Tonight I couldn't get hold of the Harry Potter book because Mel had bagged it to read on for herself after the bedtime story slot. So I put my mind to sorting out this html thing and found a great deal of help at this site and here. I then went back upstairs to find that she had gone to sleep reading. So I'm posting this.
Some further explanation. I particularly like Desert Island Discs because the choices people make are usually based on a lifetime's reflection, not three years of media manipulation which is what you'd get if there were ever a junior version.
And it's the only radio programme I know where they always tell you what you are hearing both before and after they play it.
And it's on Sunday morning so the pirate station that is right next door on the dial has shut up and gone to bed and I can actually hear it properly.
Work/life balance is a vital part of good parenting. We have worked hard at ours and it seems about right at the moment - i.e. pretty well horizontal. What to me now needs looking at is our children/culture balance, which is pretty well vertical and has had no reassessment at all since we began listening to the baby monitor over supper instead of music.
In fact the chldn probably haven't heard much decent music either since the times we played them Mozart while they were still in the womb, so we all could benefit from some skilfully applied adjustments. I'm looking for good compilation CDs for the car and I've begun to sit in on Top of the Pops just to keep everyone clear on how many of the good songs are old ones.
I don't wish to spoil our chldn's voyage of discovery through music but when it comes to the type of songs written to stir them up enough to part them from their (my) money, I feel they need a gauge of quality as soon as poss. If they can't spot the clichés then I'll just have to do it for them. (I'll be exploring this area in greater detail in my planned forthcoming essay on music.)
As for youth ‘culture’ in general, round here Beyblades are in and Pokemon is out. Overall a mixed blessing; better for the pocket, worse for the kitchen chair legs. I'll miss inventing cards that Jake didn't have (my favourite was ‘Bolyx’) but I'm quite glad he's finally got away; I always understood that ‘Gotta catch 'em all’ actually referred to the world's children, not the Pokemon.
recently we have been trying to get a general fresh look at our lives, which has led to some lively discussion re our areas of special responsibility. Mel is currently decor Tsar and has the garden, the children's health and clothes, remembering birthdays and combing out nits.
My list is polishing shoes, answering unexpected rings on the doorbell, explaining the rules during rugby internationals and choosing the wine in restaurants. M feels these are not particularly onerous but I think we need not be too rigid about things like that and should each play to our strengths. I mean, “What works” has always worked for us, and in general arguments are as rare in our house as skimmed milk in a corner shop.
I'm finding this whole blog thing v satisfying and I feel I have enough ideas to do more than one a week, which was my original target. I am frustrated by some of the technical stuff though. I would like to make my site look better but, as yet, just making links from text in Blogger defeats me. Learning html may be a bridge too far for me right now considering I don't even have enough time to look for decent new music (I tend to rely on Desert Island Discs these days). Content is king, so please bear with me while I sort it out.
Welcome to Week 2 of our Family Weblog - our account of our journey towards better parenting. If you are tired of curiously spelled blogs written by surly single youths in suburban America then bookmark us now!
This week we've been debating if it is it fair to bring up children in a warm, nurturing atmosphere when all they will encounter when they grow up is the harsh and chilly world of competition, a world that seems to promise so much but which too often turns out to be difficult and disappointing, rather like jazz. I argued that smacking them round the head and breaking all our promises might be seen as ideal preparation for choosing a pension scheme these days, but Mel says none of the books advise that.
Our chldn (Zoe, 10 and Jake, 8) both continue to do well in class and overall Brockham Hill School's drive for high standards seem to suit them perfectly. They have copious amounts of homework nearly every night but Mel makes sure she is always on hand to assist if required. I don't think she should feel guilty about helping. After all for years our children brought back paintings from school which had clearly been done by the teachers, so I reckon they started it.
We are proud parents I admit, but we do have a sense of proportion - we've never had one of those ‘Baby On Board’ signs in the car. If those new parents are so incontinently proud then why don't they get ‘Baby In Upstairs Bedroom’ signs for their houses? I didn't become a parent to cover myself in glory - just as well really because all I ever got covered in regularly were things I was pleased to wash off.
Of course the really big news of the week has been the arrival of Harry Potter 5. The unseemly disputes that broke out about who was going to read it first made me regret not getting at least three copies, but I managed to turn the situation to advantage and we had a good session on Conflict Resolution with a little Anger Management thrown in. So Zoe is reading it on the school run and at breaktimes, Jake gets it read to him at bed time by Mel, and I have access at weekends. The whole system should keep everyone happy and is a good use for all those bookmarks we seem to accumulate.
It really is a humbling responsibility trying to prepare children to lead successful and happy lives, and if only they were fish fingers it would be a lot easier telling if we were getting it right. Still, we have the comfort of knowing that we have done our v best. and most days I remind myself of how lucky we are. I like to think of us as those mice who lived in a windmill in old Amsterdam, but with stair carpets.
I've long felt that the frequent discussions I have with Mel about our child rearing policies would be of interest to others, so I've taken the plunge and here it is - The Preene Family Weblog, a weekly account of our quest for excellence in parenting. I've always enjoyed writing our Xmas messages and to me this is just a natural extension of that kind of sharing, but without the long gaps.
Keeping a weblog is v time consuming I believe but I'm not daunted. Nothing can be more time consuming than the conscientious rearing of children so I am no stranger to organising my time. You won't catch me being like the father in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. If he had been a bit better organised and had found the time to sort out that problem with the exhaust, his chldn would probably have called the car just plain Chitty Chitty, which I'm sure he would have preferred.
So for our new friends let me introduce our 2 chldn who continue to delight and amaze us - I really treasure the time I can snatch with them. Zoe has as much drive and ambition as any parent of a ten year old could wish to see, and still wants to direct films. She spends hours writing screenplays and acting out scenes with her army of cuddly animals toys. Her main regret in life is that when she includes her little brother Jake he won't stick to the lines she gives him.
Jake, now nearly eight, is less clear about his life path but there is still time. He loves football and any toy that will slam at high speed into the furniture. He seems to be going through a bit of a rebel phase at the moment and when I told him that rules are there for everyone's benefit and that he must obey them, he asked if that included obeying the sign painted on the road outside the school gates which reads “School - Keep Clear”. I think he'll do all right.
Raising a family while keeping up with all the available advice has been pretty demanding - Mel's first pregnancy is just a blur of print to her now - but she's now back at work whenever she can find the time. It's starting to feel like we're about to get our lives back but there again we thought that when Jake finally slept through. We're both excited by the prospect though; I want to go out more and listen to decent music again and M wants to get ‘fit’.
Life does have its little ups and downs (and there never seems to be enough time!) but overall there really is a lot to be grateful for, like the fact that we didn't discover how bad disposable nappies were for the environment till we had finished using them.
We look forward to hearing from you - you are not alone out there!