How can you have the most possible fun?

Advice and thoughts needed please.

About six months back I was contacted by the brilliantly named Big Game Hunters, a company that makes garden toys and equipment, wanting to know if I wanted to review a swing.  Rather cheekily I said no, but that I was quite interested in climbing frames (rather more expensive, clearly, but if you don't ask you don't get).

Disappointingly, if not entirely surprisingly, they aren't going to send me an entirely free climbing frame, but they suggested we could trial their (free to all comers) design service to create a climbing frame just for us.

I told them our budget (up to £1,250 or thereabouts - grandparents have kindly been contributing to this fund for birthdays and Christmases), and the lovely Abby has designed not one, but four options, all of which I can tweak as desired.

The problem, of course, is that I'm not a small child and so I don't actually have any idea about what is brilliant fun for the next ten years (possibly a little optimistic in L's case, but hopefully not in M's) and what is just gimmicky and will never be played with.

Which is hopefully where you come in.  What do you think of the designs below? What did/do your children/friends/neighbours/that horrid little boy you never liked anyway enjoy?

All thoughts very welcome!


Number 1:  I think there are monkey bars going over behind the swing.  Not sure how that would work.  Like the bridge though

 Number 2:   M clearly couldn't manage that cargo net contraption yet, but should that stop us?

 

Number 3:  Where do we stand on the tunnel? I rather like it...

Number 4: ...But is a bridge more fun?  Answers on a postcard.

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 The disclosure bit - the design service is free to everyone, but they have offered to give us some money off the actual climbing frame if we buy it.  How much, I'm not sure yet!

Lego or Playmobil?

I know.

It's one of those great questions of the 21st century, isn't it?  Up there with Are those bones Richard III's?  (very excited to find out they are, by the way), How can we solve third world debt? and What on earth is quantitative easing, anyway?

Playmobil or lego?

What do you think?

Two weekends ago we went to stay with some friends.  They had a big selection of duplo:  houses, hospitals, police stations and the like, and L absolutely loved it.  Not the construction element of it, but the playing imaginatively, creating tiny worlds.

It's her sixth birthday in three months time and as she is completely obsessed by planning it, I am becoming so too, and this weekend rather inspired me on the present front.

But at six she's clearly too old for duplo.

So should it be lego - on the basis that you get imaginative play and the inspirational foundations of a glittering career as a celebrity architect (maybe) - and if so, which bit of branding? How much do we hate lego friends a year or so after its launch, or is it not as bad as all that?  Or if we shy away from that and the movie tie-ins is there anything in the lego city that isn't fuelled entirely by speed and agression?

Or do we go with tried and tested, hasn't changed in thirty years (still can't walk) playmobil:  no construction, but a world of different sets to play with, each of which more reflects how she was playing with the duplo?  Even though it's, somehow, not quite as cool as lego. 

Or is that just me? 


And while you're at it, should they all have had capital letters?

What should I wear to my husband's 40th?

It seemed like such a good idea at the time:

Please wear your favourite thing (and your swimming costume).

It's B's 40th on Monday (let's skip over the oh my goodness where on earth did the last ten years go bit) and we are having a party.  It's a These are a few of my favourite things party, because that way he gets to have all the stuff he likes: champagne (on offer), hot tub (hired - hence the swimming costume), karaoke, disco, roast pork, poppadoms (the curry house is bringing 100 round at 6.30 on the evening), ice cream... All in the garden (if the rain ever stops).

So obviously, the dress code is your favourite thing.  Which seems so easy, until you think about it.  Because actually my favourite thing is the thing that makes me look most like Angelina Jolie and least like a slightly stressed, slightly flabby, slightly saggy mother of four. (Angelina has six, or seven, which must be easier, economies of scale, and all that). And I don't seem to have a magic wand handy.

