Motherhood = fewer shoes, but more goodie bags and glitter.

We survived !

Twelve toddlers, a gazebo that kept threatening to overturn in the wind and so much noise that the cat hid upstairs on his beanbag all afternoon. He only emerged after everyone had left to ask for his dinner. The main thing, though, is that we all made it out alive. No toddlers were harmed, the food was eaten and the drinks consumed. Every child found some treasure in the 'woods' at the end of the garden and they all got a goodie bag to take home as all the contents arrived in time. Then today our boy's birthday card was shown on Cbeebies after three years of trying. I'm expecting a damehood at the very least for awesome Mumming !

Seriously though I was so proud of my boy on Sunday. As each of his friends arrived he spotted them, came over and greeted them with a cheery, "Hello, thank you for my present, come and play" and took them over to the garden area where we'd set out games and playground toys for them all. At points Hubbie spotted the boy having intense conversations with his nursery pals in a mini version of the adult scenario at the other end of the garden. As all his pals left he handed them a goody bag, thanked them for coming and as his head started to droop on Hubbie's shoulder we could see he was as worn out as we were. My little party animal.

On how far we have come.

My boy is three today. At one point we weren't sure we'd ever have a child of our own. Then we weren't sure we'd ever get to adopt a family of our own. Then this miracle happened and we found out we were having a baby. Then we had a scan and found out we were having a boy. Then we were so close to meeting him and then worried that after all of it we weren't going to. Finally at 2.20pm on the 30th of September 2010 (a full two weeks late) our boy finally arrived and my heart skipped a beat.

There is a saying that when a baby is born a mother is also born (and a father of course). When I watch my boy putting his own pyjamas on, taking off his trainers by himself and giving all the family double kisses 'continental style' I see how far he has come since he was born. I'm also now - as we emerge from the fog of early parenting - starting to see how far I have come too.

• I have learned more about biology and medicine than I ever knew. Yes, Mum and Dad I'm almost as qualified as a doctor (probably not quite as qualified as Dr Ranj though). 

• My shoe cupboard hasn't been opened in three years - well four actually as I stopped wearing heels while pregnant. I used to get called Imelda due to my love of shoes, I now wear Fit Flops or trainers pretty much all the time. 

• Hubbie and I consider going out for dinner or to a gig a big deal due to the effort required to actually leave the house. It's made us truly appreciate our time together. 

• We've also impressed our boy (and a few of the other nursery parents) with our radio show - that makes us pretty cool parents doesn't it ?

Happy Birthday to my darling boy. 

No shoes compare with the joy of being your Mum. Well, maybe...

What do you give the 3 year old who has everything ?

Now I realise he doesn't actually have everything, but it must seem that way to his adoring (and adored) family members who have been asking what to get him for this birthday.

My baby boy will be 3 next Monday. His party is on Sunday and I have been asked what he'd like as a present. From me and Daddy  he is getting a microscooter which he has been promised since he was two as we thought he was too young back then. The list of what he already has is pretty long though, so it's difficult to suggest anything to kind and loving friends and family. Instead I'll tell you what he loves and you can make up your own minds:

• Last weekend Hubbie took the boy to the Metrobus open day in Beddington. He drove a bus and went through the bus wash - which was a bit scary apparently. He had a wonderful time pretending to be a driver and he came home with a poster of buses and a new fridge magnet. That's a good day out in anybody's book isn't it ?

• Hubbie took him to two football matches this weekend and at the second one he was playing with this regular footie buddie Freya who is older than him and often takes him under her wing. It was while they were playing on the stand that he clonked his nose on a metal bar and unleashed a tsunami of blood that sent Hubbie running towards the team physio - Chopper. She assured him that he hadn't broken his nose and was going to be ok. The boy was just very concerned that Daddy's shirt was dirty now. Once patched up and declared fit he ran onto the pitch - his favourite bit of the game.

• On Sunday we all ate pizza for dinner and he had great fun using a pizza cutting wheel for the first time. I remembered I had a toy one that we'd got free with the Cbeebies magazine a while back so I let him have that after dinner. He also enjoyed chomping on the 'noisy' crusts - that must explain why his hair is so curly !!

