night. Heaven.

Pre-child, I was very fussy about where I would choose to sleep and what I would sleep on. My husband introduced me to Travelodges early in our relationship (see? I am that posh that I'd never stayed in one pre 2006). The horror.

"Richard, there is a pubic hair in this bed."
"Pick it out."
"But I'll know it was there."

And, true to my word, I stayed awake all night thinking about the pube.

I could also not sleep in beds on which there was a stain on the sheets or a smell that I disagreed with (say, an unidentified fabric conditioner), or had been washed in biological washing powder or, as was the case when I was doing my PGCE and the only place I had to file my gazillion ring binders and text books was under the bed, a bed that has work underneath it. Easy care sheets and duvets were tolerated but felt nasty on my skin, and anything the slightest bit bobbly was an abomination.

Since having a child, however, I have discovered the following to be true:

1. It is entirely possible to sleep on a bobbly easy care sheet.
2. It is entirely possible to sleep under a duvet cover with a stain on it.
3. It is entirely possible to sleep in a bed that has had breast milk leaked into it for 3 weeks and a sizable blob of baby sick stagnating on your pillow.
4. And a skid mark from when a nappy went awry.
5. And if you finally decide that this is all too disgusting and rip all the sheets off with the intention of changing them but get distracted when your baby manages to crawl into the bathroom and dive head first into the toilet, it is also entirely possible to sleep in a bed that has no sheets or duvet cover or pillow cases on it at all.
6. There is now all sorts of shit under my bed - some work, some books, a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine figurines, a discarded used pair of Huggies Pull Ups occasionally. Guess what? I can still sleep.
7. You could empty the entire contents of an intimate region epilator into my bed and I wouldn't even notice these days. Because I'd be asleep.
8. You can sleep on the sofa.
9. You can sleep on the hall floor with your head resting on the first stair.
10. What you can't do is sleep in any bed which also contains a child who's hell bent on sleeping horizontally and kicking you in the face every 30 seconds.

It really is quite amazing what sleep deprivation does for your standards.

Despite that, throughout the entire first 18 months of Rory's life, I had one fantasy and one fantasy alone: It involved leaving him with somebody else, going to a hotel on my own, removing my clothes, sliding under the cool, crisp cotton hotel sheets and sleeping for an undisclosed period of time. There was none of that "oh no, how could I possibly leave my precious baby?" Bollocks to that - I was knackered. It is a fantasy that still sees me through the tough times even now. That and the one about paying someone to iron my bed sheets every day. Until I can afford to do that, I will have to continue to sleep in carnage. I don't mind too much - it reminds me that although I've come a long way, there's still a good amount of time to go before I finally emerge from the challenges of early parenthood. I'll know I've got myself back when I start kicking off about toenails in the bed again.

Low Calorie Arse Cake

2012-01-20T13:08:00.000Z

I know, I know, I haven't updated for quite a while. I've been snowed under here, people. Busy busy busy. My poor child is looking at me with sad eyes and asking if we can do baking because I've paid no attention to him for the past fortnight. I know what he really means is "Can I stand on a chair and throw flour all over the kitchen, crack an egg on the floor, then mix it all together while you're not looking and use it to re-grout the tiles again", but I have serious Mummy Guilt, so that's what we're going to do this afternoon.

Meanwhile, pop over to www.off-the-deep-end.net where I have a new bi-monthly guest spot and read my post on how to eat cake without getting fat. You know you want to.

Meet the Veggies

2012-01-09T15:54:00.001Z

Recently, I won a big Abel & Cole veggie box from a competition over at Kerry's brilliant blog, Life as I Know It. (Go and check her out, especially this post about when she volunteered to drive her daughter's classmates to their school trip destination. I'm still laughing now). Anyway, look what turned up on my doorstep this morning:

Lovely. A big cardboard box of goodness. Rory helped me to open and unpack it. Then this happened:

This is Geoff, a bad-ass celeriac and his various minions.

And this would be the King of the Pastry Cutters: all round good guy and poster boy for plastic bakeware headgear.

"I SQUASH YOU, KING. NOW YOUR CROWN WILL BE MINE, ALL MINE AND I WILL RULE OVER THE PLAINS OF THE JUS ROL KINGDOM FOREVER. BWAHAHAHAHAAAA"

"HELP, HELP! If only there was someone who could save me."

"Fear not sire, for I am Wonder Carrot. I will defend you with my magic cloak of Bounty-the-Stronger-Soaker-Upper"

"Take that you scoundrel."

*but Geoff was too strong for Wonder Carrot*

"NO! Anything but the grater. Please, not the grater. AAARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh..."

TO BE CONTINUED....?

Slow news day here, folks. Slow news day.

PS Could this be the end of Wonder Carrot? It's all down to YOU. Phone up Abel & Cole on 08452 62 62 62 to order a veg box. Tell them that I sent you (look in 'about me' for my name). This will mean I get a free veg box, meaning that my family can be nourished and blah blah blah, but, most importantly, this gripping saga can continue.

Product Review: Fancy Dress Outfitters Wolverine Costume

2012-01-04T11:24:00.004Z

I received an email from Fancy Dress Outfitters well before Christmas asking if Rory and I would like to review one of their costumes. "Hell yes" was my response. We love dressing up in this household, so any excuse is fine by me.

First, we had to choose a costume from their website. Tricky. If only Rory were a bit younger, I could have got away with getting him something like this and making him wear it to playgroup.

Alas, he has reached the stage of knowing his own mind, so this was out of the question.

However, on seeing the superhero costumes, his eyes lit up like catherine wheels, and we eventually chose Wolverine:

They sell a toddler version too, but as I'd been advised that the costumes come up slightly on the small side, I decided to order the one above in age 3-5 so it had lots of growing room.

The costume arrived the next day really well packaged, and the excitement was palpable. Rory was flinging his clothes off before I'd even got it out of the packet. Here he is modelling it. He is doing his 'superhero face' apparently.

Thank the Lord that those claw things in the previous photo don't come with it; we'd all be bloodied and battered and quite possibly dead by now if they did.

Reviewing then had to draw to a halt for a few weeks as Rory was ill and not in the mood for playing superheroes, then I was ill and not in the mood for taking superhero 2 year olds out on secret missions. Cut to a couple of days ago when we were both well enough to leave the house again. Cue the music:

According to Rory, the Wolverine costume from Fancy Dress Outfitters makes you run faster*.

There he goes, pegging it down the middle of the road. God, I'm a rubbish parent.

It also gives you the ability to JUMP IN PUDDLES WHILST LOOKING COOL*.

What's more, you will be able to balance precariously on a high wall whilst running away from Mummy*. Skillz.

What it doesn't do is stop you from slipping on a drain cover and falling flat on your arse. Fortunately, superheroes are easily healed by a kiss and a cuddle from their mums.

Rory was in his own happy world of secret missions the entire time. He didn't stop grinning once (unless it was to do his superhero pout), and a highlight was when he shot MAGIC POWERS out of his hands with a "PSHOOOO" noise at some men who were out walking their dog, cue 3 grown men and a toddler playing X-Men on the roadside at 11am on a rainy January morning.

As with all the best adventures, it ended with being covered in mud which gave me the chance to test the costume for washability, with top results. I'd definitely recommend these costumes to anyone who has a bit of Christmas money to spend for their child. Lets be honest though - it was always going to be a good review. As my friend Nick said, "what's not to like about a Wolverine costume?"

*May or may not be true.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Fancy Dress Outfitters, nor have I been paid for this review.

Les the Meerkat: a Photographic Retrospective

2011-12-24T12:06:00.000Z

Les the Meerkat has been puked on. So has the festive edition of the Radio Times, my Mason Pearson hairbrush and the majority of the floor, but it's Les who was the real casualty here. Rory is ill just in time for Christmas and has been throwing up this morning (thank you Father Christmas you utter shit). We're not sure yet whether it's a dreaded stomach bug that's going to end up taking us all down in time for tomorrow or if it's just caused by the nasty cold/cough/viral misery that he's been ill with all week. Either way, Les has been vommed on and has had a sad, lonely spin on a high temperature in the washing machine. He is a changed meerkat ; where once was lovely soft fur, he now has fluffy and matted hair (much like me, Rory and Rich to be honest), his stuffing isn't sitting right and he looks very sorry for himself. Luckily for Les, this family loves the underdog and I collect waifs and strays like other women collect shoes. Richard even has a special 'tramp bag' packed and ready to go for next time a tramp knocks on our door in winter and is cold (contents: woolly socks, sleeping bag, jumper). So newly ugly Les is still going to be loved as much as ever. What better time for a photo retrospective of the Meerkat himself?

3 month old Rory with newly acquired, glossy coated Les. Love at first sight:

Rory and his best mate in their spy camp:

An impromptu boat trip:

Rory's 1st Birthday. Les looks on with pride:

Three in a bed tent scandal (featuring the imaginatively named Pengy the Penguin):

Face down in a scone for our Domestic Disgrace photoshoot with Hannah Millard:

Today: Puked on, shoved in the washing machine, dried with my hairdryer, moth-eaten and much loved. All hail Les the Meerkat.

All I want for Christmas is...

2011-12-18T18:54:00.001Z

...I don't know. I don't know what I want for Christmas. I've been casually ignoring everyone who's asked me for months now and with one week to go I still can't come up with anything.

All I can think is that we need some more wooden spoons because Rory used ours to poke about down a drain. We need a potato masher too, and our tin opener has seen better days.

But a tin opener, a wooden spoon and a potato masher does not make an acceptable Christmas gift, especially from one's husband. So I try to dig a bit deeper - what do I really really want?

Oh God, I don't know, but it's ages since we had a new toilet brush.

See what I mean?

Has anybody else become similarly afflicted since having a child? I don't understand how it's happened but over the last 3 years (because it started the Christmas that I was 15 weeks pregnant) I have paid less and less attention to my own needs and desires and more and more to those of my son, my husband and the running of the household. I suppose that's somewhat normal, right? Please let it be normal.

Partly it's because I don't have any money. Yes, I write and yes, I get paid for it, but I barely get any time to work due to looking after a small person 24/7, so it goes without saying that I can't earn very much, and I'd rather spend what I do earn on making sure that Rory has enough pairs of trousers to keep me from having to do laundry every waking second of my life than anything for me. I was never very materialistic anyway, and I have always been a low maintenance woman (I've always been far to manically busy to sit in a beauty salon getting my nails done). I've just become even more so. I have some standards (clean hair, relatively clean clothes, 2 minute make-up job if I'm planning on going anywhere further than the local shop), but any days of striding along in high heels are long gone and these days I pluck my eyebrows (on the rare occasion that I remember) with a toddler in full war cry hanging off of my leg.

It's started me worrying. How do you know if you've lost yourself? How do you know what defines you and do you notice when it's gone? I like to think that things don't define a person and that I'm still here exactly as I was; laughing, cocking up on an epic scale several times a week, talking about music with my husband, reading when I get the time, writing, writing, writing, ankle deep in Gordons. It's just that I only own one pair of slightly holey jeans and all my shoes need re-heeling. And re-soling. And generally to be thrown in the bin and incinerated.

Maybe I need a 'thing'. Women are supposed to have a 'thing' (generally clothes or shoes or cosmetics or something). I don't have a 'thing'. I live in trainers because I need to sprint at the speed of light up the crisp aisle in Waitrose on a regular basis to stop my son from creating a storm of fried potato confetti. I don't know or care what's in fashion and never really have done, and I've made the unhappy discovery that £1.99 moisturiser from Aldi really does the business. I think my 'thing' used to be nice underwear, but have you tried joining in with Heads Shoulders Knees & Toes at Rhyme Time with the buttons on your suspender belt pinging off in all directions? It's not to be recommended.

I don't know. Maybe I should feel the fear and wear the Agent Provocateur under my slummy mummy uniform anyway. Maybe that's what I need for Christmas. That and a rotary egg whisk.

Mister Maker, I Want a Word.

2011-12-14T22:00:00.003Z

We watch a lot of Mister Maker in this household. This is more to do with the fact that I'd secretly like him to take me roughly over his arts and crafts table than any great interest in toddler art on the part of my son and I, but that doesn't stop us occasionally attempting some of his masterpieces ourselves.

I have issues with Mister Maker though, the main one being that it's easy enough for him to knock up a spectacular looking picture with pipecleaners and gloopy glue - he's about 30. However, give the same materials to a two year old and you've got what looks like something got enthusiastically squashed and died on the paper and an explosion in Hobbycraft happening in your living room.

Now, I'm not known for my wonderful housekeeping and I am not scared of a bit of mess. I also never learn, so yesterday I found myself attempting to recreate a Maker Masterpiece with Rory yet again.

We watched the Christmas special with much enthusiasm. Why is it clearly filmed in July though Mister Maker? Why? We are not fooled by a crappy computer snow graphic and a few paper chains. We then sat and watched you create a tasteful snow scene on black paper with the use of PVA glue mixed with water, flour and glitter. "We could do that!" I exclaimed. (I am sick. Really really sick with something that is almost but not quite flu. I'd taken too much Lemsip and Co-Codamol at the time and wasn't thinking rationally).

Off we went. I did the tricky cutting out bits and Rory did the glueing and the sprinkling of flour and glitter.

Mister Maker, do you have a child? Because I'm not sure that you're aware of the sheer stupidity of giving a 2 year old flour, glitter and a sieve. As I said, I am ill and cannot be blamed for my inability to think clearly. I am blaming you for the layer of sparkly flour that settled all over my ground floor/clothes/hair/stairs/Christmas tree. Also, why the actual WHY would you suggest mixing water into the glue? This just ensures that it spreads itself over a greater surface area of floor and sofa. And did you realise that flour and water make a glue like substance when mixed? So basically, when Rory went face down in the lot with a whoop of joy, he created a hybrid of flour, water and PVA glue, which is potentially the stickiest substance known to toddlers. Throw some glitter in why don't you. It now looks like pixies have ejaculated all over my laminate.

The resulting picture was...well...shite. And I did most of it. Damn you.

Next up were some reindeer antlers constructed from brown card and a plastic hair band. "Mummy - you make that for me," requested my son, so off I went to cut up an Amazon box. I cut the antlers out - so far so good, but I wasn't paying attention when you explained how to attach them to the hair band - was probably looking at your arse or something - so I used Blu-tack. I'm sure you mentioned Blu-tack. I was quite impressed with my creation to be honest, but Rory was not. "I'm not wearing that Mummy, I'll look like a wally," he said.

Fine, I'll wear it.

Wow, I look like the povvo child whose mum couldn't afford to buy a pair of 99p antlers from Asda. Not cool Mister Maker.

Look at that. You'd have got given a Chinese burn for less than that at my school.

Sort it out Mister Maker. Or I'll find somewhere very interesting to stick that pom-pom.

When Cosy Traditions Go Bad

2011-12-08T14:37:00.001Z

I see it as one of my duties as a parent to start traditions in my family, particularly at this time of year. For example, my parents introduced the Ceremonial Fetching of the Christmas Pork Pie to our festivities one year and it stuck. Also traditional is the flicking of Quality Street wrappers at my mum when she suggests that we might like to accompany her to church on Christmas morning instead of imbibing vast quantities of Bucks Fizz in her absence and mumbling obscenities at whoever suggests going for a walk after Christmas dinner. It is also imperative that one does not consume a proper breakfast on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Instead you must eat handfuls of peanuts, Twiglets, sausage rolls, chocolates - anything with no nutritional value that's lying about.

Since we've had Rory, I have introduced a particularly charming tradition. Every year he is taken to a shop to choose a decoration for our Christmas tree. They are stored in a tin, he is responsible for putting them up every year and whenever he decides to leave home, he will take his box of decorations and all the memories therein with him. I am well aware that this would work better had he been a girl as an 18 year old girl is likely to be more impressed with the thought of this than a teenage boy, and I imagine that after about the age of 10 he will be grunting at me to get lost from his stinking teenage boy bedroom whenever the subject of choosing a Christmas decoration is brought up. For now though it is delightful, and, short of something to do this morning, I decided to take him out to choose his 2011 decoration.

Lets picture the scene in years to come. The Disgrace family are sitting around the Christmas tree with the decoration box out, looking nostalgically through Rory's tin of decorations:

"Ahhhh, the blue snowman bauble. You were 6 months old the year we bought that. You pointed at it and smiled so we knew you liked it. Oh look, a little knitted cat. You chose that for your second Christmas. you were obsessed with making cat noises that year and you gave it a kiss in the shop. And the year you were two and a half. You were so excited by all the lights and Father Christmas coming that year and we went to the special shop in town and you chose....SWEET MOTHER OF FU.....

Yes, this is what Rory has chosen to represent Christmas 2011. And ALL THE CHRISTMASES THEREAFTER. Shudder. Lets have a closer look.

You should know that I am hyperventilating a little bit. Look at the teeth. LOOK AT THE TEETH. Not only that, you pull a string hanging out from up it's chuff and it beats the drum like it's caving someone's head in with a meat mallet. God bless us, every one.

Labour Saving Device Saves My Marriage

2011-12-06T14:01:00.003Z

I worship at the altar of our dishwasher. I love the thing. We've had it less than a year and I can honestly say that I don't know how we managed to avoid the divorce courts without it as our kitchen is of the tiny variety and you only have to heat up a Cup-a-Soup and make a slice of toast to make it look like a bomb's hit it. Add to this the fact that I Don't Do Washing Up (I used to be a chef and had slaves to do that sort of thing for me) and you have a house full of furry coffee cups and seething resentment. That dishwasher saved my marriage. When we finally reach the dizzy heights of owning tumble dryer we'll probably hit some form of marital utopian bliss.

I am a housework hating slacker, so any labour saving devices are welcome in my household, but the ultimate device has not yet been invented. Until now. I am still in the early stages of drafting this out, and if anyone can make me a prototype I would be pleased to work with you. I expect these to be on the market by the end of next year, so be patient my friends. Good things come to those who wait.

THE DOMESTIC DISGRACE-O-MAT 2011

Key features:

1. Folds up to convenient shape and size in order to slide easily into the tiny space in the cupboard under the stairs without dislodging the step ladder, barbecue gas cylinder, 6 footballs, 3 odd wellies, the roll of wallpaper that you've been meaning to put up for 2 years, the Millenium Falcon and the box of conkers that are supposed to ward off spiders and causing the pushchair to concertina open like an unwieldy spring-loaded bastard every time you try and manoeuvre it in and out.

2. Has bodily fluid seeking technology, allowing you to locate a sneaky wee behind a curtain, a blob of baby sick under the sofa or a turd in your slipper immediately.

3. Toddler food tracking device. Keeps track of whether fish fingers have been eaten or disposed of down the back in the radiator. No more mystery household fishy smells.

4. Husband sensing technology. Automatically turns the thermostat down half an hour before he arrives home. Never argue about the heating bill again.

5. A bit that gets black mould off the rubber bath mat.

6. Writes "IT IS RECYCLING DAY SO REMEMBER TO PUT YOUR BINS OUT" in neon writing in the sky (much like a Death Eater dark mark) for the entire 24 hours before the bin men come.

7. Fascia board salesman alert klaxon.

8. Causes magic stain repellent forcefield to appear around walls and furniture whenever your child has been, for example, poking around in the coal scuttle.

9. 'Mother's Helper' feature - shouts several key phrases on a loop such as " GET DOWN FROM THE WINDOW SILL", "STOP LICKING THE PLUG SOCKETS" and "PLAYMOBIL MEN ARE NOT FOR STICKING UP YOUR BOTTOM" while you're otherwise engaged.

10. Gin dispensing tray with ice cubes.

What do you think? I'm awaiting my call from Dragon's Den any day now.

Things to do with your child #11 Chocolate Shortbread Stars

2011-12-02T15:07:00.000Z

Things are getting festive in Disgrace Towers. Well, we've got an Advent Calendar and Mr Disgrace and I are knocking back the mulled wine like there's a world shortage, so I think that counts.

Inspired by the season, I decided to bake cookies with Rory today. Now, my Christmas cookies are not traditionally Christmassy, but they still count as they're what my mum used to make for me when I was little because I didn't like mince pies or Christmas cake or Christmas pudding (still don't - anything with raisins in should be buried in a big hole). They're also possibly the easiest thing in the world to make, so ideal for a toddler. Or so you'd think. Abandon hope all ye who enter here:

Chocolate Shortbread Stars

Ingredients:

150g plain flour

15g cocoa powder

125g butter (at room temperature)

70g caster sugar

Couple of drops of vanilla extract if you're feeling posh

You'll need some star cutters.

Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees C.

Method:

1. Set out all your ingredients and equipment in a smug fashion.

2. Sterilise toddler. Failing that, scrub their hands thoroughly. They've more likely than not been dibbling in the potty with them while you were setting everything out on the worktop. Don't pretend they haven't.

3. Weigh out flour & get toddler to tip it into the bowl. You're supposed to sieve it, but giving a sieve and 150g of flour to a toddler is asking for a snowstorm in the kitchen. Lets save the masochistic tendencies for the bedroom, eh?

4. Sweep up flour from floor where it has just been poured.

5. Repeat step 3 with more vigilance.

6. Add caster sugar and cocoa powder and mix, then add chopped up butter.

7. Get toddler to rub butter into dry ingredients.

8. Remove toy pirate from the mixing bowl.

9. Rub butter into dry ingredients yourself.

8. Get distracted by toddler snorting cocoa powder up nose and sneezing cocoa-y snot into the mixing bowl.

10. Rub remaining butter plus snot into dry ingredients with a couple of drops of vanilla extract.

11. Swear a bit and get the electric hand mixer out to do it for you.

12. Debate with toddler the wisdom of removing trousers and underpants whilst covered in butter and flour and balancing on a chair in the kitchen.

13. Remove Thomas the Tank Engine pants from mixing bowl where they were thrown during the above tantrum.

14. You should now have a dough. roll this out and try to interest toddler in cutting star shapes out of it.

15. NO! NO NO NO. DON'T EAT THE DOUGH. Cut STARS out of the dough. Sweet baby Jesus, get your TONGUE OFF THE GODFORSAKEN COOKIE DOUGH.

16. That's better.

17. Try to calm your inner perfectionist and not twitch at the crappy stars your toddler is cutting out.

18. Give up and let them chuck any old bit of dough on the baking sheet.

19. Have little swig of cooking sherry and put stars in oven for 10 minutes.

18. Hose down toddler.

19. Hose down kitchen.

20. Hose down self.

21. Put power hose on Christmas list for future such activities.

22. Smell burning and rush to oven only to find that toddler has turned the temperature up to 240 degrees.

23. Remove charred chocolate stars/crumbs from oven.

24. Leave to cool.

25. Sprinkle icing sugar on top (see: 'Polishing a Turd' in the dictionary).

Happy Christmas.

I am linking this up to the Gingerbread Snowflakes 2011 Holiday Cookie Swap. Click the link for lots of delicious recipes and no delinquent small children.

November Photo Scavenger Hunt (Domestic Disgrace Style)

2011-11-28T21:06:00.004Z

I have lots of friends who like making stuff. They have beautiful, inspiring blogs packed full of creativity and glorious photographs and tutorials. Kirst at The Leopard Anchor (one of said lovely blogs) hosts a monthly crafty photo scavenger hunt. Everyone takes photographs related to a list of words and subjects that she comes up with and she then links to all the participating blogs so that everyone can share in the inspirational beauty that they have captured that month.

Then I decided to join in. Yeah. Brace yourself:

1. Inspiration
Our little back garden backs on to a woodland path. It's really quite beautiful and the view of the late autumn leaves on the trees turning from yellow to orange to red-brown has genuinely inspired me this month, so I decided to take a photo of it for this category. Balls though. All the bloody leaves fell off somewhere between the last time I looked out of the window and now. But wait...you can still see an autumnal orange glow can't you? Yes you can. It's a horrid orange brick new build estate that sprang up at some point over the summer where once there were rolling fields. More insipid than inspirational. Get out of my view.

2. Something I Made
Ooh, I have a valid entry for this one! I made Rory these PJ bottoms this month from some bargain fabric that I picked up. He is most impressed with them. "Look at my funky whales" he says, waving a pyjama clad leg at the postman. (Who taught him the word 'funky'? It was clearly not me). It's good that he likes them because I have so much 'funky whale' material left that he'll be wearing homemade whale pyjamas every year until he goes to university at this rate. Here he is modelling them. The expression on his face clearly says "do one mother, I am very busy with my stormtroopers and want no part in your latest ridiculous venture".

3. Stripes
My attempt to scale the ironing mountain this morning was scuppered by half the cast of Star Wars congregating on the ironing board. Notable here are Luke Skywalker and Han Solo engaged in a homo-erotic dry humping frenzy. That sea killer thing can stay there for good; minutes before I took the photo it was going "RAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH" a lot and biting my leg. I had to break off from ironing my stripy top after a particularly vicious attack which caused me to lose focus and nearly scorch an ewok.

4. Comfort
A nice selection of uppers and downers. I have abandoned my beloved gin for something slightly more festive. It's nearly Christmas, after all.

5. Texture
My newly wrecked bathroom nicely demonstrates a pleasing array of textures. The Aldi bathroom wipes set this off to perfection.

Click here if you would like to join in with the Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt next month (and to see some actual lovely photos on some nice blogs that don't have pictures of dead flies on cupcakes as their banners).

Please note that this month it is being hosted by Emma over at The Gift Shed.

Done All Your Christmas Shopping?

2011-11-27T16:14:00.005Z

Don't be stupid; it's still November. There's at least another three weeks to go before I pull my finger out of my arse and spend a miserable day twitching in various queues, spending money that I don't have.

However, in the spirit of Christmas and for those of you who are more organised than me, I thought I'd post a little list of links to some of my friends online shops. It's always nice to line the pockets of independent craftspeople rather than Argos, so have a look and see if they have anything you like. I'll even include the link to my shop. Yes, I can sew. Stop laughing. I know it doesn't really go with my slummy mummy image, but it's relaxing, it makes me enough pennies to keep Rory in second hand Boden and I was thinking about gin the whole time, I swear. Just don't tell anyone it's me, OK? Like Kenickie*, I've got a rep to protect.

Belle & the Bean. This is me. Shhhhh. I sell handmade corsages and hair flowers and do custom orders for wedding and things.

Have a look at Dottery Pottery for ceramic pendants, Christmas decorations, mince pie plates and buttons.

The Gift Shed is run by Emma who makes hand bound notebooks, trinket boxes and the odd illustration. I have a couple of her beautiful notebooks, which I imagined I would use for writing when inspiration struck when out and about. Alas, it has transpired that I mainly use them for shortlisting what we want from the Chinese takeaway on a Friday night, but never mind.

Brittany at Posh Brats makes incredible smelling natural soaps, bath products, body lotions and scrubs. She's very clever. She's also got a mouthwatering selection of homemade US cakes and treats for sale at the moment.

Lovely Sarah at Sarah Designs hand paints glass and ceramics in her own distinctive style. She's great for personalised items and also does pyrography.

Finally, for vintage style jewellery, visit Roses are Red for some unusual pieces.

Happy shopping!

* from Grease, not Lauren Laverne et al.

Something happened to my bathroom.

2011-11-26T15:06:00.003Z

Something bad. Something involving my husband and the toilet and what looks like it might have been a pick axe and the mistaken belief that he could replace a broken part without having to call a plumber out.

Pre Something Bad, the bathroom was one of the only rooms in our house of horrors that was acceptable. We bought the house fairly cheaply four years ago because it had been repossessed. It was pretty disgusting. We had no heating for ages, the walls were all smeared with something grey, the ceilings were falling in and somebody had drawn a little smiley face on the bannisters. The decor was largely orange. Since then, we have chipped away at bits of it in an attempt to do it up, and we've been slowly getting there. The bathroom was nothing like the wet room of my dreams. There was no deep, vintage tin bath or power shower, but it was white, serviceable and completely inoffensive.

Now it looks like rats have gnawed on parts of it and someone has attacked it with a blunt instrument (oh, wait, that actually happened didn't it?) and there are holes everywhere.

Let this serve as a lesson to women everywhere that the answer to "Are you sure you can fix it on your own darling?" is always "NO". Even if you hear the words "Yes, it's a piece of piss", the answer should still be "NO". And if after an hour of banging, crashing, mysterious trickling sounds and muttered swear words you happen to shout up the stairs "would you like me to call an emergency plumber out?", the answer should always be "YES", not "No, no, I've almost got it" followed by the sound of several tiles falling off the wall and the hiss of a water pipe gushing forth all over the floor.

This is one of the reasons that I found myself perusing the Natural Stress Relief Medicines section in Boots earlier this week like it was the long lost Woolworths pick and mix counter. If any of you encounter a similar situation in the future, I recommend Bach's Rescue Remedy. Only don't bother with the recommended 3 drops on the tongue at times of anxiety - you need to neck the bottle for the best effect.

Mix Tape Monday: A Guilty Pleasure

2011-11-14T12:12:00.003Z

I'm joining in this meme (have nothing else to say, so might as well). Go here to find out more if you'd like to join in too.

So, I had to come up with a guilty pleasure for today's theme. Not too tricky as I'm sure there's a few songs that I like that Rich would happily divorce me for if he knew. However, I decided that it would be more appropriate for this blog if I chose an appalling track that makes a frequent appearance in our family life:

No need to thank me. I'm sure you'll all enjoy having that on your internal jukebox for the rest of the week.

This came about many years ago when I first met Richard. We were new friends at the time. He was recovering from a broken heart and I had a highly colourful, amusing and somewhat baffling love life. We were laughing at my latest bewildering romantic encounter. "I can't believe you're single," he said. "You really do encounter some oddballs. I could be so good for you..." At which point we spontaneously broke into the Minder theme tune.

Turns out he was rather good for me, so I married him. I'm kind of furious that, having married a music industry geek, the song that reminds us of each other is sung by Dennis Waterman. These days the three of us dance around the house to it when we need cheering up. Losers.

Link up to Mix Tape Monday here: http://www.linkytools.com/wordpress_list.aspx?id=116364&type=basic

On the Other Hand...

2011-11-13T11:56:00.001Z

...after yesterday's whinge-a-thon about the evils of pregnancy, birth and babies, lets take a look at a very important point in favour of having another baby:

You can dress them up in ridiculous outfits and make them wear stupid hats and they can't stop you.

This is seriously brilliant and almost makes nine months of misery and a barbaric labour worthwhile in itself.

Rory was 6 months old for his first Christmas and we made him wear a Christmas pudding hat for the entirety of December, an act that's possibly as close to child abuse as you can get without actually being illegal. It was pre-meditated and everything. We didn't just find a laughable hat in a shop and buy it on the spur of the moment. No. I made my mum scour the internet for a Christmas pudding hat knitting pattern and then begged her to make it (I can't knit. Get serious). He looked furious but it was oh so worth it for the 'ahhhh' factor from passing old ladies.

We decided to make him pose in it so we could put a photo of him in with our Christmas cards for family. This was the result:

See? Isn't that the cutest thing ever? Doesn't he look happy to be wearing his novelty Christmas knitwear?

OK, I admit it, getting that photo took around 300 attempts. This is how he looked in the other 299:

BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA. Next stop: reindeer jumper.

Who Stole My Broodiness?

2011-11-12T06:28:00.000Z

I have never been broody. I don't really like babies either. I get very excited when my friends are having them and can't wait to meet them, and mine was very cute (biased?), but in general, they remind me of maggots. Sorry. I've got better with them since becoming a mother myself, but they're never going to do it for me, and I never feel the ping of my ovaries that you're supposed to feel when I cuddle a new baby. Also, they cry a lot and don't sleep enough, and their inability to hold their heads up terrifies me and makes me feel all wobbly and funny.

However, I have recently found myself in this very odd position:

Firstly, My best mummy friend has just had her second baby. I met Rebecca through NCT classes when we were both pregnant. One day she came round for coffee, we spent 3 hours laughing hysterically at each other and it became apparent that I had met my mummy soulmate. Her son was born 11 days after Rory and together we stumbled, whinged, cocked up, swore a lot and drank copious amounts of gin as we picked out way through early motherhood. The boys have grown and changed in tandem and we've got a bit better at knowing what we're doing. Then she decided to have baby number two, and while I have been so excited all the way through her pregnancy and since she's had her baby girl, it feels weird - like she's a member of a club that I can't join. It's like your best friend getting their period before you when you're at school. Plus, she really knows what she'd doing this time, while I'm still stumbling about blindfolded with my first child. I know it won't change our relationship, but it's made me have to think about whether I want another child or not.

Secondly, my body wants another baby, but I don't. It's so strange. I have a desperate bodily craving to be pregnant, but my brain is shrieking "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." As well it might. And this is why:

1. I don't even know if I can have another baby.
This is kind of important, right? I was told I couldn't have children when I was 24. I was kind of upset for a few months, but decided I'd adopt if I wanted any and disregarded it after a bit. I can get pregnant, but I miscarry at the drop of a hat after losing a pregnancy many years ago after an accident at work. There have been a couple of miscarriages since Rory (more due to my laissez faire attitude to contraception than any great desire for a baby), and I can expect more if I ever decide to try to have another child. I conceived Rory just weeks after discussing hysterectomies with my gynaecologist, and spent the whole pregnancy waiting to lose him, as predicted by the specialists that I saw. I was in and out of hospital with bleeding for the first 4 months and every time they scanned me, I expected bad news. That Rory is here at all is quite a miracle.

2. 'Morning' Sickness.
I heaved and retched my way through my pregnancy. I never once stopped feeling sick and often it was so bad that I couldn't talk because opening my mouth would make me retch. As I was a teacher at the time, this was no fun. I often had to leave the room in the middle of taking the register to dry heave over the sink and spent a large proportion of time stealth eating illicit Jaffa Cakes in my stock cupboard because it was the only thing that would give me 5 minutes of relief. You know those nylon book bags that children have for school these days? The smell of those set me off. Imagine trying to listen to the children in your class read their reading books to you when the smell of their bags makes you want to stick your head down the nearest toilet and never come out. My mum had hyperemesis when she was pregnant with me, and the only reason I didn't actually vomit was because I have a deep seated phobia of being sick which is so severe that it inhibits vomiting. (It's a voluntary action, believe it or not). Hence I can heave until I crack a rib, but nothing comes up and I get no relief from the nausea. Pleasant. I can remember lying in bed at about 9 weeks pregnant, unable to even turn my head because I felt so ill, thinking that if anybody had offered me an abortion at that moment, I'd have taken it because I felt like I was being poisoned.

3. My body does not like being pregnant.
I think I'm allergic to it. As well as wall to wall nausea, my immune system got up and left the building for 9 months. It just completely ceased to work the moment I got pregnant and didn't start up again until I had Rory. Again, imagine here that you work in a primary school. All around you are sneezing, coughing, puking children. Yes, I came down with every single illness that they brought into school. And the worst thing about that is that when you're pregnant, you can only take paracetamol. Usually you can dose up on Lemsip or co-codamol or whatever and struggle through, but when you're pregnant you're left feeling awful. Now add morning sickness to a hacking cough. Boke. I ended up signed off at 18 weeks pregnant until the end of my pregnancy because I was constantly ill. I can literally remember 2 days of not having a cold or virus or flu during those 18 weeks.

As if that wasn't enough, I lost all the sensation in my hands during the last trimester and woke up with them bent into withered claws every morning. I retained water like a sponge. I couldn't sleep at night but fell asleep everywhere else during the day. I got restless leg syndrome. The only thing I didn't get was the text book mood swings that pregnant ladies are supposed to get. I never once shrieked at Richard for a stupid reason or burst into tears in a huff. I felt too rough for such luxuries.

4. Labour
Lets keep it brief. It lasted 30 hours, it was so painful that I wanted to die, I had heart problems half way through, Rory got stuck and wrenched out with forceps and I bled like a stuck pig. I have no desire to go there again.

5. Newborns
Ughhhh, their floppy heads. I can't stand this phase. As soon as they can hold their heads up and look about and smile and make a few noises, it's not so bad, but I have palpitations at the thought of having to care for something so entirely helpless. Also, the umbilical stump. Rancid. Smells like blue cheese. The never ending colicky crying. The walking around and around the room with them trying to calm them down and get them to sleep. Never ending breast feeding and all the agony that that entails. Getting up 3 or 4 times a night. Or simply not sleeping at all. The loneliness. Taking an hour to work up to leaving the house. Baby sick in your knickers.

6. PND
I didn't even get the baby blues after I had Rory. OK, I was exhausted and traumatised after giving birth and scared and had no idea what I was doing, but I was stoic. However, when he was about 3 weeks old, OCD kicked in and it all went horribly wrong. This blog is not the place to go into it on any detail, but I ended up seeing an emergency psychiatrist, being medicated immediately and put on watch with the emergency psychiatric team, who came to visit me twice a day to check that I didn't need to be sectioned. All because of hormones. I still take the tablets (I love the tablets. I'm calmer than I've been in 25 years). I don't fancy going down that route a second time.

7. It might be twins.
It goes without saying that I am not the sort of person who could handle twins. Can you imagine Rory and two willing minions? Jesus.

So that is why my brain and body are disagreeing. At the moment, my brain is winning by a mile. "It's worth it in the end though isn't it?" everybody says. Well, yes, Rory was more than worth it. He is my amazing little boy and I adore him. But when it comes to thinking about another child, I can't see beyond the problems that will go before having it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Should Toilet Humour Be Tolerated?

2011-11-09T16:34:00.003Z

NO, says this internet source. Wow. Of all the internet pages that have ever made me feel like a bad mother (we're into tens of thousands by now), that one is the worst. Thank you, Rachel Arguelles, head teacher at the Greenhills Learning Center in San Juan for showing me the error of my ways. I am obviously raising a violent, aggressive meathead.

Lavatorial humour has recently made an early and unwelcome appearance in the Disgrace household. Bums are deemed hilarious. Pants even more so. Any form of bodily fluid practically gets a standing ovation from my son. This worries me. He's only two and a half. If he's cracking poo jokes now, what's he going to be sniggering about in the playground once he starts school? Fisting?

It's already turning heads (and not in a good way). On a recent bus journey, I was the proud parent of a delightful little boy who chattered constantly the whole way home, giving an intelligent running commentary on everything he could see out of the window and making full and impressive use of his excellent vocabulary. two old ladies a couple of seats in front of us kept turning round to look at the angelic child prodigy and were cooing to each other about how lovely he was and how well behaved and how good his language was. God, I felt smug.

Sensing that Mummy was relaxing into the acceptance that she might actually be a fairly good parent, Rory launched into a recitation of Incy Wincy Spider in a nice clear voice so all the passengers could hear:

"Incy Wincy Spider climbed up water spout
Down came rain and washed spider out.
Out came sun and dried up all rain
And Incy Wincy Spider climbed up Rory's pants. And I did a trump on him. And he died."

I know how Incy Wincy Spider felt. The pensioners were then treated to renditions of "Old MacDonald had a poo" and "The Grand Old Duke of York" (who, allegedly, had ten thousand poos). The bus stop couldn't come fast enough.

I instantly blamed his father. He always made a comedy drama out of doing nappy changes, which is probably why Rory finds bodily functions so hilarious. Because of this, I felt vindicated when they returned home after going out for a walk the other day, Richard looking like he wanted to throttle our son because he'd spent the last 10 minutes shouting "OUT OF THE WAY. My Daddy keeps trumping. He needs to get home and sit on the toilet." Ha.

But I was forced to confess after hearing him put on what he calls "Mummy's posh voice" and call someone "an insufferable B-A-S-T..." (fortunately his recollection of the word I had spelled out came to a halt at that point because I am 100% sure that it ended in "A-R-D") that although I may not be responsible for bringing toilet humour into Rory's life, I need to keep a tight rein on myself. Master of inappropriate humour, the over-share and the very silly, I am going to have to keep a lid on the knob jokes from now on. Not to mention the silliness: A couple of days ago, Rory was running at full pelt down the street away from me and looking as though he was going to continue across the road, into the path of oncoming traffic.

"STOP!" I shouted.
"HAMMER TIME!" replied my son, before launching into MC Hammer's scuttling crab dance.

Between us both, we've created a monster: A silly, poo obsessed, articulate monster. Maybe we should embrace it. Maybe we should all take a trip to Greenhills Learning Center in San Juan and crap on Rachel Arguelles' doorstep.

