Alpha Mummy - Times Online - WBLG

Mother tries to rob bank in yellow cleaning gloves

She's 8-months pregnant. Her toddler waited in the getaway vehicle. Read the story.

Is mummyblogging still radical?

Interesting news from bloggers across the pond. The annual BlogHer conference took place weekend before last in San Francisco, with lots of talk about mummy blogging. (The NYTimes wrote about it in a piece entitled "Blogging's Glass Ceiling".)

The very interesting discussion "Is MommyBlogging Still a Radical Act" (watch the video) touched upon several aspects of mommyblogging in the US, including getting courted by advertisers and posting for $$$ (getting money or goods for writing about stuff).

It's all very interesting to hear, since here at Alpha Mummy we get to operate in something of an ivory tower. I don't have to worry about getting advertisers myself, we're not under pressure to include any products or services - we just blog about them if we like them.

I know lots of the folks who come on Alpha Mummy blog, although I get the sense the climate over here is still in its teen years compared to the Silicon Valley blogging young adulthood.

What do ya'll think?

10 top things we love and loathe about sisters

She’s your best friend, your worst enemy, the pest you’re forced to put up with, the bane of your childhood, the prop of your adult life. 

Lorraine Campbell and her sister Pam Burks (pictured) have written a new novel called How to Survive Your Sisters by Elie Campbell. Lorraine told me, about writing it, “So much to say about sisters and family dynamics! The label thing, for instance - once you're defined as the baby or the smart/pretty/lazy one - you're that to your family for the rest of your life and nothing can shake it. You could be running a multi-national empire and to your sisters you're still the slacker who probably still sleeps in till mid-afternoon.”

Here they provide a tongue-in-cheek list of the good and the bad of sisterhood.

14 things mums say (and what they really mean)

KM, a regular poster on AM, wrote in with this list of the code language spoken at toddler groups. Got any of your own?

The toddler group insider code can be difficult to crack for newcomers. Hence this handy translation. Don't let on we told you. And for goodness sake, bring spare wipes. Your child will spend the first six weeks overexcitedly throwing up on your clothes.

"Are you new round here?" - really means: Haven't noticed you offer to help with the coffee yet.

"Is it your first?" - You clearly don't know how to take care of a baby.

"Ooh, he's a big boy, isn't he?" - You are overfeeding your son.

"Are you still breastfeeding?" - Please, don't.

"Is that your child over there?" - Your child has taken his trousers off and is doing something unspeakable with a naked doll.

"Shall I fetch you a coffee?" - You have too many children in your care and are plainly not coping. After I've fetched your coffee, I'm considering calling Social Services.

"Can I hold the baby?" - I am desperate for another and my partner is refusing to satisfy my raging hormonal desires on the grounds that he would like a slim wife with a sex drive again.

"Oh, don't worry, they all go through it." - Your child is definitely worse-behaved than mine.

"It's probably just a phase." - You better hope it is.

"Are you friends with Kate?" - We have some juicy and possibly slanderous gossip about Kate to share.

"Would you like to come to a party at my house next week?" - I have some Tupperware and jewellery for sale that I am desperate to shift.

"You should come along to Weightwatchers sometime." - There's no nice way to phrase this. It's no longer baby-fat when your youngest child is three years old.

"So sorry, we can't commit to a playdate right now, life is a little hectic." I am worried that my children will pick up bad habits at your house.

"He's ready for school, isn't he?" - Your child is out of control.

Why Sarika's win on wearing the Kara doesn't mean what you think

Our pal Sarah over at School Gate has blogged about the victory of the 14-year-old Sikh girl who has won the right to wear her Kara - a slim steel bracelet - at her school. The judge ruled that she was a victim of unlawful discrimination.

Sarah Ebner argues that the ruling doesn't mean what you might expect - that it opens the door for any child to argue that wearing his or her chosen religious symbol is a right, whether or not it conflicts with school policy.

While her analysis is intriguing - Sikhs, and Jews for that matter, are protected as racial as well as religious groups - I wonder if other religious groups will feel they are disadvantaged. Surely they can feel their faith as strongly as a devout Sikh or Jew, even if they aren't defined as a racial group?

Believe it or not: Gummi Bears good for teeth

Researchers at the University of Washington, prompted perhaps by the contents of the vending machine down the hall, have discovered that children given 4 Gummi Bears containing the sugar substitute xylitol, three times a day, had reduced amounts of plaque that causes tooth decay. After six weeks - SIX WEEKS! - of gummi-eating the levels of harmful bacteria were reduced.

