why? why, mummy? why? why, mummy? why? WHY?

BECAUSE I SAID SO!

Guess which stage Li’l Bhaji has reached?! *sigh*

It was a fairly mediocre day today. Nothing terrible, nothing great. Average.

Until the postman arrived and I received this with a note inside saying “Saw these and thought of you :oD”

Thank you so, so much, TigerFeet – you are a star of the brightest magnitude.

For those who don’t know the story, TigerFeet and I went to the same primary school. A primary school which, in the early-80s, had a very unhealthy un-Jamie Olivered tuck shop. And I’m fairly certain all our money went on Wham bars.

How do these compare to the childhood memory? Pretty good, although they’re a lot smaller than I remember.

Or is it me who’s got bigger?

Except for the very rare occasion, we have always eaten together as a family at the table. I know this model of family dinners all together, sharing the same food and discussing our days is supposed to bring a whole range of benefits to our family, but quite honestly I’m beginning to wonder if the whole idea isn’t highly overrated.

Firstly, there’s the chorus of “Eugh! I don’t like this!” that greets me as Akra Jr and Li’l Bhaji reach the table. It starts from Akra Jr, and to be honest, I’d be hard pushed to tell you exactly what it is that he likes eating these days. Li’l Bhaji manages to drive the whole “Yuck” noises into a rousing crescendo, though. Despite being less fussy than his brother (although Li’l Bhaji is unlikely to eat anything green on his plate, will at least try anything with a sauce so I have some scope to hide veg somewhere) he, rather frustratingly, follow his brother’s very vocal lead every time.

It baffles me. With both children I consciously “did the right thing” – introduced a wide variety of fresh foods at a young age, kept processed foods to a minimum, etc. It appears to have made bugger all difference. Please don’t leave comments underneath about how you did the same and your little darling will eat anything from quails eggs to quinoa because I’ll cry. Or scream. Or throttle you. Or all three. I’ll just cheer if I manage to get them to eat a shepherds pie without complaining.

Really, however, the food itself is only the beginning of the battle. While keeping them at the table until everyone’s meal has been finished or they’ve politely asked to leave isn’t really an issue (yay, got something right), our definition of “at table” seems to be woefully hazy. For example, it doesn’t appear to include, sliding under the table, standing on the chairs, attempting to climb over the table to reach things in the middle. Then there’s the burping competitions, the interruptions, the demanding to know what pudding is before they’ve even lifted their fork, the complete obliviousness to the proper use of cutlery. Hey, I know I wanted relaxed mealtimes but this is ridiculous.

I also want to know at what age I can expect them to stop making so much ruddy mess. I cleaned our dining room chairs the other night using our carpet cleaning machine. You do not want to know what colour the water was when I finally finished and tipped it away. Know what? They’re already starting to look grubby again. And if anyone can give me top tips for getting tomato stains out of lino, I’d be very grateful. I swear that feeding a party of chimpanzees would mean less clear-up.

So yes, I can totally see the attraction of throwing something frozen into the oven and serving it over a very large mat in front of the TV, then having a more leisurely adult meal later in the evening. Sod healthy diet and socialisation education, I just want to be able to eat in peace. Long live Turkey Twizzlers!

Only I won’t. I shall carry on in my noble endeavor. Mainly because I can’t be arsed to cook twice in one evening.

Li’l Bhaji and I went along to our local Britain’s Biggest Breakfast today, which was sort of like the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning only with bacon and eggs (and mushrooms, beans, fried bread and ketchup with orange juice, tea or coffee…yum!)

It’s in aid of Cancer Research UK and there’s nothing quite like tucking into a nice big fried breakfast in a good cause.

Our local community centre hosted it with flair, with excellent service, smiles and food for the bargain price of £3 for the works.

Even Li’l Bhaji (who had already put away two bowls of cereal and toast previously this morning) managed to nearly clear his plate AND snaffle my second piece of fried bread too.

I did suggest that they might want to provide fried breakfasts every Friday, but for some reason they weren’t keen.

I know, I seem to lurch from fishy crisis to fishy crisis these days.

A couple of weeks back I had to euthanize my first ever fish as it was emaciated with suspected fish tuberculosis and clearly suffering.

Even though the white cloud mountain minnow’s last moments went swiftly and kindly in a little dish of 50% vodka 50% tank water, I still felt like a murderer.

Now today, as I was giving them their food, I happened to glance at the tank thermometer. I don’t check the temperature nearly as often as I should – there’s a knack to getting just the right angle to read the damn thing and usually I only end up bothering each water change – the last one being around 8 days ago.

