Jeni's Musings

One: My article in the Women in Technology series came out about a month ago. It was actually inspired by this comment on the post I wrote a while ago on women in computing, which asked about encouraging your daughters to take up computing. I found it easier to write about that than my own experiences, which have been rather mundane.

Two: Read OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so dreadful.

Three: We’ve been looking at possible infant (ages 4-7) schools for our eldest. The two nearest both have interactive whiteboards in all the classrooms and regular IT lessons. In one school, the children are taught how to touch type; this at an age when they can hardly read and write. When I was in school, touch typing was on typewriters, for the girls who aspired to be secretaries. (I Mavis Beacon‘d myself during my year out of university; it’s the most frequently used skill I have next to the ability to read.)

If you don’t have children, you probably don’t appreciate that sleeping until 6am can be a luxury. Even if you do have children, perhaps you have angels that even in their toddlerhood had to be awoken at 7:30. Or perhaps that’s just what you told your friends.

It was a great relief to me when my youngest turned out to be a better sleeper than her older sister. She found her fingers early on, and soon got into the habit of sucking them as she fell asleep or when she woke up in the middle of the night. So night times themselves haven’t been too bad this time round.

But mornings… We stabilised around 5:30am, but over the last several months she’s been waking earlier and earlier, so 5:15 was about the latest I could hope to be undisturbed and 5am certainly wasn’t unknown. And she would scream and cry until I got her up and into our bed, tucking into her early morning feed. And, having got that wound up, wouldn’t go back to sleep. So I determined to do something about it.

Some of my fellow presenters at the XML Summer School were swapping tales of warring children as we chatted, and I mentioned the book “Siblings Without Rivalry” and promised to blog about it.

But first, you should get (and I really mean get, because you will re-read it again and again) “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and How To Listen So Kids Will Talk”, which is also by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. (Actually, get two copies because you’ll need one to lend to the other adults in your children’s lives.) “How To Talk…” provides the basic parenting skills that “Siblings Without Rivalry” then builds on.

I learnt two new life-skills today.

First, how to tie my shoelaces using the Ian Knot. It’s very quick, and works just as well with anything with loops, such as supermarket or nappy bags.

Second, how to make playdoh. A standard recipe all over the web is:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon food colouring

Preparing dinner. Our three-year-old suddenly exclaims, “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!”

Too much Bob the Builder (who, for those without three-year-olds, has decamped to “Sunflower Valley” and now lives a zero-carbon lifestyle, constructing eco-friendly sunflower-oil-extraction factories and the like).

Get ‘em young, that’s what I say.