Today I took the baby to the woodland playgroup and the best thing was listening to the birds in the trees. All birds are 'duck' to my little one but I'm sure she'll soon get the hang of it

Post Merge: April 22, 2024, 01:08:06 PM

There is snow, there is melted ground, there is snow.. Cold, warm, cold.. this is the Finnish spring. 

At the beginning of this month, I was able to admire crocuses and bumblebees. Migratory birds arrived and began searching for mates. I could smell the melted earth around me and watch the ice melt on the lake.
Now, on Saturday, winter arrived back. I get to admire the snow-covered land and the forest again. Feel the freezing cold. But even though I love winter, I feel sad precisely because of these migratory birds, especially the small ones. They can't survive without the help of us people. Winter feeding must be continued. Most of all, I worry about the hedgehogs. I really hope I don't find them somewhere in the middle of the snow! I heard that yesterday someone had found a hedgehog in poor condition. I hope it survived and got help in time! Now more snow and cold have been promised for the next few days. I have to be really careful now in my yard and in the woods too.

I didn't know it was like that, I just think of Finland as being like Moomintroll forest and once spring has arrived you play a flute and start planning hikes and garden parties. I love hearing you talk about where you live. We stopped feeding the birds about a month ago. There was a light frost last nigth but I think it will be the last.

My great uncle Peter has passed away and was the last of his generation. My Mum was feeling a mixture of upset and relieved because he was very poorly. I took the baby to see her and Grampy today and we had a quiet day. I mended holes in a tea towel and two t shirts, ate lunch and then took Mum and the baby for a walk. This evening I watched the House of Lords debate on the horticultural industry, thrilling stuff! My sister has offered us TY plushies of Twighlight, Fluttershy and Cadence but they need quite a bit of work on their hair.

Not exactly nature but our male cat (who has been 'done' and is about 5 years old) has adopted a kitten who looks exactly like him. It follows him around and does everything he does. We have called it Puma 2.

Hello all, I'm just checking in and sending good wishes to everyone for their projects. BC, I have never watched Seinfeld but I used to watch Star Trek in those blah moments when I needed to rest. I will definitely check it out.

I had a very chilly moment on Friday when I was told that I would need to spend £700 on my car to get the brakes fixed. However, my husband has done it for £50. So we are no longer in the bracket of people who get basic car work done at the garage, but in the bracket of people who spend Saturday afternoon on the driveway, horizontal. This is exactly what my parents did, we have become my parents. In fact, they only had one car when we were small. So maybe that will become a thing. Hope not. Taking the baby to a woodland playgroup today if the weather is good.

I've found so many of them in thrift stores too, many still in packaging.

Ouch!

Post Merge: March 21, 2024, 10:55:51 PM

my mother remembers choosing her in the store in Birmingham, they were all up a pillar, apparently, and she thought they looked so pretty. It was rainbow pony Windy, I can imagine that display caught the eye given how new MLP was. I don't think Mum had ever seen them before...this would've been late 1984.

Your Mother has good taste!  So lucky!

Post Merge: March 21, 2024, 11:18:00 PM

If I was a kid I wouldn't want to share my fandom with grown adults 30+ regardless of gender. But especially not with adults who create so much p*** that "safe search on" still shows it.

I'm sad that G5 couldn't be for girls again without being cheaped out.

I was angry and disgusted by it at the time, but then I saw it just part of the 'next' social problem i.e. harmful media content. Every new generation of teens seem to have more serious problems to deal with and they are worse when they are new because kids (and parents) don't know how to avoid them. I just assumed that it would work itself through and that in the meantime you gave your child a brick and they just had to put up with it. Not so. The social pressure to have an online presence is now so great that it can set a child back if you don't allow them to engage with it, and meanwhile the media companies have not made things much better.

I am also sad. I would not like to offer my child something so lacking in substance that she might identify with her gender. I watched the 2 mini movies on Netflix and quite enjoyed them, but the only character I liked enough to buy a toy was Izzie, so I bought one plush and that was it. It's a nice plush but not even that different from some G4 plushes. 

I don't know yet, but don't think I will allow daughter to engage fully in these toy lines with media and current releases etc. We never did because we didn't have network TV. We saw a couple of MLP movies in the cinema because a friend offered to take us, but that was it. Incidentally, we never had any fixed idea of the characters either because my cousin lived in a different area and got different characters from us in the shops. We had Argos and they had Cash and Carry. So we just had a mixture of toys old and new and used our own imagination. If she wants to collect anthing fully it will have to be stamps maybe it can be rocks. Maybe I'm being too extreme. Will kids even want plastic toys in a few year's time? I know that they worry about the environment a lot more than even 5 years ago.

I always thought scoosh was spelt like 'skoosh'

My day is pretty dull. Baby is downstairs with Granny so they are happy. I have zero job hunting enthusiasm but I did remember that I'm entitled to get back in touch with my university careers advice centre, which might cheer me up if it's still as good as it used to be. Also feeling very flat. It's an odd time of year for me. Everyone has been ill apart from me. They had this thing the GPs are calling '100 day cough' apparently. Baby is now doing better than husband, it's getting him down now. Just trying to enjoy the spring flowers and keep well really.

Thanks for the good wishes everyone
@ Beldarna my 9 year old niece is the same. When she was 7 or 8 my sister bought her a couple of huge LOL doll sets for Christmas and now she only wants makeup and clothes. I wasn't allowed to wear makeup in public when I was that age and then I think my Mum eventually gave up when I was about 15. We played 'dressing up' but it was clearly a game and not how we looked most of the time. Anyway, I ended up buying my niece a Bobbi Brown makeup set for Christmas last year, thinking that it was for 'dressing up' but actually she just wears it all the time. I actually really dislike seeing her face with smudged mascara at 9 years old. She's also trying to talk as though she's a young adult, about bands and clothes but she's kinda lisping and hasn't got much confidence or conviction in what she's saying. I would have expected her to think more along these lines in about 5 year's time! There must be massive pressure on her to act this way and it makes me so sad, that her childhood is already over. I guess as an older Mum there is a bigger gap for me between how things were when I was a child and how things will be for kids now. But my daughter is just past one year old, so at this rate we only have 7 more summers with her as a child. I try not to think about her growing up because it makes me sad and I don't want her to pick up on it. But I have to remember not to let her childhood pass by in a blur. Big sigh.

Today... well both baby and husband have had some awful cold for the last week and are still coughing at times. I had to keep them both on paracetamol etc. for about 4 days and I'm still feeling pretty tired from nursing them. However, I can finally take baby swimming today. She's had no classes for two weeks now and of course no visits from Granny so she's really bored and starting to act a bit naughty. I'm just so glad she's better that I don't really mind. She's so precious at the moment. Hopefully swimming will be good for her today, I know it always is for me.