More evidence of the speed of growing up

Like every other parent on the planet, I often find myself saying "they're growing up so fast!". Although really, in the grand scheme of things, humans grow up unbelievably slowly - giraffes walk almost immediately after birth, while it takes us a year. But parents coo over every small developmental milestone, and I'm no exception.

Emsy's latest skill is the ability to sit up. Almost. Well, for a few seconds, until her head moves in one direction or another and drags her body inexorably after it. If she's gently propped though she can do pretty well, and is feeling justifiably proud of this acheivement.

Emily, sitting up

Isabel, on the other hand, is progressing into the role of schoolgirl at a rate of knots. She now has weekly maths homework and spellings to learn for a test every Friday, plus two reading books a week. She's expected to do 15 minutes of reading with us each night (not always easy to squeeze this in, but we're doing our best). I'm sure that when I was at primary school, in the late 1970s, we never had any homework at all. Going to secondary school proved quite a shock - now I'm just grateful for the years I didn't have any homework! She's also growing up in ways which weren't even thought of in my day. She now has her own Facebook account, and told her teacher today, as part of a discussion about which countries different foods come from, that she was growing dates on her Farmville farm on FB - I'd have loved to have heard the teacher's reply!

Getting the ice cube trays out again

Yup, it's that time for little Emily - getting ready for weaning. We went to a post-natal group meeting on weaning this morning which provided some useful reminders, and I'm starting to get quite excited about getting going. However, it may be a couple of weeks yet, since (a) the advice is not to start until they're six months old and that won't be until 18 October, and (b) we're off to the Emerald Isle this weekend, so I really don't want to get started until we're back. However, I'm preparing, both mentally and physically - I'm getting ready for the fact that she'll quite often reject the food that I've made (I will not take it personally this time!) and that it'll be messy. So, today I peeled, chopped, boiled and pureed five pears and filled an ice cube tray. We still don't have a high chair although I quite like a wooden one I saw in Asda so might get that - for the time being we'll be using the Bumbo chair since Emily's probably too small for a high chair yet anyway. Bless her, the little pipsqueak!

Repitition, repitition, repitition

I'm blogging while catching up with this weekend's X Factor, and it suddenly struck me how repititive it is. Obviously the format is repetitive, although they've made efforts to remedy that this year by holding the auditions in front of a live audience, but the voiceover is repetitive too, and it just doesn't need to be. I always quite liked Dermot O'Leary, but if I hear him saying "And no-one wants it more than Stacey from Dagenham", or whoever it happens to be, I swear I'll chuck something substantial at the telly. All of the contestants want to win, they all want to move out of their grotty flats and shed the detritis of their depressing lives - we know this, but none of them want it more than anyone else, stop going on about it!

Of course, the X Factor's not the only show guilty of this. After watching a series of Masterchef Goes Large I could pretty much do the voiceover myself. In fact, the only reality-type TV show that has studiously avoided this trap is Location, Location, Location - Kirstie and Phil are Gods of Property, and should be put forward as case studies at TV Presenter school. Sarah Beeny has her moments too, but she delivers her lines with a level of irritating smugness that Kirstie and Phil don't have. We know that they think the househunter in question is a moron, but in a friendly and non-offensive way. I may also have to take lessons, having thought about it - I think a lot of people are morons but I'm patronising about it, like Sarah Beeny, and thereby reveal my hand too early. Anyone got Kirstie's phone number?

When did weekends stop being relaxing?

Don't get me wrong, I've had a lovely weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it, but now I'm pooped! I remember the days when weekends meant getting up late (OK, I was never good at that, getting up at around 8.30am was always a lie-in for me!), watching several hours of TV which I'd recorded during the week, having an afternoon nap later on, and generally chilling out.

