Thursday, October 28, 2010
INTERESTING GENETICS
When you have children with more than one partner the similarities can sometimes be astounding. I often find Lots, Léon and Amaia hard to tell apart in their baby photos. The differences are also curious at times. One trait that differentiates my Gautier children from my Buchanan-Widmann ones is their reaction to infection. When the Gautiers get a chest infection, throat infection or ear infection, like most kids they become lethargic and their temperature goes through the ceiling. Realizing they are ill is therefore quite simple. When the little ones get the same illnesses though they get neither the temperature, nor the lethargy. Anna has had a wheezy cough all week but no temperature at all. As it didn't seem to be clearing we had her looked at by the GP and once again she seems to have a rather deep chest infection but no symptoms other than a cough and a grumpy personality. Despite my years of parenting experience, I find it really hard to tell when Anna or Amaia is ill :-(because they have never ever had a temperature in their lives. My mother-in-law also never has a temperature when she is ill. Interesting!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
THE YEAR I GREW UP
Today I read with horror in the Independent that universities might be scrapping the compulsory year abroad for language students because of cuts to funding.
I have no issue with who it is who coordinates where the students are sent, and quite frankly don't see why that has to cost a great deal of money. They could simply apply for jobs directly to lycées on a list for all I care. Let's face it, once you arrive abroad, you are paid by your employer, so the student isn't given any money by the British Council.
However, scrapping the scheme because the people who find the posts can't be afforded is insane. You cannot count in money the difference that year makes to your language skills. You can never really speak the language properly until after that year. But even if you omit language skills from the equation, when I think back on my own experience in the lycée général et technologique Jean Lurçat à Bruyères in the Vosges,
(not everybody got to go to Honolulu's twin town, you know!) that year changed my whole life. It changed who I am and everything I have done since: the job I got, the men I married, the kids I had. I cannot begin to imagine my life without the year I grew up, learned to speak French properly, learned that other cultures were so very different from my own and at the same time so similar. It taught me an awareness of others' sensibilities that I would never have got from never leaving my own country.
If I was designing the university system, I wouldn't be dropping this very necessary part of language courses, I would be making a year abroad a compulsory part of all uni courses because of the value of learning to live alongside a new culture. I would force each and every one of us out of our comfort zone because of the richness it gives to us and the life skills you can never gain until you've been thrown into a new country, a new language and had to assimilate, even if only for a year.
Monday, October 25, 2010
BUM SHUFFLING
Amaia's way of getting around might not be the most conventional but she's getting really quite speedy and can easily manage steps between rooms. It'll be interesting to see if she moves from this to crawling or if she simply shuffles faster and faster with time.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
SIMPLY SPRAY - UPHOLSTERY FABRIC PAINT
We all know this recession is hard. The world is full of financial uncertainties. Obviously after six months on maternity leave, self-employed with five kids and a mortgage, this isn't the best year to splash out on a new three piece suite but I saw Simply Spray upholstery fabric paint on the Internet and figured I'd found a stopgap until better times.
I splashed out on three cans of coffee coloured paint figuring I'd start with the living room futon as it is covered in coffee stains, felt tip stains, footprints, you name it!
On pressing the spray nozzle, a haze of pale brown paint came out beautifully then suddenly lumps of thick, dark paint shot out wrecking the surface of the evenly coloured futon and finally the can jammed. We tried over and over but each spray session ended with blobs of permanent ink dripping onto the fabric. It then completely seized up and refused to spray despite the can being at least half full.
The paint can't be washed off, can't be spread out and can't be completed. I would thoroughly recommend, however hard up you are, that you avoid Simply Spray like the plague. It is an utter waste of time and money. Instead of spending £20 to save me buying a new £150 IKEA futon cover I have now spent £20 to completely destroy a borderline usable futon cover, forcing me to buy a new futon cover. Oh joy!
I splashed out on three cans of coffee coloured paint figuring I'd start with the living room futon as it is covered in coffee stains, felt tip stains, footprints, you name it!
