Posted in Church, Faith, Family, Kids, tagged bible memory, bible memory verse, Children, Kids, kinetic typography, Philippians, Philippians 4v6-7, Seeds Family Worship on 12 June, 2009| Leave a Comment »
A few weeks ago I posted up the kinetic typography YouTube clip of Psalm 55v22 from Seeds Family Worship.
A couple of nights ago I came across another one they’ve done, of Philippians 4v6-7. ‘Do not be anxious…’ A good verse to hold onto, especially when feeling rather overwhelmed by the pace of Vicarage life…
Posted in Family, Kids, tagged Children, dentist, elephants, fillings, Kids, teeth, toothbrush, toothbrushing, toothpaste, Vicar's wife on 12 May, 2009| 2 Comments »
I am a bad mother. It’s true. The Queen and the Joker both have fillings.
Every parent knows that brushing the children’s teeth is an excruciating experience for everyone. I loathe it and confess to having been a slacker (hence the fillings). My inner city dentist, used to the bad diets of local children, told me to stop giving them pop and sweeties but I am a bit of a food Nazi and the kids hardly ever had them anyway. So it must have been my bad brushing.
Actually, you should only have a pea-sized amount of toothpaste.
But since I started my new brushing technique the fillings have stopped. Phew.
What we do is count elephants. This is because:
What I do is go around the mouth counting twenty elephants seven times – twenty elephants along each side of the mouth, top and bottom, with the mouth open. Then twenty elephants each side and front with the teeth together. This makes a total of 140 elephants, which is the dentists’ recommended two minutes with a bit extra to compensate for grumpy children.
It seems to be working for us, and can also be transferred to the kids as they start to brush for themselves. ‘Have you counted the elephants’ I ask the Queen when she brushes her own teeth…
Posted in Playground rhymes, tagged Children, Coca cola, Playground rhymes, Wolverhampton on 11 May, 2009| 24 Comments »
My kids have a strange but great selection of playground rhymes so I thought I’d share a few with you. They’ve learnt some new ones since we moved, but this is a Wolverhampton one.
So here are the Queen and the Joker reciting ‘Coca cola’ (lyrics below):
Coca cola, coca cola.
Alley alley pussy cat, alley alley pussy cat.
Coca cola, coca cola.
Alley alley pussy cat, alley alley pussy cat.
The boys got the muscles, the teacher can’t count
The girls got the sexy legs, you better watch out.
The boys go X X, the girls go ‘Whooo’
PS Please excuse me going ‘Go’ at the beginning – it’s the only way I could make sure they hadn’t launched their rhyme before I started recording.
Posted in Family, Kids, School, tagged anti-viral, Children, playground, swine flu, virus on 1 May, 2009| Leave a Comment »
When I picked the Queen and the Joker up from school yesterday, the Queen was holding a folded blue paper towel in front of her face.
Inadequate anti-viral protection
When I asked her what it was for she told me that it was so that she didn’t catch “the virus”. “But it can kill you Mummy,” she protested as I told her to put the paper towel away.
Her teacher had told the class about swine flu, and that they should make sure they wash their hands after they sneeze or cough.
The Queen also knew that the virus was spreading all over the world. It took most of the walk home for her to be convinced that her rather original method of protection was not going to be effective.
Posted in Family, Lads mags, tagged Asda, Children, Church Times, consumers, Express and Star, Lads mags, Mothers, Over-sexualisation, porn, Pornography, Supermarkets, top shelf on 17 February, 2009| 1 Comment »
In the midst of piling clothes into big boxes and hunting for missing library books, I had a phone call from the Church Times yesterday afternoon.
They’d been reading the article about my success in getting lads mags put on the top shelf in a local Asda store and were interested to know more about my ‘campaign’. I hadn’t had it in mind to start one, but somehow it seems to be launching itself.
One of the things I said to the CT reporter was that complaining to your local supermarket about the display of lads mags isn’t difficult. You can do it verbally or in writing in a couple of minutes at the customer services desk.
The supermarkets need to know that most people buying their groceries don’t want to see these magazines and particularly don’t want them shown to their children, or anyone’s children for that matter. The supermarkets also need to know that consumers are prepared to take their custom elsewhere if these displays are not changed.
It has also struck me that it is likely that far more supermarket customers are mothers and others concerned with preserving the innocence of childhood than buyers of lads mags. Consumer power could win this argument.
