GETTING OLD

Do you remember the Billy Connolly sketch when he recounts finding his first grey pubic hair? He's appalled to realize middle age has crept up on him unnoticed.

Today I had my Billy Connolly moment...
This is Marcel when he was Léon's age. In my mind, when Marcel isn't standing beside me towering over me, I still think of Marcel as being a little boy like this. It was, after all, only a few weeks ago, on my time scale, that I gave birth to him.
Today I was sitting in the car driving with Marcel, Anna and Amaia to ASDA when I stopped at the traffic lights on the Eaglesham road. For the first time in about two weeks the sun was bright in the sky. I was in the driver's seat, Marcel was on my left, the sun was on his left.
As I looked to my left to see if the filter arrow had come on on the traffic light the sun lit up his face, and I noticed in horror that the sun was illuminating what can only be described as a definite moustache of blond fluff on my 'baby'! Oh my God, I'm getting old!

WTF???

You know when you come across someone foreign on Youtube who claims they can teach you to speak with a 'British accent', that you're in for a fun few minutes. A British accent???? What the hell is a British accent...? well - listen and learn.
If you are native to these islands, I suggest you pause when she reaches the 'garage' because you may need a toilet break, or perhaps you'll simply need to fetch a tissue?
But stick with her all the way through to the second lesson when she's ordering a coffee for Bobby - classic linguistic mince (thanks to John Wells for making my day).
Maybe someone should send her the Scottish lift sketch. If we all speak the same, this might be an eye-opener.

LARGE FAMILIES

Sometimes when I look at my kids, I think of what most people consider the norm - and that would probably have been a photo of just me on a bench with Charlotte and Marcel. How much less rich my life would have been if I'd stopped there. They are all so different and so alike in many ways. Anna and Marcel are quite alike in their interests, Léon, Charlotte and Amaia look very alike. I can see myself in all of them regardless of gender and colouring. Looking into your own eyes in another colour touches the depths of your soul. This weekend Marcel has spent most of the time listening to the same song over and over trying to learn the lyrics - something I myself would have done at his age. Charlotte sometimes drives me mad with her awkwardness and shyness - again traits I too suffered from at her age though overcame. The little ones are so endearing with their smiles, their chat, their nonsense, their understanding of the world. I watch how Marcel interacts with the smallest ones and I feel pride at having raised such a gentle, lovely boy. He acts indecisively like his father and I cringe. I ask him to tidy the kitchen and he does a sloppy teenage job and I want to kill him but he was my first love so I can't. He smiles his smile and sparkles his beautiful green eyes and my heart melts. He comes home from school and leaves a report on his bed, forgetting to show me it. I find it and read he is one of the cleverest kids at his school, polite, well-behaved, full of enthusiasm and I hold my breath, thrilled that by some fluke I have managed to raise the perfect child. That's what being a mother is all about. Charlotte's teacher, at our parent meeting, stops on more than one occasion and gasps - My God you are the same person - she gestures like you, she moves her hair like you, she talks like you. I rarely see this myself. I am bemused and yet proud. She says to me - Charlotte is unaware of how bright she is. Again I am secretly thrilled at having got something right. I love her freckly nose, her clear green eyes. Her niggling with the little ones sometimes drives me insane. Her hours of patience with them in the next instant amazes me. She's more patient with them than me at times and her parenting wisdom stuns me when she sees better how to deal with them than me. Her refusal to ever brush her beautiful hair drives me batty. Her tomboyishness puzzles me as it is so far from where I was as a young girl. She talks enthusiastically about footballs in a way I'd have spoken about ABBA at her age - I have produced a me who is the antithesis of myself! Léon is my fragile little angel: my lovely, caring, gentle boy. He has the most cheeky smile. His transparent blue eyes are flecked with yellow. Had I stopped at two kids, I'd never have known kids could have yellow eyes! He adapts easily to everything, yet is so needy of our love. He's my special darling Pudgeman. His laugh makes me laugh. His hugs are so precious. Nursery tells me about this well-behaved, happy little boy and again I am proud. His spot problem and other problems he's had since his horrible chicken pox as a baby make me want to protect him and cocoon him in love, to keep him safe from the world but as he grows and I offer him a little more independence, I am proud of my brave little boy. Anna has a fiery nature and two odd eyes - one darker than the other. Had I stopped at two kids, I wouldn't have known I could have had an odd-eyed kid! Her eyes draw me in and fascinate me. Anna's favourite word is Whhhhhhhhy? She argues with me and her older siblings because she believes she knows better than us at times. This makes me laugh because she has such baby logic. And yet the minute the big three go for a night with their father, Anna walks about wailing as if her right arm has been removed. When they return, her faces breaks into a smile and she tells them how much she loves them. She's very definite about her likes and dislikes. My like pink, my ikke like blue. She can make her large dark eyes fill with tears at a perceived wrong as she mutters my am very sad. Anna is my sweet little drama queen, my daddy's girl. Anna is obsessed with being a big girl in comparison with Amaia. She studies her for hours so she can point out everything she has that is bigger than her baby sister. Being big is very important to Anna! Amaia is my perfectly content smiler. She's my happy eating machine, my nosy feeder. She pulls my boobs to look behind her when she's eating. She's my standing baby who refuses to bend in the middle. She wants to learn to walk before she can sit steadily. She loves to be hugged and kissed by me and all her siblings. Her face lights up for each and every one of them. Had I stopped at two kids, I'd never have known I was capable of giving birth to a 4.5kg baby without drugs and smiling five minutes later! She smiles and observes all day long and I need her as much as she needs me. I watch her sleeping. She sucks in her sleep and I wonder if she's dreaming of me. She is another beautiful precious child with deep thoughtful eyes of another odd grey/green/blue shade. The only thing that makes me sad about my large and beautiful family is a fear that I won't live long enough to watch the youngest ones reach my age. I can't ever imagine having only had the two kids society expected me to. I love each and everyone equally. I love the way they are individuals and I love the way they need each other.