On pressing the spray nozzle, a haze of pale brown paint came out beautifully then suddenly lumps of thick, dark paint shot out wrecking the surface of the evenly coloured futon and finally the can jammed. We tried over and over but each spray session ended with blobs of permanent ink dripping onto the fabric. It then completely seized up and refused to spray despite the can being at least half full.
The paint can't be washed off, can't be spread out and can't be completed. I would thoroughly recommend, however hard up you are, that you avoid Simply Spray like the plague. It is an utter waste of time and money. Instead of spending £20 to save me buying a new £150 IKEA futon cover I have now spent £20 to completely destroy a borderline usable futon cover, forcing me to buy a new futon cover. Oh joy!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
SKYPE
Have I ever ranted about Skype? I hate Skype with a passion. No one in my family understands my Skype aversion - they are all big Skypers. I find the jerky, time-delay off-putting - I lose track of what I want to say, distracted. I am not comfortable with visual phoning. I don't like phones anyway but having someone see I'm sitting in my bed with no make-up and a scabby old dressing gown isn't my idea of acceptable.
My family first suggested I try using Skype the first time André took Léon away when he was a toddler. I was in a state about him leaving for a week so seeing him on a computer, suddenly wondering why he could see his mummy but not hug her left both of us distressed and upset. I vowed never to Skype again.
Then Thomas went to Euralex for a week and insisted on talking to Anna and Amaia while the big kids were on the summer holiday with André. Anna can't msn at two so I reluctantly re-installed bloody Skype and let her and Thomas get on with it with minimal interference from me.
Today Dad started ranting at me that he'd prefer to Skype than msn so I opened my Skype window and it told me a new version needed installing. I clicked install and gulped at the thought.
An hour later, an ex-work colleague who I haven't seen in years emailed to say she was currently on holiday and couldn't manage a chat today. Hmmm, odd! Ten minutes later the secretary rang from Léon's old nursery to ask if I had any urgent questions about Anna's imminent nursery start. Weird. Finally, my ex-husband, who I converse with only through email, popped up and asked if it was something urgent I wanted to discuss with him on Skype. WTF??? By clicking to reinstall Skype, bloody Skype seems to have informed everyone of my email contacts that I want to converse with them (urgently?) on Skype. Bugger off, Skype! I do not want to talk to anyone on Skype, not the local council, not the babysitting service I used once in Manhattan four years ago, not ex-members of my family who've blanked me for five years but who are still on my contacts list, not the BBC photo page, not Amazon customer services page - gimme strength! I hate Skype! I just hate Skype!
My family first suggested I try using Skype the first time André took Léon away when he was a toddler. I was in a state about him leaving for a week so seeing him on a computer, suddenly wondering why he could see his mummy but not hug her left both of us distressed and upset. I vowed never to Skype again.
Then Thomas went to Euralex for a week and insisted on talking to Anna and Amaia while the big kids were on the summer holiday with André. Anna can't msn at two so I reluctantly re-installed bloody Skype and let her and Thomas get on with it with minimal interference from me.
Today Dad started ranting at me that he'd prefer to Skype than msn so I opened my Skype window and it told me a new version needed installing. I clicked install and gulped at the thought.
An hour later, an ex-work colleague who I haven't seen in years emailed to say she was currently on holiday and couldn't manage a chat today. Hmmm, odd! Ten minutes later the secretary rang from Léon's old nursery to ask if I had any urgent questions about Anna's imminent nursery start. Weird. Finally, my ex-husband, who I converse with only through email, popped up and asked if it was something urgent I wanted to discuss with him on Skype. WTF??? By clicking to reinstall Skype, bloody Skype seems to have informed everyone of my email contacts that I want to converse with them (urgently?) on Skype. Bugger off, Skype! I do not want to talk to anyone on Skype, not the local council, not the babysitting service I used once in Manhattan four years ago, not ex-members of my family who've blanked me for five years but who are still on my contacts list, not the BBC photo page, not Amazon customer services page - gimme strength! I hate Skype! I just hate Skype!