Linking up with Actually Mummy for Wot So Funee?

Child Friendly Restaurant Review: Frankie & Benny's

2011-10-31T14:14:00.001Z

Lo, what fresh hell is this?

We got caught feeling hungry whilst out of the house with Rory again. Schoolboy error. Hence, on Saturday we ended up in a Frankie & Benny's restaurant somewhere in the sprawling metropolis of concrete and drizzle that is Stoke on Trent.

Rory was in a particularly demonic mood which felt quite in keeping with the restaurant, which was decorated for Halloween. Yes, nothing says 'child friendly' like a load of carved pumpkins stuffed with precariously placed candles in easy poking reach. And now I come to think of it, nothing quite says 'quality dining' like a huge polystyrene skull looming over your table. There were children everywhere, at least half of them better behaved than ours, but all of them yelling at the top of their voices and drinking far too much Coke for my liking. Rat pack music blared above it all and despite Bobby Darin's insistence, I predicted that this was unlikely to be my Magic Moment.

Our waitress was wearing purple contact lenses with slits for pupils, which made her look like Voldemort with cataracts. Despite this, she was fairly perky and cheerily handed Rory an activity book (aimed at a more sophisticated audience than a 2 year old) and a pencil (sharp, pointy, nearly got shoved in my eye and Richard's nostril over the course of the meal). We ordered various fat-making portions of steak and burger type things, including a burger and chips with salad dressing for Rory from the children's menu. He was overjoyed at this and attacked it with gusto, although most of his gusto was directed at sucking tomato ketchup off of the chips and then posting their soggy potato carcasses down the side of the seats. At no point did he touch his salad dressing. I inhaled my burger and congratulated myself on sitting Rory next to Richard, meaning that I was out of the line of fire of most of the hurtled cutlery.

Lots of things got thrown on the floor in a rage: The activity book and pencil, every napkin in the vicinity, various knives, his entire body. The couple dining next to us stopped finding him cute after the first 10 minutes. I sympathise with them. I also stopped finding him cute after the first 10 minutes (of his life). Despite all of this, I couldn't fault the staff (even the waitress with the Voldemort eyes) and they were polite throughout and obviously used to dealing with hyperactive children, and chatted to him as they cleared the plates.

We skipped dessert. I briefly longed for the days when I could eat a brownie/ice-cream/chocolate sauce stacked thing without gaining any weight whatsoever, then briefly considered having it anyway as a sort of trauma therapy, then realised that the best course of action would be to exit swiftly as my son had just stuffed a napkin into the gaping mouth of a pumpkin and it was in danger of going up in flames.

Matt Monro sang the opening lines of 'Born Free' as we beat a hasty retreat. I couldn't help thinking that 'Born Feral' might have been more appropriate here.

"Noise With Dirt On"

2011-10-26T14:16:00.002+01:00

Isn't that what someone once referred to boys as? That sums them up fairly accurately to me. If you also add "obsessed with anything with wheels", you've just about got them covered.

I'm all for this gender neutral trend for allowing children to play with what they want, wear what they want and generally be how they want to be without enforcing gender stereotypes on them, but what has become apparent to me since having a boy of my own is how he seems genetically programmed to like doing boy things. He has been boring us about cars and trains ever since he could first point. He does occasionally give a baby doll a cuddle at playgroup, but that's usually shortly before throwing it on the floor and running it over with a tricycle. He likes to seek and destroy and take things apart to find out how they work and create mess where you'd think mess couldn't possibly be made and generally be caked from head to foot in noxious substances.

I'd like to say that I don't know what I'd do with a girl, but I do. I'd do a lot of nice colouring in and twirling and playing with dolls and dressing up and going for walks with a child who would willingly hold my hand and walk next to me and skipping and maybe occasionally go to Rhyme Time with a child who actually likes it - all the things that my friends do with their young girls. It's a lot more civilised and there's less emphasis on having to spend the whole day exhausting them so that they'll sleep at night. By contrast, Rory and I can often be found standing by the nearest dual carriageway making racing car noises as we watch the traffic and point out good lorries to each other. It's a rubbish way to spend your day, but he loves it.

Yesterday, we went to the farm. We go to the farm quite a lot because there's one just a 20 minute walk from our house. Going to the farm is brilliant, yes? You get to see the animals and feed them and stroke them and....sorry, no. You're wrong. You can do all those things with a girl. Here's how it goes for us:

*Rory and I are walking along the road to the farm*

Me: "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a...."

Rory: "Tractor."

Me: "Well, yes, he probably does have a tractor, but this is a song about animals. Think about the animals we're going to see at the farm. Lets try again: And on that farm he had a...."

Rory: "Bat 'beel"

Me: "I'm almost certain that Old MacDonald doesn't have a Batmobile. Can you think of an animal that he might have?" And on that farm he had a..."

Rory: "Boogly woogly."

Me: "That's not even a word."

Rory: "I think of an animal."

Me: "OK then. And on that farm he had a..."

Rory: "Gremlin."

Me: "Whatever."

And so it continues.

We get to the farm.

"Oh, Rory, look at the goats. Would you like to feed the goats?" I say, hoping that by speaking in a ridiculously over enthusiastic tone of voice, some of it might rub off on him. But no. He tells the goats to go away then spots a fork lift truck in the distance and goes running over to stroke it, screeching with joy. During the rest of our time at the farm, he spots a digger, several tractors, a combine harvester, two trailers and a "very funny pumpkin", all of which he has to inspect at close range. He goes on the slides and the climbing frames in the adventure playground. He makes me pay a fiver for an overpriced cake and a drink in the cafe. He jumps into every available puddle, emerges like a bedraggled swamp monster, then rolls in the hay, creating a primitive wattle and daub effect all over his body that dries and starts to crack as we walk home. At no point does he give any animal a cursory glance, and when Richard asks him what he did with his day, he looks blankly at him and replies "errrr, played cars?"

Boys are infuriating. I quite want a girl. I don't think I'd laugh as much but I might at least have an appreciative audience for my animal songs.

List of Bothersome Things

2011-10-23T19:33:00.001+01:00

I used to write these frequently from the age of 15-22ish, only they were entitled "List of Crap Things" and said crap things were usually related to idiotic men (well, boys) and the fact that I had a hole in my tights and was failing Philosophy or whatever. The idea was that I could tick the items off the list when I'd dealt with them*, thus being able to quantify how much less crappy my life was getting as I went forward. Of course, by that point, I usually had yet another useless bloke on the go to add to the list and an endless stream of wardrobe malfunctions, so it was all a bit pointless. These days, I prefer not to dwell so heavily on the negatives in life, and I realise that I have it pretty good compared to most. However, a number of irksome things have occurred recently, and I felt that this called for a list:

1. Yesterday, Rory got hold of a bottle of lavender oil and sprinkled half of it all over our bedroom. The house now stinks of grannies and we are so 'soothed' by the calming aroma that we're floating around the house with our eyes half closed. It's like Lush have invented a crack den.

2. Rory's toy Cranky Crane from Thomas the Tank Engine appears to have become possessed by evil spirits (not surprising. I've always felt that he has a rather malevolent look on his face) and keeps telling me that I'm a "very reliable engine" in a slight German accent when nobody is near him. I now fear some sort of Thomas & Friends mass murdery thing occurring at Halloween while we're asleep in our beds.

3. John From Next Door has started his yearly campaign of ABH against the local squirrels and was witnessed throwing a wet sock from his washing line at one a couple of days ago. I do fret about the squirrels.

4. Rory is eyeing up the autumnal pot pourri speculatively. This worries me. He ate a handful last year and it never reappeared at the other end. One day he's going to end up having emergency surgery to remove 3 mini pine cones, some sticks and a handful of rose petals from his intestines.

5. There have been no less than three fascia board salesmen knocking on my door this week and two cold calls from other fascia board sales people. I don't even know what a fascia board is. More to the point, I don't care.

6. There's a hole in my tights. Some things never change.

*Have just realised that this may read as if I bumped off my ex boyfriends to 'deal with them'. I did not.

Jelly Cat: Revisited

2011-10-22T20:27:00.002+01:00

Check it out mo fo's. Check. It. Out.

That's right my friends, I have reached the pinnacle of motherhood and here I sit on the successful jelly maker throne, laughing manically and dropping little silver cake decorating balls down upon those less fortunate than me. Suck it up, losers.

After this recent jelly disaster, I was given some jelly making advice by the women at my Thursday evening class. Apparently, jelly packets lie, and instead of following the instructions and adding cold water to the mix to make it up to 1 pint, the seasoned jelly maker adds enough cold water to take it to just over three quarters of a pint. What amazed me was that they all seemed to know this and were nodding sagely at these words of wisdom. It's one of those things that Only Mums Know (there are a lot of these: How to remove mould from a rubber bath mat, what muslin squares are for etc etc).

Now I too have The Knowledge, I am passing it on to you. Use it well.

My jelly cat is brilliant. It resembles a cat for a start. It's firm yet wobbly, it's features are still intact. You know what? I might go wild and make up a lime version and mash it all up with a fork to make it look like it's lying on grass. I could do that, because I'm that skilled now. Little flowers hand crafted from marzipan and tinted with food colouring to scatter amongst the jelly grass? Yeah, I could probably make some of those while sprinkling hundreds and thousands on fairy cakes with the other hand and one eye shut. If I wasn't so tormented by the threat of nut allergies that is. But I could. Hell yeah.

Distraction

2011-10-21T15:23:00.000+01:00

I was going to write a new blog post this afternoon, but seeing as Rory has decided that he is not going to have an afternoon sleep, and instead has coloured every available millimetre of his naked body in with a blue felt tip pen (an act which somehow only took him 30 seconds), I'm going to be rather busy. Please send cake and any form of alcohol. Or hallucinogenics maybe. I'm not fussy.

Innocent Kids Review

2011-10-20T09:41:00.002+01:00

Don't get me started on Smarties. Several years ago, some moron in their design department decided to do away with the cylindrical tubes and plastic lids and replace them with a rubbish hexagonal design. Did they consider the impact of this on their customers? They did not. You can no longer sneakily remove the lid from your brother's tube and steal all the good colours (orange, green, blue. Red at a push) and replace them with yellows and browns. There is no more popping the plastic lid off the tube at your dog. But most importantly - most importantly Nestle, you set of cretinous fools, the youth of today can no longer COLLECT ALL THE PLASTIC TOPS WITH LETTERS ON THEM AND MAKE A PRETEND TYPEWRITER OUT OF THEM.

Thank goodness then for Innocent, who know about the importance of these things. Rory and I were sent some Innocent kids products to review recently, and before we even address the deliciousness of their smoothies, I must inform you that these guys are a shining beacon of marketing brilliance in a world of retail that doesn't seem to try. The reason for my joy? They put 3 alphabet fridge magnets* in their packs of children's smoothies and fruit tubes. Innocent, I applaud you, nay, worship at your feet. Thank you for taking up where those eejits at the Smarties HQ left off. We now have a fridge door full of beautifully designed letters, which have tied in beautifully with Rory's first foray into phonics. Not only that, the packaging is a miracle of marketing genius, with fun facts and/or educational games or activities printed on the outer side of the boxes, and other activities inside the box (we had a monkey that you can cut out and attach to people to annoy them). Those of you who are familiar with Innocent will already know that everything on their products is written with humour and personality, and this is much the same on their kids products. Well done Innocent for knowing your customer base so well, and especially well done on your attention to kiddy friendly detail. It really does make such a difference.

OK, on to the actual products. We tested the orange, mango and pineapple smoothies and the strawberry and raspberry fruit tubes.

The smoothies were an immediate hit with Rory. He'll eat some fruits but isn't a major fan, and it can be a struggle to get him to eat enough of the stuff, so it was brilliant to be able to give him a smoothie carton knowing that it contained one of his five a day. He thinks they're delicious and really enjoyed them. I found them particularly good for breakfast as I could give him a slice of wholemeal toast and a smoothie, knowing that he'd had a fairly nutritious breakfast and was well set up for the day. He's also a bit of a pain about eating in general (he's too busy to be much bothered about food), so on the odd occasion that he was refusing to stop playing and eat something, I could give him a carton and know that he'd at least had some fruit. And they are really really tasty. I should know. I stole one. My only request is this: Please please please make the cartons an easier shape to put the straws in. I couldn't do it without a struggle and getting smoothie all over the place. Please, won't somebody think of the cack-handed.

He wasn't as keen on the fruit tubes initially. They're basically fruit puree in a tube (like those Frube fromage frais things that you can buy, but puree), so brilliant for lunch boxes. They're easy enough for a child over the age of 5 to open, and the puree gets sucked out of a small hole, so they're unlikely to explode. They appealed to me because their content is more or less the same as those pouches of fruit that you can get for babies by Ella's Kitchen and Plum, but they need to be refrigerated because they're fresh. I find this need for refrigeration reassuring. My non scientific brain doesn't understand why those baby pouches don't need to be refrigerated if they don't contain any preservatives. I am convinced that it is some kind of magick at work (note spelling: 'magic' = Paul Daniels and co, 'magick' = potential involvement of pixies. I don't trust pixies). So, yes, they need to stay in the fridge and I would assume that you'd need some sort of cooling implement to keep them fresh in a lunch box.

Rory wasn't bothered about them (as he isn't about the baby pouches) until I discovered putting them in the freezer and turning them into ice pops. After that, he was hanging out at the freezer door demanding them approximately every 20 minutes. This is an excellent trick for getting fruit into your child, and as freezing them means that they don't go mouldy, I am now quite happy to have a box of them in my freezer for fruity emergencies. I guess you could also do this with the smoothies by pouring them into ice lolly moulds.

So, there we have it. Innocent kids products are a resounding success in this household. Well done that company for making tasty healthy fruity things and knowing that it's the little things that make all the difference. The Domestic Disgrace household salute you.

*Be aware that they state on the packaging that the magnets are not suitable for children under 3. I am guessing that this is a disclaimer for legal reasons as swallowing magnets can be seriously dangerous and can even cause death. It's up to you as a parent to decide if you allow your child to have them.

**Disclaimer: These opinions are my own. I do not work for Innocent, nor have I been paid for my opinions.

Things To Do With Your Child #10: Bubble Pictures

2011-10-18T09:23:00.000+01:00

Who made these 30 years ago? (or 20 years ago, for those of you who are less decrepit than me). I remember doing this activity at nursery when I was 3 years old and it's still as awe and wonder inspiring now as it was back in the day.

You Will Need:
Thick paper
Poster Paint (ready mixed or powdered)
Washing Up Liquid
Water
Straws
Plastic cups

Risk Assessment:
Please ensure that your child knows the difference between blowing and sucking before attempting this activity. And even if they do know the difference, how sure are you that they won't drink the paint and washing up liquid mixture? Rate your certainty out of ten, then halve it and deduct 5 smug points, because we all know that complacency in parenting comes back ten fold IN YOUR FACE.

Method:
In plastic cups, mix some paint, some water and some washing up liquid. No, I don't know how much of each you'll need. Be serious. Just wing it.

Place straws in cups and instruct child to blow. No, blow. BLOW! BLOW, YOU SIMPLETON, NOT SUCK. Oh for the love of Mike, have a glass of water and stop retching.

This will happen:

Then this:

Cute.

Now grab your sheet of paper and plonk it on top of the bubbles.

Congratulations; you have spawned an artistic genius.

Now continue in this vein until you start to twitch about the state of the furniture.

Nnnng.

GAHH.

Extensions/Variations:

* If you add lots of white paint to the mix, you get pretty pastels that show up on black paper.

* You could choose colours that complement the colours scheme in your child's room and frame a couple of the pictures for their walls. They could even bubble print directly onto a small canvas if you can trust them not to balls it up.

30 Second Mummy Failing of the Week

2011-10-15T22:40:00.001+01:00

Ten years ago I was a chef in a small brasserie. I ran the kitchen and sent out three course meals of a high standard to a restaurant full of customers every night.

Yesterday I attempted to make a jelly cat for Rory.

I. Suck.

Elixir of Youth For the Embittered Old Crone in the Corner Please

2011-10-05T21:30:00.003+01:00

I got asked for ID in Waitrose the other day. This is possibly the most exciting thing that's happened to me in....oh....forever. Apart from the discovery that Mr Bloom off CBeebies was on the same acting degree course as me in the year below me at Bretton Hall. Now there's a thrill that's hard to beat.

Back to Waitrose and the ID incident. I'd nipped into town to pick up salad and a bottle of Pinot Grigio and at the checkout I was blessed with a cashier who clearly should have gone to Specsavers.

"Can I have some ID dear?" she asked.

Yay!

The joy of handing over my provisional drivers licence to prove that I am, in fact, THIRTY THREE YEARS OF AGE. Although I doubt she actually needed to look at my date of birth after I'd scrabbled through my bag in search of it, removing tissues, toy cars, sticklebricks, handfuls of acorns and conkers and a lump of playdough and plonking them on the conveyer belt. Nothing says "MOTHER" like a lump of playdough in your handbag.

I practically skipped home from the shops, convinced, in my head, that I could still pass for 17. Well, 21. Or is it 24? I've lost track. In my day, you were only asked for ID if you looked under 18 but there's all sorts of complex guidelines about how old you need to look now. OK, worst case scenario is that I passed for 23. That's ten whole years younger, which is a bit of a result. I must look like the sort of person who knows how to use an iPhone! Or who understands how digital TV works! This is brilliant! More importantly, nobody has asked me for ID since I began to look visibly pregnant with Rory. Before that it was fairly standard to be asked, but as soon as a bump appeared, I seemed to age several years in the eyes of shop assistants. I took to sidling up to the queue with my bottle of wine, trying to look as shifty and knocked-up-teen-crackwhore-esque as I possibly could, but nobody was buying it. And as soon as you've got a baby in a pushchair with you, you're dismissed as a sad old mummy who needs her weekly gin fix. Wish I'd thought of this when I was in 6th form. Taking a toddler or two along to the off licence might have resulted in a greater hit rate of getting served.

I try to convince myself that I haven't aged much, and to be fair I have been lucky. I don't really have wrinkles, which I put entirely down to not smoking in my youth. I'm still thin. Ish. Although I may not be for much longer if I continue to do a half hourly cruise of the kitchen cupboards when I'm supposed to be writing. Nothing's sagging particularly noticably. I even got away without wearing a bra the other day until Rory took it upon himself to yank on the tie of my halter neck dress and I had to act promptly and imaginatively with a bottle of water and a pack of Dairylea Dunkers to avoid flashing the 32Fs at the other occupants of the park. And the pregnancy fairy decided that in exchange for retching my way through 9 months, losing all the feeling in my hands, an excruciating, complicated, drawn out labour and bleeding like a stuck pig all over the delivery room floor, I could forgo the stretch marks, so on paper I'm almost a spring chicken. I have a lot of grey hair, which I ferociously dye every month, but that's not so bad is it?

Or is it? The truth is, you can convince yourself that you still look young until you come across actual young people. Then you want to hide yourself away in your troll hole for the rest of your days, weeping at the unfairness of it all. 18 year old girls look absolutely nothing like 33 year old women. They are ridiculously slim and supple, with peachy, flawless skin. They have actual gaps between their thighs. They wear clothes that I don't understand. (Those MC Hammer trousers; the ones that my husband delightfully refers to as 'shit catchers'. Just...why?) And then I found an old photo of myself in my first year of uni, and there I was, all glowy and effortlessly slender with bright eyes and glossy hair. There's nothing like a non sleeping infant to crap all over your bright eyes and glossy hair. Thanks son.

I had a shocker of a thought the other day: Rory is actually closer to the age of 16 than I am. It barely feels like any time has gone by since I was that age and kissing boys up against walls at parties as my dad pulled up in his Peugot estate to pick me up; windows down, Classic FM blaring, shovelling shame upon shame on my teenage self. Before I know it, my treasured little boy who calls me his "best friend in wide world" and loves to snuggle up with me on the sofa and give me kisses and cuddles will be the teenage boy at the party getting off with some vapid little tart like 16 year old me. I want to rip her (hypothetical) eyes out for corrupting my precious boy already, and she's only two years old at the moment. There she'll be in her tiny little dress, displaying her long teenage legs, and there I'll be in a sensible car, wearing a beige anorak, honking the horn and shouting "Put her down Rory, you don't know where she's been." I'm half way there already; our family car is a Honda Jazz and I really really like Classic FM.

