Sleep Interrupted

At nursery, Ben has been learning Christmas songs, Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star and Away in a Manger. Which has opened up a whole world of questions. Mainly who is Jesus, and why does he live in our hearts?

Tricky. I have tried to be diplomatic about this. I have no belief in anything religious (well, except for Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. Oh, and the Easter Bunny) but don’t want this to unduly affect any belief that Ben may have or develop. So I said that Jesus was a man who lived a long time ago, he was very kind to be people, and did lots of nice things. He was born on Christmas Day, and lots of people brought him presents, which is why we give each other presents on his birthday to remember him and the nice things he did.

Ben then wanted to know how he lived in our hearts. Obviously he is a slight pedant like his father, so I explained he wasn’t really, actually, in our hearts, but that when somebody is dead, you can remember them, and all the things they did, and you say they have a special place in your hearts. That seemed to do it. Then came perhaps one of the stranger conversations I have ever had with anyone.

Ben: Why was Jesus born in a stable?

Me: Well, because his mummy and daddy had to go to a big city, and when they got there, none of the hotels had any rooms left, so they stayed in a stable with animals. They had lots of straw so it was nice and warm.

Ben: How did they get to the shops?

Me: They walked or went on their donkeys.

Ben: Jesus didn’t have a car?

Me: No Jesus didn’t have a car.

Ben: So how would he get to Legoland?

Me: Sadly, I don’t think Jesus ever went to Legoland.

At this point I have been given some very funny looks by parents coming towards me and who have only heard the last sentence. Not one I ever thought I would be saying.

Watch now how I skilfully waste half an hour of your time.

Catching up on my blog reading today, I read about Emperor Rectal Hose. A few minutes of research later and I discovered that I was Damn Dwarves Hid It. Go on, you know you want to…

Not sure Jessica entirely understands the concept of a Christmas list, unlike Ben who goes through the Argos catalogue with a pair of scissors cutting out everything he likes the look of and making a large collage-style wishlist.

Anyway, Jessica, with a little help from Auntie Jayne came up with the following list:

Teddy Bear

Sweeties

Bananas - purple and yellow

Woolly hat

Stickers

A baby with hair

Cherries

DVD with songs you can dance to

Cook Book

Upsy Daisy toy

Strawberries

Looks like this Christmas will be an easy one to buy for.

Ben, coming upstairs after having seen something on CBeebies, : Did you know that if you have dinosaur bones, they can turn into birds??

Me: No, I would have to admit that I did not know that Ben.

Ben: Well, life’s like that.

Want to know what makes me tick? Blog posts like this and this. I love this kind of performance monitoring and optimisation work. Sometimes I wish this was what my job was all about.

The upshot of these particular posts? I think Firefox 3 is going to be very cool to play with.

Tim, I agree that recycling plastic is frustrating. When I looked into this last year the council’s rather uninspiring response was:

Thanks for your web response regarding what plastics we recycle. However, the plastics listed are the only plastics recycled in our’s and around 90% of other Councils. Basically we only accept plastic bottles.

As the recycle-more site you pointed to says, it would seem the reason for many plastics not being recyclable is that there’s not the market for the recycled material. So I guess the answer is to try and reduce instead of recycle.

I was interested to learn that Tetra Pak can be recycled… although not round here yet. Amazingly, you can post them back if you want — at your own expense. I wonder what the eco-nomics of this are?

“Daddy… why are cats’ noses wet if they don’t like wet things?”

Yet again this year we did the annual pilgrimage to Cantley for the fireworks. Unlike previous years, 2007 was not awash with mud, or cold. In fact with my scarf on I was almost too warm. So the children with hats and gloves, winter coats, two pairs of socks and boots must have been toasty.

Ben had been looking forward to the fireworks since, well, since last year. Jessica was not so sure, she did go last year, but didn’t really remember it. She spent most of the display sitting on Andrew’s shoulders, with her hat pulled down nearly over her eyes. Jessica didn’t like the red ones or the loud ones, but did like the green and silver ones. Ben on the other hand liked all of them, particularly the red ones. The bonfire, which was big, was quite a draw for Jessica, Ben hung back to start with, but soon moved closer. In the end we had to drag both of them away before they got too hot.

We had come prepared this year with our own snacks - Milky Bars, as the queues for food are generally horrendous, and for overpriced, sub-standard quality hot dogs. The merchandise is the same - cheap, plastic tat, which of course the kids love. Glow in the dark wristbands, battery operated spinning ball light things which cost about £4 and do not work well after being dropped (several times). Luckily we found the ones from last year, and with a few new batteries were good to go.

We had sparklers on the Monday night of Guy Fawkes itself, again Ben was very excited, with Jessica a little more uncertain. After I had given both children warnings about how the sparklers would be burning hot, and not to touch each other or themselves with them, Jessica ran off screaming “I’m burning” - this before I had even lit hers. She did come out eventually and quite enjoyed herself, as did Ben, despite the rain.

The next morning our road was littered with used fireworks, great long wooden rocket tails. Ben is now desperate to buy a rocket, I have said we may have to wait until next year, which he was not happy with. If we manage to lay our hand on a rocket, I will update.