Stranger Danger part 2

And so it turns out there is rather more Stranger Danger in the area than we'd anticipated - both schools sent out warnings yesterday that a black car with two men had been seen in the area, trying to entice young girls into their car. 

Its a good sign that the girls in question were sensible enough to refuse and then report it, although I can't imagine that having tried their luck and failed, the men in the car would be stupid enough to stay in the same area.

Christmas Menu Trial Run

We're having guests for Christmas (queue a joke about most people having turkey, boom tish); it has been a couple of years since anyone graced our table over the festive season and so I'm actually having to think what to cook - not just for the main meal, but for supper on Christmas Eve, breakfast on the big day and a Boxing Day lunch as well.  While I'm not getting *too* adventurous (no, Doug, we are NOT having goose), this is something that requires a little thought and a bit of planning.  It also offers the opportunity to trial a few of the recipes on the run up to the day, before deciding exactly what to cook.

We started last weekend.  Two potential contenders for Christmas Day breakfast and Christmas Pudding Replacement were rustled up, with varying results.

First up, Bacon and Parsley Hotcakes, served with a poached egg and a dollop of creme fraiche.  I quite liked these but they had strong cheddar in them, giving them a rather over-powering cheesy taste; maybe a milder cheese would work better.  Unfortunately, neither of the boys liked these (or rather Sam didn't, Jacob just refused to try them full stop), which rather rules them out as a potential breakfast dish.

The second dish was Sticky Orange and Marsala pudding, which was awesome, according to me, Sam and Doug.  Jacob, however, didn't like it at all, which may be the deciding factor when we come to make a choice - which is a shame because it was easy to make and you can prepare and steam it up to 3 days before you eat it; a bonus for Christmas Day when every gas ring is being used to make your main meal.

This weekend; Chocolate Amaretti puddings with Almond Toffee Brittle.

Stranger Danger

On return to school this week we received a letter via the Juniors telling us that the police have warned them about reports of "suspicious cars" parked in the vicinity of the school during opening time.

My first reaction to this was that, in all probability, the suspicion was entirely in the minds of the people that reported the cars to the police and that it was just a couple of dads sitting in their cars after dropping their kids off, answering their text messages before heading off to work.  Something innocent like that.

But what if.....  The trouble is that no-one wants to be in the McCann situation where not only have they had their child abducted, they'd left said child asleep alone in the room, thus allowing the ease of her abduction.  No one wants to be the parent that plays the (extremely long) odds of child abduction and loses.

Typically, all this co-incides with me giving Jacob a little bit of independence in his walk to school.  Since he started Juniors, once we get to the school grounds he hares off down the service road leaving me and Sam to trail behind him carrying his bags; we normally arrive at the Juniors playground in time to hand him his bags before he goes in to school and we then turn round and walk back down the service road to the Infants.  So I asked him if he would like to walk down the service road to school by himself.  And yes he would, thank you.

I've had varying reactions from the parents of his peers; surprise, slight disapproval, real disapproval but also quite a lot of "hmm, not a bad idea".  My next door neighbour is quite keen for her boy to do this, so we're wondering if we can actually get our shit together and arrive at the school grounds at the same time, thus allowing Jacob and Oliver to walk round to school together.

But I think it's probably time for a Stranger Danger conversation with Jacob.  I'm going to have to give it quite a lot of thought before I do it, because it's a fine line to walk - particularly as, statistically speaking, it's more likely to be Not a Stranger Danger.  It's worth noting that the only known paedophile in this area turned out to be the Deputy Headmaster at the Junior School....

Halfway through Half Term

We normally decamp to my Mum's for October half term, but as the puppy isn't still out of her vaccination quarantine we'd have been severely limited as to what we could have done there.  Plus, Mum doesn't have an enclosed back garden.  So, stay at home and see what York has to offer.

February half term is usually Viking Week, with shed loads of viking-related stuff going on around the City.  October half term dovetails nicely with Halloween, so the libraries have been doing Spooky Storytimes; ditto the Castle Museum with its gruesome stories for older children taking place in one of the cells of the old prison.  The kids have been to Castle quite a few times already, but the Victorian Street is always a winner.

Today we made some illuminated letters in the Yorkshire Museum and spent a long time playing with the magnetic mosaic boards in their learning rooms.  ("Mum, look! we've made a roman mosaic of Perry the Platypus!").  We're heading back there tomorrow for Astronomy Day - modelling stars and planets, a tour of the observatory in the Museum Gardens and getting hands on with the observatory telescope; unfortunately, it's going to be a cloudy day - we had been planning to take them to the evening session where they can look through the telescope at the heavens, but probably not worth it now.

Also planned for the weekend is the obligatory visit to the NRM - ever popular with the kids but the museum is so vast I need Doug to help me keep an eye on them.  Oh, and Jacob and Doug are going to see Tintin at some point, which means I'll have to take Sam to see something more appropriate for him - The Smurfs, probably.  I wonder if I can fob him off with a trip to Morrisons?  it seems to work in the advert.....

