2007 Bloggies: Best New Weblog [view: normal]

The spud is very keen on music these days. Following a trip to the wonderful Horniman Museum and an enthralled visit to the music room there he is keen to identify any wind instrument in a piece of music as 'a trumpet' and anything with strings as 'a piano' and he loves the music box that came with his baby mobile so much that he still plays it to himself nearly every night,

He's really in to nur...

Just a quickie update on my blog below.

The spud has responded brilliantly to me removing his toys. We had few hysterics and he has consented to do as he was asked and has been given back all his toys, praised, given chocolate and stickers and we'll see what happens next.

This has been really interesting and I hope was a lesson in consequences. I didn't take things away randomly or with anger, I j...

Recently, after failing miserably with a combined rewards system of star chart, praise, stickers, cuddles, smiley-face hand-stamps, chocolates, sweeties and new toy promises we have resorted to a punishment system that simply involves the removal of a favourite toy, with the promise of its swift return should our son actually deign to do something which he knows perfectly well how to do, can do al...

We're having negotiation. We've having a lot of failed negotiations to tell the truth. They go a lot like this:

"I want a biscuit."

"You have to eat your dinner first."

"No I want a biscuit!"

"Dinner first."

"BISCUIT!"

"Dinner AND THEN a biscuit."

"Dinner AND a biscuit."

"Dinner first."

"No I want a biscuit!"

"Do you want to go to bed."

"No I want dinner."

"OK."

"And a biscuit."...

Some children are afraid of fireworks but not our little spudlet. He calls them 'the booms' and has been begging to see them every day since some dim-witted soul at the nursery let slip last week that bonfire night was coming.

Tonight he was so well behaved. All I had to do was to threaten to withdraw the fireworks and he bent to my will immediately. Oh ho, if only bonfire night was every night...

So. We've had a bit of a setback recently which has necessitated a star chart. I have stars, I have a chart and we have, or rather, the spud has, a goal. The goal is that if he gets all the stars onto the chart I will take him to the toy shop and buy him whatever he wants. He wants 'a car'.

He is clear about all of this. He does a particular thing, he gets a little gold star. Four gold stars e...

We decided to do the Full North American last night and went for a trick-or-treating extravaganza on our street. Yeah, four whole houses and 8 very confused 3 year olds.

It was soooo authentic...

We've been warming the spud up for this for a week. We bought his costume and got him all excited... he informed his girlfriend who immediately requested the same costume from her parents... we had high ...

I quite like Daylight Savings Time but really, it is SO Victorian.

"I know" says some bright spark (George Vernon Hudson - a New Zealander but a Victorian, none-the-less) "We Victorians need more daylight in winter to do our extremely very useful inventing and to work children at the mills longer. We've invented electricity, we own the known world and so now we're going to CHANGE TIME!!"

"Yeah, sod...

OK, here are the pies that caused all the trouble, below!

I cannot take full responsibility for this recipe, however I have messed with it over the years to make it mine because, quite frankly, I hated pumpkin pie until this came along.

Firstly - pastry. Now, this is definitively NOT my recipe, I found it here and it is the best sweet-pie crust I've ever had. Seriously, you could make this into bi...

On Tuesday evening I picked the spud up from nursery to be presented with a letter informing us that today, two days later, we needed to ship him off dressed in his national costume and porting some sort of comestible representing his heritage. Heritage? Two days? Hello?

He's half French and half Canadian so while I tried to work out the food (maple-leaf croissants? pate de foie-moose?) the Fro...

Normally Canada Post is rubbish. Actually that should read 'historically', as life in Canada means accepting that it takes a week for a letter to cross town. In fact, we used to get some sort of grim amusement out of the fact that sending a letter to my Gran in Victoria took about the same time as a letter to someone just down the road.

Birthday and Christmas presents from Canada therefore are ex...

Charlie loves puppets. I have saved many a cranky afternoon with the aid of his Monkey puppet - and in fact, many a cranky morning, evening and bedtime.

Recently however while Monkey was taking a sabbatical at the bottom of the toy box, I was forced by necessity into emergency measures and, basically, Monkey made an appearance without his clothes on. Just my hand, talking, pointing, laughing and...

We like shoes in our house. It's questionable who exactly it is who has more pairs, me or the Frog; however the spud is certainly a contender, mainly because having a third set of feet in the house to buy shoes for is one of the few real perks of owning a child... er, I mean, because we love our little dumpling SOOOO much... er... cough cough cough.

Anyway, so it's not just the spud's hair and bel...

We've had holidays. We had my brother and sis-in-law to Biarritz for a few days which was knock-down brilliant. So brilliant that I didn't take any pictures because I was too busy being happy. Oh, and I forgot my camera.