Posted in Family, Kids, Lads mags, Wolverhampton, tagged Asda, buck passing, Children, Complaining, Express and Star, Lads mags, Over-sexualisation, Pornography, top shelf, West Midlands, Wolverhampton on 13 February, 2009| 3 Comments »
The success of my complaint to Asda about their lads’ mags display was written up in our local paper this week. The article was pretty fair, although I’d hardly call a five minute queue at customer services and a five line complaint a ‘battle’, as they headlined it.
As the Express and Star have an online version people have the opportunity to comment. The commentators seem to fall into two camps – the ‘good on yer’ set and the ‘you’re a prude, haven’t you got anything better to do with your time, you leech on society you’ group.
So far, all the ‘vicar’s wife=prude’ comments have been from men. Interesting, but sadly not that surprising.
Meanwhile, my friend Mrs Starcook has complained about the same thing in the Wolverhampton Asda. They, however, phoned her and said they couldn’t do anything about the position of the magazines because ‘head office decide where everything is placed’. Sounds like buck-passing to me. The Asda I went into didn’t have the same problem.
Maybe they just need a few more people to complain. Any takers?
Posted in Family, Kids, tagged Children, Grammar, Kids on 13 February, 2009| 1 Comment »
I’ve just realised why my children do things
on accident.
It’s because they didn’t do them on purpose.
Posted in Church, Faith, Family, Kids, tagged birthday, Children, Church, church family, Family, Generations, inter-generational, Kids, older people on 10 February, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The Joker was six the other Sunday. We’d already planned a party for him at a local soft play park, which happened after school on Monday. So what about celebrations on his actual birthday?
To tell the truth, we’d not completely factored in his birthday when planning our last few Sundays in this parish. So we’d invited three church members to lunch. They were an octogenarian chap and a couple who are both retired.
I hope you’re not surprised to learn that we had a delightful Sunday afternoon. The Queen, the Joker and the Engineer are used to having all sorts of folk over for lunch, so they didn’t notice that the people around the table were older than their grandparents.
Before lunch they’d enjoyed showing their baby pictures to our friends and the Joker had been demonstrating his new birthday toys in the living room. Thankfully, not the pogo stick. We all particularly enjoyed his sharing of new jokes from his Basil Brush joke book.
I can’t think of many of my friends or contemporaries who regularly share meals with those of a different generation other than grandparents or other family members. So it is one of the great joys of being part of a church family that we have friends of different generations.
I was recently told that the promotion of intergenerational relationships is a current trend in community development. The Big Lottery Fund is certainly supporting it.
I wonder if the government would just consider encouraging people to join a church family instead?
Posted in Family, Food, Kids, tagged Broccoli, Children, Food, Fun, Kids, Veggies on 27 January, 2009| 2 Comments »
The Joker started crying at tea tonight because I gave some of his extra broccoli to his brother.
My children are unusual (the Curate says I can’t call them ‘strange’).
Posted in Kids, Lads mags, tagged Asda, Children, Complaining, FHM, Lads mags, Nutz, Over-sexualisation, Pornography on 13 January, 2009| 4 Comments »
I had a letter in the post today which cheered me a little. It was an apology from the manager of the Asda store which I’d shopped in for the first time on New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t apologising about the shocking queues in there, but then I’d not actually complained about that.
I had complained about their magazine displays.
We were hurtling around the shop trying to find a few sandwiches for lunch after a morning trying to sort out things in the vicarage we’ll be moving to at half term. We took a short cut down the magazine aisle and I was horrified to see the display of ‘Lads’ Mags’.
The store had a full shelving stack of FHM, Nutz and the like, with their glossy covers of buxom naked women. Because they had so many of these mags, they had them handily diplayed right at the height where my kids could get a full eyeful.
Now, I would really prefer it if these magazines were not produced, sold or desired by their readers. However, given that this is the case, I feel strongly that they should displayed out of the eyesight of the under-18s. Hence my complaint to the manager of Asda. The over-sexualisation of children in our society is a worry to many and surely this sort of display must make a contribution.
So I was pleased that he wrote to me, apologised and told me that he has arranged for ‘the magazines in question to be moved up to the top shelf to avoid any other issues’.
Seems like it’s worth complaining. Maybe I should start a campaign?
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