Things I hear when my kids are playing Minecraft

Things I hear when my kids are playing Minecraft:
Otherwise known as, Maybe I should be paying more attention to this?:

"How did you do that?"

"No, that's my house, you can't go in there!" 

"Let's kill some cows." 

"Can you make me one of those?" 

"Oh dang it, I lost my door." 

"Do you want a TV in your bedroom? How about torches?" 

"No, that's MY idea, you can't make the same!" 

"No don't go down there, oh my god oh my god ZOMBIES!" 

"Do you want to go hunting?" 

"Where are you?" 

"What world are you in?" 

"Are you in my house?!" 

"Mum, M went into my village and killed all my villagers, so I could live in any house I want. So I chose a beautiful house. But it's a bit boring now, I kind of miss the villagers."

Image: minecraftwallpapers.com

10 ways humans and dogs are like each other

Dogs are great company, because we GET each other. That's because we're similar. All the things we love about dogs are things we enjoy in other humans, too. And the things we make fun of dogs for, we are guilty of as well.

Here are ten ways that dogs are like humans, or humans are like dogs:


1. We can't handle economic surplus.

Most humans can't, and you know it. How often, when you got a better paying job, did you think "I'm going to save the extra money". And how often did you actually do that?

Dogs also are of the "If there's extra, eat it all now!" life philosophy.  Sure, they'll bury a bone sometimes, just as humans will save money sometimes. But it doesn't happen every day.


2. We live for love.

We love our cats, but we kind of know they don't really love us back the same way. We love our dogs BECAUSE they love us back.


3. We get overly attached. But we can also (usually) move on when things change.

Dogs LOVE their owners. They will be very upset and will pine for their owners if they lose them. But in most cases, they will get over the loss and will form a new bond with a new owner, just as strong as the last. When I was a kid we had a black Labrador called George. He was the Best Dog Ever. He was loving, gentle, and smart. He loved us, especially my dad. When we moved to LA we had to give him away. He went to live with another family. A year later my dad went to visit him. He was overjoyed to see my dad, and gave him a warm slobbery welcome - and then went happily back to sit at the feet of his new dad.

Humans too, by and large, get over losing a partner and form an attachment to a new one. Which is as it should be.


4. We get jealous.

Another part of being suckers for love. We both get jealous when our special people cosy up to someone else.



5. We love ball games. (Well, when I say "we" I mean other humans, obviously)

Photo: invalid_argument/Flickr

Photo: NCReedplayer/Flickr

Mongolian ball game by Jeanne Menjoulet & Cie / Flickr

Photo: Jeff Shapiro / Flickr

Photo: Karah Levely-Rinaldi /Flickr

Photo: Russ Anderson / Flickr

Incidentally, there is a whole subset of photos on Flickr of people playing ball games next to signs that say NO BALL GAMES. I didn't realise so many public places banned ball throwing.


6. We like routine. 

Yes we do. Even though we also love adventure and recklessness, we crave and get comfort from routine. Whether we get up at the same time every day, sit in the same carriage on the train every morning, frequent the same few cafes, have a favourite chair, or read the same newspaper/visit the same sites every day, we are all attached to some level of routine.

Routine is a big part of what helps kids feel secure.

Routine is part of dogs' lives too.

When I get up in the morning, my dog Harry is a coiled spring, watching my every move and jumping up at me, until I put on my shoes and say "Do you want to go for a walk?" Then he goes briefly mental, cries with excitement, shivers in anticipation, and bolts for our very short (very short) run, and settles into our walk. When we get home he waits for his chewy treat, eats a mouthful of breakfast, laps up some water and flops down on the ground while I sit on a chair outside.

This morning routine is good for us both.  (And it's also keeping me on track for my January resolution).


7. We love the wind in our hair.

Photo: Anniruddha Sen Gupta/Flickr

Photo: Ko:(char*)hook/Flickr

8. We have been warped by our environments.

Humans have adapted very successfully to a range of environments, from the African steppes to the suburb-and-7-11. Unfortunately, we adapt in ways that don't help us, getting fatter and less fit where our environs allow it, unless we exert a lot of very difficult effort. And our canine friends get fat right along with us.  We have also bred our companions into all sorts of weird, wonderful and grotesque shapes, some of which are maladaptive (bulldogs that can't breathe, Alsatians with bad backs, tiny dogs that are too nervous to go out, huge dogs with short life spans). Our dogs now are further removed from wolves than we are from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. But we haven't had our best friends manipulating our gene pools for centuries; we've gone a bit slower on that on ourselves.



9. We both have a shame face.

You know that face politicians and sports people make in the news when they've been caught doing something wrong. Always this face:

Source unknown; thank you Internet!