Mummy's secret life

It was as I was hiding a fully lit cigarette in my mouth last night, as Dora asked me a very complicated question about Doctor Who, that I thought: what else wouldn't I let my kids see me doing? They don't know I smoke. Not a clue. Not that I do smoke, of course - just the odd "party fag" here and there, in the summer, lying on the grass. It's less than 10 Silk Cut a month. Get off my back. I'm 33.
I'm pretty sure I smoke because my dad did. Yeah - let's blame him. He really looked like he enjoyed it, and he looked, I have to say, very cool doing it - he's a jazz drummer, who can do kind of technical, razzy jazz things with a ciggie smouldering in the corner of his mouth. By eleven I was making cigarettes out of loo-roll. And then setting fire to them. And watching myself smoke them in the mirror, whilst trying to convince myself I, too, looked cool with a length of smouldering Andrex hanging from my yap.
So no. I don't let the kids ever, ever ever see me smoking. I've even hidden all the pictures of me smoking, as well - a shame, as one of my best shots ever has me tabbing on a bifter with a back-comb of nearly a foot high. They'll never know how beautiful, and drunk, Mummy once was.
So - what else wouldn't I let them see me do? I wouldn't let them over-hear a "I'm having a fat day" conversation. Those kids are going to grow up as un-neurotic about their bodies as I can manage. Likewise, they will never see a flicker of my real fear of stray cats, down-escalators or the kind of spiders that look like they're screaming when they run. No point in having them unable to remove bugs from the bath, as well. I try to avoid them hearing me bitching, as well. At least until they can join in properly. A seven year old is rubbish at bitching. I'd get face-ache pretending to laugh at their gags.
I don't mind them seeing me drink - something I kid myself will make them more "continental", but is actually because it would be a logistical impossibility to hide those two weekly crates of Hardy's fizzy rose (buy one crate - get another free at Macro at the moment!)
I don't think I'd mind them seeing me shag, either. Obviously from my point of view, it would suck - there's nothing quite like a child, hovering in a doorway, in a nightie, snivelling, to shift your mental self-image from Ava Gardner to just "a gardener" in less than a second. From their point of view, though, I don't think it would do them any harm. They've got to see their first shag at some point. Might as well be two normal looking people they can tease about it instead of some horrible porn at their mate's house. And I always let them watch me having my eyebrows threaded and my legs waxed, when my "hair lady" comes round. They might as well learn early what being a lady consists of. Well, being a lady with good eyebrows, anyway.

The most annoying children in movies

In today's T2 Caitlin has written about the scariest movies of all - the ones in which the children are smug, wise-cracking cynics, smirking their way through popular films.

For me, some of the most annoying children are in genre-crossing "family" films or even adult movies, where the child is designed to tug your heartstrings and make you think of the *important* bits of life. A few examples:

Home Alone
You may be surprised to learn that Home Alone was nominated for two Oscars. You may not be surprised to learn that neither of the nominations was for acting.

Jerry Maguire
Who's more annoying - the impish kid with oversized glasses denoting that he needs a daddy, or Renee Zellweger as Tom Cruise's wettest love interest ever and her witless "you had me at hello" line? It's a tough one to call.

Kids' recipe for clueless cooks

When I was young my mother advised me not to learn to be a good cook "because then you'll always have to do the cooking." It turns out to be good advice, because I seem to have dated men who either didn't care that we ate burritos every night or who were terrific cooks and loved to show off their prowess with a chicken and garlic press.

Where this strategy has failed is in meal planning for my daughter. When my husband and I shared a nanny with another couple, she used to eat homemade butternut squash and quinoa soup or fish curry. Now it's variations on tomato-pasta and cheese pasta, with some broccoli thrown in.

That's why I love Annabel Karmel. I mean, really love her. The idea of a cookbook for children's recipes may sound too try-hard but I find I regularly use her Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner to go beyond fish fingers and ham sandwiches.

Her new Baby and Toddler Food Diary (£14.99), out August 1, has advice on weaning and nutrition, plus recipes my daughter might actually eat and I might actually be able to make: creamy courgette rice, mini chicken pies, teriyaki salmon. Because it's a food diary it has plenty of space to write notes on variations and the child's reaction (slightly helpful) and is published in a ring binder so it stays open on its own (really helpful). For those - like me - who know more about eating than cooking - you can check out some of Karmel's recipes on her website.

The nightmare of pushy parents

Demetri Korzh, a would-be tennis brat dad from the Ukraine, has earnt himself the title of pushiest parent of the century for making his eight-year-old daughter, Anastasiya, wear an ear-piece during a match - into which he issued tactical instructions.

