Diary of the Dad

Review: Cardooo cards

Dec 112013

There’s more to these cards than meets the eye…

Here’s a new take on the traditional greeting card – these are interactive! On first glance, these offerings from Cardooo may look like the standard ones that come through your letterbox to mark a special occasion, but there’s loads more to them. They include fold-out activities – which range from colouring in to puzzles and stories – to keep little ones entertained. As soon as they got in touch to ask if I’d like to review a couple of their cards, I knew they’d be a hit with Dylan and Xander. Dylan loves things like this and always chooses activity magazines when he completes a line on his reward chart, while Xander has become rather fond of decorating things with crayons – the only problem was keeping the cards from them for long enough to have a look for myself!

The first one is a birthday card for a three year old. Kids seem to love pirates just as much as they love stickers and this has both of those things, which made it an instant hit with Dylan. The other activities include colouring in, a maze and a drawing exercise. Plenty of treasures to keep young children occupied and both boys loved it!

Image of two little boys colouring in cards.

No complaints from these two!

The second is a Christmas one which is a cross between a story and activities. It builds up to a large, fold-out page that, once children have solved earlier puzzles, can add the relevant stickers to. The puzzles include working out which toys the children in the story have asked Santa for and finding the relevant stickers to add to the pictures that shows the bearded one’s journey around the world. So it’s educational as well as entertaining and that can’t be bad.

Just in case this hasn’t come across, I think these cards are a great idea and the Christmas ones would make nice little gifts for kids who are off on long journeys to stay with relatives over festive period. They retail at £3.50 each.

Silent Sunday #26

Silent Sunday 16 Responses »

Dec 082013

Unfortunately the rumours are true

Dr Who, Maximo Park, Something for the Weekend, The Monday Club, Wednesday Witter 2 Responses »

Dec 062013

You know that situation when a band you liked well enough to buy all their albums releases that dreaded statement saying that they’re not splitting but going on hiatus indefinitely? Well this is like that – sort of. Yes, unfortunately the rumours are true… Something for the Weekend? is off for a bit. After much thought, Sarah and I have decided to stop this little linky for a wee while. It says something when both the hosts fail to get posts written in time and, as numbers have slipped too, this will be the last one until next year. Maybe.

So, just in case this is the last edition of this linky ever, we’d both like to say a big thank you to everyone who has joined in with their posts over the last year or two. It may not have been known in its current guise for long, but it’s been around in almost as many regenerations as Dr Who since Sarah started it as Wednesday Witter, followed by The Monday Club. I won’t take it personally that it has nosedived since I came on board as a co-host. Much.

I feel I should read a poem or sing a song to mark this potentially sad occasion, but I don’t think you’d thank me for doing either. Here instead is a song by my favourite band, Maximo Park, that I think our linky would sing about its plight. I’d love to see it back next year, so here’s hoping!

That’s well sick!

Sick, toddler 4 Responses »

Dec 032013

“If you’re going to spew, spew into this”

Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, but I really don’t get why young people – yes, I just used that phrase and am sticking by it – use the word ‘sick’ when they’re articulating their delight at how thoroughly spiffing something is. I know it’s not new; I think I first heard someone use it about ten years ago but, while other slang terms have got away with adopting opposite meanings – like ‘wicked’, for example – I really can’t get my head round how something that conjours up images of technicolour yawns can ever be good. And, yes, I may be writing this because the sick fairy visited our house at the weekend.

Dylan had been unwell in the night the previous week and we foolishly thought that had been the end of it. Kate spent Sunday shivering under a blanket and feeling utterly grotty, but managed to avoid making a call on the porcelain telephone. Then Xander decided to take it upon himself to do a Mr Creosote impersonation on behalf of the pair of them. He was sitting on my lap watching telly at the time, having refused to go to sleep; all nice, quiet and snuggly and in serious danger of actually nodding off when, suddenly, evidence of everything he’d eaten that day was everywhere. I say ‘everywhere’; I was mostly wearing it. It was a bit like when Lady Gaga wore that dress made out of meat.

