Of boys and girls

In some faraway imaginary fairyland, I assumed that my children would play with all kinds of toys and enjoy the fun of it.

How wrong was I. Gender stereotyping is alive and kicking. I can't but admit that some of it seems nature, hurried along by nurture. Whenever Cubling chooses her clothes, it's a dress, pink is for girls and trousers are for boys, the train tracks are never picked out to play with because they've been categorised as boys' toys.

I vowed not to go down the pink lego route only to realise that the neutral stuff is boooring and the non boring stuff is all about wars, monsters, killing and fighting. I'd rather have pink then. I like horses more than dead aliens.

I remember loving lego and building space stations. I played with a boy most of the time. In fact, my early, pre-school (before I turned 7) , friends were all boys. But I didn't loathe to play with them, in fact I loved it because they had racing cars, remote control stuff, and a lot more lego.

For Cubling, playing with boys is totally out of the question. She is reluctant even to go to boys' birthday parties. The other day she noted that inviting a boy over for play wouldn't be a good idea because she didn't have any boys' toys.

What appears to have happened in the 36 years since I was her age is that toys (and clothes) have been gendered and have become extreme. There is no longer a middle ground. I'm pretty sure that most girls enjoy playing with dolls and dressing up while there will be more rough play with boys usually. But what I object to is the extreme end, of making all boys' toys aggressive and having some sort of fighting element to them, while all girls' toys are princessy, cute, dressing up and about being beautiful. The lego space station has become Star Wars or Monster Fighters.

I'm worried by girls growing up to believe that beauty is the most important asset a woman can have, I'm worried that Cubling at 5 years announced that women can't become doctors because doctors are men (and our GP is a woman!!!).

However this worry is beaten by an even more uncomfortable observation. There is no mean sense of alienation by the way that guns and fighting instruments are accepted as necessary equipment in the world of boys. It must be a cultural difference that I'm only becoming aware of now. All guns and toys of war were a big no no when I grew up. The only time I would set hands on a gun was for carneval and it was only a borrowed one. Any self respecting parent would ban guns from their home. The prevalence of gun use in children's toys that I've witnessed here and now makes me wonder if I lived in some strange vortex, if things have changed over time or if the banning of war toys is due to German history and the peace movement.

I'm not sure, but I can't help but be worried by seeing young boys aiming to shoot and kill.

Hogmanay

This Hogmanay, we decided to host a kind of party. "Kind of" because it was more like an open house, we wanted it to be friendly, informal, family friendly and non-committal. So that people could drop in for 10 minutes or 10 hours. As ever, we are very spontaneous with family life plans, and it was extremely short notice. Encouraged by a pre-Christmas get together hosted by our neighbours, and how lovely it was to get to know the people living in our street a bit beyond the 5 minutes between doors, we invited everyone on our street plus a few close friends.

  
I admit I was nervous. Nervous that everyone would turn up and there wouldn't be enough space for us all. Nervous that nobody would turn up (it has happened to me before that I organised a party and nobody came).

And when we said goodbye to the last people at 2am and finally the children agreed to nod off to dreamland, we realised it was potentially the best idea we've had in years. We had people in the house from 4pm to 2am, but at no point did it get too busy. There were kids having heaps of fun throughout. And then all those wonderful gestures: bubbly for the bells, real turf for the open fire, sparklers for lighting outside, treats for the kids and oh so much food. In fact, we're still surviving on left overs.

There were neighbours I'd never seen before, others whom we know well already, and a lot of merriment and laughter was had, cultural differences explored, and anecdotes shared, commonalities found and plans for future get togethers made. Even those who couldn't make it (all due to health reasons, we live in a street with quite a few elderly people) dropped a note and made a commitment to come along next time.

Nothing world moving, just a sense of belonging and community. I kept wondering why this kind of thing never happened in the various tenement flats I stayed in, where we could have easily had a get together to have fun and potentially solve a few of the communal issues that old tenement housing brings with it. In the tenement flats I lived in much closer proximity to people yet some neighbours wouldn't even give you the time of day when you bumped into them on the stairs. It was lonely at times, a bit depressing actually.



So if I've learned something from our Hogmanay adventure it's that it's easy to come together and have a brilliant time, and that it can make such a difference to how you feel about where you live. And that some wonderful people are living right next to you. All you need to do is open the doors and let them in.