Along with piano-playing, chess and acting, tennis is one of those sports that seems to attract pushy parents. It's not so much the financial possibilities, as the opportunity for the parents to live out their own thwarted desires through their offspring - an unattractive but common ambition. I recently encountered one such individual at my local tennis courts, where my son (three and a half) attends the local kiddy tennis club, a fun, relaxed affair.

There I was, watching Will having a roaring time chasing yellow balls, when a new child arrives with his father. The child is ludicrously well-equipped - tennis whites, proper trainers. He has an enormous racquet, which almost decks several of the other children. The coach gently informs him that his racquet, although clearly super and everything, is far too big for him. Would he like to borrow a more maneagable one?

Immediately the father strides on to the court, scattering toddlers. His son, he explains loudly, has been playing tennis since he was two. His son can handle this racquet. His son, unlike the coach, is a pro. The teacher, a laid-back fellow, doesn't want any trouble. He backs off. The kid swings. The ball sails over the net. The dad returns to the sideline, an expression of extreme smugness on his face.

I walk over to this man, who is now shouting obnoxously loud words of encouragement, and say, as calmly as I can, "This is a class for three-year-olds. Can you please stop shouting and just let them enjoy themselves?"

He stares at me as though I were mad. "Listen, lady, you may not have any ambitions for your kid, but I sure do for mine." This is a mistake. "Lady" is never a good word to use on me. Aside from it being factually incorrect (I am not a member of the aristocracy), it always rouses my inner feminist. Invariably, she is cranky. A red mist descends. I explain a few things, chiefly that this is not Wimbledon, his son is not the next Raphael Nadal and that he is manifestly an ass.

What follows does not bear repeating in a family newspaper. Suffice to say we exchanged views on the relative merits of different parenting techniques. He wasn't calling me "lady" any more by the end of it. And yes, the kid changed racquets.

Do you have stories about pushy parents?

Weekend web grab

Some stories from around the web you might enjoy:

> What life as a day care worker is really like, in Slate

> Bullying starts young, on MSNBC

> Classic children's characters get a makeover, from The New York Times

A strange name in today's news

By coincidence there's another "name" story in the news today. The Metro newspaper reports that a girl named "Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii" has been made a ward of the court so she can alter her name. The nine-year-old hates her given name and instead called herself K. The judge said "The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have show in choosing this name...It makes a fool of the child and set her up with a social disability..."

The judge also attacked other strange names, such as Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence, and Benson and Hedges (the last two for a pair of twins).

The 20 strangest baby names

Michael Moran, the books editor for Times Online, has discovered a book that makes every Jane Doe or Tom, Dick and Harry thank their lucky stars.

We're familiar with the celebrity trend of giving children playful, silly, impractical names on the basis that they'll never have to endure the vicissitudes of a real school or workplace. The first one most of us noticed was probably Zowie Bowie, or perhaps Marc Bolan's little boy Rolan, and probably reached its apotheosis in the wilful christening flightiness evinced by Bob Geldof or Gywneth Paltrow. 

Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback, the authors of a new book, Bad Baby Names, have looked into a century of US census reports and discovered that the history of weird names is longer, and stranger, than most of us could have possibly imagined…

What should we be teaching our children, and when?

Two stories today about education raise the same interesting question: when should we teach our children different topics.

According to to government recommendations, we should be teaching and assessing preschoolers on reading, writing and punctuation. The Times's School Gate blog comes out against the under 5's agenda and quotes Carl Honore, author of Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting, who says the "joy of childhood" is being squeezed out.

What credit crunch?

Who says the days of bling are over? As long as you can buy a dummy that looks like a rapper's favourite tooth, there is still hope for conspicuous consumption. From the end of July godparents, grandparents and friends with a highly developed sense of irony can buy Elodie Detail's gold and silver edition dummies for £24.99.

http://www.elodiedetails.com/english/index.html

5 tips for a streamlined life

Katie writes in with an essential list for every multi-tasking parent:

The key to operating as an Alpha Mum is to make your life as streamlined as possible. Here are five top tips for achieving this that restore calm to chaos.

1) Never admit to being a mother
Admitting to motherhood is like being a member of HR – everyone will think you care about their problems. Your world has enough challenges of its own without taking on those of others

Learn to be nice to your wife

Tom sent in this eye-catching "Wife Leave" ad from Google, which links through to the story below. I can't really tell if these guys are celebrating their wives leaving, trying desperately to win them back or just resigned to the fact that they are terrible husbands.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/25/AR2007112501720.html

Should girls wear headscarves?

