You might find Smallest at the table with a bowl of flour and water while I’m making batter for toad in the hold. (Ticks for sensory activities, fine and gross motor skills, as well as social.)

Big is at the other end of the table, writing up our amended recipe in an order that makes sense so that she can cook for us too. (Recipe was based on one from Delia’s Frugal Food, then increased so as to have batter for my extra veg in the hole as well.) So that’s writing, maths, home economics, as well as social stuff too. Perhaps she’ll aim for a career in cooking. Or working with children. Or maybe she’ll do like I’ve done and dot and dash from career to career before carving her own way out around children.

And when the mixing is done, some washing up. Believe me, it was needed.

And where’s the boy while all this is going on? (The big boy that is. The little one is in his cot, gurgling happily.) He’s at a computer, having decided to teach himself to touch type.

I foresee a career in computing for him, maybe something to do with graphics, perhaps programming following his early excursions with Scratch. Maybe he could earn a living writing apps for Smartphones, with in app advertising from someone like madvertise UK. After all, he’s got his mother’s example to live up to, with my app being award nominated now (have I reminded you to vote for Family Quest recently? Please do! Sadly I don’t make any money from my lovely app, but it’s success does make me very happy.

As did my vegetarian toad in the hole. All in all, it was a good day.

First up, idealo is a website that offers price comparison, and they were talking about lego recently. So obviously I got them to send me a toaster…

It’s a fabulous toaster. Our previous Dualit went phtt all of a sudden, after a good six years in service, and so Dualit was what we wanted to replace it. This is the same model as we’d had previously, but it has a couple of extra features that make it even more adorable, as well as being a four slice instead of a two. Turns out that with a family of six that’s a fabulous step forward It also has a frozen setting and a bagel/bun setting, just fabulous for my favourite snack of hot cross buns.

Idealo are also available as an app for your mobile phone, a great way to save money on those bits you’re shopping for online, without spending hours searching websites yourself.

Another brand I’m fond of is Vosene. We’ve been using a variety of their children’s shampoos for a year or more now, and we were very happy to be sent a selection of their shampoos for all the family. I’m testing out the daily use shampoo at the moment, and I have to say that it’s working well. I need very little to get a good lather going, and it doesn’t have a chemical smell like you get with some shampoos. Still doesn’t beat my favourite though, which is the children’s hair and body wash with lavender

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{eating} icecream. And roast chicken. Maybe some cauliflower cheese, if the oven ever heats up.
{reading} my own tweet in the cybher 2013 advertising email.
{feeling} happy.

Me and my poor little blog didn’t make it through to any finals. Meh. However, the fabulous Family Quest, our app from the BritMums and ThreeUK campaign last year is a finalist in two categories in the loved by parents awards !

I am so proud

Feel very free to vote for it, and spread the word. It’s in the specials section, under both children and family apps. I won’t get anything out of it but happiness, but there you go.

This is going to be a linen shift for Tigerboy for when we do the Grand Annual reenactment of Tudor life at Kentwell Hall this summer. I’ll write more about that shortly, but if you are within 50 miles or so of the place (or even a little further) I’d really really advise trying to visit. It’s fabulous. And the first two weeks you stand a chance of catching a glimpse of us.

This is not me. And it’s not actually a crafty activity. This is handcream with glitter added, and the idea is that one person starts of with their hand so dosed, and then goes about making normal contact with other ppl – high fives, handshakes, hugs – and you can see how many ppl they’ve touched, and track how a disease would progress. We’re doing the black death this week.

Making a rosary – this is Small, who decided to be awkward and picked the dark beads out of three of the cups Helen had set up with the right number of beads in. Our reenactment year this time is 1556, which is a Catholic year, so these rosaries, made of wooden beads and linen thread, may well be acceptable. Though we might replace the fimo cross, unless it’s decided they look enough like pottery

It’s about that no follow link thing. Ppl were talking about the legality of no follow links, and I think in most cases they were really discussing breaking google’s guidelines. But there are advertising issues with disclosure, and I’ve discovered that it’s the quickest way to make some PRs go quiet, explain that you only give no follow links.

But one Mrs Kerry Jean Lister, PR for large firms like Lego and so on, pointed out that her clients spend lots of money appearing where they want to on google, and the reviews they get from bloggers are for a different purpose. They are to appeal to your specific, highly engaged, readership. Not to game google, not to shade the results – but personality marketing, on your reputation. So no follow links are fine for that.

I just wish a few more PRs were similarly clued up.

Which, in the style of awards we’ve got floating around right now in the blogging world, just isn’t going to work. Not for me – I don’t have enough regular readers who are into that kind of thing and would think to vote without being asked. Which I suppose means that actually, I’m not good enough. Hm.