I've narrowed it down to the fact that I can't buy anything new (because that feels like cheating) and I genuinely like dressing up (in the posh, not stupid, sense), so where plenty of people are planning on coming in their pjs, that's not for me. I want to look splendid, and pjs (or at least my pjs) aren't splendid.  And I'm definitely wearing these:

But what else?  Because while B might be quite happy to have me in just gold sparkly shoes, I'm not sure the Scottish Borders is ready for that.

Here's the shortlist.... leave a comment letting me know what you think. I don't promise to do what I'm told, but some independent thoughts (and not that I need my legs waxing, that's next Tuesday) would be very much appreciated.

We could go sort of smart casual-ish.  These are absurdly flattering jeans (although better with shoes), and it's a nice top, although looking at the pictures I'm not sure it doesn't make my body look long and my legs short, which they are, but still....

Or the other extreme.  Nothing casual about this. I bought it for a friend's wedding in 2003.  Still love it:

 
Downsides: it appears to make me fade into the background, but I'm hoping that's just the picture.  Oh, and no bra... possibly unwise in a woman who has breast-fed (and sort of appears still to be breast-feeding) four children.

Or this.  I made this dress out of fabric my brother bought back from his gap year in China. Quite proud of that, but not sure I still have the figure I made it for. 

Or what about this?  I bought this in a charity sale about two weeks ago for a fiver.  It makes me feel all flirty.

B's always been quite a fan of this dress, which I bought with a friend (the same one whose wedding it was, as it happens) in about 1999.  I'm not convinced it does that much for me, but he wants me to put it to the vote:

He's also quite keen on this one, my amazing coat, bought on a whim for my birthday about five years ago in a funny little shop by Baron's Court tube, but I haven't got anything that really works underneath it (this purple job's a bit of a poor compromise), and as I've mentioned I'm not sure the Borders is prepared for the alternative:

So what about this?  Bought for the day after our wedding, when all the people my parents like but we don't know were invited for lunch.  Got a bit of a red wine stain on the front of it from a wedding about a month ago, but you can't really see it...

Or this? It is one of my favourite things, after all....but is it really that sort of party? And am I prepared to risk it?

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments box, if that's easier...).

HELP! - How do you entertain four children for 1,002 miles?

In three weeks' time we will be heading off on holiday.

It will, I hope, be brilliant.

But we are driving.

So that means an hour and a bit to Newcastle. Then 16 hours on a ferry.  Then nearly 12 hours on the road in Holland, Belgium and France.

I am told, by google maps, that where we are going, not far from Lyon, is 1,002 miles away from where I am sitting now.

And L gets car sick, so DVDs are not an option.


So we are going to need help...

We're thinking story tapes and CDs, but we need recommendations. L is just five and is loving having Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his ilk read to her, but S and A are 3 and a half and haven't got the attention span for "chapter books".  Their only request so far is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

M of course gets no say in this yet.  Nor does B, incidentally, although he's likely to be less tolerant of Twinkle Twinkle on a loop.

Any ideas?   Songs, stories, activities?

And if all else fails, I do at least now know the French for Soft Play Centre.

 

Balance bike or stabilisers?

We have a policy on Christmas (and indeed birthday) presents: try and get them something that we'd be buying them anyway.  It's worked so far, although I realise it probably won't for much longer, and certainly not once they hit school and peer pressure.

Anyway, this year, with L four and a half and S and A coming up three, we think it's time we introduced another life skill.  Time to get up on two wheels.  Bikes it is.

But even the world of bikes is not as straightforward as it was when my parents bought me "Bobcat" thirty-odd years ago.  There are now choices:  do we go for the tried and tested stabilisers, or the modern and trendy balance bike?

I rather feel that for L, we have missed the boat (if that's the right metaphor in this context) with a balance bike, although that might simply be because you tend to see very small children on them, and not the slightly bigger ones, but that for S and A, we could decide to go either way.

Fortunately we have cousins, and fortunately the cousins have both sorts, so this weekend we tried them out in an attempt to see what suits.