Fortunately, we hadn’t had pea soup for tea so there wasn’t a precise tribute to the iconic act of spewage that made Linda Blair famous – and, thankfully, he didn’t levitate afterwards either – but this was nonetheless epic. It was like what the bigoted W.I. lady on Little Britain manages to produce when she encounters someone who doesn’t fit in with her Daily Mail politics. The projectile side of that is where the comparison ends – although maybe not… he is very much a boyish boy and Kate had Strictly Come Dancing on. Perhaps he wanted something a little more carnage based on for his viewing pleasure? What a critic!

This was my first true encounter with the awesome power of an unwell toddler – there have been other incidents, but nothing nearly as grand – so I feel I’ve reached another of those little parental rites-of-passage moments. Lucky me. Other parents I know had told me in the past that kids bounce back quickly from these things and they weren’t wrong. Three minutes later, when we were both stood there in our undercrackers having hurled – poor choice of word? – our clothes into the washing machine and he’d stopped sobbing from the shock, he composed himself. “Rice cake please, Daddy?” he said with a genial smile. That’s my boy!

One man went to Mo

Movember, Something for the Weekend 10 Responses »

Nov 292013

A black-and-white shot of a dashingly handsome man with a moustache

My Crimewatch face. Please donate today to stop me having to take any more of these mug shots

The hirsuite pursuit is almost over – the month once known as November ends tomorrow which means that Movember is drawing to a close too. This year, I’ve gone for a more traditional mo; the Machete and d’Artagnan efforts of 2011 and 2012 were fun but a faff and this one has been much easier to manage. I don’t think it looks quite as silly, but my colleagues would beg to differ; one of them said she couldn’t take me seriously when I was talking about something vaguely important in a meeting, another thought I looked like Bobby Ball and one more asked if I had a caterpillar under my nose. Oh well, that’s half the point of the awareness side of things anyway and I’m happy with the result!

In lieu of an unconventional tache, the novelty this time relates to the word of the year. Yep, I’ve had to do a ‘selfie’ every day. Now I understand that there’s a proper way of doing them – snapping them from above and slightly to one side – but, due to the way the Movember app works, I’ve had to take them differently. It gives you a dotted line to show you where your face should be and a phantom moustache to show where yours should appear. The result is that you have to look straight down the lens. I looked rather malevolent smiling in my first effort, so deleted it and went for a neutral face every day. The result is a rogues gallery of me. If Crimewatch did photoshoots, this would be it. Oh dear.

So I’ve raised some smiles and awareness of male cancers which is great. I’ve also raised a few quid for the cause, but there’s always room for more! At the time of writing, I’d raised £71 but it would be great to make £100. If you would like to do so, you can donate via my Mo Space page. Then feel free to come back here and ridicule me for my appearance in the comments.

Thank you!

Review: Orchard Toys big bus jigsaw

review No Responses »

Nov 262013

I’m all for toys that encourage thought so I was happy to oblige when education suppliers CostCutters UK dropped me a line to see if the boys would be interested in reviewing something from their range. Knowing how much Dylan loves both jigsaw puzzles and vehicles – and how scarily good he is at the former – I chose this one by Orchard Toys for him and let him have it once he completed another line on his reward chart. Blogging isn’t half useful at times!

He’s a good lad most of the time so it didn’t take long for him to get his mitts on the floor puzzle and, no surprise, he loved it. He was soon piecing it together, complete with running commentary of the picture that was appearing as he did. The image is very detailed and there are lots of things for children to notice and talk about so it’s good for conversation skills as well as hand-eye coordination.

Once he’d completed it for the first time, in fact, I noticed that the illustration includes a dad with a pushchair. This gets a big thumbs up from me – a small victory, I know, but I’m getting increasingly fed up with portrayals of ‘parents’ either omitting dads completely or showing them as uninterested. Well I was impressed anyway. So much so that I’ll overlook the inclusion of an apparently helpful bus driver.

The jigsaw measures 59 x 42 cm, so is big enough to keep a toddler entertained but not too large to get in the way. The pieces are nice and sturdy and comfortably passed the Xander test I like to put review products through – which is impressive as he broke a door the other day. In fact, this puzzle sufficiently piqued his interest in doing something constructive and there was a magical ten-minute spell in which the two boys were happily completing it together, taking turns and not squabbling. Now whoever thought something involving public transport could ever be involved in a stress-free outcome, eh?

