Some birds for the Gallery

Thu Jul 29 2010 – 0:20

I love the Gallery posts but so rarely get around to compiling one and entering it (um, once so far I think?) but this week has the additional draw of there being chocolatey goodness on offer in the form of prizes so I couldn’t resist :)

Having said that, it took me all day to actually publish this post, and I would have given up on it, except @tara_cain was lovely and encouraging on twitter!

The theme is nature.

I’m quite fond of nature. Where we live, although residential, it’s very quiet and as such we get a fair bit of wildlife in our garden right outside the french window. Soa likes to sit and watch the birds through it and we feed them right outside to keep drawing them in. (This also means I spend some time chasing the cat off or rescuing slightly chewed birds but you can’t have everything!)

bird watching

As we’re within a mile of the sea, we get quite a few seagulls around. I’ve set myself a challenge to take photos of them – which is proving very much more difficult than expected. For such big birds, they are incredibly nervous, and they don’t hang around. And it takes a flock of them seconds to clear a garden full of scrap food (not much makes it to our bin nowadays, it goes out for the birds or into the compost!)

So far I’ve got lots of pictures of an empty garden:

where'd he go

and occasional pics of (slightly blurred) seagulls in motion.

there he is!

Thankfully, the bluetits in our relatives garden were more cooperative :)

For this shot, I was sitting out in the garden, with soa, while everyone else was inside watching England play football very badly. I think I had the more enjoyable afternoon!

who you looking at?

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (2)

I have a small problem.

Wed Jul 28 2010 – 0:21

This is not me.

this is not me

Well, obviously it is me. But it isn’t.

You see, I don’t look like that. Not in my mind’s eye. I look more like this.

though possibly skinnier. And less blurry. With better lighting ;)

So where has she come from, this woman in the mirror? She catches me by surprise on a daily basis as I’m leaving the living room, jumping out at me from the mirror as I cross the hall. She follows me around all day, weighing me down and making me feel old and frumpy when I have to put on clothes that just don’t fit right, or if they fit, don’t look like anything I’d ever choose!

I’m back in my own jeans, and getting close to my even skinnier trousers, but my lovely velvet Christmas skirt doesn’t fit, and my top half doesn’t seem to have got the 9 months on, 9 months off message. (We’re coming up hard on the 9 months now, and I’m still well over a stone heavier than I was before I was pregnant.) I know that breastfeeding has some overhead, but I still don’t like it.

And I look around at these (lovely) children around me and I wonder sometimes where they came from too. I mean, I know where they’re from, but at the same time, I can’t quite work out how I got from being that kid not long out of university to being a mother of three, at home with the children, doing things like washing, and shopping, and cooking from scratch.

What happened to changing the world? Becoming a writer? Making a difference?

It appears to have fallen by the wayside somewhere in the last decade.

It’s not that I have regrets about my life, with the whole family and having children thing. I don’t, I’m very happy. It’s just that there are other things I wanted to do as well, and I’m a little surprised to find myself here now without having done them. So it’s time to start, now, doing them.

I’ve started a new personal challenge. It’s the Artist’s Way or the highway, each morning. I either run (a very short distance atm!) or I do the morning pages and when those two new activities are set in as as habits, I’ll choose some more things to change.

I’d like your support. And if there are things you’d like to start new or change in your life, I’d like to support you too.

So if you do feel like joining in, leave a comment, and if enough ppl want to, I’ll set up a linky. (Oh, and I’ve set this post to allow trackbacks, so if you want to link back here, you can and it’ll link to you too.) I’ll post my update sometime next week and you can let me know how you are doing too and we’ll see where we go from then. (You never know, if ppl want to join in, I might even get around to creating a blog badge ;) )

Here’s to living otherwise :)

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (20)

Once more, with feeling.

Tue Jul 27 2010 – 14:43

Sadly not a Buffy post.

The serious case review into the death of Khyra Ishaq came out today. Predictably a variety of ppl are blaming home education.

Let me go through this very slowly.

Home education did not kill Khyra Ishaq. Her parents did. The discussion is wandering around whether her death was preventable, and it seems to me that it is likely it was, as concerns were raised by multiple ppl about her while she was in school.

Social services had, and has, all the powers they need to intervene when a child is at risk. Saying that they couldn’t because the child is home educated is just not true, and makes no sense to anyone who thinks about it for a minute or two.

Stop clouding the issue Birmingham. Stop stirring the pot journalists. Politicians, get your act and spiel together, and focus on social services departments doing the job they are supposed to do with the tools/ powers they already have, instead of interfering with families and children who are absolutely fine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pick up my socially deprived 10 year old and her friends from the dance camp they are at this week, and lock her back in the cupboard under the stairs. (Just kidding, we have no stairs. We use the garage instead. :? )

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Heads up

Tue Jul 27 2010 – 11:51

Home education mentioned in new consultation document.

Home educated pupils

80. The Government also proposes to introduce a scheme allowing local authorities to claim for funding for pupils educated at home where services are provided to these pupils. This might include giving them access to school facilities or paying the entry fees for exams sat at school. The proposal would allow local authorities to claim for 10% of a unit of funding for home educated pupils in order to provide these services. This is consistent with the recommendations of the Badman Report.

Consultation with full document can be found here.

