On past experience with configuring new machines, this should prove a real time saver, although I must admit my new laptop come remarkably free of rubbish - for once IBM seem to have decided to install useful utilities instead of the usual pointless junk.
As mentioned yesterday, Big is being kind of challenging atm. They ended up eating lunch outside today (not all that much of a hardship, with hindsight I should have relocated myself and left them in here!) because I couldn’t cope with the fighting, giggling, table rocking and so on.
It continued after lunch in much the same vein as before - so with the suggestion from Tim that Big was possibly bored, we set to to try to find some science experiments to do. This proved more difficult that you would expect, as even with the Cool Science box kit that I bought a few weeks ago, we still needed to find some stuff from around the house. And we couldn’t. So the first requested experiment, something to do with lunar eclipses and phases of the moon, got shelved until I can find a 5cm+ white ball that we can attach some kind of holder too.
The second experiment, to do with rubber bands contracting when heated, was remarkably unsuccessful too. (Remarkable, worthy of comment. That would be one I had to explain yesterday. I feel like a cross between a household chores robot, an entertainment centre and a walking thesaurus rather a lot of the time atm, and it’s not really cheering me up.) So we went for number three, to do with electricity and conduction.
Now, I’m hoping that very very soon, Big will have her own place to blog, and that part of what she blogs will be her experiments. I did want her to write a little bit up, even if it was only a list of keywords, but realistically, as she’s done most of the recording with a digital camera, it’s going to work better to add the words to the pictures, and hope it means something to her when she looks back. So I won’t go into great detail on this particular experiment, except to point out that the instruction pictures in the book are not clear at all, and that joining a circuit with your finger is quite painful.
So that probably took up the best part of a couple of hours, also adding in a quick camera using tutorial from Tim as we went. And then it started to rain, so we went out to get the rug back in from the fence where it was airing, and fetch the laundry as well.
Oh, and another learning outcome for the day - suitable outfits for little boys who are toilet training do not include waterproof dungarees, although at least it meant the sofa didn’t get wet. (And no, it wasn’t me who put the dungarees on him.)
And finally (for the moment, I’m not promising I won’t be back later) Small is finally big enough for the like-a-bike substitute. Well, he was once we put the seat down. He’s really rather chuffed with that, although I don’t think Tim aimed the camera at him during that moment. Shame really.
time to rattle cages again 
equal pay for equal work. There’s legislation to mean this is supposed to be so. Doesn’t really go far enough though, as it seems to me that there is still a vicious circle at work, as can be seen by looking at the results of the NHS Cumbrian pay review, where it was discovered that work traditionally done by women was paid less than work done by men, even when the work was, objectively speaking, of the same value. That’s illegal, but without enforcing that kind of review on companies/ organisations, you aren’t really going to change anything. And if you do enforce the review, then there’s the question of where the money for the backpay/ equal pay going to come from. Unsurprisingly, the ppl who were earning more aren’t usually up for just taking a pay cut, so the review isn’t a popular process.
And the thinking that underlies the situation is harder to combat - can’t wait for the value of doctors, barristers and so on to go down, given that you’ve now got more women training and graduating in those professions than men 
But in the first instance, it seems to me that there are two simple steps that could be taken. First of all, remove gender identifiers from application forms. No more Ms, Mr, Mrs on there, and only have the first initial rather than a full name. Of course, ppl like me who’d been to a Girls’ School would rather give the game away ;), but even that wouldn’t be insurmountable. It shouldn’t really be necessary to give the name of the school you went to anyway, and perhaps doing away with that would do away with some of the old boy network that surrounds some of the fee paying schools as well.
Secondly, do away with the culture of secrecy that surrounds pay at work. I’ve been thinking this for a long time, even since I moved from social work, where everyone knew pretty much what everyone was paid, as there was a tight payscale and you knew where everyone was on it. Then I started at the bank, where it was a disciplinary offence to disclose details of your pay award/ bonus. Always seemed to me that that could only work in the interests of the employer.
Slightly ashamed to say that in this area I’m right behind one David Cameron - it’s not offend that I find myself cheerleading the head of the conservative party, but when he makes speeches like this one I’ve got to say that I think he’s talking sense.