Imagine my shock when I saw that my tropical fish aquarium was at 19°C – a whopping 7 degrees lower than normal. Just what I needed, an emergency trip out with toddler in tow to Pets At Home for a new heater.

Oh well, I’m now £27 poorer and have a brand new Visitherm 50W heater and a Reef One submersible digital thermometer so I am more likely to include checking the temperature into my daily routines. Let’s just hope these are reliable.

So, my top tip for beginner aquarists – when was the last time you really checked your aquarium’s temperature? Please learn from my mistakes – someone has to, because I don’t seem to be…

Gordon, this post is dedicated to you. *evil cackle*.

I was given this link by a fellow procrastinator and I thought I’d disrupt a few more people’s productivity. It’s called Game Giveaway of the Day.

Unsurprisingly, the idea behind the site is to give away complete fully-licensed copies of games completely free of charge for 24hrs only. They claim no adware or spyware and I certainly haven’t had any problems so far and I’ve downloaded several now. You do have to be choosy – not all will be to your taste, but it’s certainly worth checking daily to see if there’s any real gems being given away.

They also have a sister site, Giveaway of the Day, but as that’s mainly boring useful software that might actually enable you to get stuff done, you wouldn’t be at all interested now, would you?

There is worrying new legislation being proposed here in the UK to prevent people taking photographs of children in public places – even if they’re your own children.

I can’t even begin to express just how ludicrous and ill-considered this legislation is. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if further restrictions on amateur photography in public places followed suit – probably to save us all from “terrorism”.

Of course, I’m guessing that councils and the government will continue to be able to store images of children and us in public places via CCTV. Silly me, they’d make sure the new law didn’t apply to them, wouldn’t they?

The e-petition is here. I strongly believe that if you even so much as own a camera and are a UK citizen you should sign this and publicize it as much as you can.

Update: with further investigation, it appears that the petition itself may not be about what it first appears. This article in Amateur Photographer details the confusion that has been caused and states that, on the contrary, the UK government has no such plans to restrict photographers’ rights.

The petition creator, Simon Taylor, explains on his website more about what he intended with the petition and also has a link list of rights violations in the news which make for interesting reading.

Either way, I apologise if I inadvertently mislead anyone with the above blog entry. I’m leaving it as it stands (other than this addendum) as I hate post-event editing at the best of times, and if it shows me up as an idiot then that’s my problem not yours!

But also, the spirit of the post still stands true – our rights are gradually being eroded in the midst of media panic of terrorists or paedophiles and it’s worth being vigilant for those erosions.

It’s also worth reading today’s post on the Digital Photography School blog about Photographers Rights and Photographers Privacy Advice.

However, if you do decide to sign the petition, you should know what you’re really signing for.

Sorry.

It’s no good – I just can’t master this game at all.

Maybe you can do better.

Our AEG dishwasher is 11 years old this year and it’s been showing its age for a while. We’ve had a few leaks (which we’ve mended), the cutlery basket has rotted away at the bottom… but the thing that is most frustrating for such a minor break: the catch has broken on the tablet dispenser.

Being aware that it’s probably coming to the end of its useful lifespan, we’ve occasionally looked at the new ranges of dishwashers, but found none we liked. All the brands have now altered the way you stack crockery and cutlery inside – to our minds giving you less practical space and being more awkward for big pots and pans. They also feel more flimsy and lower quality than our last decade’s manager’s special. We just haven’t been that impressed. Never mind that it felt criminally wasteful to replace an otherwise perfectly functional dishwasher.

But… the broken bits were really starting to annoy.

Fortunately, someone on Mumsnet recommended we check for spare parts on eSpares – an online appliance accessory store that has a fairly exhaustive collection of bits and bobs for a whole range of domestic appliances. We had a look searching under the model number in question and not only did we find the parts we were looking for, we actually had a choice between several that would fit our model.

Concerned that we might opt for the wrong one (our machine appears to be so old it doesn’t have a PNC (a Product Number Code) to double check against) we got in touch yesterday, received very helpful advice over the phone and the new dispenser and cutlery basket required arrived this morning. Very impressive service.

A simple fitting and all is wonderful again. A “new” dishwasher for around £50. Bargain.

The house has been on the market for mere days now, and I am already sick of keeping it clean and tidy.

It probably doesn’t help that I have two monkeys running behind me on a messing and dirtying mission. They’re actually licking the windows because they think my reaction is funny. *stifled scream*.

Let’s just hope we get this place sold really quick so I can stop being one of those mothers who don’t allow their children to even breathe in their own home…