I won’t have time to read and digest this properly til tonight, but I’m dropping it here now so that if ppl have thoughts to share they can, preferably on the blog so I can find them!

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By Jax | Posted in political stuff | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Quiet day needed.

Sun Jul 25 2010 – 12:09

Having been up way too late last night (which rather makes me wonder why I’m still up at this time) what I really needed was for the baby to keep me up all night feeding so that I’d be raring to go for our doctor’s appts at 9 and 9.15.

So obviously she obliged ;)

Big wasn’t up to wandering down to the doctor’s. She was barely up to standing upright. Temp was still up about at around 38.2, she was wobbling and sorry for herself. So I changed the appt to be one where I talk about her, and went to grab babe to rush down with Small.

Except babe was wet. First time a Pampers has let us down overnight, *obviously* on the morning that I needed to just grab and run. So it was full change and then into wrap and rush out – arriving at docs 10 minutes late :(

Small has a verruca. He’s had it for years, he informed the doctor, explaining that it hasn’t changed colour and hasn’t grown for weeks. It hasn’t been there for years I said, and apologised for his google diagnosis. He did do it himself I pointed out.

The doctor seemed very unsure as to what to do next. Think he was a trainee – he read the BNF and prescribed something or other after much deliberation. Then he wasn’t very happy to prescribe diarolyte for Big without seeing her (I only asked for it as NHSDirect said we needed it when I spoke to them last night) so she had to be added to the home visit list. And Tim texted to say he had an emergency dentist appt at 11.30.

Small and I called at the chemists on the way home. To discover that the prescribed verruca medication has been discontinued. Sigh. Why is nothing ever simple? Then we stopped off at our favourite charity shop, where they are still selling £1 children’s bundles of books two for £1.50. Six books for £1.50, including The Illustrated Mum, The Ship That Flew (Oxford Children’s Modern Classics) and The Haunting of Hiram for Big, with a bundle of Viking history books for Small.

Inspired choice for Big – she loves Jacqueline Wilson and somehow hadn’t read The Illustrated Mum. That kept her occupied all day, staving off the headache that she was getting if she tried to watch TV. By evening she was a lot brighter, although not enough for swimming club, rather a shame as it was the last session of the term :(

Small spent the day teaching himself programming. I’ve shown him Scratch several times in the past, this time he just took off with it, worked out how to have multiple sprites in one project, starting ripping off code from one to put into another and even began to fit in conditionals of his own accord. Tim and I discussed Scratch for Android and whether I can justify a new Android phone if Small (and maybe me) would write apps for it.

Then we brainstormed apps that we could write. Which was fun.

So we needed a quiet day, and that was pretty much what we got. Not quiet enough for me to actually finish the blogpost on the day I started it (Friday!) but hey.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (3)

10 years in

Fri Jul 23 2010 – 0:09

and still making rookie mistakes.

Those of you with weak stomaches or sickness phobias will want to stop reading now.

Are they gone? Good.

For the rest of you:

if your daughter, who sleeps in a cabin bed, tells you that she has tummy pains to go along with the high temp and headache that have caused you to put her to bed, supply her with a bucket just in case.
If you haven’t done this, and she calls that she feels sick, do not pause to work out where the best bucket is. Just find something, anything, and take it to her immediately.

Or you too may find yourself transferring sleeping children to bed mats in other rooms and washing copious amounts of bedding at midnight.

Oh, and when your daughter makes a transition to a big bed, that is the time to wean her away from keeping priceless treasures in bed with her.

Or you too may find yourself throwing away Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and washing regurgitated nectarine out of the woollen hair of the irreplaceable rag doll that was an unsuitable present when Grandfather bought her several years ago, and is even more unsuitable now that her stitches are coming undone, her hair is unravelling, and she’s covered in nectarine.

And as for the hank of lovingly dyed fleece brought back from the re-enactors at festival of history – well, I suppose it was washed when it was dyed. So handwashing it gently in lukewarm water can’t harm that much can it?

And if you find yourself composing a blogpost about it all instead of doing the washing up that your poor dp couldn’t do, because he’s in bed with horrendous toothache (you know that it’s bad when they can’t stand up straight!), then face it, you’re an addict.

Please let that have been all. It was quite enough for one night universe.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (9)

Festival of history – Saturday

Thu Jul 22 2010 – 14:04

Friday morning, and indeed some of Friday afternoon, passed in a bad tempered haze of packing, carrying, putting into car, realising it wouldn’t fit, taking it out of car, repacking and so on. Not much fun. I had wanted to be away by midday, in the end it was (just) after 3 :(

At least we had a good drive though, although I was less than impressed when the heavens opened extremely impressively when we were just 10 miles from our campsite.

Putting up the Montana 6 Man Tent was made much easier by Em running off with soa – she had one baby strapped to her front and one to her back, go Em! And soa was very happy with it. Also grateful to help from various not so small children – Big, Sb and Barbara’s E.

Tent is slightly more difficult to put up in light wind with rain showers, but we still got it up in under 40 minutes. Given that it goes up with inners and groundsheet already attached means that it’s then just a case of chucking the carpet and bedding in and you’re ready for the first night, a definite bonus.