The big bus jigsaw puzzle costs £8.70 and is suitable for children from two to five years of age.

Mr Grumpy

behaviour, Something for the Weekend, toddler 8 Responses »

Nov 222013

A grumpy toddler: yesterday

Oh dear; I’m late to my own party. I’m not one to point the finger, but the reason for my tardiness to this week’s Something for the Weekend? is staring you straight in the face. To be fair, it wasn’t Dylan’s fault; he was unwell during the night so I had to work from home in case it was a bug and I set it on its merry way round the office, but it’s delayed everything. So, excuses out of the way, it’s time to defame the poor little monkey with an upset tummy…

He’s been such a mardy little thing lately and I’m not sure why. I know that the so-called terrible twos start earlier than their name suggests and go beyond the third birthday too, but he’s getting on for three an a half now and has suddenly started acting like a sulky teenager. He remains a lovely little lad most of the time, but he’s capable of being a miserable little sod for sustained periods. He regularly answers us back and tells Xander off for doing things that displease him. He told me off earlier, in fact. He sent me to the naughty corner and made me count to 100. In my defence though, he IS a poo machine…

We went to see how he’d been doing at pre school the other day. On the whole, it was good stuff and it seems he reserves the charm he is more than capable of displaying for the teachers there, but there was one little anecdote that stood out. Apparently, a little girl accidentally flicked a bit of sand on him at the sandbox and, by all accounts, he was quite affronted! He impressed the staff by not shoving her or crying, but I cringed when they told us what he did. He told her he was disappointed with her behaviour and proceeded to remind her at regular intervals that he wasn’t happy with her.

His teachers were amused and said he’d shown great self control in not flying off the handle, but I’m embarrassed. Not by him, you understand, but by the fact that I can see myself in his reactions. As a kid, I always held silly grudges about small matters and could be quite pompous in the things I said. He may well look like Kate, but there’s no doubting the fact that he’s a mini me.

So I guess I owe him an apology for the grumpy gene he would appear to have inherited. Sorry, Dylan, but thanks very much for the CD you and Xander got me for my birthday; I love The Smiths too and think that Morrissey’s lyrics are inspired.

Blogging this weekend? You know what to do! Here’s the linky.

Review: From You To Me journals

review 2 Responses »

Nov 212013

Our Story – For My Son and Dear Dad from you to me

As a parent blogger, I’m used to making a note of all the important little milestones that Dylan and Xander achieve as well as of some of the little foibles that make them who they are. It’s a great way of keeping a record and I love it, but what about people who don’t necessarily want to share personal details online? Ta-dah! These journals from From You To Me are one such answer.

I was sent two journals for review and, despite having not actually put pen to paper yet because of my truly awful handwriting – seriously, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’m a doctor or something; I’ve got more chance of being able to read it if I do it in shorthand – I’ve put a lot of thought into what’s going to get jotted down in neat once I’ve refamiliarised myself with that almost forgotten art of using a pen.

Each section of the journals includes questions to answer or statements to complete that will tell your loved ones more about you or, if you’re completing one as a parent, what they were like as a child. It’s a simple idea, but a thoughtful and incredibly useful one – how many times have you sat down to write something important and meaningful and found yourself gazing at an empty page or screen half an hour later?

Close-up image of a page with a sentence for people to complete.

Questions and sentences to complete in each journal provide handy prompts.

Our Story… For My Son is a great way of chronicling your little man’s childhood. The idea is to sit down for a couple of hours each year and fill in the relevant sections with details of all the little landmarks, thoughts and pictures too and give it as a gift when he turns 18.

We went to visit Dylan’s pre school the other day and were shown a scrapbook they have kept to show what he gets up to while he’s there. One of the things they included were things he had said, which I think is a great idea – I’ll definitely be adding a few quotes to this one!

D ear Dad, from you to me is one you can either fill in for your children or that you can give to your old man so he can fill it in and give back. There are 60 questions to help dads to tell their stories such as “How did you feel when you found out you were going to be a father?” and “Tell me something I don’t know about you”. They’re all great conversation starters which any loving dad will find comprehensive answers to!