My instinctive preference is for the balance bike.  If riding a bike breaks down into two parts: balancing and pedalling, then pedalling is, surely, the easy bit.  Better therefore to master the tricky one first and then add the easy one.

The problem is, of course, that that leaves balancing as the tricky bit, and three year olds, or at least my nearly-three-year-olds, aren't that good at perseverance in the face of initial failure.  They tried the balance bike, gave up and proceeded to fight over the one with pedals and stabilisers* for the simple reason that they could do it.  My sister-in-law also pointed out that with twins, balance bikes, which require an initial intense element of parental participation, are even harder - you can't hold on to two children on bikes at the same time, apparently, especially if they're heading in opposite directions.

So I'm veering back to the principle of four wheels good, two wheels bad, but what do others think? Does mastering a balance bike first really make learning to ride a "proper" bike easier in the long run? Or doesn't it make much difference?



PS: You'll be pleased to hear that compromise was finally reached...

The Gallery - a photographic education

Say cheese!

We bought L a camera for Christmas.  I think we have learned more from it than her. 

She uses it totally differently from how I use a camera - she takes pictures indiscriminately, click, click, click, without reference to view finder or screen.  And while more often than not they're a blur of carpet or wall, every now and then she captures something that not only would I not have taken, but I wouldn't have even seen.

So I am torn between teaching her how to use a camera "properly", to compose, to think, to pause and check,  and letting myself learn from her how much there is in the world to notice, if only you take the time.

But that's not the end of my photographic education.  Because I need teaching, and I'm hoping, shamelessly, that the gifted and enthusiastic photographers of the Gallery can help me.  We've been talking about getting a new camera for over a year now, and not doing so because of the sheer overwhelming nature of the choice out there.

At present we have a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ5 which was my wedding present from B. It's fine, but it's both too big to slip in a pocket, and too small to take the amazing pictures I take in my head, if not in reality.  It's also pretty rubbish in low light, and I am coming round to the realisation that low light is pretty much all we get up here from October to March.  We used to have a little Nikon too, for the pocket slipping moments, but that's broken.

My sister, who is a semi professional photographer, uses and recommends, some sort of fantastically complicated Canon Digital SLR with a million different lenses and tripods, but I know that however much I'd like to, I'm never going to get my head around exposures, and apertures and all the other things one needs not only to understand (which I do, while she's actually explaining it) but to retain (which I don't; it seems to fall out of my head, as soon as she's safely 500 miles away again).

So, please, lovely Gallery contributors, educate me.  I need a smallish camera that works well in low light and doesn't need too much fiddling with, but still takes good pictures.  Does such a thing exist?  What camera do you use? Would you recommend it?  What would you go for if you were me? 

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Being not on twitter, I hadn't realised that for this week's Educational Gallery, Tara was hoping we'd post old school photos.  And having now realised I can't anyway, because they're all at my parents' house down South. So sorry to anyone who was hoping to see what I looked like at three, or six, or sixteen.  Although, come to think of it, there is one here....

Necessity is the mother of invention.

What do you do if you have one of these?:

Not to mention three of these:

(yes, I realise they do look a bit nasty but they're the ones that came off the tree yesterday, so they got bashed around a bit by the wind).

Well, first you chop up six kilos of them and put them in your freezer.  Then you realise that you now don't have any room for anything else in your freezer, so you take some of them out and make apple puree, apple chutney, apple sauce (yes, I know it's the same as apple puree but my children don't, and it turns out they'll eat pork if you cover it in sweetened apples, which is a bonus), apple crumble, apple pie, baked apples, apples, apples, apples, apples, apples...

Does anybody want some apples?

You'll have got the gist.  We've got a lot of apples and we're rapidly running out of ideas as to what to do with them. And then I realised that the prize in English Mum's Big Autumn Bake Off is a copy of a book called Food from Plenty: Good Food Made from the Plentiful, the Seasonal and the Leftover with Over 300 Recipes, None of Them Extravagant by Diana Henry.  And if there's ever a book I need, it's that one.