Life took a bit of a nosedive though, when I got the stove set up and discovered I’d left a piece at home :(

Thank goodness for friends. Especially for friends with the same stove, so they can lend you the bit you are missing :) Pasta and sauce for tea, and really the children were just happy to be in a field with their friends, meaning that I could be happy to be in a field with mine :)

Saturday morning and as usual we were pretty much the last ones out of the field. Though we did then bump in to theBabs in the Tesco carpark where we’d stopped off for packed lunch supplies :) Which in turn meant we arrived at FoH in the rain, sigh. But it was a short sharp shower, and by the time the second one arrived we were safely ensconced in the YAC tent dissecting poo. (Well, OK, it was plasticine poo, but it was still a very interesting activity. Particularly for Small, who spent over 20 minutes making sure he had every last seed and stone out of his portion, doing an extremely thorough job of it. More thorough than the ppl manning the stand had ever seen before in fact!)

Thankfully that was pretty much it for rain for the afternoon, meaning that we could sit and eat our lunch at the Victorian seaside while the children watched Punch and Judy and then something about Robin Hood I think (may edit if I can find program). Rest of afternoon was just wandering around the various encampments and medieval market where the children bought a few bits, and then we headed back to the campsite for an evening of bubbles, friends, marshmallows and sky
lanterns. (Can’t believe I didn’t get pictures of the sky lantern! But here’s some others.)

shopping for bracelets

time travellers are us

no explosions yet!

tents are fun places

and so are fields

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (5)

A bit of an excuse

Wed Jul 21 2010 – 0:06

for not blogging for a bit.

We went away. Only for a couple of days, and without Tim at that, but I’ve discovered that going away for two days camping requires at least two days preparation, and a day or so coming down afterwards. So for two days out, 5 days away from virtual life.

Hm. May have to try to get a bit more organised to cut down on the required preparation. Or rope in the children more. Hollow laughter.

Anyway, thursday was a day of list making, and list failure. I tried, really I tried. But the world was against me, including the HMRC self employed helpline, who hung up on me 5 times when I rang them to explain that I’m no longer self-employed. Sigh. This is why I don’t do paperwork – whenever I try to do paperwork, it just doesn’t happen.

While attempting to clear the list of the things that must be done, I turned it over and added a list of things that actually got done. It was quite enlightening in explaining the lack of entries on the first side.

Along with ringing HMRC 5 times, I spent some time on the phone to the coop. And along with time on the phone I spent time in purposeful conversation with the children. We did maths, talked about spelling, may have discussed language exchanges and Big did sewing. (You may wonder how I would be involved in her sewing, but believe me, I was involved.)

Small and I discussed words – nano, micro and milli. This was started by him telling me that a nano me would be very small. He’s right :)

Purposeful conversation sounds a bit contrived. It’s not though, at the time. Because if you contrive to make it educational, it quickly becomes boring, and your children switch off. So we can only have that kind of conversation when we are all interested in what we are talking about.

Along with education there was feeding. Of me, of children, of baby. Several times. And the things you have to do after feeding, the nappy changes. I did email. I did twitter. I lost my list, I found my list. And I didn’t really do much packing.

I did do three loads of laundry. And some shouting. The shouting was related to the third load of laundry – I asked the children to fetch dirty clothes out of their room so that I could be sure they had clothes for the weekend. Some hours later they’d fetched out a very small pile. Then I had a go, and in three minutes I fetched out twice as many. So then I shouted. :(

their pile

my pile

And that was as far as I got towards packing really, so the intention of leaving by midday Friday was optimistic at best and downright hopeless at worst.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (2)

It’s that AFK Wednesday thing

Wed Jul 14 2010 – 16:12

We needed to be up and out really early (well for us, anyway) so obviously staying up until 1.30 was the thing to do. Sigh. but I had to back up my netbook again to send away *again* for repair around the intermittent white screen fault.

(As an aside, if anyone from Samsung should happen to read this, I am not impressed. I love my NC10, and I wanted to go on loving my NC10, and even when it developed this built in fault, I was prepared to go on loving it if you delivered the wonderful customer service that two of my friends had received, but it was out of warranty and you basically told me to go away. Really not impressed. I will not be Samsunging again, no matter how much I love my NC10.)

So the netbook was backed up and boxed up for its travels, and I was awake so many times during the 6 hours I had in bed, so when the alarm went off it was a real drag to get up. We obviously didn’t leave the house to get to town for swimming at 10 – it was nearer 10.30 when we finally got into the water, but at least we made it.

Good to be in the water with all three children, and slightly astounded to discover that I basically have two very efficient swimmers. Big we knew about (did I mention she swam 30 lengths (of a 25m pool) in 30 minutes last night? And had time left over and wasn’t out of breath? Well impressed with her) although it was still good to see it up close. Small I didn’t really know about, but it turns out he has a very nice looking breaststroke, a slightly breathy crawl and a floundering backstroke. I’d guess he’s really not that far from being moved up a group at his lessons either (wonder if we’ve still got the next hat in the cupboard!)

And soa loved the water. The pool is fantastic for babies – water is really warm and so is the air temperature, so it’s just like being in a big bath, but without getting overheated. We were in for nearly hour and a half, and she was happy throughout, only getting cross during the getting dried bit. Definite result.