TOO FEW BIRTHS

One of the problems with the low birth rate in Western countries is the fact that women don't have the experience to know what their bodies are capable of. Also women are unlikely to know someone personally who has a lot of children and who can offer real advice. Women end up listening to health officials and believing what they say. Back in December I was told I had to have a caesarean, which I refused because I knew the limits of my body but had Amaia been my first or second baby, I'd probably not have had to confidence to argue and win my case. I was told on at least five occasions that I probably wouldn't be able to have her naturally as they tried to frighten me into signing up. I am becoming more annoyed at stories I am hearing. How often do we hear - I won't be allowed to go more than X hours past my due date or they'll induce me. Given they can check blood flow, oxygen etc to and from the baby these days (they did it with Amaia), it seems to me that setting average deadlines is not in our interest. Of all the people I know who've been induced, 80% have gone on to have a caesarean because they have not dilated. I find it hardly surprising they don't dilate if the baby isn't ready to be born. I hate the dictatorial vocabulary too. Another friend's baby was breach till near the end of her pregnancy. They won't allow me to try to give birth naturally, she told me despite the fact that she already had several children. Advising women is one thing, telling them what they can or can't do is another. I wish they'd spend more time trying to avoid such traumatic surgical outcomes. And I wish women trusted their own instincts more.

PLAYING 'WORLD CUP'!

With her siblings home from their 'stay home and watch the world cup' holiday with André, Anna has found a new love of football. She's been dribbling one of Charlotte's footballs around the garden all day wearing her Denmark strip. After spilling jam on it at 3pm she was distraught that she didn't have a second football strip to change into, sobbing inconsolably that her other T-shirts didn't have a number on them. I took my camera out to capture them all playing happily together after two weeks absence. I was particularly pleased with this photo.With the ball reaching up almost to her pudgy little thighs, it shows that for all her confidence and ability, Anna really is still a baby. She looks so unsteady and cute here in a way neither Lots nor Pudge look with the ball. I guess this will be one of the very last shots where Anna will look more like a baby than a big girl, so it'll represent a treasured moment snatched before she grows up some more.