So, remove gender identifiers from applications forms, and in case you think it isn’t relevant, take the example of an IT recruiter recently who wanted to add one to my cv, as otherwise you couldn’t tell. And why precisely would you need to know whether your prospective programmer was male or female? Yes, I know there are some jobs when it’s relevant, but we currently have legislation in place to take care of that, so I don’t see that being an issue.
Secondly, have companies publish pay information. Not quite sure what form that needs to take, but I’m sure it’s feasible.
The third aspect, of doing pay audits on gender basis would take longer to implement, but I still think it’s something we should be moving towards.
I’m aware none of this is groundbreaking stuff, but I wanted to talk about it, so I did.
a lovely day.
Quiet-ish morning, until it degenerated into world war three amongst the offspring and I sent them to their room. I think what is happening is that Small is attempting to assert some level of independence, and Big isn’t overly impressed - he’s been a very compliant player of pretty much any game she’s come up with for ages now, and she doesn’t like that he’s starting to come up with his own. So we’ve got some boundary testing on both sides, and it’s rather wearing on the ears for me.
And then we loaded them into the car, and went off the path, where we also found the wellyboots Good to catch up with them, and considering that there were 10 children around and about the place, I couldn’t believe how harmonious it was! Think the only tears (apart from babies ) were from Big after a very minor incident, incredibly quickly resolved. So a lovely afternoon, marred only by the unexpected departure of Tim’s dolphin kite when the string he was using (meant for a much smaller kite) snapped, and it flew off over the trees. It kept going much further than you’d expect in the circumstances, beyond anywhere that we could go to reclaim it. 
Lots of other kite flying, dressing up, involved games, and particularly lovely to see Small pal up with a 3 year old wellyboot. Think Tim may have pictures - they played beautifully together for ages.
Leaving was a touch traumatic, as my children just didn’t want to. Journey home was again tough and argumentative, and they stayed awake throughout, much to my surprise. They are down now, and it’s raining! Maybe it’ll be a little cooler tomorrow, that would be nice. I do like summer, but I feel this one is passing me by while I keep hiding from the heat
Gosh, it’s hot isn’t it?
Right, now we’ve got that over with! 
As many of you will have noticed, we’ve been having some issues with the server, and that has taken up a lot of our time over the last day or so. Then there’s this work lark that I keep having to do as well.
Today was a work day, and the kids were pretty much exhausted after a long hot week at school and commuting. They vegged to Discovery Kids for most of the morning, then eventually got down to serious playing and completely trashed the living room. Despite several exhortations to sort it out, they didn’t, and consequently I’ve just put a lot of stuff into a black bag, which I’m going to put away, and they only get back when they manage to keep what is out tidy. Actually, I haven’t told them there’s a chance of stuff coming back out, but it was kind of difficult to be heard over the screaming
Small has had an excellent day with the toilet training, having transitioned from being dragged unwillingly to coming to tell me that he needs to go. Only one accident and the rest of the day he took care of himself. Well impressed - the end of nappies is in sight
And that’s pretty much it. There’s nothing on tv tonight, is there?
Comment is free: The forest is dying
Scary post from the guardian. Go and fill in the petitions.
There are also some excellent discussion threads on there tonight. I particularly enjoyed Natalie’s Give Waynetta Rooney a chance
In other news, it’s Wednesday. Where are my thunderstorms? I was promised thunderstorms, and I was really looking forward to them. It’s been very hot in our office today. But I did go for a swim at lunchtime again, third week running. Can’t remember whether I blogged it before, but I managed 20 lengths the first week and hurt lots afterwards. Last week I did 26 (ish) and didn’t particularly hurt, this week I wrapped up 30, including several crawl. Feeling very proud of myself.
I’ve also been managing to get to bed a little earlier each night, to eat more fruit and veg (never mind children getting reported, I’m a vegetarian and I often don’t manage my recommended portions!) and I’ve gone on the occasional walk.