From there we went on to a local park with the swimming friends, and being an incompetent mummy, I scrounged food for my children from other parents. (The chances I was going to have a picnic lunch organised for leaving the house before 10 are always minimal :( ) Park was nice, though rather swamped by school groups presumably on end of term outings. My children were hugely unhappy about this, one of the benefits of home ed as they see it is in not having to share the play equipment ;)

And eventually home again. Where Small rushed to the pc to continue with some writing he’s doing about one of his superheroes (creativity, pc literacy, english, tick) and Big picked up yet another Princess Diaries book (don’t want to think about it. Tick.)

All of which means that today we haven’t fitted in any maths, but given that we did an hour one to one last night on perimeters while I was trying to cook tea (home educators do it anywhere, anytime) I guess we didn’t really need to fit any more in today.

We won’t get any done tomorrow either. Or not much, given that tomorrow I have to run around frantically and get organised to go to Festival of History on Friday.

Wonder when I’ll get my netbook back :(

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (1)

Mummy blogging?

Tue Jul 13 2010 – 11:10

There have been times in the past when I have tried to get this blog searchable on various terms. I’ve gone for home education blog. I’ve tagged posts with Badman, home ed review, and I’ve promoted posts by explaining to ppl about putting particular terms in the link text.

But I’ve never tried to promote this blog as a mummy blog. It’s just not occurred to me. In a recent article in the FT it was claimed that a couple of years ago there were only 200 mummy blogs, and I rolled around laughing. I suspect I can name going on for 100 without even trying that were around then, there are going on for 100 that have passed through the blogring*

None of us are known as mummy bloggers. Except maybe Grit. Come to think of it, all of this might be her fault. I’m sure it was her blog where I first saw the British Mummy Bloggers badge. ;)

I think the problem is in the terminology. I don’t identify myself first and foremost as a mummy. I’m just me. If I list the things I do, mum is right up there, especially at the moment when I’m not working, and I’m at home with two children to home educate and a baby to raise. But I’m also a cleaner, cook, shopper, entertainment machine, cheerleader, nurse, chauffeur, diary coordinator and oh so many different roles that I play throughout the day.

So I don’t identify this blog as a mummy blog. It’s a home education blog. It’s a family blog. It’s part of a community. It’s a place where I rant, vent and share. It’s a repository for those parts of our life together that I want to remember. It’s a journal of our education, a record of our days. And if it can generate some income for us while remaining all of those things, all well and good. If it can’t, no worries. Because it will still be all of those other things to me, and that is its true worth.

*Note for new readers. If I say ‘the blogring’ I’m referring to the yellow box up top there. It has also been running a long time. There’s a lot of good (mummy) blogs on it.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (16)

Today I did…

Sun Jul 11 2010 – 21:59
  • blog copiously (as this is the second post of the day, well on the way to that target!) This is post three. I think that’s fairly copious :)
  • include some pictures Coming soon.
  • install wordpress elsewhere, while keeping notes, and write about the experience Hm. I helped someone else sort theirs out, does that count?
  • hang yesterday’s washing out.Done!
  • do today’s washingNot done
  • take stuff to charity shop, thereby working towardsNot done
  • find space in garage to put tent awayNot done. Which means that the tent is just stood out in the garden. Not good really.
  • get Big to take pictures of my hair so that I canThis I did
  • cut hair following you tube instructions and blog about it (of course)and this. Apart from the blogging about it. So keep reading.
  • update my cv, write covering letter, apply for a jobMost excellently done. Don’t worry, it’s a part-time evening job. And I don’t think I stand a great deal of chance with it, but it’s worth a try.
  • buy english heritage festival of history tickets Done. And receipt printed out. And put in a safe place. (And when I can’t remember where that is, remind me it’s in the letter rack in the hall, ‘K?)
  • make a list, on paper, of everything else I’ve got to do and assign a certain number of tasks to days so that I start doing them and stop feeling so hopelessly incompetent and ineffectual. SighNot done. Bigger sigh.
  • try to remind myself that this too will pass, and I will miss baby days and breastfeeding when they are goneThis I did. And thank you for earlier comments and support.

And I spent time relating to my 10 year old as well as playing with my baby. Big is going through so many changes atm, it is so important to keep talking with her and keep her talking with me. I figure any day we stay friends is an important investment in our future!

And so to the pictures.

before

during

lookie what I did!

after

What do you think?

What do you mean you can’t see it? You want a front shot?

Kicking myself that I didn’t get Big to take a front shot beforehand, but I guess I can get Tim to take one now…nope, sorry, you’re going to have to wait for the daylight for that one. You don’t get the full glory of the hair with flash. I’m such a tease ;)

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (7)

Today I shall

Sun Jul 11 2010 – 12:23
  • blog copiously (as this is the second post of the day, well on the way to that target!)
  • include some pictures
  • install wordpress elsewhere, while keeping notes, and write about the experience
  • hang yesterday’s washing out.
  • do today’s washing
  • take stuff to charity shop, thereby working towards
  • find space in garage to put tent away
  • get Big to take pictures of my hair so that I can
  • cut hair following you tube instructions and blog about it (of course)
  • update my cv, write covering letter, apply for a job
  • buy english heritage festival of history tickets
  • make a list, on paper, of everything else I’ve got to do and assign a certain number of tasks to days so that I start doing them and stop feeling so hopelessly incompetent and ineffectual. Sigh
  • try to remind myself that this too will pass, and I will miss baby days and breastfeeding when they are gone

What’s on your list?

