ASDA JOINS THE POLY BAG MAFIA

ASDA Hollingbury
Originally uploaded by Dominic's pics

Gimme strength! ASDA has decided as of this week to join the poly bag mafia. Get this - you go in the door and they have not one but three big 'Recycle your ASDA poly bags here' bins. They have had for over a year so once a month or so I have remembered to take up all my poly bags and put them in their bin. That is supposed to make me feel I've saved the planet though we all know poly bags are less than 0.1% of the oil problem in the world. Ok I'll go along with this nonsense - it keeps the kitchen cupboard tidier. So today I take up - and I am not joking, a whole shopping trolley of bags as I am tidying out my kitchen this week. I go in the door, I post them all into their bin and I do my shopping. When I get to the checkout the operator asks Do you have your own bags with you? Well I did have but I posted them in your poly bag bin at the entrance - isn't that what it's for? Oh poly bags are an under-the-counter item now, I'm afraid she elaborated. A what???? I want a poly bag for my shopping not a porn movie! You really need to buy reusable ones at 5p each. That'll be bloody likely - the shopping is 30% dearer than last year and I just posted 200 bags in your bin so give me some of your under-the-counter free bags now! If they are going to start charging for bags but not rewarding for the ones you bring back then it doesn't add up. I am happy to recycle all my bags but my handbag is already over-full with nappies, changes of clothes etc so I sure don't want to have to carry 10 polybags everywhere I go in case I happen to need to pop into a supermarket.
I'm off to Tesco - well till they get stupid too :-(

UK CHILDCARE - HOW IS IT SUPPOSED TO ADD UP?

I'm getting more and more annoyed trying to work out how a family is supposed to operate in this country. I have just enquired how much 2 nursery places will cost when I finish maternity leave. I spoke to an average-priced private nursery in the suburbs, not an expensive city one. You can only use private nursery as state nursery only offers a session from 12-45pm - 3-45pm for a 3-4 year old and a place 9am-12pm for a 4-5 year old. That doesn't fit in with any job in this country. So there we have it. I can either have 2 full time places costing £1270.80 a month or 2 morning places (8-30am - 12-30pm) costing £677 a month. Work that one out - either £15249.60 a year or £8125 a year. The diesel I use in my car to get to the office and the nursery is now costing me £1.26 a litre (it was 92p a litre when I stopped for maternity leave 5 months ago). I use on average 160 litres a month, so add £201 a month to the nursery bill (that's assuming diesel doesn't go up at all in the next 6 months, which I guess is unlikely given it's gone up more than 30% in the last 6). If I decide to work full time, I need after school care and holiday cover for Marcel and Charlotte at an average cost of £470 a month for 2 places, ie £5651 a year. So to work full time my annual outlay for just childcare and diesel at today's prices is £23312 after tax. That means to cover just childcare and petrol I need a gross income of £35k+ to break even. Add to that an average £150k mortgage at £900 a month and food and I am left wondering where you get a job you can live off, even as a couple.

PREPARING FOR KITCHENS

We have exactly one week left to prepare two whole rooms in the house for demolition, more or less. So we got up this morning ready to rock. Spurred on by Vista collapsing on my computer for the 2nd time this year, I needed to look for my recovery disc anyway, so I started by bagging all sorts of paperwork and unopened letters left over from the flat days. Marcel and Charlotte negotiated treats for work and then actually contributed nearly 3 hours each. Lots went through old toy boxes throwing stuff out and Marcel packed carloads of rubbish to take to the dump, tidied and even asked if we could point out weeds in the garden so he could help with that. (Did aliens abduct the real Marcel?) Thomas moved the tumble drier and some other boxes amongst other things. We worked from we got up till 5pm... so why does the house look worse now than when we started? We are still knee-deep in rubbish... I decided at one point to tidy the garage a bit as it is next on the list. When tidying one corner, I was a bit perturbed by the fact that it seemed to buzz every time I moved anything. After several minutes observing it, I noticed a line of bees (not wasps - phew) entering and leaving by the door. I doubt they'll be overly pleased when they find out it is scheduled for demolition in about a month's time...
Anyway, time for bed, if tomorrow is to be another hard day... Poor Pudge and Anna are getting a bit bored with all this already.

A CAGED GENERATION

Children in Cage
Originally uploaded by Mr. Guybrarian

I like to watch Child of our Time, given that the 25 kids it is following were all born within days of Charlotte. I generally like the psychological tests and know instinctively whether or not Lots would have conformed to the general outcomes. When they were analysing how the kids conformed along gender lines last week, I just knew Charlotte, if left to her own devices, had she been chosen for the study, would not have come out the changing room in the mini-adult pink sparkly dress all the other girls chose, for example.
This week was interesting on many levels. It followed 24 hours in all 25 8 year old kids' lives. The statistics it gave were dreadful. I felt more and more smug as the programme went on because I realized I was actually doing better than most of the families.

