Memory Loss

I keep a little book in which I jot down ideas for blog posts when I have them, to write later. There's a title in there called "Memory Loss".

To be honest, I can't remember what it was supposed to be about.

The Gift of Time

There's a phrase I've recently become conscious of muttering a lot, and I am starting to hate myself for it:

"We haven't got time"

Yes, I'm a full time working mother of two, so it's logical "time" isn't going to be on my side. The mornings involve rushing the kids to either breakfast club or school, then straight back to my desk to log on. Evenings three days a week involve picking up the kids from after-school club and pretty much starting the end of the day routine straight away. Not much time for "mummy, can I make a rocket", or "mummy, can we bake some cakes".

Of course, winter is worse, when the evenings are dark. At least as the evenings get lighter the pressures of bedtime somehow never seem as pressing. The truth is, I've always got very stressed about timekeeping. Friends laugh and say that I spent too many of my formative years in Germany, and that their reputation for punctuality has rubbed off on me. This may be true, but whatever the underlying reason, I hate being late for anything, and it makes me horribly agitated.

In the spirit of opposites attracting, I therefore of course went and married a man who is perpetually ten minutes late for everything. The kind of man who insists on starting something just as we're getting ready to go out or as food is on the table. Also, as every parent knows children have no concept of time, or what it really means to be "late" for anything. You might therefore appreciate that circumstances conspire against me 99% of the time in my quest to be both relaxed and punctual. Heck, even most of my blog posts are rushed!

However, I am very conscious of the fact that I don't want to be one of those mothers who is forever screaming at her children to hurry up. Do I really want them to remember me as someone who used to rush them from place to place, never letting them do what they wanted to for "lack of time"?

I'm going to try picking up sticks and looking at leaves on the next home run, but in the meantime, if someone could please invent a time machine, I'd be most grateful.

Review - Just Dance for Kids (Wii)

I've always loved my copy of the original "Just Dance" for the Wii...well, I say "my", technically it was a Christmas present for DD1 for Christmas 2010, yet in reality, it proved that actually I was the one that used it most. Much as the kids love the songs and the routines, they are not quite yet at the age where losing comes easily to them, and sessions would generally get competitive and end up upset...When I was therefore offered a chance to review the version aimed specifically at kids, I jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, I have to say at this point that we probably haven't played this as much as we should have done since DD1 broke her arm a few weeks ago...

What We Liked:
- Definitely easier dance moves than the adult version, which makes for much more enjoyment for the kids
- "real life" children doing the dance moves, which made it easier for the kids to relate to
- good selection of game modes, and fact it goes up to four players
- two different sets of songs aimed at slightly different age group, from the nursery rhymes for the very young to hits for slightly older children

My biggest "but" in all of this not really related to the game itself...but more to the fact that I also received Just Dance 3 as a Christmas present, which in my opinion improves on the "problems" with the original Just Dance (duet mode, group dance mode meaning you don't necessarily have to compete against each other). Because the selection of hits is slightly newer (Katy Perry, anyone), it also appears that DD1 (age 6) prefers playing this to the kids version as she knows more of the songs...

In summary, I would therefore say it is still perfect for DD2 (age 4), or for any children that don't have any previous experience of any of the Just Dance franchise. For older children, or anyone that has played before, personally I'd go straight for Just Dance 3...

The Gallery - week 89, Me Right Now

I've not done a Gallery post for a long time, for no obvious reason other than laziness, if I'm completely honest, and I thought it high time I made more of a structured effort with a bit of a prompt to get me blogging again.

Last Friday (27th Jan), just after 11am, I happened to catch a tweet about this week's prompt, and decided to take a look. Tara's instructions were simple:


Literally take a photo of whatever you're doing when you read this prompt.


So I did, and here it is:

At work - in my home office. Simple!

Of Chalk and Cheese

Two very different incidents over the weekend have got me marvelling about how truly different my children are from each other. Little did I know, when I rashly exclaimed at number two's birth "My goodness, you're your sister", how wrong I would be proved. The physical changes became gradually apparent; after the shock of jet black hair they shared at birth had faded, DD1's colouring turned to my dirty blonde, whilst her younger sister stayed stubbornly brunette.

Physical differences are of course less interesting to me than their differences in character. In many ways this too became obvious when they were still tiny. Problems with reflux meant DD1's first few months were emotionally fraught and physically exhausted while her sister ate and slept well almost immediately, and it seemed reflected in their general temperament.

We popped to the shops on Saturday to pick up a few bits and pieces, and the familiar cry of "mummy, I need a wee" was soon heard. I looked around and mumbled something about trying to remember where the toilets were. When I looked back, number 2 had disappeared. I headed towards the toilets with DD1, only to  find DD2 purposefully striding towards the back of the store already. "It's ok, mummy", she said, "the toilets are over there - I asked a man". It truly amazed (and worried) me to see her confidence at age four - I barely dare ask strangers for directions at *cough* years older! Needless to say, even at two years older, it's not something her sister would ever consider either, which I must confess saddens me a little - I'd love to give her a bit of a confidence injection sometimes.

Yet an incident on Sunday reminded me that she has her own positive attributes where her sister may perhaps be "lacking". We went for a lovely bike ride with some friends along a canal. All was going well, when, around an hour in, DD1 slipped when pushing her bike up a hill, and fell. Her friend behind her struggled to stop, and ran over her arm at the elbow. From the initial cries we could tell something was not right, and my husband hurried back to fetch the car to the nearest point (thankfully close). From that point, through to being diagnosed as having a broken arm, having had it x-rayed three times and cast twice until we were ready to go home around 6 hours after the incident had happened, she was incredibly calm and uncomplaining, and her bravery really impressed me. It's probable that her younger sister would have howled and complained through the entire process.

I suppose it will never cease to amaze me how the same set of genes mixed slightly differently can result in such different little personalities, and seeing that mix develop and grow truly has to be one of the most fun aspects of parenting.