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (7)

Standard saturday?

Sun Jul 11 2010 – 11:06

Art class in the morning, so my alarm went off depressingly early at 8am. Only particularly depressing as the baby is currently making up for dropping off feeds during the day by feeding ferociously at night, so I am tired. Bone tired. Beyond bone tired and into that headachey feeling where what’s inside your head feels bigger than its container.

Kids were thrilled that their Red Alert 2 arrived already, so Tim was hard at work trying to get two computers set up to accept the game and network it. Why is it never that easy? It should be just put in disc, install, run game, but it never is.

Anyway, got kids out of the door and off down to their art class, having managed to shower and breakfast *and* persuade the baby to eat solids too. (Weetabix. Apparently weetabix is acceptable as breakfast fare.)

Dropped the kids with heavy hints about wanting them to actually be learning stuff rather than just decorating craft items (I can do decorating craft items at home. I can’t do art/ painting lessons.) and rushed home to put the tent down. We only put it up in the garden to find out whether Big and I can put it up without Tim (we can, Festival of History is a go) and it’s been up ever since. I’d wanted to put it down with her, but that had been superceded by just wanting it down, so dragged Tim away from his computer woes and we dropped it.

To find that there were puddles between the tent and the footprint groundsheet, bizarre given that it’s rained once, a week ago, and not for very long at that.

And then as I was just finishing up feeding the baby to go and get the children, she decided to fill her nappy, so Tim had to go instead :(

Which at least left me time to process some washing, while melting in the sun.

Big didn’t come back, instead going off with her friend for the day, but Small had some lunch and then me, him and the baby jumped in the car to go off and see his friend R for the afternoon.

Lovely afternoon, the boys are really getting along well now. They played with transformers, bit of Xboxing, we had cake (with chocolate custard) and then I chucked them back in the car and we raced home so as to have time for our next appointment.

That was a special preview evening at a local gallery, that Big and Small had had personal invites to. Note to self, preview evenings are a big deal, and jeans are *not* the required look. Oops. Still, lovely to meet a couple of the artists, and have chance to talk about their work.

Was an event too far for both the kids, who after a long hot day rather let themselves down behaviour wise. Although tbh, I should have known better than to expect anything else :( Split our forces on the way home and Tim headed to pick up takeaway while me and the kids popped for milk and cereal. Big managed to escalate events to the point where she went straight to bed on returning home, which at least led for a quiet meal time. (Before you call SS, she’d had tea out with her friends earlier, I’m not quite at the sending them to bed starving stage. Yet.)

And that was our day. In a tweet:

art class, tent down, nappy, lunch, playdate, home, special gallery preview, takeout. Throw in washing, feeding, changing and that’s my day.

Hm, not sure that the whole blogpost adds all that much to it. Sorry.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (0)

Life in between

Fri Jul 9 2010 – 22:28

the cyber excitement :)

Life blogging has been a bit thin on the ground here recently. I do apologise. Both to any readers who read for the real bits and to future me, looking back to try to remember this time and that there was more to life than tweets and cybermummy ;)

So much more to life. Getting off the train on the way home, had my very own Railway Children moment. Tim had brought the kids to pick me up and they came hurtling up the platform, grinning all over their faces, so so happy to see us both. Small said “I’ve missed you soooo much!” and it quite literally brought tears to my eyes. Wish I’d had a camera in my hand at that moment, but I was kind of laden down.

I love my kids :)

Let’s not ask if we always like each other ;)

So life goes on. Much mathletics in the early part of the week, though it seems to have slackened off again, replaced atm in the high interest stakes by BrainPopUK. Caught Small on some astronomy site earlier today, and he and Tim appear to have started an on off spelling competition.

Big and I are working on our very own business project, hopefully to be launched within the next couple of weeks. And that led us to an impromptu beach trip this evening, which was fabulous fun.

The usual swimming, Beavers, Brownies and swimming club have happened, but music is over for the summer. Various other families met up somewhere up the road, but my kids mutinied and we didn’t get out in the morning. Regretted that later so dragged them out into town instead.

Big got her swimming club report tonight, and more importantly, got a well done and a smile from her teacher. She was very impressed with that, as apparently C doesn’t smile very often ;)

I am loving how Big is blossoming atm. She is coming into her own, and beginning to work out who she is, and who she might become. At times she is the most wonderful helpful daughter and big sister in the world, other times are louder, but now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for both of us. Loving having her here everyday and sharing her growth.

Small is still Small. Although apparently he’s tall now. Which is a bit confusing :lol: We stalled slightly with some maths this week when he got on to improper fractions, and I tried to explain them in terms of sharing. Sharing is not really something that works for him as a concept ;) Having said that, he bought himself a toy one day, and then when Big loved it, went back the next day and bought her one too. He does have a very kind heart underneath it all.

Smallest enjoyed her weekend away, and didn’t quite crack crawling at the conference. She sits beautifully and keeps rolling herself on to her front but not quite managing to move.

And now she’s woken up so that’s the end of this post :)

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (2)

Cybermummy – the stat and influence session.