PURPLE POTATOES

We've been growing purple potatoes this year. In fact we've been growing four or five different types of potato to make up for the fact that we went to the garden centre too late last year for our seed potatoes. These are so pretty you could frame them and put them on the wall - and they taste great too - though I'm only allowing myself them on weekends as I'm still on my post-baby diet.

HOW TO PAINT BEHIND YOUR RADIATOR

Why don't they sell these in B&Q? This is Thomas' oversized Danish toothbrush for painting behind radiators. I can hardly believe I reached the age of 38 before seeing one of these - they are a 'must' for any serious DIYer! (They also come in handy if you're quite short and you miss a bit high up!)

BLOGGER, GOOGLE AND THE WHOLE FIASCO

I first started blogging years ago when my name was still Phyllis Gautier. I chose the domain name phyllisgautier.blogspot.com. I didn't have a crystal ball at that point so it seemed a fair enough choice! A few years later I was getting divorced, going by the name Buchanan, not sure whether I'd stay a Buchanan, become a Widmann, a Buchanan-Widmann or what so bought the domain name phylsblog.com as it was future-proof and a mere £5 or so a year.
I set it to re-register automatically. I changed my email address on all my google accounts but for some obscure reason the domain-name renewal service for google and blogger stuck with my old email address which I haven't used in years. So last week when it tried to renew my £5 subscription it emailed my old account to say my credit card details needed updating. Funnily enough I didn't find out till my dad went onto my site today to find out it was gone. An impostor was there staring out of the screen at me.
I tried various things then Thomas suggested it had maybe expired. I trawled my email for half an hour then tried accessing my old hotmail account and there was the email telling me my account was cancelled.
I tried to click to renew but there was no button. I read my way through every page of my google account, more than once being redirected to a sign-in page for an account I have never had - phyllis@phylsblog.com. Over and over I tried to reset the password for it.
By this time I'd managed to burn the batch of sweet potato and chicken I was making for Amaia for tomorrow, possibly destroying the pot in the process.
Three hours in I finally clicked something - I have no idea what that finally let me access the part of my account I needed to reorder - I was losing the will to live by then. I was relieved and thrilled to receive an email confirming Thanks for buying: Domain Registration Renewal phylsblog.com
I clicked on my blog in anticipation and up popped the impostor again. What now? I have no idea. Blogger lets me into my create new post page but I can't post it - so I'm ranting for no one here in the hope it somehow jumps back into life. I used to be quite good at computer-related things but this is beyond me - I've been going round and round like a puppy chasing its tail all night.
After wasting nearly four hours on spending £5 to not have my blog back, I am going to throw in the towel and sadly go to bed :-( and I don't even have my man to cheer me up as he's off at Euralex growing our business empire - hopefully he'll get enough work to hire me my own private computing assistant as I'm obviously too stupid to fix this by myself!

WHY I'LL NO LONGER BE READING THE TIMES

As of this morning my old boss Rupert will be charging us to read the Times. I will therefore no longer be reading the Times. I have no objection to paying for a paper copy of the Times if I happen to want one at the corner shop, but it seems to me this is a very old-fashioned way of looking at news, media and journalism.
Before the Internet we all bought one preferred paper and read their take on everything. Over the last fifteen years we have changed our way of accessing information. We read the same story in ten different newspapers, on BBC's site and maybe a US site to get the balance of the take on it. So although Rupert's £1 a day might have been fair when we wanted one paper, I for one am not willing to pay £15 a day for the newspapers I access. Either they all need to get together and charge an information tax of some sort to access them all, or they need to come up with a new revenue model.
Of course these days with blogging, the new journalists will become people like me who, if all papers start to charge, will pay and rewrite the information free on independent sites, thus killing off the pay model before it can take hold. It's time to look to the future Rupert, not the past.

