TV is crack for kids. Other kid stuff. Garden.

Don't read on if you hate people going on about their kids and child rearing stuff. OK.

I'm aware that I waffle on about kids TV quite a bit. You could be forgiven for thinking all P does all day is watch "ABC da Kids", as she likes to call it.

Well for the last 9 months, she has! It has been on ALL the time since B was born. It's been all TV, all the time!  And don't get me wrong,  it's been fantastic.  I haven't had regular family support this year and I am not ashamed to say the TV helped me through the first 6 months of B's life. When P stopped having a reliable day sleep, it was the only respite I got, and I used it to keep her out of B's room when I was getting him to sleep. And frankly the kids programs on ABC2 are about fifty million times more entertaining than any of the utter shit and tripe that plenty of adults watch. Give me Peppa Pig over X Factor any day.  I may have just alienated a few hundred thousand people with that statement, but that's me, always controversial and TELLING IT HOW IT IS!

EVERYBODY likes jumping in muddy puddles! [Source]

And yet. And yet.

The time has come for TV rehab. It's been great, but the carnival is over. Life is back to normal, we no longer have a newborn to juggle and I am feeling strong enough to break the TV habit! Our new rule is no TV until the afternoon, which means the part of the day when I'm getting dinner organised. Oh crikey it makes for a long day with a non-sleeping, spirited 3 year old who is awake before 5am and not in bed til 7pm.  6pm if we've really got it going on bedtime wise.  I was desperate for it yesterday morning when getting her ready for kindy - I used to plonk her in front of the TV to distract her while I brushed her hair.  So I had to chase her round the house while she wailed and screamed, "You are HURTING ME MUMMY!!! AAARGGGHHHHHH MUMMY IT HURTS, IT HUUURRRTTSSSSSSSS!"

Hopefully no-one was listening.  It wouldn't have sounded good, and what with the filth and mess on the floor that morning it would have painted a suspicious picture for any child protection worker types passing by.  Sometimes I watch that show Hoarders and get bloody paranoid that I will end up living surrounded by teetering piles of tins and newspapers and then I'll die and be buried in my own filth and the cats will eat me and no-one will know.....ahem. Sorry for that little visit into my psyche.  Not pretty is it?

Anyway, as I said to a very anti-TV mummy friend "It's like breaking someone of a crack habit!".
Unfortunately she looked completely horrified. Oops. Sometimes I need to keep my gob shut.  Look away, child protection people, nothing to see here, NO CRACK INVOLVED OTHER THAN A TODDLER'S PERPETUALLY NAKED BUM CRACK! Thank you.

In other parenting news, B can plank like a hardcore pilates guru. Check out his abs of steel.

Go, son!

Also, my wonderful friend J, who has just had her second baby, is obviously not busy and hasn't got a million newborn baby + toddler related things to do at all, because she just MADE ME A WHOLE LOT OF CLOTH NAPPIES.  She is very clever.  I've never gone down the cloth nappy route but I'm giving it a red hot go. So maybe I'll be buried alive Hoarders-style in dirty nappies instead, we'll have to wait and see.

Cute as!

I'm feeling glum at the moment because I'm eating like a total puritan and exercising daily but THE SCALES DID NOT BUDGE LAST WEEK.  I feel thinner, perhaps it is psychological.  So here's some nice pictures of the beautiful flowering gum tree in our front garden to cheer me up.

There's always lots of bees, of the bumble variety and also the native variety.  I feel good about this because one of the things I lose sleep about is the situation for bees at the moment.  Which isn't good.  I also worry about the polar bears and the whole melting ice cap thing.  I wake up in a cold sweat replaying the image of polar bears floundering around in the middle of the ocean like I saw on a documentary once.   

Lovely isn't it?  It's very festive I think.

Do you worry about bees?  Or something else?  Or nothing? Do you use cloth nappies?  For yourself maybe? This is a JUDGEMENT FREE ZONE my friends.