I wonder how much longer I'll need to carry ID about with me. It can't be long before I'm consigned to the dustbin of "middle aged" in the eyes of the cashiers of Waitrose. If they ever ask me for it again, I might save myself the time and humiliation of rummaging through my overflowing bag, drop my trousers and show them my backside, because there's no way in the fiery bowels of hell that my bum could pass for 17 years old these days.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Ben and Betty Activities

2011-10-04T15:06:00.013+01:00

I was so pleased to be sent a Ben & Betty demo disc to review, partly because Rory's starting to get curious about letters and words (he likes playing with words and sentences at the moment, saying words in different ways, stretching the syllables out, elongating certain phonemes etc) but also because I used to teach in primary schools, so would be able to review this resource from the point of view of a parent and that of a teacher. Ben & Betty is an interactive learning system which allows your young child to learn concepts about phonics, numeracy, reasoning and IT skills through playing a variety of mini games on the PC and following up with printable worksheets. The website - www.benandbetty.co.uk has plenty of other ideas for follow up activities, plus a range of toys that reinforce these concepts for sale.

The first point to note is that I liked it a lot and would recommend it to other parents and will pass on the info about it to teacher friends, but it's not quite as simple as that, so please read on. It's a long one I'm afraid, but useful thoughts, so bear with me.

Rory is a bright child. I say that from the point of view of an early years practitioner, not as a competitive parent. If it helps, he tends to use his rather unnerving intelligence for the purposes of mischief and showing off rather than putting it towards any great academic achievement. Children are different and they learn different things at different rates. Please please don't compare them and don't try to push them to do or learn anything that they are not ready for. Just because I have been doing this with my son doesn't mean that your child should be ready, and likewise, some of the same age may have got these concepts even earlier. He's 2 years and 3 months old, so a few months short of the 2 and a half year minimum starting age that is recommended for these activities. I thought I'd see if he liked them, knowing that he's fairly advanced, and see what happened. I'm not a pushy parent and not fond of formal learning at home or baby and toddler classes, preferring to let him learn through everyday experience, but it's always nice to have a starting point for phonics. The CD came with two levels - starter level and level 1. I had a brief look through level 1, but due to Rory's age we only tested the starter level.

It was easy to use as a parent. Rory hopped onto my knee as I sat at the computer and I introduced him to the letter 'a' on screen. We were able to see how it is written, and there was a handy link to click to repeat the sound (very useful for parents who may not be aware of the way that phonics is taught these days - it's important to pronounce the sounds correctly). We then clicked through to a range of short games, all related to 'a'. Rory easily picked up the activities which involved pressing the space bar to make something happen (he particularly liked helping the ant to eat the apple). They seemed ridiculously simple to me, but were actually perfect for his level and great for demonstrating the cause and effect of a computer to a toddler. There was also a game in which you had to spot the odd one out of 4 objects (3 of which were the same). I was amazed to find that he could do this straight away without any help, which was useful to me as I hadn't known that he possessed this level of reasoning yet.

The only activity that he found difficult was the one in which you had to spot 'a' in various words. He tended to be able to find the letter fairly easily, but struggled to select it by pressing the space bar when the letter was highlighted, as the highlighted bar seemed to move too quickly for him to keep up.

We did the activities for 'a' every day for about 3 or 4 days, each time following up with one or two of the related worksheets. As a teacher, I am not a fan of worksheets at all and rarely use them, but for some reason, very young children seem to like filling them in occasionally, so we gave it a go.

Hmmmmm. One of Rory's efforts is displayed below:

Yeah, what can I say? The child's a genius. You can see above where I held his his hand, guiding him around the capital 'b' in the hopes that he might attempt the lower case one on his own. Also visible are various scribbles of rage that he did when I suggested that he may like to try this. You can also see half of a butterfly that I lovingly coloured in (God, I love colouring in) and various squiggles that Rory did that are, apparently, "froggerhoppers" (Translation: grasshoppers). Not exactly a resounding success.

Nevertheless, we continued in this vein for about 10 days, looking at 'a', 'b' and 'c', also doing some of the follow up suggestions on the website. I wasn't convinced that it was working. He asked every day to do the activities and seemed to enjoy it, but no real progress seemed to be made, especially as the activities for each letter were more or less the same but with different characters. I fretted a bit about how I was going to write the review as it wasn't doing much for us, and I worried that I may have overestimated Rory's abilities.

Then, several days into the experiment, we were drawing together. Rory sat very quietly, concentrating intently on something. When he'd finished, he showed me proudly. "Look Mummy, it's an 'a'." It wasn't. it was a particularly exquisite squiggle, but in Rory's head, it was an 'a'. "Now I do a 'c'", he said, and produced another squiggle.

I felt so stupid. I had broken the major rule of teaching emergent writing and tried to push him into doing something that he didn't 'own'. He didn't want to trace around letter shapes, but he did understand the concept and wanted to produce his own version of it. "Let me write you a letter", I said, and wrote him a little note, then gave it to him, telling him what it said. He wrote me a reply and 'read' it to me, ascribing meaning to each squiggle. At the end, he did a few shorter squiggles (more 'a's apparently).

Since then, we have spotted all three letters while we're out and about - street signs, number plates, clothing and books, sometimes extending to other letters. (Me: "Oh look Rory, it's a digger! Digger starts with 'd'." Rory: "You are wrong Mummy, that is actually an excavator". Precocious little smartarse). I watched him watch Alphablocks on TV (CBeebies phonics programme) and saw his face change with recognition, as he began to put the letters into context. Slowly but surely he's getting it, and I'm happy to continue at this level.

So, time for my concerns:

1. My expectations of my son were too high and not compatible with the early years philosophy. If I (as an ex early years teacher) can make this mistake, other parents will probably make it too. It worries me that some parents will assume that simply sitting their child down in front of this every day will teach them, but you really do need to put a lot of effort into it yourself, not just when you're doing the activities, but on bringing out the learning during other situations.

2. The activities could do with a bit more variety. Rory got quite bored with them and he's only very young.

3. It would be handy if there was an option for the activities to be presented in the order that phonics is taught in nurseries and schools (starting with S,A,T,P,I,N). This is not essential, but may be useful.

4. Rory wasn't the slightest bit interested in the rabbit characters. If the characters were, say, cars or trains, it would have had him from the moment the activities flashed up on screen, but bunnies left him decidedly un-arsed about the proceedings.

5. Following on from that, although the activities are gender neutral, I definitely think that Ben and Betty would appeal more to girls. Sitting down and doing activities and worksheets is something that girls tend to learn better from. Not so for a lot of boys. Sometimes I think I might develop a brilliant way of teaching phonics and other literacy concepts to boys, but sadly for boys, so far I have been too distracted by eating Mars Bars and pottering about the house to get any further than this initial thought.

That's not to say that I didn't like Ben and Betty though. We will probably purchase the full disc and book (£29.95 from the website) as it's working to some extent and I think it will continue to work right the way through to the time that Rory is ready to start school. If I was still teaching, I would certainly consider having it in a nursery or reception classroom (especially as you can play it with a keyboard and mouse or on an interactive whiteboard) and also think it would be a valuable resource for SEN children in Key Stage 1.

I would recommend Ben & Betty to other parents, but only on the condition that you don't get frustrated when your child can't do what you think they should be able to manage and that you don't sit them down religiously every day to fill in worksheets for the rest of their pre-school lives. Let them go and dig up worms or do that annoying thing where they twirl around and around until they fall over. Let them be toddlers. Oh, and the most important condition of all: Don't ever use it to be competitive with other parents over what your child can do. Just don't. Nobody needs that sort of pressure, especially a two year old.

Memories...light the corners of my mind...

2011-10-03T15:30:00.002+01:00

...misty watercolour memories...of the time that Mummy accidentally made jam with a maggot in it. So the song goes (well, it does in this household anyway).

The autumn leaves made me remember my time as a teacher earlier, specifically a misty October day several years ago when I took my class out of school and down the road to the local park. It was cold outside and we all wore our scarves and gloves and formed a crocodile; me at the front holding a small gloved hand in mine, the rest of the class snaking behind, puffing little clouds of steam like baby dragons. Once in the park, we stopped still and listened to the sounds around us: birds in the trees, leaves scrunching, wind rustling the branches. A bonfire was burning some distance away, bringing with it the particularly autumnal smell of burning wood and leaves. We hunted for special leaves - the biggest and brightest ones we could find on the grass, and put them in a carrier bag for later, then played on the swings and the climbing frame just because. Afterwards, we snaked back to school and sat down with mugs of hot chocolate to write ideas down for autumn poetry. Later that week, we wrote our poems on the pressed leaves that we'd gathered and suspended them from the ceiling. As we walked back from the park that day, the child at the front of the crocodile asked me if I had any children. I laughed. "No - I've got you lot. 25 children are enough for me, than you very much." "That's a shame," he said. "I wish you were my mum. You do the best things."

Crawler.

It's sort of true though. I loved teaching - all aspects of it, but the bit that appealed to me more than anything else was the ability to create childhood memories for the children in my class. We did our fair share of normal classroom stuff, but I always tried to throw in something special occasionally. We squidged through mud with our shoes off when it had rained, looking for worms. We wrote on unpeeled bananas with biros during handwriting lessons (try it). Whenever it snowed we all stopped what we were doing immediately and ran to press our noses against the windows to watch and speculate about the possibility of it settling on the ground properly. Every December, Sinterklaas visited my classroom and filled the PE shoes with chocolate coins, lit a candle and left a trail of glitter. I fulfilled my job of instilling my classes with knowledge, but I also tried to ensure that even the children who didn't have much of a home life would have something to look back on and smile about when they grew up.

I was definitely better at being a teacher than I am at being a mother.

My own childhood memories seem to kick in at the age of two, starting with a memory of my 2nd birthday party and my birthday cake - rectangular and pink, scalloped with white icing, my name written on the top, flaked almonds pressed around the sides (no such thing as nut allergies in 1980). It had apricot jam in the middle (which I did not like) but the sponge was light and fluffy and the icing was just the right sort to stick to your teeth. What follows after that is a jumble of images: Coming home from nursery school to the scent of freshly baked bread, the smell of damp earth as I helped my Dad dig in the garden with my wellies on the wrong feet, ironing with my mum in the kitchen - her with the steam iron, me with my toy iron and board, the smell of starch in the air, both singing a song about ironing which, to this day, I am not sure is a real song or just something that she made up.

Rory was 2 in June, so I know that he may well remember things that happened from that day onwards when he's older. This worries me.

I sweated blood to make him a chocolate hedgehog cake for his 2nd birthday (you know the sort - studded with chocolate buttons to look like prickles). I presented it to him ceremoniously a couple of hours before his birthday party. "Oh, very lovely pinecone" he said, crushing my cake decorating self esteem and ensuring that his enduring memory of his 2nd birthday will that Mummy made him a cake in the shape of something that falls off of trees into the drain outside our house.

There is, of course, the memory of Mummy making jam with a maggot in it. And the recollection of when I sat on his cheese spread sandwich due to his sneaky slight of hand and he laughed so much that he wet himself. There is the time that he fell down the toilet because I was plucking my eyebrows in the bathroom mirror and wasn't paying attention. And the time we threw cake at each other for an hour in a field. And the time that Daddy had an actual panic attack because a jelly had upended in the fridge before it set a few days previously and I'd forgotten to clean it up (in my defence, I did clean up the jelly that went on the floor. I just forgot about the fridge at the time, and anyway, it gave it a pleasing raspberry fragrance which masked the smell of the rotting cucumber at the back. You say 'almighty mess', I say 'novel fridge deodoriser'). It's hardly the stuff of childhood dreams is it?

So, I am setting myself a task. This week, I am on a mission to make memories and will report back at the end of the week. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment below. They must all be memories that can be made without the use of a car and with as little money as possible as I have about £3.00 to my name. (ie no going to the zoo - you need a bank loan to do that these days). I don't think this morning's disastrous trip to Storytime at the local library counts somehow. ("This story is TOO RUBBISH for me", said Rory to the librarian running the session. "Please be quiet." The shame.)

Pinecone, my arse.

An Absence of Pants

2011-10-01T12:29:00.012+01:00

Years ago, during my first year as a teacher, there was an ongoing problem in my classroom: A pair of homing pants. Like a tenacious pigeon, the same pair of age 7 Leeds United briefs kept appearing and reappearing in various places around the room. I first located them at the end of a PE lesson after everyone had got changed, perching jauntily on the back an abandoned chair, grey from too many washes and mildly...how to put this?...soiled.

I picked them up with a pencil and waved them in the air like a flag.

"Who is minus a pair of pants?" I asked.

Silence.

"Anyone accidentally take their pants off when they were getting changed and forget to put them back on again?"

*Silence*

*sigh* "Right, everybody check to see if they've got their pants on."

*flurry of pant checking related activity and much sniggering*

*Silence*

"One pair of Leeds pants, age 7, must belong to somebody," I called, whirling them around my head.

"Eurghhh, they're not mine!"

"Leeds are the scum!"

"They've got someone's bum juice on them."

"Last call for a pair of Leeds pants, going in the bin in five...four...three...two....ONE."

The pants hit the bin. The episode was over.

Or so I thought, until a few days later when they reappeared on my desk.

"Seriously now, whose are these pants?" I asked, and the class collapsed into fits of giggles, which was fair enough; pants are funny.

Again, they ended up in the bin. Throughout the rest of the school year, to the delight of all in the classroom, the persistent keks turned up in my desk drawer, in various PE kits ("EEEK! Miss Hale! Those skiddy pants are in my PE bag"), wedged behind the pipes of the class toilet, on the book shelf hidden behind "Sharks and Other Creatures of the Deep" ("ARGHHHHHH! MISS HALE! I touched them! I've got PANT FLEAS" and brazenly sellotaped to the window. They took on the status of a legend within the class. Rumours sprang up that they were haunted. One child swore that they glowed in the dark. Nobody ever claimed them, and no matter how much I tried to bury them in the bin, they just kept on reappearing. I never found out who was doing it although I suspect a colleague or a child in the class who had a particularly malevolent sense of humour. I finally got rid of them for good on the last day of summer term, although I half expected to receive them as a leaving present when I moved away a year later. Happily, I did not.

In this household, we seem to have the opposite of homing pants. We have a distinct absence of pants. Rory's pants, to be precise.

We potty trained him several months back and purchased two multi packs of underpants; some with pirates on ("ARRRR") and some featuring the beaming faces of Thomas the Tank Engine and his pestilential mates. We definitely started off with fourteen pairs of pants. We're now down to four. I discovered this a few days ago. One pair was in the wash, one pair was in his drawer where they were supposed to be, much rummaging about uncovered a stripy pair lurking at the bottom of his toy car box and an inspired moment of motherly intuition resulted in the discovery of the Percy the Green Engine ones stuffed into a Russian doll. The rest were nowhere to be found, and, knowing Rory as I do, I looked everywhere, even in the freezer. Especially in the freezer.

"Where have all your pants gone Rory?" I asked.

"Oh, I just don't know Mummy" came the innocent reply. "Maybe perhaps in the washing machine."

They were not in the washing machine.

I pondered this for a couple of days on my own, not wishing to drag Richard into the trivial domestic thoughts of a mother who is clearly Losing It, but eventually I gave in and asked if he'd seen any rogue pants anywhere.

"Oh," he said, "I caught Rory throwing a pair in the bin last week after he took them off."

"Rory", I asked, "have you been throwing your pants in the bin?"

"Yes, pants in bin. Very stinky indeed", he replied.

So that solves that. Ever since he was a tiny baby, we've thrown urine soaked nappies straight into the kitchen bin after removing them (go on, judge me. I'm sure I should have been wrapping them in little scented bags with odour neutraliser and anti bacterial what-have-yous inside them and throwing them in the dustbin. If it makes you feel better, we always put poo nappies in plastic bags and put them in the wheelie bin, although admittedly we usually left them festering on the doorstep for a few days because the bin was an entire 5 metre walk away, probably delighting the milkman and all other doorstep dwellers in the process). He was just copying what we'd always done. Slack parenting comes back and bites me on the arse yet again.

Tomorrow we will purchase another multi pack of age 2-3 pants, all of which we will not lose. I'm considering getting some Leeds United ones. They seem adept at coming back and biting you on the arse too

Things To Do With Your Child #8 - Public Transport

2011-09-26T20:04:00.001+01:00

Children are chauffeured everywhere these days. Everyone seems to own a car, and they're bundled into them from the word go and taken from pillar to post - baby signing classes, sensory hours, rhyme time, playgroup, music classes, soft play, baby gym - it's never ending. While I'm not denouncing cars (I can't drive, but that's my own choice, and if I ever pull my finger out and learn how to, my life would be much easier. I can completely see how they end up getting used so much), or baby and toddler classes (absolutely not my bag and I don't think they're of any major benefit, but you've got to get through the days as best as you can, so if you like them, go for it), but I do think that an important learning opportunity is being missed out on here. Walking, being pushed in a pushchair, going on buses and train journeys takes a fair bit longer than going by car, but the potential for learning is huge. Think of all the things you can point out while you walk, all the tiny details that you miss as you whizz by in your car, the infinite number of sweet wrappers, blobs of gum and bits of debris that your toddler can study in minute detail as you bellow at them to "hurry the Jesusing hell up" like an irascible shrew in dire need of beta blockers.

Likewise, train and bus journeys may not be the most easy thing to undertake with a toddler in tow, but there's scenery to point out, new experiences to be had, buttons to be pressed, 'pull only in an emergency' cords to prevent them from yanking. Above all, (most) children really enjoy a trip on a bus or a train. It doesn't really matter where you're going to - the trip is the best bit at this age. Go on - bite the bullet, gird your loins and hop on a peasant wagon occasionally. It will be worth it.

TAKING YOUR CHILD ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT

You will need:

A bus/train/tram of choice.

A destination.

A selection of shiny pennies for the fare.

Nerves of steel.

Risk assessment:

Child may lurch off seat due to sudden stops, however the greater risk is that they'll embarrass you horribly by remarking upon another passenger's body odour.

Amount of time it wastes in the never ending day:

Completely dependent on length of journey. We usually manage to dispense with an entire morning in this way.

Method:

Today dawned with one of those glorious autumnal mornings full of dappled sunlight and dew on the grass. It was a day for being outside and going somewhere different, so I decided to take Rory on the train. It's a 40 minute leisurely stroll to the nearest station, but not a problem if we take the pushchair, plus, to get there you have to walk up a particularly idyllic avenue lined with horse chestnut trees. We could stop along the way and gather conkers (I refer you back to the point about the dappled sunlight and the dew and stuff). OK, so we'd only be going to Crewe (an entirely joyless place) to have a hot chocolate and a muffin in the cafe and then come back again, but that wasn't the point.

Here is where I shall mutter about "best laid plans" and "bloody toddlers". Rory was quite taken with the idea of going on a train, having not been on one for about a year, but then inexplicably decided that he would not be wearing any clothes today and would instead lie on the floor in a floppy, immovable mass of limbs. It took 15 minutes for him to stop being a pain in the backside, then I lost the travel potty liners, and by the time I'd found them he'd removed his shoes and thrown them behind the TV. Eventually we left the house and set off at a brisk trot. All ideas of conker gathering in the sparkling dew were forgotten as I checked the time and broke in to a sprint, racing along the pavement with the pushchair bumping over cobbles, scattering pensioners to the four winds. "WOOHOOOOO!" shouted Rory. I said a silent prayer to the God of Dignity as I panted up the street; "Dear God, please let my thighs not be wobbling about too repulsively. Please let this bra be supportive enough. Please don't let me slip on a dog poo." I hitched up my jeans as I ran, wondering how it's at all possible that they can simultaneously create a muffin top and slip down, revealing my pants to all and sundry.

We arrived at the station just as the train pulled out. People on the opposite platform looked at me with sorrow in their eyes, and a fair bit of disgust as well as sweat had started to pool above my eyebrows. The next train to Crewe was in an hour's time. Fine, we'd just go somewhere in the opposite direction. I decided upon Alderley Edge, home to a lot of pink velour tracksuited footballer's wives and tweedy ladies who lunch. I lugged the pushchair up 55 steps and down another 55 steps over to the other platform, having been informed by the ticket attendant that if you're wheelchair bound and want to go to Manchester, you have to get the train to Crewe and then get a train back the other way because the steps are the only way over to the other platform. Nice. The train appeared, we got on it, and Rory spent 15 minutes of bliss hopping up and down and chattering excitedly.

