Potty Time

Pickle's lost another tooth. The Tooth Fairy was running low on change and he only got 300huf. But he doesn't seem to mind.

Poppet smacked her big toe on the trampoline and needed an X-ray. It's not broken... but the lift from the basement car park to the medical centre on the 4th floor was.

The Insurance Fairy had better be able to poo money when I put the bill under my pillow tonight and rest my aching back.

Boy-Next-Door left his puppy here for the weekend - it looks like Ja-Ja Binks... only ginger. Tiggy is putting it through its paces and exerts her top-dog authority by dragging it round by the scruff of its neck. Still, it seems to have learned from her that weeing in the house really isn't going to win you any friends and keeping quiet at night keeps you from getting water-pistolled (all that Dog Borstal training is flooding back to me).

I am still having an essay crisis but my Mum is sending a text-book care-package, gawd luv 'er, (and by that I mean a parcel of text books, not a model parcel that would get you a Brownie badge).

Nobby is at a meeting over the other side of Hungary and missing all the fun.

That's all for now, but here is a joke from Pickle, who is reading this over my shoulder because he wants to play Grow-Island on Mummy's computer and the bit about pooing money made him giggle.

He says:

What happened when the cat swallowed a coin?

There was money in the kitty!

An announcement

I just need to let you all know that Pickle has finally lost his first tooth. I didn't twig at first when he ran up to me at the end of school yesterday with a huge grin - he's always happy, plus of course his adult tooth already grew in behind the wobbly one (flash git) so there's not much gap to speak of.

But after much wide-mouth-frog-style grinning coupled with meaningful eye-gestures and unintelligible noises I finally got it and congratulated him, while Poppet sulked how 'it's not fair!' that her own wobbly tooth isn't budging.

Despite suggestions to the contrary the other week, Pickle decided he does actually believe in the Tooth Fairy and later wrapped his tiny incisor inside a tissue, inside a ring box, inside a Russian dolly with a note saying 'Lots of love from Pickle'. He was delighted with the resulting 400 forints this morning, especially as he thought he'd only get 300. The Tooth Fairy must have been feeling generous after waiting seven years for her first visit to Pickle's bed.

Anyway, as you were. I have to get back to my essay, I still have half a Thesaurus left to swallow so I can beef up my words a bit. I mean, to enable myself to enhance my written vocabulary... I seriously don't envy my tutor their job.

Lookin' Good!

This will have to be a quick word as I am up to my eyeballs in essays. I have two to complete by Saturday and I only have 1200 words to play with - not easy for me, I do love a good waffle. The one I wrote last week is full of big words but sadly lacking in verbs as I was running over the word count. I'm hoping they'll get the gist... (or maybe I'll have to rewrite it. Sigh.)

Anyway, I decided to take most of Sunday off to get some household things done and spend time with the small people and Nobby. Poppet and I had some Mummy-Daughter time before I decided I couldn't put off Tescos any longer. No-one else wanted to come along so I went on my own.

I didn't think I was wearing anything particularly flash but I kept getting the feeling that people were looking at me. I checked the usual things - flies done up, same colour shoes on, bulges all normal size and in the right places - and all seemed to be in order. Then the girl behind me at the checkout was very obviously staring at me while the guy running my stuff past the infra-red was avoiding eye contact. Very strange.

So I busied myself checking off my list - I always take one and I always neglect to look at it until I am just about to pay. Luckily I had remembered everything except the make-up remover. Make-up remover? Now why did I need that? I don't wear a lot of make-up. I certainly never do my nails...

Then I finally noticed, with dawning horror, the bright pink blobs of Princess nail varnish on my fingernails and suddenly remembered just exactly what Poppet had wanted to do with our Mummy-Daughter time.

You guessed it - Beauty Parlours.
Using her own cosmetics.

I really should allow myself the occasional glance in the mirror on my way out the door because I had just spent an hour in Tescos sporting hair, nails and make-up by my eight year old...

Fish, footie and flying

Ever had one of those days when you just can't remember the Core Foundation Subjects of the National Curriculum? Or define the main factors that create an Effective Learning Environment?

