Amaryllis

Our Ikea Amaryllis has just opened.

I was just thinking Amaryllis is a bit like a more colourful version of a Phyllis name! I think when I was busy feeling sorry for myself in the 70s saddled with a granny name I'd probably have quite liked to be called something exotic like Amaryllis! ;-)

Cynthia and Dave

When I had my first baby in 1997, I was a bit new to kids to say the least. I don't think I'd seen a baby since my brother was born in 1971. I joined the QMH breast feeding group to make some friends and met a small group of three - Cynthia, Siobhan and Karen who were to become my breast friends - lifelong dear friends I'd trust with my deepest heartaches and my greatest joys.

Recently I remembered with great fondness one specific occurrence... When the babies were all little - as in this picture - big enough to sit but not to run away, Cynthia (left in this photo), the American member of our group would occasionally read to them. A great favourite was Dr Seuss's Too Many Daves. I don't know if it was her accent or just the wonderful way she read it but she always had the babies in stitches reading it. I wish I'd had a smart phone back then, because if I had I would definitely have filmed it for posterity. I remember Marcel always used to chuckle at the way she said 'Moon Face'. Anyway, I decided tonight to see if I could achieve the same effect. I took out my Dave book and read it to Anna and Amaia sitting together on a chair. They looked at me completely blank! I don't know where I went wrong but I just don't seem to have Cynthia's charm!

Ognon

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When I lived in France in 1987-1988, I shared a flat with a German girl. Given I spoke German and she spoke English, we decided that because we were in France to improve our French we would speak to each other in French when we were in France (which of course was the majority of our year together), in German whenever we crossed the border into Germany, which we did on a dozen or so occasions, and English if we came to Scotland, which we did once. At the time I had already had a French partner for two years so was very used to speaking French, whereas she had learned more from books. I therefore knew that the French pronounced oignon /ɔɲɔ̃/ and not /waɲɔ̃/ as you might expect from the spelling, but my flatmate stubbornly refused to pronounce it properly, even when the French people all around her were constantly correcting her!

We often used to drive from the Vosges to the Doubs on weekends, where my partner lived at the time. We passed through a tiny village just south of Vesoul called Ognon /ɔɲɔ̃/. I used to wind her up commenting it was called the same as the vegetable, she used to growl back that the pronunciation was different. We agreed to disagree, though I smugly knew I was right!

I stumbled upon the French spelling reform on wikipedia recently. Oignon has officially been changed to ognon to reflect its pronunciation! I wonder what my old flatmate has to say about that, given she now lives in France! If I had some spare cash I'd be tempted to go on a wee holiday to the east of France and send her a postcard from Ognon as an 'I told you so!' :-)

Mini chef

We have a rota on the fridge door of chores in the house. It requires the adults and two biggies to cook three times a fortnight and Léon and Anna to cook around once a fortnight. It'll need changing soon and Léon is beginning to complain he doesn't have enough cooking days!

We've always thought that starting them cooking at a young age makes them into competent independent young people and of course gets cooking into their routine before they reach the blasé, teenage 'I can't be bothered' stage. Marcel already cooks better than me and can happily feed a dozen people. Charlotte isn't quite as keen but can do Mexican things, pasta, rice, pie and potatoes, fish and chips etc so is self-sufficient. The wee ones are starting simple. Anna peels and chops veg and oven bakes them with chicken and similar. Léon makes mainly pasta dishes.

Tonight Anna let me in on her cunning plan: 'Next time I'm on cooking mum I'm going to make fish and chips. But I'm not going to make it. I'm going to go to that wee shop near ASDA with the pizza oven because when you go in there and ask for fish and chips they just make it for you and give you it in a box. That's much easier!'

I think she's missing the point of our cooking lessons!

Is Mouse Trap one of life's biggest disappointments?

I don't know what it was about Mouse Trap... I clearly remember as a child looking through my mum's catalogue just before Xmas. You turned straight to the toy section at the back, of course, back then! I'd stop on Mouse Trap. I thought the box looked so thrilling. I was desperate for Mouse Trap! I never ended up getting it - I don't remember why - whether I ended up asking for something I preferred, whether I decided it was too expensive to ask for or whether I asked for it and my parents (sensibly!) vetoed it?

A number of years ago, Marcel asked for it. I didn't want my child to go without Mouse Trap ( ;-) !) so I gave him it for Xmas. I tried to build it on Xmas day. It was a nightmare! None of the traps really aligned so none of them worked properly. Every time you touched one bit another would jump out of its space. It was a bloody nightmare and stressful as hell! I hated it to a point I could hardly imagine. And the kids didn't enjoy it either. It simply frustrated them.

Somehow I got it in the divorce settlement! Lucky me! (I must have been bad in a previous life.) I'd used it once so it was simply thrown under the stairs. I had long forgotten it until Sunday when Léon found it. Cue nightmare. He thought it looked like the most fun any seven year old could ever have. After half an hour of reading pages of instructions and finally tearfully delegating its building to Marcel (my nerves couldn't take it after a week up with vomiting kids!), it still didn't work and now with two mice missing, the three wee ones couldn't even play simultaneously. Amaia then jammed the toilet section with the coloured cheese chunks! Léon, a fairly easy-going child, didn't even realize it was awful so happily played with it Saturday and Sunday before Amaia took it apart again. 

