Hours of fun In the series "things I never knew might amuse a 10 year old this much" I give you the face transformer from The University of St Andrews (via Melle ). First you need to root through your digital pictures and in search for a good face on picture of your favourite little boy and go awww on opening folders you had forgotten you had, then after an age of clicking followed by awwws decide it is actually quicker to take another picture just for the purpose of the exercise, passport pic style. Then upload the picture and watch your child giggle for ages as you make him 50% monkey and acquiesce that indeed he'd doesn't make a very attractive girl. The next step is obvious, it's succumb to the pleas of "let's do your face now Mummy", skip the rooting in folders for suitable pics because I tend to be behind the camera and try to avoid being in front of it if I can, give The Boy a crash course on the D50, let him take a portrait and upload the resulting image Cue more giggles than ever because Mummy's face 50% ape is rather funny. I'd love to show it to you honest but we were laughing so hard I forgot to save it, honest. In the meantime enjoy this portrait of The Boy as a Megatokyo cast member |
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3.11.07 22:27 |
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Memorial My friend Kate's little boy Adam would have been 6 this week . This year to celebrate his short life she decided to break with the tradition of the previous 5 years and instead of fireworks of the evening she set free a white homing dove after her daughter said a few words. Once freed the bird circles over the garden to get its bearing and then flies home (to Essex for this particular bird so there were many a comments that it had a dangerous trip over London in perspective and people were hoping it would avoid the peregrine falcons ). The event was about celebrating life and, between the unseasonably sunny weather and the children doing their best to transfer mud from the garden to the house (nothing like water pistols in November right?) and to prove there is no such thing as too much cake, it did just what it was set out to do. 
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4.11.07 22:32 |
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argh! You know it's time for another eye test when you return a book to the library because however much you enjoyed the first 20 pages the print is just too darn small (somebody please invent ctrl++ for books please) and when you press the green back arrow and give up on a great recipe because the site's colour scheme (grey lettering on black) makes it painful to read.
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5.11.07 20:50 |
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random thoughts Why does my doctor's surgery think a tank is a friendly cheerful sort of a pictogram well suited to accompany the scrolling red welcome on the board in the waiting room? Why do I keep forgetting to recharge the battery of my small camera meaning I can't share the aw fator of 2 guide dogs, one a yellow labrador, the other a black labrador passed each other while assisting their humans across the road, oblivious to each other's presence? Why are estate agents so useless when it comes to turning up at the time they agreed? Why is it that when you give Estate agents precise instructions as to the locations you are interested in - say within 5 to 10 minutes walk for railway stations A, B, C or D which are all on the same line - the only places they ever offer for you to see are never withing the requirements (no I do not want to live 5 minutes drive away from station Y which is on a different line, which does not stop at B, C or D and only has 2 trains an hour into London). Why do I never learn and leave it to The Boy to hand over leaflets and letters from school instead of checking his bag more often than once a fortnight? This time I only found the note about sending the children to school with cake (baked or bought, no nuts please) to raise funds by selling said cakes at break time at about 11pm last night. A few years ago I would have baked something on the spot or woken up earlier to make a bunch o muffins, this morning I did not even bother popping round to the shop on the way to school to get a packet of goodies. Does it make up for it that I gave him enough change to buy 3 cakes? PTA approved mothering: I can haz FAIL.
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7.11.07 21:22 |
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Genius The last time we experimented with The Boy, testing the concept of pocket money in exchange for performing a bunch of tasks around the house the result was not conclusive. There was nothing he wanted enough to be worth tidying his toys away. These days he has a costly hobby and twice a day every school day he gets to walk past the shop where the objects of his desire are to tempt him. So we made a deal: £2 a week (that's the price of one of those little pots of paint to pretty up the models) in exchange for not having to nag to get him to help a bit around the flat (I'm not house proud so we are not exactly talking slave labour). The genius part, the pocket money also gets offset against a number of incidentals incurred by his general scatterbrainlyness (he is my son after all)like the library fine on the book I reminded him to take back a number of times. It also helps focus his mind. For example, jumper forgotten at school would in the past have meant me nagging him every day for weeks to go and look in lost property until I gave up and asked my friend Christine if she would go have a look the next time she had to go inside the building. This week all I had to do was say that 1 school jumper = 4 weeks without pocket money. The jumper made it's way home the next day. I like it when an evil plan comes to fruition.
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8.11.07 22:11 |
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Remembrance Sunday
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11.11.07 21:57 |
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The story of his life The Boy is learning about biographies at school at the moment. The latest pieces of homework have all been about gathering information, first about a famous person now about himself. I am really not very good at all with dates. Unless an event is associated in my head with something else which happened at the same time I will not remember the date at all. It has its good sides. For example I do not get any sadder around the anniversary of the death of loved ones because I genuinely do not remember when it happened. The flip side is I tend not to link happy events to any particular date either so unless your birthday happens to be at the same time as a generally known to everybody date I won't remember it unless I am reminded many times (for example my nephew, Valentine's day, I can remember that, just don't ask me what year, my niece "sometime in the autumn" is the best you will get from me). It's not that my memory is entirely terrible. I just tend to remember different details to dates (or names). But I digress, the scene: The Boy is on the floor in the living room, a pencil in his hand and a white sheet of paper in front of him. He is building a time-line so he can write an autobiography. "Mummy, how heavy was I when I was born?". Ok that's an easy one 9lbs9oz. "How old was I when I first walked?", easy too 10 months, easy because so much happened at that time it's all gelled into one big memory. "tell me things that happened between 1 and 2", still doing ok, there's moving to the house. Then the questions continue to come thick and fast "what about when I was 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9?" and there things start being hazy because there are no big milestones any more, just months blending into each other with nothing making 1 stand out enough that I could match it with a year. So I pulled out the photo album and as things caught his eye I was looking for clues in the surrounding pictures, counting candles on birthday cakes for example. I powered up the laptop and we looked through folders of photos which have dates added. Mostly, I answered "I don't know". As I did I was kicking myself for not having the time/ patience, attention span, staying power of some of my friends who carefully gather mementoes in pretty boxes to document their children's lives, or date and add notes to photos they put in albums or scrapbooks. I am a hoarder but I never got the collecting bug. I have been doing the mum thing for long enough that my guilt buttons is honed to extra sensitive. By the next morning I had a big fail imprinted on my brain so I couldn't wait to ask if the time-line had been good enough. "Huh huh, I had more stuff than the others". Guilt mode off. "The others didn't have things happen to them like having to move loads of times and change school and going to Casualty 3 times". Guilt mode back on, for about an hour when tried to milk the misery of his life to coax pudding out of me. I am not *that* much of a plum and I have been doing the mum thing long enough to recognise when he tries to play puppet master.
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15.11.07 22:55 |
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