So, for the first time in my life... I made up a recipe.

I give you:

Apple Fairy Cakes (I need a snazzier name, I know, any suggestions?)

And you know what, they were delicious. So delicious in fact, and I'm so proud of myself (and L, who did some very valuable stirring) that not only am I blogging about them, in a blow your own trumpet sort of a way, but I also made them again, only in a big tin this time, and served it with creme fraiche as a pudding.

So, for my own reminder, when I can't remember this time next year, how I did it, and for anyone else in the same boat, here's the secret:

You need:

3 medium sized bramley apples
lemon juice (jif is fine)
teaspoon of cinnamon
demerara sugar
2 large eggs
butter
caster sugar
plain flour
teaspoon of baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 centigrade. (I have no idea what that is in farenheit, sorry)

Peel, core and chop up your apples into smallish chunks (you're going to put them in the middle of a fairy cake after all), and put them in a bowl with a squeeze of lemon juice, a tablespoon or so of demerara and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Weigh your eggs, shell on.

I know, you think I'm weird don't you? But honestly, this is how Mrs Beeton used to make a sponge cake, and if it worked for her... It's also the only way I know how to other than following a recipe, because it's how my mum told me, and presumably hers before that, and hers before that. I find something very comforting in the idea of all these women baking in the same way.

Weigh out the same amount of butter, caster sugar and flour.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one by one.  Then fold in the flour and baking powder. You can probably use self-raising instead if you like, I just didn't happen to have any.

Lay out fifteen (or so, that's how many it made for me) fairy cake cases (I've got the ordinary sized ones you can get in the supermarket - about two and a bit inches across (she says, vaguely, having absolutely no sense of spatial awareness)) and put a heaped teaspoon of mixture in each one.  Put two or three bits of apple on top of that, and then another, smaller, teaspoon of mixture on top. It'll be a bit sticky, and it probably won't spread down, but don't worry, it will in the oven.

Sprinkle some more demerara sugar on top and put them in the oven for about 12-15 minutes until they are golden brown.

If you do it in a big tin, mine is about 20 cm in diameter and it took more like 50 minutes to cook.  It was quite thin too, so next time I might do it with three eggs and increase all the other quantities as above.  It was also one of those cakes that was better the next day.

Oh, and if anyone has any other ideas as to what I can do with a million Bramley apples, do say.

ps Tescos had blackberries on special offer this week.... crumble for lunch on Sunday I think.

What's in your kitchen (and what should I have in mine?)

The most expensive thing I've ever bought is a house.

The second most expensive thing I've ever bought, is, you guessed it, the old house.

The third most expensive thing I've ever bought (by a significant distance, I hasten to add) is, I think, about to be a kitchen...

The people were here today. They've got lots of whizz-bangy, exciting, state-of-the-art, hideously expensive ideas.  I've got some too, but not as many as they do.

So, before I look pleadingly at B, sign on the dotted line and head off to seduce the bank manager, I'd love some help:

What's in your kitchen? What's not in your kitchen but you wish it was?  What should I have (and, perhaps more importantly, what should I not have) in mine?

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The picture is not my current kitchen (funnily enough)... in fact it's Mary Berry's and is from the Beautiful Kitchens Blog for which thank you.  Needless to say, it's rather larger than mine.

Wanted! Mum of four with twenty minutes to spare*.

B and I have had the conversation. 

And then we've had it again.  And again.  And again. With each other and pretty much everyone else we've come into contact with over the last few weeks.

Are we going to have another baby?

It's no secret (if it wasn't before, it certainly isn't now, the amount we go on about it) that I want another baby, and now we're here, and we have the space, and I have no job**, I really want another baby; but B isn't so sure.  And where I'm worried about birth defects, and age gaps, and more sets of twins, he's just afraid of a little hard work (and the twins...).

Because it would be hard work, wouldn't it?  A baby is hard work.  A baby, two toddlers and a three year old would be very hard work.  I can't pretend that it wouldn't.  All I know is that I want it anyway. 

