Monday 12 March 2012

Can't sleep....

...so I thought I would blogg instead.

This feejit thing on the side of my blogg is not very accurate. It seems to register when I view my blogg but is not at all acurate when it says where I'm from. "A visitor from Milton Keynes" is the closest it's got so far, with the Liverpool and Dromore, Down (Ireland?) being the two most random places for it to choose for me to be from!

Thursday 8 March 2012

Things I have done today.

1) Weighed in at Weight Watchers. - 1/2 a pound, thank you very much!
2) Took Jemima to the fruit and veg stall at the market, had fun buying oranges from Spain about the size of her head, some avacadoes and artichokes!
3) Did some ironing.
4) Tweeted Miranda Hart. Will she reply? Who knows!
5) Saw my dad's God Daughter asking a question on Question Time.

Tuesday 6 March 2012

New sofas!

Well, new to us. They are from the British Heart Foundation shop and are gorgeous. They are red, I've always wanted red sofas!

Monday 5 March 2012

An evening in...

Jeremy is having a rare evening in which means he is sitting on the sofa bugging me while I update my blogg and just generally arse about on the internet, and do a bit of knitting, which is pretty much what I do in the evenings. There are times I long for us to be "normal" but actually it would probably drive me insane if I had him under my feet every night. I quite like having sole charge of the remote once the girls are in bed!

We're into a good routine with Jemima now - I get her ready for bed with Tabitha at about 8.00pm and she has a bottle while we do bedtime stories (Tabitha reads it now more often than not). Then I put her down in the crib and set the mobile going, and she falls asleep pretty quickly (quicker than Tabitha!) Then I give her another bottle about 11pm, sometimes she wakes up but more often than not she stays asleep. Once I put her back down she goes right through till morning, today it was 8.00am and even then she was happy to lie there until I had finshed the packed lunch and given Tabs her breakfast.

I need to explain what animation is to Tabitha. Tonight we were watching her Snoopy DVD and she wanted to know how old the person was "inside" Snoopy.I tried to explain how animation works but was not very successful! Perhaps we need to make a flick book!

Saturday 3 March 2012

Dear reader...

...or not as the case may be. It's a bit strange to keep updating a blog that no-one reads, but I suppose bloggs are really for the people that write them are they not?

So. Saturday morning. Tabitha is at her extra English lesson, Jemima is having a nap and I am about to hop in the shower. I have had no sleep because Tabitha came in at 2am and then tossed and turned next to me for about an hour before going back in to her room. She came in at about 4am with a drawing for me and then got back in to bed. So today am am shattered. But there is something lovely about having Tabitha curled up next to me and Jemima breathing softly in her crib. I love being a mummy.

Friday 2 March 2012

I think this is very lazy blogging as I'm copying this over from the forum I originally posted it on...

When I saw the Build A Bear Workshop advert at half term it made me really cross. As part of the advert the little girl says that her favourite part of the day was the heart ceremony, where she made a wish "and it came true". To me it seemed wrong that an advert should be able to make such a statement (no matter how trivial, it was the principle that seemed so wrong) so checked what it said on the ASA's code of practice (I had some time on my hands!) and found this:

"Advertisements must not take advantage of children's inexperience, credulity or sense of loyalty. Advertisements for products or services of interest to children must not be likely to mislead; for example, by exaggerating the features of a product or service in a way that could lead to children having unrealistic expectations of that product or service."

So I filled in one of the online complaint forms on the ASA website, and two days later I had a response.They said that

"We have noted that the child in the ad states, "The heart ceremony is my favourite. I made a wish and put it inside my bear, and it came true..." The protection of children is one of our primary concerns but we have to assess whether what an ad depicts will, in itself, cause harm or distress to children. In this case, we consider that children seem to accept the make believe involved with playing games. Even if children were to believe that a wish has come true as a result of another child placing a wish inside a bear, this does not represent a breach of our Code and we consider it unlikely that the ad would mislead children to their detriment or that it would cause harm or distress to them."

I just feel that that is completely missing the point. And anyway it certainly is NOT the case that all children understand the difference between what is real and what is make believe, learning the difference is part of growing up. The advert makers are clearly relying on the fact that not all children understand the difference so that they can make money! Make believe should be harmless fun, not used to manipulate children for financial gain. (And it is also certainly not the case that children will be wishing for things like ponies - what about the ones who wish that dad would stop beating up mum?)

I know that there are bigger fish to fry but it really bugged me. Anyway I phoned the person who emailed me and she said she would take it to the ASA Council for a decision... probably just to get me off the phone! I haven't heard anything yet, and I doubt they will change their decision, but the advert is still wrong.

The blog I never knew I had.

"There must be some way," thought I, "That I can record my most profound and compelling thoughts for the world to see." And then it occured to me that the obvious thing to do was to create a blog. So I googled "free blogs" and found this site. Creating my blog would be free and easy and all I needed to do was create a google account. "Well I'm sure I've got one of those," I thought, and logged myself in. Behold, the blog I created in 2009 and then promptly forgot...