Friday, October 15, 2010
BLACKSTICKS CHEESES
I noticed some new cheeses recently in ASDA. I hadn't tried these before so bought them, being a big cheese fan. I would highly recommend them if you like smooth, creamy blue cheeses!
Monday, October 11, 2010
WHY THEY SHOULDN'T RINGFENCE THE NHS BUDGET
I'm all in favour of the NHS having a decent budget but I don't believe corners can't be cut to make it more efficient. This morning I took Marcel to the orthodontist because (as can be seen in this photo) his upper jaw is too small to fit in all his adult teeth, so some work will need to be done in there. We had originally been called up ten months ago but at that time he still had some milk teeth so they delayed treatment. Today his consultant looked inside and said he was ready to begin treatment. Perfect! So, what happens now do you think? Well, he makes a report to his assistant, who fills out the NHS funding forms and sends them off to apply for payment for Marcel's treatment. These will of course be accepted without question as he's an under-16 UK citizen, so after eight weeks the funding department will stamp and return his forms with the money and his consultant will then have his secretary write to us calling us for our first appointment. He said this without blinking, as if this ludicrous bureaucracy was completely acceptable. (Mind you, he is Greek so maybe he fails to see the wastage in this system). I have a better idea for my NHS tax money. The orthodontist looks in Marcel's mouth, decides he needs four teeth out and braces so pulls out four teeth and sticks in braces, fire the assistant, fire the funding rubber-stamper, fire the secretary and spend those three salaries on NHS funding. Am I a genius or what? Maybe I should charge them £30K for my one-page report...
Sunday, October 10, 2010
CHEESECAKE ANYONE?
When we found out at 24 or 25 weeks that Amaia was a girl, we started a long search through all possible female forms of the name Peter as a tribute to her grandfather. Given Anna was named after both her grandmothers and Léon had Douglas as his middle name after my dad we thought it would be nice to find a Peter tribute. Peter isn't the easiest name to feminize :-( Apart from the obvious Petra, there were many weird and wonderful names we had barely or never heard of: Pella, Pernilla, Pernille, Perrine, Pet, Peta, Peterina, Peternella, Petria, Petrina, Petrine, Petronela, Petronella, Petronelle, Petronia, Petronija, Petronilla, Petronille, Petrova, Petrovna, Pier, Piera, Pierette, Pierrette and Pietra. I had heard of a Peterina once - but that is simply tragic as names go! So after much deliberation Pernilla (the Swedish form) was chosen. After her birth we told the kids, who had never heard of it. As always in these situations Marcel learnt it quickly and Charlotte awkwardly claimed at every turn not to be able to remember it. What's Amaia's middle name again? Vanilla or something like that? she'd ask. Grrr - you know what it is Lots!!!! Anyway last week, out of the blue she asks how much it costs to change your name. I wonder what she wants to change it to. No, she explains, she's come up with an idea for a second middle name for Amaia! (Like Anyone who is called Amaia Pernilla Buchanan-Widmann really needs more names to render herself unique!) I ask what, and a huge, triumphant grin appears across her face. Cheesecake! she says. Cheesecake? I ask, bemused. Yeah - then people would think she was called 'Am I a vanilla cheesecake?' Haha - very funny, Charlotte. I'm hoping she waits till her late twenties at least before starting a family, if this is her idea of child-naming!
Monday, September 27, 2010
IT IS I, LECLERC!
You've got to laugh at wee kids, don't you?
Yesterday, as I blogged, Léon received a Woody from Toy Story dressing-up costume from my brother and his wife. Marcel was away on a sleep-over with his friend Matt so missed him receiving it. I texted him a photo of course, which he thought was awfully cute.
