Farewell January

As January plays out its final day, I am not sorry to see the back of it.

It has been a month of coughing, and more coughing.... and yet more coughing.

It has also been a month of chocolate, alcohol and takeaways - nice at the time of indulging but the sluggishness that inevitably accompanies such excesses has not helped me to cope with how busy I have been and how thinly my personal resources have been stretched.

Cold, dark mornings and cold dark evenings do not charge me with the energy I need to make the days productive.

I have worked so hard to help my daughter get her new home ready to move into that my own home has been sadly neglected. I have really enjoyed being able to help her with the decorating and cleaning (and now curtain buying) but I am desperate to get on with my own home improvements.

Blog posts have been half written and will remain so as drafts until such a time as I get round to finishing or deleting them.

The sands of time are doing their thing with the hour glass at far too great a rate.

A lovely wedding that featured my daughters singing so beautifully, lifted my spirits and gave me a moment to reflect on how lucky I am to be part of a big, sometimes demanding, sometimes challenging, always wonderful family. No matter how difficult things get, no matter how torn in different directions I feel, no matter how sleep deprived I am - I must never forget how truly blessed I am.

With optimism fully intact, bring on February.

Thomas in Charge

It's been years since I've watched an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine - not since my nephew (now in his twenties) could name every engine from the tiniest glimpse. In all honesty, I've never really been a fan of the works of Reverend Awdry and until recently, having been blessed with only daughters, Thomas et al did not feature in my life.

The arrival of my son has precipitated an interesting shift in the toy cupboard and the DVD collection. I don't go out of my way to impose gender stereotypes but my son very definitely has more interest in all things vehicular than my daughters ever did.

When I was offered a copy of the new Thomas & Friends DVD - Thomas in Charge - released this week, I  imagined my little Dylan would be very happy.

The animation style is quite different to the original series that I remember and  Ringo Starr has been replaced as the narrator by Michael Angelis, who I remember fondly as Lucien from the BBC sitcom The Liver Birds ("I breed rabbits, me") - but I suppose evolution is inevitable with a franchise of any longevity.

Another difference is how much more friendly and pleasant the engines are to each other. I'm sure that in the books, there are some quite nasty characters.  I was disappointed that the original theme tune no longer featured but Dylan responded to the new cheery tune with a little wiggle and a smile.

Although for me, watching this DVD inevitably made me draw comparisons and ultimately feel my age, for Dylan, watching with fresh eyes, it was a positive experience. It did not sustain his attention for the running time of just under an hour but as it is comprised of episodes, that was not a problem.

I was actually doing my knitting and chatting to my mum at the same time as watching this DVD. Without giving it my full attention I couldn't really give you the run down of all four episodes but suffice it to say, it was much what you would expect with  problems finding resolutions in the setting of  Knapford Station and the Island of Sodor. I was more attuned to my little boy's reactions as he watched avidly, proving that I was right to think he would enjoy this.

It is possible to select the episodes individually on the DVD menu or to take the option of "Watching with Mr Perkins". The Mr Perkins infill between episodes creates a separate story arc about playing music at the Knapford bandstand. There was a gentle educational content to the Mr Perkins segments but I could happily have done without it. Dylan was far more engaged by the animation than the acted parts. Perhaps for older children it would have more value.

In summary, fans of Thomas & Friends are in for a treat and for Dylan it was definitely a good introduction to a classic.

Chinese New Year

Despite the fact that both my little ones are under the weather and consequently being more demanding than usual, I decided to go ahead and celebrate Chinese New Year with a special dinner - if only for the excuse to use an oriental bowl set that my much missed older sister gave me on the occasion of my first wedding many years ago (a wedding which had it not yielded four amazing daughters would have counted as the biggest mistake of my life).

I had grand plans involving an elaborate menu and painting dragons but on account of my poorly babies, I downscaled. I did egg noodles and quorn nuggets with dipping sauce (that is tomato ketchup dolloped onto a little plate) for the less adventurous palettes and a vegetable thai red curry that was as easy as chucking frozen stir fry vegetables into a wok with a jar of curry sauce. I managed to turn the nuggets hard and leathery and the rice soft and blancmange-y by overcooking both but nobody minded once they had entered into the spirit of celebration.

I'm not sure how much the little ones actually ate but they enjoyed the novelty of chopsticks and spread noodles and ketchup far and wide.

Dessert was another cheat - shop bought chocolate fudge cake (not very Chinese but they both start with Ch) which we decorated with some little plastic dragons that I found in a tin of mythical creatures  I had forgotten we had until I had a rummage for a dragon that I know we have but failed to find. These dragons were much better anyway!

The one thing that we did spend a bit of time on that made the evening special was our origami fortune cookies. I pointed Charis in the direction of a You Tube tutorial, provided her with paper and left her to get on with it. Rather than fortunes, I told her to insert little slips of paper with monetary values on them from 5p to £1 and for one lucky person £10. The money corresponding to the amounts was left tantalisingly on a small plate waiting to be claimed.

Charis did an amazing job in the time she had and wrote little messages telling people what they had won rather than simply putting the value as I had suggested.

I won £1 which made me stupidly happy given that it was me that put the money into the pot in the first place! It wasn't Taylor that won the £10.