Mum-e Blog

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.

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.

STAY IN BED

OK, COME AND GET US

I’m feeling a bit more positive this week due to several lovely things happening. Firstly, we have ordered our puppy and are collecting him next Friday from his breeder in Cardiff. Be prepared for lots of photos.
Secondly, I have a great new techtoy. It’s called netvibes. Does everyone use it and am I the last person in the world to get into it? It is FANTASTIC! It means I can totally keep track of the RSS feeds from all my favourite blogs and add comments really easily, as well as see Twitter alerts, Facebook, organise loads of other websites etc that I like. Wow wow wow. If you haven’t used it, you must. It’s free, and you can find it at www.netvibes.com
Finally, and most cheering of all, the totally adorable anxiousmum gave me my first award this week! Here it is…

Now, being fairly new to this blogging lark, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, so I Googled it, and although I am not sure where it originated, it turns out I am being praised for writing honest stuff about myself on my blog and now have two tasks. One is to list 10 honest things about myself and the next is to present the award to seven other bloggers.
So here goes with 10 honest things about me:

1. I am obsessed with baking and have been known to make muffins at 4am before going in to work on London Lite (the freebie newspaper, which I helped launch) with a tin of warm ones for the staff. My favourite so far are raspberry and white chocolate. (I’ll share the recipe with you some time.)
2. I once wet myself when I was concentrating really hard in a violin lesson at school, aged seven, and now am worried that if I concentrate too hard on anything, it will happen again. This was such an issue at university that before my finals I had to have ‘exam training’ to learn how to concentrate properly without fear.
3. I hate using the phone. I live in fear that I am going to phone, say, a cousin, who will respond to my greeting by saying ‘Anne who?’ This means I am really bad at calling people to congratulate them or thank them. I’d always rather write to them.
4. I love rubbish TV. America’s Next Top Model is the best, closely followed by Come Dine With Me.
5. I also love modern fiction. Good stuff – most definitely not rubbish. Preferably by women writers. Favourites include Scarlett Thomas and Sarah Waters. I never go on holiday without something written by Paulo Coelho.
6. When I am feeling low I eat pilchards on toast, read Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers books and suck my thumb.
7. I hate lateness. I try to arrive everywhere half an hour before the alloted time or I start to panic.
8. I use Mitchum deodorant. I don’t exactly have ‘problem perspiration’ but let’s just say I am really jealous of people who can wear silk blouses during a heat wave…
9. I have twin brothers who I love to bits – as well as their wives and kids – and get quite upset when they do stuff together without me.
10. My husband says my chicken soup is better than his mother’s.

Now here are seven other bloggers to whom I award the Honest Scrap Award:

1. Violet Posy
2. Perfectlyhappymum
3. Part Mummy Part Me
4. dulwichdivorcee
5. and1moremeans4
6. amodernmother
7. pottydiaries

Imagine my suprise this week when I drove into school for the first time in a while (I have been allowing the new au pair to get used to the school run while I try to do housework and writing work, worrying she is going to get lost/crash the car) only to find the hunky caretaker standing near the gate, seemingly looking for someone. As I approached in the car, he pointed and waved and patted his heart and looked sad.

‘Oh my goodness, he has missed me!’ I said to the Little Princesses, who ignored me and continued to sing along to High School Musical 3 (please, please Zac Efron, agree to making a HSM 4 so at least we can have something new to listen to in the car.)

Anyway, I parked up, checked my hair in the mirror, and then walked the LPs into the playground where the caretaker was waiting by the gate. ‘Hi,’ I said, in my most cheerful yet seductive voice. ‘Hi,’ he replied. ‘I can’t tell you how much I am missing your old au pair. She was so pretty with such a lovely smile, it made me happy to see her every day.’

At that moment, we were joined by one of the male teachers. ‘Are we talking about the tragedy of this school year?’ he asked. ‘How can you have let her go, she was gorgeous.’

‘Yes chaps, she was lovely,’ I told them, through gritted teeth, ‘and she was also 19, so way too young for you.’ And with as much dignity as I could muster, I stalked off.

Let’s just say my crush on the caretaker is well and truly ended.