We arrived at Alderley Edge in good spirits, Rory having been made a fuss of by the ticket man. "Do you need to wee?" I asked, brandishing the travel potty. "NO I DO NOT" came the reply. I bundled him back into the pushchair, tackled another several hundred steps, and went in search of a cafe. I bypassed Costa Coffee in favour of a little independent place, then wished I hadn't. We weaved our way to a table at the back, and as I unclipped my boy from the buggy, I realised that he had urinated all over it. Oh God. A quick look around the room confirmed that I couldn't get the pushchair into the toilet. and it was occupied anyway, so, sweating still, I pulled him out, yanked off his trousers and pants there and then and flashed a mutinous look that said "come on, make my day, dare to tut at me" at all the other customers while I put fresh clothes on him. The owner looked thoroughly delighted that we were using her busy cafe as a baby changing facility, and appeared positively homicidal as Rory remarked loudly that "there something very pongy indeed in here mummy" (I think he was referring to the freshly roasted coffee). We shared an overpriced chocolate milkshake as quickly as possible, paid up and left, Rory sitting on an emergency plastic bag, wee dripping from the buggy in an insolent little trail from our seat to the door.

The journey back was uneventful but pleasant. My son bounced happily in his seat, enjoying the wind in his hair through the open window of the train, and on the walk back home, we did stop and collect conkers, although entrusting Rory with the full bucket of them was a mistake as it only ensured that he had a full arsenal of weaponry to fling at the ginger cat from number 129 as we turned the corner to our street.

Now, why on earth would you ferry your child to and from a soulless class when you could have a morning like that? And has anyone got the number of a good driving instructor?

A Disgraceful Photo Shoot

2011-09-25T14:50:00.004+01:00

We moved into our house nearly four years ago and most of the walls are still bare. It's not down to laziness. Well, it's not entirely down to laziness. It's because I refuse to have anything on my walls that I don't love. If a piece of art is a treasured gift or something passed down via older members of the family, or something we found in a junk shop and loved, or was done by a friend, then it fulfils my strict criteria. Photographs are even harder. Richard and I got married in 2007, but we still don't have a wedding album and the only wedding photos we have on display are a treasured few taken by my oldest friend who is a photographer (but couldn't take many photos on the day because she was on bridesmaid duty). I'm crippled by indecision and by not loving the official photographs enough. They're beautiful and our wedding photographer did a great job, but there's something missing that I can't quite put my finger on, and that's why I still haven't got around to making an album or getting them framed.

Likewise, we have hundreds - perhaps thousands - of pictures of Rory, but they've never made it to the wall. Visitors to my house may be forgiven for thinking that I don't care about family enough to have them on display, but it's exactly the opposite - they're just not perfect enough.

With this in mind, I decided that a family photo shoot may be the only way forward. Now, when I talk about photographs not being perfect enough, I'm not talking about the lighting or the focus or the expressions on our faces. What I mean is that nothing quite seems to capture us as we really are, and I knew that nothing taken in an impersonal studio would capture us either. Rich and I are very very silly and when two silly people get married and have a child, the child comes out silly. Rory has laughed constantly since he was a few weeks old. In fact, the three of us rarely stop laughing. Our days are filled with funny faces, chasing around the house after each other and general messing about. Our days are not filled with tidiness and order or routine or beautiful clothes or any other Cath Kidston perfect version of family life. We are unruly. We have uncontrollable hair. We are not what one could ever call 'picture perfect'.

Enter Hannah Millard, a photographer whose work I have followed for quite a while. I've watched her raw talent grow and grow into something really rather special, and I knew that she was the perfect person to capture my family in all our domestic disgrace. She's quirky and original and her beautiful wedding photographs and portraits are full of happiness and character. We emailed back and forth for a few weeks, throwing around ideas for our collaboration, eventually emerging with a picnic theme with a difference. An enormous, messy, disgraceful difference. I won't say any more, I'll just leave you to look at some of the photos safe in the knowledge that our once bare walls are now spoilt for choice:

What do we think the odds are of Rory flinging a scone at a waitress next time we have lunch in a cafe?

Have a look at some of Hannah Millard's other beautiful work here and read her blog here. Do it. I can't recommend her enough.

I Can Cook?

2011-09-20T16:25:00.004+01:00

My child doesn't eat. Sorry, I mean he doesn't eat anything that he's supposed to eat. He'll happily wolf down cake, chocolate, ice-cream and chips if they're on offer. He's also partial to his toenails and the odd bit of playdough, oh, and the archaic crumbs that he finds between the sofa cushions. He's never really been bothered about eating, even when he was a tiny breastfeeding baby. It's just all too much of an inconvenience for him. He has things to do, people to see, things to open and tip all over the floor that are supposedly childproof. He's a busy man, you know. God knows how he's managed to grow into a two stone toddler; all those bits of tissue paper from the bin and grass must be fairly calorific after all.

Unfortunately, he's rather too keen on junk food. "My child doesn't really like fizzy drinks" say my friends. Pff. On the odd occasion that Rory's stolen a sip of lemonade, he looks like he's about to rupture something with the deliciousness of it all. It's getting embarrassing now. On waking the other day, before rubbing the sleep from his eyes, before the pillow creases had begun to fade from his face, he looked up at me and whispered "burgers" in tones far too lusty for a two year old. He then sat in the pushchair as we walked through town shouting "Can I have more Monster Munch Mummy?" over and over again, making me look like the sort of wretched mother who knowingly stuffs her child with salt, sugar and E numbers night and day. How many times have we fed our child Monster Munch? Once. One piece. It was obviously so delicious that it's stuck in his mind as the pinnacle of all culinary delights as he requests it over and over again, usually in restaurants.

Of course, I do try to be a good mum so I don't give in to most of his demands and I attempt to serve up a healthy family meal every day of the week. This is, without fail, ignored by Rory and often leads to a nuclear style meltdown. "I NO LIKE MUMMY" screams my child, drumming his little feet on the floor. " I am not your friend." Of course. How ridiculous of me to attempt to put nutrients into my son. I am completely deserving of such treatment. Tell you what - I'll stand in this corner and give myself a good thrashing with the wooden spoon shall I?

Yesterday, after a perfectly acceptable lunch of pasta in homemade tomato sauce with cheese on top had been refused and turned into an epic battle, I decided that a different approach was needed. Have you seen that I Can Cook programme on CBeebies? The one with the presenter with the impossibly perfect hair - Katy whatever her name is.* She's always cooking up food that looks like crap with kids and they seem to eat it (although they're probably rather handsomely paid to do so). "Today's recipe is going to be....cabbage and broad bean soup", she says. "Now doesn't that look yummy?"

"Mmmmmmmmm", say all the kids, rubbing their tummies with glee.

"You are WRONG, Katy", says Rory, pointing indignantly at the TV. "Looks like yuck".

Never mind, she's got the right idea. Involving children with preparing and cooking food is great for learning opportunities and encourages them to eat what they've made. I do a lot of baking with Rory and he helps me to make sandwiches and things, but I've never involved him in making anything more complex than a pizza before. Ah well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

We sang the hand washing song while we washed our hands (successful, even though I wanted to punch myself in the face for using the word "yucky").

"Today's recipe is....spicy sausage casserole", I say, fake smile plastered on my face. "Now doesn't that sound delicious?"

"Hmmmm", says Rory doubtfully and puts his apron on.

Oh God, cooking a main meal with a toddler is a nightmare. I managed to just about prise him away from fiddling with all the knobs that turn the hob on with the promise that he could hold a knife (just a butter knife - I'm not that stupid) and cut up the peppers. He was very enthusiastic about that part - the knife brandishing, not the peppers. The peppers remained defiantly un-chopped while he waved his butter knife about with a demonic expression of his face muttering "I stab you mummy". How the hell does he know what stabbing is anyway? Ripping the mushrooms into pieces was more successful. Meanwhile, I was chopping up sausages and attempting to ensure that he didn't touch them as I have a thing about raw meat. He then lost interest and did a runner up the stairs while I was covered in sausage meat. By the time I'd got everything into the pan and had washed my hands, he was in my bedroom, rifling through my make-up bag and decorating his genitals with Benetint. At this point I had to go and open the door to the Avon lady, who always manages to call round at the most inopportune moments. "Umm, no I can't quite remember where I put the brochure" I said apologetically, trying (and failing) to block the view of the carnage behind me while my semi naked child performed a painted bollock fashion parade on our front porch. No time to clean him up though, it was back to the kitchen from which was emanating a smell of burning sausages. Rory was convinced to throw a handful of kidney beans into the saucepan, then entrusted with the Worcestershire sauce bottle (foolish, in retrospect). He even crumbled an Oxo cube in the general direction of the pan, and it must be said that he snorted very little of it up his nose despite attempts to the contrary.

We then left it to simmer and embarked upon a clean up operation. When Rich arrived home from work, he entered a (semi) clean house to find his wife dishing up three steaming bowls of sausage casserole and a child devoid of any make-up on his balls. It was a charming domestic scene.

So, did Rory willingly eat the casserole that he helped to cook? Did he rub his tummy and say "yum yum" a lot like they do on I Can Cook? Did he buggery. He refused to take a mouthful and I had to resort to pretending that all his Brio Thomas the Tank Engine trains wanted to eat it ("Peep peep! Can I have some of your delicious dinner Rory?"), and even then he refused until I put on a scouse accent for each and every sodding engine.

Well, Katy from I Can Cook, that was so not worth it. As my child would say "I am not your friend".

*Ashworth - I've just googled her.

Things To Do With Your Child #8: Sensory Sandy Dough Stuff

2011-09-17T12:30:00.001+01:00

I do have to ask myself why I always end up doing this sort of mess inducing activity a couple of hours before Richard is due home from work on a Friday afternoon:

Tough week at the office darling? Never fear. Step onto the oasis of calm and relaxation that is your home:

Today we will be making a sort of silky, crumbly, sandy sensory dough that I used to make when I taught Reception. I think it's known as cloud dough, but that's a ludicrously fluffy name for something that spreads such a large proportion of filth throughout your house in such a short space of time. Just take the above photo as a warning. This is not an activity for the anally retentive.

SENSORY SANDY DOUGH STUFF:

You will need:

Flour

Baby Oil

An area of the house with no carpet in it. What are you still doing with a carpet in your house anyway? Has your toddler taught you nothing? I heartily recommend stripping it all out and coating everything with a big plastic sheet. Actually, I've been thinking recently that a padded cell sounds quite pleasant; nice and cosy, child proof, nobody can hear you scream and all with the added bonus of being wipe clean.

Risk assessment:

Apart from not tasting nice if eaten, no major risk to health aside from mental disorders caused by the sight of it flying through the air in all directions and covering your soft furnishings.

Amount of time it wastes in the never ending day:

About an hour.

Method:

Put flour and baby oil in a large bowl. You need 1 part baby oil to 8 parts flour. I tend to use 4 mugs of flour to half a mug of baby oil, which makes plenty for one small person hell bent on grinding it into your cushion covers. It's easy to make - chuck the two ingredients in the bowl and combine with your fingers (just like making a crumble topping) until it looks, as Nigella would say, "like damp sand". You could do this with your child. I didn't because we make an awful lot of apple crumbles and he's used to shovelling great handfuls of crumble mix into his mouth straight from the bowl. Feel free to judge me now - I don't care, it keeps him quiet and stops him from engaging in his other favourite baking activity of smashing eggs from a great height.

This makes a crumbly dough that feels soft to touch, smells lovely and behaves like damp sand. You can squidge it together (as demonstrated below by Mr Shark) and crumble it again.

We started off by making walls with ours and then knocking them down with the digger.

Then we did a bit of light sandcastle making with Rory's old stacking cups.

Then he dumped every available toy in the middle of it and scrabbled messily in it like a dog digging up a corpse while I sat and enjoyed the therapeutic effects of feeling sweet smelling silky sandy stuff squishing between my fingers, staring wistfully out of the window and remembering a time when I used to get paid for doing this sort of thing and my teaching assistant would clean up afterwards.

All in all, a very nice time was had by both of us. Rory liked how the dough changed shape and texture and used it in all sorts of games (mainly putting a couple of pirates and a happy land alien in the path of Thomas the Tank Engine and using him as a sort of murderous snow plough) and he joined with in the epic clean up operation afterwards with his dustpan and brush. We would have continued to play with this for a bit longer, but the activity was brought to an abrupt halt when Rory (with delighted expression on his face) uttered the joyous words: "oh, I put some up my bum", sending me running upstairs for the baby wipes and emergency cotton bud. That's the third time this week ladies and gentlemen. The third time.

The Great Toilet Paper Incident of 2010

2011-09-14T13:17:00.003+01:00

This post is brought to you by popular demand. It's taken me a while to get around to writing about it as it's the sort of post that you need to work up to. Today I am feeling strong enough to share it with you, so please enjoy it and be grateful that your child is not Rory:

The day had started so well. With the help if an unprecedented surge of energy and a bit of Bob the Builder style self cheerleading ("Can I clean it? Yes I can"), I'd managed to hoover the floors, clean the bathroom and - get this - wash and dry all the sofa covers without Rory causing too much damage to anything while I was busy. He was nearing 18 months and still quite a handful, but I was able to leave him unsupervised for a couple of minutes as long as I was in the next room. Such was the success of the morning that we'd also been to Aldi for some essentials (fruit, veg, toilet roll), and, buoyed up by my achievements, I dumped the pack of toilet roll by the stairs to take up later, plonked Rory in front of CBeebies and took myself off to the kitchen to knock up a nutritious vegetable soup for Rory to ignore at lunch time.

It took me about 10 minutes to prep all the vegetables for the soup and get it bubbling on the stove, and throughout this time I kept a sharp ear out for Rory. I could hear him wandering about occasionally, but otherwise all was quiet.

"What are you doing Rory?" I called a couple of times.

"Cleaning," came the answer.

I was satisfied with this. He'd recently acquired a toy dustpan and brush and pretend cleaning was his favourite game.

Only, it turned out that that wasn't the sort of cleaning that he was doing. On re-entering the living room, I discovered that he'd managed to get into the toilet paper. I'd never really thought of toilet paper as being something that could explode, but it looked exactly like he'd stuffed the packet with dynamite and detonated it. He'd done an impressive Andrex puppy impersonation with a couple of the rolls, which were festooned around the room in a cheery, convivial sort of way, and the rest of it he'd ripped into clumps and sprinkled with water from his sippy cup. He had then used these makeshift j-cloths to 'clean the sofa'. Toilet paper disintegrates when it gets wet. And it sticks to things. And it can cover quite a distance. My newly cleaned sofa was covered in clusters and shreds of damp toilet roll, some of which had been forcefully ground in during his cleaning endeavours.

I erupted. I'm ashamed to admit it, but you have to understand that I am a hopeless housewife and for once - just once - I was looking forward to my husband coming home to a super clean house. I shouted and scolded and put him on the naughty cushion, then yanked the sofa covers off and shoved them back into the washing machine in a foul mood. It took quite an effort to do the whole kiss and cuddle bit after his time on the naughty cushion was up, but I managed it, and then went and brought him his lunch.

At first I was annoyed beyond belief when Rory refused to touch the soup that I'd so lovingly made, but when he also refused to eat the bread and even turned down a strawberry yoghurt I started to worry. He wouldn't even look at me and wasn't chatting away as he usually did. I felt his head. He was a little warm. Or was he a lot warm? I can never tell. I took a good look at him. Something was different. His face looked puffy. I felt around his glands. Were they up? I can never tell that either. I decided that they absolutely, definitely were up and went into panic mode. Mumps. It had to be mumps. Can't mumps be serious in babies? Something about infertility? Or was it meningitis? Panic. Twitch. Oh God, I was horrible to him and he was feeling ill and he was only trying to help. Poor little boy. What a terrible mother. I got straight on the phone to the GP surgery, where the following conversation took place:

World Weary Receptionist: "Hello, doctor's surgery."

Me: "Oh hi, I'm calling about my baby. He's really not very well. We need to see a doctor today please, as soon as possible."

World Weary Receptionist: "What's your name please?"

Me: "It's Lisa Jarmin."

World Weary Receptionist: "Oh, Rory's mum? He's the little boy with the toy meerkat who ate the antibacterial hand gel isn't he?"

Me: "Yes...no...yes...well...it was Rory who ate it, Les the meerkat was just an innocent bystander."

World Weary Receptionist: (as if talking to very stupid small child) "Yes, that's what I meant."

Me: "Of course."

World Weary Receptionist: He's a character, that one. What's he done this time?"

Me: "I think he's got mumps."

World Weary Receptionist: "Right, and can you tell me his symptoms?"

Me: "Well, his face is all swollen and he's off his food and he seems a bit hot to me. He's not talking much either. Seems a bit quiet, you know?"

World Weary Receptionist: "And are his glands up?"

Me: "Yes. Well, I think they are. They must be because his face is so swollen. Poor lamb, he looks just like a hamster with its cheeks full of f...."

I looked at Rory. He looked back with an expression that very clearly said "I am about to introduce you to a whole new level of mortification."

Me: "Will you bear with me a minute?"

World Weary Receptionist: "Tut. OK."

Me: "Rory, have you got something in your mouth?"

Rory looked at the floor and shuffled his feet in a delinquent manner.

Me: "Rory, SPIT. IT. OUT."

(Pause. Spit).

Me: "Hello? Turns out we won't be needing that appointment after all. He had a wodge of toilet roll stuffed in each cheek."

World Weary Receptionist: "........"

Gin anybody?

Moon Dough Grocery Store Review

2011-09-11T20:32:00.001+01:00

And lo, there was much rejoicing at Domestic Disgrace Towers.

Yesterday, our postman turned up with new boots for me, a Bravissimo catalogue for Richard (eye roll) and – fanfare – a Moon Dough Grocery Store set for Rory and I to review. Yessssss!

We haven’t come across Moon Dough before, so there was a palpable air of anticipation as we opened the box. A sensible adult would have read the instructions but as Rory was practically turning himself inside out with excitement, I just ripped open the Moon Dough packets and we dived straight in.

The box contained packets of red, yellow and white Moon Dough, a plastic cash register which MAGICALLY MOULDS COINS (note shouting to indicate appropriate level of excitement here) and various grocery moulds which either snap shut and open “Like a suitcase” (said Rory) or you twist to remove your creation.

We ignored most of it to start with while we got to grips with the Moon Dough, which is seriously addictive stuff to play with. It’s very light, a bit like solid foam in texture, really easy to mould and shape and – stop the press – you can mix the colours together. Well, it impressed me anyway.

Eventually, we had a go at making pretend groceries with the moulds. Rory found this a bit tricky, but he’s a bit under 2 and a half years old, and Moon Dough is aimed at the 3-5 market, so I imagine he’ll find it easier as he gets older and develops his motor skills further. He did manage it though, and when he discovered that you could put dough into the top of the cash register and turn the handle to make coins, he was sold. (As was I, if only because it reminded me of the chocolate biscuit mill episode of Bagpuss). He spent 20 minutes stuffing the dough in and turning that handle. That is possibly the longest he’s ever spent doing anything apart from the time that he removed everything from the fridge and threw it in the bin when I wasn’t paying attention.

Between us, we managed to make the following items below:

(l-r) some coins, a baguette, a pineapple, a milk carton, an apple, a tin and, um, something unidentifiable and phallic.*

Groceries and coins made, we decided to play shops and argued about who was going to be the shopkeeper. To solve the dispute, we gave Rory's meerkat, Les (don't ask) the little shopping basket and both served him, which worked pretty well until Rory ended up forcibly ejecting him from the shop for stealing a pineapple and threatened to call the police. I do sometimes worry about my son’s imagination.

All in all, we declared this set to be a success. We all liked playing with it (even Richard tore himself away from the Bravissimo catalogue), Rory was engaged for a good 50 minutes or so, there were loads of opportunities for role play and he asked if we could play with it again as soon as he got up this morning. It was more or less mess free (although this may not be the case if you have carpet – I’d definitely keep it on a table surface) and easy to clear up afterwards. At £15.99, it’s not something I could afford to pick up as a treat for Rory, but we will definitely be telling Father Christmas about Moon Dough sets this year.