If you were that interested, you could go here and scroll down to September 16th to see a little bit of the sort of holiday we had (and a lot of the sort of holiday Hoto and She...

The word spread around the park yesterday: "There's water in the paddling pool!" We heard it at the cafe at the top of the hill and by the time we got there, not only was there water in the pool but the fountains that fill it up were still on. The spud was delighted.

Nobody else at the pool had left their houses with swimsuits or towels either; there were already half a dozen or more children lar...

Six months ago, one of the spud's friends turned three and his mother delivered to the nursery a blue train cake, cunningly crafted by a local baker.

All the kids had blue poo the next day but that just added to the thrill as far as the spud was concerned. He ranted on and on and on about the blue train cake for months.

A year ago, another of his best friends Jacob (or 'Jpeg' as the spud calls him) ...

The spud is becoming very self-aware all of a sudden, telling us how he feels and what he's thinking and what he's been doing.

He's completely unashamed of his own transgressions and will relate them with the same relish he reserves for imaginary ice-creams. Last weekend we spent with friends including his best mate Einstein, whose Granny has a boyfriend with a big boat. We went to the marina for...

Tonight, folks, after two hours of him jack-in-a-boxing in and out of bed, I bribed my son to sleep. It was not without its amusing moments.

'If you go to sleep, tomorrow we can go for ice-cream!'

'From the ice cream van!'

'Yes, we'll have ice cream from the ice cream van. What else shall we do?'

'Go to the park!'

'Yes, good idea, we can go to the park. What else would you like to do?'

'Get some money!...

Hello everyone and thank you all for your submissions to this, my first (and potentially only) go at hosting a carnival. It's been a big job and at points I've really had to strain to get this one out but I've finally produced the goods. Ba dum dum.

er... ok. So, If you've not potty trained a child in your life then these stories will make you either smug or terrified - so read at your own risk. I'...

I have maundered on a lot over time about my son padding around our appartment. Now, however, he is a little boy; and little boys, it turns out, do not pad at all; rather, they clank. Clutching a nest of toy cars and airplanes, the spud cannot trust us enough to leave them unattended even for a second and is forever toting more cars than he can carry. He cannot do even so much as a quick wee wee w...

I give up. No, seriously, I give up on the whole part of parenting where I try to influence or second guess my son or report on what he's doing with any sort of authority.

As if to rub my nose in the whole argument over eating his dinner, as if to underline that he is now and will always be in control, today in the vegetable department of the supermarket he walked over to a tray of green beans and ...

Ah the beach. 'What would it be like to live here and be able to come to the beach every day if I wanted to?' This was my self-imposed question yesterday while lying on the sand hoping to dim the brightness of my skin.

While the spud threw pebbles at me I spent some time covertly eying up the beach populace and trying to work out who were the locals and who the visitors. Some were easy. Anyone pale...

We're having eating!! Apart from various battles fought on the field of the dinner table, since having the chickenpox the spud has insisted on being bottle-fed like some sort of veal calf.

He's been downing upwards of 3 pints a day on good/bad days and eating almost nothing. A few days ago however he woke up, demanded breakfast, ate a bowl of cereal, drank some juice and then proceeded to eat all the way through the day, finishing off this evening with four fish fingers, a big plate of rice and pepper, half an avocado, a small carrot, a kiwi and two glasses of milk. Hooray!

A short amusing note that I forgot to post last week after the big standoff is that the one part of the dinner that the spud refused to eat was the green beans. He loves green beans. He has eaten dinners in which he has picked out the green beans, eaten them all first and then announced he was 'fished'.

So, the other day when we had our standoff, which has, I possibly need to inform the odd passerby, helped quite a lot in terms of overall spud behaviour, he ate his fish fingers and a pea or two but the green beans were met with quite a show of distaste and some pretty jaw-clenching rejection. Since he'd eaten the rest of his dinner with gusto however, I let the poor beans go... or rather, I scarfed them myself.

The spud's nursery has a system to tell a confused parent exactly what one's offspring has eaten during the day. A filled in circle is one helping, a line next to it is seconds.

Imagine, therefore, how far my eyebrows rose on entering his nursery the next day, the next day, mind you, on examining the food chart and seeing not only a full circle but four, mind you, that's one two three FOUR lines next to the words 'green beans'.

Ah yes, I may have won the battle but clearly, I am not taking home any prizes....

We're in France on holiday; Sammy safely ensconced with a house-sitter and the rain, as usual, bucketing down. Yesterday it was actually amazingly hot and sunny and for once we made it to the beach.

I tell you, it was obvious we were British. OK, so I'm Canadian and the Frog is not only French but we're actually in his home-town but you know, it's been a while. So, firstly, we were pasty pasty whit...