Hmm, it's been a study crisis kind of a day and we're only on week two of the course. I blame the fun day I had at school observing lessons yesterday - I was lucky enough to pick a field trip day and took the opportunity to 'observe' Grade 7 on an outing to the local Cash and Carry to research products they might sell in a school shop they are planning to open. I observed quite a few items I would happily buy myself; I hope they'll let me tag along when they go to make the purchases. As for the students, it was literally watching kiddies in a sweet shop. Did you know you can still buy those candy cigarettes? At this place you can even pretend you're in candy duty-free and get 50 packs for a cut down price. I offered the group my services as a consultant representing the parent population who will be supplying the readies for their customers, in case they wanted to conduct a little market research on what Mummy will approve for little Johnny to spend his hard earned cash on. But once I'd put the kibosh on chewing gum, candy fags, fizzy pop and crisps they strangely stopped asking.

Anyway, after all the excitement (and the fun-packed journey with four eleven-year-old boys in my car) slaving over a hot OfSTED website didn't hold much appeal today. I think I learned that there are three types of planning - long, medium and short term (no kidding) - but that's about it. Luckily I was saved by a couple of friendly teachers at the school who were willing to listen to me rant then allow me to grill them about teaching practices when I went the collect the skunks. (What they don't know is I had a concealed tape recorder taking down all their pearls of wisdom so I can use them in my assignments as my own ideas! I AM KIDDING, Mr Course Tutor, Sir.)

Enough of study talk though. Let me tell you what I did at the weekend.

On Saturday we were invited to one of those company Family Fun Day things at a local camp. It was pretty good all told. I learned how to weave a bird out of strips of coloured paper while Poppet fashioned a pin-wheel, and Nobby and Pickle played football. Then I walked the dog round the forest while Poppet did some fishing in the little pond, and Nobby and Pickle played football. Later, Pickle and I raided the free buffet while Poppet fished... and Nobby played football. Poppet had a ride on a pony, while Pickle fished (and Nobby played football). Then Pickle and I visited the three fire engines they'd laid on and he went up on the hydraulic lift about 10 storeys in the air (it was strictly not for me, despite the comforting presence of a pretty fit fireman who offered to let me wear his helmet...) while Poppet fished and Nobby played football.

Are you getting a pattern here? Poppet and Pickle's previous angling experience is limited to a game called 'My Simms' on the DS but they were sorely bitten by the bug once they got a rod in their hands and the little fishies started to bite. Incidentally, I am doing Nobby down a bit here, he did come and join in between football games, they were only twenty minutes each, and he was rather keen on the fishing too, having been brought up by a keen angler and done quite a lot when he was younger. (But who caught the first fishy with the rod though, huh? Me!)

However the kids soon discovered a quicker way to catch lots of tiddlers using a large square net that you chuck off a bridge then pull up as they're scurrying past. Once they were over the revulsion of handling their slimy, flapping little bodies Poppet in particular had a wonderful afternoon hauling them in, then picking the dead ones out of the bucket.

Pickle joined in the fishing for an impressively long time after tiring of the football and then he decided it was time to test Mummys nerve to the max (as if he doesn't do that on a daily basis anyway). Before I knew what I had volunteered for he was in a harness and hard hat, attached by ropes to a chap known as 'Chubby' and shinning up a telegraph pole, gaily calling 'Come on Mum! You can do it!!' over his shoulder.

May I refer you back to the earlier paragraph about the lovely fireman and how he couldn't persuade me up his ladder? Well, I couldn't let my little boy down like that so up I went - it was one of those aerial assault course things, all about fifteen metres off the ground and requiring some serious monkey skills that my 7 year old has in abundance and which I sadly seem to have lacked since birth.

I get vertigo on a deep-pile carpet people, this was not fun.

I think the mountaineer types who were operating the thing quickly cottoned on to this fact as I bear-hugged each telegraph pole I arrived at like I was greeting an old friend. Meanwhile Pickle whizzed across swinging ropes, narrow bridges and what was basically a tightrope and proceeded to jump off the final platform for the final lowering to terra firma singing 'I Believe I Can Fly' at the top of his voice.

As if that wasn't enough, he then climbed up a single telegraph pole, stood on a tiny platform on the top, then jumped off, hitting a large beach-ball on the way down. All for shits and giggles.