There's a thought-provoking piece about the headscarf debate in Turkey in today's Times. Does the wearing of headscarves by devout Muslims change society overall, perpetuating hard-line ideals and sexism? A female journalist there says: "The harrassment of women who don't cover up is increasing. I get called a whore as I walk down the street. The confidence of the Islamic movement is shoring up lumpen sexism among Turkish men."

She goes on to say: "Women who wear headscarves have already been exposed to religious ideology. It affects the kind of things they want in life. They make more passive choices."

Can we say the same about the wearing of headscarves in the UK? Are girls who wear headscarves being molded into meek specimens of womanhood? I think requiring them to wear headscarves jars with our society's ideology of equality. But for some it is simply a case of parents passing on their ideals to their children, just as one might pass along the tenets of Protestant or Catholic beliefs.

I've always been interested in women who cover themselves for religious reasons, at the same time feeling a bit sorry for them. They seem to be colluding in their own disenfranchisement and oppression. They - together with those who champion the niqab and burka - seem to buy into the idea that a woman's hair or face or body are dangerous things that must be controlled. That they are naturally "bad" because they are too stimulating and provocative for men to see.

And when it comes to young girls, there is a moment where they pass over from the freedom of childhood - of being able to run and play as equals with boys - to having to be modest and decorous and not too visible. That's my personal opinion and there are many who disagree. But then who's to say what's "right" when it comes to the rules of the country we live in?

Is a sexy au pair a fate worse than death?

It’s so predictable. Mention you’re interviewing au pairs and the first thing people say is “Get an ugly one”.

Well, they don’t say it actually. They snigger it. Blame it on the age-old reputation of men – although undoubtedly Jude Law and Ethan Hawke haven’t helped matters with their high-profile getting-it-on with their nannies. Get an attractive 20something around a man and, so the thinking goes, he’s unable to contain himself.

Frankly, this is the least of my worries. I need a young woman (or man) who’s responsible enough to look after my daughter, engaged enough to make her after school hours fun, cool headed enough to deal with any emergencies that come up, yet with modest enough expectations that we can actually afford him or her. And I need to be able to live with them in my house. If Scarlett Johansson fit the criteria, I’d hire her.

I figure if my husband’s susceptible to an affair, he’s more likely to a tasty tidbit among the intelligent and attractive women he works with in the City. Besides, as anyone who’s married knows, familiarity breeds contempt. And if you’re paying someone to live with you yet they still leave pans with caked-on baked beans in the sink, it’s hardly conducive to romance. That’s one thing I know from experience.

Picture: Scarlett Johansson in the Nanny Diaries

Why we need 5 terms in the school year

An excellent suggestion from the new School Gate blog: scrap the old system whereby kids get six weeks off over summer for a more manageable system that includes four weeks off over summer. Check out the very convincing arguments.

12 most expensive celebrity baby pictures

UPDATE: Pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's newborn twins sold for $14 million.

Can we just step back for a moment and marvel at the news of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt having twins and selling the pictures for an estimated $11 million? Before the birth, paparazzi camped out in front of the hospital, and the mayor of Nice announced the twins' arrival along with the couple's doctor.

There is big price escalation for celebrity baby pictures these days. Consider that in 1989 pictures of Lisa Marie Presley's baby - quintessential tabloid fodder - sold for $100,000. Nowadays that barely covers the catering bill at baby's first photo shoot. But really, what is our fascination with celebrity baby pictures?

There's a ludicrous predictability to them all: parents beam as the little blob looks uncomprehendingly up at the bright photography lights. "We're a happy, normal family" the pictures attempt to project, but the perfectly styled mums and dads end up looking as posed and artificial as the babies look unformed and natural. People in "the business" say the rising prices of baby pictures is fueled by fans wanting to know the "real" person behind the celebrity facade. But these pictures look as plastic as a pacificer. And while ostensibly they are focussed on the baby and the family unit, they seem to be about one thing alone: burnishing the parents' image.

12 celebrity couples and what they sold their baby pictures for:

1. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: Twins Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon, sold for $14 million to Hello! and People magazine (figure updated)
2. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: First child Shiloh Nouvel born in Namibia in 2006, sold for between $5-7 million to People magazine
3. Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony: Twins Emme and Max born in 2008, sold for $6 million to People
4. Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves: Levi, reportedly sold for $3 million to OK!, according to TMZ.com

5. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: Adopted son Pax Thien, sold for $2 million to People in 2007
6. Anna Nicole Smith and Larry Birkhead: Dannielynn, sold for a reported $2 million to OK! magazine
7. Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman: Max, sold for a reported $1.5 million to People in February

8. Jessica Alba and Cash Warren: Honor Marie, sold for a reported $1.5 million to OK!
9. Jamie Lynn Spears: Maddie Briann, sold for a reported $1 million by OK! in June
10. Nicole Richie and Joel Madden: Harlow Winter, sold for a reported $1 million to People in February
11. Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale: Kingston, sold for a reported $575,000 to OK! in June 2006
12. Britney Spears and Kevin Federline: Sean Preston, sold for a reported $500,000 to People in November 2005

And three high-profile celebrities who didn't:

* Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, for Sunday Rose, because they said they did not feel that it was right

* Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, for James Wilke. The actress stood outside the hospital with her baby and posed for free.

* Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, for Suri Cruise. The couple reportedly took the pictures off the market after a bidding war. Pictures taken by Annie Leibovitz ran in Vanity Fair.

Source: Forbes.com, The Times archive and agencies

5 reasons why exclusive maternity leave is bad for women

The new head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission says equality laws are holding women back. It's good to see that someone is finally acknowledging it. There's been such a focus on getting more maternity leave for women that we haven't noticed that the one-sided benefits aren't always benefitting women or families in general, because...:

1. You can't change human nature

If an employer has two job candidates, and knows that one can take off for months with little notice and do it repeatedly, it's natural that the employer would choose one that provides the most continuity, the one that can be more available and - perhaps - just make the employer more comfortable with their predictability. That is to say, an employer would choose one who won't become a mother.

2. It sidelines dads

Why does the law assume that mothers are the best at peeling bananas, playing ball, reading stories and wiping tears? The law places the responsibility for the first year of life solely on mums and sends the message that dads are there to be breadwinners and occasional babysitters, not full-on parents.

3. It keeps women out of the top ranks at companies

If a man took a year off from partner-track at his law firm to sail round the world, it would be assumed that his heart wasn't in his work. If a woman takes a year off to look after her child, the same is assumed. It's not right and the situations aren't analogous, but "commitment" at the management level in many companies is still measured by the amount of time - year after year - that you slave away at your desk. The law feeds into the existing cycle. Men are currently in top management; women take off time to look after children; they come back but languish at lower levels because they haven't put in the time; they leave because they're not being promoted. Rinse and repeat.

If taking time off was normalised for everyone within companies (that is, if men were doing it too), then attitudes among top management would change within a generation.

4. Maternity leave law affects all women - whether or not they want to have children

Even if a woman has decided she never wants to have children, when she's of child-bearing age - and especially if she's married or in a long-term relationship - she'll be subjected to the same fears and concerns from employers. In other words, every working woman from age 21 until the menopause has a harder struggle for her "commitment" to be taken seriously. After all, who knows when she'll lark off to make babies?

5. It keeps mothers barefoot and pregnant

The longer you're out of work or out of the office, the harder it can be to get back in and maintain your career trajectory, as this story of working mother Sarah Vince-Cain shows. Once you've started your family it makes sense to continue (a big topic of debate in my antenatal group was whether it was better to leave one year or two between babies). And while you can take the woman out of the fast lane, you can't take the fast lane out of the woman. Intelligent, educated women who leave their jobs to look after children devote their intelligence and dedication to their new task. Thus having babies and raising children become the woman's vocation. Just like the good ol' days.

How to use body language in the office

Sometimes at work we are our own worst enemies: We don't ask for big raises, we don't speak up in meetings and we flap around the office in a whirlwind of activity, trying to get everything done between morning drop-off and evening pick-up from nursery (or at least, I do).

A new Times video special on body language shows how to read colleagues and use your own body language to get ahead in the office. Julie Daniels, who produced the video, says this about the experience:

Next time you’re standing in a group chatting, look at the other people’s feet. If they’re pointing in your direction, you can be sure that it’s really you they’re giving their full attention to. If they’re aimed at the attractive blonde standing next to you, you’re in trouble.

The flirtatious behaviour of some women in the workplace can be seen as demeaning, and the videos have certainly made me think about how a woman’s body language can undermine her. But men are great preeners. Have a look at one of your colleagues next time he’s in conversation with a attractive woman. He may pull in his stomach, stand up straighter, adjust his tie - isn’t that flirting? The way men behave with each other is also very telling. Guys will puff out their chests, mirror the body language of the other man, try to outdo each other and show who’s boss.

If you want to find out what your colleagues are really saying: who’s lying, who’s flirting, and who’s powerplaying, check out our films. You can also pick up useful tips on interview techniques, how to give a good presentation and get the promotion you deserve.

Part 1: how to read your colleagues

Part 2: how to give an effective presentation

Part 3: find out who is in control

Part 4: do’s and don’ts at an interview

Part 5: how to negotiate a pay rise or promotion

Plus here's a great ad from Crunch gym about a different kind of body language in the office.