It is currently in its box in the dining room but I have to say throwing it out for the bin men on Friday is incredibly tempting!

Flowers!

I'm not overly good with plants - a trait I get from my mum! I leave plants (indoor and out) to my other half, I just weed.

Amanda gave me this plant a wee while back. I figured it'd be dead in days but I can only assume it is indestructible because it has not only grown beautiful flowers on the ends of each of its arms, it has even grown extra flowers at the end of some of its flowers!

Pretty!

Making Trifle

There's something cute about foreigners attempting to recreate a well-known dish. 

Yesterday Thomas decided to recreate trifle using his knowledge of how it tastes! That doesn't sound too difficult, but a few problems arose. Firstly he chose a large, shallow, flat dish so when he put in the lady fingers he covered the entire bottom so used about three times as many as I would recommend. That of course meant that as soon as he poured on the unset jelly, the extra lady fingers sucked it all up instantly and you couldn't actually see there was any jelly at all! Next, because raspberries had been too expensive he sliced a banana on top of the jelly but given there was no more jelly the slices just sat there on top of the soggy fingers, turning brown. In an attempt to save the banana's colour, he poured on custard straight away, but not thick, set homemade stuff, runny custard from a box which did at least manage to save the bananas. Given the jelly still hadn't set, it managed somehow to draw a little of the jelly back out of the fingers causing a strange pink and yellow marbling in the dish. An hour later, he whipped some cream and grated on some chocolate and the final dessert looked and tasted nice, and even vaguely trifley but I think it did come across as a rather foreign trifle!

Sooooo fed up with it!

I've said it before and I'll keep repeating it till the day I die no doubt.

My name is NOT Mrs Gautier!

If approximately 30% of UK marriages end in divorce, and 50% of Scottish children are born to unmarried parents, then why does everyone and their uncle assume a woman has the same surname as her child? It drives me batty. I went through three years of a very acrimonious divorce to NOT be called Mrs Gautier. It cost me a fortune to NOT be called Mrs Gautier. I have spent the best part of the last seven years being dragged down by everything to do with my ex. And given half of the Gautier family has disowned even my kids, it is beginning to get seriously on my nerves.

So woe betide you if you are the next person to call me Mrs Gautier!

Dad and Amaia

It's strange which character traits people inherit from older generations. Of everyone in the family, dad was the one who could least tolerate tepid food. He often asked you to heat his food a little in the microwave, when no one else was upset by it. He claimed he couldn't eat in IKEA because they never served the food hot enough!

Recently Amaia has started to go down the same route. If she eats too slowly and her meal cools down too much we get her famous 'I just can't like cold rice!' and she does everything in her power to make us heat it till it is piping hot so she can continue to enjoy it.

Poor kids

Sometimes I think Thomas and I must discuss linguistics and semantics a little too much over the dinner table for the kids' good!

Tonight Anna hopped into bed and said 'soon I'll be fast asleep...' then she paused and came out with 'fast - now what exactly is the meaning of fast in this phrase, it's obviously nothing to do with speed, so does fast have some other meaning in this context?' OMG - she's only four, if she talks to the other kids in the school playground like that, they'll run a mile!

We've created a monster! ;-)

Vanilla?

When Amaia was born she was named (as her second name) Pernilla (= Peter) after her grandfather. She's only two so she doesn't know her middle name yet. The other day Lots called her Amaia Pernilla. Amaia is never very happy about new things. She knows she's Amaia, she's very happy to be Amaia or just Maia but she'd never heard the Pernilla bit so looked very concerned when Lots came out with it. She put on her pensive face and then slowly announced 'I'm not Vanilla, cakes are vanilla!'

Biccies

I am currently eating these with some nice Brie and some mature Gouda. I have to say the little flat ones with the pumpkin seeds on are just to die for!

Back translating

As with her brother before her, Amaia has taken to back translating from Danish when expressing her likes and dislikes. If one of her siblings, say Charlotte, is annoying her she exclaims 'I just can't like you Yotsie!' If she's given dinner she disapproves of, she wails 'I can't like cold rice' and this morning when I made her put on her new stripy jumper, just to keep her cosy, Amaia, who is often somewhat reticent of change cried for five minutes 'I just can't like new clothes!'

Fireworks

Two years ago, we took Amaia out for her first fireworks' night. She was not amused! It was way too scary.

Tonight however things had turned around completely! She had a ball watching our £5 worth of ASDA fireworks and her first sparkler was just the most exciting thing she'd ever seen!

And so to the orthodontist again...

Marcel has been attending the local orthodontist since January 2010. His mouth is way too small to contain all 28 adult teeth so he needed the four that had grown inside the outer ring of teeth removed and the rest realigned. He also had no overbite so they have been working on that too.