I am happy to report that while I was trying to force my heart out of my throat and back to its proper place, Nobby and his company team won the football tournament. Unfortunately I missed the trophy ceremony because I was watching my son fly through the air on the end of a rope but I heard the applause through the trees and I was very proud.

The joy of learning

OMG my head is spinning. Today I have been learning about 'metacognition', 'deep learning', 'high order thinking' and 'constructivism'. This is mind-boggling stuff, and rather tricky to spell. There is no getting away from it, I am really going through with this PGCE Teaching course.

I have watched two lectures by a wonderful chap who sounds just like Eric Idle, and he certainly seems to look on the bright side of life with the little jokes and anecdotes he puts in his lectures. It was all on the internet so it could have actually been a Monty Pythoner for all I know, he was about a centimetre tall on my screen.
How's this for a great way to start a course:
Two parrots were sitting on a perch. One says to the other, 'Do you smell fish?' ... geddit? boom boom! Yup, he and I would definitely have got on if we didn't only get to meet in cyberspace.

It's interesting learning all these modern theories about teaching and learning methods. Apparently now we teachers don't instruct to a group of passive learners who learn by rote and regurgitate in exams. It's all about facilitating the learning and students have to take responsibility for their learning, constructing knowledge by analysing, evaluating and judging. Sounds a great idea to me, only trouble is I was taught in the old style and I am having to learn all this in the new style, there is no-one holding my hand here and making me nice cups of tea in a cosy faculty office when I can't think how to start my assignment essay. Eek!

I was the student in the back row of the lecture theatre with my eyelids made up to resemble open, alert blue eyes while I had my real eyes firmly closed, sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Now there's no one to nudge me if I start to snore or to lend me their lecture notes if I don't get round to taking any. Luckily the course is all beautifully guided with a detailed self-study workbook to go through and a crash course in study skills for the old farts like me who haven't had to 'compare and contrast' much more than which brand of baked beans to buy at Tescos for the last fifteen(ish) years.

And yet there are new distractions in the virtual learning environment. All is quiet in the house, there is no impromptu party thumping out loud music elsewhere in the hall of residence, I don't have to walk past a single bar on my way to the virtual lectures and tutorials. The dog is walked, the kids are in school, there is a flask of coffee on my beautifully tidy desk. What could possibly keep me from immersing myself in the books? These days it is not the pull of an afternoon with my friend Bob and her three male flatmates watching every episode of Black Adder then hitting the local student bar with the rugby team. Nowadays I have 'Farmville' and 'Mob Wars' and 'Livechat' to put me off my stride. They are just a double, sometimes only a single click away on Facebook... oh, how innocent we were in the olden days with only a drafty library and a microfiche for company.

Anyway, I really ought to get on with analysing that Ofsted report, I really don't have time to Blog. I am a student you see, and I can prove it. Not only did I pop into Farmville to harvest my crop of pumpkins when I should have been investigating the Core Subjects of the National Curriculum, I just fell asleep on Pickle's bed saying goodnight to him when I should have been preparing for a day in the classroom tomorrow.

All I need now is to stay up all night on ProPlus, sleep through my alarm every morning and have a lot of big rows with my flatmates about the washing up and my transformation will be complete.

What's big and white and if it fell out of a tree it could kill you?

Whilst my boy is watching some obscure cartoon about a boy with a pet fart (don't ask, but he keeps it in a cage beside his bed and Pickle thinks it's 'well cool' - so much for the spanky new TV and satellite receiver improving the quality of our TV time...) let me tell you about an exciting and fun new sport:

Fridge Wrestling.

Anyone can take part, it is particularly popular among Stay At Home Mums whose husbands are away and whose landlords insist on delivering a new fridge while you are out. Clearly landlords all subscribe to The Law Of Sod given that mine only ever calls to say he's on his way over when I have been in alone for 5 hours and am about to go out.

So get an old fridge, preferably one that has been used and abused by several tenants in a rented property over a fifteen year period, switch it on and wait for bits to fall off it for twelve months or so. When it develops a noise sounding like an aeroplane landing in your kitchen each time the motor runs, Round One can begin, as you wrestle it through the pantry door so you can shut the noise away for the sake of your sanity. You must be unaccompanied for Round One, the fridge must be heavy, with no wheels and the doorway must have maximum five millimetres clearance on either side.

