There comes a point where you just avoid reading the opinion pages. Parenting is certainly a lot more enjoyable and a lot less stressful when you’re not continually being told your children are eating the wrong things, either watching too much or too little television, having their IQ points trickle away because you’re not doing XYZ activity on an hourly basis and you’re mentally scarring them for life because you work out the home or by not being a good example to your daughters by having a stimulating career – depending on which editorial you’re reading at that moment in time.

So, it’s incredibly refreshing to find an article about parenting that actually makes you feel good about yourself: We’re all good enough mums.

It takes some self-confidence to laugh at your cock-ups or share them with other mothers in a climate where mothering has become invested with some spurious professionalism rather than an instinctive process that most of us muddle through pretty successfully. The idea that being a mother is nothing more than a simple combination of knowledge acquired through experience is anathema in these anxious times: motherhood has been hijacked by experts. No wonder a quarter of 38-year-old women in the UK don’t have children when it seems as though you need a degree in child psychology to qualify. The basic assumption that has endured for generations, that most mothers are naturally competent in bringing up their children, has steadily been eroded.

It’s timely, because now Akra Jr is in year 1 at school, I have found myself relaxing more and taking a more cynical view of whatever parenting gurus are currently trying to ram down our throats this week. I now have a couple of good friends at the school gates who I can relax with, without fear of judgement or comparison, and we all sort of muddle along the best we can with very different parenting styles. All of our children have very different personalities and are all happy and healthy, despite our very different approaches to the same issues.

Isn’t it time we clubbed together a bit more rather than always being in competition with each other? After all, the journey is as important (if not more) than the end result.

Oh, it was good to see Richard Hammond back on the set of Top Gear. He looks tired and gaunt but otherwise seems his normal chirpy, cheeky self. The Hamster is intact.

It was quite impressive that Akra and I managed to watch Top Gear at all, actually. We rarely watch the telly, and the new season of Top Gear had been put on the calendar weeks in advance so we wouldn’t forget. But there we were, tuning in fifteen minutes early with a bowl of cherry pie and custard, settling in for an evening’s viewing.

But what WAS that dreadful show on before Top Gear?! Meerkat Manor – it looked more like Big Brother for rodents than a wildlife documentary. The voice over was particularly cringeworthy and saccharine. Can’t say that we were terribly impressed.

I think next week we’ll have to set an alarm for the television to be switched on at 8pm precisely.

Akra (singing): Breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner… you’re the one who is a winner…
Me: Oooh, what do I win?
Akra: These two lovely boys.
Me: Oh. Is there a cash alternative?
Akra: Nope. Terms and conditions apply.

Rats. Isn’t that always the way?

… can one small child pick up so many illnesses?

Only a few weeks clear of The Evil Stomach Bug[tm], Li’l Bhaji has picked up his latest affliction – Slapped Cheek Disease, otherwise known as Fifth Disease or Erythema Infectiosum. No, I hadn’t really heard of it before either, but I’d taken him to toddler group as I’d just assumed it was a heavy cold and chapped cheeks due to the cold and someone said “hang on, is that slapped cheek?” A quick trip to the docs and the GP confirmed the diagnosis within seconds of walking through the door. Oops.

So now we’re confined to the house again (Slapped Cheek can be nasty if pregnant women are exposed to it). I like my house, but not so much that I want to be in it 24/7 yet again. The worst is that he’s not even acting ill, so I have a hyperactive toddler who desperately needs to burn some energy and can’t understand why he’s not allowed to go to any of his normal activities.

Of course, the optimist in me just knows the second he goes back he’ll pick up another bug…

I’ve avoided being tagged for almost 4 years now, but Angela got me.