And the week has only got worse. Poor darling LP1 has a vile tummy bug, Not So Alpha Male is in Sicily at a glamourous wedding while I stay at home with the kids, and despite dieting like mad all week, I went to be weighed to find I had, in fact, gained a pound.

Plus I am a bit cross with my formerly beloved iPhone.  I plugged it into my AppleMac to update it with all the new software so I can now text photos and so on, and for some reason it crashed and I lost all my music, apps and  – worst of all – contacts.

That’s the thing about technology. When it’s all going according to plan it is wonderful and makes life so much better. When it goes wrong, it’s a right pain in the backside.

Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood by the time I write my next post.

I read the most amazing story today about people using their iPhones to ‘paint’ amazing pictures, using an app called Brushes. Just take a look at this one, by a Spanish chap called Jose Andres Guijarro.

Stunning, isn’t it? You just paint on to the screen with your finger and thumb. The app costs £2.99, and apparently it has become so popular some people are now planning to exhibit and even sell their pictures.

I’d imagine that even if I had the app, I wouldn’t be producing art like that. Frankly the only thing I am good at on an iPhone is playing Solitaire (record is 2 mins 12 which is pretty good I think) and Bloons (slightly stuck at level 34).

What I can’t wait for is the new iPhone OS 3.0 so I can cut and paste text – and most importantly, video things.

This morning it was Little Princess Number One’s school play and it was so cute. I practically had to be held down by Not So Alpha Male (who actually managed to come along, for once) to stop myself running over to give her a big kiss and sort out her hair clip which was falling out (not that I’m a control freak or anything).

Anyway, obviously I forgot my Flip little camcorder thingy – along with the tickets, hopelessly – and I sat there thinking how totally fantastic it would be to be able to record it all on the new iPhone.

I guess a cheaper option for now might be to stop forgetting to take the camcorder out with me.

Not So Alpha Male was lying in bed last night, reading a booklet.

“What’s that, darling?” I asked him, as I glanced up over my copy of Popco by Scarlett Thomas  (Popco is, by the way, the best novel ever. Seriously, if you are interested in branding and big corporations and puzzles and codes, you must read it. I’m now reading it for a second time, and I never do that.)

Anyway, he barely glanced up, he was so engrossed. He just muttered, “I’m reading the instructions to the new microwave.”

I am ashamed to say I sniggered. And sneered a bit. And said: “Goodness, your literary tastes are terribly sophisticated, aren’t they, darling?”

At which point he looked up and said: “Well, you’re the one who won’t know about the clever stuff it does. Using sensor technology. So everything is perfectly reheated and defrosted without you having to do anything except press one button.”

And then he had my attention. Because I love clever gadgety stuff. And if I had to write a list of things that make my life easier – aside from the au pair – along with my iPhone, Sky Plus and my new O2 Joggler, the microwave would have to be up there.

So, when we had the kitchen re-done recently, we bought a new one. I left Not So Alpha Male to choose it…and the boy done good. After I’d stopped sneering and listened to what he had to say, I realised I now have the best ever microwave on the planet, a Panasonic Inverter.  And yes, it does just what he said it does. So if you want to reheat something, you just tell the thing to reheat and it does, beautifully, for just the right amount of time, so there are no extra hot bits, and no cold bits, and no dry edges. It’s all just so. I have to admit to not being quite sure how it does all this, but I do know that it is really great and clever and looks sexy too, sitting there neatly in my utility room. If only it was a man….

Anyway, here it is, in case you want to see it. Oh and it costs around £140, which is quite good for something so fabulous, I think. So, no more laughing at my husband’s reading material. In fact, I’m encouraging more of it. I’ve put the instruction manual for the new extractor hood on his bedside table.

My new microwave

Little Princess no. 1 is turning into a devil child and I don’t know what to do. Take yesterday for instance:

LP1: Mummy, can I wear that pink coat that folds up into a heart for school?

Me: No darling, sorry, it’s not a school coat, it’s just in case we get caught in the rain when we are out.

LP1: But I want to. And someone in Year  3 wears one for school. 

Me (thinking, oh dear, that coat was £1 in Tesco, someone can’t afford a proper coat..): No darling, you’re not really allowed. Hang on, that’s my iPhone ringing, it’s work. Hello?

