Mum-e Blog

It’s LP2’s birthday coming up and as usual I am not quite on top of the situation. Last year I made her a cake I am still very proud of – it’s Peppa Pig in case you don’t recognise her.

This year I am not sure I am going to have time for that though. So I am thinking of using www.caketoppers.co.uk who can make and send you edible cake decorations, which means I can have a birthday cake and matching cupcakes from a photo – I am thinking of using one of Rufus, our labradoodle. The cake decoration is less than £10 which is a hell of a lot less than the cost of all the icing I used (and had to throw away when it went wrong the first 24 times) on Peppa.
The other site I like to use is www.vistaprint.co.uk which I used last year to print invitations with the girls’ photos on and thank you cards with pictures from the party, which my kids (or I) can personalise by writing on the back. They cost £11.99 for 20 cards which I thought was pretty good and they look really professional. I use them for business cards too.

Obviously, however much I say I am going to do all this, I probably won’t get round to it in time. In fact, I bet I’ll still be up at 3am the night before the party re-rolling the icing for a cake in the shape of the Little Princess and cursing my total lack of organisational skills…

The drive to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where we are spending a few days, is only a couple of hours from home, yet the kids spent the whole journey whingeing. This despite a packed picnic of ‘treats’ (breadsticks, homemade gingerbread men, a few crisps, a chocolate crispy cake…) and endless CDs of everything from Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton stories to High School Musical 1, 2 and 3.
Still, now we are here it is blissful, the puppy loves being at the seaside and we are going to spend the day at Rendlesham Forest where there are marked walks and a great playground.
My top tip for making sure they don’t start moaning again that their legs hurt or they are hungry?
Make an I-Spy board. Basically draw a grid, fill it in with pictures (don’t worry if your artistic skills are limited, it only needs very basic drawings) of things they might see. Make some of them easy – leaf, bird, branch, cloud, that kind of thing – and some harder eg stream, pine cone, woodpecker, blackberry. And always have a prize for when they have filled the whole thing in.
I’ve bought them each a Crayola magic ink colouring set in the desperate hope that it might keep them entertained for two hours on the way home at the weekend….

Goodness, Monday again, that happened quickly…
The weekend was fun. I had a dinner party for ten which I had been a bit nervous about – most of the people hadn’t met before and I hadn’t entertained in ages. But it went really well – the last guests left at 2.30am. We ended up playing a great game called Tunes with Spoons which basically involves everyone having a spoon, picking some cheesy songs on the iPhone, sticking it in the docking station and turning it up really loudly and then pretending to be a pop star, singing along. Kind of like a rubbish version of karaoke.

Anyway, it was a good giggle until LP1 came downstairs and asked us to keep it down, did we know what time it was…
Then yesterday after dinner she asked if she could play a game, like we did. I really didn’t have the head for loud music again, so I looked on familyfun.go.com and found some games the kids could play in the garden. So, that’s my top choice for this week.
Another good one is http://www.picnicrecipesandgames.com/ – great ideas for picnics and what to do when you’ve finished eating.
Now we just need a few more sunny days.

Little Princess number one woke up the other morning saying ‘I’m hot, my throat hurts, I can’t move, I feel sick.’ With that, she ran to the loo, threw up and then went back to bed. Her temperature was 40, Calpol didn’t seem to be helping and – of course – I was worried that it was the dreaded swine flu.
I went on to the government website where you can tick a few boxes about symptoms, and get prescribed Tamiflu. Scarily, it seemed she had way more of the elements you need to qualify. My daughter had swine flu.

But something didn’t feel right. She hasn’t been in contact with anyone with it. And anyway, I’ve read lots about Tamiflu and I was worried about giving it to her.
I called a doctor friend who advised me to get her examined by a doctor, rather than just use the website.
‘It could be anything,’ she told me. ‘Tamiflu has horrible side effects and it could be that she has toncilitis and needs antibiotics anyway, not Tamiflu at all.’
I was concerned that the local surgery wouldn’t see me, but they made us an immediate appointment, put us in an isolation room, and the doctor came to examine LP1.
‘It’s a throat virus,’ he said. ‘Well done for not just going down the Tamiflu route. It’s not necessary at all. And it can cause bad sickness as well as hallucinations that can be very scary for a child. Lots of fluids and Paracetemol and she’ll be fine in 24 hours.’
And she was.
Which got me thinking…is the government getting its swine flu figures from the number of Tamiflu prescriptions going out? If so, the numbers could be awfully wrong. I know at least half a dozen people who have taken it, none of whom saw a doctor first and who almost certainly didn’t have it at all – they recovered way too quickly.
So…my top tip for the day. If you think your child has Tamiflu, go to the doctor. The web is brilliantly useful in loads of ways. But for prescribing drugs to kids? I’d rather stick to the old fashioned way.

My two favourite websites of the day….

1. www.woolworths.co.uk
Hurrah, Woolworths is back – albeit only online – selling clothes, toys and party stuff, really cheaply. And they are offering free cinema tickets – you just have to sign up as a VIF (Very Important Family) first.