The first surprising statistic was that only 3 of 25 kids ever sat at a table with the rest of their family for an evening meal. The majority ate quick foods in front of the TV on the couch. In some families the mum ate at a table with the kids while the dad came home too late. The last and also popular scenario was one where the kids were fed and sent to bed before the adults even started to think about their meal. Twenty two of the twenty five kids had no concept of a family meal. That in itself might not seem important but the dinner table is a place where families talk about their day. It is a place of communication. Communication between partners but also as your kids get older and want to spend more time with friends or in front TV, a small chance for you to have relaxed communication with your child. Having spent years married to a man who came home and checked the microwave after we'd eaten every night, I set that as one of the rules for my new life. We'd have a meal at the table every night at about the same time and it would only be moved or cancelled in exceptional circumstances. There are 2 more rules in my house: no toys at the table, no texting at the table. This may annoy the kids but it means the family meal is just that - a family meal. I sat gobsmacked watching kids play, read, text, even play play station while eating alone. They did everything but eat and talk.
The next astounding statistic was the number of hours kids watched TV or played PS2 (and the likes). Ask my kids, I am the first to rant constantly that they are turning into zombies, that the TV has to go off and I jump up and down like an irate lunatic. So I was worse than horrified to find out my kids actually were at the low end of the TV hours scale. There were kids watching 9 hours in a row on there!
Next, but no surprise to me were the hot house kids, as I like to refer to them. I see them at my kids' school every day. I mean the kids that are enrolled in so many afterschool activities that they don't actually get a minute to draw a breath. They run from school to football, to piano, to chess, to karate. They have to buy a takeaway and eat it in the car as they don't actually get home till bedtime and their parents are always moaning their kids can't fit in homework. And the parents, of course, never see each other! I sat in horror watching a crazy mother driving her kid to tennis lessons 4 times a week over an hour's drive from home, returning all 4 nights at bedtime. The 8 year old cried a tantrumed in such a dangerous manner beside her in the car from exhaustion, that I genuinely think she should have stopped driving as she couldn't possibly have been concentrating on the road. What benefit is this regime to an 8 year old? I have nothing against the odd afterschool activity - My 2 big ones have tried several: football, martial arts, badminton, swimming, tennis - but an hour, 2 at most a week, never 4pm-8pm every night. Let them have time to relax, play, use their imagination!
Finally, and worst of all I sat with my mouth hanging open as the parents discussed the freedom they allowed their kids. I thought back to 8 - I was allowed to walk to school, walk to a friend's house, walk from my granny's to the corner shop and buy Saturday breakfast - rolls, eggs, juice and a few added extras. I could play in the field behind my house, in neighbours' gardens and generally wander about my estate. By 9 I was cycling to school on the road with no helmet! I can't remember the exact numbers but I know only 1 child in this study was granted the freedom I had at that age. Two, perhaps three more were allowed to play outside their garden but within sight of their parents. They weren't allowed to walk to school either. The most shocking was the fact that many of the kids weren't allowed in their own garden, none were allowed to the park. This wasn't because of traffic levels, which are much worse since we were kids but because people actually believed kids were so likely to be kidnapped or abducted that they wouldn't allow them out. Time and time again parents said they preferred their kids alone upstairs on a PS2 because they knew where they were! Don't people realize that abductions hit the headlines because they are uncommon, not because they are common? How are these kids, caged till 16, going to cope when they are thrown out into the world? When they are forced to leave home to go the uni or whatever, before they have even learned to cross the road alone. What damage are these people inflicting on their kids?
I let my kids cross the road and go shopping alone. Charlotte can go see granny just as Little red riding hood did many moons ago. They can go play football out of my sight in the field. Lots is allowed to go cycling up and down the pavements round the corner in neighbouring streets away from my line of vision. I have given them mobile phones so I can contact them. I am not 100% happy when they are out of my sight, no parent is, but I am 100% sure I am better preparing them for adulthood than by locking them in a bedroom alone. What will these kids remember of their childhoods? What life skills will they lack? How will they know how to parent themselves?

A FLAG-WAVING NATION

I mentioned a few Danish idiosyncrasies last month when we returned from Denmark. A final one, which I overlooked at the time, came to my attention last night. Thomas came home from work full of joy at the realization that Anna was exactly 5 months old. He couldn't bake her a birthday cake as she's too wee for cake so he headed for the fruit bowl and squished her a banana. He then stuck a Danish flag in it! I suddenly remembered Denmark's flag obsession. One of the first things you notice when you walk down the street in a village or even suburbia is that every 2nd house has a flagpole in the garden usually topped with a rather strange skinny version of a Danish flag. When we first arrived at Anna's grandparents' house, they had raised a proper Danish flag in her honour. You can actually buy large (several-metres-tall) flag poles in your small-town sized supermarket, off the shelf along with your bread and sausages! And there is at least half an aisle devoted to flags to decorate your house, your cake, your car, your fridge - you name it! This might not surprise an American reader but as a Scot this is extremely alien. At 40 I have never received a birthday cake topped by a Scottish saltire, I have never once put saltire bunting on my house, waved a saltire or felt the need to buy a flagpole. I wouldn't know where to buy one if my life depended on it... I wonder, if Scotland was to adopt this flagmania, how quick my dad would be to plant a large saltire in the middle of his front lawn (mum-permitting!)?

WHERE TO PUT THE KIDS?

Having just seen this in the flesh in ASDA car park, I am wondering whether they are likely to make a 7-seater version? :-\ It was my first love in cars and though I tend to be a driver of very big cars these days, I still have a soft spot for these. If I win the lotto tomorrow (though I guess statistically this is unlikely given I have never ever played lotto), I will be buying myself one for use on any trips where there are fewer than 4 occupants in the car. It is just stunning, and cute into the bargain. Failing that I guess I'll buy one once the kids leave home...

THE UNEXPECTED QUESTION

7 Green Bottles
Originally uploaded by Sean Stayte

One of the best bits about parenting is the unexpected questions. You've known something all your life, you just accept it. Then you tell your child and they ask you something really wacky.
Today I was feeding Anna so all I could do to entertain Léon was sing. Fed up with Incy Wincy, I tried Ten Green Bottles for a change. Léon listened, smiled a bit and when I stopped singing he asked seriously: What was in the bottles? Now there's something no one ever told me!

A MUDDY BATH

With everyone grumpy this morning, I thought a nice bath might cheer us up. I filled it up, put Léon in and picked up Anna. As I stepped in myself Anna grabbed the leaves on the pot plant on the window ledge and pulled it into the water with us... so I was back to square one. Two grumpy babies and a bath to empty, clean out a refill before we could start our nice bath :-(

RETURN OF THE COWBOYS

cowboy gang
Originally uploaded by sibhusky2

I guess John Wayne and his gang have struck again. We're still trying to get to the bottom of the missing cooker socket in our kitchen. On saturday we had an electrician friend round. We asked him if he knew what the problem was. He went into the cupboard to look at the fuse box and returned, never having been upstairs in our house and asked, knowingly, 'You have an electric power shower somewhere in the house, don't you?' 'How did you guess?' we asked, only to be told that they'd wired the power shower through the cooker switch on our circuit board. Don't you just love our cowboy house?

