today’s news

We had got plans to meet friends at the park this morning but they were unable to make it and cancelled yesterday so we decided to have some time at home instead. Davies and Scarlett played a lengthy and rather hilarious to listen to game featuring aliens from Ben 10 and Timmy the dog from the Famous Five. Storylines seemed grafted together too with dungeons and tunnels working alongside other planets. This was all played with geomags, soft toys, Betty Spagetty (which I always struggle with the misspelling of) and the use of various regional and international accents :lol:. Listening to and watching them play like that reminds me of Andy in Toy Story with his muddled collection of toys, all different perspective in size, coupled with junk models and hefty doses of imagination along with borrowed cartoon characters from now and Enid Blytons stories written before their own grandad was even born. Oh and Abi from Primeval puts in the odd guest appearance too 😆 Just lovely :).

I watched Child of our Time on iplayer. I know opinion is split on old Dr Bob and indeed the format of the programme but it is something I have watched all the way through first with a tiny baby born in the same year as those on it, comparing his development along with theirs, then rapidly departing from lots of what was being talked about on it as our paths deviated from those children when they all headed off to nursery. When I did sociology we looked at the series 7up (and indeed 14up, 21 up and so on) as part of the course and this is for me the updated version of that of our time. Very interesting from a sociological point of view and relevant to me as I have a child the same age as the ones featured. I thought the gender stuff was amazing and scary at the same time, the little girls attitudes towards body image horrifying and it made me realise once again how much of a bubble my two do exist in in many ways.

I know from the couple of schooled friends we have that there are all sorts of peer pressure type things Davies and Scarlett miss out on; fads and fashions, latest toys (neither of them would know what a yu-gi-oh or whatever they are called is), latest pop music etc.It’s not that we particularly shield them from it, more than we just don’t expose them to it I guess. I know this will change over time and to be honest there is nothing from that show today I feel they are missing out on that wouldn’t be negative anyway (worrying about being fat, wanting to have boyfriends/ girlfriends, even knowing what ‘bling’ is, putting rich and famous as priorities above being kind or healthy) but I hadn’t realised quite how much we are protecting their childhood / innocence either. As I say I would view that as a positive thing, I’m sure others would disagree… And 25 years ago my parents were probably talking to other parents about how quickly my generation was growing up, as indeed their parents had probably been 25 years before that. Does make you think that growing up faster with each generation is a phenomena that simply can’t last though really…

By popular request – and because we have a glut of eggs and some milk that needs using up before we go away for the weekend – I made pancakes for lunch. Ali and Freya arrived not that long afterwards. We’ve had one of F’s DS games here since their last visit, accidentally left behind which I rather foolishly had been vaguely aware of but not thought to gather up and put in the hypothetical ‘safe place’. Scarlett remembered it as soon as they arrived and was proud to report that Davies had been playing it and unlocked loads of new stuff on it for Freya. Now Davies regularly does this for Scarlett and it is wanted and appreciated genuine help so Scarlett viewed this as a good thing. I think Davies hadn’t quite taken the time to think it through properly and had half thought he was being nice and half just wanted to play the game. When I reminded him how he would feel if someone played one of his saved games on xbox or DS and either got him further along when that is something he takes great pride in achieving himself or worse still made a wrong move and deleted a game he was rather mortified :(. But worse than that we then couldn’t find the bloody game anyway! I was equally cross with the children for not having looked after something belonging to someone else and with myself for not doing the responsible adult thing about it previously so gave them both a hard time about it.

Eventually the game was found, F was fine about it having been played with and I thought all was forgotten except I’d clearly laid it on a bit thick with the whole ‘how would YOU feel?’ stuff with Davies who had gone down worst case scenario avenue and was feeling crap :(. He’d decided to ‘punish himself’ with a selfimposed ban on playing out in the garden which he’d been looking forward to doing all morning. The whole punishment thing is an odd one really as he knows my feelings on rewards and punishments – the theory even if I don’t always hold true in practice ;). Ah well I guess he’s bound to rebel somewhere and end up as a law enforcer or something :lol:. So we had a long chat about all that while Scarlett and Freya went and played outside and eventually he cheered up, worked through it and headed off to play with them. A sensitive soul is Davies, a trait I can admire in him (and indeed Ady who is very similar natured and equally hard on himself and takes any outside criticism completely to heart and agonises over it for ages) but struggle to empathise with.

The rest of the afternoon went fine – the children played indoors and out while Ali and I chatted. Freya had a moment of struggling to get Scarlett’s attention (she was off playing with Davies and they can be quite inpenetrable sometimes I think) and then not getting the response she’d hoped for when she did so she came to help me make pizza for their tea instead.This of course meant Davies and Scarlett appeared to help too :rolls: There was some debate over choice of dvd to watch while eating their pizza which they sorted out between them easily enough with Davies being the one to manage it and pacify all wounded parties :). Ady arrived home, pushed plants onto Ali (they’re like goody bags at our house, all visitors go home with some sort of as seen on TV greenery :lol:) and then I ran Ali and Freya home.

Ady bathed the children (well as I explained to Freya he ran the bath and then left them to it, infact Davies can now run a bath and is very sensible about checking the water temperature too) so when I got home it was story time while Ady did some gardening. We’re only 3 chapters away from the end of the book and several plotlines were revealed to great delight that they’d guessed them right. There is much excitement about our camping trip this weekend so bedtime was a bit of a shambles as they were both too giddy to get to bed and go to sleep easily apparently.