strange little world

Babycake wakes with things on his mind. Most recently it has been the concept of large vehicles such as cars, motorbikes, planes and trucks being controlled by a human agent. He describes this agent as 'er Man' and the man has a hat on (if he's on a bike) and this morning he announced that the 'Man' also wears 'bants' (that's pants for us Brits and underwear for other English speakers). Apparently the Man on the bike, in the car and in the plane wear pants. I am delighted to hear it.

I am interested in how his concept of the three ages of humans; 'Bee' (baby), 'Boy' (child) and 'Man' (adult, but only applied to males) has developed and is so relentlessly gendered. His interests are wide and encompass trucks (encouraged by Mr McMuffin), his doll and pushchair and he demands to be allowed to hoover, stack the dishwasher and put detergent in the washing machine, so perhaps he is showing me that there is no cause for alarm-he recognises the existing power relationships, but will carve his own path.

I shall discourage too strong an interest in housework though, as yesterday he sneaked up behind me and grabbed the glass cleaner. Realising he had about a microsecond before I snatched it off him, he sprayed a little bit of it straight into his eye. The trauma of the event and the subsequent dipping of his head under the tap has registered and he is dining out on tales of his experience to all visitors. Ms Ginger Cake was treated to a re-enactment that was so moving for him that a little tear came to his eye and he hung on to me for comfort. The moment where he mimes the spray in the eye and the 'ch ch' noise is one of the most pathetic things I have ever seen and leaves me somewhere between sobs and uncontrollable mirth. This is one of the aspects of parenting I didn't anticipate and yet really enjoy.

he is so generous

Babycake very kindly offered me the opportunity to suckle from Mrs McMuffin tonight. He exposed her breast and then pulled my head towards her. What a lovely child we are raising.

Phew

I got a bit tired of being told how 'tiny' my bump was and how 'small' I looked for my dates by any fool who saw me when I was pregnant with Babycake. This time round I got some small satisfaction from asking people if they thought there was something wrong and watching them squirm, that was until my midwife sent me for a scan, because I was actually measuring a little small.

She is a very calm woman and reassured me that a scan would probably show things to be fine and was better than 'a midwife with a tape measure'. Naturally, I believed that I was going to have to name this one Thumbelina. Anyway, all looks well, she is exactly the right size and she seems to have long legs like her brother. Phew.

still loving my iphone

I have finally taken the plunge and hacked my iPhone so that I can put third party apps onto it. I am loving it more and more. It is now the fully fledged mobile computer that I always knew it should be. Of course, this will all be official in about three months time. I can even take screenshots, and rather sadly this is what I have done. So, here they are:

the con

I thought I would share my latest musical obsession. Tegan and Sara's album The Con is quite simply brilliant.* There really isn't a duff track on the album. The bubble gum pop covers an album of surprising depth. Here are a couple of tracks off the album: I was married and Burn your life down

* DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Mr McMuffin. Mrs McMuffin, being a soul of low sense, doesn't appreciate the genius of Tegan and Sara at all.

down to me

I didn't watch a single match and so helped the Welsh squad to their stunning Grand Slam. One might be forgiven for thinking that the 6 Nations is a matter of little interest to the English people and media, unless England are doing rather better then they have. Anyway, who cares? Wales, you rock (or 'Rot' as Babycake would say).

pots and pans

I have wanted some new pots and pans for a while now. The ones we had were collected over many years and they had all seen better days. I admired a very nice mid-price range a couple of years ago but could not persuade Mrs McMuffin that they were worth the money. However, yesterday I saw them in TKMAXX for less than half the price that I would have been willing to pay for them all that time ago. They still looked like mighty fine pots to me. Mrs McMuffin hatched a cunning pre-birth, nest building, everything has got to be cleaned NOW, plan. She agreed that I could get new pots if I sorted out the ones that we have and cleaned out the cupboard where they are stored. After a couple of trips to different TKMAXX stores I was able to get us a variety of pots in different sizes from a little baby milk pan through to a huge 6 litre stock pot. I also got a new griddle pan, a saute pan and a couple baby non-stick skillets. I got the lot for about £150 which is quite a bargain as far as I am concerned.

I thought the clearing out the cupboard was going to be the hard part, but when it came down to it, it was dead easy. I just chucked everything out!

Now all I need is a new Le Crueset saute/casserole pan and a steamer and I'll be away.

It is all very satisfying.

By the way, Happy Easter!

is it wrong...

...for a full grown man to want one of these...badly? You can see some more of these fantastic creations here.

well I never...

William Shatner just did some plumbing work for us. I just didn't have the heart to mention the glory days of T J Hooker.

jericho

I have just watched the last ever episode of Jericho. Only 7 episodes into the second series and they cancelled the show. The first series was good, if a little dull and soapy at times. I stuck with it because I knew there was something worthwhile in there. I wasn't wrong. The second series came blasting back as some kind of political action thriller thingy, and it was absolutely gripping. I know Skeet Ulrich (is that a real name?) has the kind of weedy, weaselly, face that you could never tire from slapping, but even he grew on me a little. I know that most of you lot never watched it, or gave up after a couple of episodes. Don't deny it, I know it's true. Even so, the show will be sadly missed by me.

one, two...more

For some reason Babycake has taken against the number three. He goes "unn, duu...more" or occasionally, he will just skip to "seese". He will even count everything in twos, "unn, duu, unn, duu, unn, duu..." I can't make up my mind if I should be proud of him for mastering the concept of binary or keep him away from other children because he is just a little bit odd and might hurt them. Although, having said that I am not sure he really gets the idea of binary. He does get the idea of on but if he wants something off he says he wants it on. Nothing I say to him makes him change his mind. Maybe he is just messing with me.

oh my god...

It's been ages since I messed around with a Windows machine. My friend got herself a new Windows laptop a couple of months ago and she has proceeded to make a complete mess of it. She asked me to fix it up for her. I was quite excited at the prospect of playing with a new computer. I have spent about four hours on it so far and it is still no where ready for her to have back. First off, I thought I would do a nice clean install of Windows XP, but could I work out how to repartition the hard drive. I remember that I used to be able to use FDISK but after a bit of searching on the internet, apparently this is no longer available under XP. In the end I allowed the machine to kind of install another version of the OS. There are now two system folders and I am being offered the option of starting up from either, which is a bit odd given that at least one of them doesn't work.

The best bit is that I can not set up a wireless, or any, connection to the internet. It is all driving me a bit mad, not to mention the fact that I now feel a teeny weeny bit guilty because she will now have machine that is in worse condition than when she gave it to me, but I really do have to go to bed now. I have tried to make up for it by sorting out her music and giving her a nice copy of Office. Hopefully that will go some way to helping her feel a bit better when I tell her she can't connect to the internet, and that she will have to sort it out by herself.

While I have been working on this machine I keep finding myself thinking that I could do this on the mac or that on the mac, or even better, I have no idea how to do this, but the mac just does it for me. For example, I have rarely given my internet connection a second thought since I got into macs. I am not trying to bash Windows here, but it really is true, macs just work.

how secure is your password?

Found this while trawling through Lifehacker who got it from someone else, but I can't be bothered to do any more links. The Password Meter will measure how secure your favourite password is. Scarily my most used password scored only as 9% secure. Fortunately my second most used password managed to notch up a whopping 84%. I know which one I will be using in future.