Christmas with a toddler - move over angels, here comes Incey Wincey!

1. Our tree is fantastically esoteric. It has a spider J made at the top and much of the decorating was done by him too (eg little "zill" cymbals; luggage labels... and baubles 5 deep on some branches). I love it. Give me that over some I've seen that are so perfect and symetrical and look like shop window ones.

2. J made and ate his first trifle today. We had great fun :-)   First he nibbled every sponge finger he took out of the packet before lining the glass dish with them. When I poured in the tin of fruit salad he quickly hoovered up all the cherries and proceeded to pick out all the other bits he particularly fancied. He helped pour in the jelly and later on when the jelly was cold, he smoothed out the custard and enjoyed licking the spoon. As ever, he took using the electric mixer very seriously (imitating the noise at the same time) as we whipped the double cream. Then came decorating using smarties and grated chocolate. What restraint! He managed to put a whole mini box of smarties on the top without eating a single one. Then scoffed two mini bars of chocolate (meant for grating) :-))  He LOVED eating his masterpiece at the end. I remember asking a German whether they had a word for "trifle" and described it for them... "Kalorienbombe" they said. Yeah - sums it up :-)

3. J started very slowly with present opening. By midday on Christmas day, he'd only opened three presents. It was very gratifying that the Maisy ball I (or rather Father Christmas) had got was a big hit. By the end of the day, he was ripping the paper off new presents every few minutes! There are so many that it continued today and he still has more left for tomorrow. The new Dyson I got him was used for a good 20 minutes to vacuum his cot (he sat in it and cleaned it all). Where does he get this obsession with cleaning from!??

4. Although the first few scenes were rather dull for J, he started to be entranced by the Mary Poppins DVD
when M.P. began singing and dancing. A particular hit was the farmyard scene (Holiday with Mary) where the animals all sing too. Huge grins from J.

5. His love of ripping off the wrapping paper started to be problematic today. He ripped a page from a book and ripped a Christmas card in two. So I put him in his "den" box (huge cardboard box) with all the paper due for recycling and we had a wonderful time ripping, scrunching, throwing and playing peepo.

6. New words: "-ick" (stick) which I heard when we were den-building in the wood yesterday morning (we went for a walk in the vain hope he'd nap as he was exhausted but ended up collecting big sticks and building a den with them - great fun!'); "bye" (said very clearly and with my intonation ie byee... very cute)

7. He acts out a lot of things with his toys. I found him in his cot with three of them in deep conversation (dinosaur, froggy and tiger). He does a good roar for dino and was babbling for the others. His new elephant pressed the button on the train set using her ear. The two elephants were both wagging their tails with pleasure at one point yesterday! (He knows dogs wag their tails and has carried this over to all animals- even the frog whose little label is used as a tail!).

8. He was very happy to sit on Father Christmas' knee at Hatton- some kids have a screaming fit and are scared stiff. And Santa did a high five with him at the end! (Since when did Santa start high fives!!!! Never happened in my day...). We've met quite a few Santas this year. The one at the nursery was a grumpy one - didn't say a word! We bumped into one at the Sports Centre legging it down the stairs (I think he was late for an appearance at a party) - he stopped and handed J a little bag of sweets before running off! Plus the Hatton one. There wasn't a queue when we went so we had a good few minutes chatting.

9. Goodness knows what image of Christmas he has from the advent calendar! Each window is a joke, so there's Good King Wenceslas with his "deep and crisp and even" pizza (J kept pointing at that - he loves pizza); an owl; a duck; a penguin;.... I can't remember them all. The Hatton nativity tableau and story didn't help in terms of the "real" story either. The peacock clearly thought he should have a role in the nativity and strutted about with the sheep and donkey... and the mannequins forming the tableau are all female ones. So you have 3 Wise Men and Joseph all with with beards and bosoms!

10. The best gift for me has been J's sleeping. You may remember that J didn't properly sleep through till about 14 months. I have been desperate to get him to bed earlier - it's often ended up 8.30 and sometimes much later. The lack of bath is a real pain (I know, I should be used to it by now...). No time for much other than clearing up and preparing for work afterwards if he doesn't go down till late.

Well we've had 2 instances of getting to bed by 8pm now, and he's been wanting to stay in his bed till gone 8am for several days. Bliss. He makes noises loud enough to wake me up while he's sleeping (especially after about 6am) - but I don't need to go in to see him. There are lots of things that affect his sleep of course: teething his molars has been problematic recently; not having the cast on unsettles him (must feel odd when he has it 13 out of 14 days); he's been wheezy and coughing lately too - but if we can have runs of good nights like this, I'll be a different person :-)

Hope everyone reading had as much fun (especially the non-traditional things) as we did this Christmas. I'll try and post photos - you'll love the tree :-)    Got to take advantage of Sleeping Beauty next door and get some shuteye myself now though. Gute Nacht. Schlaf gut!   

