It’s about that no follow link thing. Ppl were talking about the legality of no follow links, and I think in most cases they were really discussing breaking google’s guidelines. But there are advertising issues with disclosure, and I’ve discovered that it’s the quickest way to make some PRs go quiet, explain that you only give no follow links.

But one Mrs Kerry Jean Lister, PR for large firms like Lego and so on, pointed out that her clients spend lots of money appearing where they want to on google, and the reviews they get from bloggers are for a different purpose. They are to appeal to your specific, highly engaged, readership. Not to game google, not to shade the results – but personality marketing, on your reputation. So no follow links are fine for that.

I just wish a few more PRs were similarly clued up.

Which, in the style of awards we’ve got floating around right now in the blogging world, just isn’t going to work. Not for me – I don’t have enough regular readers who are into that kind of thing and would think to vote without being asked. Which I suppose means that actually, I’m not good enough. Hm.

So, if I didn’t ask, didn’t get the votes to go through to the next stage of either BiBs or MADs why do I have this curious feeling of disappointment? I knew it wouldn’t happen. But there’s that tiny germ of hope that somehow it will…

Why would I want to win? Do I really want to be a part of the in crowd that much? Of course I do! I want posh prizes, I want glorious nights out, I want ppl to sit up and notice when I mention my award winning blog, like I saw ppl react at Cybher when other bloggers just mentioned their nominations. I want to be able to use that to climb another step, maybe break into paid writing, be the blogger that ppl want to meet but are almost too shy to – don’t I?

I don’t know. I want some of it. The payment, definitely. Times are, as they say, hard. But not at the price of asking for ppl to like me. There’s a stubborn streak that won’t let me do that.

So I guess I’ll go on without awards, trying to make my way some other way. Otherwise, you might even say

This post started life as a comment on Michelle’s blog (yes, that is a follow link, do you remember the days when we used to just link to ppl because we wanted to, not because of a linky or a carnival, just because?), but got out of control and had to be dragged over here.

I wish I’d managed to get my hands on some of those cupcakes.

I wish I could work out who I met and who I didn’t meet. And remember names. Ppl seem to like it when you remember names.

I wish that when we thought we’d solved the problems of famine with feed the world, we really had.

I wish that I’d got a picture of me with Tigerboy at some point, and taken more pictures of the ppl I met through the day.

I wish that I knew what we could do to solve the problems of the world.

I think I do know. I think it needs us to act, not wish. Do as well as blogging. Give as well as tweeting. Encourage our neighbours, friends, family to do likewise. Pressure our government to see ppl as individuals, both here and abroad, in order to change lives for the better.

Cybher cost me money. Not the ticket or the hotel, but almost the first thing I did after signing in was visit the WorldVision stand and sign up to sponsor a child. I chose a boy, 9 years old, from Niger. Check out my Silent Sunday post to meet him. Turned out that that fitted in really well with the announcement at the end of the conference that Sian aka GeekisnewChic is going to Niger next week. I’m hoping that I’m going to be doing a little work with WorldVision to help spread the word about what is going on over there.

I wish I could bottle the feeling of hope and determination and optimism and take on the worldness that I had at the end of the day. I’m trying. I’m going to sit everyday and remember that feeling, and see what I can do with it. I’m going to change me, I’m going to change this blog, I *am* going to make a difference.

What did cybher do for you?

I’m hopeless at faces. I don’t recognise ppl I should. And ppl recognise me much more easily – it’s the wrapped baby that’s the giveaway. So please, if there is any chance at all that I’m confused, remind me of your blog and twitter id when you say hi, because I’m so much better with the virtual world. And although I doubt I’ll look all that shy, I am, so be kind.

And I’ll try ever so hard to remember you all too!

I figured out feeding in a wrap.

Navigated the tube, found the venue, found some ppl I know.

Then the hotel, and a Chinese meal, and finally back to peace and quiet.

I didn’t like passing cocooned bodies of men in doorways, sleeping amidst the raucous celebrations of day to day life.

And I feel a little guilty that I’m warm, with a bed and a kettle and sweets and they are not.

See you all tomorrow, cybher bloggers.