Crunch Fitness commercial - Head crusher - kewego
An office worker is hit in the back of the head by a co-worker. To take revenge, he crushes his head with his fingers. Crunch Fitness, you're stronger than you think !

Keywords: commercial ad health office head fitness worker crush body crunch

Video from ryudo

The new blog all about the education system

The Times has just launched its new blog all about education: School Gate.

Sarah Ebner, who's hosting the blog, has already got some great posts:

* The most embarrassing recipients of honorary degrees

* A poll on whether end-of-term gifts have gone out of control. (If you missed the comments from an AM reader about having to fork over money for a group gift, read them now.)

* The 10 best blogs about education

Check it out!

3 new ways to shop stylishly for kids

1. Sue, mother of a "trendy 4-year-old" boy writes in with a clothing source for XYs:

"I have found a great new website www.guycollection.co.uk  What a refreshing change to find something different for boys! The polo shirts are as good as they look on the site, and the 'jumping hoddie' washes beautifully and indeed does look fab with the red shorts! My son will no longer look like everyone else in his class, with the Next and Gap collection!"

 

2. Cowley Manor, the cool family-friendly hotel near Cirencester, has a new boutique, and unlike so many hotel gift shops, this one is worth visiting. For adults, they have items such as Ernest Sewn jeans, funky necklaces, felted saddlebags in grape and gorgeous design books about luxury travel. But the kids' corner is amazing. In addition to adorable clothes, they have groovy design-led items from all over. There are Areaware Fauna silkscreened stuffed animals from New York City (£21.50 for a blue boxer dog), Douce France stickers you colour yourself of iconic French images (Tour Eiffel, mais oui, but also a waiter, students sleeping on a bench and little cups of espresso) (£3.95), and my favourite - the Wu and Wu Dumpling Dynasty kits.

These are beautifully decorated little kits made of tin that hold sewing items, first aid supplies or pigtail accessories. The Hove-based designer was inspired by trawling through the flea markets of Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. I got the pigtail one for my daughter's birthday (£15).

3. The Littlebabycompany.com isn't so very new (started in 2007) but has stylish items for everything from feeding time to playtime to bathtime. The site carries classics like the Mary Jane socks (£16.95 for 6 pairs) and amusing items like the crochet tea set (£35) but my favourite section is decor & interiors, with the race-track decals (£39) and birdhouse lamp (£110). What is it about countries like Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands that they turn out such great design for kids?

From the 'Oh Come On' Department

Toddlers who dislike spicy food could be deemed 'racist'

10 things no one tells you about parenthood

Check out this amusing list of things you only learn once you have kids, from the US.

It's a pretty good list, although I think he's left out some very important ones, such as:

11. You were never really tired before.

You thought you were exhausted when you used to stay up all night drinking on Thursday then work all day before heading out to another party on Friday. You believed you were shattered during a week of exams at school. But then you had a baby and realised that it's possible to drift through an entire year drifting in and out consciousness without any proper REM stage while simultaneously working the straps of a Baby Bjorn or singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as dawn breaks. You now know what it means to have tired bones.

12. Half-eaten nursery food is still palatable.

A biscuit - sodden and gummed for 20 minutes - can still be popped into your mouth after being passed on from your toddler. Cold chips and abandoned fish fingers are perfectly fine, if eaten while hovering over the sink before loading the dishwasher. In fact, almost any manner of food fits into your diet as long as it is handled and spurned first by your offspring.

13. It's not so important to be 'cool'. (pictured)

Kids demonstrate that it's a lot more fun to roll around on the floor, make animal noises and funny faces, and generally act goofy than to pose in the corner, sneering and making snide comments about other people's outfits. But beware - from their teens to their own parenting years they'll forget this rule. Be prepared to soldier on in your unhipness.

Got any of your own?

Ladies' day at the church

Just when you thought you might have to stop worrying. Just when you thought, we've got the vote, we've ostensibly got equal rights by law, we're no longer our husband's chattal, some clergy shatter the illusion. Thank goodness the Church of England officially decided to consecrate women bishops, and leave behind the antiquated idea of females as not up to snuff when preaching God's word, but the groups rallying against it give me cause to worry.

I've been meaning to join a local church, especially after my daughter asked in the car recently, "Who is God?" Yet the call for no women bishops reminded me how important it is to choose the right church. It's pretty shocking to realise that some religious leaders still think women are inferior to men. Some people are saying this is the end of the CofE, but it's the opposite: if people feel the church reflects evolved and modern moral and ethically viewpoints, it will become more relevant to their lives, not less.

