Before Li’l Bhaji started school full time, I had loads of plans. I was going to be financially better off as there would be no more nursery fees to pay, and I was going to have so much more extra time for new and exciting projects.

Well, the money thing definitely hasn’t panned out.

I now have two lots of school dinners to pay for, Li’l Bhaji starts swimming lessons this week and Akra Jr has came home with a letter about a residential school trip that needs paying for. Suddenly, any spare cash has evaporated.

But there’s still plenty of extra time, right? Not really.

Li’l Bhaji was already doing one full day at nursery and the rest up until lunchtime, so in reality it only equates to a couple of extra hours a day. Add to that the knowledge that you have a whole day to yourself, and chores get started later and are done at a more leisurely pace as there is “plenty of time”. If anything, I’m getting even less done than before he went off to school!

Somehow, all this wasn’t part of The Plan [tm]. I’d better pull my socks up and get organised, especially if I still want to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.

I’ll just go make myself another cup of tea though, before I start…

… leaving me in sole charge of the children and I didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt!

He also brought home really noisy cable car toys for the kids which ding loudly every time you run them along the floor.

We need to have words.

The ideal:

• child gets to autonomously review work already done in class.
• the teacher gets feedback as to how much of the work has been understood.
• parent feels involved and gets feedback on the topics their child is learning about.

The reality:

• child sits at the dining room table, takes one look at it and bursts into tears. “I CAN’T DO IT!”
• parent tries to explain it in cack-handed manner using techniques that haven’t been seen in a classroom for the last 20 years.
• child gets even more confused and upset.
• parent gets frustrated and angry.
• session ends with a row or just nasty atmosphere with parent ending up virtually telling child what to write.
• rinse repeat every single afternoon after school.
• parent/child relations disintegrate totally involving lots of therapy for all.

The frustrating part is that I’m continually being told that Akra Jr is bright, enthusiastic and engaged, but the futility of homework in Key Stage 2 is driving all of us insane. God knows how the less bright ones are coping. I can’t see how this nightly torture is helping his learning at all.

At least I can delegate the weekly spelling test revision to the computer (thank you look cover). So that leaves his reading book which he’s hardly touched this week despite reading voraciously on his own, because Harry Potter is far more fun and interesting.

I honestly am beginning to think that homework at primary level should be banned.

I’m ill, pity me.

The kids kindly brought home a cold on the second day of school and it’s gone right to my sinuses so have had really disturbed sleep for the last 5 nights (although last night wasn’t too bad – only woke up twice – vast improvement).

For me, first sign of Autumn is when I have to increase my inhaler dosage. *sigh*.

… what goes through kids’ heads sometimes. I try not to make too many posts along the line of “hey look what cute thing MY child said today”, but I couldn’t resist sharing these two:

Akra Jr: “Did dinosaurs stamp on where our house is?”
Me: “I don’t know dear, I wasn’t there”
Akra Jr: “But Nana was…”

Just hope he doesn’t repeat that one in front of Nana – I’m sure she’d be thrilled to know that her grandson thinks she is around 64 million years old.

Li’l Bhaji: “I don’t want to be dead. I want to be Lego.”

My youngest son has some weird ideas about death at the moment (if ever I mention when he or I am older he’ll cheerfully reply “oh, when you’re dead?”) but this one takes the biscuit.

I think it’s something to do with Lego Star Wars game where they don’t really die if they run out of life, just respawn. It’s as good an afterlife theory as any, I suppose, and better than a good few.

Well I say Buckinghamshire, but I don’t think a single trip out from the campsite was inBuckinghamshire – the nice thing about this county is that it is central to a lot of different areas so you have your pick of outings.

The other difference about this camping trip was that with the children being that bit older, we were able to spend a couple of days at the site chilling out while they played with other kids on the play area. While this made for a much more relaxing holiday, it makes for a shorter trip report!

Legoland, Windsor

Before we arrived at Legoland we were frightened a bit by reports of how busy it was in the summer holidays, how people had only managed to get on three rides each day and how expensive it all was. So, while the kids were really looking forward to going, I have to confess to not a small bit of trepidation.

Fortunately, some of the cost was covered as we had saved up Tesco vouchers to get free entry into the park. We did fork out for their virtual queueing system, Q-Bot, to the tune of £10 per person (including very small children) – a grand total of £40 which in the end didn’t end up being that useful.

The problem is that most of the rides suitable for younger children aren’t on the Q-Bot system. Also, you don’t appear to be able to queue up several rides in one go, only your next ride – this relies on you a) knowing the park well enough to work out where you are going next and b) sorting out something to do while you’re waiting (just not physically standing in the queue). It would probably work well if you have an annual pass so know the layout, have older children and press the button for the next ride just as it’s scanned on your current ride (so that you’re effectively “queueing” while on another ride and walking to the next one). However, that takes a more organised family than us.

That said, we did have a lot more fun than expected and the kids adored every minute. It wasn’t too crowded (the weather wasn’t brilliant and the predicted “good weather” day was the day after, so presumably more people put off their trip until then) although the traffic getting through Windsor was a nightmare – all queueing to get to Legoland, presumably. A lot of the models were showing their age – the plastic faded in the sun – and we didn’t end up spending much time in the model area as it just didn’t really grab the kids’ imagination as we thought it might (though the shop was another story!).

The rides, once you’d got on them, were pretty good – especially the rides for the younger children which were still interesting enough that a 7 year old was perfectly happy going on them. They had a nice level of interactivity which made them more compelling than a lot of fairground rides, and most of the queues in the morning at least were fairly short.