Yes, that is a peacefully sleeping child. One down, three to go.

I’ve been listening to myself and my children. And I think I’ve been doing far too much condemning the older children are far too quick with a sharp word or snide comment, often much worse than I would say, but I think that they are enlarging mirrors aren’t they?

And smallest is an echo. So I know when they’ve been calling each other unpleasant names, as she innocently and piercingly repeats them. She also us mainly talking in questions “what did I say?” Being a favourite, and it has been suggested that perhaps I say that too much.

In my defense, I use it to check that everything I’ve said has been taken on board, but I need to find a different way to do that.

So how long will it take me to change my habits and in doing so, change theirs?

We have books coming out of our ears in this house. Smallest loves to be read to, and she loves to read books back to us. She’s got a pretty good memory for them as well. We were sent a couple of lovely first shape/ colour type books for review the other week, and she adores them. They are rather lovely. These ones:

Lots of great pictures to talk about, with words in sensible font underneath. I particularly like the Numbers book having an owl on every page to spot, although I’m not sure what pages on Feelings and Manners are doing in there, particularly with nice/ naughty as concepts. I try to stay away from the word naughty tbh, I don’t find it to be useful.

Having the books did make me start thinking about actually planning some education for her, so that’s a good thing, surely?

So far she’s been educated incidentally. It seems to have worked rather well in giving her excellent vocabulary and speech – she’s extremely, almost relentlessly, verbal. (Which is to say she hardly ever stops talking. And at the moment all of her speech is phrased in questions. “What did I say? What did I just do? Why did I do that?” If you don’t know, darling, I don’t think the rest of us stand much chance :/ ) She also counts up to 7 or 8, depending, which is due mainly to playing hide and seek with her siblings. We’ve got no stairs to practise our counting on sadly, as that’s another good tactic.

She loves to draw. Mark making we’ve definitely got sussed. The other day I started her copying ones and zeros – it did occur to me later that zero is actually a rather complicated concept and I probably should have stayed away from it to begin with, but done now. I would like some of the early Montessori bead materials, I might make equivalents from some Baker Ross beads instead.

Ooh, Baker Ross. I nearly forgot the fabulous bundle of crafts they sent us recently!

They were country themed. We had African wooden necklaces, Scottish scratch art magnets, Welsh foam bookmark kits, St George’s Cross flag tissue kits and leprechaun masks.

Small loved them. Big loved them too, though bizarrely I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of her with them.

Of course, we don’t always use full craft kits. Sometimes just a pair of scissors and a piece of paper hit the mark. She’s pretty good with scissors, left handed here, although she does tend to swap them around.

So we do arts and crafts, writing, reading, counting and so on. There’s also singing, dancing, swimming, running, climbing, playing, watching, more reading, a bit more reading, some drawing, occasionally baking, and lots and lots of play.

Hm, maybe I don’t need to do that much in the way of planning after all, perhaps the incidental education will get us there after all. Although I should confess that I’ve ordered her a set of Bob Books

as I think she’ll enjoy them, and they might help her towards those first skills for reading in a relatively painless way. (After the experience of teaching Big to read, I did actually say I’d never do it again. I guess with two extra children I’m going to have to get over that phobia. Bob Books should be a relatively painless first step for me too )

Disclosure we were sent books from Random House and craft items from Baker Ross for review. Amazon links are affiliate links – if you buy via my link I get a small amount of money back. I’ve paid for the Bob Books. We provide our time and opinion free of charge.

Hm.

Well.

I’ve installed the app on my phone, which is a start. And I set up a page for my blog, which I think is here. And therein lies the rub. If you take a look at that link in detail, it’s just not user friendly is it? And while I *hate* giving negative reviews, that is my major opinion of G+ as a system. It’s just not user friendly. (Please do feel free to give me a follow. Unlike using it as a person, the blog page can’t circle ppl who haven’t circled it first, which means that brands can’t spam you. Individuals however can circle you without you circling them, and then messages they output will be pushed into your stream. Confused? I was, but I think I’ve got it straightened out now.)