2. allrecipes.com
I love this site because it has recipes from real people, given ratings by other real people, so they do actually work. You can search under any ingredient or occasion and the recipes tend to be really straightforward. There is now also allrecipes.co.uk, but there aren’t so many rated recipes as yet. I tried these Maple Walnut Muffins (I am a bit of a muffin freak) and they were YUMMY.

If you haven’t booked tickets for this yet you really should – it’s touring the UK. Brilliantly educational and entertaining for kids and adults – the animatronic dinosaurs are brilliant. I saw it in the States because I was writing a review and can genuinely say it’s a must see. It’s showing at loads of arenas around the country – including the O2 in August.

Today I am presenting a new regular slot on my blog. Every Monday, to start the week, two links to fabulous websites that make my chaotic life a little bit easier – and hopefully you’ll find them useful too. I’m calling the post Magic Monday.

So, here are today’s:

1. www.dayoutwiththekids.co.uk
This is a great site for the summer holidays. Click on a county on the map, choose an age range and then loads of great places for outings come up, all colour coded under headings like Animals and Nature, Museum & Gallery, Waterfun and Play Centre. Click on your choice for more info. A really good range of places – not just the obvious one you’ve already heard of, and really quick and easy to use.

2. www.lakeland.co.uk
For every household gizmo you will ever need and more… I LOVE Lakeland. Who could not want one of these 3-in-1 Pineapple Corer/Slicer/Peelers? I certainly do. Along with an avocado slicer, fizzy drinks bottle stopper, chopper scraper and an apple juicer. And loads of other stuff. Just as fun to browse as it is to buy. And brilliant for presents.

Oh dear, another quandry.
My littlest daughter turns four in September and this morning we discussed what she would like for her birthday. ‘Everything the same as last year,’ she said, determinedly. ‘I want you to make me a Peppa Pig cake, I want Mr Marvel and I want it in that place near the park, please Mummy. But I want a different present please…this time I would like a DS.’
Her big sister was given a Nintendo DS for her fifth birthday. I took counsel from a friend who is a teacher who told me that actually hand held games consoles can be good for children because it makes them totally relaxed with technology. They are also quite good for hand-eye co-ordination. We are very strict about what games we allow her to have – not difficult actually, because she can’t read fluently yet so she is left with cute colouring-in and drawing programs. And she doesn’t actually play it very often, and she shares it quite nicely with her little sister, so I have no regrets.
But four? Is that too young? I mean, it would help on long journeys and she is starting to use computers at school from September, but still, it feels a bit wrong somehow.
All thoughts and advice really appreciated from other parents out there.
And even if you don’t want to comment, maybe you could vote in this poll:

Now, as regular readers will know, I am rather addicted to useful gadgety things that are properly helpful to family life.
There are two in particular that get my big love this week.
Firstly, the Ocado app I’ve just downloaded to my iPhone. It means you can do your whole weekly shop really easily and quickly, even when you are, say, stuck in a traffic jam or waiting for your daughters’ dance lessons to finish – which is exactly what I did today. Brilliant. They even offer you the option to change your normal irritatingly long password to a four-digit pin so you can sign in really easily. Thank you Mr Techy Ocado person for making me very happy today.
Also – and this isn’t exactly techy but it is marvellous – I want to thank everyone involved with making the Bunny Clock which must, surely, be every parents’ dream invention.
The idea is that you close the Bunny’s eyes at bedtime, then you set a time – 7am, say – when the eyes will open. If Bunny is asleep, the girls are not allowed to wake us up unless there’s an emergency, like the house is on fire, on pain of huge punishment. When the eyes open, they can come and wake us up. So even when your kids are too young to tell the time, they can use a clock. Genius.
In case you haven’t seen it before, here it is in action.

Anyone else got any favourite gadgets or gizmos?

The new puppy has arrived! We went to collect him from his breeder in Cardiff and drove him home, on my lap, at the weekend. I knew it was all going to be fine when he managed not to make any mess on me for the full three and a half hour journey. Then as soon as he got out of the car he did the longest wee in the world. Clearly a superpup.
Anyway, here he is. How cute?

We all love him. Little Princess 1 and 2 have not been near the TV since he arrived, preferring instead to hare around the garden with him, a bit like over excited puppies themselves.
Not So Alpha Male has read three puppy books and thinks he is Barbara Woodhouse or someone – remember her? – doing lots of training exercises and continually telling me how to praise him and not to make eye contact and stuff.
The au pair has been cooking him fresh boiled chicken with rice because his tummy’s a bit upset and the vet told us to give him a plain diet for a few days.
And even my mother-in-law, who is staying with us at the moment, and professes to hating dogs, absolutely adores him.
So far it’s only me having slight doubts. The thing is, he has decided that despite us buying a dozen toys for him to chew on, all he really wants is one of my new pink, patent Birkenstock sandals. Oh well, at least he’s got taste….