I should add here that the covers of the journals can also be personalised, which makes them great gift ideas for that festive time a month or so away!

Our Story… For My Son is priced at £19.99 while Dear Dad, from you to me costs £12.99. For gifts that keep giving, I’d say that’s great value.

Rubik’s Cuber in Training – challenge three

Rubik's Cube, Something for the Weekend 3 Responses »

Nov 152013

A Rubik's Cube and a phone's stopwatch app showing the time 00:03:53:93

My personal best… never to be achieved again!

I’ve reached the end of my Rubik’s Cuber in Training programme and, despite coming close to throwing it out of the window several times, have become quite attached to this colourful piece of plastic. I’ve practised anywhere and everywhere I can; during family mealtimes, while allegedly watching TV, during lunch breaks at work and on the train to and from it. I’ve surprised myself by not only solving it at all, but also by the speed that I’ve picked up in a relatively small amount of time. Being provided with a guide and a Skype call with former world record holder, Daniel Sheppard have definitely helped with that side of things!

It’s inspired some interesting conversations too; it’s amazing how a shared sense of nostalgia can dissolve social boundaries that have become the norm – particularly on the train where nobody normally dares make eye contact. I had a nice chat with a Hungarian lady the other morning who was pleased to see that the iconic toy – which is originally from her country – was making a comeback to the mainstream. I also found myself talking to Daniel about the merits of using household products to ease movement. Bad idea, by the way; get some proper stuff if you’re wondering. I don’t know what it’s called, but if the marketing people haven’t named it ‘Cube Lube’, they’re missing a trick. I digress…

So the third and final challenge was to solve the cube as quickly as possible in competition with the other bloggers involved in the programme and capture it on video to prove we weren’t telling porkies. After several attempts, the battery in my phone dying during a particularly good run and plenty of wine to keep me in a zen-like state, I managed a time that I was pleased with and that I hadn’t come anywhere near before. I’ve totally spoilt it with the picture above, but here’s the proof that I’m required to share.

So that’s that. It’s been a fun challenge to take part in, so big thanks to the organisers for inviting me to join in. I now have to hand the cube over to Dylan who has been patiently waiting for me to let him have a go and prepare to weep when he beats my time.

Blogging this weekend? Please join in with the Something for the Weekend? linky by adding your posts via the widget below.

Rubik’s Cuber in Training – challenge two

Rubik's Cube No Responses »

Nov 122013

Sequence showing the completion of a Rubik's Cube

Ta-dah!

I’m now into day six of the Rubik’s Cuber in Training programme and have some rather smug news to impart. I’ve completed the first challenge in 11 minutes. Hooray! Nine minutes under the target time that I was convinced I would never do. I’m not quite sure how I managed to achieve it, I guess it must have suddenly just clicked. Having a guide to some of the key moves has definitely been useful though. I got so engrossed in trying to complete it, in fact, that I left Friday’s episode of The Walking Dead on pause for an hour while attempting it – a big deal as I don’t usually let anything get in the way of zombies!

My second challenge is to again complete the cube in 20 minutes, albeit under distraction. In a way, I think I’ve already done this – at home I’ve got Dylan asking to play with it every two minutes and during lunch breaks at work I’ve had colleagues asking what I’m doing. But these are not distraction enough; oh no. I had to perform another task while solving the cube.

I had a go while recording the Love All Dads Podcast the other night – and cracked it in about 35 minutes while discussing various parenting issues – but that’s not really much different to solving it in under normal conditions and I think the point is for me to look silly. I could also argue that the fact I’m growing a ‘mo’ for Movember counts as doing something silly at the same time but, again, there isn’t much of a multitasking effort involved in that.

So here’s the daftest thing I could think of doing while attempting to solve the cube. I say daft, but it actually resulted in a small area of carpet being cleaned. Ignoring the fact that I may have aggravated an old football injury and failed to do the cube in 20 minutes, I somehow managed not to wake Dylan and Xander with the noise of the vacuum cleaner and my swearing, so I’ll take that. Bring on the third challenge!

At least I made myself useful…

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