So, if I didn’t ask, didn’t get the votes to go through to the next stage of either BiBs or MADs why do I have this curious feeling of disappointment? I knew it wouldn’t happen. But there’s that tiny germ of hope that somehow it will…

Why would I want to win? Do I really want to be a part of the in crowd that much? Of course I do! I want posh prizes, I want glorious nights out, I want ppl to sit up and notice when I mention my award winning blog, like I saw ppl react at Cybher when other bloggers just mentioned their nominations. I want to be able to use that to climb another step, maybe break into paid writing, be the blogger that ppl want to meet but are almost too shy to – don’t I?

I don’t know. I want some of it. The payment, definitely. Times are, as they say, hard. But not at the price of asking for ppl to like me. There’s a stubborn streak that won’t let me do that.

So I guess I’ll go on without awards, trying to make my way some other way. Otherwise, you might even say

This post started life as a comment on Michelle’s blog (yes, that is a follow link, do you remember the days when we used to just link to ppl because we wanted to, not because of a linky or a carnival, just because?), but got out of control and had to be dragged over here.

I wish I’d managed to get my hands on some of those cupcakes.

I wish I could work out who I met and who I didn’t meet. And remember names. Ppl seem to like it when you remember names.

I wish that when we thought we’d solved the problems of famine with feed the world, we really had.

I wish that I’d got a picture of me with Tigerboy at some point, and taken more pictures of the ppl I met through the day.

I wish that I knew what we could do to solve the problems of the world.

I think I do know. I think it needs us to act, not wish. Do as well as blogging. Give as well as tweeting. Encourage our neighbours, friends, family to do likewise. Pressure our government to see ppl as individuals, both here and abroad, in order to change lives for the better.

Cybher cost me money. Not the ticket or the hotel, but almost the first thing I did after signing in was visit the WorldVision stand and sign up to sponsor a child. I chose a boy, 9 years old, from Niger. Check out my Silent Sunday post to meet him. Turned out that that fitted in really well with the announcement at the end of the conference that Sian aka GeekisnewChic is going to Niger next week. I’m hoping that I’m going to be doing a little work with WorldVision to help spread the word about what is going on over there.

I wish I could bottle the feeling of hope and determination and optimism and take on the worldness that I had at the end of the day. I’m trying. I’m going to sit everyday and remember that feeling, and see what I can do with it. I’m going to change me, I’m going to change this blog, I *am* going to make a difference.

What did cybher do for you?

I’m hopeless at faces. I don’t recognise ppl I should. And ppl recognise me much more easily – it’s the wrapped baby that’s the giveaway. So please, if there is any chance at all that I’m confused, remind me of your blog and twitter id when you say hi, because I’m so much better with the virtual world. And although I doubt I’ll look all that shy, I am, so be kind.

And I’ll try ever so hard to remember you all too!

I figured out feeding in a wrap.

Navigated the tube, found the venue, found some ppl I know.

Then the hotel, and a Chinese meal, and finally back to peace and quiet.

I didn’t like passing cocooned bodies of men in doorways, sleeping amidst the raucous celebrations of day to day life.

And I feel a little guilty that I’m warm, with a bed and a kettle and sweets and they are not.

See you all tomorrow, cybher bloggers.

Yes, that is a peacefully sleeping child. One down, three to go.

I’ve been listening to myself and my children. And I think I’ve been doing far too much condemning the older children are far too quick with a sharp word or snide comment, often much worse than I would say, but I think that they are enlarging mirrors aren’t they?

And smallest is an echo. So I know when they’ve been calling each other unpleasant names, as she innocently and piercingly repeats them. She also us mainly talking in questions “what did I say?” Being a favourite, and it has been suggested that perhaps I say that too much.

In my defense, I use it to check that everything I’ve said has been taken on board, but I need to find a different way to do that.

So how long will it take me to change my habits and in doing so, change theirs?

We have books coming out of our ears in this house. Smallest loves to be read to, and she loves to read books back to us. She’s got a pretty good memory for them as well. We were sent a couple of lovely first shape/ colour type books for review the other week, and she adores them. They are rather lovely. These ones:

Lots of great pictures to talk about, with words in sensible font underneath. I particularly like the Numbers book having an owl on every page to spot, although I’m not sure what pages on Feelings and Manners are doing in there, particularly with nice/ naughty as concepts. I try to stay away from the word naughty tbh, I don’t find it to be useful.

Having the books did make me start thinking about actually planning some education for her, so that’s a good thing, surely?

So far she’s been educated incidentally. It seems to have worked rather well in giving her excellent vocabulary and speech – she’s extremely, almost relentlessly, verbal. (Which is to say she hardly ever stops talking. And at the moment all of her speech is phrased in questions. “What did I say? What did I just do? Why did I do that?” If you don’t know, darling, I don’t think the rest of us stand much chance :/ ) She also counts up to 7 or 8, depending, which is due mainly to playing hide and seek with her siblings. We’ve got no stairs to practise our counting on sadly, as that’s another good tactic.