When Marcel returned home at 3pm today, he wandered into the kitchen where Léon was sitting, once again dressed as Woody, at the breakfast bar. When did Woody move in? Marcel exclaimed walking past Léon. Léon looked absolutely thrilled and genuinely believed that Marcel hadn't recognized him. Lifting both his cowboy hat and glasses simultaneously he replied 'It is me, Pudge!' He reminded me so much of LeClerc from Allo allo! Marcel and I looked at each other both thinking the same thing smiling.
THE MILKY BARS ARE ON ME!
A combination of Léon's new glasses and the Toy Story 3 dressing up costume he got from his Auntie and Uncle for his birthday have left me with the closest thing I've seen in 30 years to the Milky Bar kid living under my roof!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
26-09-10
Apparemment aujourd'hui - le 26 septembre - c'est la journée européenne des langues. Afin de fêter la journée du blogging multilingue il faut que j'écrive mon blog en français, allemand, suédois, danois ou italien. Vu que j'ai passé la moitié de la nuit à allaiter un bébé enrhumé, j'aurais du mal à l'écrire en anglais, donc je vais m'en passer pour cette année!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
LIFE WITH GLASSES WEEK 2
Nearly two weeks after getting glasses we still have a way to go. Firstly I might as well record the phrase 'Look through your glasses Léon, not under them!' and play it on a continuous loop. I then ask if he doesn't see very well through them and he claims he sees much better through them. So why the hell does he look under them non-stop? I am completely baffled. Then there's the contrast between what an adult would consider to be a safe place and Léon's interpretation of the same. While dressing yesterday morning I suggested he should take them off and put them somewhere safe. He proceeded to take them off and simply drop them onto the wooden floor from the height of his face. Arg! They didn't smash - phew! Today, he asked to join me in the bath. I asked him to put them somewhere safe again and he decided that placing them carefully on the floor in front of bath was a 'safe place'. I guess he's still learning... I just hope the glasses last until he's learnt.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
LANA AND AMAIA
Don't you just love it when babies become aware of other babies and check each other out as if they are seeing another mini-human for the first time ever? :-)
Friday, September 17, 2010
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A SCHOOL
Here in Scotland parents are forever moving in and out of catchment areas to make sure their child gets to go to a good primary school. The whole housing market is artificially inflated by the desirability or not of the local school. I'm first to admit I'm caught up in that trap too. Like most parents I'd give anything to give my kids the best start in life...
So after 13 years of parenting I thought it was time I shared my wisdom with those who are less experienced. Given the ubiquity of uniforms here, I would say the most important thing to look for in your child's prospective primary school is the colour of the polo shirt! Orange. I would highly recommend orange! As someone whose kids have all gone to a white (soon to fade to grey) primary, I have come to the conclusion that an orange shirt would blend in much better with beans, ketchup, fish fingers and most everything else primary ones like to eat for their lunch.
So there you have it - the advice of an expert (who has spent way too much time and money on bleach over the years)!
So after 13 years of parenting I thought it was time I shared my wisdom with those who are less experienced. Given the ubiquity of uniforms here, I would say the most important thing to look for in your child's prospective primary school is the colour of the polo shirt! Orange. I would highly recommend orange! As someone whose kids have all gone to a white (soon to fade to grey) primary, I have come to the conclusion that an orange shirt would blend in much better with beans, ketchup, fish fingers and most everything else primary ones like to eat for their lunch.
So there you have it - the advice of an expert (who has spent way too much time and money on bleach over the years)!
Monday, September 13, 2010
HELP THEM TO HELP THEMSELVES
The school has been encouraging parents since back in May at the induction days not to help their children with dressing of any type so that they are able to function independently at school. We had been trying even before then to find the patience to allow Léon the necessary time to do things all by himself... This morning I'm not sure where Thomas and I, or even Lots and Marcel were when Léon was getting dressed but none of us saw him apparently. He looked fine, he went to school for the day, he came home. Nothing seemed wrong until we walked past the downstairs loo while he was peeing. What's that you're wearing? I heard someone ask. There was a moment of silence, just time to look down and up again. Oh! Did I forget to take my pyjamas off before I got dressed this morning? he replied! I shot through to the calendar... Is Monday a gym day, please don't let Monday be a gym day... Gym - Tues, Weds, Thurs - phew! I have narrowly escaped being the laughing stock of Newton Mearns! I bet he was warm and cosy though in this hideous weather!