Not quite first footing but definitely the spirit of Hogmanay.

"And there's a hand my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine,
And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught
For auld lang syne!"

Photos taken on our 2nd January outing to Palaceriggs Country Park, and George Square Glasgow

A Naming Ceremony

The other day, a friend asked me if I could take photos of her second son's naming ceremony. I was flattered to be asked to do it, and more than up for the challenge of taking photos of people most of whom I hadn't met before. It occurred to me that in my teens, when I was as passionate as one could be about photography, I dismissed a career in the field because I couldn't see myself ever getting excited about taking family photos. And rather than taking ever more pictures of ever the same poses, I then decided that photography would remain my passion and hobby, never to be my career.

Today, I can officially declare that taking photos of a family and the milestones of family life is not boring but an honour and a very special privilege which is not to be taken lightly. I was rather nervous knowing that some of the photos would end up as special presents or in a treasured family album. I could even be overheard complaining about the sun that shone into the room making for hard shadows and very difficult light to deal with.

But what's light and all that if you see a baby boy with the biggest eyes ever, adored by his big brother, his parents, his grandparents and aunties and uncles, and a cheeky cousin who did his best to escape my camera (I won in the end - the cake was simply too yummy!).

It was very special to be part of this.

A Different Weekend

This was meant to be the weekend of the Christmas Craft Fairs.
Except that at the very end of her first ceilidh, a family ceilidh on St Andrew's Day, fundraising for a school in an earthquake hit town in India, Snowflake graced the carpet of the church hall, right in front of the yummiest cakes, with an expulsion of self same, a sausage, and, as Cubling later explained, blueberries eaten at the childminder about 6 hours earlier.

It was one of those "where's the next hole in the ground please" moments.
I don't get why kids go from totally fine to totally not, and vice versa, in just a minute. I was sure it was just the dancing and jumping about, but what was to follow made it clear that no, it was a proper bug.

Cubling panicked in the car upon expulsion no. 3 declaring she most definitely never wants to have children because she simply hates puke. My suggestion to be a bit more sympathetic for her poor little sister were literally met with deaf ears (held shut, like her eyes and nose, so she wouldn't have to get any sense of what was happening beside her). I should also say it followed on from a discussion in the car en route to the very ceilidh when Cubling had told me that she didn't want to grow up because she didn't want to have children. I tried to explain that she wouldn't automatically have children and could decide not to have any, which of course was followed by a "how so" question that I answered with a certain amount of evasiveness. I wasn't quite sure if she had fully believed me, with a kind of "mummy knows about these things, you don't need to have kids, it doesn't just happen and you can avoid having them" "how?" "that's just how it is" "but how can I avoid having children exactly?" "I'll tell you another time".

And so, we spent the weekend at home. Holding baba (who is really not a baba anymore of course), going for a short walk, cooking and baking, watching films on our trial subscription of Netflix, playing games and doing some Christmassy crafts. And it was ok, even though I had to try a little bit not to feel too sorry for having missed the Christmas Fairs.

This afternoon, Snowflake woke after a long nap (followed by another bad episode of les vomits) and demanded food. Just like that. I was a bit hesitant but truth be told, a switch had been flicked and she was totally fine again.

Mummy shakes head and hopes that this has been it, and it hasn't been passed on.

Wacky

wack·y  (wk) also whack·y (hwk, wk)

adj. wack·i·er also whack·i·er, wack·i·est also whack·i·est Slang

1. Eccentric or irrational: a wacky person.

2. Crazy; silly: a wacky outfit.

There is this wonderful get together in the Southside of Glasgow that goes by the name of StitchUp. It's all about sewing and related stuff, upcycling, making and mending and sharing skills. It happens once a month and my big girl loves it. Recently, there's a weekly StitchUp specifically aimed at families which runs weekly after school. Normally, I wouldn't be able to make it, but luckily I've ended up with a lot of annual leave at the end of the year and have managed a few sneaky short days to take Cubling to her favourite sewing cafe.

The funniest thing is, she never ever actually does any of the projects on offer. And more often than not, I wondered why on earth she loves it so much when she doesn't actually engage with what's on offer in any conventional way.
If there's pin cushions, she makes random concoctions of fabric.
If there's sock monkeys, she decorates her fingers with a skirt and draws a smiley face on her fingertips.
If there's weaving/french knitting/pompoms she'll sew a button on a piece of elastic.