As a user, I want to be able to see things easily. But like on older versions of facebook, posts in your stream leap around, rising to the top depending on whether and when anyone has commented on them, making it very difficult from my point of view to keep track of what’s going on. And while it’s probably because I haven’t been on it long enough to find enough ppl, it really doesn’t seem to be the chatty kind of place I enjoy on twitter.

As a blogger, I set up the blog page. But unless I’m missing something (entirely possible, I don’t know when I last managed something resembling a decent nap, let alone a full night’s sleep!) I don’t seem to be able to manage the blog page from the android app. This is a serious drawback – it’s very difficult for me to get time on the laptop at the moment, and most of what I do is done from the phone.

Instead I looked to see how to add my RSS to the page, and was dumbfounded to discover you can’t. I’m really not sure what that’s about, I found an interesting thread discussing it all, but didn’t quite follow it all

I was looking forward to trying out a hangout, which I understand to be a sort of group video chat, but when I looked into the tech you need for that, it recommends a wired connection. As I’m not sure I’ve got one of those in the house, I gave up on that idea as well.

All in all, google plus just isn’t doing it for me yet. I’m not sure we need another social network, and I’m really not convinced google has good motives for doing it either. I have yet to be convinced.

Disclosure. I offered to review google+ for MumsnetBloggers network in return for a voucher to recompense me for my time. As you may be able to tell, all opinions are very much my own

I’m a bit nervous.

This is kind of silly, as I’ve been to both cybermummy conferences, and really enjoyed them. But, I’m not actually all that good at big crowds. I’m awful at names and faces. I may or may not recognise ppl I’ve met before, and my chances of recognising ppl I’ve never met are minimal.

I want a blogger bingo card. With ppl’s pictures next to their twitter and blog name as well as their real name so I can keep track of who I’ve managed to met and who I’m still looking for. Because I don’t want to be on twitter the next day saying, you were there and I didn’t see you?

And I’ve started to build a twitter list of attendees. Please feel free to leave your twitter id in a comment so I can add you, and do follow the list so you can find everyone else. I’m also building a back up google+ circle in case twitter crashes, so feel free to give me that link, or comment on this post in g+, but I don’t think I can share a circle can I?

And how will you recognise me? I’ll be wearing clothes that give me easy access to my breasts, which I’ll be whipping out all over the place, because I’ll have the delectable 9 week old tigerboy with me. Yes, I’ll be the woman with a baby in a sling. And I’m shy, but I don’t bite, so please do say hi.

We don’t actually have elections in our local area this time. Or if we do they must be secret elections as we’ve received no notification or polling cards But all over the place, particularly on social networking sites I am being exhorted to vote, and told that I’m letting the side down and have no right to complain if I don’t.

Hm. I have voted in every election I’ve been entitled to vote in for my entire adult life, except one where there was some odd mix up with polling cards and I didn’t get the information in time. (Student days. Lots of things were confusing then.) Despite this stirling effort on my part I’ve never yet been part of a majority. In earlier years this could have been down to my rebellious habit of voting for joke candidates – is that also an abuse of my right to vote? Or does that somehow count more than staying home?

I am involved in my community in that I follow what is going on locally, my other half is part of the chamber of trade, I’ve written (probably rather more frequently than she likes) to my MP. I’m also still in touch with the other PPC for the area, who I really really wish had been elected but she wasn’t, and there you go.

The system we have at the moment is not, as far as I can tell, democratic. It depends on your understanding of the word. I’ve been told in the past by an MP that her duty is primarily to her party (not this MP, someone somewhere else) as without them she couldn’t have been elected. In which case what is the point of us having chosen individuals? We might as well just vote for a party, and let them send ppl to parliament.

Or why even bother with the ppl? Why not just do away with the individuals, who don’t appear to be able or willing to do much against the party line anyway, and they just cost us money.

It seems to me in this day and age that we ought to be able to be more representative. There are any number of ways to get ppl’s opinions, instantly. It’s farcical to just hold an election once every 5 years and then have the government of the day ignore the promises they made and carry on rough shod over the objections of the electorate.

Is that really what the suffragettes protested for? I don’t think so. So don’t tell me I have to vote. That’s my decision. Not yours.

I wasn’t wrong.

She loves it so much that I can’t show you a picture of it in action as the lid is currently missing, squirreled away somewhere. I’m sure it will turn up…Peppa is still about though.

The set is somehow very pleasing. Although plastic it has a solidity to it I didn’t expect – it doesn’t feel plastic-y if you know what I mean. There’s a little table set with four places, and the seats lift out of the van to be used as chairs – complete with character sized bottom imprints

I can see me having to track down the rest of the figures so that they can go on picnics together – and because they all fit in the van it works well as a travelling toy for days out – assuming you can find the roof!

An absolute must for fans of Peppa Pig and her family, particularly any who like camping too.

Disclosure – Peppa Pig and her Campervan were supplied free for the purpose of review. All opinions are my own.

Baby lotion will remove almost everything from most surfaces, including biro from toddler faces. (See rule 1.)

Your 12 year old daughter might not think she can get sunburnt in April, but she can if her brother puts the sun lotion on her back instead of you.

[picture not included, she really wouldn't be happy with that!]

When speaking to your utterly precise, pedantic 8 year old, don’t be surprised if you get exactly what you ask for. So if you wanted the bread for the birds to go somewhere other than on the front path, you needed to specify a location more clearly than just “outside”.

You’re the parent. It’s your fault.

This instalment is about the baby gifts that don’t cost vast amounts, but still say it all. So you could get a Mothercare Unisex Canvas set (currently on sale at £12) which is something that this time, I *am* actually going to do. In fact, I’ve taken it a step further, and I’ve got some canvas boards from the Works, and I’m going to do one with all their hands, and one with all their feet

A very lovely idea, and something a little bit different is the Journal 10+ – a ten year diary. Imagine if you actually managed to make an entry every day for ten years of your baby’s life? A bit more impressive than a baby journal, and it would be a fantastic keepsake. Needless to say, I haven’t…

Practical presents – muslins. I was fortunate to get two packs in fact, a large pack from Mothercare, and a smaller pack of organic ones from Bambino Mio. There’s no such thing as too many muslins, particularly if your baby goes in for regurgitation, as mine does, so these will always go down well.

And the best present of all that will cost you practically nothing? We were brought a meal. Cottage pie, cauliflower cheese and apple crumble – all ready to be reheated, saving us from having to think, shop or cook. Believe me, that’s a special baby present.

Disclosure – some of these items were given for the purpose of review. Some, however, were just gifts

Tigerboy is 8 weeks old today. In the last week we’ve seen some big changes in him. His eyes focus better, and yesterday after Big kissed his cheek he turned his head to look at her intently. He’s started smiling at interaction, though is somewhat camera shy in those moments, and is developing a range of conversational noises other than the basic waily, waily racket.

He enjoys nappy free time and is starting to be happy to be awake, although obviously only in someone’s arms.

I’m loving watching him becoming a person, if you know what I mean. Although I’m slightly unnerved at how rapidly it’s happening.

Child no 3 is now 2. The baby gate is leaning on the wall in the hall. Our sofa came from the charity shop, and is going to be in no fit state to return there. I found the box of safety locks in one of the crates upstairs, and scratched my head for a while wondering what the thing that slots in the video drawer was for, all video machines being long gone from our house. Instead we’ve computers all over the place, and Smallest is adept at climbing up on to chairs to access them, so that she can click on her frog and play Thomas on her profile. When Tigerboy gets to age 2, Smallest will be four, and I’m seriously considering hiring a round the clock nanny and moving out. Or maybe I could build an extension, with a sort of adult sized version of a catflap that doesn’t let small children through, so I could sit of an evening on my quality sofa (look, I can dream) with a glass of wine and my feet up…

I ought to know how to do all this stuff, but I never had a little toddler and a baby before, and given that the older two are both in their own individually challenging phases (is there a non challenging phase a child goes through at any point please?) I bounce from crisis to crisis, attempting to remain calm through the haze of sleep deprivation, and wonder precisely who is taming who. I think Smallest has me wrapped around her little finger – she’s certainly got her big brother leaping to her every command, and I suspect once Tigerboy is a little more independent he’ll be just as bad.

I’m not sure where I went wrong. It might be in having children in the first place…