Car journeys with kids

One of the most challenging things you can do as a parent is go on a long car journey with your children. By the end of it they are extremely fractious, grizzled, hungry, thirsty, and there is a good chance one of them will have wet themselves. You will be lucky to have retained your sanity.

On our last trip to visit the olds, it was about 5 hours each way. This involved the following incidents.

1) An hour into the trip Littl'un #1 pipes up with the usual "I need a wee!!!". Queue stop off at next service station for toilet break.

2) Five minutes later down the motorway Littl'un #1 pipes up with "I need a poo!!!" Queue stop off at next service station for yet another toilet break amid furious mutterings of "couldn't you go last time we stopped?" "But I didn't NEED to go then"...

3) Littl'un #2 then clearly feels that he has been left out of the equation for too long and starts whining. Luckily he is still in nappies so that is one problem avoided. (We did consider putting a nappy on his brother after point 2 but there you go). So then we start the great Feeding of Children to Keep Them Quiet part of the journey. Sandwiches, biscuits and crisps are passed to the back of the car and now the car looks like it needs a good hoover. Littl'un #2 is covered in jam and just out of reach, but he can still reach to smear jam all over the interior of the car. Littl'un #1 moans that he didn't want jam and complains mightily for at least 20 minutes.

4) Kids are sated for a little while. Mum decides to put some music on to keep them happy. Littl'un #1 has developed a taste for Meatloaf and after listening to "I would do anything for love but I won't do that" five times in a row, mum is ready to bail and hitch a lift for the rest of the journey. What started off as cute, Littl'un #1 singing along to Meatloaf, is now very annoying and when we try and put something else on he complains loudly that it is rubbish and "can we put Meatloaf on" over and over and over and over...

5) Finally we get to our destination. Kids get out of the car, and immediately say "can we go home now?". We have yet to face the journey home, and are considering ways to drug the kids to sleep on the return journey. 

Clocks

The clocks went back an hour today. In his wisdom Littl'un #2 decided to wake up at 6.15 yesterday's time which is very early for him. This means we have been awake since 5.15. I am refusing to change the clock's yet in a futile attempt to pretend it is still yesterday. Whoever invented the time change was a sadist or didn't have kids.

Strictly

So who WAS that bloke who got voted off Strictly at the weekend? I literally have no idea. Is he like that Andrew Castle who was famous for tennis or something then just famous for being annoying?

Spiderman

We went to the tip over the weekend to get rid of all the bags of garden waste I normally leave in my shed for about 6 months. The boys were in the back seats, the rubbish in the boot. Ten minutes into the trip the youngest started moaning. Me and Mr Babs ignored him for a while, it's quite common, but then when it got louder Mr Babs turned round to look at him. In that short period of time a cunning spider had come out of the boot and spun a web all over his face!! Ha ha. It was funny! Littl'un was not impressed. If we'd left him any longer he'd have probably been woven into a cocoon!

School stress

Littl'un is in Reception now full time. He's only done 2 full weeks and I am so stressed about it! Firstly I have no idea what they do all day, the odd crumbs he mentions when he gets home may or may not be true, for example, "we went to the park and climbed a tree and got stuck and had to get the firemen out". Oh righty. Then he has been on the "time out" spot at least 3 times, well these are the ones he has told me about. He said it was for fighting. There is another boy in his class who is a little shit, to put it politely. So I asked the teacher who claimed to know nothing as she "wasn't there" but it was "probably something to do with not doing what he was told". Gee thanks, if the teacher has no idea what is going on, who does?!

And this is Reception! Wait till he's in secondary school! I really want to get involved and make sure the boy behaves and doesn't start getting in bad habits, but the teachers' don't really seem to care. The only thing that made me feel better is that apparently most of the kids ended up on time out. I think they are just really harsh with their punishment. "You didn't put your chair in correctly, time out for you!" - maybe it gives the teachers a rest if 27 kids are all sat on the time out spot!

Strictly bye bye

Ha I was right! Edwina was the first to go, poor Vincent, I think he knew that when they got put together. I am still on Team Jason, he is so cool! Can I start a petition for next year? I want Dermot O'Leary and Greg off Masterchef please? And Philip Glenister, ooh, imagine him doing a foxtrot!

Strictly Come Dancing

But I am loving Strictly! They managed to make Holly Valance look quite ordinary and a bit chubby, and Jason Donovan rocked! Yeah for men who are "getting on a bit"! But that Edwina has to go, politicians and dancing really don't mix, especially when in your head you've got her getting it on with John Major every time you see her. It's putting me off my wine!

X factor again

Against my better judgment I've been watching the latest X Factor. It's more interesting now with different judges, though Gary Barlow obviously has the Simon Cowell hat on. But what's bugging me is all the messing around they are doing with the groups. The judges keep taking one person out of one group and then putting them in another, and most of the groups that actually auditioned as groups are sent home. Why bother auditioning as a group? You might as well audition individually and then if you don't get through on your own merits they may well call  you back and put you in a group with 4 other strangers and then flog you to the media. Doesn't matter that you don't know each other or even like each other. Well if it worked for the Spice Girls...

A 4 year old expert blackmailer

So Littl'un has been trying to get me to play Monopoly with him for ages. I keep saying "no", mostly as when he asks I am making tea or something, but I do feel bad! Anyway, yesterday I had just sat down after hours of gardening, ready to just sit and do nothing with a cuppa. He asked again, and automatically I said "no". "Right," he says all dramatically, "if you don't play with me I am NOT your boy anymore and I am going to go and live somewhere else".

Well, if you put it like that I suppose I'd better play!

Men and money

You know when you have a certain amount to spend every week and it is all accounted for? Mostly on food and a ridiculous percentage of it on beer. So you get the beer, and then the other half drinks it in 2 days and then goes out and buys some more. And has also developed a nicotine habit that is getting worse and more expensive! How can I be expected to keep to the budget?! But why do I feel guilty when we don't?!

And the depressing thing is, he would happily have us all live on frozen sausages every night as long as he has beer and fags in.

Doing two things at once...

It seems the new trend is that you can't just do one thing at one time anymore, like watch tv or go to a party. You have to sit watching tv while posting pithy tweets at the same time, the amount of times I've gone onto Twitter and it's all about last night's Dragon's Den or Strictly. I feel left out, at the time I had a brilliantly sarcastic one liner I could have shared, but my computer doesn't load up quick enough! (It is 7 years old people, practically prehistoric) And now there is a program (the Million Pound Drop) that actively tells you to log on and play along and you might get selected to be on the show next week and win shedloads of cash. And what is developing? A nation of people watching tv while on their laptops or fancy phones and not really relaxing as they never switch off. What happened to relaxing with your feet up and a cuppa?! The most advanced technological thing I ever did was a textathon when the Eurovision was on, Mr Babs doesn't get the comments about crazy hair and weird European lyrics!

Technology is great but it is stopping people interacting in real life. Next door had a barbecue last night (get them, October 1st and all!) and I watched them over the fence sitting round drinking and all on their phones texting other people or on the internet. It was quite sad really. If me and Mr Babs ever entertain I will have a dish to put phones in, a bit like the old car key trick :)

And if you ever don't want to know the results of a program or anything important, you can NOT go on the Internet. I used to have to avoid the news channels if I hadn't seen the last episode of Masterchef or something and didn't want to know who won until I saw it. Now I'd have to avoid Twitter, probably Facebook, and the news, and email just for safety.

Maybe I'll go and live in a cave with a tin foil hat on, it's probably safer...