Date nights and babysitters

During pregnancy you seem to be public property, I am not sure which is worse: people trying to touch your bump, the labour horror stories or the constant advice. The worst thing about the advice is that it is not offered lightly but instead barked as a command. “Get your sleep now, you will need all your energy later”, “Enjoy every moment, they grow up so quickly”, or even reminders to keep the romance alive in your marriage and “Keep up the date nights”; at eight months pregnant romance is not the first thing on your agenda!

Date nights for parents? Great idea. Loads of things can be a great idea when extended families living close at hand are there to help. It would be great if we had family to pop in and babysit at a moments notice, come to think of that any babysitters would be good. Like many people we had moved to where the jobs are, and our closest relatives were over half an hour away and my family are hundreds of miles off. When I was small babysitting was a guaranteed teenage income, but when the whole village had lived cheek by jowl for generations you knew with a fair degree of certainty that the babysitters are trustworthy. If I were to try the teenage babysitter here I may end up with Vicky Pollard, so scrub that, I trust only a DBS (formerly a CRB) check!

Initially we thought that going to family homes for events would be easier, but far from it. At a family event all the free babysitters are in attendance. Every time we had a “do” we seemed to spend about a hundred pounds on another expensive agency Nanny that we had no lasting contact with.

Grudgingly, however, I have to admit that the advice of keeping up the date nights is sound. Sometimes it can be as simple as dinner by candle light in the dining room rather than at the breakfast bar, at other times we do reciprocal babysitting with a Mummy friend down the road, and sometimes we just have to bite the bullet and find an external babysitter who we can trust. You can try your luck with Care.com a kind of dating agency to help you find carers and babysitters (including ones with their DBS checks in place).

Looking at their website I may be tempted to add another bit of advice for dog owning Mums to be - for the last weeks of pregnancy and first weeks of motherhood, seriously consider a dog walker. Eighteen months on, rubbing my Caesarian scar, that is one change I would have certainly made to DB's early months!
I met up with the lovely ladies from Care.com at the Mumsnet Bloggers Conference, and they asked me what I thought of their services and - WARNING - they have paid me to write this piece. The thoughts are all my own, but the gratuitous plug at the end has been SPONSORED - the first time I have strayed into commercial territory. They seem like good people, so I hope you don't mind.

Moving out of London

Can it really be ten years since my self imposed exile. I still feel like a newbie in the Home Counties - royal Berkshire no less (doesn't that sound better than Reading?). A new friend has recently joined the exodus and I thought I should reflect on what I have learnt.

Don't make assumptions that anything you know from London holds true. Distances and roads are calibrated differently outside the M25. Anything over half an hour is too far - unless it is a theme park with an international reputation.

Forget IKEA, to get kudos points you must shop at John Lewis. Talking of Kudos, it is not comical that after christmas over a quarter of the school mums all have identical outfits, it is cool. All right shoulders seem to have been branded by SuperDry and feet are still the property of a certain Mr.Ugg and don't forget other essentials from Hollister and Jules. So choose your clothes carefully, it defines your school gate tribe.

Vintage clothes are not, repeat NOT, cool, they are smelly old clothes. Likewise antique just seems to be a posh word for second hand and so keep quite about them, please. So far people have been too polite to comment on what they think of old cottages like ours.

It has been quite a learning experience! I feel like a social anthropologist. I can confirm that the local tribes are generally benevolent - and those who aren't well, our kids will be at school together for another ten years so I am not about to rock the boat. I am sure if I had investigated earlier I may have been assimilated, but I have held onto my individuality instead.

Slow blogging

I question everything, life, philosophy and mostly blogging. I read Mammasaurus and Slow blogging and it struck a chord. I started off the Easter Holidays full of bloggy hope, loads of great activities from lambing at a cousin's farm to organising an over the top Easter egg hunt and party, all photographed for posterity and, I hoped, this blog. Then silence.




Remember the old arcade coin drop games? After a few very tough years of depression and other challenges, it has not been so much that the penny is finally dropping but a coin cascade. Life seems to be making so much more sense, but I just needed a bit of time to myself while I was doing that mental sorting.

Rather than a tedious cross between blogging as therapy and public naval gazing I have just needed a bit of time for myself to clear the decks and enjoy two very cute little people.

Walks

My day is defined by walks. Up in time to walk to school, then straight off to walk the Mr.Woof. The day starts the slow wind down with the school collection, with promises of cuddles, food and eventually bed time. Throughout these long walks I love seeing the year evolve at first hand.