All of these things are conspiring to make me feel quite a bit happier in myself. Now, if I could just save the world and wipe out sexism as well…
This morning while I was in the shower, Big got up and got herself dressed. I heard a drawer opening in the bedroom, and assumed it was Tim, but when I came out, I found Small balanced precariously on the bed, shoving the pjs he’d taken off back into his clothing drawer. It’s the first time that he’s made an effort to get himself organised, discounting yesterday when he went upstairs semi-naked, and came back down with a pair of pj trousers on, back to front and inside out He only needed a tiny bit of help to get his clothes on and buttons fastened, and we were ready to leave the house just after 7.30, without so much as a hint of a raised voice.
It was a great way to start the day, and the traffic is lighter now that the holidays have started. So despite the best efforts of the M1 roadworks, we had a good run up, and I got to my desk by 9am.
First day of holiday club seems to have gone down well with the offspring, especially when they found lots and lots of little froglets around the garden. Amusing moment as I picked them up (eta that’s the kids, not the froglets!) when I had to rescue a succession of ppl from an amazingly scary spider, with my children running round me trying to make friends with it
Brought home Big’s first report - wish I had the first idea what any of it means! There’s a great long list of all the materials she’s worked with and some nice stuff about how lovely she is, and that’s about the sum of it. Will have to try to talk to them to work it out a bit - I’d really like to make sure that I’m complementing stuff rather than duplicating it. Overall though, it looks like she just gets on with what interests her, so that seems to be pretty good.
Right, it’s dark, I can go hang the washing out now
I’m not a morning person. Anyone who knows me will testify to that effect, so when I found myself wide awake shortly after 6 this morning, I was not amused. However, I decided to make use of the quiet, and got up and got started on a few bits, and actually knocked a couple of things off my to do list. I was impressed.
And then the day started properly, with children and work and stuff. Got through the morning fairly well, but by the afternoon, lack of sleep was beginnng to make itself felt.
I rallied a bit around lunch, and we read another couple of chapters of the book. It’s getting pretty exciting now and Big is very into it. Small listens, but bumbles around doing whatever as well, guess I’ll probably find out some day that he’s been taking mental notes! He floored me today with something he said, can’t remember what it was, but was a polysyllabic word that I hadn’t hear from him before, and used utterly correctly. And this from a child who still can’t pronounce ’sp’ and therefore eats breakfast with a ‘foon’.
And after lunch, I took it into my head that we’d do some maths. Now one of these days I’m going to learn that going head to head with Big doesn’t do either of us any good. We manage better when we’re doing something we are both interested in, and right at the moment, despite her voluntarily doing workbooks yesterday, she isn’t all that interested in maths. So it took the best part of an hour to do a page worth of questions (pictorial questions this is!) and recite the 2x table successfully right the way through.
And after that, I tried to do some paperwork. Don’t quite know who I was kidding! I did get the washing hung out and played tag with the wasps for a while, then I called it quits, loaded the kids into the car and headed off to the library so that we could pick up the Reading Mission card for Big.
It was a different librarian this week, and she was ever so kind to Big, explaining all about how the system worked and asking how we’d heard about it. She looked a bit taken aback when I pointed out it was our third year! Small briefly wanted a card, but went off the idea just as quickly, which was just as well, as they really didn’t seem set up for that. Makes me cross actually, if it’s all about encouraging children to love books, why on earth haven’t they got a set up for young kids to bring their books home and get stickers?
Oh, and the library were having a sale on tudor books, so Big was rather thrilled when I rifled through the box and grabbed her a load. What *is* it with little girls and the tudors??? They had two copies of Tudors (History Insights S.)
On to Morrisons to spend my Smiles voucher and get tea, and pick them up a magazine each. Took Small seconds to find a Bob the builder mag, but Big agonised over a wide variety of pink things. Actually, by the time we were done, I was hopping mad. How come once children get past about the age of 4 they are supposed to be either pink or violent? The only non gender specific mag I could find was Art Attack, and she didn’t want that because the free gift was texture pads, and she already has texture pads. So she chose some pink thing about fairies, or princesses, got back to the car, and then sobbed all the way home as there was absolutely nothing in it that was worth more than about a minute of her time.
Anyone think we could get a magazine published that wasn’t quite so pink or violent? What do the rest of your children read?
Right, and now I’m knackered again, so I’m going to go to bed and hope that this time I sleep through til morning. Office tomorrow.
We have a homing wasp. No matter how many times I’ve kicked the little so and so outside, he comes coming back in. Either that or we have a queue of really stupid wasps coming in one at a time and being unable to find their way out.