But what neither of us knows is whether it's too much hard work.  Of course that's subjective.  If I'm a lazy bugger who likes long lie-ins (which I am) and you're a workaholic who enjoys laundry and can survive on four hours sleep a night, you're going to find it easier than me, goes without saying.  But what I want to know is, insofar as it is possible to be objective about this sort of thing:  is 4 children do-able?  Does it get easier each time? Do the older ones ever start to be more of a help than a hindrance?

So this is a plea.  Does any of my lovely readers have four children?  Does anyone know anyone who has four children? And if so, would you or they be prepared to tell all....?



* and if I can't find anyone, that might tell its own story


** and therefore need something to validate my existence (?).  I think therein may lie another post...

The Rules

One of the nice things about a new house and a new life is you can convince a trusting 3-year-old that certain things are going to be different.  Things that, if the truth be told, don't necessarily actually have to be different.  Things like "no toys in the kichen" and "we only have apple juice at breakfast".  The sort of things, in other words, that I've been trying to change for some time and haven't managed to. Until now.
"Things" that in another house might be called "Rules".

I've had rules in the back of my head for a while now.  A couple of months or so ago I read an article by a man who had brought up his son on his own (though sadly can't remember who he was or where I read it, sorry).  Anyway, he said that one of the secrets of his success (ahem) was that he had a small set of fixed rules which were never breakable*.

Now, if you'd asked me before I had the girls, I'd have said that you have to have rules and you have to be consistent.  In fact, if you asked me now, I'd still say that you have to have rules and you have to be consistent.  But the thing I can't decide on is what those rules should be. 

I know that they've got to be clear, I know they've got to be enforceable, and I know that they've got to be few.  You can't have too many rules, it just gets confusing.  But then I get stuck.  In fact, the only rule on which we are decided, agreed and live by ourselves is that the girls aren't allowed to hurt each other.  Hurting each other brings the wrath of  Mummy down upon them.   But even then the extent of the wrath of Mummy depends on all sorts of factors mostly relating to how thin Mummy's patience is wearing by that point...

But what else?  What rules should we have and how should we enforce them?  Is no toys in the kitchen a good rule?  Is it enforceable? And what about when the rules conflict?  If L bites A and then owns up, should I be cross because of the biting, or pleased because of the honesty?

I asked some friends about this, and they said that they had been told that the most important thing was to decide what was important to you, and then to live by it as well as imposing it on your children.  In other words, if you think the most important thing is that your children are polite, you must be polite. If you think they should be honest, ditto.... 

Which just adds another question - what about the times B and I conflict?  I'm tidy, B's not.  He's got endless patience, I'm not so hot at that. Where should our priorities lie?

Is this just another impossible parenting question, or can we achieve a set of simple, enforceable rules?  And if so, how?

*One of these was that when Daddy said  "It's time to go" it was time to go. No questions. No answering. No procrastination.  


To which I say, in tones of disbelief  "How?"  Whatever he's got. I want some of it.

Oh help! What's for lunch?

I've suddenly realised that my first proper week of unemployment starts tomorrow and that in just over ten days I'll be a full-time mum (we're leaving the girls in nursery on Thursday and Friday next week to allow time for packing ('cos I can pack up my house in two days, easy)).

I've got all sorts of worries about this:  will I lose my identity? Will B respect me if I'm not contributing to the family income? Will the girls respect me when they're grown up? Will I respect me when I can't remember who the prime minister is?  What on earth am I going to do with all that empty time???

But I've suddenly realised that I've given no thought at all to the biggie:  What on earth am I going to feed them?

I'm going to have to provide three delicious, nutritious meals a day, every day.  No respite: no "Oh well, they're going to nursery tomorrow, I won't have to think about it"; no "They eat a varied diet at nursery, so fishfingers for the third time this week won't kill them"

So this is a plea for advice.... what do you feed your children? And, more specifically what do you feed them for lunch?   Even I can make a piece of toast and put some cereal in a bowl at breakfast and I have a repertoire of things I feed them at suppertime* (it's remarkably the same as the stuff my mother used to feed me) but my brain goes blank on lunch.