MORE ON THE BLOODY SPECS
So today after school I notice Léon is constantly trying to look over or under his glasses rather than through them. We decide to do our own eyetest. Thomas opens a cookbook with small pictures. Close-up, he asks What's that? He points to a mushroom - Emmm, I dunno - a doughnut? What's that? pointing at a cow - A brown puddle? From across the room we try a distance test. I show him a tractor and he squints under them and gets it right. He fails again with the specs on. We start to worry he has some other kid's specs. I phone Specsavers and they say to bring him back in but it's too late today so arrange to do it tomorrow. I then try his library book with the specs on, asking him to point at an 's', a 't', an 'e' an 'o' etc and he gets it all correct with and without the specs on. I don't understand. Stress, stress and more stress! Why couldn't this have happened once he had the vocabulary to say something is sharp or blurred. When I ask if it is better with or without his specs he simply bursts into tears and says he wants to keep them because they are cool with Mr Tickle on! Stress :-(
THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN YOUR CHILD GETS HIS FIRST GLASSES
Today we found out the hard way what no one at the opticians warns you you need to be on the lookout for on the day after your kid gets his first glasses. We had a plan to go and see Toy Story 3 with Charlotte, Léon and Anna, leaving Marcel at his friend's house and Amaia sleeping on my dad. We left at 1-15, dropped Marcel and reached Cineworld in Glasgow at 1-45. As we turned into Renfrew street, Charlotte let out an appalled gasp. I looked up at my Mummy-mirror (all Citroën C8s have a second mirror on the ceiling for keeping an eye on your zoo while driving) just in time to see Pudge vomiting profusely all over the back row of my car. I was a little surprised given he's two weeks short of 5 and has only been sick in a car once in his life and has travelled thousands of miles. I instantly realized the new glasses with their magnification had given him a whole new travel experience which had culminated in the outpouring of his insides and was instantly regretting the blue cheese sandwich he'd had for lunch with 7-UP. With 15 minutes to go till the movie, Thomas sprinted to Sauchiehall street where he found new jeans and a T-shirt for a distraught wee boy who was begging for his cinema trip not to be cancelled, while I gave up all hope of finding a parking space and simply headed for a multi-storey so I would at least have time to clean my car as best I could with a packet of Amaia's baby wipes. After this I got some odd looks as I made my way to the cinema foyer where I'd organized to meet up with Thomas and the new clothes, dragging a four year old wearing only boxer shorts and a vest! And it only took me an hour of cleaning my car when I got home to get it usable again. Funny how it was definitely my car once it was covered in kiddie vomit!
Sunday, September 12, 2010
WHAT NEXT?