Charlotte's mouth is almost a third wider to look at so at least she wasn't going to cause any problems... Then when her upper right cuspid came through last year it was completely out of line with her other teeth (as you can see on this photo). The dentist suggested a small spring could be placed behind it to push it back in line. He sent her to the orthodontist to check his hunch.

In we went yesterday morning. I joked that at least she'd be a small issue in comparison with her brother. The orthodontist had a look and confirmed it was a tiny job. Then he pointed out that one of her bicuspids was still a milk tooth so nothing could be done till that fell out, suddenly he looked concerned, eyeing her high school uniform. She's very old to have milk bicuspids, he commented, noticing she still had all four. Then he explained that they could just speed the whole thing up by extracting them. He sent her for an X-ray with his nurse. We're just checking how close the adult tooth is to pushing it out itself, he explained. There is a rare inherited genetic condition that leads to the odd adult tooth being missing, he added - 2% of the population are missing one adult tooth. Less than 0.5% are missing more than one though, he explained. Charlotte's X-ray was transmitted to his computer... He brought it up. He started to look worried. I looked at it with him. I couldn't see any teeth in her gums, but I'm not exactly a dentist, am I?

Oh! Charlotte is missing all four adult bicuspids, he pointed out, surprised.

Is nothing this year going to be simple?

So he talked me through the options. We try to look after her four baby bicuspids in the hope they'll last a lifetime. Built to last eight years, keep them eighty? Sounds unlikely... With a lot of care they have been known to last into a person's forties, he told me. Or the four baby teeth can be removed leaving four large gaps in her very large mouth and then they can try moving all her back teeth forward to fill the gaps, copying Marcel's treatment! How ironic is that? Marcel needed teeth out because he has no space, Charlotte is missing the same four but has lots of space. Oh and to cap the problems, the NHS is cutting back orthodontistry because of the recession so they have warned me Charlotte's application might be rejected simply because of lack of funding, leaving Marcel with beautiful teeth and Charlotte, who has perfect teeth but a genetic defect with potential gaps everywhere.

So my kid is some kind of genetic anomaly. And I guess that means I also have three other potential future mutants to deal with. Stress!

Halloween

What's the big rush?

We noticed it first on Sunday. Derek and Amanda had invited the kids in for some Halloween fun. Getting into the spirit Thomas wanted some vampire teeth. Lots didn't have a costume either. We left an hour early and went into Glasgow centre. None of the shops were still selling Halloween goods. It was 28th October. After half an hour in Sauchiehall street we threw in the towel and Thomas went in just a cape (he had from last year) and Lots went in her jeans and t-shirt.

The big supermarkets, I discovered today still had things but at 10am had instated a near giveaway sale in a panic to get rid of everything. I bought these two costumes (the bat and the skeleton) for Léon and Anna at £1 each! Still - it was nine hours before kids needed them so why did Tesco think it needed to slash everything by 90%?

After school Lots wanted to go to Matalan. There, I was even more gobsmacked. As we walked in (at 4pm) the woman on the door asked 'Can I interest you in these Halloween things, we're giving them away free, we'll never sell them now?!' I looked down and came face to face with the tablecloth (pictured), the cardboard cake stand (also pictured) and several bags of chocolate pumpkin sweets (slightly obscured by the bat suit). Each had an original tag of £1. So I left Matalan with £5 of goods free of charge!

What is the big rush? I can see why everything would be heavily discounted or free tomorrow but why today? And what made the big Glasgow shops believe on October 28th, that they needed to ditch all their Halloween costumes in favour of Xmas decorations!? No one wants Xmas stuff yet, and if they do there's the Internet, but for last minute panic buyers, the Internet doesn't work.

It really is quite mad. If we don't get all our Xmas decorations in the next ten days, we'll need to watch out, the Easter eggs will be in already!

Pencil sharpener

We bought one of these a few months back. At first I thought it was a bit overpriced, but fondly remembered always wanting to use my teacher's one as a small child. But I have to say, it is wonderful. The kids can use it easily and it sharpens even the crappiest pencils really well!

Amaia

Isn't she looking like such a wee softy, lit only by the candle in the pumpkin?

When she gets this close for a look, I find myself relieved she still hasn't grown much in the way of hair!

Persimmons

Persimmons are a cheap (three for a quid in ASDA) and easy solution to Halloween. Unlike the fairly insipid taste of these carving pumpkins the supermarkets stockpile, their flesh is quite palatable and the kids think these baby pumpkins are just cute as hell. And into the bargain, instead of hunting the entire house for where I tidied the tea light candles, you can simply stick a birthday cake candle inside.

Result!

I decided against a rerun of my 2010 Scottish Halloween, turnips are just too hard but you will be pleased I am still clamping down on the T and T words!

Oh to be young again!

Ever wish you were young again?

Lots was just showing me an amateur video taken in her school lunch hall last week. The sixth years put on an improvised dance show at lunch time for want of something better to do at a rainy lunch time. It almost brought a tear to my eye, I have to say. Don't they just look like a lovely crowd of youngsters with their whole lives ahead of them?

High school definitely looks much more fun in the age of speaker systems and mobile phone videos too!