That's not really a dog's shame face of course.

This is:

Photo: dogshaming.com

10. We both like trampolines!

Keep this video handy for next time you are feeling down.

Top 5 Guilty Pleasures

I can't tell you how glad I am to see that Listography is back. Normally hosted by Kate Takes 5, this week it's being run at Older Single Mum.

This week's topic is: Top 5 Guilty Pleasures.

Mine are:

1. Nutella - obviously, because I am an Australian mummy blogger. We are all obsessed by it from what I read. In the past I used to eat actual chocolate. Now I eat spreadable chocolate that pretends it's something else. The kids get it rarely, on toast. I eat a mouthful (honestly, just one) on a spoon in the evening. I don't eat it every day, but that's only because some weeks I force myself not to buy it.


2. Horror stories. Not violent slasher stuff but scary supernatural stuff. Love/hate a good scare.  My current fixation is listening to podcast short stories at Tales to Terrify.  "Come in....if you dare!"


3. The Reader's Digest.  I know it's corny and old-fashioned, but I love it.

4. Cartoons. Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Ben 10, Stoked and Sally Bollywood give me immense pleasure.


5. Games on the phone. Words With Friends, Candy Crush, Temple Run, Cut The Rope, Cat Physics.... Such a time waster. So stoopid. And yet so much fun.

What about you? What are your guilty pleasures?

How our lives have changed

From this (2007):

To this (now):

It is truly remarkable how much the smartphone has changed our lives, in such a short time.  It's become a different world in 6 rapid years.

When I go out, even for a walk, it feels natural to me to be holding my phone in my hand. Not in my bag, or in my pocket, but in my hand.

I only walk and read sometimes - mostly I refrain from using my phone while I'm actually walking, because you don't want to be one of these people.

I don't tweet, Facebook, read or text too much in front of the kids, because you don't want to be one of these parents.

I'm only on level 41 of Candy Crush. I have wasted more time than is healthy playing dumb games on my phone, but I've petered off from that now. There is only so much time in the day, and we have less time than ever, so why fritter it all away on playing games?

But so much is so good. Twitter: news, conversations, comedy and reading: I love you, always and forever. Google maps. Google anything. Texts, messaging and email. Postcodes, currency conversions, Greek name days, constellations, world maps, bus timetables and movie screenings at a glance. News, essays, NASA photos, fiction and podcasts 24/7.  Utilities: pedometers, calculators, trackers, diaries, flashlight, remote logins for work.

The only thing I don't use my phone for that much is telephoning.

The other day I went walking and I left my phone at home. Last week I left it on my desk while I stepped out for lunch. It sounds ridiculous I know, but on those two occasions it was like stepping back in time, to the world as it used to be. Pre-smartphone, I didn't always take my phone with me. I didn't have it switched on all the time. I certainly didn't sleep with it tucked under my pillow as I...um..."sometimes" do now...

We are all uneasy at being "plugged in" 24/7. We all know that too much internet (too much anything) is bad for us. We all know we have to limit our screen time or we will live our lives plugged into the matrix and not living real life at all.

If you're older than me, you probably find this whole thing quite perplexing, simple or absurd. Baby boomers don't tend to struggle with smartphone addiction. If you're younger than me you probably don't see the problem.  Maybe it's a Gen X thing.

Anyway, it's changed our lives. The smartphone, the internet, and the seductive combination of the two.




Image credit:
@leftsider tweet image from HuffPost Tech "oldtweets" story from 2012: read here.
This image is of an embedded tweet which is public.
Second image: 9Gag

The Ribbon

Children love the most unexpected things. One day on a whim I popped into a haberdashery store and bought two metre lengths of wide ribbon, one for each of my kids.

"Here you go," I said, and gave them the ribbons which I unrolled with a flourish.

"What for?" they asked.

"Anything," I said. You can use them for playing, or you can decorate something, or you can cut them up and use them for a craft. Whatever you want."

They loved them. They initially used them as gymnasts' twirling ribbons, then various other things, and after awhile A cut hers into smaller strips and made flags with straws and sticky tape, and that was her ribbon all used up.

M still has hers, and she still plays with it a lot. It is a rope, a scarf, a swing, a tightrope, a bell rope, a hair ribbon, a belt, a weapon, a blindfold. Today she got me to wrap it in a bow around a rolled up piece of paper to make a scroll.

Leaf Art

Half the time we back the car out the driveway the kids follow a little ritual accompanied by hushed giggles whereby M tells A to wind down her window and grab a handful of leaves from the bushes and trees our car brushes past. I pretend not to notice, then when we come back home they quietly gather up the leaves they've harvested and then I tell them no leaves inside the house, and they either leave them in the car or toss them on the front lawn.