So, here we go: The Three Things Meme

1. Three Things that Scare Me: chickenpox (no really – I veer towards phobia on this. I’ve never had it, and had a big scare when Akra Jr caught it while I was pregnant with Li’l Bhaji. Gives me the heebie jeebies every time I hear that it’s doing the rounds again), flying when my loved ones aren’t with me (I don’t care if we all crash and burn together, but I get panicky at the thought of leaving the kids on their own), horror movies – will only watch 18-certificate films if I know they’re classified for explicit sex scenes rather than for horror or gore.
2. Three People Who Make Me Laugh: ~Misty~’s ducks, JonnyB, and Akra (because he can’t read a Terry Pratchett book in public without sniggering out loud every third sentence).
3. Three Things I Love: my camera, my fish tank, and my life.
4. Three Things I Hate: The Daily Mail mindset, doorstep selling, and jar lids that are spot-welded on.
5. Three Things I Don’t Understand: why it always rains at 3pm, astrophysics (even though I have a degree in it, my brain seems to have hemorrhaged all that knowledge out in self-defence), and how Li’l Bhaji can bring home SO MANY illnesses.
6. Three Things On My Desk: a cold half-cup of tea, a bulging in tray, and a crumpled Cadbury’s creme egg wrapper.
7. Three Things I Am Doing Right Now: staring at a computer screen trying to think of answers so I can post this damn meme, looking folornly at the cold half-cup of tea I forgot to drink earlier, and wondering if two Cadbury’s creme eggs in the space of half an hour would be considered greedy.
8. Three Things I Want To Do Before I Die: have a novel published, play a computer game all the way to the end before I get bored, and see my boys grow up into men.
9. Three Things I Can Do: make a squeaky noise with just the palms of my hands, knit (yay!) and write a novel in a month (but then that’s the easy part, it’s the editing of it that’s the real bugger).
10. Three Things You Should Listen To: Li’l Bhaji singing “horsie horsie, don’t you stop”, anyone who advises you not to do memes, and compliments.
11. Three Things You Should Never Listen To: the inward spiral of self-negativity and critique, nursery rhyme CDs on permanent loop, and anything louder than 85 decibels. Mixing the latter two is especially dangerous.
12. Three Things I’d Like To Learn: Spanish, a martial art and to live in the moment.
13. Three Favorite Foods: vegetable lasagne, chicken korma and Cadbury’s creme eggs (not all three at the same time, though).
14. Three Beverages I Drink Regularly: water, tea and fruit teas (but only if they’re made by Twinings).
15. Three Books I Read as a Kid: I can pick only three?! Okay – The Changeover by Margaret Mahy, The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon and The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming (yes, really – my father had a huge collection of Flemings and Alistair MacLeans and I think I worked my way through the entire shelf by the end of primary school).

And finally, three people to tag: … I pick Tiger Feet, Jaegerin and Alley Katt.

My brain hurts now.

Akra Jr: Mummy, Mummy! I got this smiley face sticker at school today!
Me: Oh that’s good. What did you get that for?
Akra Jr: For remembering something!
Me: Well done. What was it that you remembered?
Akra Jr: … um … I’ve forgotten.

Bless. He takes after his mother.

I hold all you clever knitty bloggers on my blogroll personally responsible for this – how dare you have lots of interesting pictures of your handiwork up there for all to see!

Yes, I have finally succumbed to picking up some knitting needles of my own, spent a small fortune in my local department store on various wools and accessories, purchased the Stitch ‘n Bitch Handbook and have knitted a whole nine rows of a garter stitched square (a very exciting first project, can you tell?). I was actually quite impressed that I still remembered a lot from a couple of decades ago when I last did any knitting (and even then I think my mum cast on for me).

It’s all part of a grand plan to lure me away from the computer (especially during the day at the weekends) and get me sitting in the same room the boys are playing in order to be an interractive, chatty mother instead of the glazed internet addict locked away in the study.

They play well enough during the day together now that I don’t want to interfere with that (or get dragged into playing Power Rangers or somesuch) but sitting watching them is only interesting for the first ten minutes or so. I may as well do something practical and fun at the same time. Me woman, me multi-task.

I do need to find another source of knitting supplies though. I had a choice of two colours for the type of wool I wanted (worsted/aran – hardly an unpopular weight, surely?) and the whole haberdashery was crammed into a very dark corner of the basement. I’m guessing it’s not something you can easily buy online either? Hard to work out what the wool is going to be like without physically seeing and feeling it.