The Tiger Who Came To Tea

Yesterday we took J to the theatre for the first time and saw The Tiger Who Came To Tea.

One word sums up the experience: brilliant :-)

J loved it.

It had elements of slapstick ("Daddy" is quite a clown, putting his shoes in the toaster and the tea cosy on his head), pantomime (the characters on the stage don't see the Tiger when he first appears, so there's lots of calling out), and musicals (singing and dancing eg Tiger-obics, which we all were encouraged to get up and join in with). Plus there were ideas which are very appealing to toddlers/pre-schoolers, for example food, doorbells and ticking/chiming clocks.

Since J's concentration is usually very good and he loves music/dancing, I thought it would be ok but he was fantastic - he sat on my lap for the whole hour and was utterly entranced by the whole experience. He joined in with the clapping and since we were sitting just 3 rows from the stage, everything felt very immediate and powerful.

I can't wait to take him to the theatre again. I hope they repeat the Gruffalo soon - he was too young when that was last being staged, but as a great fan of the book, I think he'd very much enjoy the play.

Ha ha :-)

Hooray for Christmas lights

J pointed out of the window and went "bang" for many nights after bonfire night... He soooo enjoyed the fireworks - not just the ones we could see from home, but the local Round Table display as well! Not every 18 month old's cup of tea I know! Unexpected noises can startle him, but when he knows what it is, he's quite tolerant (eg the vacuum cleaner starting up unexpectedly is a bit scary, but then there's no stopping J. He is happy to vacuum for hours! We were staying at friends last week and practically burned out their poor Henry. It's genuine cleaning too - he's good at spotting where dirt is).

Having to say "no, no more fireworks for another *twelve* months" was hard (though it doesn't mean much to him!).

Now we can see lots of Christmas lights out of the window. Several of my neighbours have gone overboard and during dinner, we turn the main light off and admire the flashing and twinkling. J has been signing "twinkle" and "left/right" (I was commenting on how some of the lights looked like they were going one way and then the other).

Thank goodness we've got something to replace the fireworks :-) 

I'll have to see where there are good local displays (Oxford Street is a bit of a trek, but maybe Birmingham??)

(this isn't near us, thank goodness - though it would keep J amused for a long while. Heaven knows what their electricity bill is!!)

What J likes part 1 - age 17 months - part 1

I thought it'd be fun to list what J likes at the moment at 17 months. Some of these border on obsessions, given how much he does them:

• dancing (by bending knees and bobbing up and down) - this makes mummy laugh :-) At the weekend we were doing the hokey cokey and other action songs and he was grinning the whole time. He's very good at spinning round too)

• music (J responds so much to music - sometimes he sits transfixed, sometimes he dances. When I turn on music in the car, he has started making froggy (the frog that's hung on the carseat in front of him) dance by grabbing the legs and waving them up and down. He has a big grin on his face when he does this.)

• other children (younger and older) - he's fascinated by them and loves watching and interacting with them. He's really quite sociable (which is great!) - although he may be a bit quieter in a new setting, he's not a shy child.

• cooking - he's loved mixing and stirring for ages, but the latest thing is making omelettes (cracking open eggs, pouring them into the bowl, using the electric mixer (and imitating it), cutting the butter - all done with a great deal of concentration).

• the word 'couscous' - he laughs whenever I say it :-)

• pushing round his shopping trolley

• trucks, dustbin trucks, cement mixers, planes, trains. Please don't say "typical boy" - he loves such a range of things that are "typically boy" as well as "typically girl" things. I cringe at the toaster he has - it came from an NCT sale and is pink and has "girls only" on it. Yuck yuck yuck...  but he loves the way the toast pops up and has no problem with the colour or inscription (yet!).

• Making cups of tea, offering them to others and pretending to drink them himself (with lipsmacking etc too)

• vacuuming (or rather, pretending to vacuum, as it's too noisy for him when switched on! Again, he likes imitating the noise)

• cleaning with a dustpan and brush (we were staying with friends at the weekend and they were concerned that J was going into the cupboard below the sink where non-toddler friendly things were kept. J showed no interest in anything other than the dustpan and brush, and kept getting them out all weekend :-)

• hairdryers (he returns to the drawer where mine is kept several times every day and then carries it round, making the noises, pointing at his or my hair and trying to plug it in.