The food wasn’t particularly unreasonably priced, although not particularly inspiring. They do have healthier choices though with a selection of baguettes as well as the ubiquitous hot dogs/ice creams/doughnuts. Which was just as well as (for the first time in ages) we hadn’t been organised enough to get a packed lunch together before we went.

All in all a good day out, but I’m not sure we’d have been as happy if we’d paid full-price entrance fee!

Didcot Railway Centre, Oxfordshire

Living with a train buff and small boys, we can’t get through many holidays without a visit to the local steam railway. This trip was no exception. This time was the turn of Didcot Railway Centre.

This is a great little railway – there’s not much to it (only a very small line for short trips, unlike the Severn Valley Railway where you can go miles on the trains) and you do have to be careful to visit on a steam day, but it had such a friendly and hands-on atmosphere. You can have a good ramble around into the engine sheds, watch an engine being turned on a turntable, look around a little memorabilia museum and take short trips back and forth.

The facilities are good for such a small place – refreshments, a good sized picnic area with some under cover and a well-stocked shop. A very good value day out.

The Look Out Discovery Centre, Berkshire

We went to The Look Out as part of a mini-blog meet with Turquoise Lisa and Karen @ Rise and had a blast.

The Look Out is a hands on science and nature exhibition separated into different subject ‘areas’, eg. forces and movement, light and sound, water and nature. Basically the children and adults get to play, and accidentally learn stuff at the same time. By far the best room was the water and nature room (see the photo) which had a big plastic ‘canal’ that you could run boats down and control the flow of water with taps, barriers and tunnels – we spent ages there!

Outside the centre is great too with a large adventure playground suitable for a wide range of ages, although it did get rather busy and it was quite challenging to find a picnic table free for our lunch.

All in all, though, another great day out and it was fantastic to be able to see Lisa and her girls again, and meet Karen, Pete and Bernard for the first time.

Guess which muppet ordered 8 punnets of plums instead of 8 plums?

So, we in the Naan household are enjoying rather a lot of different plum dishes. I’ve made plum jam for the first time ever (and I was shocked at just how easy it was, actually – I may never buy a commercial jar of jam ever again), made a plum crumble, given a punnet away to next door… even (*shock*) eaten a few plums.

I’m now down to my final 3.5 punnets.

Plum ice cream, anyone?

Those of you who are still following the comments on the Mooncup Review I wrote over five years ago (otherwise known as “The post that will not die” … 287 comments and rising even after all this time! Who’d a thunk it), will know that I recently purchased two mooncup pouches from Lovealittle on Etsy.com. I promised to write a little review of them once received – and this is it.

If you’re currently looking blankly and wondering what a mooncup is, then I suggest you read the original post (although I should warn you, if you’re uncomfortable talking or reading about menstruation products, you may prefer not to).

On the surface, a specially designed pouch for the mooncup seems a great idea. The little drawstring bags that come with them get tatty rather quickly and never seem to really protect them from collecting all the fluff you normally find in most chaotic bedside drawers (or is that just mine?). Also, to have a pretty patterned little bag rather than a plain cream one with the mooncup logo plastered across it at least allows you to retain a small sense of feminine mystique en route to the loo.

But do they live up to expectation? The short answer is yes.

Delivery was prompt after purchase and packaged well with a promotional bookmark and a personal post-it to say thank you, which was a nice touch.

This attention to detail in presentation was carried into the actual product – they’re beautifully made, sturdily put together but at the same time feeling delicate and pretty. They’re sort of a pyramid-shape cotton pouch with a zip along one edge. This opens smoothly to reveal a red cotton lining interior which (as you would expect) a mooncup fits in perfectly. In fact, you could probably fit two mooncups in one pouch if you slid one inside the other before putting it in the pouch, but I prefer to give them a little more freedom in a pouch of their own.

There are several designs to choose from; my favourite of the two I chose is the ladybird design – the little glass ladybird bead at the end of the zip is really sweet. I was also pleased to see that they can be hand-washed or put into a gentle machine wash.

The price? A very reasonable $10 US with $2 US shipping for UK orders and $4 US shipping to anywhere else. Every mooncup owner should have at least one.

You can purchase your own from the Lovealittle shop at Etsy.com. Alternatively, Jane at Lovealittle has kindly offered to donate one of these lovely little pouches in a Prattle giveaway!

All you have to do is come up with the most unusual use for a mooncup pouch (other than keeping your mooncup in, of course) and leave it in the comments for this post.

The one that makes Jane laugh the loudest gets the prize!

Entries should be submitted by the 30th September.

Good luck!

Yes, this is the obligatory “my youngest started school today” blog post, so if the thought of reading yet another one makes you want to hang yourself or me (you know who you are!) then feel free to skip this.

For the minority who were curious as to how we got on (and the majority who really couldn’t give a toss either way but are currently wasting time before their next coffee break), I’d like to reassure you that I had a lovely, quiet, relaxing and peaceful afternoon.

Oh. And Li’l Bhaji got on alright too.

The end.

(No, really… he came home covered in pavement chalk from an art activity, I’m sure he had a fab time even if all he could be bothered to tell me is that he played with Lego).

(Edit: of course, the thought occurs that it might not have been an art activity and he may have mugged the teacher for her chalk. Then again, they have interactive white boards these days, so I think we’re safe).

… well the album is finally available on iTunes internationally, anyway. You can get the link from DrHorrible.com.

I’ve been having lots of fun singing all the songs and have carefully cut and pasted all the lyrics into the info so I can see them on my iPod, so probably safest not to venture into Worcester for a while.

All together now…

Go ahead – run away
Say it was horrible
Spread the word – tell a friend
Tell them the tale
Get a pic – do a blog
Heroes are over with
Look at him – not a word
Hammer, meet nail