LP1:  (in high-pitched scream) I want to wear that pink coat! I hate you! Let me wear the pink coat!

Daily Mail commissioning editor on phone: Er, is that your child? Is she always like that? Is there something wrong with her?

This kind of thing is happening all the time. The au pair told me when she was naughty she used to get hit by her father with a belt and that made her behave better. I have asked her not to try that with my children until I have tried out all other disciplinary methods.

Instead of a beating, the Nintendo DS was  confiscated for yet another day. Highly effective? This morning LP1 came bleary-eyed into the kitchen and her first words of the day: ‘Let me wear that pink coat, mummy,’ she said. ‘I mean it. I’m getting cross with you.’

Sigh. What should I do?

So here’s where I was last night..http://tinyurl.com/p2q5v7. Really good fun, met some incredible, selfless, truly inspirational women and got to hob nob with the stars! Had a lovely chat with Claudia Winkleman who I was at school with. She’s fab – and not the remotest bit vain despite being stunning and really clever and funny. Sigh. I did notice she said no to dessert…why do I have zero self discipline?

Anyway, am now still in pyjamas, with leftover mascara round my eyes and a slightly sore head, trying to motivate myself to get on with some work and go and buy some gear we need for the after school club I’m helping to run. Thinking of making sugar mice with the kids – I think they’d love it and there is something so nice and old fashioned about sugar mice that even the mothers in the anti-sweets brigade can’t object, surely…

Have now found a memory stick and am determined to find time to load my O2 Joggler with pics and music today. Have taken loads of pics of kids’ school artwork with iPhone so should be straightforward to get them on to the Joggler. That way we get to see the kids’ pics all the time, without those scrappy bits of paper ruining my new kitchen walls!

We were late for school again today because Little Princess no 1 decided to have a tantrum in full view of everyone in the school car park as I wouldn’t let her take her new pencil case into class (they’re not allowed them for another couple of years). I wrote ‘Tantrum’ as my reason for lateness in the tardy book. Hope the head realises I meant my daughter and not me.

Scruffy-but-sexy caretaker grinned at me today. Felt myself blush and wondered if he smiles at all the mums. How pathetic?

New au pair update: The one I met seemed very nice and brilliantly efficient. Now just have to see if she passes test with Not So Alpha Male. He is a far better character judge than me so I’m insisting he meets her before I hire her. She’s coming over on Sunday to meet him and the LPs.

Am now a fully fledged tweeter and rather enjoying it. (if you’re interested my Twitter name is mum_e_tweets). Most impressive moment so far…tweeting from my phone while having my nails done. (We have been invited to a party by Not So Alpha Male’s boss and I have been instructed to ‘prepare appropriately.’ Am assuming that means I should have lots of beauty treatments for the first time in about 18 months…) I used  an iPhone app called Tweetie – absolutely brilliant.

Excited about nails – first time I have had acrylic ones. Yes, I know they’re naff and WAGish. But mine are short so not that bad and it meant I could have a French manicure that will last til party on Sunday.

Anyway, that was my one hour of Yummy Mummyness for the day – now got dinner to make, work to finish before weekend and eight tons of dust-covered clothes from building work on our house to wash. Sigh..

Wonder if new au pair knows what she’s letting herself in for.

Despite the sunny weather today, both the Little Princesses have woken up with snuffles. I guess that’s what happens when you let them wear summer dresses and no tights just because it finally feels like spring but is actually quite chilly. Hard to believe we had all that snow just weeks ago.
Actually I’m not feeling so great either.
Let’s hope we’re not all in the grip of pig flu, or Mexican flu or whatever we’re supposed to call it.
Saw on the news last night that they are bringing a live sample of the virus to Mill Hill to work on it in a special lab. That’s not far from us. Scary….
Trying to do some work but distracted by the million and one other things I need to do…make dinner, do the washing, go to the dry cleaner, play Solitaire on my iPhone…goodness, that game is addictive. I actually think I might be the world record holder. 2 mins 12 seconds. Anyone beaten that?
Have just bought a detangle brush from the Great Little Trading Company Website
It was £10. If it’s great I will be buying three and having them all over the house – anything to stop the daily hair brushing screaming. If it’s rubbish I’ll be letting you know here, very soon…