THOMAS'S TOOL

Thomas's tool
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Thomas at his happiest when he finds a kitchen tool he doesn't yet have. Today he found a machine that not only simultaneously peels and cores an apple but also thinly slices it perfectly to make good old American apple pie. Of course I did laugh myself silly in Tk Maxx watching his delight at unearthing this contraption and subjected him to all sorts of ridicule. Unfortunately when we got home, I actually had to admit that it was quite cool and the apple definitely tasted better like that - Oh god, he's turning me into a kitchen utensil nerd :-(

SUSHI - GLASGOW STYLE

Today Thomas suggested we should go try the sushi bar in Silverburn shopping centre as we needed petrol at Tesco anyway. It turns out you can eat there for a reasonable price and it is fun to choose your dinner by colour-coded bowls rather than actually knowing what you are about to eat! We tried about 10 dishes for £25. The best, I think, was the salmon sushi, though I did like the deep-fried aubergines too. Not all Glaswegians are quite ready for sushi though. Standing in front of the sushi place a couple passed. He suggested 'trying sushi', she gave him a withering look and said she wasn't about to have 'sticky rice and deed fish' for her lunch - (I think you'll find it's raw, not just dead...) I was, however, touched by a slightly more adventurous couple, pictured here in the background of my photo. A grandson and grandmother sat down. He seemed genuinely pleased granny had joined him and asked what she was having. He took a prawn and rice something and tucked in with his chopsticks while she carried on cautiously watching the little dishes trundle by on the belt. Eventually, probably around when the octopus passed, she suddenly claimed not to be overly hungry and reached out to the belt. I was surprised this little old granny had the courage to try but of course she simply took the chocolate cheesecake in a little sushi bowl - one of only 3 desserts I saw passing while he ate all the other fishy delights.

TALKING ANNA

Anna has taken to talking a lot. She does it a bit during the day but her very favourite time of the day for a conversation or monologue is 4am :-( I'm sure what she's saying is very interesting and I can definitely see the beginnings of language in her lip positions. She herself is definitely very serious and passionate about it, but I haven't a clue what she's on about!

If you can't see the attached clip (I have been having a problem seeing flickr videos in Internet explorer, though Mozilla Firefox is working fine) then click on this link.

Talking Anna
Originally uploaded by PhylB

NETTLE NUMPTY

stinging nettles
Originally uploaded by urtica

It's been a bad week for nettles. As Léon mentioned in his blog the other day, he was already suffering all sorts of itches, so the last thing he needed this week was to learn the hard way what jaggy nettles are.

Thomas and I were sitting on a log by the canal having a picnic when Léon decided to join us without warning. He had been at our feet watching the ducks. He crawled up beside us on the log and sat down in floods of tears muttering about nasty plants. He raised the legs of his shorts to expose two legs covered in scores of white sores all the way from his knee to his shin. We concluded he had crawled through a stinging nettle to get to us. Poor wee man, nasty jaggy nettles.

Today we were gardening - I noticed a very large nettle in our garden and remembered poor Leon's pain. Thoughtfully, I took a spade and dug it out from the root. I brought over the organic waste bin. I made sure not to touch the leaves and picked it up by the stalk in the middle. I remembered from childhood that the stalk is ok, it is only the leaves that sting, and given this was a huge plant with a central stem about 2cm wide, I wasn't taking any chances. The bloody thing instantly burned my thumb badly... hmmm was it actually thistles you are meant to hold by the stalk? I am no longer sure - but it sure isn't jaggy nettles - my thumb has been throbbing all day, worse than my last wasp sting, and that was a queen! :-( I guess that makes me a nettle numpty.

FLICKR VIDEOS

Léon at the beach
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I joined youtube ages ago but I never get round to uploading anything to it as Thomas either uploads things to his account, or I am simply never on that page. Over the last few weeks I have been meaning to try flickr's new video uploading facility. After my trip to the beach on Tuesday, I had taken a tiny clip of Léon and figured it was a perfect size to try. It worked fine and was available on my usual site for my usual audience without any hassles. I'll definitely use it for wee short clips in the future.

DARLING NO MORE

This made me smile today - I wonder if there is any mileage in barring him from the petrol stations too?

A TUMMY EXACTLY 15 MINUTES BIG!

breastfed legs!
Originally uploaded by PhylB

My little Anna is funny. Some days she suckles on and off the breast all day, others she is more business-like. Daytime feeds can last less than a minute of hours of comfort but little milk. But during the night, I have noticed over the last few weeks, almost every feed starts around 4-20am and takes exactly 15 minutes - never 14 or 16, exactly 15 - sweet.
Oh, and don't you love what the breastmilk has done to her legs!? How come on a baby those legs are just gorgeous but on an adult woman the same legs would be considered hideous!?

A WEBER CHIMNEY

I know that I am 40 but I have never in my life tried to start a barbecue.
This probably is related to my ex-husband's barbecuing habits. Barbecues with André tended to consist of an hour of him lighting copious old newspapers in a vain attempt to light some charcoal. Thereafter, with dinner running late and family assembled, he tended to throw on the sausages as soon as the coals did finally catch fire, leading to black-on-the-outside, raw-on-the-inside sausages which my family constantly cringed at. I explained at every barbecue that we should wait till the coals heated and the flames died but he was a bit impulsive, so we just never got there.
Consequently, I always assumed barbecues were beyond me.
Tonight Thomas asked me to start one and have the coals ready for him coming home from work. Arg! That's a tall order! He must have had faith in me, though. He has bought a Weber Chimney Starter so I figured I could try and if I failed, I failed.
I took out the chimney contraption. I stuffed 3 pages from the Glasgow Herald in the bottom. I put 60 charcoal bricks in the top and I took 1 match. It lit in less than a minute and 40 minutes later my coals were glowing beautifully. The barbecued food was absolutely perfect.
I think this would be the perfect gift for André. If we actually got on these days instead of fighting every time we try to have a conversation, I'd buy him one, but given we don't, I won't! :-\

THE RIGHT HAND DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE LEFT IS DOING

I was parked in ASDA car park yesterday in a Parent and Child bay. The stupidity of it got me really annoyed! Why? I don't have a problem given Charlotte has a booster seat, Léon has a child seat and Anna an infant seat. So if I park there I am unlikely to get a £60 ticket slapped on my windscreen. However, imagine Anna was my first child. I drive into the Parent and Child bay completely legitimately, and what do I see parked 3 metres from the bay? I see these wonderful parent-friendly trolleys. Great, no need to waken the little angel up, I'll just take out the infant seat.

