Big Bus

Auntie Wendy and Uncle Neil!! Peter loves his big bus, as you see.


But at night, when he's gone to bed, it has nowhere to live, and it sits in the middle of the living room for me to look at.

Look at this

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/toys3.html

China produces 75% of the World's toys. 55% of those end up on my living room floor. I couldn't say it if it wasn't true.

Bubbles

Good call, Grandad-with-the-drums! Bubble machine very popular!! Gets an exceptional plastic crap exemption. Very few of those handed out. Here's Lizzie andPeter enjoying the fun.

Car crash? Fist fight? Strawberries?

We also went out picking strawberries near St Cyrus. Between you and me, I think Peter was eating them as we were going round. Good job he didn't make it obvious... errrrr....

The REAL reason Peter didn't get lots of presents

Well, at £40 a time for me and Diane, there wasn't a lot of money left for Peter's presents. So he stayed home with his Gran, and we went out and had a good time on his behalf. Awesome.

Hard work being two

Peter's second birthday. Argh! I dread birthdays for fear that the Toys R' Us truck will comne and dump its load on our front lawn. Tried to get around that this time by not telling anyone, least of all Peter, it was his birthday. So Pea-brain knows he had cake for breakfast, but doesn't know why. Family did well though - socks and a fiver from Auntie helen and Uncle Darren, couple of games from Stewie and Michelle, clothes from Nana and a scooter from Gran... so not too much pink plastic crap littered around the place. In fact, I almost approve, AND I haven't been drinking anything. Apart from God's purest tea. We went out to Stonehaven.

Peter with scooter and cake.


Peter and Lizzie enjoying ice cream. Peter looks like he's trying to be Axl Rose.


Peter really enjoying his ice cream


Lizzie, on collision course with Black-headed Gull


Peter at the amusements, scared by Postman Pat



Peter won a fish. All too much. It's hard work being two.

Barbie Mermaidia

Hooray! A Barbie Mermaidia doll is in the house! A development that I regard with unalloyed pleasure.

Missing shoes

Scottish wife has pointed out that I MISSED 4 pairs ofLizzie's shoes... her sparkly ones, and three pairs of dance shoes - ballet, highland (eugh!) and tap. So that's 19 pairs of shoes.

???? wtf?

Shoes

Goddammit! *I* have two pairs of shoes, both Doctor Martens boots, seen better days. My children (2, seen better days) seem to need 15 pairs of shoes between them! 14 seen here, one more currently on Peter's feet. Bear in mind that at this age the shoes last about 3 months if we're lucky. How does this work? See documentary evidence. There is another caterpillar around, couldn't find it. This is just tooooo much.

Fountains of sweetcorn

10 days since my last post - our house has gained further varieties of PPC that I will document when time allows. But you should know this.... Saturday lunchtime - we found a baked bean in Peter's ear! And today, the wee P-brain sneezed up a piece of sweetcorn that had been lurking up his nose for the last two weeks. Surprised he didn't eat it, or stick it back up an available orifice. The minger.

Pea-brain

A copycat crime. Lizzie stuck a pea up her nose at tea time. Fortunately she's old enough to blow her nose and get it out again. What possessed her?

Does the bus go faster if I get out and push?

On way home tonight...Diane rings. 'Where are you?' Well I was on the bus coming home. 'Can you get here as fast as you can... we're going to have to take Peter to A+E.' Not the words you want to hear. Especially as I can't make the bus go any faster, short of hijacking it.
It turns out that while Diane was making our tea, my IDIOT son had been systematically shoving sweetcorn up his nose. I have a funny feeling he was being egged on by my wee girl, but eventually she got round to telling her mum what was going on. Apparently he started sneezing, and 2 bits popped out, but Diane could see another lodged wayyyyy waaaayyyyyy waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy up there, and had rung the Doctors and she had to go to hospital so a nurse with some teenytiny, but long, tweezers could hoik it out.

Oh, the shame... there we were in baby A+E, comparing mishaps. One boy had fallen off his bike, broke his thumb and had a bleeding head. Another baby had fallen off the settee and had a big bump on her head. And us.... well.... sweetcorn blockage. Took them a few minutes to get it out. First we tried blowing up the other nostril... then the long tweezers, and out came this sweetcorn. Had a good look up his nose with a sweetcorn searchlight, but looks like all out. We went home. As i was getting him ready for his bath - lo! Another bit of sweetcorn up there. Where did THAT come from? NO WAY I am heading back to A+E to sit with the boys with saucepans on their heads etc, so I went after the f***er myself. Diane and her running pal were intially surprised to find me on the living room floor with Peter in a vice-like grip and a screwdriver up his nose. In hindsight I can see their point. So we borrowed some eyebrow tweezers from next door, and I got it! Please god let that be the END.



IDIOT! :-) Note plastic crap keeping him amused.

