just because..

1. Today i have been mostly wearing winter coats and large jumpers….its May and its cold. The weather is here is like some eccentric old dear, you just have to nod and smile and put up with its madness. 

2. Today all our kids, except the tiny one, got to swim. It was a fairly massive undertaking mainly due to the ratio system adults:kids that they operate here, means that Isaac is the only one who can swim without an adult supervising…and Maisie and poppy have to have one adult between them. It laughable really, all our older kids are really good swimmers…Isaac recently got his 100metres badge..i mean, im not sure i could swim that far and yet the Life guards view us with complete suspicion. Anyway Ben was delegated adult supervisor and he froze, God love him.

3. We are watching the west wing, i may have mentioned that…and there are a few occasions when reality is blurring and going fuzzy round the edges. For example, the american president has been here these past couple of days and i keep expecting them to be chatting about President Bartlett and not Obama. Speaking of which, he went to Ireland right? why? His great great great grandfather was from there. hmmm..think i might be able to conjure up a relative who lives in sunny Oz to warrant a visit there?

4. Half term is here, which is good for us. =)

5. im continuing to work through the wedding shots, this is a cute one that captured a moment, all be it a bit fuzzy which is annoying but i think it really captures a sense of fun in the little flower girls

6. J bird had an 8 month check, she is doing all things an 8 month old should be doing. Go jemimah. 

7. On monday i walked a neighbour's daughter home from school for her. She is older than my kids so poor girl got her ear bent by Maisie ALL the way home. Mostly about dogs, Maisie is currently on a mission to get her own dog. good luck with that. 

8. I am currently neglecting my blogger feeds, i tend to read blogs that are linked into facebook or twitter now and then only if they load pretty quick on my iphone. Its hard to imagine life without instant access to the WWW? I guess we would survive tho! 🙂

9. Whats the acceptable amount of time between bedding changes? just asking?

10. Next month it is June, in fact that is in a very few days and then i shall be on the final countdown to you know what 🙂

teamjames

I have joined up over there at twitter, apparently i have done this before, it told me. Mustn't have stuck with it……

thats just plain flakey.

So anyway i joined again and this time i actually worked out what the little shorthands mean, well some, and tried hard to decipher what a sentence means when it only consists of about 3 actual letters. I know that makes me sound so old….which in fact….

The reason i joined up at twitter was because of something i heard over a year ago in a seminar and it has stayed with me ever since and a few weeks back it just kept coming to mind. 

I was in a seminar about parenting and it was being led by a couple whose children were in their twenties…through all the stressy stages no? maybe thats why the parents looked so…i don't know…

clean?

They had finished the seminar and opened up the floor to questions and quick as a flash, almost predictably the question was raised 'my teenager is always on facebook or whatever and i never seem to connect with him/her' 

Before the mum could answer, her daughter said quite loudly into the microphone 'get on facebook!" 

It was kind of a conversation killer but i thought there was a lot of truth in what she was saying. Our kids are growing up in a very different world. My Isaac, at the age of 8 can operate my phone, the wii, the DVR, TV and any other assorted communication devices. This is their playground, these items are going to be at their disposal when they are old enough to choose or when we eventually give in….and we will…..

because it isn't an anti-social behaviour…it is social behaviour, its their reality in the 21st century and we have to either jump on the train or get left at the station going 'tap tap..is this thing on?"

Hands up who remembers the walkman? yeah? how many parents liked them? not so many. The walkman revolutionised how we listened to music back then and im sure the majority of parents would tutt tutt at the buzzing bee noises that could be heard from the earphones of a walkman user. But look what the walkman started? like a tiny lump of snow at the top of a hill it has started to roll and it grew and grew until it became normal and the 'old' way seemed odd. 

So my point is….

…..what was my point?

We are a fairly computer literate family…but im still aware that the kids learn, adapt and adjust quicker than us and we need to, if not keep pace, at least stay fairly close behind in the things that they choose, are marketed at them and that their friends are into. Ignorance is rarely a good excuse…

So that is the reason for my newly embracing attitude to twitter…but this time its grown on me and i sorta like it there. Come find me a follow if you will

me on twitter….

teamjames

So that would be um……. Yeah there are some. You know who you are! Some of my latest iPhone pics. Been trying to snap photos with my iPhone and been using the instagram application to post them to facebook.

on a stroll down memory lane….i can do this, its my birthday in 30 days time. So you know, I was born in the 70's…so my high school years were the 80's….so this could become a bit scary and pastel for some. 

first one:

i know i used to dance around my bedroom to this pretending to be in 'fame' i think i wanted to be the cool, funky Coco Hernendez but was actually more like Doris Schwarz! oh and check out the guy in the back on roller skates..remember them? We all wanted to be able to dance on wheels right?

teamjames

I had one of those moments today, it was weird. Walking home from school as we do every single day. I must turn my head about a thousand times on our walk home, checking everyone is keeping up and not dawdling or distracted or sulking…..i swear i need a sheep dog. 

Anyway i glanced back and Isaac was just walking behind me singing a song to himself and he smiled at me when he caught my eye…and i had a moment…when in a split second i saw the young man he is becoming and the child he is leaving behind and it made me catch my breath. As in…literally the strength of the emotion took me by surprise.

I was trying to think about why i felt so surprised by the feeling it gave me. I think because with young kids and this stage of parenting it can be so relentless and so labour intensive that there is no time or even inclination to stop and see the bigger picture..and sometimes that bigger picture is something you may not even be able to imagine let alone think about. Don't get me wrong Im not getting all sentimental about him not being a baby anymore etc but it was like peering through a window into the future and realising that he is becoming a young man. Our young man. And his life, his adventure and that of his sisters too is just beginning and that is kind of exciting. 

teamjames