I go round ASDA, I do my shopping and I come out to a fine stuck to my window because, by using their parent-friendly trolley, I remove from my car the evidence that I am a legitimate user of the space! How stupid is that? When I finish my trip round ASDA, the last thing I need is to then have to look for a traffic warden to show I do have a child with me, then no doubt to be told that they can't cancel the ticket, but I have to write in some kind of appeal. Especially as my frozen food sits thawing in my fancy baby-friendly/ or not-so-friendly trolley!

Oh and another thing - when is ASDA going to add pregnant woman on to the parent bay, as Tesco has? Personally, I always find carrying many heavy shopping bags to the far corner of the car park when I am 9 months pregnant and ineligible for this space much more tiring than nipping into ASDA unpregnant with Charlotte, when I do qualify because I have her booster seat along with me.

Get the logic sorted ASDA!

ON THE TOPIC OF MANUALS

A certain family member, who shall remain nameless, also seems to suffer the manual aversion.
Just yesterday said relative bought a new toaster. I am told by the other relative he lives with, that had he read the manual, he'd have realized that you were meant to put the toaster through its paces by twice running it through with no bread in, and on its third run, setting it to setting 4/9 using a slice of moist, fresh bread. Of course this relative likes well-fired toast, so, ignoring all instruction, stuck an old, dry slice of bread in on its first run and set it to 9/9. Worse still he went for a walk round the house, rather than keeping an eye on it.
After the toast caught fire, shot up high enough to set the pine kitchen cupboard on fire, and fall back on top of the plastic-coated toaster, melting it in the process, he had the cheek to return the 'faulty toaster' to Argos demanding a refund and compensation for his kitchen cupboards! ;-)

GADGET MANUALS!

oops!
Originally uploaded by PhylB

We bought a new camera the other day - mainly because our Sony 100 was a bit sick, but also because we found a wonderful deal on Hong Kong imports. I took it to the Botanics with me on Tuesday... its first outing. I hadn't read the manual - I suffer from a complete allergy to manuals and usually only ever resort to reading one when the gadget I am attempting to use has caught fire or something similarly fatal.
Léon was standing in front of Kibble palace with a sinister stormy sky at his back. The sun was also at his back. I went to turn the dial to force the flash only to find the new Sony 350 doesn't have the function dial the 100 has. No problems, I was sure I could easily find a setting to compensate for the back light before the beautiful sky changed...
Hmmm maybe I should open that manual after all...

DRINKING STRAWS

this sucks.
Originally uploaded by billaday

The older I get, the more I find myself hating drinking straws. I have them in the house, of course. Marcel and Lots like them for drinks but the real reason I have them is for smooth soup. Since Léon gave up bibs smooth soup without a straw ends up with his clothing needing several washes if not incineration! But this is also the reason I find them so revolting. Have you ever watched a 2 year old with a straw? Today, for lunch, I made some homemade cream of chicken and spinach soup and gave Léon a straw. That was fine. He had Ribena too. He alternated dipping his straw in the green soup and the purple juice. Yeuch! Inevitably somewhere along the line he dropped it on the carpet and reverted to his spoon, dirtying his t-shirt after the second spoonful. Running to clean the t-shirt, I forgot the spinach-caked straw, which he, of course, found at dinner and promptly plonked into his apple juice. The combination of a pre-schooler and a drinking straw is just too revolting for me. I wonder when kids tastebuds start working well enough that they too find using a hairy, soup-caked straw in a clear, fresh glass of apple juice unacceptable?

SIBLING RIVALRY

Poor Pudge
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Sibling rivalry seems to be starting earlier than I remember from my Marcel and Charlotte days. I was in Tesco with Léon and Anna in a trolley like this one today. Anna, as always, was waving her arms and legs excitedly. Léon whined a little - Anna no hit Nénaw, Anna no hurt Nénaw, Mummy Anna's hiiiiitting me! Gimme a break! I explained she was simply trying to pat him on the head because she loved him, which seemed to pacify him for an aisle or two anyway till it all started up again! I guess I should get ready for fireworks once she can crawl!

DUMMY?

yummy wine
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I was saying last week that I didn't know why Danes were so into dummies... Here in Scotland we have found the perfect way to keep a baby content without hiding its smile ;-) See the whole set of shots of my little wino on flickr!

EGG

As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs
Originally uploaded by Monster.

Léon loves eggs. It has got so bad that when egg is one constituent of a meal we have to hide it till the end or he eats it first then says 'more egg, more egg, more egg'. Funny boy - He's not quite his Uncle Derek! Huh?

THANKS A BUNCH GORDON AND CO

So, their tails between their legs, they have U-turned on the taxes, but of course I am still in that tiny little minority that is getting shafted. Because I work part-time (just mornings), I don't earn more than the £18K you need to not get screwed. Today they decided to give money back to the over 60s that had lost out and to the under 25s with no kids because they too are losing. What gets me is that my group is meant to be covered by child tax credits, but because of my partner's earnings I don't qualify for those - despite the fact that three of my kids are not my partner's dependents. There is a crazy situation in this country where those who are on a low or part time income have their partner's income taken into account when they apply for tax credits. The upshot being that new partners end up having to take on the financial responsibility for their partner's children from previous relationships. And the government is still surprised when people in my situation claim to be living as a single parent instead of declaring their partner. I wonder if it is too late to hide Anna under the bed and pretend that I am Thomas's lodger ;-)
It is intersting actually. Watching Newsnight at the moment and the Labour spokesperson keeps discussing how the taxes affect specific 'households'. I think that has put the finger on what is wrong. In my parents' generation people thought of taxes a couple thing, or a household thing but these days people think of themselves as individuals. Couples often have separate bank accounts so taking £200 off the woman, and in some cases (again, not mine) giving the £200 back to the man is still not seen fair. Labour needs to stop thinking in these old-fashioned terms. Households change too often these days to operate in those terms.

