Helter Skelter: Sharing your passion with your kids

What do Enid Blyton's The Enchanted Wood and The Beatles' Helter Skelter have in common? Read on and ye shall see...

One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is sharing your passions. My parents gave me a love of books, music, travel and wine and I am now passing the first two on to my own children. I will move onto travel soon but shall save the wine until much later.

For Christmas the Chief was given two of my favourite childhood books: The Enchanted Wood and The Magic Faraway Tree. We've been reading them together. I am actually quite amazed that a 4 year old can sit and listen to a book that has chapters and very few pictures but she does. It took her a while to get that we read all of one before starting on the next though.

Did you ever read those books? I'd forgotten a lot of the details. I could only remember the pop cakes and toffee. I guess that's another thing my parents shared with me that I'm now sharing with my kids: a love of food. Tonight we read the chapter about the funny old saucepan man who causes so much clanging and banging with his saucepans that he doesn't always hear correctly. Reminded me very much of The Fawlty Towers episode, Communication Breakdown, which I'm sure I'll share with my kids in due course.

We got to a section in the book that read: "The saucepan man ran helter skelter to the hole..." when suddenly the Chief burst out with "Helter Skelter, helter skelter", her rendition of The Beatles' classic. And I looked at her proudly and thought, "that's my girl" as I'm sure my dad will think when he reads this.

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I would just like to add that I don't talk about Happy One much but he is just adorable at the moment. He's a stubborn creature (can't think where he gets that from Grandad, or more likely Grandpa!) with a love of cake (once again, where did he get that from, chaps?) and cars (Grandad); he sleeps in the car and with a car. His language is maturing every day and he is starting to formulate two and three word sentences. How can you resist, "cuddo-mummy, wanna cuddow mummy"? Which, of course means "cuddle". So sweet. Tonight he told Map Man, "I wan nana-weet", meaning banana and weetbix (weetabix). He cries when he doesn't get his own way and if that doesn't work he screams, throws things, hits, pushes, lies on the floor and kicks his legs and slithers along on his back like a snake. If you have hold of him at the time he proceeds with a back arch a yogi would be envious of, doubling over and out of your arms. He never wants to eat dinner but he's always up for cake, cereal or egg. If we manage to give him something he likes he'll ask for "more" regardless of whether he actually wants to eat more. He gives the loveliest cuddles and kisses and follows the Chief around like a little puppy dog at times. And she is such the big sister with him, taking his hand and leading him around. He also has violent tendencies, which worry me, and loves to lounge in his rocking chair with his milk in his hand like an old man. He is impossible to take photos of as he always runs around the back of the camera to have a look just as I'm pressing the button. Here are some pics I took of them at Underwater World this afternoon.

And to wrap up I thought you'd be interested to know I just found my laptop mouse in the bathroom, courtesy of Happy.


Well do you, don't you want me to love you....

Hey! I just wrote a whole post without even mentioning diabetes.

Doh!

Toddler music aficionado

I have been mucking around with the Instagram iPhone app lately. It allows you to apply cool retro filters to your photos and share them. I avoided it for a while as from what I can see the photos end up public. But finally I relented and it's super fun. I try to keep photos of the kids to a minimum and to make what I do put up there slightly abstract and arty. Here are a couple of my favourites. (Actually, so far they're the only ones of the bairns.)

I call this one Beautiful Innocence. My little girl just looks so beautiful in this photo. I love it.

This is called Rolling Stone. I started Phoebe's music education early. Actually, that's only partly tongue in cheek. Her favourite song for a while now has been Black Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow. More recently we've all been into Gotye's song Somebody That I Used To Know and Phoebe also loves my new Kimbra CD. I'm amazed at her ability to remember music. The other day she was wandering round the house singing "copier". Eventually I realised that she was singing the line "You didn't have to cut me off" from Gotye's Somebody after hearing it that morning on the telly. Today she was wandering around singing "buck buck cockadoodledoo" which she'd heard this morning at The Wiggles. She just loves live music. If we ever go anywhere where there is live background music she is absolutely transfixed and then applauds at the end. I love that my girl is so into music and I'm excited that this is something we can share together in the future, just as I share my love of music with my parents, especially my Dad.

Eee man, my little girl makes me laugh sometimes

I picked Phoebe up from daycare today.

When I arrived she was on her way to the toilet. I watched as she pulled down her leggings and knickers, sat on the toilet, did a wee and attempted to wipe her bottom. Well, wasn't I the proud Mammy.

Then she got off the toilet and did a nudie run around the classroom. Pride, fall and all that.

Eventually I managed to catch her and get her dressed and we left.

Sort of. See, there's this cubby house in the playground on the way out. Phoebe loves this cubby house. She likes to hide in it from me, knowing full well, I'm sure, that at 8 months pregnant it's slightly beyond me to get on my hands and knees and pull her out of it. Somehow I did manage to get her out, which displeased her greatly. I could tell that as soon as I put her down she was going to run back into the playhouse so I attempted to carry her to the car. She squirmed like a giant worm making it really hard to keep hold of her. So I half-dragged, half-carried her to the car. By the time we got there she was crying. I asked her what was wrong.

Phoebe: Don't want to leave daycare, Mammy.
Me: We have to. It's time to go home and get some dinner.
Phoebe: No, Mammy, wanna go back to daycare with Stacey and Jen.
Me: Everyone's going home now, Pheebs. There'll be no one here to play with or look after you.
Phoebe: No Mammy, I don't wanna go home. Wanna stay daycare.
Me: Really? Why don't you want to go home? What about if we play Boom Boom Pow in the car?
Boom Boom Pow is her current favourite song, which I find quite amusing in itself. Little Black Eyed Peas fan.
Phoebe [Shaking head]: No, Mammy. Nooooo.

Anyway, during a lengthy and emotional discussion about the relative merits of going home versus staying at daycare all night I managed to get her fastened into the car seat. We set off for home with my current favourite CD playing, the latest Black Eyed Peas, The Beginning. Not, by the way, the one with Boom Boom Pow on it. I turned it up hoping to distract Miss Chief with music.

Phoebe [Wailing]: Boom Boom Pow, Mammy. Boom Boom Pow.

So I changed the CD and cranked up Boom Boom Pow. When it started she gave an excited giggle and started to sing.

Phoebe: Phoebe happy now. Phoebe not sad any more, Mammy.
Me: Really? That's good.
Phoebe: Phoebe don't want to stay at daycare any more Mammy. Phoebe want to go home. Have yum yums. Go home and have dinner. Boom boom pow.

How she made me giggle as she basically repeated all the things back to me that I'd said in an attempt to persuade her that going home was a great idea.

The hilarity didn't stop there either. Back home I was getting dinner ready when Phoebe came into the kitchen saying, "Lookame Mammy, lookame. Phoebe wearing a hat. Look Mammy, a hat. A hat."