Whilst we were sleeping

I've been inspired by Dinovember, in which a mum and dad pretend their dinosaurs come to life in November and every night set up a dinosaur tableau for their kids to discover.

Bizarrely, because we seem to own everything else, we don't own any plastic dinosaurs. (A friend recently suggested, kindly, that when we come to sell our house in due course we should put half of what we own in the loft to make it look like we have more space. I didn't have the heart to tell her we've already done that.) But we do have soft toys aplenty, and last night before I went to bed I set up a little scene between two of my favourite bears (for the children are fickle and do not yet have favourites). It was a simple scene - just two bears having a civilised chat over a cake each. Not for these bears a feast made of all our toy food. No, my daughter might like making concoctions such as chicken, orange and sock soup, but these bears are a little more refined. I mean, they do wear clothes after all.

No doubt if I was the Dinovember mum the bears would have had real cake, with icing on their paws and a trail of crumbs leading from the kitchen. See, for example, what happened when the dinosaurs discovered eggs.

Good job I didn't bother with that, for Goodynuff's Law that 'the more effort you put in the less bothered the children will be' was completely true. "Look" I cried when the children got me up and brought me downstairs at some ungodly time beginning with 5, "the bears came to life and decided to have a cake and a chat." I was talking to myself really - in the six hours between going to bed and getting up I had completely managed to forget I'd set up this scene before I went upstairs. When I opened the door the surprise was entirely mine. The kids, alas, didn't even notice.

Level crossing policy

Early on in my relationship with my husband, we went to see a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. I was early so got myself a cup of tea and found a seat, sharing a table in the cafe with another woman. We got chatting and I asked her what she did. She was the civil servant in charge of level crossing policy.

Oh that poor woman, she had no idea that she had just told this to a level crossing aficionado. 

I love level crossings - the excitement of seeing a train hurtle past, the slight danger than the signals have gone wrong, the idea that order depends wholly on people being told what to do by a mere wooden barrier.

"I love level crossings," I told the woman. I think she thought I was taking the piss. But I made her tell me all about her job, the pertinent issues in level crossing policy and the cultural differences regarding level crossing behaviour around the world. 

My mum puts this down to our regular day trips when I was a toddler, taking the bus to a local level crossing to watch the trains. It was, she says, a cheap day out and perfect for young kids.

I've not done this with my children yet. But our wooden train set has many exciting elements - a station, a ferry (with a horn!) that can take trains on it and that opens automatically as it touches the track, various loops and points and of course a level crossing. I buy the coolest bits for my husband as birthday or Christmas presents to him from the kids. I have noticed recently that, despite no day trips of the kind my mum used to take us on, my son is fixated on the level crossing, endlessly lifting up the barrier and letting it drop. I am so proud. 

The best crafting with kids book I have read, ever.

I love being creative with my kids and as they get older my ambitions increase. I'm no longer content with using a glue stick to attach cut up bits of magazines to scrap paper. I want to make objets d'art. Though as I have written elsewhere on this blog, my strength lies in enthusiasm rather than execution.

I've been an occasional visitor to the Red Ted Art blog for a while now and have always thought the craft projects look great. But I try to keep my phone and my laptop out of the way when the paints and glue are out at home, and never remember to look up ideas in advance.

Last week however I treated myself to the Red Ted Art book, by Maggy Woodley. My daughter and I read the whole thing during an hour long bus journey, picking out what we want to make together - "everything!" She also spilled apple juice on it which on reflection is the best thing she could have done - now it's already sticky and crinkled we may as well feel free to let it get covered in glue and glitter and let paint covered fingers turn the pages as we look for inspiration whilst choosing our materials.

I particularly love Red Ted Art because so many of the ideas are so simple. Reading it I kept having 'why didn't I think of that?' moments. From easy ways to turn toilet roll middles into animals to cookie bunting, I really can't wait to get started, possibly even whilst the kids are elsewhere so I am allowed, for once, the sparkliest bits of ribbon and coolest scraps of wrapping paper. Is that terribly sad?  Plus I've also been inspired to rediscover crafts I did as a kid - egg blowing and flower pressing, long forgotten as a pastime, once kept me busy for hours. I suspect it will again now I have this book.

If you know me in real life, and you're the parent of young children, then apologies for ruining the surprise as I am likely to buy this for you as a present at some point. If I don't know you, or don't like you enough to buy you a present, go and buy your your own. It genuinely is the best book I have read this year.*

*I've not read many books this year - never sleeping for more than two hours in a row has dulled my concentration. But I suspect it would be my favourite of the year even if I had read more.

Buy it here

(Pictured are stone ducks, walnut boats and loo roll monsters).

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Here's a little plug for my Kickstarter crowdfunding project for a book about elections aimed at toddler. Here's the link - every pound or dollar helps, and I have until Nov 21 to get to the £2000 total. And here's my previous blog post explaining what I'm doing. 

A post about poo

People who don't have children often wrinkle up their noses, literally and figuratively, and the idea of pooey nappies. I don't mind poo however, unlike vomit which makes me feel, aptly enough, sick. After all, you're worried if your baby doesn't poo for a while, or struggles to do so, whereas vomit is a sign that something is wrong.

Nevertheless, shit stinks. I don't mind wiping it off the beautiful bums of my beautiful babies, but, in the words of Bill Clinton, I don't inhale.

Our council introduced fortnightly bin collections earlier this year for non recyclable rubbish. This has given us a poo problem. On an average day my children will do two poos each. That's four pooey nappies. Even bagged pre binning, that's quite a stench. Imagine now, by the time the rubbish truck is due, the smell of fifty six poos in various stages of decomposition. It's pretty awful in this chilly weather. Imagine what it was like in the summer. We live in a terraced house with small front gardens. Neither we, nor people walking past, can avoid our bins. It's a wonder our neighbours are still talking to us.

You might suggest that the solution is to use cloth nappies, though the environmental case for this, if you use a washing machine and tumble dryer, is far from clear cut. (This is explained in detail here but essentially the carbon footprint of cloth nappies is only lower than that of disposables if you wash at lower temperatures than recommended and don't tumble dry, and reuse the nappies for subsequent children.

I'm not against encouraging recycling, and I understand the strain on finances for local government, but really, fortnightly collections - it's a policy that stinks.

Here's a little plug for my Kickstarter crowdfunding project for a book about elections aimed at toddler. Here's the link - every pound or dollar helps, and I have until Nov 21 to get to the £2000 total. And here's my previous blog post explaining what I'm doing.