*Have had a look at the contents list on back of the box. Turns out that it’s a chicken leg. This seems obvious now.

Five Things You Should Know About Your Father

2011-09-09T13:18:00.001+01:00

Rory idolises Richard. He spends the last few hours of every afternoon asking me when Daddy’s coming home, and the second he hears his key in the lock, he’s primed and ready to fling himself around his legs with a gleeful shout of “Love you Daddeeeeeeeeeeee!” Incidentally, the only time he’s ever told me that he loves me was when he was trying to convince me to give him some of my Chocolate Buttons. This is infuriating as I am, after all, the one who endured nine months of nausea and thirty hours of agony, then was sliced, ripped and torn in unmentionable places just to bring him in to this world. I am the one who sat up all night breast feeding him every two hours for the first six months of his life, and I am the one who spends every day with him trying to keep him entertained and happy. Richard waltzes in at 6.30, pushes a few cars around, pulls silly faces and chases him around the sofa then puts him to bed so he can have a beer, yet he’s the one who gets all the love. I feel wronged.

So, Rory, here is a list of five things that I think you should know about your father. Read them and weep:

He wanted to call you Ulysses. Seriously. I had to explain to him that as we are both shortish, pale, need glasses and are slightly ginger, it was highly unlikely that you’d end up being able to carry off such a name. His other contributions to the baby name list were Wolfgang and Thurston. You had a lucky escape my son.

He was such a geek at school that he set up a club called The Weirdos, which would only accept the most nerd-like and unpopular people in his year group. He was then ousted from the group by the rest of The Weirdos for being too weird. This is one of the reasons that I married him. The lesson here is that geeks are more fun and well rounded than the popular kids, although this just might not become apparent until they’re in their 20s. Until then, you have to endure several years of misery at school, but it will be worth it. As your father says, “I may have been a weirdo at school, but I still ended up marrying a girl with big boobs.” Profound.

Ask him about his trip to Paris many years before he met me, and the vomiting and the helpful lady who was “giving him directions”. Just ask him. This is the definition of inappropriate behaviour. He told me about it on our first date, along with a lot of other unspeakable things. Apparently I have the first date persona of a female Michael Parkinson and can get people to open up and tell me all their secrets within fifteen minutes of meeting them. Hopefully you’ll inherit this useful trait from me and not your father’s propensity for naughtiness.

He exists on a diet of sweets, cake, biscuits, pork scratchings, pizza and Lucozade. He swills Coca Cola around his mouth several times before he swallows it. He will cheerfully eat an entire Sara Lee Black Forest gateau for lunch and nothing else. Despite this, he’s pretty healthy, on the slender side and only has one tiny filling in his teeth. This is an example of injustice. Do not copy him.

He is a skinflint. He resents spending money on anyone apart from himself and as long as he can afford his imported trainers, he is happy for his wife and child to walk around in rags. Rags, I tell you. OK, not rags, but you see where I’m going with this, right? The man is too tight to buy you a little rail to stop you from falling out of bed. That’s why I have to wedge you in with hardback books every night. Yesterday evening while you were ~~palmed off on my mum~~ spending quality time with your grandparents, he took me out to see PJ Harvey in Manchester using tickets that he had bought rather than been given by a record label for a change. When she was given a standing ovation at the end, your father refused to stand up because “I paid for these seats, I’m going to sit in them for as long as possible. And anyway, it’s not like I’ve seen Jesus or anything. Bring me Jesus and I’ll stand up.” If you want to go to university in the future, I’d start saving up now if I were you.

So Rory, that’s your beloved father in a nutshell. I have to admit that he’s not all bad though. He can charm the birds from the trees and sell ice to the Eskimos. You seem to have inherited this trait, so use it well, but don’t become a drug dealer and don’t knock anyone up or you’ll have me to answer to. (Not that he’s done either of those things – I’m just saying). Plus he loves us very much and we’ll always be on his team, which is a winning place to be. In the days before you came along, I used to be his wingman, but it seems that that’s your job now. Just try to remember your mother when you’re both flying high.

Go to Notes From Home to see what other people want their children to know about their fathers.

What Does a Child Bring to Your Life?

2011-09-07T21:24:00.004+01:00

You're expecting me to gush about a feeling of unconditional love like no other and dimply smiles and heartfelt joy aren't you? Those are the traditional thing that spring to mind when discussing a topic like this. Well, that's all true, but that's not how we do things in these parts. Lets just take it for granted that, yes, I adore my son and think he's brilliant, and now that's out of the way we can get on with the interesting stuff that you really want to know:

1. A large selection of plastic tat. Before your child is born you will discuss with other pregnant friends and anyone who will listen the importance of traditional wooden toys and how you plan to never let any plastic rubbish over the threshold of your house. You will purchase charming items like this:

and marvel at how seamlessly they slot into the chosen decor of your house. Several months down the line you go to put the baby down for a sleep, slip on a half chewed Sticklebrick and land on a VTech Sing and Discover piano, which immediately starts playing to itself, waking the baby up and causing you to to sit, head in hands, snivelling and peeping out from between your fingers at the vast array of hideous, beeping, whizzing, flashing, all singing, all dancing technicolour plastic crap that has taken over your house. Never fear; by the time your child is a year old you'll have surrendered yourself and your home to anything that keeps him or her quiet and out from under your feet for more than five minutes at a time, commercial plastic rubbish included.

2. Vomit. Ah, vomit. Get used to that cheesy stench because it's going to be following you around for a long long time. You go into motherhood with the knowledge that babies spit up a little bit of each milk feed for a few months. You grow to learn that it's not always just 'a little bit' and you will soon develop a good understanding of the word 'projectile'. You will have baby sick in your hair, down your cleavage and in your knickers. It will collect in crusts on your upholstery and there's about an 80% chance of finding a blob in your shoe at any given time. This is to ease you in gently, because when they're on solids you'll be picking chunks of cauliflower cheese out of your bra on a regular basis. You get used to it. I have an absolutely crippling phobia of vomit, but I managed to deal with even the most epic of baby puke incidents, and even regurgitated food. I still absolutely lose the plot over tummy bug hurling and have to draft in somebody else to deal with it, but I coped admirably in the face of the baby sick phase and if anybody ever feels like crafting me a small medal to reward me for services to a spewing child in the face of adversity, it would be gratefully received.

3. Exhaustion. For the last month of pregnancy, you are convinced that you are desperate to get the baby out of you ASAP. You're seriously uncomfortable, you can't get out of bed without someone to winch you up and there's likely to be stomach acid bubbling out of your nose at some point. Damn it, you're knackered and hot and enormous and you want that baby out of you.

When the baby is a couple of weeks old, you will seriously consider shoving it back up from whence it came just so you can sleep for a couple of hours. This gets better as your child gets older, but you will never sleep soundly again. Not everyone has the sort of child that causes the sort of tiredness that makes water fall involuntarily from your eyes with the effort of keeping them open, but all of them have the ability to run rings around you and leave you gasping, hollow eyed and wondering if feeling rested was all just a beautiful dream.

Here is Richard demonstrating eye bleeding exhaustion with a 4 month old Rory

4. Noise. They come out crying and rarely seem to stop. This is followed a few months later by a phase in which they learn to make a repetitive high pitched shrieking noise like a cat that's just been kicked up the arse. Then comes babbling and jabbering, and then there's the screaming phase. Eventually they learn to talk and then they never shut up, especially when you have PMT and a migraine brewing. Most of the conversation will be about Thomas the knobbing Tank Engine (see below). At this point you will begin to think wistfully of the cat that had been kicked up the arse phase.

5. Germs. Number one on the list of things that nobody ever tells you about having a baby is how they're always ill (although it's jostling for position with how it's a seriously good idea to stick a pack of maternity pads in the freezer before you give birth). Rory spent the entire first year of his life sniffling, coughing, whining, overheating, going limp and floppy, puking, having diarrhoea and getting mysterious rashes. Richard and I also spent the first year of Rory's life sniffling, coughing, whining, overheating etc, only we did it on three hours sleep a night. I had no idea that small people were ill so often. He seemed to pick up germs from nowhere and would generously share them with us. The weekend that we all got the Winter Vomiting Virus remains the worst few days of my entire life. If you think being ill is bad, then try looking after an ill child. Then try looking after an ill child when you're ill yourself. Then try looking after an ill child when you're ill yourself and so is your partner.

6. An Interesting Variety of Stains and Smears. You see that pristine white wall over there? Not for long you don't. Children's artwork is precious, absolutely precious, but not so much when it's a mixed media collage of make-up, glue and faeces on your sofa. And even though Rory impressed me deeply with his early knowledge of colours and geometric shapes, I was not filled with pride and joy when he toddled over to tell me that he'd drawn a green triangle on the television. Likewise, the day that he lined his wax crayons up on top of the hot radiator was not a high point of motherhood for me.

7. Thomas the Tank Engine. You will grow to loathe this odious little bleeder and his colourful chums. "Well bust my buffers", said Thomas. Oh, just cock off.

8. An extensive knowledge of CBeebies and Milkshake. For the uninitiated, these are TV channels for small children. I don't want to hear that your child is never going to watch TV. Go away. I give you six months before you cave in and about two months after that before you have formed an opinion about all the programmes and the presenters. "Oh no, it's the spider episode of Auntie Mabel and Pippin again" you'll say as you wait expectantly on the sofa (it's called 'Come Outside' really, but we insiders all know it as 'Auntie Mabel and Pippin'. Because we're cool like that). You will also begin to leer at the presenters like a dried up old crone who's just been put on a mega dose of HRT. Mr Bloom seems to be the current mummy favourite, with a slightly lesser but ardent following of admirers for Chris off Show me Show Me and Andy whatever his name is who does the continuity links. Mister Maker rocks my sad little world. I know it's wrong, I know it's dirty, I know he's irritating and he looks about 12 and wears a really bad spotty waistcoat, but oh my God, I totally would. Sigh.

9. Miscellaneous: Headlice, a selection of sticks, leaves and stones that they find on their travels, headaches, scabies, rampant consumerism, bruises all over your knees from constantly being down on the floor making robots out of Duplo, toy car related injuries, marital discord, at least one trip to A&E in an ambulance, guilt, an empty bank account, an unexplained trail of ripped up bits of tissue that have been chewed. I could go on, but I think that will do for now. Children: Aren't they brilliant?

Things To Do With Your Child #7: Dressing up as a ninja.

2011-09-06T17:10:00.003+01:00

Yeah, really bored here today.

NINJA DRESSING UP FUN:

You will need:

Two t-shirts. Not yours. Use daddy's as he probably won't notice that they've got stretched out of shape.

This web page so you can follow the instructions: http://www.ehow.com/how_2265800_make-ninja-mask-out-tshirt.html

Toddler/child with really stupid sense of humour

No shame

Risk assessment:

Remove all pieces of Lego and toy cars from the vicinity before attempting any stealth ninja moves. We found out about this the hard way.

Amount of time it wastes in the never ending day:

How long have you got?

Method:

Lets just clarify one thing: I have not been teaching Rory about ninjas or any other form of violence. As far as he is concerned, a ninja is a person who wears an amusing mask and sneaks about a lot, doing high kicks and making comedy noises.

This one was easy:

Followed instructions to turn t-shirts into masks for Rory and I, then embarked on ninja stealth mission around the ground floor of our house, jumping out at each other and pulling some first rate martial arts moves as we went. Much hilarity.

Not so much hilarity as we stood by the window while I adjusted his mask and realised that a horrified neighbour was watching from across the street, potentially under the impression that I was a masked predator smothering a child. Encouraged him to give her a cheery wave to indicate that all was well.

Less hilarity still when I opened the door to a window and fascia board salesman with a t-shirt around my neck and attempted to conduct a conversation about why I wanted him to go away and never darken my door again when Rory the Masked Warrior suddenly sprang into view from behind the sofa, doing an approximation of a king fu kick and shouting "MINGE". (Close to 'ninja', but not quite. Well tried son). On the plus side, I don't think the salesman will be coming back any time soon.

The University of Life

2011-09-05T07:13:00.001+01:00

I lay in bed this morning thinking about how it's the start of a new term this week and suddenly had the crushing realisation that it's been 14 years since I started university. (I say university, - it was more like drama school with a degree at the end of it, but you get the idea). FOURTEEN YEARS. How can it be that long since I packed my suitcase with my mum's worst saucepans and an abundance of ill advised PVC clothing and set off on the road to studentdom? I was just thinking about how it only seemed like yesterday when a little voice from the next bedroom started demanding "getting up and playing cars time now mummy" and informing me that he would be removing his pants imminently, which rather brought it home to me that there have indeed been fourteen years of adulthood in the interim period between starting my degree and now.

"How different and wonderful life is now", I thought. I'm now a successful adult with a husband and a child and a completely different lifesty...oh, wait a minute.

	Life as student	Life as stay at home mum

Occupation	Drama student. Waitress/chef during the holidays.	Stay at home mum who occasionally does a bit of writing or sews things to make people look pretty at weddings for cash. Wiper of snot. Dodger of housework. General drudgery.
Living accommodation	Terraced hovel on street inhabited by Wakefield criminals and their savage offspring. Heating didn’t work unless you kicked the boiler. Colour blind approach to décor courtesy of Mr Khan (landlord), who was always in Pakistan whenever anything needed fixing. Small colony of woodlice in the bath.	Semi detached 1950s shack which we bought with the intention of doing up. This bright idea was put on hold when I unexpectedly became pregnant, so everything is half finished or not started at all. Heating only works in short bursts, toilet doesn’t flush unless you have the knack, colour blind approach to décor (courtesy of previous owner). No woodlice to speak of but large infestation of flying ants inhabit the kitchen from time to time.
Money	Reliant on student loan and working all summer as a waitress/chef. Still managed to afford to get hair cut at Saks every 2 months I seem to recall.	Reliant on husband and have to ask him every time I want something which makes me feel like a gold digger, so I don’t. And we’re always penniless by a week before payday anyway. Cut own hair. It shows.
Food	101 ways with tinned tomatoes and Smartprice kidney beans. Pies from the local shop. Pop Tarts. Sunday lunch at weird pagan Wetherspoons pub at top of road.	101 ways with tinned tomatoes and Smartprice kidney beans. Occasionally gin.
Night Life	Cackling over cheap red wine with housemates, stumbling into taxi to awful club with sticky floors, entire night spent dodging various irksome men, falling into bed at 4am, naked apart from one shoe.	Occasional meal out with husband during which we giggle like excited 15 year olds who have been allowed out to the pub for the first time, get hammered on half a bottle of wine each and are back home in time for The Apprentice. (Fully clothed).
The Walk of Shame	Involves waving to the milkman at 5am wearing very small dress and wondering where I’ve left my keys/credit card/moral standards.	Involves walking to the One Stop shop at 9am in pyjamas and flip flops with a similarly attired toddler, safe in the knowledge that I left my dignity on the labour room floor 2 years ago along with a fair proportion of my blood.
Daytime	Good day: In college at 8.30am, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for dance class. Classes and rehearsals all day, home by 6.30. Bad day: Slumped on sticky brown sofa staring slack jawed at Supermarket Sweep, chain eating Ginsters pies.	Good day: Up at crack of dawn, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for playgroup. Baking, playing cars and a trip to the swings follow. Daddy home by 6.30. Bad day: Slumped on sticky brown sofa staring slack jawed at In the Night Garden, would be chain eating Mini Milks but Rory takes a dim view of me eating any food on my own and steals them from me.
Conflict	Bickering with housemates over whose turn it is to do the washing up.	Bickering with husband over whose turn it is to do the washing up. Debating with toddler the necessity for wearing more to playgroup than wellies and a superhero cloak. Berating toddler for sliding my debit card deep into the crack under the hearth again.
Sex life	Abundant. Colourful. Overly convoluted.	I’m sorry, what?
Clothes	From vintage shops that smell of biscuits or crap places like New Look due to supposed lack of money.	Errrr, I made a new top out of a pillowcase a few months ago that makes me look exactly like I’m wearing…well…a pillowcase. Does that count? Everything else is years old and covered in Pritt Stick.
Looks	Can’t be bothered to put make-up on but still look good because I’m 20 years old with killer cheekbones.	Can’t be bothered to put make-up on and look like a hag beast because I’m 33 and haven’t slept for two years due to insomniac baby. Cheekbones AWOL.
Transport	Bus. Train. Walking.	Bus. Train. Walking. Thank God I don’t drive actually or I’d be a good few stone heavier.
Plans for the future	Graduate, be fabulous grown up with amazing career and generally brilliant life.	Sleep. Obtain more gin.

Bollocks.

Product Review: Fit Fruit & Vegetable Wash

2011-09-04T07:30:00.005+01:00

Much excitement in the Domestic Disgrace household yesterday when the postman delivered my first product to review. To put this into context, other high points of the day were getting the washing out on the line and finding half a Kit Kat in my sock drawer but, nevertheless, it was still exciting.

So, I have in front of me a bottle of Fit antibacterial fruit and vegetable wash. This is what the company who makes it have to say about it:

"From kitchens to bathrooms, toilets and all household surfaces we clean and disinfect every bit of our home - as well as wash our hands before handling food - but is the food we eat clean? Short of scrubbing your fruit and vegetables with a detergent what can you do to protect yourself and the family? The solution is Fit Fruit & vegetable Wash, made of natural ingredients, which removes pesticides and bacteria leaving no aftertaste or smell, so you get just the taste and nutrition that nature intended."

My first reaction to this was one of scepticism, after all, I am a slacker who doesn't "clean and disinfect every bit of my home". My excuse is that a bit of dirt is good for the immune system, plus I reckon I've had worse in my mouth than a grubby apple (I know, I know, you can't buy class like that), so it's not exactly going to kill me.

Pesticides are a different matter though. In an ideal world, the Disgrace household would buy and eat only organic produce, but money is tight, so unless we grow our own veg (unlikely - attempted this last year, resulting in a bumper crop of one courgette and four green tomatoes with a bonus plague of greenfly) it's not going to happen. Sometimes as I hand Rory a bowl of fruit I have a niggling, guilty worry about it, but I never get much further than that. Could Fit Wash be the answer to the problem?

Yesterday I tested it on a range of fruit and veg. It's really easy to use - just spray on, rub in and rinse under the tap for a few seconds. My apple tasted fine afterwards and the skin was noticeably less waxy. The cabbage still tasted the way cabbage is intended to taste. But the best and most noticeable results came when I tried it on some grapes.

Here's a photo I took showing (left to right) an unwashed grape, a grape washed only in water and a grape washed with Fit.

The difference is clear to see, but it was the taste test that convinced me. You know how when you eat a grape straight from the fruit bowl you get a slightly chemical taste followed by a bit of a numb feeling as all the saliva is sucked from your mouth, only to be relieved when you bite the grape and release the juice? (Yet still I keep eating them. Pleasure and pain is the only explanation. Or gross stupidity. One of the two). Well, it turns out that grapes aren't meant to do that. Who knew? It must be caused by some sort of pesticide or...I don't know...weird grape fungus or something because the grapes that I washed with Fit Wash didn't do that and tasted so much fresher and more pleasant for the removal of whatever covers them.

OK then Fit Wash people, now I'm convinced. Your product does what it says on the tin and serves a valid purpose. I felt extra smug as I served up our food: No dirt or chemicals would be going into my son. Until I caught him on his hands and knees licking the kitchen floor a bit later on. Seriously, why do I bother?

So, if your child is more sensible than mine (i.e. doesn't make a habit of deliberately ingesting filth) and you would like to try this product, it's available at www.buyfit.co.uk in the form of a 350ml spray for £4.99 or a 950ml bottle of the soak for £5.99. I'd say it's well worth the money for peace of mind, the smug factor and delectable grapes.