DANISH CAR POLICY

The seatless car
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I have been meaning to blog about Danish cars ever since I first set foot there 18 months ago. I found it absolutely mind-blowing and still do. There are many parts to the car tax policy that are incomprehensible to us foreigners. I am sure anyone, unfamiliar with Denmark, will fall off their seat in shock once I mention a few of its surprises.
I lived in Germany many years ago (1989) and for some (illogical) reason, I always assumed Scandinavia would be quite German in its car policies. I visualised lots of green policies - many small cars, but bright and new so low in pollution. I imagined car sharing amongst students - after all, my Konstanz stay was punctuated by hitch-hiking in old VW campervans and looking uni noticeboards for Mitfahrgelegenheiten on the weekends. I presumed that once you had a reasonable job in Denmark you'd probably drive around in a fancy Saab, the way the Germans drive their BMWs.
Thomas mentioned his parents shared a car - a minister and a university professor in the UK would have 2 cars - they wouldn't share a car. I figured it'd be something fancy - he is a top professor, after all, and she must have to drive around a lot as a minister. It is a Fiat Multipla. There is nothing odd about that in itself - many of my mum friends drive Multiplas given they have 6 seats - Oh no they don't...Oh yes they do???? but not always if you live in Denmark! Thomas's parents' Multipla has 3 seats. I thought they were nipping down to Ikea to buy a new dining room table or something. Nope - they only own 3 seats! Car tax in Denmark is so high that many people use the tax loophole of converting their cars to vans (by removing all but the front row of seats) to pay less tax... now I don't mean no tax - a 3 seater Multipla is still majorly more expensive than a 6 seater one here in Scotland but it is then affordable. The net result is that no one in Denmark with these adapted cars can give you a lift anywhere. If 4 adults go out to the theatre together they can't go in one car, they need to take 2. So instead of the green policy I expected, while the rest of us are being encouraged to car-share and avoid single occupant journeys, Denmark is populated by empty cars all driving around.
The other problem, of course, is that because car tax is so high even people with the most prestigious jobs are driving about in 10 year old cars - the kind of thing we here bought as our first car at the age of 18. Thomas remarked that although Copenhagen felt like a city with fewer cars than Glasgow, the pollution level was worse - possibly because of the number of really old cars still in use.
Often when asked what I drive, (a 2 year old 7 seater Citroën C8), I am met by a blank look as they just don't exist there (they retail at more than £50K unlike the approx £20K here). When I elaborate You know the big Citroën people often ask if I mean the C4!
Funny country!

GIMME STRENGTH!

I hate this culture of pointing out the really obvious to people just to cover your back. It is getting worse and worse. At work we got a sticker on the coffee urn telling us hot water is hot. If they were less pc and just stuck a sticker on it saying 'Don't sue us if you are stupid enough to burn yourselves', I'd respect them more! But today's took the biscuit... I found this allergy advice inside a box of free range eggs I was using to make scrambled egg rolls for lunch.

DISAPPEARING JOBS

young gran
Originally uploaded by PhylB

From time to time Thomas and I find ourselves discussing jobs that disappear or get outsourced - sometimes in the context of what best to advise the kids to study, sometimes just for fun. Today, it occurred to me that a job that no longer exists is one my grandmother did. My grandmother played piano. She gave lessons and played in a nightclub even when I was a child, but a job she did earlier was a shop job. But not a shop job as I did in my student days! In the olden days when people often bought sheet music, especially as a gift, and often when the buyer didn't play an instrument, people had no way of telling what they were buying. My gran's job was to play sheet music to prospective buyers in a department store in Glasgow. When the buyer liked what they heard, the music was bought, otherwise she'd play piece after piece until they found something that suited their purposes! What a quaint lost world!

GOT YOU - YOU B@STARDS!

You may remember I wasn't exactly starting up the East Ren Council fanclub last month... Well I said I'd get them and I did! With the help of Marcel, Mum and Dad (thanks guys) I have now cut the conifers into little pieces (despite being allergic to the bloody things and getting a nasty rash) and put them in my normal brown recycle bin to be removed from my garden free of charge on Fridays. And I stand by my charge of them trying to make an easy buck off my back. You'd think it was a lot work given they wanted to charge me £70 for the job - but how many bins did the trees actually fill? - 3 in total. What a cheek! Robbers! :-(

LÉON'S ASTHMA

Pudge with his inhaler
Originally uploaded by viralbus

Léon has been using an asthma inhaler now for 11 months since he developed respiratory problems after contracting chicken pox at the age of 20 months. A few weeks ago the doctor recommended taking him off it for a week or two to see how his breathing is and whether he develops any chest infections. He stopped using it on April 13th and so far so good - touch wood...

THE LUCKIEST PERSON ALIVE?

Audi A3
Originally uploaded by Kamidh

Am I the luckiest person live this week or am I simply being harassed constantly by annoying spam? It's Saturday evening and in the last 4 days I have won 6 Audi A3s according to my email, simply by being the 999 999th person to visit some website...just click wherever. Audi - leave me in peace NOW!

SOME THINGS JUST AREN'T INTUITIVE TO A FOREIGNER

Last week Thomas and I were in the station in Skanderborg in Jutland. In the station there was a waiting room. There didn't seem to be a ticket office however. Outside there was a newsagents which sold magazines, sweets, sandwiches and drinks but had no signs outside mentioning tickets. There didn't seem to be any indicators inside either that you could ask for a return to Copenhagen along with your newspaper and bottle of coke or ice lolly. Given many stations in the UK have been replaced by a ticket machine on the platform, and this is also the case in France, which I know as well as the UK, it would never have occurred to me to even try the newsagents. Had I been travelling alone and unable to speak Danish (as most foreigners visiting Denmark), I would have hunted up and down the platform for a machine in vain and then I probably would have been fined in the train for entering without a ticket. The next day we were in Copenhagen and the same occurred. We needed tickets for the subway. This time there was a small hint, not one I noticed but one Thomas spotted (see the notes if you click on the photo). Again it would never have popped into my head to try to buy tube tickets at the newspaper stand in the local supermarket, rather than in the actual tube station. I imagine Denmark is probably full of foolish foreigners wandering about aimlessly because they are unable to work out where to buy the tickets for any of the public transport systems in the country! :-)

TOO SHORT TO BE DANISH!