Round Two can start when the landlord finally tires of your constant b*tching about the stupid fridge and tells you he'll buy a new one. He will keep you waiting a week for it then call to say he'd like to deliver it in the next half an hour just as you are leaving for a meeting. Of course he won't have his house keys with him so you must leave the front gate on the latch and when you return the new fridge will be on your doorstep with a note asking you to leave the old on in the same place for him to collect.

You can have help for Round Two if hubby happens to be home from his travels. All you have to do is move the fridge to the interior of the house so it doesn't get rusty or stolen in the night. Of course a telepathic link would come in handy to ensure no hands, feet or heads become wedged between the fridge and the door posts on the way in.

Round Three requires a free hour or two in your schedule and involves getting the old fridge out of the pantry and onto the front porch, unwrapping the new fridge from it's sellophane and somehow removing the polystyrene pallet from underneath it - small children can come in handy at this stage. Then, since the new model will not actually fit under the wall cupboards in the designated fridge corner of the main kitchen because the kitchen was built around the old fridge and they make 'em taller these days, wrestle it into the pantry, shut the door, have a cup of tea.

It's a very enjoyable way to spend a Friday afternoon.

Introducing a new Super Hero

Pickle has a new name.

I am pleased to inroduce you to Teflon Boy.

Nothing sticks to this one, both literally and metaphorically. Now that's quite a Super Power.

He came to me last evening, after a heavy session of spinning his sister round on an office chair, complaining that his dressing over his stitches was falling off. And sure enough, upon closer inspection, he was sweating so much that all the sticky had disappeared and the thing came off in my hand. Boy sweat - more effective than acetone any day. Unfortunately, upon even closer inspection, it seems that one of his steri-strips had also slipped in the flood and the hole was opening up and oozing out something nasty looking.

Just. Effing. Fabulous.

Options were limited at that time of night so I decided to let it scab again and take him back to the private clinic this morning. They confirmed that this is it now, there is nothing we can do but wait till it heals and get him seen by a plastic surgeon a couple of months down the line.
So much for keeping him off 'physical activity' - a note excusing him from PE is obviously not enough, but being Teflon Boy even the simplest instruction to 'not run about getting hot and sweaty and risking bashing your head' slides straight out of his brain. I might as well try to nail jelly to the wall.

He has Teflon shoulders too - earlier in the evening I was trying to get him to do his homework but I could not get any co-operation out of him; I tried threats (do it now or no DS for a week), bribery (do it now and I'll let you watch TV) and corruption (do it now and I'll pay you 300 forints) but nothing stuck. Actually the homework was to finish a task that he had refused to do in class because he was in a mood with the teacher for taking a toy off him... in fact now I think about it Tefal must have got their hands on him long ago; this is not new behaviour. Perhaps I should be looking for a red spot on his bottom to show me when he's reached optimum temperature.

Poppet, meanwhile, has astounded me this morning by locating her 'responsibility' gene, switching it on and actually helping me out. Somehow it has sunk in that if you wait for Mummy to do absolutely everything you're going to end up at the school gates half an hour late, still in your pyjamas with scraggy hair and smelly breath. Most mornings I even have to do the walking for the precious darlings; Pickle's favourite phrase is 'Mummy, carry!' while his dressing gown is on, wanting a lift from his bed to the sofa then from the sofa to the breakfast table. (Hey, perhaps that's what I'm doing wrong at every other mealtime when he can't stay in his seat for more than five seconds at a stretch, I should bung on his dressing gown...?)

How we ever make it out the door is a daily miracle, yet this morning when I raced back into the house to get Poppet's coat, Pickle's bag and shut the dog out, I encountered Poppet carrying Tiggy's water bowl into the garden to join the dog bed and toy she had already put there. Then she picked up her own coat and got into the car. You could have knocked me down with a feather.

Knowing my luck this was just a one-off and I'll be back to headless-chicken mode tomorrow, but we'll see. Hope springs eternal.