Hands are very important. Recently the icy wind has been biting, I feel as if I am trotting along without jeans as their weave is no match for the elements. Poor DB struggles, as for longer walks I incarcerate him in the push chair, and it is his hands that suffer most.

Now, when his hand starts to get cold up it goes. His hand declares a halt! It is time to rub those little fingers and lavish with hot potatoes. Normally we end it with a kiss on the nose, accompanied by endless giggles.

We have beaten Jack Frost - walks are fun again. Hurrah! Now hurry up spring, the seedlings need you now.

Shakespeare for beginners

Conflicting emotions started long before the action. I love Shakespeare but was the Pickle too young? I love the Globe but was the building just too historic to be comfortable for a six year old? the production was aimed at school children but would it be dumbed down?


We did our home work, and read an excellent introduction to the play. Pickle got to know the story and we could chat about the language, the themes and 'thees and thous' and generally we started to get excited. Then the snow started to fall!

From underneath a hat, coat and blanket a little nose and two twinkling eyes were ready. I confess to welling up as I saw her face in awe of the action. The troupe burst onto the stage from all angles dancing and playing a thunderous chorus on trumpets from that point on the Pickle was hooked.

The production part of the 'Playing Shakespeare' initiative, promoting the Bard to school children, and so ran the risk of alienating both children and aficionados alike. Glyndebourne's attempt at pop opera that they marketed at the Brighton's Universities was a classic example of how to get it hideously wrong; Tangier Tattoo was an 'operatic thriller' and had all the elements - guns, drugs, sex and torsos - that you would think could appeal to a student, if you had never taken the time to talk to one. Ultimately it was let down as the music was not very good. Even the marketing had failed as most of the audience looked as if last saw the inside of a classroom when they dropped off their heirs at Eton. It would be tragic if this was the fate of all accessible productions.

Daunted at the prospect of seeing the Bard mangled I almost winced as the first words were spoken. Would it be Shakespeare reinterpreted in modern speech, a limp 'West End Story', or would they be brave? I opened my eyes to the first impassioned rhyming couplet and glanced at the Pickle - she got it. Within her cocoon her eyes were like lasers, focused and enjoying, really enjoying.

At a running time of an hour and three quarters the play had been cut, but I had seen more blatant text savagery in so called adult theatre (Michael Gambon trying hard to carry off Alan Ayckbourn's Othello springs painfully to mind). They could have taken more liberties with the text, but with a production of this calibre it was not necessary. With the snow swirling and the mercury diving attention were still focused on the stage; it was not just the Pickle, a little girl behind us kept a stage whisper going demanding Daddy description, but interpretation given she still seemed rapt. The elements could not detract from real performance.

There were some highlights, Richard James Neale excelled as Mercutio but ultimately it was an ensemble piece from the musicians to the confetti's star turn. There is often a week link and Tom Whitelock's Paris was a tad limpid but in other less impressive settings his performance would not have seemed below parr.

I am not trying to rear a genius, and promote Shakespeare for educational oneupmanship. I took the Pickle as I wanted to share something that could be fun. I have a parenting bucket list - to introduce the Pickle to the broadest variety of experiences, skills and foods, so that once she leaves home she is not daunted by anything new. The Globe's Romeo and Juliet was just that, we laughed, gasped and I cried - the Pickle is already requesting a return visit.

Pickle's short review relates 'it was good...it was funny and sad in a few places. go and see it as it quite tricky to describe'.

Testing

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So here is Super Hedgehog as a test card, to avoid a blank post :)

Red

Red could be the Pickle's uniform, but that had featured once or twice, or it could be a fire engine. (Is there a specific medical complaint brought on by the sounds from the great plastic idols?)




But, a red fire engine is the theme of my life not a story. So instead I must tell a red yarn.

I like to know how things work, I need to know how to things are made. Recently I have had a craving to make a crochet flower, so armed with no prior knowledge, a hook and YouTube I was ready for the challenge.

A few deflating knots later I realised I had to start with basics, I should focus first on discovering my single and double crochets, as well as the chains that had come so naturally.




Notice the difference between attempt one and attempt two? From there it was not too big a step via Mom of 5 Daughters to make my long awaited flower.




What do you think? Pickle now wants me to make us matching crochet hats. I imagine that it will be an addiction for the next month or so (just like spinning wool, lace making and millinery before it) but for now crochet rocks! Any ideas for what to do next, or should I capitulate to Pickle's dubious and taste defying demands?