What's In My Handbag

2011-09-03T18:05:00.001+01:00

I took this photo for a little project that Britmums are doing about what is in a mother's handbag. I think it's supposed to show how diverse and resourceful we all are, but all it's actually done is reveal that I am a disgusting skank in comparison to everybody else. The photo and list of contents are below, but please note that I decided not to photograph the main content of the bag, which was bits of fluff, biscuit crumbs, soggy, half chewed bits of those Wotsit crisp things that you can buy for babies, the detritus from when a face powder compact exploded at some point around Christmas 2009 and what looked like a piece of cooked spaghetti that had dried out and stuck to the lining. Shameful, I know. My solution to this reprehensible state of affairs is not to take a bottle of Milton Fluid and a sponge to my bag and scrub it out, but to suggest to Richard that I need a new one. This one is a health hazard.

CONTENTS:

A travel potty

A complete change of clothes (for Rory, not me. I don't wear pirate pants)

My wallet, containing very little in the way of money

A notebook

A bag of organic snacks for toddlers, probably out of date as he turns his nose up whenever I offer them

My perfume

Antibacterial hand gel

A lone sock

Calpol (but no spoon...)

A car with a bit of unidentifiable crap stuck to the side

Keys

A scrunched up Waitrose bag

Squished bit of Playdoh covered in fluff and some weird brown flakes of something

Chewing gum

A sticklebrick

An empty packet of chocolate buttons

An orange crayon

Drugs galore (prescription only, obviously)

My inhaler

Lip balm

A screwed up grocery receipt

Things To Do With Your Child #6: Making Musical Instruments

2011-08-31T12:17:00.002+01:00

It is around this time of year that I start to pine for my old job. I used to love getting my classroom all set up and ready for my new class in September and right now, teachers everywhere are preparing to go back to work after the glorious 6 weeks of summer holiday. Doubtless, when I walk past the local primary school next week and see the poor sod on playground duty trying to remove three new reception kids from their leg so they can drink their coffee and screeching ineffectively about only using skipping ropes for the intended purpose I will be delighted that I am now a stay at home mum, but at the moment I feel a bit nostalgic and sad. So much so that I had a brief flick through my old planning folder for my reception class last night in search of activities for Rory. I hit the jackpot with an old lesson plan about making musical instruments:

MAKING A RAIN STICK AND A DRUM:

You will need:

A kitchen roll tube, minus kitchen roll. This will be no problem as you used the last of the kitchen roll up a few days ago when mopping up that biblical flood of wee.

Paper

Paints (or other mess making equipment)

Things to print with (optional). We used a bit of Duplo, a sticklebrick, a cotton reel, a pine cone, a star shaped stamp, a button and Rory's sleeve, although that wasn't in the original plan. Child initiated activities and so forth.

The lentils/rice etc that you scraped up off the floor the other day.

Tin Foil

An empty tin

A balloon

Things to hit a pretend drum with. (pencils?)

Glue

Tape

Risk assessment:

Risk of child eating dried lentils: Very high.

Risk of child injuring self on tin can despite you childproofing it: Very high

Risk of child attempting to eat balloon: Yeah, you'd think this wasn't even a consideration but it turns out to be pretty high.

Amount of time it wastes in the never ending day:

You have to do this in 3 stages:

Decorating paper - about 20 minutes

Making instruments: 15 minutes

Breaking instruments: 3 seconds.

Method:

First, you need to decorate two sheets of A4 paper. I decided that we would print on ours to give our instruments an aesthetically pleasing tribal motif. I can only guess that I forgot to take my medication last night and was having some sort of manic delusion of grandeur. Rory quite happy to print for approximately 30 seconds and then it descended into the usual finger/hand/elbow painting chaos.

When the paper is dry, glue it around your kitchen roll tube. Rory immediately located some Balamory stickers under the sofa and set about bastardising the pleasing tribal effect with PC Plum's curmudgeonly face.

Cut two circles of paper a bit bigger than the ends of the tube (by, for example, drawing around the wine glass that you've been gazing longingly at since 10am). Make little snips around the edge of the circle and bend them upwards, then fix the circle to the end of the tube with lots of tape.

Fashion some big twisty spiral shapes out of tin foil that will just about fit into the tube and stuff them in, then get child to sprinkle lentils into tube.

Stick the other circle of paper to the other end of the tube as before.

Demonstrate enthusiastically and hand to child as if presenting them with one of the seven wonders of the world.

Watch helplessly as child deftly removes one of the ends and tips lentils all over the sofa.

Weep inwardly and feel like useless, unappreciated mother as child flings the tube to one side and shrieks with joy as he throws lentils everywhere.

But it's OK! You have a second instrument to make! What toddler could fail to be impressed by a drum? Here we go with instrument number two:

Child proof your empty tin can by sticking lots of brown tape over the sharp edge.

Leave room to fetch other sheet of decorated paper.

Return to room 10 seconds later to find child merrily picking all the brown tape off and running his finger speculatively around the razor sharp can edge.

Re-child proof tin can and glue the decorated paper around it.

Hide Balamory stickers to protect tribal design.

Cut end off balloon and stretch it over the open end of the tin. Secure with an elastic band.

Demonstrate hitting drum with a pencil. It actually makes quite an impressive noise. What child could fail to be won over by that?

Mine. He hits it about 3 times then pulls the elastic band off, removes the balloon skin and recommences removing the tape in his quest to sever his fingers. Ungrateful little...

At this point I remove the tin from his grasp, put Tellytubbies on and stomp off to the kitchen to aggressively load the dish washer.

Rory wanders through after a few minutes, leaving a trail of lentils in his wake.

"What you doing Mummy?" he asks, amiably.

Dying inside, Rory. Dying inside.

In Pursuit of Smugness

2011-08-29T11:59:00.003+01:00

Wouldn't it be lovely to be smug? How satisfying it must feel to be so complacent and pleased with yourself that you can go to bed every night thinking nothing more than "well done me". As someone who goes to bed every night thinking "oh well" or, occasionally, "pffff", I'd quite like some of that.

I first became aware of the concept of smugness in primary school. Every day in assembly I sat behind the same girl in my year. She was bright, she was keen, she excelled at netball (I, on the other hand, excelled at getting hit in the face by the ball whilst missing the net entirely), she always had her hand up in class, she didn't spend lunchtime playing perilous chasing games with the boys, preferring to stand in a circle of giggling girls, making up dances to chart songs, and to top it all off she had smug hair. You know what smug hair is, right? There's a girl with it in every class. Every morning, her mum sent her to school with a perfect french plait, and every afternoon she went home, hair still in that perfect french plait and not sticking out in all directions. My mum couldn't even do a french plait and even if she could, a) she would never have had time to do one before school because we were always late and b) I have the sort of hair that defies all attempts at restraint and gets dishevelled just by being looked at, so it would have been a futile gesture. There is a woman who lives on the same road as me who has smug hair (shiny, perfect, straight, probably looks that way when she gets out of bed). She is also skinny and perfectly groomed even though she has a little girl (with perfect french plait of course), a toddler and a baby. I can't even find a pair of jeans without a snail trail of PVA glue all over them in the morning and I only have one child. What hope is there for me? I hate her a little bit. OK, quite a lot.

Smugness looks like a perfect french plait. It smells of freshly baked bread with a hint of furniture polish. It is the sound of a child playing happily in one designated corner of the room and not breaking anything, having put the toys it was playing with before that away in one of the colour co-ordinated stacking boxes. It tastes of peppermint tea made with freshly boiled water and mint just picked from the garden, brewed in an Emma Bridgewater teapot. If smug was a person, it would be Annabel Karmel, or that Gina Ford cow.

My life looks like something fell off a high shelf and exploded. It smells and tastes pretty much of Batchelors Pasta n Sauce made in a saucepan with the non stick surface coming off in flakes, and last time I tuned in, the main sound was Ringo Starr narrating Thomas the Tank Engine.

I went to bed last night having failed (as usual) to provide a mouthwatering Sunday lunch for my husband and child. Instead, I only remembered that food was a necessity at around 6.30 (by which point most of the children of my Facebook friends were in bed according to their status updates. Gah) and produced a nutritious tea of fish fingers, tinned spaghetti and frozen sweetcorn for all. And the tinned spaghetti was from Aldi. Having also failed to do any housework, and after the maggot in the chutney incident of a couple of days ago, I decided that I had some ground to make up, so this morning when I woke at 6.15, I decided to go in pursuit of the smugness that so often eludes me.

Fifteen minutes later I was kneading bread dough in the kitchen. Half an hour after that I had apple compote bubbling away on the stove while the bread proved by the radiator. Within an hour, I'd done all the ironing and the bread was in the oven. At this point I opened the kitchen window a crack because I could see John From Next Door in his garden and I wanted the scent of freshly baking bread and apple and cinnamon to waft out towards him because last time he saw me I was in the garden getting the washing in, swearing disgustingly as I dropped it all in the mud and screaming like a fishwife through the back door at Rory to take his willy out of his Petits Filous. Take that John From Next Door: I am Nigella Goddamn Lawson and I am very smug about it. See how I got up before everybody else and made bread? See how I concocted a delicious preserve using freshly picked apples? See how...oh bollocking Nora, I've set the oven gloves on fire again.

At this point, Richard and Rory came downstairs, sniffing their air appreciatively. Rory immediately set about sitting on his potty and crimping off a massive Mister Whippy shaped turd which had the effect of killing all delectable kitchen aromas stone dead. Meanwhile, Richard walked into the kitchen, looked about and said "It's a mess in here isn't it?" I said nothing but have mentally added it to my list of unreasonable things that he has done for future use in the divorce courts, along with bringing me home a present of an out of date yoghurt from the fridge at work which nobody else wanted and teaching Rory to say "crack on mummy" when he asks for something.

The bread didn't rise properly and sat in our stomachs like a soggy brick. I washed mine down with a swig of Diet Coke from the bottle then went in search of biscuits. I give up. I am the anti-smug. Who wants to join me?

Jamageddon

2011-08-27T21:18:00.008+01:00

Autumn begins every year with an après festival trip to visit the in-laws. Every year we come home with carrier bags full of apples and damsons from their fruit trees and laden down with jars of homemade jam. Every year I promise faithfully to do home maker type things with them. Every year I start off enthusiastically by making apple compote and then forget about them until one day Richard wonders where the rancid smell is coming from and unearths a bag of rotting wild plums and some brown apples. I fail at being a housewife.

This year will be different though. MIL has passed on her damson jam recipe for me to cock up and I am determined to use everything up in true domestic goddess style. This is partly because my in-laws hate waste of any kind and I don't want to incur their wrath, but mainly because of my secret desire to recreate the CBeebies picnic from their autumn song complete with rustic bread, check tablecloth and home made preserves.

So, here are the damsons and eating apples:

See how I emptied them all into a basket and put that 1960s tint and a vignette on the photo? That is a blog writer trick to make you think that I live in a glorious, smug, aspirational world in a perfect shabby chic house with roses around the door and the whole family seated around a scrubbed pine farmhouse table every meal time, sharing happy banter as we pull chunks off of the home made bread and spread it with freshly churned butter from the farm next door.

Here are the cooking apples. I think the technical term for the amount is 'a bitch load'.

See how I couldn't be arsed with tipping them into a basket and making the photograph look pretty? That's my real life, right there.

Today I decided to make damson and apple chutney. For those of you who fancy having a cook along, I used this recipe as a starting point, but attacked it with my usual slapdash attitude (don't weigh or measure anything, chuck it all in a pan and ignore anything that claims to require mincing). I also had a secret ingredient, but you'll need to wait to find out what that was.

So, I started by using my MIL's tip for getting the stones out of the damsons - simmer them with a little water in a pan for a bit, put the lot through a colander and pick all the stones out of the mush. Wasn't prepared for it to look quite as much like innards as it did, nor for my fingers to turn pink, and neither did I expect it to take half an hour, but I got there in the end. Tricky bit done, I threw the rest of the ingredients in and gave it a prod every 10 minutes or so.

Here it is, simmering nicely, bits of chutney and damson all over the kitchen. Look at the state of that, that's going to take ages to scrub off the tiles and the hob. Sorry, I mean that's going to take Richard ages to scrub off the tiles and the hob.

All was smelling good, I had my jars in the oven to sterilize and I was twiddling my thumbs for a bit, so I started to clear up the mess from the mass damson de-stoning exercise.

It was at that point that I noticed the maggot.

Yes, there in the colander was a very tiny, almost so small that it didn't exist but very definitely there maggot.

Ah.

Now, the pre-medication Lisa is having a meltdown and jumping up and down and waving her hands about in that dance you do when something is disgusting, but the Sertraline Queen is thinking "hmmm, protein" and pondering that it can't be that bad seeing as the mixture boiled for 2 hours, so surely all maggot related bacteria will have been destroyed. Plus, they eat maggots in some countries, right?

I will put it to the public vote. if more of you think it's disgusting than think it's acceptable, I will throw away my domestic goddess batch of chutney. If you think it's OK, I will cheerfully eat it. It's not like I'm giving it to anyone for Christmas or anything. (Although....). You decide.

Note that I couldn't even be bothered to soak the old labels off the jars or wipe the smears off from where I stuffed chutney into them and missed. Ladies and gentlemen, that's just the way I roll.

Naughtiness, Thy Name Is Rory

2011-08-26T10:22:00.002+01:00

We need a new vacuum cleaner. Oh how we need a new vacuum cleaner. Ours is ancient but was chugging along quite nicely until Rory got wind of how to use it. Ever since then, I have had to dismantle it several times and poke various household items out of it with a coat hanger. These have included the majority of my son’s socks, my wedding ring, a wealth of playdough, the front door key and a cheese sandwich. I think it was the cottage cheese incident which finally killed it though (one of the worst sounds a parent can hear emanating from the living room is a two year old exclaiming “oh no! Cottage cheese ALL OVER PLACE”, followed by the sound of the Hoover being turned on and the squelching of said cottage cheese as it gets sucked up the nozzle). I must point out here that I am not a terrible parent who ignores my child while he plays with electrical items – I simply worked out early on that if I wanted to get any housework done I had to involve Rory, and he was particularly charmed by the vacuum cleaner. Being an intelligent sort, he worked out how to plug it in pretty quickly and although he knows that he is under no circumstances allowed to do this, the cottage cheese incident was a one off. The naughty step was well occupied that day, I can tell you.

So, when I saw that Dirt Devil were running a competition to win £200 worth of their products, I really felt I should enter, partly because of our desperate need for a vacuum that doesn’t smell of month old cottage cheese and partly because the competition asks you to blog about the naughtiest thing your child has ever done.

Well.

It’s hard to know where to begin really. Rory is now a relatively biddable (if mischievous) toddler, but he was the baby that nightmares are made of up until he hit around 18 months. There was the time he cracked an egg down the back of the radiator when the central heating was on, resulting in a sort of instant omelette that had to be prised off in eggy clumps with a stick. There was the time that he ate page 64 of the Christmas Radio Times and then vomited it up in various secret places around the lounge. There was the time he worked out that water made his Aquadraw mat change colour, so he removed his nappy and did a big wee on it. There is the time that we only ever refer to as The Great Toilet Paper Incident Of 2010. It really is hard to know which to pick.

I decided, in the end, to share with you something that he did shortly before Christmas last year. He was 18 months old and going through a phase of finding his pushchair to be an absolute abomination. Unfortunately, this coincided with a great deal of snow. He took exception to the snow and refused to walk in it and as I don’t drive, this led to us not leaving the house for days on end. Cabin fever had set in, we had watched The Snowman so many times that Aled Jones had started to appear to me in my dreams and damn it, I just needed to get out in the fresh air for half an hour. So, I sought the advice of friends on how to coax him into the pushchair.

The advice was as follows:

Get his favourite toy dressed to go outside as part of the going outside routine. Turn it into a game.
Make putting his outdoor clothes on a fun activity with lots of songs and silly faces.
If he still resists, threaten to leave the house without him.
As a last resort, walk out of the door without him and pretend to leave, then stand by the door and await his screams of displeasure. This is your cue to open the door and say “well if you want to come too you need to get in the pushchair.

Genius. This is how it went:

*Start the whole leaving the house routine by dressing Les the Meerkat up in socks and a hat. Improvise a little scarf from a J-cloth.

*Tell Rory that he's going to get ready to go out just like Les.

*Shove outdoor clothes on Rory. As fast as I get them on him, he removes them.

*Try being fun and silly with the clothes. La la la, this is all just a funny game. He kicks me in the face.

*Hold him down with one elbow and wrestle clothes on to his helpless body.

*Briefly wonder if holding my child down with my elbow would be frowned upon by the health visitor then push all such thoughts aside because, seriously, we haven’t left the house in four days.

*Attempt to put him in the pushchair all the while singing "this is the way we leave the house" with a moderately unhinged air.

*Rory goes rigid and then proceeds to flail about until I get kicked in the face again. The pushchair is propelled backwards several feet and one of his shoes flies off in the struggle.

*I strap Les the Meerkat into the pushchair with lots of "Oh Wow Les, you are so good and so brilliant and we're going to have so much fun going outside."

*Wonder how my life came to this.

*Tell Rory that if he doesn't get into the pushchair and be a good boy JUST LIKE LES, then me and Les are off to the shop without him, where we will purchase Milky Bar Buttons and a new CBeebies magazine.

*Another boot in the face whilst trying to strap him in.

*Les the Meerkat and mummy leave the house saying "bye then Rory, we'll be off now."

*Rory waves us goodbye.

*I shut the door and await the screams.

*All is quiet.

*Where are the screams of anguish? I WAS PROMISED SCREAMS OF ANGUISH.

*I peep through the window. Rory has strolled off to the kitchen and is helping himself to cheese from the fridge.

*Give in. Sit on sofa with Les the Meerkat in his winter collection in one hand and a lump of cheddar in the other, watching the Snowman for the 24^th time in two weeks and rocking almost imperceptibly backwards and forwards.

*Rory sticks his head up the chimney again. Splendid.

This post is part of the Blog Hop competition sponsored by Dirt Devil. See the Tots100 website for details.

Green Man 2011

2011-08-25T13:44:00.001+01:00

When we decided to take Rory to Green Man festival last year, people reacted with poorly disguised horror. I am well known for my obsessive compulsive quirks and allergy to just about everything that exists outdoors (grass pollen, tree pollen, leaf mould, the sun...) and the implication was that I would be a weeping, sneezing, itching, sunburnt, soggy mess of unfit mother by the end of the first day. They did not count on three things: 1. I love a good festival and am prepared to consume antihistimines by the handful for three days if that's what it takes to get me through one. 2. My new found fondness for mood stabilising medication. 3. Green Man is not your average festival. It's different.

It's different for many reasons, but mainly because of the people. Everyone's there for the music and nobody is there just to be seen or with the sole intention of getting messily drunk (that lot are at V, which tends to fall on the same weekend). That and the exhilaratingly beautiful backdrop of the black mountains make Green Man the most laid back and enjoyable festival that we have ever been to. It's also amazing for families. It's a comfortable place to take a child, with an unspoken understanding that everyone looks out for each other, especially those with kids. As Rory made one of his many escape attempts through the crowds this year, I noticed a lot of people watching him run, then looking around to check that there was a parent hot on his tail. "Want me to grab him?" asked another dad on a similar mission for his escapee toddler as I dashed past. "No need", I shouted back, putting on a sprint, "I'll catch the little bugger in a minute". This is what brings us back again and again.

Mind you, going to a festival with your small child is an entirely different experience to attending without one. Gone are the days of going through the programme with a highlighter pen, working out how best to see 60 bands over the course of three days. Now we camp out at the main stage most of the time, sometimes venturing into the more child friendly areas (more about them later). There is no more lying on the grass, pleasantly drunk on cider, eyes shut, absorbing in the music. Any attempt at this will result in two stone of toddler jumping squarely on your stomach with a gleeful cry of "PILE ON MUMMY". There will be no drinking of alcohol as smalls love nothing better than filching your food and drink and you will be forced to down a pint in 20 seconds with a whining child hanging off your leg repeating "Rory have a tiny bit. Please Rory have a tiny bit" ad nauseam. Also, you're not going to be able to see any of the headliners because it's well past bedtime. What there will be are a lot of attempts on the small child's part to jump into whichever pond/quagmire is closest, a fair amount of whinging, a trip to the children's area and an awful lot of ice creams. It's also helpful to note that, while children are not exactly quieter outside, they are definitely less concentrated, in that their manic energy and ear splitting shrieks have no walls to bounce off, and therefore they are much less migraine inducing.

