Accidents and advertising

"Mommy, if you have an accident and it wasn't your fault and someone else was to blame then you need to call someone about that don't you?"

I think Pix might just watch too many TV channels with commercials on. Back to Cbeebies.

Let's go fly a pirate ship.

After a horrendous start to the Bank Holiday weekend (horrendous to the point I had to call all of Ed's colleagues to get them to interrupt his client meeting so he could come home RIGHT NOW because I couldn't stop fainting from a stomach bug. Which he then came down with. Yeah.) things picked up and we made the most of the glorious weather. I know, May Bank Holiday, nice weather and the north west of the UK - I don't think that's ever happened before.

On Sunday we headed up to Lyme Park to fly kites up at the Cage, cavort around the adventure playground and roll down hills.

Let's go fly a kite

Crawling up that hill, made a deal with God....

They were filthy by the end of it. So were we! They don't warn you of that when they're extolling the virtues of babywearing, do they? ;)

Today we made good on Pix's belated birthday trip to Gulliver's World which was heaving - better than our last visit when we tried to go when it was still closed for the season. Whoops. Taking the carrier on its second trip of the weekend was inspired really; it was SO much easier to have Pops tucked up on us rather than being pushed and barged by the crowds in the pram.

The park is looking a bit tired and was understaffed which is a shame as it's the perfect size for littlies. There's only 2 rides that Pix can't go on and there's a fair few that Pops is able to ride on too. Although as she seems to have grown 8 foot overnight that's not surprising. Two things they did really well were the number of toilets (hurrah, says the ridiculously tiny sized bladder person!) and the number of climbing frames where the kids can run riot. They both did really well with queueing and walking and I think it's because they got to run off steam at every second corner.

Apparently as Pix got off the Pirate Ship and his dad said thank you to the guy running it, he shouted "Shiver me timbers!" then ran off. He's a comedy genius sometimes.

Scream if you wanna go faster!

Given the amount of sugar, e-numbers and BLUE ICE LOLLIES they had, I'm surprised they're asleep. Thank god they are, I'm bushed.

*tap tap* Is this thing on?

Oh dear. 6 months and no post. You can blame my forum and GOING BACK TO WORK for that. Eurgh.

Allowed to wee yet?

I've just come across this post on a new mother using Gina Ford's methods. Hilarious. You should check out Laura's entire blog, it's very funny.

Does TV stunt children's brains?

Confession time! My children watch TV - a lot of it.

Until two days ago.

I've cut them off cold turkey. No more Peppa (hurrah!), no more Mr Tumble, no Batman, no Dora the Explorer, no Spiderman, Super Hero Squad, Ben & Holly, Mister Maker, Thundercats, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Team Umizoomi, In the Night Garden....whew! Yes, there's a lot. So TV is more of a staple in this house rather than a treat. It also doesn't work as an electronic babysitter because there's no novelty value to it.

Although there was some mega whining about not having the TV on during the first day (and, to be fair, some the second day too), Pix has risen to the challenge admirably. He's spent hours and hours playing clever little games, making little worlds and asking questions. Oh God, the questions! Here's just a taster of what we've covered today: what planets there are, gravity, maths (addition and subtraction), what aliens might eat (salt), why we think about people when we're not with them, why people might die if they don't eat their breakfast (he's going through a death phase at the moment), how to send an email to people, whether jumping counts as exercise, does Woody from Toy Story get old and die (hello death phase!), what are cars made out of, what are tellys made out of, why are there so many red lights on cars, where does rain water come from and why does the swing make his penis tickle. I'm sure he didn't ask this many before, so perhaps turning the TV off has stopped stunting his brain. I might put it back on tomorrow for a rest ;)

We've also noticed that there's been absolutely no shouting matches over the last two days. And there's been quite a few recently, so that's amazing. Where he has started to try it on, he's backed down pretty quickly and it's not escalated to being removed from a situation which has been pretty amazing really.

How much screen time do your little ones get? Do you see a difference in their behaviour when it's off?

We started the indoctrination early with Pixie

Minty....fresh?

It's perhaps indicative of my state of mind why I didn't put two and two together to make the answer to why Pops has had a bad tummy and skin complaints... It was, in fact, only when I stumbled across a post in a forum of mine that I discovered that peppermint tea can sometimes cause diarrhea  and skin irritation in nursing babies. Peppermint tea is what I've started drinking by the bucketload for the past few weeks.

Head, meet desk.

How on earth it didn't enter my head that there may be a connection when her brother has an allergic reaction to mint I don't know, but since I stopped the tea her problems have begin to, er, dry up. I'm sure it wasn't the cause as the timing's wrong but early indicators show that there's a link. Unfortunately, that leaves me without a hot drink of choice!


ETA: I've reintroduced a couple of peppermint teas into my diet and so far so ok. On second thoughts I don't think it was that after all, but I'm not taking chances!

Dermatographic urticaria, or, why my child is weird

Poppet is in week four of a bout of diarrhoea (woo, spelled right the first time, get me!). Tests show she doesn't have a bug, so it's probably some sort of viral thing. It's not pleasant, but she's fine. What's interesting to note is that the last few days she's been really reactive to touch. If you pick her up, or hold her, or she knocks herself, or anything really she gets bright red marks. It rather looks as though she has dermatographic urticaria - a small scratch to her arm flared up in a big welt. The font of knowledge wikipedia says it can occur post virally. Am I meant to notify the doctor of this?

Good grief, but can none of my children be normal in the health stakes?