Different shades of cold

Isn't it weird how colds affect people in different ways, even when it's the same cold virus? We've all had colds this week which has been less fun than giving myself a paper cut and pouring lemon juice in in it (OK, I stole that line from Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride, so sue me). Isabel shrugged it off, and was left with a slight cough which I think we've knocked on the head with Triaminic, a US cough medicine which works miles better than anything we've ever bought in the UK. The trouble is that Isabel, like me, will cough for a good two weeks after a cold if we don't try to get rid of it quickly. When this happened to me last year I was pregnant, had a weakened immune system, and ended up with three successive chest infections and bad asthma which lasted til the end of the pregnancy. So we try not to let coughs linger!

Husbandio, however, never gets a cough. He gets what he describes as a fog in his head, and this can take a while to clear, even after the cold has gone. With this cold he's also had really sensitive ears, so Isabel's driving him mad because she's naturally loud. She's even louder now however since I think the cold has left her a little deaf so she keeps shouting when she doesn't need to - it's like she's wearing headphones all the time!

As for me, I've been left with a cough, as ever, and very blocked sinuses which I hope doesn't mean I'll develop sinusitis, as I have in the past. The blocked sinuses also mean I've lost my sense of taste which is a right pain in the backside. I love my food, and miss tasting it - please, sense of taste, come back soon!

But how is it that one cold virus can affect all of us in such different ways? And who will Emsy take after? Not sure as yet, but she has her own talent down pat already - the girl can blow the biggest snot bubbles you've ever seen. If only I'd had my camera...!

Reading or memorisation?

Last week, Isabel's school sent home a list of what it expects from parents and pupils, and in turn what we should expect from the school. The intention is that you read this document through with your child, then sign the form and return it to the school.

One of the expectations was that parents listen to their child read every night, so we've been trying to set time aside each evening to do this. The books Isabel brings home are, as previously discussed, from the Oxford Reading Tree series and therefore somewhat less exciting than watching paint dry. However, in her bag today I found a bookmark with a list of books on the back of it. Now, whether these are books they should be able to read, or good books to read with them, I'm not quite sure, but we took the plunge, found that we owned one of the books, and set off.

The book in question was Peace At Last, and Isabel looked very dubious as to whether she'd be able to read it. But she boldly plunged in and, to her surprise and mine, started ploughing through the pages with very few problems. She claims not to have read the book in question at school, and we've not read it together for ages. She struggled in places but was certainly able to read 90% of it. However, when she easily read words like "refrigerator" I got a bit suspicious, so either she's a genius reader, or she has an excellent memory, or she's using the picture clues very well. Either way, she did brilliantly, and Emsy, despite her cold, loved having her big sis read her a story. A good start to Year 1 - well done that girl!

The Media Revolution

Let's have a show of hands: who watches anything live on TV nowadays? By live I don't mean a live concert or something like that, but simply watching a programme when it's actually being broadcast.

Here's my answer: never. If the programme I want is on a channel with adverts I always record it on Sky Plus and, even if I'm home, I'll start it 10 or 15 minutes late so I can scroll through the ads. And there's no guarantee that even if I'm taping it that I'll want to watch it then - programmes now fit my mood rather than me watching whatever's on just for the sake of it.

Recently, however, things have got even more exciting. Previously, if I wanted to watch something, I needed to know beforehand and remember to set the box to record it. The launch of BBC iPlayer changed all that, and I occasionally used it to catch up with stuff I'd missed. The problem, however, was that iPlayer only worked through my laptop or, since my birthday, my iPod, and neither of those devices are very good for watching a programme with someone else. Curling up together with the laptop just doesn't cut it for me.

The newest development has changed all that - good old Auntie Beeb has joined forces with Sony, and we now have iPlayer available through the PS3. Fantastic! Today I'd read Rob Brydon's tweets about his panel show Would I Lie To You, which I'd forgotten to record, so instead we watched it on the TV through iPlayer. OK, it froze a couple of times, but mostly it was perfect - and even with glitches it's better than huddling round the laptop. Let's hope the BBC's great work in this area will spur on the other broadcasters, because at the moment they're trailing way behind.

Developing a sense of irony

I have a cold. I haven't had one in ages and, as if to make up for lost time, this one is a corker. I've been streaming all afternoon, walking around the house miserably clutching half a toilet roll and a Vicks inhaler. I caught it from Isabel who must have picked it up on Thursday when she went back to school - she was runny-nosed all weekend, while I only started today.

At least I have company - Husbandio and Emily have also got the dreaded lurgy. Poor Ems - at one point today she got herself into such a state that her face was just covered with tears, dribble and snot. She had no idea how to cope, so just fell asleep eventually. There's my girl.