 
 

Ever since I have known Thomas, I have thought of him as a tall man - at 1m80 (6'), he is definitely above average in Scotland. But last Saturday I finally realized what he means when he insists he is simply of average height back home. Travelling on the newly-built Copenhagen subway, I went to hold on to the bar as the train pulled out of the station. We laughed when it turned out that at my very-below-Danish average 1m61 (maybe even 1m62 in my shoes), I couldn't even reach the bar the average person was meant to hold on to!

DANISH DUVETS

As I said last week, travelling is interesting. Not only do you get to people-watch but you get to culture-watch too. The first time I visited Denmark I was very surprised by the beds in everyone's homes. Beautiful comfortable beds but always with two single duvets rather than one double duvet. Thomas explained Danes, for the most part, just don't own double (or bigger) duvets. There seem to be 2 common excuses - people like different weights of duvet, so a common one for a couple doesn't work, or people are wary of duvet hoggers, so don't want to share with a partner. I find this utterly bizarre. If you want to be cooler than a partner, stick your feet out the side, if you want to be warmer, stick an extra blanket on top on your side and if you happen to live with fajita man (as I do) then simply buy a king size duvet for your double bed - then there is plenty cover for both of you. However comfortable I am in Denmark, I do find the single duvet system a little lonely, and when I reach out for a hug, I find a big cold gap in the middle between us :-(

STOP PRESS! BELOVED FAMILY MEMBER SICK!!!!

Oh my God! Our first born DSLR is sick! Yesterday when I turned it on it made an odd shuddering noise, but as the battery was showing red I assumed it simply didn't have the power to operate the auto focus. Tonight I recharged the battery and put it on only to find the wee soul is still shuddering. I therefore assumed it was a lens problem but given it makes the noise even with the lens off, I can only conclude our Sony Alpha is sick and in need of a trip to the DSLR repair shop :-( How will we live without it? What if it is terminally ill???

LIKES AND DISLIKES

huggy brothers
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Up till about a month ago Léon happily told us his likes and dislikes. I like cappuccino, I don't like that bad dragon. One afternoon Marcel was playing on his computer with his friend Gregor. They'd closed the door locking Léon out of the bedroom. Léon came downstairs whining in that way only a 2 year old can whine Nénaw can't like Marcel and Nénaw can't like that Gregor either! Both Thomas and I took this as being Léon's way of explaining a deeper annoyance with Marcel than usual. For a month now we have been told of various things Léon 'can't like'. Tonight, as if struck by lightning, it came to us both at the same time. This isn't a different degree of hatred, it is simply a bilingual problem. Léon is simply back-translating the Danish wrongly. In Danish you say : Jeg kan ikke lide Marcel. Sweet!

PANCAKE FEAST

Sometimes things happen that restore your faith in life! I got up this morning to find Marcel and Charlotte had got together, without a hint of sibling rivalry, no rude insults, no lazy lying in front of the TV and made chocolate pancakes following a recipe in one of Thomas's cookbooks. Cooperating in a new adult manner, they'd made the batter (though had put a whole solid cold block of butter in it instead of melting some), and mentioned too that since they didn't know what baking powder was they'd used bicarbonate of soda! Mixing it with the electric whisk had caused batter blobs to be sprayed to all 4 corners of the kitchen and the floor was caked thick enough in maple syrup that I was actually sticking to it, but hey they were friendly, so nothing else matters as much! A parenting success?

A DANISH DUMMY

Denmark is a bit of an enigma to me. In the UK you are warned from late pregnancy against giving your baby a dummy if you intend to breastfeed it. Midwives warn of this mysterious 'nipple confusion' that sends shivers of fear up the spine of any dedicated breast feeder. We are told that dummies can grudgingly be introduced at the same time as solids - probably because they know that if you get through 4 or 5 months without one, you will not want to introduce one then. For that reason almost no breast feeders use dummies in the UK. If your baby has a piece of plastic sticking in its mouth you can bet with 95% certainty it is a bottle feeder. Shops reinforce this by selling dummies on the same shelf as bottles and formula milk, on a completely different aisle from breast pumps, breast pads or nipple cream. I think there is even a bit of breast feeder snobbery attached. A true breast feeder wouldn't be seen dead out and about with a baby using a dummy (though they might sneakily give them one in bed at night, under cover of darkness, with the curtains drawn). Denmark definitely has a higher proportion of breast feeders than here, in the early months at least, and yet I am yet to meet a Danish baby that isn't hidden behind one of these things. When we visited Olivia on Saturday she was sporting a dummy complete with Danish flag, so we had to have a photo. It is after all almost a symbol of Danish babyhood!

Personally I hate them with a passion - the photographer in me cringes at the beautiful smiles you are missing out on when you hide their little faces with these ugly things.

UPSIDE DOWN

Dad got a new lens for his birthday. I took a whole series of Thomas playing with Anna till I got this cool shot. You can see just how much fun she was having with this daring game! ;-)

JET LAG

Jetlag Reception
Originally uploaded by Adriaan Bloem

It's funny - I didn't think jet lag happened when the time difference is just one hour but when the flight home is at 5-50am Danish time, meaning you need to get up at 2-30am UK time and then get through the whole day, then I swear it feels exactly the same as full-blown I've-just-flown-home-from-the-States jet lag. YAWN! I'm away to my bed!