Mostly this is all to no further end, but sometimes the leaves are used in a game where they become money or fairy dust or counters or confetti, and sometimes I find them stashed in a cup or a bowl inside a cupboard for later play, or carefully piled on the table outside until the wind or the cat swats them away.

Today they were put to another use, with the help of some extra bits gathered from the backyard and some paper and sticky tape:

"Leaf Garden"

"Leaf Dog and Cat"

Calculate Your Most Efficient Trajectory, and other walking games

Could not believe my eyes when I saw this madness on (er...) 9GAG the other day. 

OMG IT'S NOT JUST ME THAT DOES THIS.

Kids play walking games: 

Step on a crack, break your mother's back;  

Step on a line, break your father's spine

So do adults.

Here are the walking games I still play - cannot help playing - every time I walk:

1. Even Stevens
2. The Point of No Trace of Origin
3. Most Efficient Trajectory

Even Stevens

I no longer try to avoid stepping on lines. Please! I managed to stop that madness in my twenties! But I do have a thing quite often where I have to keep track of how I step on lines and keep things "even" with both feet.

Example: 

I've just stepped on a line with the ball of my left foot - therefore I have to do the same with my right foot. But so I don't stop short and shuffle my feet around and look like a weirdo I keep walking "naturally" but keep count of what I step on with both feet, until I can even the score of each item with the other foot. So the count I keep in my head might go something like: left one ball of foot, left one heel, right one middle of foot, left two ball of foot...

Of course at some point it starts to get too hard to keep track, in which case I DO quickly do a weird foot shuffle or stop and swap feet, so I can keep my feet even.

The Point of No Trace of Origin

I do this while city walking, when I've just passed through an intersection or turned a corner. Imagine someone got a snapshot image of you walking at a given point in or after the intersection. Based on your position on the footpath, distance from the curb or corner, length of your stride and angle of your body, at many points it must be possible to look at the snapshot and figure out whether you got there by crossing the street or turning the corner. At some point, as you go a little further, there is a point at which it would no longer be possible to tell which way you had come.  

As I walk I try to pinpoint where that point is. Sometimes I try to pass through an intersection in a way that would give away as few clues as possible as to whether I had come from straight behind or from around the corner. 

Most Efficient Trajectory

Like the 9GAG cartoon at the top - but in my case with frustratingly little math skill. Try and estimate or calculate the most efficient route between two points. That might not be the shortest one; it could be the one with fewest angles, the least foot traffic, more downhill slopes, etc. I spend a bit of time trying to figure out at what distance/number of obstacles a zigzag or series of corners is more or less efficient than a straight line, etc.  This is not to avoid walking, which I love - just another attempt to be more efficient through silly shortcuts.

Here's how I know I'm not the only one doing this:

Adult walking games in popular culture

I remember two references:

The first was an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry walks his date to his apartment door and tells her about a game he plays where he pretends he's being chased by murderers and when he gets to his door he has to unlock and open it as fast as possible to elude them.

Who hasn't played that game?

The second was a short film I saw years and years ago as a kid. When I was a kid, when you went to see a movie it went like this: ads; short film; interval; movie.  Shorts were a mixed bag. Most were boring, some were genius. This particular short one of the best I ever saw. It followed a Londoner on his morning commute into the city. All the dialogue took place in his head.  He is standing on a bus and looks around and picks three or four other passengers to "race" with. He assigns each a name like "Green Cardigan", "Umbrella" and "Bowler Hat". When they all get off the bus he starts narrating (in his head) in the style of a horse race: And they're off! Green Cardigan gets off to a fine start but Bowler Hat is way back... The narration continues as it shows him hurrying through the busy streets, taking little shortcuts, veering through foot traffic, all the while keeping an eye on the others as he tries to reach the finish first.  It's obvious these are all regular commuters going to the same street for work and he plays this game with different people every day. There are a couple of tense moments where he thinks he won't “win”, then he's on the home stretch and in front of everyone. Just as he's grinning smugly and striding to the "finish" he realises Bowler Hat is not behind him as he thought but in front. He gets such a shock at being about to lose the "race", that he loses his sanity – the film ends on a freeze frame as he cries out and grabs  "Bowler Hat" by the shoulder.

Do you play walking games? Tell me one!

The Meaning of Kids' Birthday Parties

Last weekend my kids went to a birthday party. Like all kids they were excited about it and the coming party infused the whole preceding week with excitement.

As at every party, there were highs and lows, but overall the kids enjoyed it immensely.