I think the problem is that it's so long since I ate anything other than a sandwich or soup for lunch that I can't think beyond that.  But somehow I instinctively feel that a sandwich isn't sufficient if you're sixteen months old, and I'm not sure my kitchen floor would survive me giving them soup (even assuming L would eat it).  But I'm also not sure if I'm supposed to be giving them a proper hot meal at lunchtime too.  Am I?

So, please help!  Hints, tips, recipes...any and all gratefully received.

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*Things I feed my children:  shepherds pie, fish pie, spag bol, Annabel Karmel's chicken sausages (actually I make them into chicken burgers), AK's salmon rosti, the ubiquitous fishfingers (used to be home-made pre-A and S, now I am Captain Birdseye's most loyal fan), sausages, risotto (they actually tend to get that one for lunch), roast dinner if we're all having it (so not very often then), beans on toast, jacket potatoes, eggy bread, erm... that's it.  It's not wildly exciting is it?

Mind the (age) gap.

I recently posted about my want (need?) for another baby, and lots of kind people said lots of nice things, and in particular several (Chic Mama, Expat mum, Potty Mummy) said that I wasn't too old, and that I had plenty of time, and should just leave it a little while until I'm out of the baby thing, and see if then I really want another.

But the thing is although I know I'm not too old (despite recent purchase of anti-aging cream - aargh!), I don't feel as though I do have the time. In fact, I feel as though if I'm not pregnant in the next nine months, or year at the outside, I'll have missed the boat, and it'll be too late.

Why? I'm not nearing the menopause, there's no biological, or other, clock ticking away, surely I've got plenty of time....? Well I have, but I've also decided that I want this baby, if there is to be a baby, before A&S turn 2 1/2.   Which means if I'm going to get pregnant, I really need to do so in the next year.

Is this ridiculous?  Certainly A&S actually arrived sooner than we had intended (got pregnant quicker than we expected and then they were born at 36 weeks (this is standard for identical twins at our local hospital)), so there are just over 19 months between L and S, and just over a minute between S and A.  I suppose if I'd been able to pick and choose I'd have had a gap of about two and a bit years between each of my children.  Why? I think probably because that's what there is between me and my siblings, so it's what I know. 

So I have this feeling, or maybe a fear, that if I let there be a bigger gap than that between them, particularly in view of the fact that L and the babies are so close in age, that the hypothetical baby will be a tail end charlie, a little loner, tagging along at the bottom of the family, always struggling to keep up.  Or that I will find that having got all three of my girls to a stage where they are a bit more independent and I can occasionally read the paper or have a cup of tea in peace, I will resent a baby for being needy. 

So I'm asking: what is the "right" age gap?  Is there such a thing? And if there is a big gap in your family, how does it work?  And how was it going back to tiny babies and nappies after a big break?  Are my worries totally unfounded, or is there a grain of truth in my fears?

I love you Mummy...

... and I don't want Daddy.

L is going through a phase.  And it's a phase that's making all of us miserable (including S&A who don't like crossness and crying - who does?).

To put it simply: she doesn't want Daddy. Ever.

The other morning, when we woke up, B was first in to her room.  L took one look at him, screamed "Go away! I want mummy!" and slapped him in the face. This is not an isolated incident.

Let me put this into context.  B is an awesome father. A friend of mine was telling me this morning about something she'd read in a (nameless, sorry, I didn't catch a name) blog about whether you married a good husband or a good father. I'm either really lucky or really good at choosing, because I got both. B is amazing. he's hands-on, patient (mostly) and prepared to be climbed on, puked on, and generally run ragged.  Even better, he works from home, so he's here all the time.