I'm reminded of the hysteria when I was young about Satanic messages embedded backwards on records. At a youth group, several kids asked the minister if we should worry about absorbing "bad" messages via pop. "How many of you regularly listen to your records backwards?" he asked jokingly, before dismissing the scaremongering as a distraction from the real issues facing us - coping with parents, peer pressure, budding sexuality. He made me realise that there was a church that actually tries to help people with real problems in their real lives, that I could feel a part of. Now I feel that way about the CofE.

Ruth Gledhill blogs about the debate on her excellent Articles of Faith blog - check it out if you want to read more about the full motion.

(Thanks, KM, for bringing up the bishops issue in the comments of Caitlin's post.)

"Us" time

We went to Glastonbury last week. Yes, I know, it was a while ago but, to be fair, I still felt a bit "dizzy" until yesterday - although I have now nailed for certain the fact that drinking half a bottle of ASDA own-brand brandy, before 11am, really doesn't agree with my constitution, after all. That feels like a scientific breakthrough.
This has been the first year we haven't taken the children. The kids love Glastonbury - but this is because, as far as they're concerned, Glastonbury is The Kidz Field, where Bodger and Badger do shows every hour on the hour, fairies wander around handing out handfuls of fairydust, and half a dozen tents offer everything from puppet-making, to song composition. After six years of this, we finally tired of going to the greatest rock festival in the world and then using it as a hippy Centre Parcs, and dumped the kids with an assortment of my siblings, instead. Then me and the man-missus headed down there to spend four days in the fulcrum of ROCK. Despite my intense desire to ROCK, I did greatly fear that I would become maudlin, and miss the children. But I have to say - and you must imagine me saying this in the voice of Mr Toad - I didn't miss them at all! I'd do it all again in a heartbeat!
Indeed, so marked was my joy at being away from them that, by 3pm on Saturday, I had actually forgotten that children existed. When a small bunch of small people, wearing velvet jester's hats, barged past me on the way to see Crowded House, I truly marvelled that so many dwarves had travelled down together, to rock. Then I saw their faces, and remembered. The young of the species! Of course! Kids! Coh!
Perhaps our pleasure was all the more intense because this has been only our second break from the children since Dora was born, in 2001. Indeed, I am starting to wonder if I might actually be, contrary to all my assumptions, an incredibly diligent and loving mother, after all - like some manner of slightly overweight saint, in a TopShop smock. When I was having a pre-Glastonbury guilt, my sister Weena said, slightly incredulously, "All my friends who have kids are off on mini-breaks left, right and centre. They leave them for a week, sometimes. Just bugger off and get wankered on hot cider, there's a good girl."
So, I have no idea what the average child-dumping rate is. All I know is that, on Saturday, I was pleasantly steamed from 11am onwards, danced for 10 hours straight, "showed" Jay-Z my "diamonds", spontaneously learned to body-pop, and accidentally punched the woman who plays the sexy gipsy lady in Stardust in the mouth when running to a falafel stall at 2am. And it was brilliant. And I wish I could do it all again this week.

Do you re-heat?

My husband laughs at the latest announcement from Gordon Brown that we're throwing away too much food. I confess: I love leftovers. The bit of risotto hanging around after dinner. The roast pork enduring after Sunday lunch.

No bit of uncarved meat or pan scraping is too small for me to pop into a Tupperware container and reheat for breakfast, lunch or dinner. My mother used to call it "jungling up" (she said it was an old phrase used on the railroad).

When I was still living in New York and my husband called from London, he's often hear me just finishing a breakfast of Thai green curry or last-night's spaghetti. "It's unnatural!" he'd cry. "Noodles for breakfast?"

But what started out as a serious culture clash has now we've settled into symbiotic balance. He cooks a little bit more than we'll eat, and I'm not forced to have tuna sandwiches every day. As long as nothing gets pushed back behind the mayonnaise jar or hidden by the milk carton, everything gets eaten. This makes my husband especially happy since it doesn't have to get eaten by him.

What's the leftovers philosophy at your house? Are you one of those people Gordon Brown is mad at?

90 most awesome old-school children's books

Stories you read when your mother put you to bed

When Caitlin Moran wrote recently about the books that defined her childhood – notably Enid Blyton’s Naughtiest Girl books - her post evoked reams of response.

“These books actually work as wonderful parenting manuals,” Caitlin said, “showing children working out their problems for themselves, and seeing the consequences of not only their actions, but their personalities. They tackle some pretty big issues, as well: ugliness, anger, loneliness, laziness, obesity, parental disaffection.”

“I just might never bother with a book written after 1962. I just might live in my mother’s suitcases.”