I find children's birthday parties fascinating. My kids have been to parties before where they seemed overwhelmed with it all from start to finish - scraps with other kids over time with the birthday girl, scrapes and bruises from accidents on play equipment, grumpiness over not winning a coveted prize, tears from feelings of exclusion, alternating with moments of excitement and joy.

As a parent you watch all this and cannot believe the kids actually enjoy it. Yet after it's all done and they're riding home in the car eating lollies and talking excitedly, you ask if they had a good time and it's always "YES!"






So what "purpose" do children's birthday parties serve? What benefit do they give children?

I think it's these things:

• They are a milestone marker. All cultures have ways to mark rites of passage in a child's life and mark him/her as "older".
• They allow parents to bestow love and fuss on their children 
• They allow children to congregate and socialize together, which is vital for them
• The games teach children valuable socialization lessons: getting along, competing, being a good sport, playing by the rules, winning and losing gracefully - even, I think, life lessons in accepting rigged games
• They allow kids to be energetic, loud and a little wild, things they can't usually be at home
• They are an outlet for all the emotions: your kid during the course of the party will likely experience excitement, shyness, happiness, jealousy, joy, disappointment, fear, sadness, relief and more, all in a couple of tumultuous hours
• They allow kids to try new things. Shy kids are coaxed to join in, nervous kids are encouraged on the big slide, children are helped to meet kids they don't know and encouraged to see the bright side when things don't go their way 
• They strengthen the child's protective circle by allowing the adult friends and family members to mingle and consolidate their relationships

What about all the criticisms leveled at today's kids' parties, that they are overdone and parents are too competitive and everyone is running around fainting with anxiety about sparing the feelings of all the children?

Competitive Parties

It probably depends where you live, but I haven't experienced this. Most sensible parents try to reign in the expense, happily do the traditional home party for little kids, and don't spend a fortune on "goody bags" or entertainers or gifts for other parties.  However there are 3 factors at play here, that lead to more expense and more catering over time:

1. These days both parents usually work, so planning and executing a stay-home party is not nearly as easy as it used to be
2. Even if you have the party at home, at a certain point once you've factored in the food, drinks, games prizes and lollybags, once you hit a certain number of kids it is not much more expensive to do the party at a venue
3. There are more and more party options available, so your child attends parties and is exposed to more and more cool venues and entertainers, making them less and less keen on Musical Chairs in the loungeroom and Statues in the backyard. That's not parents "competing", it's just evolution.

Pass The Parcel

Pass the Parcel is the lightening rod for modern complaints about over-the-top children's parties and mollycoddled kids. It's a rare occasion that today's child-rearing is discussed without a complaint about Pass the Parcel and how "these days every kid has to get a prize".

Blah blah blah.

OK, there IS a little something in every layer and every kid does get a turn, but the main prize is still at the end, and is still the most special.  Plus, Pass The Parcel has always been rigged. When I was a kid the usual way was to have a few small prizes in some of the layers (not usually all), and it was a given that the birthday child would never win the main prize. Every kid got a turn to unwrap a layer, as they do now. At some parties, every layer had a prize, as now.

I will say, for the parent running the birthday party, Pass the Parcel is a bastard to execute. You need to have the right number of layers, and enough little generic gifts, to make the job as easy as possible (don't try and alternate "boy" gifts and "girl" gifts). If people don't RSVP or don't turn up, you will have too few or too many layers necessitating a quick count and desperate dash to the bedroom to whip off/add layers before starting the game. You need help from other parents to ensure each child only unwraps one layer, and the discarded newspaper layers don't clutter up the floor and cause confusion. You will have every parent watching and making little anxious comments every now and then pretending they are not watching hawk-eyed to make sure their kid gets their turn. And then you have to carefully stop the music at the right child each time - though after some time the kids will start to help, as they all know it's rigged and they all keep track of who hasn't had a turn. It's a strange game - a mutually maintained fiction between parents and children where no one admits that everyone knows what's going on.

Lolly Bags

When I was a kid, your lolly bag included a piece of birthday cake and lollies, and you were sometimes handed a balloon on a string on your way out.  Now the kids eat the cake at the party, and the lolly bag contains lollies, an un-blown-up balloon and a couple of trinket toys that probably cost less than the lollies. Same difference really. Like Pass the Parcel, today's "goody bags" often attract criticism along the lines of "these days every kid has to get a gift" but the reality is the "gift" is a plastic ring and a mini water pistol, so it's not a big deal.

In fact when I was a kid our lolly bags used to sometimes contain this stuff too - I have dim memories of super bouncy balls and those little mini plastic men with parachutes attached to them.




So I think what I'm saying is, parties like everything have evolved from what they were in 1975, but they still have the same meaning and serve the same purpose in a child's life as they ever did.

Kids' parties. Love em or hate em?