Sunday - a non-plastic day

Isn't it boring when the footie season ends? Not that following Leeds United is a barrel of laughs, but at least it's something to be worried about at weekends. NOW, argh! I was tricked into spending time with the family!! :-) We went out for a picnic in Hazlehead Park - lovely - never been there before. Only when I got there was I told it was for a wholesome afternoon of healthy exercise - playing rounders etc. OK I managed to avoid the rounders, but only at the expense of a serious session at the swing park. What next, standing around the piano singing songs?? Argh again! Come back plastic crap!!

Skirting board - what that?

IIIIIII remember... when the World was young, and we didn't have any kids, Diane had three cats and sometimes there would be a few cat toys, baskets, maybe even a cat, strewn around the floor, and we'd get itchy about that and tidy up. Then Lizzie came along, and one of the cats got in a huff and died, to spite us, and the other two moved into the garage for some peace. And then, dear reader, something strange started happening to our house... the floors got smaller. Bits of baby-scat would gather and get pushed into the corners. Christmases and birthdays came and went, and then one night we got drunk and bam there was Peter too, so double the number of birthdays etc., and piles of stuff came into the house. Like Trojan horses, we allowed these prettily wrapped things to come through the door, but inside... they contained plastic toys. Oh yes. Plastic toys which neither die, nor move out, nor even rot away, but pile up in the corners. NOW, we live our lives in a 2 x 2 metre bit of floor space in the centre of the living room, with mountainsides of plastic crap all around, scared to make a noise in case it all comes tumbling down. You think it can't happen to you?? Beware! Beware! Still at least we never have to clean the skirting boards.


The corner of Peter's room. Where plastic goes to die.

More comics

Here we are... case in point. This turns up in the ASDA bags. £2.25!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Note the My Little Pony purse sellotaped to the front with something stronger than battleship chains. To my certain knowledge, Lizzie already has 4 purses. And no money!

Open the back door and let some plastic out.

Peter would like to show you the latest addition to our emporium of plastic crap.

Comics

And another thing.... in my day, by which I mean August 14th, 1976 (I remember it well, we hung out Union Jack Bunting and had cups of tea and cake in big street parties) (actually I think I'm getting confused with the Silver Jubilee)... anyway MY day, whenever it was (think Sex Pistols, power cuts, Morecambe and Wise, crushing a grape, trades unions, Cheggars Plays Pop, winter of discontent, Home Rule - that's around the time I'm talking about), we bought comics and they had the decency to cost 10 p and just be a comic.

NOW.... (think Blair, Girls Aloud, ASBOs, nuclear inspectors, windfarms, Big Brother errr... Morecambe and Wise, Home Rule) they cost £1.75. Yes.... you non-parents gasp. I'll say it again. £1.75... AT LEAST, and are either full of princesses or turtles (according to gender) and ALWAYS come with a cheap plastic toy. A reaalllllyyyy shit one as well. They always either don't work, or if they're not meant to work (like a necklace), they break, so the kids get disappointed. I don't want them because they fill up my house with plastic crap. Newsagents and distributors don't want them cos they are all bulky and angular and make it a nightmare to package and stack the comics. The publishers don't want them because they cut into profit margins - basically they spend about 20p per toy, tops. But this is the clever capitalism bit. Every publisher has to put toys on their comics, because all the other publishers are putting toys on theirs. So toys it is. The comic industry revolves around kids whining for cheap plastic necklaces.

And if anyone has ever pulled a toy off a comic without the sellotape ripping off half the front page, I'd very much like to know about it.

Plastic. Crap.

Plastic... well first I guess it's made from oil and coal and stuff. Strangely, apart from perpetuating global environmental crime and propping up mad-dog capitalist economies (no names!), I don't mind this. In 200 years or so when we've finished robbing all the fossil fuels and there's none left, people are going to realise how useful it all was, and they're going to look back at us and be gobsmacked that we used to burn the stuff. At least with plastic, something is being made, rather than burnt. Of course, the oil might be spilt on the beach (bad), but if we're lucky, it is made into plastic pellets.


Mostly, these are thrown in the sea. Well, not mostly. But a lot find themselves overboard one way or the other, where they may float, and of course hang around FOREVER! Birds eat them. It fills their stomachs and they starve.

But if we're lucky, plastic pellets reach their destination, where they are turned into... well... the stuff that fills my house. I guess some of it goes to good use and benefits humanity. The rest of it is wasted on stuff like Barbie.

And then... if we;'re lucky.... it's recycled. I would love to see Barbies melting. But most of it goes to landfill... or back in the sea! Plastic bags look like jellyfish. Turtles eat them and die. This lot was pulled out of a dead Minke Whale's stomach. (copyright - sorry I don't know where this came from).



Is that a 'Boots' bag?

Xmas 2005. I'm quite astonishingly happy that by 10 am they would rather play with the boxes. Against the odds, my children have souls. Next stop, armed revolution. And then maybe they'll leave home! Boom boom! That joke didn't turn out as funny as I'd hoped.

No one gets out alive

I didn't have any grey hair before the kids.