Loads of Alpha Mummy'ers agreed, citing books loved from childhood into adulthood. Yes, we like our children to discover them. But we still enjoy them as grownups. As one mother wrote, “I could go on [listing these] forever! In my 50s I'm collecting and rereading them all over again!”

These days we’re more likely to recognise the gender stereotyping or the homosexual overtones (or did we just imagine that?). Yet their grown-up appeal can be unexpected.

“I wrote about Enid Blyton's life and work for my university thesis, so I ended up reading my books and listening to my story tapes more in adulthood than I ever had as a kid. Suddenly all my friends started donating their long-abandoned examples. I've now digitised the tapes and put them on my iPod. [It's a] really is a great way to relax after a long day.”

Here's a by-no-means-exhaustive list of your heirloom reads - for children of various ages - in no particular order. Where possible I've put in posters' comments - lightly edited so they work with the list format.

There's also mention of a story in entry 90 about a burglar who gets trapped in a cupboard that we're still trying to get a title for. Anybody heard of it?

Post any obvious ones that got passed over. In the meantime I'm putting these on my daughter's Christmas list.

1. Enid Blyton books
“I have recently reread the Faraway Tree trilogy and, yes, I am 65. It still is magical. I have introduced my grandson and goddaughter to the same, and at 7 and 8 they are enjoying reading and escaping with Enid Blyton. The world today is so abrasive and somewhat frightening to our young. How wonderful to read and escape it for a short while every day or evening. The world of literature has been opened for many by these lovely childhood books.”
“I was always thrilled by Enid Blyton. The stories were funny and it was lovely to learn about British ways and words like tyre, boot, and torch.”
“I liked Julian from The Naughtiest Girl series but always thought the quarrel in the stables - "if you were a boy I'd show you what I really think of you" - had sexual undertones.”

2. The Patchwork Cat
“A most beautiful book by Nicola Bayley and William Mayne. My daughter would sob "Read it again! Read it again!".”
“How brilliant was that book? I have wanted a tabby my whole life because of it. 'I have done some snatchwork on your patchwork ...' genius. I learned to read late, and I think my mum must have read me that book about a million times ... and I'm keeping it for my children when they come along, too.”

3. Susan Pulls the Strings
“I loved the Susan series. Susan Pulls the Strings, Susan interferes etc. It was good to have a Scottish heroine and she was so funny. The later ones now fetch a lot of money on Amazon.”

4. Swallows and Amazons
“I love Arthur Ransome's Swallows & Amazons series. I adored the book covers too - definitely appealing.”

5. The House of Arden
“I loved time travelling books – this was a favourite.”

6. The Tiger Who Came to Tea
“It's all mummy at home and daddy popping in for dinner later on! Lol - I loved those when I was little; maybe it's why I feel a deep subconscious need to ply my other half with dinner on the table at seven and beer on tap.”

7. A Traveller in Time
“Alison Utley's A Traveller in Time is set in the doomed Babbington house, and the heroine goes back to the Elizabethan days. There was a great 'first boy' in it, Antony Babington's teenage brother, who kisses the heroine - but then she has to go back to the future, her own time. Sigh.”

8. The Wool-pack 
"Cynthia Harnett's history stories (e.g. The Load of Unicorn and The Woolpack) were good."
"I loved Cynthia Harnett’s book. Children's books just used to be *better*, basically, didn't they? How sexist are the Lucy and Tom books, though?"

9. Hugh Lofting's Dr Doolittle series

“I was absolutely furious at the farcical films with the same name.”

10. Laura Ingalls Wilder books

“I named my daughter Laura after her.”

“When grown up, I read a sequel called The First Four Years in which Laura described her own experiences of motherhood, which she found extremely difficult. Mrs Ingalls made it all sound easy, but Laura burnt the house down by mistake, through exhaustion as a new mother.”

Go to second page for the entire list

Looking out for meningitis

Meningitis is a word that strikes fear in the heart of any parent. And I've just heard that a child at a friend's school has died from it. Apparently another child they know died of it last year. This is the kind of news that sends me to The Meningitis Trust like I'm drilling for a test (and in a way, I am, just in case). The signs and symptoms:

* feeling unwell

* fever with cold hands and feet

* floppy, drowsy or difficult to wake

* headache

* stiff neck

* dislike of bright lights

* rash

Apparently the much-talked-about petechial rash (ie, doesn't go away when you press a glass on it) didn't show up in this case and the local hospital didn't catch it either. It's just a reminder that as parents we have to educate ourselves, be proactive and not be afraid to challenge doctors if we think they've got it wrong.

Here's a good piece from the BBC that tells more about meningitis.