a flair for the dramatic?

sparky - (sorry another cute anecdote!!!) - has been showing a very dramatic turn of speech lately. Instances:
1. yesterday when I was ignoring the repeated mum!s from the backseat of the car because you know I actually wanted to talk to my husband for a change. - he exclaimed with a flourish "Ladies and gentleman, I said MUM!"
2. today when we set off for a walk with Owl in the pram, he came up to the pram and announced (with perfect intonation too) Follow that pram!
I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of the time he is in his own mind not a boy, but a ringmaster, or policeman or...... so I am left trying to work out at times what part I am currently playing.

friends not links

If you are in the group who read my blog regularly (as far as I am aware a very select group indeed lol), you might have noticed I recently changed my section links to be titled friends. That is because I had a think about who I should link to and why. Which led me to thinking about the purpose of my blog. There are lots of different types of blogs out there (based around businesses, philosophies, interests etc) and so there are lots of different reasons for who is included in links. No one way is the best, it depends on what your blog is for. This blog I have decided is, and always has been, about friendship - in the sense not that I talk about that necessarily, but that I use it to maintain and enrich my friendships. So I have a single criterion for my links section: I link to genuine friends. So a link doesnt mean I agree or disagree, or that I am similar or dissimilar to those blog writers. I impose no such limits on my friends that we must agree or be like each other! Since those linked to are my friends though, if you visit them, please treat them kindly and gently - I love them.

cute evil?

I just bought a bday cake book for Ethan to choose his bday cake from - and what really annoyed me was that for the 6 bday cake - in shape of 6 - it was a little devil. This always bugs me! I hate that you can get little devil costumes for toddlers, and little devil cuddly toys or valentines - what is cute about evil? You may think I'm overreacting, but I think it is very clever and subtle way of making us feel that talking about absolute evil is somehow a bit silly - thus allowing it to go on all around us.

sparky quotes

I couldn't resist sharing these with you.
1) Sparky - almost 3 - has just been looking at a baby pig on tv, which I tell him is called a piglet. After some time, he says to me "what do you call a baby hit?" thinking I know where this is going I suggest - "hitlet?" he says no, a high five! a deliberate joke as he burst out laughing.
2) Having just played a game with lofty (the crane from Bob the builder) lifting things, he says to me, mum, why isn't he called lifty? why indeed?

what is important

Last night I watched a DVD at church about the spread of christianity in a very large Asian country that is anti christian....it was very moving to see the hope people had in the midst of suffering.
A couple of things struck me:
I complain too much - my question for the week to myself when i get all whingy is 'are you in prison?'
the acceptance of women as teaching missionaries/ministers in this situation - i think when a situation is urgent, then it strips away all the non essentials, revealing what is important - surely it is most important that Christ is preached, whoever does it????? (imho)

tv versus internet

Only a few years ago, i was astounded that the gen yers that i knew really didn't watch Tv and instead spent time on the net. I didn't use the net until I was an adult, at my first job post uni - in 1996 - and didn't get it at home until 1999.

i have enjoyed it from the start, but as i grew up on tv not net, i didn't see tv watching getting taken over.

but i have to admit, the net is drawing me in more and tv is drawing me less. Surfing, ebay, facebook, blogs, email - on the net i can direct what I am interested in a lot more, rather than being stuck with the very few options of today's free to air tv.

As a relational kinda girl, I am interested though in how it affects these - I think it is good for relationships outside my family - instead of sitting watching tv i am often on the net interacting. but i think it isn't as good for my r/ship with my husband - tv watching can be a shared activity, but with the net we sit in different rooms - even now we are watching tv, but i am also on the net.

quizzy

A friend (Hi MIM) had this little badge on her blog, so I couldn't resist and did the tests. regular readers would know I am INFP, though this shows the relative strengths of each scale. The multi intelligences though is interesting - I wasn't too surprised, though musical came a little higher than I would think. Have lately though been keen to get back into my singing.