You don't expect to pick up the phone and hear your son say 'Mum, I was shot while walking past ASDA at 4 o'clock with my friend', do you? I could tell from his phone voice, he was ok, so wondered if he thought this was some sort of amusing joke, but that would be out of character as he's turned into quite a sensitive and sensible young man so I asked what he was on about. It turned out that after he'd left my house at 3-30pm on Friday on a bus to the Kirkhill area of Newton Mearns, he met up with his good friend Jack as he was to have dinner there and together they had walked to ASDA around 4pm to buy some drinks and snacks. Walking back from ASDA to Jack's house along Eaglesham road, Marcel said a blue car (which they didn't know) had driven up beside them, and slowed down, rolled down the window pulled out a 'BB gun' and fired off six shots, hitting Marcel in the shoulder with one. Though he was dressed as in this photo, the pellet went through his jacket and t-shirt marking his left shoulder. Stunned, neither boy managed to note down the numberplate of the car. Fortunately Jack's dad is himself a police officer so knew exactly what to do. Three cars were called out and took statements and looked at Marcel's superficial wound. Jack's dad then rang me to recount what had happened. Shockingly, Jack's dad, who works in the West End told me of the easy availability of such pistols, grenades and the likes and the problem all over the UK (and presumably the Western world) of kids freely buying what they consider fun-guns on the Internet - free delivery, no questions asked - and thinking such seemingly non-dangerous attacks were a way to relieve boredom, not realizing that hitting 30cm further up in his eye would have resulted in quite a different injury. He told me he regularly arrests kids in town on a Saturday night carrying such weapons, but was himself more than surprised to find 13 year old kids being singled out at 4pm on an autumn day for a drive-by shooting in a quiet and affluent area of the city. Did these crazy attackers realize how young these children are or were they singled out as acceptable targets because Marcel's height makes him look older than his age. Whatever the thoughts behind this, I'm absolutely appalled anyone can bring up a child to believe this behaviour is acceptable. And I thank my lucky stars neither Marcel nor Jack was really hurt in this incident.
NEW MR TICKLE SPECS
We found out last week that Léon was rather long-sighted. Today we picked up his glasses. Instantly when he put them on, he opened his mouth wide, looked immediately around himself and exclaimed 'woooooow, so this is what the world looks like!' Has my wee man's eyesight been so bad all this time without any of us noticing? :-( It nearly broke my heart to see this new excited Pudge, even happier than the usual Pudge. While tidying the kitchen after dinner, he bounced through to me and said 'Mummy, can I go outside and look at the night sky?' Again this was followed by another exclamation of awe. Wee man...
Monday, September 06, 2010
POOR PUDGE
It's always poor Pudgeman... After three years of fighting the spots (as you can see we still have one of those on his right cheek) we received a letter from nursery saying he'd had an ambiguous eye test. That was about ten months ago. I rang the number on the letter from the NHS and was told he'd be recalled for a more detailed eye test within nine months. Of course nine months came and went with nothing so I rang again the week before he was due to start school, given being able to see always puts you at an advantage in school. They claimed they'd discharged him without seeing him and advised if I was still worried about him I should simply take him to a high street optician. Grrrr, thanks - I would have done that ten months ago, had I known... So off we trundled last week to Specsavers and they checked the health of his eyes - no problem, and rebooked us a week later for a pupil dilation and eye check. We arrived today, had his pupils dilated and were sent away for a half hour wait before the test could take place. To cheer him up I offered to take him to Waitrose for sweets. He chose a Kinder egg. I built the toy as he chomped on the chocolate. I handed it to him, only to have him ask what it was (a Little Red Riding Hood wolf in a nightie) - I hadn't realized the dilation would make his eyes so blurred he couldn't tell what he'd got, poor wee man! As we walked back down Byres road he pointed at the lamp posts and told me they were lovely helicopters. Oh dear - the dilated pupils were really having bad side effects :-( Once inside the optician diagnosed long-sightedness that he should outgrow before adulthood but insisted he wears glasses before his vision sustains any permanent damage in the meantime. Poor baby :-( He has such beautiful eyes, I don't want to hide them. I already see years of broken, lost, and temporarily misplaced glasses stretching before me. Years of glasses forgotten on visits to his father that I'll get to replace, no doubt :-( And years of hospital appointments stretch ahead again... Specsavers now want Marcel, Charlotte and Anna tested too - though Anna will need to be done during Léon's hospital appointment as she's too young for them to cope with. Marcel is less than amused at losing his Saturday afternoon to that, to say the least, and Charlotte is very (un)helpfully saying in front of Pudgeman that she won't be seen dead in ugly glasses! Thanks, Lots! At least Pudge himself is thrilled he's getting cool Mr Tickle specs - until he tries them on anyway.
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