After I'd fed Emily and put her to bed tonight I went in to read a final story to Isabel. Who, with a gleam in her eye, handed me a Charlie and Lola book entitled "I'm Really Ever So Not Well", in which Lola has a terrible cold, and passes it on to Charlie. Oh, how I laughed....

Language pedantics

My last blog post generated such an animated discussion that I thought I might try to think of something equally contentious to write about tonight. This has proven tricky since (a) I didn't realise I would stir so much passion with the last post, and (b) I'm not really sure I want to start another mini-war! However, I then started watching the last episode of On Thin Ice (yes, we're about six weeks behind, but thanks to the beauty of Sky Plus we're battling on), and the narrator said something so annoying that I realised I'd found my topic.

The thing that the narrator said was "they're really got a mountain to climb now, as they traverse the vast Antarctic plateau" - eh? Mountain or plateau? Can't be both! I am known for being a terrible grammatical pedant and a stickler for spelling (something which Isabel will learn to her cost as she proceeds through Years 1 and 2) - it's something I inherited from both of my parents, and also something for which I'm grateful.

I love to read well-written books, and hate reading things like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code since the language grated on me throughout. I could say the same of the current book I'm struggling through (OK, the book which I've been ignoring for about three weeks, and blaming this on the summer holidays) - Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram. It's so overly flowery that it's really distracting me from what could be quite an interesting story. One example: "She walked into Leopold's at the usual time, and when she stopped a table near me to talk to friends, I tried once more to find the words for the foliant blaze of her green eyes". The what? Foliant blaze?! This is making it really hard for me to finish the bloody book, and I've only got to page 124 out of 933. And I'm reading it for a book group, so I can't give up. In fact, I never give up on a book - I still have a bookmark in the middle of Vanity Fair and have done since I was 15. I'll finish it one day. I hope I can kickstart my reading of Shantaram so the same thing doesn't happen....

Virtual farming - why?!

Several of my friends and family members are devotees of the virtual farming applications you can get on Facebook, and I just don't get it. This may be another example of me having a complete sense of humour failure - similar to my loathing of so-called comedians like Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey. Since I've never played either of these apps I guess it's a bit unfair to write a blog post slagging them off. But hey, it's my blog, so live with it.

At present, I have two Farmville invitations and 32 (!) Farm Town requests. I'm too polite to turn down requests to be someone's neighbour or refuse gifts of plum trees, so I've just left them to fester in my inbox. The thing is that I just don't see the point. I don't see what could possibly be entertaining about growing virtual crops. Can you eat them? No. I rest my case.

My 14 year old brother, who is a fan, tried to convince me of the efficacy of these games by saying, "It's so exciting harvesting them and watching them grow - I watched them growing last night, 1% every hour". What?! Needless to say, this did not sway me. Husbandio did a slightly better job - he says it's therapeutic. I can understand that, in fact that's why I write this blog. That, and it keeps my writing muscle exercised. And because I can say what I want without anyone interrupting me.

I suppose what it comes down to is that I have a very limited amount of time in my life for entertainment, so I have to be selective. And virtual farming just doesn't cut it. As an aside, I also don't understand why boys like console games where you have to spend ages customising a character or a car before you fight or race - that just seems to me like playing with virtual Barbies. And since I never liked real world Barbies, that doesn't appeal either! But if anyone can convince me as to why these farming games might be fun then I'll give it a go....but don't hold you breath.

Social restrictions

This evening we were invited to go to the pub with my Dad and stepmother for dinner. I didn't really think much of it until last night, when I started to question why I'd accepted this kind invitation - Emsy fusses from about 6pm onwards because it's the end of the day and she's tired, and we wanted to take this fussing four month old out for an evening? Madness! I could suddenly envisage Husbandio and I eating as fast as we could in shifts while trying to keep Emily happy, and then rushing home to get her into bed. Where's the fun in that?

I thought I'd been quite good this time round about accepting the social limitations of having a small baby but clearly my a small part of my brain still wishes for the freedom of a long ago life. When Isabel was small I felt for ages like I'd been imprisoned, and it took a long while to accept that we couldn't just pop out to a movie or for dinner as and when we felt like it. This time I knew what I was letting myself in for, so I haven't felt that at all. Rather than going out, we've had lots of people round for meals, or been to houses of friends with kids, usually for lunch. Doing anything after dark has been a no-no (other than one venture out to a friend's book group, which was a five minute walk up the road!).

Yet all this slipped my mind earlier this week, and I blithely accepted the invitation, only to then realise that I really didn't want to struggle through that situation. I don't like being ruled by baby schedules, but I accept that if you keep a small baby in a reasonably strict routine you end up with a baby who sleeps well and is fairly predictable. So, for the next few months (realistically, at least a year I'd say) we will be mostly staying in in the evening - but hopefully this will be interspersed with visitors, and nights of silly card games and vodka. Because that is currently my idea of a great night!