Wed Jul 7 2010 – 15:27

As I said in my earlier post, I didn’t go to cybermummy expecting to learn much about the technicalities of blogging. I didn’t think anyone would teach me much about platforms or tech, or even really seo, though I was hoping for a bit from the sesh on stats, especially when I saw there was someone from google analytics there.

Google are the tesco of the online world, doing everything and doing it disturbingly well. They’re the company behind blogger, gmail, wave (what *is* wave for, has anyone worked that out?), they bought feedburner which is a way of delivering your blog feed and getting stats on it, and there’s the free service, google analytics.

I’ve used it before, though not excessively, and it is currently plugged in on this site, so I was very interested to hear the inside view on it. Eve who was doing the talk was wonderfully geeky, and talked about her site and used Pi day as an example. (Which meant that I learnt that Americans use a different day to us as Pi day, they use March 14th instead of 22nd July. Who knew?) The basic overview was, understandably, basic, but the one point that had never occurred to me before that I thought worth repeating was ‘don’t get hung up on bounce rate’.

Bounce rate is related to the number of ppl who arrive at your site, check out where they’ve arrived, and depart again. Usually on a website you’re trying to get ppl to hang around, but if you think about the logistics of blogging, ppl are generally going to come in to read your post, and then they’re going to clear off again. Especially if they are repeat visitors who’ve read all the stuff before, there’s not much to get them to hang around. So, if you’ve got a good core of repeat visitors, bounce rate is not something to worry about – the thing to build on a blog is repeat visitors.

I will be exploring analytics further as I suspect it’s easier to get to grips with than the awstats that’s provided on my hosting package, and will update on that further as and when.

The rest of the session didn’t make a great deal of sense to me, and I wasn’t listening very closely until the Q and A came up, which was when I made my own contribution re wordpress.com v .org as blogged earlier. I think what was lacking from both of the other panellists was an understanding of the world of blogging from the point of view of the blogger. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Belinda knows more about PR and branding than I will ever know, and Justine is head of an incredibly successful website/ forum but neither of them are bloggers. And I do think that blogging is different. And should be different.

For a blog to be good and worthy of returning to, you’ve got to share a part of yourself, and you can’t learn to do that by following a ten point plan. It’s humbling, it’s harrowing, it can be nerve wracking, it can be deadly boring. When it comes down to it though, I’d still be blogging here even if no one was reading.

(Which doesn’t mean you all have to run away, please stick around! :lol: )

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (6)

Cybermummy and cyberbaby :)

Mon Jul 5 2010 – 23:49

I went to cybermummy :)

I have so much to say about it that I’ve decided to separate it up into several shorter posts, which also means you can pick and choose which bits you want to read. Aren’t I thoughtful :)

Tonight I’m going for the personal version of the experience.

On the run up to Cybermummy, I wondered what I was doing, planning on going. I’d tried to get to know some of the other bloggers online, but struggled to break into the conversations. My blog started to drift down out of the top 100 tots blogs, and my twitter conversations stalled. I didn’t get nominated for the MADs (not that I expected to!) and I didn’t even hear of the Gurgles until they were practically over. I struggled to find time to enter the various linky workshop things that go on, and leaving comments on blogs wasn’t getting me much traffic back to mine. In short, I panicked.

But I decided I was going anyway. The ticket and accommodation were organised and paid for. I booked a train ticket. Packed bags. Organised an itinerary and briefed the kids, and headed off into the sun.

First class rail travel to London – big tick. (Price cheaper than many standard fares, achieved by booking ahead through thetrainline.com but smacks self around head for forgetting to use topcashback link for cashback on fare :( ) Made the journey much more enjoyable even if the train was delayed.

Tube travel across London at 5.30 on one of hottest days of year? Not so good. Baby in wrap spent the journey trying to eat the beautiful glittery scarf of friendly woman sitting next to me (at least she was a friendly woman!) and then smearing rusk biscuit down my top. Hohum.

Arriving at tube station to find it was off the end of the A-Z map I had? Waah! So obviously rang home for instructions (*what* would I do without dp and google?), then stepped to the edge of the pavement, looked down road to work out roadname and saw the hotel right there. d’oh. Oh well. Made it.

And as I walked past the bottom of the hotel towards the entrance, saw this huge room, with lots of placards, and ppl rushing around organising things, and pink bags and it was real, I’d made it to cybermummy!

Evening in hotel was made much more bearable by getting the wifi password from the very lovely organisers :) Who didn’t snigger audibly at the tired looking woman with the baby and the rusk smeared T shirt ;) Oh, and by harassing poor innocent person in lobby after overhearing her mention cybermummy at reception, and so just going up to her to chat. So sorry Avril, hope you didn’t mind too much!

Didn’t sleep much. Too hot (even with the aircon), and really rather nervous.

And then, the big day dawns. Breakfasted early, and saw the Huggies mums in the restaurant. But they were all together and they all knew each other, and though I tried to say hi in a rather diffident fashion it didn’t really work :(

So gave myself a stern talking to when I went back up to the room for my stuff, and resolved to get stuck in.

So I did. I went down, registered, and got in there.