I know that the answer to my question is "when you had kids, you idiot, what did you expect?!", but I don't think I was prepared for the state of perpetual motion that weekends have become. This weekend was typical - took Isabel to ballet class from 11.15-12.15 on Saturday, with Emsy. Home for lunch while Emsy napped, then back into action - feeding, walk down the hill to the library, the chocolate shop and the park, more feeding, dinner, bathtimes and then general parental collapse. Today was slightly more chilled - quick trip to Sainsbury's, friends round for lunch with their toddler and small baby (9 weeks old and heavier than lil' Emily I think!), then homework with Isabel, dinner, bath and bed. Oh, and in amongst all this, Husbandio moved bunk beds from my dad's house to here, and a load of furniture to his sister's new place in London - this took him ALL DAY yesterday so he was properly shattered.

However, even though I'm tired I wouldn't have changed it - the girls have been lovely, I spent quality time with some good friends, I didn't spend too much money, and we have a tidy playroom. And a new bed for Isabel - she seems pretty chuffed with it, what do you think?

Good job I'm not (gulp) scared of spiders

There was an article on the BBC News site this morning saying that more spiders than usual are expected in the UK this autumn because we had a wet autumn last year and a reasonably cool summer this year - perfect breeding conditions apparently. And it's definitely true in our neck of the woods. Each night recently we've had pretty big chunky house spiders scuttling across the lounge floor (luckily I usually sit with my feet up on the coffee table!). Other than that I haven't found more webs than usual in the house, but the ones outside are just magnificent. Some are so thick that they're more like cotton threads than webbing. And several have big spiders living in the middle just waiting for dinner to be served - as shown in the picture below.


It's lucky that spiders don't bother me I guess - although even I jumped earlier this evening as quite a big spider scuttled up my arm as I was feeding Emily. What does bother me however is the thought of a spider scuttling across her face as she's asleep - now that's creepy. Since I'm not really bothered by spiders, Isabel isn't either - in fact, if she sees a spider she descends upon it gleefully, saying "Sidney, I've missed you!". I think she may be going a little too far the other way...!

She's a Sixties child at heart

Over the last few months we've been expanding Isabel's musical interests beyond nursery rhymes and Disney songs. So far her favourites are the Beach Boys and, in the last few weeks, the Monkees. She likes the Beach Boys so much that she'll watch the Beach Boys DVD we have rather than Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (yay!), but the Monkees are quickly catching up.

I always loved the Monkees, and even saw them in concert several times as a teenager, and I'd love to get her watching the TV shows as well. I was going to buy them from Amazon, but Series One costs £34.98, which is just madness, and Series Two isn't much better at £31.98. Why so expensive?! Must be because there's quite a lot of content and not a massive demand. I'm considering setting up a petition to get the BBC to broadcast the shows again! I fear I may be the only signatory. Oh, and Isabel, now that she can write her own name! All together now, "Hey Hey, We're The Monkees, People say we're monkeying around!"

Making friends

Isabel's now into her third term at school - she's settling into a group of friends, and even has a best friend. Interestingly, our neighbour's daughter, who is also in her class, is not in this group, and they don't really seem to interact at all at school. Both of them appear to have agreed that they are "home friends" but not school friends, and both are very happy with this. Strikes me as strange, but seems to work for them.

The issue which I'm thinking about at the moment is whether it's a good thing or not to have a best friend at this stage. I'm concerned that having a best friend may mean that Isabel doesn't interact as much as she could do with other children in the class, and that if the best friend relationship turns sour then she could be stranded without a network of other friends to fall back on. So far that seems to be a groundless fear since she does mention playing with other children (all girls, it should be added - boys don't seem to feature at all on her radar yet as potential playmates!). And I'm trying to encourage a range of friendships by inviting various children home for tea - we have one coming on Friday (sausages and mash for tea!) and another on Monday (macaroni cheese!). The best friend can come too of course, but a little later this term. Not quite brave enough to invite more than one child at a time - refereeing between two extremely over-excited five year olds is as much as I can manage at the moment.

I think the line I'll try to follow is to encourage her to have a best friend, but with the caveat that a group of friends can also be enormously valuable. As they say, "books and friends should be few but good".