LÉON OR CHARLOTTE

I'm sure I can feed myself mash!
Originally uploaded by PhylB Up to now I've seen Amaia as a little Léon clone. In hundreds of photos (and in real life) I see Léon all over again.

Yesterday when I uploaded her eating her mashed potatoes I was sure I'd seen this look before but this time it was a mini-Charlotte.

NEW LOOK BLOGGER

I love Blogger's new templates! I've been fiddling about with Pudge's blog trying to find a more suitable look for a four year old boy and I think I've come up with the perfect solution! He's going to love it when he gets back from his holiday - well at least until he realizes he can't eat it!
I think I'll have a play with mine and Anna and Amaia's later in the week!

BILINGUAL KIDS

I love the way bilingual toddlers decide which words they want to use in each language. To a man they use mainly the right words in both languages but there is always a category of word which will not be translated no matter who is being spoken to. For example, at two Marcel much preferred grenouille to frog so even if he was speaking to a monolingual English speaker, he refused to use the word frog although he knew it. I have a lovely video clip somewhere of him at two recounting a complicated story about a princess kissing a grenouille and the grenouille turning into a prince! Anna has several preferred Danish words. She always uses at rutsje for to slide and at gynge for to swing, even if she's speaking to my mum, and when counting she always counts: one, two, three, four, five, six, otte, ni, ti. Don't ask me what seven has done to offend her in both languages but for some reason she always skips it and swaps language there! Sweet!

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL

Camels - Jahrah Desert, Kuwait
Originally uploaded by QuiteLucid

I think I've been living with the politics nerd too long...
On Tuesday Léon graduated from nursery. We were invited in for strawberries, shortbread and a little concert. The kids sang a dozen songs, some chosen by the teachers some by the kids themselves. What will we sing now? asked the head teacher. Little Beth suggested Alastair Campbell! How strange, I thought... Why would the kids want to sing about the Labour party? Of course they then all proceeded to sing Alice the camel. D'oh!

LATE RETIREMENT

Raising the age of retirement in the UK from 65 to 66 and then beyond to 70 seems to be a major topic of conversation with the new government this week.
Am I the only person to wonder how the logistics of this are actually going to work?
The first problem I see is a major number of workers in the middle and upper management categories being made redundant in their late 50s, or 60 at the most. These people never get other similar jobs afterwards - they are dispensed with because they are seen as part of an older generation that needs to move aside for newer ideas or technologies. Does the government really expect our managing directors to go and spend the last ten years of their working life in ASDA or B&Q? And why do we want 70 year old managers working on the check-out in ASDA when our unqualified 16-25 year olds are unemployed? I don't get it!
Secondly and even more significantly the UK does not offer affordable childcare solutions. Maternity leave lasts a maximum of one year and the government offers you a free three (not eight) hour nursery place from your child's third birthday until they start school. As a laugh I will calculate childcare costs I would incur had I not given up on childcare long ago, but imagine for a minute I only had Anna and Amaia - that is after all not an unusual family for a 42 year old uni graduate. Anna is 2 and Amaia is 5 months. The private nursery I used when Léon was one year old, a great nursery but average in price for a Glasgow suburb, would cost me £1479 a month. When I left my job a year ago my full-time net pay was £1667. Even if petrol had been free, would you work full-time for a month to earn £188? So how do women on salaries of up to about £35K (which is way above average female income) manage to work in the UK? Well, for the most part (myself not included) women leave their under fives with their grandparents who give up their own well-earned retirement to babysit their grandchildren so their children can afford to pay for their inflated mortgages while still having children. I wonder who is going to babysit these millions of under-5s while granny and grandpa toil in ASDA till 70. Has the government budgeted for full-time childcare for all 1-5 year olds when raising the retirement age?
And that amusing calculation I promised you... If I worked full-time away from home my monthy childcare bill once Léon starts school in August would be £2323 a month during term-time rising to a £3041 month during school holidays!