• Thomas the Tank Engine, Peppa Pig, Maisy (pictures, stories, DVDs... everything)

• the moon (he spotted the moon for the first time last week, and now points at it very insistently every time we see it)

By the way - I have been wracking my brains for "moon" songs - any suggestions? All I could think of was "Au Clair De La Lune" (link to wikipedia) but got stuck with the words. For the record - here's the first verse:

Au clair de la lune

Mon ami Pierrot

Prête-moi ta plume

Pour écrire un mot

Ma chandelle est morte

Je n'ai plus de feu

Ouvre-moi ta porte

Pour l'amour de Dieu

• fastenings (he can sit for a very long time with things as simple as the fastening of my bag or the buggy so and I've just bought 2 special boards as part of his Christmas present. I think they're great - let's hope he does too: a latches board  (link to Amazon)

and a basic skills board (link to Amazon).

[Yes they are aimed at older kids, but his fine motor skills are so good I think he'll be ready for them before he's 3 or 4 (which is what they say!)]

Right - that's enough for now! To be continued...

No TV - no problem

Well we have been without any TV since 21 September, and so far it's been absolutely fine. Once or twice I have got up from putting J to bed and thought that I would have flopped on the sofa if I'd had a telly - but it's not that I really want to do it. I have started listening to Radio 4 in the evening which I haven't done since J was born - I feared it would wake him up as the kitchen is near his room, but have found that it doesn't now (it might have done when he was younger as he was a poor sleeper) - and I am really enjoying the variety and the new ideas. I am missing reading at the mo (I'm too knackered come bedtime) but Radio 4 in the evening is helping with that.

We've now got several DVDs for J including Peppa, Thomas, Maisy, Fireman Sam and In The Night Garden. J's favourites are the first three mentioned above. I really regret buying In the Night Garden - soooo boring.... whereas I really look forward to the next Thomas episode (we have 3 DVDs and each has 26 episodes!). We have 2 episodes of a DVD each evening - 10 minutes - and I sit with J on the sofa and point things out or talk about it after (as much as you can with a 17 month old!) which means it's more of a shared activity. I still don't think it's "necessary" but J is very active much of the time and I think he quite enjoys the sitting down together.

The DVDs have actually formed a useful part of the evening routine - after losing bathtime (due to scoliosis) and breastfeeding (about the same time as stopping bathtime) we seemed to have nothing specific to do between wash and bed and it felt a bit unstructured and could stretch out for ages. Now we read books (lots - sometimes 5 in the evening!) and might play a little bit and then finally J has a beaker of milk watching the 2 episodes of a DVD.

I've just borrowed a DVD for me (The Time Traveller's Wife) and am looking forward to watching that some time. Instead of watching rubbish on the TV (I'd fallen into bad habits out of tiredness) I will try and make conscious decisions about what I choose as DVDs. Or at least that's my good intention!

We don't need no education

Apparently there were a few outbursts in Coventry last week during the riots. Nothing on the scale of violence seen elsewhere.

As I was out walking at the weekend, this caught my eye:

I've heard of an educated guess - is that an uneducated prodiction?

Going TV free

In less than a month's time my TV will stop working. Or rather, it will stop working as a TV with channels - I will be able to watch DVDs and videos (yes, I do still have a video player!). 

I have been putting "buy digital TV" in my diary since March when they started going digital in my area and finally got round to looking at them last weekend. A chat with the sales person at John Lewis led me to choosing the following qualities:

• LED (back lit so better picture)
• 32" (don't want it to swamp the living room - some of them are massive and become such a feature in a room. The current one is about 24” and I like the modest size.)
• slot for memory card (for videos/photos)
• able to play BBC i-player etc (if I also get a £50 dongle** - the way the living room is set up would make it impossible to lead a USB cable across to the TV)

**Don't you love the word "dongle"? Who came up with that one???

I'd also like to be able to record programmes and something along the lines of a Humax TV recorder looks good - though I've heard friends talk about how they can go wrong. The guarantee is only for 2 years suggesting that even the manufacturers think they don't have long lives. The TVs have a 5 year guarantee.

All in all the sales person and I worked out a package that would cost me about £800. Perhaps a different shop or a sale would cut that cost – but we’re still looking at a sizeable sum of money.

Fortunately J was a good excuse to leave (he was having a great time trying to pull leads out of the TVs) and "have a think".

So ever since Sunday I've been thinking on and off about whether to get a new TV at all.