I’m not sure which would be worse actually.
I’ve said time and time again that I don’t particularly like reading aloud. I do it because I feel it ought to be done, but it doesn’t light my fire iykwim.
This weekend, I’ve begun to see how it could work. I picked up some books at the library a visit or so back, from their new fiction for children section. I scanned them while I was there, and wondered whether they might be read aloudable and yesterday, I just picked one up and started on it.
Turns out it’s pretty near perfect. In understandable language, not too difficult concept wise, but still raising lots of questions. We’re 12 chapters through Vicious circle now, and going strong. We’ve had several conversations about topics in it - who could know that Big didn’t know hospitals are for ppl that are poorly? (They are for ppl who are broken apparently.) And I’d never thought about the fact that she wouldn’t remember her own experience in one. So I guess I’ve probably read for a couple of hours this weekend, and I’m full of plans for what else we might try next. One thing we have no shortage of in this house is books!
We’ve also done a tiny bit of work on timestables - started working through 2x. I didn’t think it had stuck, but today she came up and started telling me facts out of it, so maybe it did. And I found some Schofield and Sims workbooks on timestables, so I think I’ll drag those out tomorrow. She did some workbook stuff of her own accord today, while she was playing at schools.
They’ve played endlessly. One game involved getting all the fake food out and setting up a shop, then buying it all and taking it home. Lots of questions about what categories - where things fruit or vegetables, what kind of thing would be frozen, or needed to be in the fridge, or could live in the cupboard. Gotta love this autonomous ed thing. Much den building as well - why does this always involve so many of my pegs being left all over the floor?
And I’ve spent much of the time in bed, or sitting in a corner, with headaches and general malaise. Somehow, I’m struggling to find the energy for day to day life at the moment. Hohum.
Quite a lot, I think we have had about an inch fall during the rather spectacular thunderstorms. Big has decided that thunderstorms are exciting not scarey, which is good.
But really a rather grumpy day for everyone, cooped up inside.
Yesterday Big and Small went on their first ever school trip. They went to Ponderosa. Apparently, despite the extreme heat, a jolly good time was had by all, mainly because A and co planned ahead, and rented a classroom to use as a shady base.
And then they spent some money in the gift shop. Big bought a strange gecko in slime in an egg, and a small rubbery frog creature that flashes if you press its backside. Small bought a train.
The frog creature was named froggy doggy. No, I don’t know why. He travelled to Jan’s last night, where we retreated from the heat rather than driving the hot way home. And he waited in the car today, for them to come out of school again.
Small got to him first. This was a bad thing. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and somehow, froggy doggy was separated from his foot.
This was a worse thing. Much wailing and shouting ensued. Big was distraught. Loudly. For quite a while. Demands that I fix froggy doggy (remember that at this point I’m attempting to drive us home, and not really equipped for on the move rubber frog surgery). I did try to explain that I didn’t really know what, if anything, I was going to be able to do, but it was quite difficult to make myself heard over the noise.
Then, from the back seat, a voice.
“Hey, I got a good idea!”
“What’s your idea?”
“We could use sellotape to fix froggy doggy. That would make Big happy.”
“That is a good idea. We’ll see what we can do.”
He was terribly upset that froggy doggy got hurt. Big was not in a forgiving mood. I tried to be supportive of her pain, but a very large part of me wanted to tell her that it’s a cheap plastic toy, and she was really over reacting. But she was hot, and tired, and upset, and I tried to remember what it was like to lose something new when I was that age, and refrained from telling her to be quiet. I did tell her to stop blaming Small - it was an accident.
So that was our journey home. And now I’m going to bed - it’s been a very long couple of days, and I’ll get up early in the morning and crack on before the offspring wake up. I’m hoping that they are going to sleep in a bit and catch up with themselves - they’ve had a couple of late nights due to the heat.
At least there’s no commute tomorrow.
It has taken me a while to get round to blogging this. Last week I took the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off to avoid the Great Yorkshire Show traffic jams in Harrogate, which would have added several hours to my travelling time to work (which is already too long).