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN BY LIONEL SHRIVER

Just before I had Anna, everyone in my family started raving about We need to talk about Kevin (please DON'T read the spoilers if you intend to read it). First Amanda read it for some book group, then dad and finally mum got dragged into the circle. As the family's resident worm, I heard over and over how I just had to read it, apparently I had no choice in the matter! I was given a copy. 'Shortlisted for the Orange prize for literature', it said. I read the blurb - it sounded readable enough. I started it in December - 9 months pregnant, exhausted. I tried to read a few pages every night before bed. The style didn't lend itself to that - the sentences were long, the topic stressful, the tension tangible. I really couldn't see what the fuss was about. After Anna was born, I managed 2 or 3 pages a week and frankly the style was annoying me. But my whole family couldn't be wrong, could they? So I took it with me to Denmark this week and read it in one go. By half way through I couldn't put it down and as I wandered round Copenhagen and Amsterdam airports today majorly sleep-deprived, I still couldn't stop. I was banging into people reading the way most people walk around texting! I just finished it (holding it in one hand while changing Anna's nappy with the other - I just didn't want to put it down for that 3 minutes!)
Phew - I am exhausted, wrung out. Shit... wow. Eva is quite a character. I wonder if you need to be a parent to read it or if it knocks over even non-parents. Kids... the part of ourselves we know nothing of.

PEOPLE WATCHING

I like to travel - it gives you time to observe people. On Monday, I was flying through Amsterdam Schiphol to Copenhagen but our flight was cancelled, leaving us 2 extra hours sitting about. KLM kindly gave us a €10 to spend on food (Ryanair they are not!) While sitting in the restaurant, I observed one interesting man. He arrived at a table with two chairs carrying 2 plates, each with a large slice of pizza and a salad, a full bottle of wine, 2 wine glasses and 2 water glasses. He poured out 2 glasses of wine, and 2 of water. He set his pizza in front of him, and the other pizza in front of the other seat, obviously awaiting a wife or colleague. He started to eat, he finished his meal and half the wine. She's taking her time, I thought to myself. Then, to my surprise, he furtively looked around, swapped his plate and glasses for the full ones and proceeded to eat the other meal and drink the other half of the bottle of wine! Hahahaha: people, there's nowt as queer as... you've got to laugh!

JASON LEE FLICKR PHOTOGRAPHER

Check out this photographer! Not only are his little girls cute as hell - his photos are so full of imagination. I guarantee a smile! I particularly like his coffee photo. Anyone who has ever lived with little kids will relate to it!

CHILDHOOD

IMG_0370
Originally uploaded by memeeps

Over the past 6 months it has been striking to me how much shorter childhood seems to be now compared to when Derek and I were children. I see that Marcel is behaving more and more like I did at around 14, (he is ten and a half). He sits looking fierce, watching TV ignoring me sometimes. He grumps and growls if I dare to suggest a walk round a nice park, though condescends to accompany me if I let him walk behind me, hidden in a hood, hooked up to an ipod. He sits on Bebo and giggles over sexual innuendo with his friends. But the thing that alerted me to the difference was the sudden realization that he seems to have skipped an essential part of male growing-up. This morning I remembered that Derek and his friends spent most of their summers probably from about 8-12 catching bees and wasps in jars and watching - in the name of science - whether they would fight to the death. This was something I particularly hated Derek doing - not because I was a great bee or wasp lover - I was simply afraid I'd be the one they'd sting should the escape his jar in an enraged state. Marcel has never once, to my knowledge, caught a wasp in a jar for the fun of torturing it. Wee boys just aren't wee boys any more.

PHOTOGRAPHERS

project
Originally uploaded by th3g

This goes to show - real photographers never ever run out of things to photograph, do they?

MONSTER MOVIE UPDATE

Apparently Chicken Run is also a movie for the under 5s, so Marcel and Charlotte tell me ;-) I think I'll show them The Great Escape next week and see how they class that...
Hmm, time to read them Animal Farm as a bedtime story?

WEE BESOM

 

She's only gone and done it again... cracked and blistered my right boob with all her gum-grinding and pulling off and grinning at me etc. Tonight I tried to feed her while turning my head away because the usual eye-contact you get when feeding a baby often seems to cause her to pull off and smile at me lovingly, but unfortunately without unclamping her jaws first - wee besom! It is hard to be angry though when it is mainly caused by her wanting to smile at me. I shudder to think how it'll be feeding this one once she grows some teeth! :-\

THE PROBLEM WITH LÉON'S ASTHMA INHALER

Léon was given an asthma inhaler when he was hospitalized after developing respiratory problems as a result of a severe dose of chicken pox in May 2007. Léon had previously been in hospital in October of 2006 with a suspected kidney virus. Between the autumn of 06 and the spring of 07, Léon suffered numerous chest infections and was generally unwell. All the time he had a bad cold at the very least. He lost his happy personality and sat depressed as if waiting for the next illness to strike at any time. He was so used to being sick that he was a master at blowing his nose, a feat many toddlers have a real problem with at 18 months. After starting on the inhaler his health improved in leaps and bounds. He hasn't had a single infection. He is back to his happy self but he has also not had a single cold since last June until this week. When it struck, I realized he has completely forgotten how to blow his nose. He's spent most of the week running up to me shouting 'Nénaw has a yucky nose!' but has no idea how to stop it running. I guess unlearning nose-blowing has to be the only downside of the asthma inhaler. Next week he is meant to try coming off the inhaler for the first time in 11 months. It'll be interesting to see how that trial goes.

MURAL

Léon and Anna's bedroom is finally finished
Originally uploaded by PhylB

As my flickr friends may have noticed, I have been working on a 360 degree dinosaur mural in the babies' room for the last few weeks.
I guess all in all there is no more than four or five days work involved but when you can only start it every day at 9pm once Léon is in bed, and you have to do it in 1 hour chunks so you can feed Anna, do homework with Charlotte and talk to Marcel, and you are generally in bed by 11pm, then a week's task suddenly stretches to an eternity. Anyway, my bit is now complete. So all I need is to convince Thomas to take some time off his gardening schedule to stick down the laminate and we can move in Léon's bed straight away, and ultimately Anna's cot much later.
I wish I had the time to do some more murals. I did them for all the kids in my old house too.