There were so many ppl to talk to! I *think* I went round pretty much every stand over the course of the day. But that’s another post ;) And I tried to meet bloggers, although I couldn’t really do the speeddating – running around the room with a baby didn’t work for me conceptually. I did hook up with Vonnie, from Adventures of a Lady in Training, who was a lifesaver as she kept running off with the baby :) And it was great to meet Jay, whose photography is awesome, including the pic of me and soa which now graces the Asda website ;) And there were others, although sadly and embarrasingly, I didn’t keep straight names/ faces/ blogs and twitter ids :blush: And while I handed out my cards, I don’t seem to have gathered many of anyone else’s, so please, if you met me, leave me a comment, or @me on twitter.

And I realised that I could do it. That the ppl on the panels weren’t really saying anything much that I don’t already know. That I’ve been blogging long enough to have found who I am, and I won’t lose that even if I diversify a little to try to make this something that can help to support our chosen lifestyle.

So it was worth going for that.

I’m not sure at what point I came to that realisation. It could have been when I stood up to clarify what a panel member had just said, and caught her out a little, completely unintentionally. But I’m sorry, call yourself ladygeek then confess you don’t know the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress to download? It’s not good, really.

I don’t lay claim to the word geek. Those of you who are only just getting to know me (I really hope that there are some of you out there!) won’t know that in a previous life I was a java programmer and team leader. (It’s all back in the archives, somewhere.) I code in php sometimes too, and can do my own customisations of wordpress, although I tend not to. But the thing I have done for years is hand hold ppl through setting up blogs – lots of ppl. I’ve lost count of how many tbh. So my comments to the floor were hopefully helpful, and I really appreciated the round of applause, and the ppl who came up to me afterwards to pick my brains further or just to say job well done :)

So I felt OK. Cybermummy was good. Even the blogposts that made me cry, thought it was really good to have a baby to distract me during them. Not so good to have a baby with me afterwards, as it meant I got stranded in the hotel room with her, but tbh, I was shattered by then anyway, and I struggle even more in bars than I do in seminars and meetings. So probably enough to be on the prize winning pub quiz team (yeah, I am Liz Jarvis!) and a fantastic end to the day to win the wonderful Stokke Xplory stroller. More coming on that very soon ;)

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (13)

When you say wordpress, what do you mean?

Sun Jul 4 2010 – 23:40

Not a proper cybermummy post yet, but one I promised various ppl there, so I’m getting it online quickly :)

I am sure, once upon a time, I had a post about the relative merits of blogging platforms. Goodness knows that it is something I have expounded on many times in the past 7 (oof!) years of blogging. I started out on blogger, although iirc at the time the choice was rather more limited than it is now. (I think my blog predates wordpress. So that would be why I didn’t choose it in the first place then!)

Most recently, I wrote it up like this for a friend via email:

First question ought to be what do you want to blog for? Personal/ business? May influence your requirements! I’m guessing that most of you that I’ve met at cybermummy are going down the business side of personal route, but you never know!

Blogger, now owned by google, is probably the best known hosted platform. It’s very easy to manage, you have good control over commenting options and plenty of template options for layout. It allows use of javascript for things like webrings and adverts. You can have your blog completely open or private for followers only. You can also have your own domain and have it point at a blogger blog as demonstrated by the very lovely wifeinthenorth :)

Wordpress as is at wordpress.com is hosted for you and again easy to manage with plenty of template options. I don’t think the commenting options are quite as flexible as blogger in terms of what options you can select for ppl to enter, but again you can have an open blog or a private blog, and it also allows for password protected posts or private posts within an otherwise open blog. It doesn’t allow use of javascript so putting webrings and so on on is a little more difficult but can usually be worked around. (There are widgets. Come back to me later if you need more on that.)

Wordpress that you download and arrange your own hosting for is about as flexible as it gets, but obviously you’ve got to pay for hosting and then you have responsibility for upgrades and so on. And if it all goes horribly wrong, there can be varying levels of support depending usually on how much you are paying for hosting. Having said that, it is actually very easy to do, and there are hosts which are particularly well set up for it, such as dreamhost.com (I like them so much I’m an affiliate, if you go with them and use my code LIVEOTHERWISE15 you’ll get a $15 discount, although in the interests of full disclosure I get an affiliate payment too) which is a one click install and pretty much a one click upgrade. (ie in the control panel for the hosting is a button which says something along the lines of install wordpress, you press and you’re good to go!)

Given that you can try all three for free (even dreamhost has a free trial, though you will need a domain name to get it to work which isn’t free!) I’d be tempted I suspect to start with blogger and try out the blogging side of it all – it’s very very easy to use. Also you can, as I’ve mentioned, point your own domain at it, and you can migrate off it very easily into a wordpress install as well, if you decide you want more control over your site. The thing that will be fiddly if you’re unfamiliar with websites is getting it to look the way you want, but there are loads of free templates about and it’s fairly easy to tweak colours/ images and so on as you go. (Just remember to take a back up copy of your template before you start!)