My reasoning is as follows:

Why it’d be good not to have a TV

1. J is only 15 months old. We can get a TV at some future date. I am not saying he’ll be in some anti-technology household and the butt of jokes at school about never having seen X on TV. However, I have a golden opportunity now to put off the whining requests about wanting to watch television. Once you start allowing it, children want more. J won’t miss it at the moment.
2. J has so far had almost no exposure to television. I put it on occasionally in the evening for me to have some "flop" time, but the sound is muted and I use the sub-titles (J is surprised when he's at other people's houses and sound comes out!). We have watched parts of Countryfile and Springwatch and pointed at the tractors or animals - but he hasn't seen much at all.
3. The nursery comment on J’s long concentration span. I have NO evidence to link this to the lack of television, but I have read that if children watch a lot of television they can have a shorter concentration span (they're used to images changing so quickly). You may shoot me down with examples of your children being very good at concentrating despite being keen on TV, but if there is a possibility of it having a negative effect, then why chance it?
4. We can still watch DVDs. We don't have many toddler ones at the moment - and J shows almost no interest in sitting and watching them when I put them on - but if I think I'd like him to start watching something at some stage, then I can choose that. It gives the advantage that I remain in control. Plus there are no adverts. I could write a long blog about the inappropriateness of adverts (eg the pinkification of all things to do with girls; the make-up (!!) offered to entice 5 year olds to buy certain shoes; the violence of certain characters) - I’ll save that for another time. 
5. My will-power is very low at the moment, so although I would like to have more time to read, it is far too easy to just put on the TV and sit in front of anything that's on once I’ve put J to bed and got things ready for the next day. If it’s not there, I won’t be able to watch it. It could be an interesting experiment if nothing else!
6. I don’t *want* to start watching huge amounts of television. So why spend lots on fantastic sound and picture quality?? My current TV was £70 from Tescos about 5 years ago. The picture and sound quality are probably rubbish – but there is nothing we watch that necessitates anything better at the moment. I haven’t got time to watch an entire film (haven’t watched one since J was born except one outing to the cinema for a mums and babies session with the lights on!). There are occasionally times when I see adverts for films I’d like to see (The King’s Speech or the last Harry Potter) but even if I got them out on DVD I don’t see that I need a cinematic experience at home to enjoy them.  

Why it’s not so good not to have a TV

1.     There are times when it *would* be useful to put J in front of something and know where he was while I get on with other things. Like an electronic babysitter. Am I making my life harder by not using a television for this purpose? A small amount of this is not going to harm J. It’d be a question of making sure it didn’t displace other activities for J.

2.     There was a girl at secondary school who was a couple of years above me - Jenny. Her mother didn’t let her watch commercial stations (I think there was more to the restrictions than just that, but that is one I remember). It was seen as odd by other pupils – but I wonder what effect it actually had? Jenny had “wacky” hair and clothes later on- was her slightly rebellious appearance down to anti-parenting sentiment, or could it be that she had a stronger sense of self because her mother’s stance helped her develop her individuality? Not sure that’s very clearly written. I’m thinking as I write. Anyway, we’re talking about teenagers not toddlers.

3.     I would hate to become evangelistic about it! The danger is that I could start feeling virtuous about neither of us ever watching TV. I’d like to make it clear that I’m not particularly anti TV – there *are* some great programmes. But for now, there is a window of opportunity to experience a different kind of life!

4.     I would like to be better informed about what’s happening in the world and TV news is easy to access – though at the moment I don’t even watch that unless my “flop” time happens to coincide with it! I may listen to snippets of Radio 4 in the car and see the odd half hour of Sky News when I’m at the gym but that’s it. Is that shocking? When J was having swimming lessons at the Hilton, I used to take advantage of the free newspapers, so would at least read of one of them once a week. Whether or not I buy a new TV I think I need to find ways to be better informed – making an effort to watch the news online maybe or buy a newspaper regularly (and make the time to read it! ).  

Alternatives? I could get a set-top box I guess so we continue to have a TV with minimal outlay. But the whole “how much TV do I really want us to watch?” question isn’t addressed by that – and if I am going to get a better TV in the near future it’d be daft to pay anything extra.

Conclusion: I think we’ll try to live TV-free until Christmas - and perhaps even until J's second birthday. I’ll keep you posted!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog!

I am the mother of J - a wonderful, gorgeous and amazing little boy.

The intention in setting up this blog is to have a space to:

1. Think about parenting
2. Record our family life in all its richness
3. Reflect on life in general
4. "Keep" the quirky things that are so easily lost, but which brighten up the day

I already have a blog:  http://infantilescoliosis-diary.blogspot.com/
That has a different purpose - it is a record of my son's treatment for infantile scoliosis - and although some posts could fit in either blog, I will try and keep J's scoliosis ones separate.