As for the actual performances, some will fare better than others against the tyranny of a toddler. This year, the Avett Brothers gave a performance so amazing that even Rory trying to push his father and I in to a big thorny bush throughout failed to mar it. The Burns Unit fared pretty well even though he sang Meet The Veggies from Mr Bloom's Nursery most of the way through their set, and he was lulled into near compliance and quiet by Dry The River. However, The Leisure Society didn't fare so well as he was throwing a paddy about not wanting to eat a pie out of a box throughout most of their set, Robyn Hitchcock might have been brilliant, but I'll never know as I spent the entire time chasing Rory up and down the hill as he made a bid for freedom, and poor Laura Marling's sweet, fragile vocals didn't stand a chance against my son announcing at the top of his voice to all within a 50 metre radius that he had "got BIGGEST POO IN WHOLE WORLD LURKING UP BOTTOM," which was not really getting into the spirit of things, although you have to admire his use of the verb 'to lurk'.

On the bright side, he ate a lot less insects than he did last year and was able to walk for longer periods, which is kinder on your back when you're heaving a pushchair about. He was chuffed with his wrist band, especially after we told him that pressing it makes the music get louder, after which he spent much of his time standing, legs apart, arms aloft Thundercats style, pressing it and shouting "ROCK POWER". Also, he was old enough to appreciate parts of the Future Generations children's area this year and happily plopped himself down on the floor in a tent and looked through a huge selection of books and played with all the action men while Rich and I relaxed for a bit. There is also have the beautiful Einstein's Garden - a large area dedicated to fun sciencey activities with a solar powered stage which features quirky bands playing throughout the day so you don't feel that you've been deprived of your music fix while you play splat the rat with your child. Rory was particularly enamoured with this area, as he was last year, and had lots of fun squishing clay about, swinging on a hammock, conversing with some chickens and impaling other people's dads on construction sticks. He also pulled in the gypsy caravan, which his father found quite commendable. We also managed to take it in turns to babysit, me putting Rory to bed while Rich went back and saw Explosions in the Sky, and Rich taking him up the tree house while I had the pleasure of watching an unexpected performance by John Cooper Clarke in the Literature tent

On the last night, he finally fell asleep mid way through The Low Anthem, which we found rather appropriate as they are one of our bands of choice to listen to on our rare child free evenings (Me: "what are you putting on?" Rich: "The Low Anthem." Me: "Great. There's some of those Gu chocolate pots in the fridge, do you want one?" Rich: "Hell yes. And some wine. There must be wine." Me: "I'm going to eat mine lying on my back on the floor because there's nobody here to jump on me." Rich: "Good call." And so another night is spent lying in silence on the laminate flooring, eyes shut, savouring the very child-free-ness of it all). As he finally succumbed to sleep, we sat on the grass and allowed our bodies to relax after a weekend that, like the occasional child free night after weeks of extreme parenting, was all the better for chasing a little boy up through the crowds, eating too much ice-cream and rolling down the hill over and over again until we hurt from laughing. During the whiney bits, we'd briefly discussed the possibility of going on our own next year so we can have a drink, but I know we'll take him with us because he enjoys it so much, and I'd miss our crazy little mate if he wasn't there.

On the journey back home, Rory was quieter than usual, worn out from a combination of fresh air, sunshine and late nights and humming quietly to himself. "Liked all that rock and roll" he announced happily while kicking the back of my seat. Welcome to the fold little muso baby. I can't wait for you to make me a mix tape.

Pack It In

2011-08-18T21:47:00.005+01:00

There are piles of stuff all over my floor. This isn’t that unusual in itself; said piles usually consist of crumbs, toy cars, discarded Mini Babybels with one bite taken out of them, every Thomas the Tank Engine book ever written – that sort of thing.

Tonight, though, we have piles of clothes, of wellies, of medicines and of snacks to eat in the car. It can only mean one thing: We are going on holiday and tonight is Packing Night.

Have you ever attempted to pack for a baby or toddler? I thought it was bad when it was just the two of us. I thoroughly loathe going on holiday, and nothing brings out the combination of my chronic OCD and wretched inability to organise myself (a pretty unusual combination it must be admitted) than having to pack for such an event. But when you throw a very small child into the mix, it becomes a form of torture akin to having pointy objects repeatedly jabbed into your eyes.

It’s not quite as bad this time because now Rory’s a bit older, we don’t need to take the colossal travel cot along with a load of bed sheets, Grobags and so on. He’s now big enough to sleep in a normal bed, so as long as we remember Les the Meerkat we’re good to go. We also don’t need a breast pump, sterilising equipment and a Moses basket, which is pretty fortunate because that will make room in the car for the metric f*ck-tonne of Duplo, Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia and 64 toy cars that we are going to have to take. This is before we even consider the clothing crisis.

We’re going to a festival, which means that Rory is going to need: clothes, clothes to change into when his other clothes get soaked from the rain, clothes to change into when he goes face down in the mud wearing his spare clothes and clothes to wear when he spills copious amounts of *something* down his second spare set of clothes. Also, a raincoat, a waterproof all-on-one, wellies, baby wipes galore, snacks with the word ‘organic’ on the packet so that we don’t look like we feed our child rubbish in front of all the hippies (if he actually eats one of the wholesome looking sweetened-only-with-grape-juice cereal bar things you can spank my backside and call me Dave, but it doesn’t hurt to try).

So, here we are surrounded by various piles. Richard has gone into organisation mode. I have gone into denial. I am also being very precious about the packing because he doesn’t understand the system that I have that is all in my head, and he’s made a spreadsheet and OH MY GOD, HE MUST BE KILLED.

I have been banished to the computer and I’m fretting that he’s not using the zip-loc freezer bags to the best effect. Also, will he remember to pack a range of carrier bags for dirty laundry? I bet he won’t. And then where will we be? Eh Richard? At least Rory’s in bed so we’re spared his usual onslaught of anarchy. I might go to bed too in a minute and perhaps take the peanut M&Ms for the car journey with me for a small cuddle.

Oh, and where are we spending this little vacation? A Travel Lodge in Merthyr Tydfil – the third worst town in the UK. I’ll send you a postcard.

Curly Locks

2011-08-17T11:19:00.003+01:00

My son had his hair cut yesterday afternoon and already he looks like he’s been rolling about in the bushes after experimenting with a range of exceptionally sticky hair products and/or golden syrup. The poor lad has inherited my unruly hair, and although he doesn’t realise it now, a lifetime of hair related woe awaits him.

I fight a daily battle against the tangle of horrid that passes for my locks. It’s naturally curly, but in an irregular, ridiculous sort of way – a ringlet here, a scrunchy bit there, a silly fluffy bit to one side and so on. On a good day, after liberal applications of serum, taming cream, deep conditioner – basically anything lard based, it looks like this:

(which would have been a lovely picture if it didn’t look like Rory was screaming at me. He was actually yawning, but it just makes me look like an unfit mother whose baby hates her).

On a bad day, it resembles a permed Brillo pad. On a seriously bad day, it is defiantly pubic in texture. It also has fried ends and broken bits as a result of years of attacking it with straightening irons. To make matters worse, I have started to go grey at an alarming rate and the grey hairs stick straight up in the air like springs. This is not a good look. My neat freak ex hated it (and this was in the days before the grey started to invade). My husband complains when his fingers get stuck in it. But my mother, of course, loves it. In her head, I am still her adorable, curly haired little girl and her fingers itch to twirl those springy ringlets like she did when I was Rory’s age.

I have spent my life tussling with it and treating it with contempt. The thing about curly hair is how unpredictable and dishevelled it makes you look. I have ever looked neat in my life. It doesn’t matter how much I try to groom myself (not much these days, to be fair), I always have a few uncontrollable kinks and strands of frizz sticking out at odd angles, making me look a little unbalanced.

Last November, I got so sick of it that I had it cut off. Wild eyed through lack of sleep, surrounded by bits of Duplo, half chewed crayons and bits of squashed banana, with a loud and demonstrative 18 month old running rings around me, I wanted order in my life. The hair had to go. My hairdresser was reluctant, but I convinced her to chop it into a nice shiny bob (somewhat hampered by the opinionated old biddy having her blue rinse done in the corner of the room, AKA The Voice of Doom: "I knew somebody who had lovely long hair like yours once and had it cut off. It never grew back again", came the prophecy. "Your little boy won't recognise his mummy", she continued. "He'll probably cry when he sees you." God love the aged). It was amazing – smooth and glossy, neat, it only took a couple of minutes to dry every morning; it was a revelation. I started to wear smarter clothes and became more organised. Life was more by design and less haphazard. A hair cut really can change your life. I was a convert.

Well, I was a convert for the first two weeks, which were, incidentally, dry and crisp outside with a light layer of frost. On the third week, the rain started. Wow. Frizz on an epic scale, worse than ever before because there was no length of hair to weigh it down, so it stuck out horizontally from my head like a ridiculous, fuzzy, hat.

Ever since then, I have been going through the long and painful process of growing it back. I have banned GHDs from my life to prevent it from getting too damaged at the ends while it grows and am learning to embrace the curl. OK, it’s messy and tangly and erratic, but then, so am I. I have been disorganised and vague for my entire life so far and it appears to be my default setting. I am creative and jumbled and nearly always late. That is who I am. I spent years feeling guilty about it in the workplace, where everyone else seemed to be highly organised, and I definitely caused frustration to people who don’t function the way I do. But I don’t work for anybody at the moment. I run the household, I look after my son, I am responsible for my life, and I will do it the way I choose and the way that suits me. If we live in disorder, then so be it. It seems to suit Rory, who has defied routine from the earliest possible opportunity and is overjoyed with surprise events. I suspect that, along with my crazy hair, he has also inherited my propensity towards the chaotic. His messed up, cheeky angel curls make me smile, and for the first time ever, so do mine. When I watch him running about the house wearing one sock and nothing else, a range of food remains lodged in his hair, stuffing grapes into Richard’s trainers, I look down at my own odd socks and survey the mess of abandoned, half finished projects on the dining table and am delighted that finally there is somebody else like me. I’ll make sure I buy him a good hair gel when he’s old enough though.

The Food of Love

2011-08-15T22:00:00.002+01:00

There are about 2000 CDs in my house (and this is after a recent cull), various cupboards rammed full of vinyl and 65 days worth of music on iTunes, all lovingly collected over a period of around 20 years by my music geek husband and I. Everything is nerdily alphabetised apart from the compilations, which are organised by genre. We have playlists for every possible occasion. Much of our early relationship revolved around music – listening to it, talking about it, going to see bands. Even Richard’s career was built around it (not mine though, hence the heated discussion of October 2006: “I don’t care if you work in the music industry Richard, you cannot wear ripped jeans and a band t-shirt to my school harvest festival service”).

Why then, in the last 6 months, have the only albums played regularly in our household been ‘Postman Pat – The Album’, ‘Shakin’ Stevens – The Collection’ and some generic 70s disco compilation that neither of us is prepared to accept responsibility for originally owning?

I’ll tell you why: We had a child.

It is at this point in time that I would like to refute my husband’s claim that having a child doesn’t automatically rob you of your taste in music. I would also like to take this opportunity to mock him for stating that having a baby would be “a bit like having a cat”, but we’ll save that one for a rainy day.

Richard was convinced from the outset that he could educate Rory into having a varied and superior musical taste by playing him a different classic album every night. There he would sit in our darkened music room (which now contains all the commercial plastic tat that we swore our child would never be allowed to play with), his infant son in the crook of his arm as he fed him his bottle and talked him through the finer points of Johnny Cash.

“I think he liked that one”, he’d say hopefully as Rory stared blankly into the distance and occasionally did a bit of sick. But the truth was, the only music that Rory responded to in the slightest for the first 8 months of his life was when one of us would sing Swing Low Sweet Chariot to him while we attempted to rock him to sleep. I never did like that song, and standing in the middle of our pitch black living room at some ungodly hour, singing it over and over again to my insomniac baby in the certain knowledge that everyone else in the country was asleep at that moment in time, the bastards, remains the loneliest point in my life. I would happily never hear it again, ever.

One morning somewhere around Rory’s first birthday, I came downstairs to find my husband and child pogoing around the kitchen to what could only be described as a savage assault on my eardrums. It turned out to be the Mrs Goggins song on the Postman Pat album (link handily provided so you can listen to part of this oral assailant yourselves), kindly donated to us by one of the record labels that Rich consulted with. I had never seen my son so elated. Listening to the album further unearthed such gems as Robot Rampage, Stop That Cake and a song about a parrot who likes bananas done in the style of mediocre Brit Poppers, The Lightning Seeds. “MORE, MORE! MORE PAT!” shouted Rory, and, delighted that he was, for once, not throwing fruit at Mr Tumble on the telly or putting his cheese on toast in the washing machine, we were only too happy to oblige.

Since then, he has developed a penchant for Shaky (Richard’s guilty pleasure) and the theme from Shaft. He is also fond of The Wheels on the Bus, Five Little Peas and the theme tune from Raa Raa the Lion. Oh, and the Bing Bong Song. I’m made to sing that particular piece of torture at least 50 times a day. Any attempts to educate him otherwise have failed entirely, apart from when I attempt to take him to Rhyme Time at the library, where he brings shame upon us by doing knee slides across the floor and muttering “no like this Rhyme Time, I want rock and roll”, then taking himself off to sulk in the box with the tambourines and shaky eggs in it.

Rich and I have adapted to this pretty well and humour him whenever the occasion permits. We dance to buskers on the street, I belt out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the top of my voice as we skip down the road to playgroup and it’s not unusual to see all three of us spontaneously break in to the Footloose dance routine in the middle of B&Q. I think Richard has accepted that his son's musical education might have to wait a few more years.

Except I have a secret: When Rory was just a wriggly baby bump, I discovered that I could stop his constant punching and kicking and squiggling about by singing to him. It had to be a certain song though, and the song of choice was Bob Dylan’s Abandoned Love. It’s a song that reminds me of the last few months of my teacher training, specifically of sitting in the car with my dad as we drove through the North Yorkshire countryside one morning, both of us singing along, windows wound right down, my dad joyously providing air harmonica. As well as that, it’s a song that I associate with being pregnant even though the lyrics have no relevance at all. When Rory was born, I continued to sing it to him, but only when we were on our own. It usually stopped him from crying when nothing else worked. As he’s got older, it has become our song. He climbs on my lap and asks for “the mummy’s tummy song” and I put it on (he favours the Everly Brothers cover version, controversially) and both of us sing along while he throws his arms around my neck. “Heart telling me, LOVE YOU STILL” he bellows into my ear before launching into an air harmonica impression that his grandfather should be proud of.

“I love you too Rory,” I say, kissing his forehead.

He smiles up at me and touches my face and I think how lucky I am to have this beautiful, warm and clever little person cuddling up to me.

“Now sing the Bing Bong Song, mummy,” he says.

God, children are annoying.

Things To Do With Your Child #5: Pretend Cooking

2011-08-13T09:33:00.011+01:00

And lo, another Friday afternoon is upon us. Exhaustion and apathy are flourishing. Rory is sitting under the dining table playing with all manner of pointy objects and plastic bags and mummy is mainlining chocolate buttons, counting down the hours until daddy gets home. How are we going to get through the last three hours of the working week? Sigh, come on then, lets make another almighty mess….

PRETEND COOKING:

You will need:

A selection of saucepans, spoons, sieves, ladles, bowls and other kitchen equipment.

Some form of dry, sprinkly food like pasta, rice, lentils, Rice Krispies, Cornflakes or oats. We used lentils because I had some out of date ones in the cupboard after a completely out of character attempt at making a horrible Annabel Karmel recipe with them when Rory was a baby. Needless to say, he took one mouthful then looked at me as though I deserved to die. They have not been touched since.

Selective mess blindness.

Risk assessment:

However well you tidy up, you are going to be finding lentils/rice/oats for the next 8 months. Get over it.

Amount of time it wastes in the never ending day:

He played with this on and off over the course of 2 hours, then happily joined in the clean-up operation for 20 minutes. Excellent.

Method:

Set all your stuff out and let your child take over. Rory did a lot of very serious stirring and pouring from one container to another, then spent a while trying to stuff spoonfuls of dried lentils into my mouth whilst insisting that they tasted of strawberries. When he tired of that, we buried each others hands, and then I dropped lots of coins into the lentils and he sieved for buried treasure. I sat idly next to him talking to him and enjoying the therapeutic effects of letting hundreds of lentils run through my fingers over and over again. We also discovered that lentils cover a pleasing distance when a handful is thrown with the appropriate force.

When he eventually tired of this game, I scooped up as many lentils as I could and put them in a container for another day (might do something arty with these at a later date. Any ideas anyone?) and got the trusty vacuum cleaner out. Rory overjoyed at being allowed to hoover up all the lentils which kept him busy for another 20 minutes, although this also meant that most of our worldly possessions were hoovered up at the same time, but, you know, swings and roundabouts.

How I Met Your Father

2011-08-12T15:56:00.001+01:00

Richard is in disgrace. He doesn’t know this yet, but he is.

It started with a bit of reminiscing the other night – how we met, things we used to do, places we’d been etc etc. All very nice. It beats discussing our ongoing ant problem, which is the usual topic of conversation these days. (Ant Watch update for those who have been following the saga: No recent sightings of the little bleeders, but we now have a household slug to add to our menagerie of pestilence)

For the record, we met online - NOT via online dating; he used to read an old incarnation of my blog - shortly after his girlfriend of 6 years had split up with him and moved to London. He was heartbroken and miserable. I had been single (the flighty, man juggling type rather than the crazy cat lady variety) for about 2 years and was happy to provide counselling and advice from my corner of the internet.

“Have fun, sleep with unsuitable women, enjoy the time on your own and whatever you do, don’t get into another relationship for a long, long time,” I typed.

18 months later, I found myself walking down the aisle of my local church to marry him*, entirely convinced that I was doing the right thing, but baffled as to how I got there.

As far as I remembered, we’d met for a drink after a couple of months of emailing, spent the entire time laughing at each other, he forgot his ex immediately and then…he was just there.

A couple of months in, he mentioned that it might be a good idea if he moved in with me so we didn’t spend every weekend travelling between Harrogate and Manchester. Probably a very sensible idea, I agreed, vaguely thinking that this might be something to consider in three or four months time. Two weeks later, I had a flat full of man crap and a live in Richard. A few months later, I had a nice sparkly ring on my finger and my mother was wiping the sweat off her brow after being convinced that I’d never settle down after the messy break-up I’d had with my ex two years previously.

In retrospect, this is all a bit disconcerting, and even though I’ve been with him for 5 years now (and married for 4), I do sometimes wonder if one day he’ll wake up in horror when he realises that he accidentally married his rebound fling and had a child with her.

My mistake was questioning him about this.

“Why exactly did you decide you wanted to marry me when you were in no way ready to have another relationship?” I asked.

“Buying”, was his answer.

To explain, Richard works as a buyer. When I met him, he was a music buyer (very attractive, that. He was always taking me along to see up-and-coming bands, off to award ceremonies and on various VIP guest lists). He then moved on to DVDs (lots of red carpet moments and film premieres) and I’m not allowed to talk about what he does now as it is a Top Secret Project. As most buyers do, he has the gift of the gab and endless charm. He can talk anybody into anything and uses various dirty tricks to get the best deals. He’s devoted to his job, knows his stuff and does it brilliantly. And, apparently, he ‘bought’ me.

He looked at me like I was a bit simple.

“First rule of buying, Lise: Get in there before the competition. You’re funny, you’re pretty, you’re low maintenance, you’re great. If I could see the deal, other men would be able to, and one of them might have been ready to settle down. You don’t leave a good deal on the shelf if it’s not the right time – you snap it up and work out what to do with it later.”

“Interesting analogy, Richard. Are you fond of your balls?”

“I don’t know what you’re bothered about, you were my best buying decision ever!” (wide eyes, palms upwards, wheeler dealer charm in full evidence).

“Keep talking.”

“And my second best buying decision was when I got that great deal on the Lost box set, and you know that set the industry standard for the retail price…”

So, there we have it. Not only am I a prolonged rebound fling, I am also a buying decision, albeit a particularly astute one. Romance is not dead, it’s just interchangeable with media procurement.

*Looking back, I should have taken this as a warning that he was going to ignore everything I advised him to do for the rest of our lives. Bugger.