If anyone is reading with any specific questions that I haven’t answered, let me know, and there are other blogging platforms such as typepad and so on, but these are the biggies, so I generally start with them – even if I’m theoretically asking questions in the middle of a panel at Cybermummy ;)

Oh, and if you’re wondering just how flexible your own hosted wordpress could be, take a look at movie gazette and Computer troubleshooters suffolk*. These are both wordpress sites (as indeed is this), adapted to differing levels, with plugins and/or customisation, and go to show just how little a site needs to look like a traditional blog. You can do pretty much anything you want within a wordpress environment, including photoblogs and storefronts, although you might end up learning to code php to do it ;)

*If you’re wondering why I chose these sites as demos it’d be because I’m quite close to the developer concerned ;)

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (10)

One more for the road

Tue Jun 29 2010 – 22:17

I’m on a roll!

Decided to not waste another day. Bit of an odd morning – got up before 9 and it was still dark. Huge heavy grey clouds and the foghorns sounding from the coast. Then the rain came – but not for very long. Didn’t even manage to properly wash the bird droppings off the tent.

Dried up very quickly and I got two loads of washing out on the line. Wanted to do another but insufficient pegs!

Baby came and sat outside while I hung out laundry, she seemed to enjoy that.

Big planted the slightly sad sunflowers that we had given to us – all children should have sunflowers. (I agree btw.) Small pootled, and Big completed year 4 on mathletics!

Big whoop to her – she really finds maths very difficult, and we are working hard to overcome that (although I had a very bad mummy moment when I slipped from the cheerleading script and said “OK, do you want me to say you are stupid? Fine, you’re stupid. YOU ARE NOT STUPID and I’m tired of telling you that!” Hm, possibly not *quite* the montessori approach there then.)

As an aside, do other ppl have to cheerlead for their children? Big’s first response to anything mathematical is to say I can’t do it and then I have to persuade her that she can and I get ever so tired of it. Because she can do it. She doesn’t retain mathematical facts (number bonds, multiplication and division facts are a mystery to her) but she’s getting faster at working them out. And when she tries she copes. She is doing well, and has worked so hard at it recently.

Turns out that there is a reason for that. She goes swimming with a group of girls from a local school on Monday evenings and it would appear there has been some discussion of whether home education is a worthwhile way of doing it, and I think she has been comparing herself with them and finding herself wanting. Now that I know that’s part of the motivation we’ll work on what to say to the big girls in the showers as well as the maths.

I am really proud of her for dealing with the girls, the maths and the swimming. She is really growing up atm, and she’s a wonderful person to be around. Except when she’s screaming ;)

Small was in a contrary mood again today – we’ve reached an impasse on his tidying and he refused point blank to get his swimming stuff ready. Think he was hoping I’d call his bluff and leave him at home but living at the coast swimming lessons are non optional as far as I’m concerned. Especially after seeing the drowning doesn’t look like drowning thing that’s going round fb atm. :(

So we went to swimming then we came back – we carred it as I couldn’t face the walk in the heat. *need* to sort out back carry with the wrap, the ergo just doesn’t feel quite comfortable yet (don’t think soa big enough) although made it to the coop and back and she must have been comfortable as she fell asleep! Tea was a mishmash of whatever was about – some hard boiled eggs, reduced price pizza and carrots, sliced meats for the meat eaters and warmed up pitta breads. Was surprisingly successfuly and we then went on to look at cube numbers and cube roots with the aid of duplo bricks.

So maths in the living room at ten to 9, with Big enjoying it. Take that, big girls in showers who think going to the beach on a school day is bad for your education.

Harumph.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (6)

Monday moaning.

Tue Jun 29 2010 – 21:54

Only me though.

Spent most of the day trying to put together business cards – who knew that they want a three week lead in time to print them. Grrr. I really ought to get myself more organised.

And didn’t really seem to achieve anything much else. Hate days like that.

Oh, but I did do some maths with Big, who now professes to like doing maths with me. Which may be the most important thing we’ve achieved so far in home education. :)

And Small did an experiment. I’m not sure what the experiment was about, but I was slightly startled to go in the kitchen and find the windowsill full of glasses, each occupied by one of his toys. It was something to do with salty water, and probably came out of the Huge book of cool facts (can’t check the title as I rather think he’s sleeping with it just now :lol: ) that he’s spending most of each day with.

So it wasn’t a complete wash out of a day after all. Given that I cooked dinner too!

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (0)

Sunday Funday.

Tue Jun 29 2010 – 21:43

Sunday. Beaver’s fun day out at the scout campsite. Felt like I spent the whole day running around like a loon – took Small out to the campsite, went on to mothercare to try to buy some breastfeeding tops for #cybermummy (failed dismally, the one top I bought I discovered after wearing for the day has a twisted strap. Not sure when I’m going to fit in taking that back and complaining!) which obviously then involved stopping for a feed and a change, then getting fuel, racing home to drop off car, and heading round to D & S for BBQ.

Lovely meal in the sun, but all too soon time to head off to pick Small up again, with wailing baby as I’d forgotten about the 10 minutes needed to pick up the car which ate into her afternoon snack time – we had it at the scout camp, and she forgave me very quickly ;)

Small had had a lovely day and tie dyed a shirt. Amused me rather as he was wearing the one he’d tie dyed at HE group a couple of weeks ago :)

Came back and dropped him and the babe off with Tim and took the car home again. Got plenty of walking in between houses at least!

We’ll gloss over the football match. Spent a pleasant hour or two with extended family while Tim kipped on their living room floor ;) and eventually home.

And so to Monday.

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By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (0)