Above all, she loves the sewing machine. It's a bit of a version of what I guess a racing car or Scelectrics is for boys. Ahem, or some girls, those things were definitely on my favourite toys ever list. But I digress. She won't actually sew anything normal on the sewing machine, but quite likes to create lines and make shapes with them, or knot things together to create a fish on a fishing line.

Sometimes, I get impatient or feel like her refusal to engage with ideas put to her is a personal rejection. But more and more I've been learning to sit back, relax and appreciate her out of the box thinking, her true creativity that doesn't follow the norm or what people say she should be making. Her creativity is not one that works within boundaries, but one which is free of boundaries. Maybe it's the creativity of any child, where the world is full of potential and not yet boxed into right and wrong. Maybe she is a rebel in the making.

Today, while I was making a sock monkey as was expected from me, I secretly watched her focus on making the wackiest creations with fabric scraps, stuffing, bands and buttons. And I starte to envy her for the passion and determination in creating something totally her own, for going her own way regardless of any expectations around her. I no longer felt apologetic for my wacky girl, or out of sync with her actions, but felt a sense of admiration growing inside of me.

I was reminded of a poem, Markings by Seamus Heaney, where he likens child's play to the power of the imagination where boundaries are created and then allowed to be passed. The poem celebrates this  freedom of child's play, which is not directed towards a purpose but optional, and which is a metaphor for the creative freedom of the poet to challenge the world as it is perceived:

It was quick and constant, a game that never need
Be played out. Some limit had been passed, 
There was fleetness, furtherance, untiredness 
In time that was extra, unforeseen and free. 

And so I am challenged by my daughter to question my expectations on her and my own limitations of my mind formed by so many other expectations that were imposed on me. Through her I can see a glimpse of freedom and possibility that otherwise would have remained unknown.

Where you may find me these days...

As you can see, it's a bit quiet on this space at the moment. Fear not though, there's some blogging going on at my other place, Nature Kids Glasgow. When I first had the idea for Nature Kids, I was sure I could keep up regular blogging on both blogs. Since then, I've had to increase my working hours and recently I've been busy with many a project (photo books for instance, which took up a lot of evenings because I'm a bit perfectionistic when it comes to photo books, but there's also been a lot of knitting). It's not that I'm thinking of shutting this place down, far from it, just that part of what I used to blog about has now moved over to Nature Kids. So I'd like to invite all my Mummy do that! readers to also subscribe to Nature Kids. Currently, I'm doing a series of posts on innovative initiatives that connect children with nature in and around Glasgow, as well as a review of outdoor clothing and tips on what Santa may bring the child who loves to jump in puddles and climb trees. All of which would have been blogged about here before I had a second blog!

If you're in or near Glasgow (or even if you aren't), you might find it useful to sign up to the Nature Kids Glasgow facebook page because I share outdoor events nearby (as well as nature craft ideas and anything else that I come across - I've found that the facebook page is quite popular, a bit to my own surprise, maybe facebook pages are the way blogging is going, who knows, they are a bit more interactive that's for sure).

With all things children and nature moved over to Nature Kids, this space is reserved for EVERYTHING ELSE. Which, at the moment, isn't a lot and I'm clearly far from my previous every 2-3 days posting schedule, because we do rather a lot outdoors in the little time we've got!

Review: Snapfish

It was June when we went on a loooong train journey to the other end of the world the UK and spend a week in beautiful Devon. Or rather, I'm sure it was beautiful, just that for all the rain we didn't see much beyond the hedgerows. We went with the extended family, and the kids had an absolute whale of a time.

Having just taken part in two of the Capturing Childhood e-courses, I took a ton of photos, always with the intention of creating a photo book to remember this first holiday with the whole family, something to look back on and to remember the special moments and the fun had.

Ahem, and now it's November and Devon seems to be even further than a 7 hour train journey away.
It took a bit of a kick in the backside to get this photobook off the ground, or rather an invitation to try out Snapfish for a photo product. Not having used Snapfish before, I was game.

There are quite a few photobook designs to choose from starting from approximately £20. I opted for the customised A4 book, which is special enough without taking up a lot of space. After uploading my favourite photos, I managed to create the full book in just a couple of hours through the interface on the Snapfish website. The book is very customisable, from the background down to the different designs for arranging the photos on the page. Even within the page layout, photos can still be moved and the sizes changed, or even photos added.