• He loves singing and dancing. My mum bought him his own 'radio' last year - it's a pretend CD player and he likes to switch it on and dance around the room changing the volume and speed of the tunes on it. It's hilarious to watch and tires him out as well - a win win !!

• I cannot accurately convey the look of excitement when he spots Jiggles Bear waiting in his car seat after he's had a fun day at nursery. He adores his first bear so much it is now ragged and smelly from being loved so much - aren't we all ?  They have a snuggle on the sofa at home with the boy sucking his fingers - which he's done since he was born - it's a picture of toddler bliss. I prepare his dinner and they catch up on what they've been doing all day. It's so simple and makes him so happy.

So that's what my boy loves to do. Yes he loves running around outside. He also loves toys and noise and singing at the top of his voice in the back of the car. Cake makes him very happy indeed. It is all part of what makes him so very precious.

As for what you can get him for his birthday - well he does need new shoes actually.

Mission Impossible 3: the quest for a birthday greeting

My son loves Cbeebies.

From Tikkabilla (which is weird and like Playschool on mogadon) when he wakes up to In the Night Garden (which is like doing psychotropic drugs so I'm told) at bedtime he loves loads of shows on the schedule. I give full credit to Justin Fletcher for my son appreciating a good knock knock joke and I'm pretty sure he's learned to count and his alphabet from watching educational shows on the channel. Yes I am happy to admit that I've left the telly to teach my son numeracy and literacy. 

I'm sure he's not the only child who knows all the theme songs and sings them enthusiastically. Today he sang Bob the builder when sitting on a tractor in the shopping centre. It was quite funny actually. Again I'm pretty sure that other children also call all postal staff Postman Pat and recognise the Royal Mail logo on the side of red vans.

So our credentials as Cbeebies fans are clear for all to see. I've befriended Dr Ranj on twitter and posted pics of my boy pretending to be a Dr using the stethascope from the front of his Cbeebies magazine that prompted a sideways smiley from the good Dr. Before you jump to any conclusions no I'm not one of those who pants when he's on screen because of a crush - that would just be wrong as he looks a lot like my brother !

My issue is that my boy is going to be 3 in a month and this is the third year of trying to get his birthday card read out on Cbeebies. I even asked for advice from my friend Lou who has managed to get her son's card read out twice - yes that's right TWICE !! Two years of trying to get a card shown on Cbeebies has almost broken me. The first year I was in such a panic to get the card there in time that I forgot to put his date of birth on the back and had to pull strings with my friend Vicky (who works at the BBC) and she put in a call to the Cbeebies office to make sure they added it to the back. We spent all day watching the birthday slots becoming increasingly depressed as it became clear his card wasn't going to appear. Last year I sent a card again and double and triple checked that I'd got it all right and again no sign of it. We even resorted to doing an online greeting on baby TV just to be sure he got something on telly.

This year I'm taking no chances. I've taken top tips from Lou in her capacity as 'the Mum who can' and am even going to write a super smarmy message on the back of the card just to be sure. I'm including as many characters as will fit onto the card and it's being posted in plenty of time.

If we don't do it this time I'm actually going to cry.

You don't want to make a grown woman cry now do you Cbeebies ? 

It's not real life - it's just TV

I often complain that we don't get any decent telly any more, just a lot of reality telly. Another of my bugbears is misery TV and I don't watch soaps for that reason. If I want to watch families yelling at one another I'll visit mine and not do it in my precious leisure time. There is an element of TV being there to inform and educate, but my favourite shows tend to be purely entertainment, which I almost feel I have to apologise for.  More often than not I'll watch Blackadder yet again (which is almost like learning history isn't it ?) and recently Masterchef or the newly returned Great British Bake Off (come on that's just Home Ec) or if I'm being really swotty a quiz so I have to use my brain a little bit. It made me wonder whether TV was always about real life or if this obsession with 'constructed reality' is all new.