Now, if you lot can just stop doing ultra-colourful advanced knitting projects while I finish my square and start on a very basic scarf, I’d be grateful. Oh and tell me how to stop doing the stitches so tight I can barely move them on the needles too. Ta.

I hope all my North European readers came through the storms relatively unscathed.

For those that didn’t know, we “enjoyed” hurricane force winds yesterday.

Fortunately, we only had most of our garden furniture doing a Wizard of Oz impression and lost part of our fencing.

A neighbour had tiles fall off and smash through her porch as well as a large proportion of her fencing collapse.

Akra is currently working from home as power still hasn’t been restored to his office.

And last night, all our power went off at 4am, setting burglar alarms off all across the estate (we’d replaced our back up battery recently, but still woke to the sounds of others’ alarms).

Still, none of us were hurt, and the repairs have all been negotiated between neighbours in a very civilized manner.

… I’d be asking why Track and Trace systems don’t have GPS for the more obsessive parcel trackers among us.

It should have been a fairly straightforward delivery. I was due in for the whole of the day, excepting three trips out of ten minutes each (one to take Akra Jr to school, one to take Li’l Bhaji to nursery and the final one to pick them both up again). All day.

You just know that the parcel will arrive in one of those ten minute slots, don’t you?

So, I hurry off to school for the first trip. It’s raining so I’m hoping that Akra Jr will be allowed straight in so I can minimize the time out of the house. He goes in the doors and I turn around relieved, ready to frog march Li’l Bhaji back home quickly to wait in for The Parcel [tm].

That’s when a sobbing Akra Jr appears at my shoulder and refuses to go to school – a “friend” of his had called him a name, and Akra Jr being a fairly sensitive soul took it very much to heart. It took a fair while to calm him down and get him back through the doors with at least a slight hint of a smile on his face.

I get home, I’m convinced there’ll be a “sorry we missed you” card through the letter box, but obviously my luck is in as they haven’t been yet.

I’m rabidly twitching curtains looking for a delivery van. One arrives. It parks outside a neighbour’s house – are they in the wrong place? Should I run out?

Ooo… he’s reversing out, he got the wrong house… he’s parking in front of mine… YES…. YES!

I have never been so disappointed to receive a crate of wine in my life.

Back to waiting. I know I should do something to keep myself occupied. Li’l Bhaji is happily doing jigsaws “By Myself, Mummy”. So I do some cleaning – it needs doing anyway. Of course, the windows got extra special attention. Time ticked slowly onwards. Lunch came and went. It was time to take Li’l Bhaji to nursery.

More frog marching (poor lad) and then just as we get to the door I see the Initial City Link van pull up the road. I know odds are on that he’s aiming for my house next as their depot is a fair distance away.

The poor child was signed in to nursery super fast (don’t worry, he actually completely ignored me and went straight for the painting activity, I’m not that self-obsessed) and I RAN all the way home. I had the advantage that it’s actually slower to drive round than go via the footpaths, but still, I very nearly gave myself an asthma attack and had to take several puffs of ventolin on entering the front door.

I arrived TWO MINUTES before he did… [insert smug look here].

The things people will do for their cameras.

There were about four boxes inside each other – it was just like pass the parcel for grownups, with tantalising pictures of the camera inside to tease you as you removed yet another layer.

Eventually, however, I got to the prize. The Canon 400D with the 18-55 lens kit, a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II and a Hoya UV filter.

All I had to do then was wait 90 minutes for the battery to charge up.

Now I have a grown up camera, does that mean I have to start taking “proper” pictures?!

Well, the following article might explain why, a week later, I still didn’t have an estimated delivery date for my new camera this morning: worldwide shortage of stock from Nokia and Canon. Typical. They just knew I was going to order a DSLR, didn’t they?!

Still, due to stunning lack of communication by the company I originally ordered from, including (but not limited to) no indication that the item was out of stock until after I was expecting it to arrive, I have cancelled.

So I have had to accidentally hit the checkout button and accidentally fill in my address and credit card details again – with Jessops this time – who, ironically given the above article, are one of the few places that do have stock of the Canon 400D (albeit in silver rather than black).

Should arrive tomorrow. Hopefully.

Update: just got the dispatch notice – yay for Jessops!