But L doesn't want him.  In the end I refused to come downstairs until she decided to be nice to Daddy, and eventually that worked. But it's horrid. I don't like being cross with her; she can't, surely, like screaming and shouting; and it's really, unbelievably, hurtful for B who utterly adores her.  It's also knackering for me, because guess who has to put on all the pairs of shoes, get all the cups of milk, read all the stories, fetch all the toys that she's left elsewhere, push all the pushchairs and, of course, empty all the potties...?

I realise it's just, as I said, a phase, and somehow I found it heartening to discover during a whingy phone call that my friend LC is going through the same thing with her daughter, so it's clearly not just us.  But this really isn't one that I, or B, want, or have the heart, to wait out.

ps. I started this yesterday, and never got round to posting it.  Of course last night, she and B were absolutely best of friends.  Just by force of circumstance he ended up doing her bath while I was with A&S, and they had a wonderful time during that, and stories and into bed.  I heaved a huge sigh of relief, only to wake up to her demanding Mummy again this morning....

What shall we do with the poorly baby?

Or perhaps, more accurately, what shall we do with the perfectly ok, if disgustingly snotty, other two?

We've got a cold.  It's just a cold. It's not flu, swine or otherwise, it's not norovirus (incidentally when did that stop being "stomach flu"? It sounds much more scary these days, and I'm pretty sure it's basically the same thing) and its certainly not any one of the millions of terrifying afflictions which seem, at 3 am, to lurk out there in wait for my children.

But while A and L are combining being full of snot with being equally full of beans, S is feeling miserable.  She's fevery and tired and wabbit (great word that. B uses it. I don't know if it's Scottish or just in-law-ish, but I love it) and what she really wants to do is be cuddled.  Constantly.

But I can't. Because I have L and A, and what they want to do is play, and argue, and snatch toys from each other, and giggle at each other and go out "Mummy, pleeeeeease", and play somewhere that isn't our living room, and shout.  And I can't see a way to make the two combine.

At the moment, of course, they're all in bed. But I am girding myself for the moment of wakefulness and the juggling act that is normality.  With an added dose of cold.

How to lose friends and alienate an entire Boeing 747

First a word of warning: If you are flying to Vancouver this Christmas and are planning on sitting in economy on the daytime flight on 19 December with BA you might want to change your flights.

(voice of doom)

Because we are going to be on it.

And when I say "we", let's not forget that that includes two just-one-year-olds and a partially potty trained toddler.

By way of background, and before you think I'm insane or ridiculously extravagant to be even thinking of doing such a thing, my brother and his wife now live on Vancouver Island.  We haven't seen them (obviously) since they went in August and I'm missing them.  Plus (and here's where the not ridiculously extravagant bit comes in) if we go now, when S and A are under 2, we don't have to pay for them.  This is a big deal, so with trepidation and gritted teeth, we've booked.

It's going to be amazing.  Be prepared to be jealous, because my lovely parents have booked a chalet in Whistler for the first week and then we've got a few more days with S'n'T (brother and sister-in-law) in their house.

But first we've got to get there.  I think that I've done everything right so far.  I've pre-booked the seats, so that B, L, I and my very long-suffering sister are in a block of four, with S&A on the drop down bassinet/bouncy chair things in front of us (my parents, wisely, are flying business). I've checked whether I can take "proper" milk through security (I can't, so I think I'm going to have to come up with some scheme involving empty water bottles and a rather odd request at Pret). I've got L excited about the flight and being able to watch lots of telly (all normal rules clearly out of the window). My friend KH is going to lend me her flying bag of goodies (she's South African and has done this lots with her 2-year-old).  I've got a shopping list of stickers and new books and colouring pens...

So that's L sorted.  But what about S&A?  They'll be just one.  Very active, very mobile (though not walking) and very likely to get very bored very quickly.

I've already decided I'm going to have to

a) dress them identically in the hope we can play on the cuteidenticaltwins thing and
b) apologise in advance to the entire plane in the hope that that draws their fire.

But what else? How on earth do you entertain two one year olds for ten hours....?