I had planned to take the children to Eureka (”The Museum for Children is the first and foremost hands-on children’s museum in the UK and is designed especially for 0 - 11 year olds.”) on Tuesday but instead spent the day taking my car in to Dixons to be what they call repaired, but everyone else would call being ignored for a week in their car park (I was promised it back today, but hey, I had been promised it back last Wednesday). So the Eureka trip was postponed to Thursday.
I hadn’t been to Eureka before but Big and Small had already been with Jax, long enough ago to have forgotten about it. It is excellent and I can commend it to anyone else within day trip range with appropriately aged children. The exhibits are nicely thought out, a lot are a bit Science Museumy, I thought that some were just a little odd, but then I am not the target audience. Anyway, the small people loved it.
There was an added little something which set everyone’s day off, in the shape of the presence of Big and Small’s big sister, Lily, who they hadn’t ever met before. So this really was a little bit special. We spent about four hours at Eureka and then pottered off to a pub with a play barn for lunch, the children ate a little and ran around a lot, and Lily and I chatted and watched them.
So, a very lovely day all round.
Low point was lending Big my camera and discovering that she has a much better eye than I have. The pictures with this post are ones she took, with the obvious exception, of course, of this last, in which she appears.
Round up the youthful suspects! Govt to target crime at birth | The Register
Another version of the story that I linked to a couple of days ago, with quotes from and reference to ARCH.
Kids both found and read (or had read to them) multiple books. I indulged myself going through a couple of their books-for-sale boxes, and picked up
(which was one of Big’s favourite books, so I’m looking forward to reading it with Small)
which looks pretty good
which now that I’ve scanned it, I might withhold for a little while, as it’s about a child who dies and the friend he leaves behind, and Big is having enough nightmares about dying for the moment 
which has the most glorious pictures in it
which is not one we’ve read before, but we’ve had others in that series.All for the princely sum of £1.80! The religions dictionary is worth that on its own
And now they are listening to Aristocats Read-Along
crawl off in a corner and sleep.
What I’m going to do:
wash up (put washed up stuff away).
clean the paint off the kitchen surfaces and the paint pots.
eat something.
put more washing on.
get some washing in.
put clothes away.
make lunch for children
shower
find library books - go to library
go shopping
find sofas
clean up table under floor
excavate dining table.
paperwork - shuffle credit card balance around
overtime form (which I’ve just realised is horribly past the cutoff date. Sigh. Oh well, will get good pay in August.)
reorganise school standing order.
do some site work.
by that time it will probably be tea time. At that point I might allow myself a sit down with some blogs to read, or Head First Design Patterns
Ooh, borrowing. That reminds me, BorrowMe have pre-launched.
The Observer | UK News | Fresh blow to Reid as violent crime rises
His cabinet colleague Hilary Armstrong will also announce proposals to target babies and toddlers under two in the war on antisocial behaviour, identifying children in problem families who could grow up to get into trouble.
Read on.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. As is mentioned later in the article, health visitors are already a touch overstretched, but somehow they are now supposed to
identify parents who are not coping or whose older children’s behaviour raises concern and direct them to parenting classes, social services intervention or help with drink and drug problems. Research suggests that preschool development is crucial to children’s later life chances.
Health visitors in this area are horrendously overstretched. They don’t do routine visits any more - they send out questionnaires for you to fill in and send back if you want to raise any concerns. Have to say that once I raised a concern with Small’s speech, they were fabulous, but I’m going to be really surprised if families are going to raise concerns that they feel their parenting isn’t good enough, or that their less than two year old is going to be a yob when they grow up.
Or am I missing something? Again?
I hope!
Looking back into my childhood, I remember summers best. I remember weeks in caravans, sleeping in awnings, the summer of ‘76 when my sister got heatstroke and threw up down the hallway I guess I do remember winters as well (notably the one where the road got snowed in, and the fire engine couldn’t get up to the chimney fire), but they aren’t the bits I choose to revisit, iyswim.
So this weekend we went over to Jan’s place. Coincidentally, it’s just up the road (less than half a mile up the road!) from where I grew up. Maybe that was the other detail that dropped me back to childhood this evening. Yesterday the children played, which was a large part of why we’d gone over, and Tim and I went window shopping for houses. It was a good trip - gloriously sunny day, we drove around some local villages, and stopped for a drink in one. He liked it (the drink ), and the village as well, so it looks like we may be working on a plan now. That would be good.