MONSTERS INC

Mike - Monster Inc.
Originally uploaded by ClausM

I was watching Monsters Inc the other day with Léon. Léon loves it because there are good monsters and bad monsters and it is sweet and colourful. There is no way in a million years he can grasp the finer points of the plot because the whole idea of monsters stepping from their world into ours through cupboard doors that they call up in a factory is just too complex for little kids. I remember that even the last time Marcel and Charlotte saw the movie - when they were maybe 7 and 5, they also didn't get the whole door thing. I asked them one night after watching it, what it was about and they told me the basic goodies and badies, but didn't get the doors, the energy crisis or the human kids. So while watching it with Léon, I wondered in fact how old a kid needs to be to understand the plot. When they came in from school I asked if they'd watch it with me, just to test my theory, that even now at 10 and 8, they might not get what is actually happening. Amusingly, they both looked down their noses at me and refused point blank to watch 'that baby movie'. Funny - I guess I'll need to wait till they are adults for them to believe me that it is actually quite cleverly an adult movie and not really a kiddie movie. It'll be fun to watch them grow up enough to have that dawn on them.

2 ANNAS

Marcel just weighed Anna for me. She now weighs 6.8kg at just 15 weeks. She was 3.4kg at birth so I guess I now have 2 Annas. Twins? Just what I need on top of the other 3! ;-) But, joking aside, it is amazing how you can grow on just breast milk and nothing else.

MORE PHOTOSHOOTING

Blue girl
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I've been playing with my brollies again and though it is great fun, I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I would really, really like a studio - or at the very least a room with dark curtains (instead of no curtains as in my current living room!) and one of those long white roles of vinyl that you can pull from the ceiling to under the kids as a backdrop to the photo: a cream duvet and a basket chair really can't house 4 kids at a time!
Maybe Thomas will build me an extension with a studio in it for my next birthday!
It was interesting to watch the kids reaction to the photoshooting. Charlotte - who is usually more shy than Marcel, rushed for a comb and her favourite T-shirt, where Marcel was less happy to be photographed. He played along for the first 5 minutes but wanted out after that. The babies think being photographed is their purpose in life so they were no problem.
I guess Marcel is reaching that self-conscious phase of early adolescence where he thinks mum isn't so cool.

EYES

I often wondered as a child or as a teenager, what any kids I may one day have would look like. Would they be smallish like me or taller? Would they have dark hair like my parents or lighter like me? Would they have straight or curly hair as we have that in the family too? In fact the only thing I took for granted was the eye colour. Any kids I had would have dark eyes like me, my brother, my mother, my grandfather etcetc. Of that fact, I was one hundred percent sure. And as you can see I was completely correct?!?!!!
First I had Marcel.

Then Charlotte.

Then Léon.

And finally Anna!

Two green, two blue. How strange - I really haven't mastered the art of making brown-eyed babies very well, have I?!

THE TERMINAL TERMINAL

I don't know whether to shake my head, cry or laugh reading all this BA terminal 5 nonsense.
Thomas took one look at that picture and wondered what would happen if a terrorist now claimed to have put a bomb in one bag. Would they just remotely detonate the whole pile (taking the building with it?)
And I laughed out loud at the story of passengers sitting in the plane watching luggage being put on and taken off 3 times, only to see the whole plane emptied just because staff weren't sure the cases had been scanned properly... That reminded me of my flight out of Barcelona to London on 15-9-01. US airspace was just reopening and we were sitting on an Easyjet beside the Delta airlines flight to Atlanta when a member of airport security came up the stairs holding a large blue suitcase - Does anyone recognize this? she asked... tickticktick? :-) When no one claimed it, the airline staff hauled it down our steps and up the steps of the delta flight, no doubt to ask the same question. Had they learned nothing 4 days earlier?
But why am I surprised at the BA fiasco? When I think back to the pre-Ryanair days, when I always flew BA, BMI or Air France when visiting my French family, I had to go through Heathrow 3 or 4 times a year. They got so good at losing my luggage (12 times in 3 years!), I knew exactly what was in their emergency handout: a toothbrush, hairbrush, soap, a pair of white pants and a white XL t-shirt with a BA logo on it. I acquired so many of them over the years that even now - 9 years on from the last time Heathrow last lost my luggage - I still regularly sleep, DIY, and garden in BA t-shirts as I still have a stock of them!

CLEVER SITTING GIRL

Clever sitting girl
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Tonight we dropped by Derek's. While Charlotte was putting on her coat we put Anna on the floor and she seemed to sit. She was wearing a big snowsuit so I figured the shape of it was somehow keeping her upright. Later I decided to experiment in her pyjamas. First I tried sitting Charlotte behind her to catch her, but I soon worked out she could do it with no one nearby to catch and could do it for quite some time - up to a minute at a time. Fourteen weeks does seem a tad early to be sitting - I guess she hasn't got to the chapter in the baby book yet that tells her what to do when!

A DIGITAL DILEMMA

DSC08519
Originally uploaded by viralbus

Last week something new happened to me as a mother. Something that has never happened before despite my having 3 babies already. Anna started to suck her thumb! Now Anna is only 14 weeks old, so it is extremely cute at the moment. I will be completely horrified though if she is still doing it once she is in a school uniform. I have just spent the last hour googling it like mad to see how easy it is to break your child's habit if it goes on too long and checking its possible orthodontic and phonetic implications - and whether you need to saw off their thumb at some stage if you can't crack it. Surprisingly the consensus seems to be that between 70 and 90% of babies do this - why didn't the other 3? Are they freaks? And no one seems to be suggesting amputation as a necessity further down the line. This is a relief as I was beginning to wonder if a dreaded dummy would need to be substituted as it could at least be withdrawn at some point in the future. And as you know dummies are about as far up my popularity list as infant formula - and that isn't a compliment.

So it looks like she's going to be allowed the thumb, for now...

OUR DANCING QUEEN

Is this cute or what? We had just hung Anna in the door-bouncer for the first time ever when Thomas stuck on the radio and she decided it was a door-dancer rather than a door-bouncer! With Léon already a bit of a musical babe, I shudder to think how noisy this house is going to be once they are both teenagers!

SHOULD I BE WORRIED

 

Is this the sign of a disturbed child? Should I start saving now for the future psychologist bills? I wonder what Barbie did to deserve being stripped and drowned in a skeleton mug in my sink? ;-)