Its just like having another baby...

..... although it isn't, not quite.   For one thing, you don't stand outside in the garden at 5am waiting for your baby to do a poo, or have to de-lego your living room.  Doug and I have the same "parental" conversations along the lines of "only X accidents today" or "she slept through last night", and for the first week we had Coco, there was that dizzying feeling you get of trying to fit your regular routine around a new arrival; on day one, I rushed the kids out to school feeling as if we were massively late, only to arrive at the school gates a few minutes early.  In fact, with the house-training and de-lego-ing it feels more like having a toddler or pre-schooler - she still requires a lot of your attention, but is also quite happy to snooze away in her basket and be left alone.

The house training is as frustrating as toilet training the kids was - because I'm around most of the time, Coco mostly goes outside and she is getting the hang of using the training pads that I've put in the two places (one upstairs, one downstairs) that she seems to like to poo/wee on.  On the whole, she will either whimper or fuss about a lot if she needs to go, and then we can get her outside in time, but sometimes she just does something without warning.  I keep the boys' bedroom closed, but if she gets in, she will almost always do a wee unless I can get her out in time.  Coco also gets over-excited when it's their bedtime and there's quite a lot of movement up and down the stairs; it's almost as if she knows she isn't the centre of attention at this time, and on a couple of occasions she has pooed outside the bathroom in what is almost a "oi, back to me!" protest.

Obviously, things will change somewhat when she can go outside (other than the back garden).  She has her second injection tomorrow and then we have another two weeks before she can go out into the world - the boys are really looking forward to taking her for walks and last night we had a discussion about her coming with us on the school run.  But equally, we will be able to take her out first thing in the morning and last thing at night for her "constitutional" (as my mum used to refer to it), and I'm hoping those two walks will deal with her toilet needs without having to resort to our back garden too much, especially not in the middle of the night :)


And that's possibly quite enough about dog poo for the moment.....

Squeeee!

We have a dog!!!  Her name is Coco, although her Kennel Club name is Wingbeat Diamond, and she is an eight week old labrador bitch.

So far she has been extremely good and seems to have settled in with us well - she's fast asleep in her dogbed as I type this, and was a good girl when she went to the vets this morning for her first vaccination.  The boys are over the moon that we've got a dog and are being so gentle with her that it's lovely to see.

The only thing we have to get a handle on at this stage is getting her housetrained - we've had lots of accidents so far, but I've worked out that she starts whimpering when she wants to do something, so at least we're getting some warning to get her on the newspaper in time! 

Even Doug, who likes to play the crusty old animal-hater, is taken by her.  Perhaps a bit too taken - at one point last night he said "If I start to turn into your brother, please stop me".  

School Rules

Jacob's new school is a school of rules; most of these rules start with DO NOT.  Now I know that schools are home to the arbitrary rule - from the narrow strictures of what can be worn as uniform to whether you can whistle in the corridors or take crisps in with your lunch.  At my school, girls were briefly banned from wearing ankle socks on the grounds that it made them look like sluts.

At Jacob's school on Friday he was told he couldn't ride his bike nor Sam scoot his scooter along the largely car-free access road between the Juniors and Infants.   It's possibly the safest road in the area, hardly the M1 on a Monday morning.

My reaction on having this rule explained to me as being "for everyone's safety" (general WTF-age, followed by irritation, derision and truculence) made me think - and not just about the fuckwittery that seems to infect the leadership of Junior School.

If you think about it, the arbitrary rule goes out of your life around the time you leave school.  When you get to Uni, there are deadlines to be met and expectations about your attendance; when you start work, you encounter the seemingly arbitrary rules of our Health & Safety culture, but only rarely are you told that you cannot do something for no good reason.  I guess this is probably because you're an adult, with an adult's reasoning powers - if someone presented you with an arbitrary rule, you could probably defeat them with the sheer power of your contempt.

Doing a training course as a post-grad in a college that also taught 16 year olds, I was ordered out of a lift by a tutor as the rule was that they weren't to be used by students; I told her that I hadn't got an upper second degree in English and Medieval History to be ordered around by someone who was teaching an HND course in hairdressing.  You see?  contempt, arrogance (and considerable pomposity) defeat the arbitrary rule in a Scott Pilgrim-stylee battle where the tutor explodes in a puff of smoke and I get 548 XP (as well as a ride to the 9th floor in the lift).

But then you become a parent and your kids go to school - and once again, sooner or later, you are exposed to the arbitrary rule.  If my reaction on Friday afternoon was anything to go by, there needs to be Family Learning courses available to all parents to enable them to deal with these rules in ways that don't involve being utterly contemptuous of the people responsible for your children's education.

Perhaps I'll suggest it as a future course to the people from the local council.  And in future, on being told that my children have to stand completely still in the playground for the 10 minutes of breaktime, "for everyone's safety", I'll be able to smile brightly and say "right you are!" without blinking an eye.