Then back to Jan’s for tea and more beer, and eventually some hours without children. It’s good to be with friends whose only reaction to your other half falling asleep and snoring on the floor, is to try to sit a cat on his chest
It’s relaxing there, we all enjoy it. And this morning we did something that I think we all enjoyed. We walked up on to the moors, followed a stream to a pool, and paddled and made a dam. It was great, and we were up there a good couple of hours, all of us playing and building together, hot sun and cold water. It was good.
I am very painfully aware that if my children were to write “where I’m from” the thing that is said to them most is probably ‘not now, I’m working’, or maybe ‘in a minute’ that usually stretches to well more than 5. I don’t want them to remember their childhood like that. I want them to remember sunny days building dams, all the books they read, tents in the garden, holidays with friends in fields. I want them to have a fantastic happy background that gives them inner strength and self reliance as adults. Happy memories of happy times, of being loved, and having fun.
So today was good. And I need to remind myself that early childhood days don’t last forever. I can’t keep on telling myself that children are resilient, and that I have time, because one day, I won’t.
Today was a good day. Tomorrow will be good too.
Tonight I got a text from the mother of Big’s oldest friend. Oldest in terms of length of friendship that is. They met at nursery when they were only a few months old, and as soon as they could move, they gravitated to sit with each other. It meant that P and I got to know each other pretty well, picking each other’s offspring up, dropping them off, having them over for sleepovers. P was the first non family member to meet Small (other than midwives ) when she dropped Big off the next morning.
So we go back a long way. And in December last year, they moved house, from five minutes up the road, down to Nottingham. We saw them in January, and somehow not since. The text said it was time to rectify this, and that A would really like to see Big and Small. The funny thing about this is when I told Tim, he said that Big had mentioned a couple of nights ago that she would really like to see A. Seems like they are still synchronised then
Small is starting to make friends as well. When we go to Jan’s he talks about seeing M and J (not so much C, think she might be too tall ) There is a little group of around three year old boys at school, and he talks about one of them quite a bit too. So they are both social little creatures, and I’m pleased. Socialising (not socialisation) is something that worries me - my children don’t have friends within easy reach here. They seem to be pretty good friends with each other, which is a good start, but I’m not sure whether it’s enough.
So a phonecall from Jan tonight, inviting us over tomorrow, was very welcome too. It’s ages since Tim has been over there, as we go so often during the week, and it will be good to have a night out.
That’s our weekend pretty much wrapped up then, don’t expect to hear much from me tomorrow.
it really is a different world.
On the way home tonight, we came down the A629 towards Sheffield. Big was thrilled to see the ‘windmill farm’. She wanted to know what was important about it - and we had a chat about electricity generation. I mentioned that some ppl don’t like wind farms. She couldn’t understand that - she thinks they are beautiful. It made me wonder how she looks at other things - we pass the cooling towers by the Tinsley Viaduct as well, and it turns out she likes those too. She wanted to know what they were, and other than knowing that they are cooling towers, I didn’t know a great deal. Something to look into perhaps. Tomorrow however, they are off to Eureka with Tim, something they are all really looking forward to.
And some other things I’ve had in draft. Think they probably don’t make all that much sense, but shoving them out there so I don’t forget them.
The other night, Tim decided to introduce Big to a new tool, the dictionary. This child is now beginning to remind me of myself - she reads anything and everything. From cereal boxs, to blogs over my shoulder, signposts, print on the tv, she’ll have a go. She’s still not overly into the idea of books, but I suspect it’s just a matter of time. A couple of days ago I did have to tell her to take her nose out of a book and listen to me, and boy did I internally rofl at that moment!
So, dictionaries. Tim gave her a very old one of mine - a collin’s gem from senior school. I gave her a quick run down on how to use it, and left her to it. Her vocabulary is expanding by the minute
Small is having very on and off times with the toilet idea. He’s had a couple of days completely accident free, but he doesn’t seem to be able to have a one accident day, iyswim. Daresay we’ll get there in the end though
rounds: 4 / 95 (4%)
sections: 5 / 10 (50%)
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