She loves to draw. Mark making we’ve definitely got sussed. The other day I started her copying ones and zeros – it did occur to me later that zero is actually a rather complicated concept and I probably should have stayed away from it to begin with, but done now. I would like some of the early Montessori bead materials, I might make equivalents from some Baker Ross beads instead.

Ooh, Baker Ross. I nearly forgot the fabulous bundle of crafts they sent us recently!

They were country themed. We had African wooden necklaces, Scottish scratch art magnets, Welsh foam bookmark kits, St George’s Cross flag tissue kits and leprechaun masks.

Small loved them. Big loved them too, though bizarrely I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of her with them.

Of course, we don’t always use full craft kits. Sometimes just a pair of scissors and a piece of paper hit the mark. She’s pretty good with scissors, left handed here, although she does tend to swap them around.

So we do arts and crafts, writing, reading, counting and so on. There’s also singing, dancing, swimming, running, climbing, playing, watching, more reading, a bit more reading, some drawing, occasionally baking, and lots and lots of play.

Hm, maybe I don’t need to do that much in the way of planning after all, perhaps the incidental education will get us there after all. Although I should confess that I’ve ordered her a set of Bob Books

as I think she’ll enjoy them, and they might help her towards those first skills for reading in a relatively painless way. (After the experience of teaching Big to read, I did actually say I’d never do it again. I guess with two extra children I’m going to have to get over that phobia. Bob Books should be a relatively painless first step for me too )

Disclosure we were sent books from Random House and craft items from Baker Ross for review. Amazon links are affiliate links – if you buy via my link I get a small amount of money back. I’ve paid for the Bob Books. We provide our time and opinion free of charge.

I’m a bit nervous.

This is kind of silly, as I’ve been to both cybermummy conferences, and really enjoyed them. But, I’m not actually all that good at big crowds. I’m awful at names and faces. I may or may not recognise ppl I’ve met before, and my chances of recognising ppl I’ve never met are minimal.

I want a blogger bingo card. With ppl’s pictures next to their twitter and blog name as well as their real name so I can keep track of who I’ve managed to met and who I’m still looking for. Because I don’t want to be on twitter the next day saying, you were there and I didn’t see you?

And I’ve started to build a twitter list of attendees. Please feel free to leave your twitter id in a comment so I can add you, and do follow the list so you can find everyone else. I’m also building a back up google+ circle in case twitter crashes, so feel free to give me that link, or comment on this post in g+, but I don’t think I can share a circle can I?

And how will you recognise me? I’ll be wearing clothes that give me easy access to my breasts, which I’ll be whipping out all over the place, because I’ll have the delectable 9 week old tigerboy with me. Yes, I’ll be the woman with a baby in a sling. And I’m shy, but I don’t bite, so please do say hi.

We don’t actually have elections in our local area this time. Or if we do they must be secret elections as we’ve received no notification or polling cards But all over the place, particularly on social networking sites I am being exhorted to vote, and told that I’m letting the side down and have no right to complain if I don’t.

Hm. I have voted in every election I’ve been entitled to vote in for my entire adult life, except one where there was some odd mix up with polling cards and I didn’t get the information in time. (Student days. Lots of things were confusing then.) Despite this stirling effort on my part I’ve never yet been part of a majority. In earlier years this could have been down to my rebellious habit of voting for joke candidates – is that also an abuse of my right to vote? Or does that somehow count more than staying home?

I am involved in my community in that I follow what is going on locally, my other half is part of the chamber of trade, I’ve written (probably rather more frequently than she likes) to my MP. I’m also still in touch with the other PPC for the area, who I really really wish had been elected but she wasn’t, and there you go.

The system we have at the moment is not, as far as I can tell, democratic. It depends on your understanding of the word. I’ve been told in the past by an MP that her duty is primarily to her party (not this MP, someone somewhere else) as without them she couldn’t have been elected. In which case what is the point of us having chosen individuals? We might as well just vote for a party, and let them send ppl to parliament.

Or why even bother with the ppl? Why not just do away with the individuals, who don’t appear to be able or willing to do much against the party line anyway, and they just cost us money.

It seems to me in this day and age that we ought to be able to be more representative. There are any number of ways to get ppl’s opinions, instantly. It’s farcical to just hold an election once every 5 years and then have the government of the day ignore the promises they made and carry on rough shod over the objections of the electorate.

Is that really what the suffragettes protested for? I don’t think so. So don’t tell me I have to vote. That’s my decision. Not yours.