I'm pretty sure that very few bus companies are like seventies sitcom On the Buses. For a start they don't have nearly as many staff as that any more, the cultural mix is far more diverse and the bus garage in South Croydon certainly doesn't have a canteen where they all sit around between shifts - hence the roaring trade in transport caffs along the Brighton Road. If the drivers were to walk out in protest at women driving buses they'd get nowhere these days as women drivers are not controversial any more. I do remember when I was at school and Sheila was the well known driver of the E2 bus who would get out of her cab to help pensioners on and would tell the school kids to wait and take their turn. She won bus driver of the year many times and was brilliant !!

Despite what the papers and every Prisons Minister and Justice Secretary (how Orwellian is that ?) think I know for a fact that prisons aren't like Porridge. Prison officers who've been in the job a long time insist it used to be like that and long serving prisoners do hark back to the days of it being like a gentleman's club, but I suspect closing the 'staff clubs' where officers could get 'cold refreshments' during breaks is only a good thing. Norman Stanley Fletcher and his like do exist, but the scams are far less jolly than the ones depicted going on at Slade Prison. In reality we have an interesting TV crossover where the Muppets help children who have parents inside prison to deal with this very difficult issue in their young lives.

Citizen Khan is no more an accurate reflection of 'multicultural Britain' than Love They Neighbour was back in the seventies. It's just the language was less censored back then and now the white character does not get an equal number of digs as the Asian one. It was a stipulation made by Rudolph Walker when he took the part of the black neighbour that for every racist epithet he should get an equal number of them back at his white neighbour as recourse. I think that was what passed for equality back in the seventies.

And despite what every Health  minister in the last 15 years believes, NHS hospitals are not like Green Wing (and then Scrubs). I'm sure they want to believe that doctors have time for japes and hilarity and that the admin staff spend all day photocopying their body parts rather than actual work. If you think it's a bit far-fetched that actual policy on health might be based on misconceptions from watching a comedy series then try and recall the last time you saw a minister or indeed any public figure sitting in A&E at 3 in the morning with a child with a viral infection. No, it's ok I'll wait...

My personal favourite is a recent addition to the thinly disguised propaganda school of TV making and is the vintage and soft focus Call The Midwife. An everyday depiction of childbirth in the East End of London with a side helping of 'why don't women give birth at home anymore ?" I'm pretty sure that it was commissioned as a lovely bit of Sunday evening nostalgia and costume drama to keep families entertained - I mean only a hard heart wouldn't be reduced to tears by the cute ickle babies wouldn't it ? In addition it's a tale of women giving birth in adversity and without horrid doctors interfering that elevates midwives to mythical status. I honestly do think midwives can be marvellous and that childbirth should be treated as a normal thing and not medicalised as a matter of course. I'm also fascinated to see if requests for and actual home births increase as a result of the show.

Of course all of this is moot when you have a toddler as the TV is on Cbeebies the majority of the time he is awake. At least I can say that is educational without fear of contradiction :o)

April Fooled out of my holiday

So remember how I had all those lovely plans for today ?

How I was going to do lots of things just for me ?

Well it went slightly differently from how I'd planned.

My boy woke up with gummy eyes, a puffy face and his rash hasn't gone away. So instead of the boys going to football we all went to the walk-in centre and from there onto children's A&E. It almost became the highlight of mine and the boy's day when Hubbie told us that Dr Ranj works there, but the nurse said he was off today. He was kind enough to tweet back a sad face when I said my son had missed seeing him and Nurse Suzanne and Dr Tim looked after us brilliantly. Thankfully the boy is ok, if a little whiney, and we have eye drops, banana medicine and he's off nursery tomorrow. I can't teach yoga in the morning, but I do get to spend some extra time with my boy. Of course wrestling the drops into his eyes 4 times a day won't be so easy with Hubbie back at work, but it's good exercise for me.

If my attitude towards this enforced family time sounds less than charitable bear this in mind. I plan my entire week around their activities. I do my radio show and teach yoga on days when the boy is at nursery. Every day I go to pick up Hubbie from the station so he can be home to "do bedtime" with his son. On a Saturday I no longer go to Zumba, but am "Mum Cabs" so that Hubbie can do his radio show between kiddie football and grown up football. When they are watching football in the afternoon I finally have a few hours to myself. Either I do my house chores in peace or I meet a friend for a late lunch. This week the boys did not go to football so I didn't get my few hours of peace. It doesn't sound much, but I look forward to that bit of time and it's my little oasis in the week.