COUNTDOWN TO FREEDOM

I often wish I could bottle the smell from the roses in my garden. In the same way I wish I could bottle the last five minutes of summer term in primary school.
Most days of the year I turn up late to pick up Charlotte - there's no point in being there at 3pm as she always wanders out after ten past but the one day a year I allow myself the secret pleasure of turning up early is the last day of summer term. It isn't that I am deliriously delighted to have five kids under my feet for seven weeks, don't get me wrong. I just love the joy and exuberance that you get at no other period in a kids' life. Today they were coming out at 1pm. As the clock struck one minute to, the noise began. Standing outside the grounds I could hear as 630 kids counted backwards from 60, with the roof almost coming off the building as the bell rang at 1! Then 630 smiling kids ran out blowing whistles, thrilled their summer had begun. By high school the last day of term is nothing special, they can't even be bothered going in for the most part. Blasé, the joy of real childhood is already gone, sadly. So every year my kids finish at primary, I allow myself to stand outside the gate listening to that joie de vivre that teenagers and adults have lost and I shed a little tear for le temps perdu! (Don't tell anyone!)

LÉON

Today my little Léon left nursery forever. After summer he will start real school in primary one at Kirkhill along with his sister who is going into primary six. Leaving nursery is more of a parental experience than a child's one. The children, although they know they are not going back, are too small to be overly moved by it. The parents often cry inconsolably at the loss of that period in their lives. I still have two babies going to nursery so leaving Hazeldene today for Léon's last time was less traumatic for me. I knew it was simply an au revoir rather than an adieu, though it did bring a lump to my throat! I guess when I see him in his over-sized uniform in August I'll be reduced to mush!

STATIC HAIR

Charlotte's always had an issue with our garden furniture and static electricity. I noticed it on this photo I took at the weekend. It immediately reminded me of a really sweet one I took eight years earlier :-)

A COPER

Anna has proved herself to be one of life's copers over the past three weeks. On the day her stookie was put on she sat on a chair in the garden and didn't move or play. By day two she was dragging it around the house bum-shuffling and by the third day she could roll and lower herself from the couch. The middle of the first week saw her develop the bravery to drag in along the patio outside on her bottom. Last Monday (day nine) she got out of bed and decided if it was going to be on for what I assume feels like forever in her timescale, then she'd just get on with it, so she got up and started walking. By Tuesday jumping, running round the garden and climbing had been added to her repertoire and I have to say today's shopping expedition in Glasgow which saw her walking unaided around shops in Sauchiehall street drew some funny looks, particularly in Primark when Brita was shopping for socks for Ursula and I actually found myself shouting Anna will you stop running, you have a broken leg! It will be interesting to see how she re-adapts to normality on Wednesday when it finally comes off.

KIDS

One thing no one warns you about having kids is the questions you are going to have thrown at you daily. Today's big dilemma for Léon: why does his shadow not have eyes!?

DISADVANTAGING THE DISADVANTAGED

Anna is to start her free state nursery place the first week of January next year. As is the case in the UK free nursery places are offered to all three and four year olds. They are meant to complete a year of ante-pre-school, and then a year of pre-school and then they start school around the age of five. The cut-off point for school starters in Scotland (not England) is January 1st. If you are born after January 1st you can start school in August of the year you turn five. If however, like Anna, you are born a week too early at the end of December, you have to start school in the August before you turn five. This wouldn't offend me if she was then allowed to start her ante-pre-school year with all the kids who she will be going to school with, but because the government only provides nursery for three and four year olds she misses two whole terms of her ante-pre-school year disadvantaging her and all the other youngest school starters - those who could probably do with the most help if they are to start school at 4 years and 8 months. Given the only two criteria for receiving your state nursery place are that you are toilet trained and can talk by your third birthday, I see no reason why Anna couldn't be given a place from August despite being two - she has been potty-trained since her second birthday and can talk very clearly but instead I have to keep her home five extra months disadvantaging her educationally. It's just not fair for the littlest ones.