The book will print as is displayed, and there was only one minor worry when a warning came up that some of the spaces for photos were vacant, when in fact there was a photo there which hadn't been locked - however the actual print was perfect, so the software appears to be erring on the side of caution.

The print quality was great and the kids love the book. It's already brought back so many memories and anecdotes. In fact, Cubling had a right old laugh remembering the adventures had and I'm sure the book will be picked up a lot. It just shows that for those special occasions, making your digital photos special with a photo book is definitely the right move. Let's face it, we don't often look at photos on the computer, but photo books are definitely getting picked up a lot in our home.
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Disclaimer: I received a photo product credits to try out a Snapfish photo product and review it.

St Martin's Day in Glasgow

So it's November again. That time of the year where things seem to be falling over one another. We had Halloween, St Martin's and Bonfire night in the space of a week and to be honest, I'm glad it's over. We did have fun though. Having just returned from our holiday for Halloween, the costume was an improvisation of a new dress that passed as a witch's dress and random items from the charity shop - quite an outfit actually. Snowflake was stuck into a pumpkin outfit, as you do with toddlers. Our pumpkins were carved but not very elaborately, though there was lots of pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie.

Our crafting energy went mainly into the making of St Martin's lanterns (and general Halloween crafts). Thankfully there are some crafty people in our German Playgroup who had posted images of lanterns in preparation of the big lantern making event and I fell in love with the Elmer lantern. Thankfully, the girls did too, although Elmer hasn't as such featured around here much. What they loved about this lantern was how it transformed a milk bottle into an elephant with no effort at all and how they both were able to make the lantern because it's really so very simple.

You'll need a milk bottle - the biggest ones, 6 pints, are the best because the shape is more like an elephant and the lantern will have a decent size. We didn't have one, so went for a 4 pint and a 2 litre bottle, and the 4 pint one was still quite elephantesque, while the 2 litre one, well, it just about passed the elephant test so to say.

You cut the bottle along the line in the middle, and the handle will suddenly become a trunk. Feel free to cut out legs if you like. Next, cut transparent paper into small squares, get some glue and get sticking. We used a broad brush which is toddler friendly, and Snowflake (2 years) did make most of her lantern herself. Cubling had no problems just getting on with it without any help. To finish off, add some googly eyes and elephant ears cut out from cardboard.

Ideally, put some wire through the top and hang on a light stick. We didn't have wire and used pipe cleaners. The lantern is light so it worked well.

We were lucky to have lots of lantern events in Glasgow this year though we only managed to make the German playgroup one. It's lovely to see so many lantern events popping up now, with one in Battlefield and one in the Children's Wood in the West end too, and I'm sure there's more.  Plenty of opportunities to let those lanterns shine!

Why bother having kids if you don't have time to look after them

There has been some media attention on the fact that in the UK job market, about 1 million women are missing. They are missing because work doesn't pay for them as second earners and they've made the decision of not returning to work after they've had children or leaving their jobs.

This isn't surprising as such. I've thought about it. Childcare is expensive and there's not a lot of support with the cost here in this country. For parents with two children in childcare, the second earner needs to be on an above average income to make work pay.

What really got me though is the invariable response when this topic is brought up. Summarised in one sentence: Why have kids if you then go out to work?

Of course, this phrase is said to the mother. Please contradict me if I'm wrong! Now I'm all for extended and paid maternity leave, I know about the importance of child-mother bonding, breastfeeding and responsive care by the primary care giver, who due to breastfeeding usually is the mother. So while I do believe that our roles are different at the early stages of parenting, determined by biological facts, I don't buy this statement because we do have maternity leave (even if partly unpaid) for a full year.

After that, we're mostly equal.

Until the same question is directed to fathers, something is at odds. Because you know, really, kids would love both parents to just be at home with them and play all day, but that doesn't bring food on the table, warmth in cold winters and electricity to your home.

So for the record, as a mum who'd love to spend more time with her kids at home, as I'm sure their daddy does too, this is why I have kids and still bother going out to work:

1. I have skills that are well used in my job and I'm making a difference. I'm a confident trainer, researcher, thinker, writer, project manager. I'm not a confident parent (though I'm working hard on it, being ambitious and all that). In fact, I actually think my kids benefit from a bit of childcare by people who know what they're doing.

2. I've been told all my life that this was an equal society and that both men and women have equal access to the workplace and will be renumerated equally, regardless of whether they have children or not. I've come to understand that in reality this is not the case, but I believe that what I've been brought up to believe is at least something we should aspire to.

3. I've never believed that my primary role was that of raising kids. In fact, for most of my life, I wasn't sure I actually wanted kids. I made a decision to raise kids but did not make a decision for this to be my end all and be all.

4. It's a bloody hard job juggling kids, home and work. Many days I think I can't do this anymore. But it's also a bloody hard job being a stay at home mum, and to be honest, I prefer the juggling situation. Not by much, but by enough to keep going.

5. Let's talk money. Kids are expensive. You need more money to offer a decent life for them, like a bigger home, a car to take them places, days out, and let's not even mention the doubled cost of a holiday as the little ones pay full price. Oh yeah, and there's clothes, toys, presents for them and above all their friends and the incessant fundraising forms from nursery and school. I think I may have even bought a poppy this year, my principles are crumbling.

6. Let's talk some more money. If I took a career break, this is my financial loss: pension contributions. Income while I'm out of work. And then, as I rejoin the strained job market, a 30-40%% cut of my salary because I'd have to start from the bottom again. This cut is for good, also impacting on my already tiny pension prospects. So even if for a few years, work doesn't pay, in the long run the loss of earnings would be so massive for me, that I'd probably work for nothing

7. The insecurity of the job market: would I be able to find another job?

8. I enjoy my job. Nobody wails, whines, screams, hits and kicks me or spills milk over my clothes at my job for 8 lovely hours. But seriously, I do like my job.

9. And just to say.... I'm not a career woman. I don't strive for a 50k plus income, promotion and managment roles. This is not about my career, just about being a worker. I also think that parents who stay at home do an invaluable and tough job, a job that I'm probably not too well cut out to do. I simply don't want to have to justify why I work when I have children just because I'm not a man.

So in the public view I shouldn't have had kids then in the first place. Let's give the dads a voice now too, shall we? Should daddies have had kids because he's out of the house 9 or more hours on a weekday? Can I invite working dads to justify why they're working instead of spending quality time with their kids?

Here and there and everywhere

Maybe, just maybe, this was the first time I felt like a stranger in my own country. Not in a bad way, just that it felt like travelling into a world I no longer managed to manoeuvre with ease.

I loved:
- outdoor play areas,
- the Indian summer we had (it was proper warm, 18 degrees in the late evening and I totally packed the wrong clothes),
- Brötchen,
- people of all ages and abilities riding bikes,
- properly insulated houses,
- renewables everywhere
- Rewe our world sticker book (if you have doubles, please get in touch, Cubling would be happy to trade)

I was a teeny weeny bit irritated by:
- right before left traffic rules and how they really catch you out if you're used to the much simpler and more intuitive British system,
- jam etc in tiny plastic containers
- menus where ever single dish contains meat
- chips being served with large quantities of salt
- kids meals either non existent or served without veg

In Amsterdam, I fell in love with the baksfiets/boxbike. I mean, I like them anyway, but to see them in all shapes and sizes, wow wow wow. I had to be told that you simply cross bike lanes in Amsterdam because if you wait for the bike traffic to provide a gap for crossing, you may be there all day.

Cubling decided she wants to live in Germany now. Not because of the play areas, although she thought the raft pond where you could play on a raft was pretty awesome, but because of the kids' shopping trolleys. Snowflake took leaps and bounces in speaking (both languages), and loves Peppa Pig even more now that she's Peppa Wutz.

And although travelling by ferry makes the journey rather long, it also makes it into an adventure in itself, and on the plus side it's actually much less stressful than flying with kids.

We managed to meet up with more people than expected, and I'm pretty impressed that in spite of our rare visits to Germany there is something like budding friendships going on between my kids and the kids of my friends. So much so that penpals have found one another. Pretty cool, I say.

The best thing for me had to be how Cubling just made friends with kids on the playgrounds without a second thought. She was totally at ease and at home, switching between languages without even a thought. It was both her social ease that impressed me (I would never, ever have spoken to kids I didn't know like that) and her ability to blend in and make the best of everything on offer.

And when we got home, she want back to school and totally enjoyed seeing her Scottish friends again as well. Now I only have to get used to the cold again.