I plan enough nice things for all of us to do together. We did our first family Easter egg hunt on Sunday morning and my son was delighted with his haul of goodies. Last week mother-in-law came to see us and we spent a lovely afternoon entertaining her. We took the boy to see my family and he kept them all amused too. The whole week was devoted to keeping everyone else happy.

Then at the end of it all his poor little body could take no more and he got ill. So this week is all about making him well. It's about rest and relaxation and play and fun.

Or as Dr Ranj sings, "Be Happy, Be Healthy, Get Well Soon."

And the gold medal for saying new words goes to...

Ok, so we're all feeling the post-Olympic love right now and it's all about celebration and it's ok to be competitive. In the spirit of pride and achievement I'm sharing while acknowledging that no-one likes a show off.

I was wildly impressed at hearing my son sing nursery rhymes - in tune - without any assistance on the long drive back from my parents sitting in traffic. He also surprised me and Hubbie by counting to ten (with some help) and as I prompted him he kept smiling shyly at me as if to say "alright then I do know how to do this really." I don't want to make him 'perform' for us, but I do love it when he does something entirely new and clever - which seems to be every day at the moment.

We have done our bit in talking to him all the time, but not everything we've done has the desired effect. Despite our vain attempts to try and influence him to sound a bit posher than we do he has developed an accent entirely of his own making. He says 'boat' and 'coach' like he's from the West Country (well his grandparents live in Hampshire, but they don't talk like that either !)

It's that balance between being a pushy parent and being wildly proud when he does something that we are wowed by. At almost two he uses new words every day and copies everything so his vocabulary is pretty vast. Words my son uses now include:

Nani (my Mum) and Nana (my Dad). He's said Grandma and Grandpa for a while now - probably because the let him get a word in edgeways. Unlike my family who bombard him with praise, cuddles and kisses the minute they see him.

Of course he knows the names of all the characters on Cbeebies - he also now says 'Bye bye' to them when the progammes finish.

When my Mum and brother were babysitting him the other night he said 'night night' as they put him to bed.

He says 'nursewy' without being traumatised by it, which is a good sign I think.

His favourite programme is 'whyme wocket' and he can identify the rhyming words (eg. mouse and house which I heard him saying while I was washing up the other day) - that just blows my mind !

Phil - the neighbour who can't pronounce my son's name gets called while his wife Jill is put out as she thought he was saying her name when she heard him calling out in our garden.

Snow - a new word this. For obvious reasons it's not been so relevant lately, but he has the basics of a conversation with any English person as he knows 'waining' and (s)'now.' If I can teach him 'parky' and 'a bit muggy' we're there.

'copter - which covers helicopters and the plane that Aunt Mabel flies in the kids programme 'Come Outside'

I'm touched by him saying 'sowwy,' although I realise at this stage he is merely parroting me rather than making a heartfelt apology for throwing his spoon across the room

Most impressive of all though is the word he's only said twice. Once at Naniji's house when he was busy emptying a toy box onto the floor and we weren't entirely sure we had heard it right. The second time in the car on the way home - accompanied by a prescient teenage eye roll. He said his own name. This may not sound like much, but my son has a pretty tricky name for a toddler to say. He said it very clearly and with some pride. Hubbie then proceeded to push him to say all his other names. He has four of them - I know pretentious, moi ?

Now that's a competitive Dad for you !

My childhood love of Michael Rosen is rekindled...

Like 18,882 other people I follow Michael Rosen on Twitter. You know him, the poet who wrote for children and performed on television and radio when you were little. The man who told us it was cool to read books and that we were not nerds at all.

Well, he has serious concerns about what is happening to education at the moment - and who can blame him - so I sent him an email this evening outlining a few of my thoughts. Imagine how flabbergasted I was when he replied less than half an hour later asking if he could include my comments on his blog !

He's put them on his blog and now I'm putting them on my blog (which is a curious form of cannibalism surely ?) Anyway, what a lovely man and still the most important advocate for children and reading this country has.

http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/letter-from-parent-of-2-year-old.html

If you want to follow him: http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com and http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk