A downward slope to the land of coloured plastic:Additional.

Having just published the previous post, I almost immediately discovered the following in my inbox, so I thought I would share...

Preparation for parenthood is not just a matter of reading books and decorating the nursery. Here are 12 simple tests for expectant parents to take to prepare themselves for the real-life experience of being a mother or father. I'm sure all the experienced mums will love this little piece

1. Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, takeout 10% of the beans. Men: to prepare for paternity, go to the local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper. Read it for the last time.

2. Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it - it'll be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

3. To discover how the nights will feel, walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. At 10pm put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, till 1am. Put the alarm on for 3am. As you can't get back to sleep get up at 2am and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45am. Get up again at 3am when
the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4am. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

4. Can you stand the mess children make? To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

5. Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: first buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the
arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

6. Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a pot of paint turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet tube. Using only scotch tape and apiece of foil, turn it into a Christmas cracker. Last, take a milk container, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Coco Puffs and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations. You have just qualified for a place on the playgroup committee.

7. Forget the Mazda and buy a Galaxy. And don't think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a two pence piece.
Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size packet of chocolate cookies. Mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. Perfect.

8. Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette end, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you've had as much as
you can stand, until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back into the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a
walk.

9. Always repeat everything you say at least five times.

10. Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this do not even contemplate having children.

11. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Weetabix and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an aeroplane. Continue until half the Weetabix is gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.

12. Learn the names of every character from Barney, Sesame Street, and Power Rangers. When you find yourself singing, "I love you, you love me" at work,now you finally qualify as a parent!

A downward slope to the land of coloured plastic.

This weekend I will be traveling to Wales, where I will collect my gorgeous cariad and her three beautiful children, and bring them back to mine for the duration of half-term. The original plan was that they were to travel to mine by train. Whilst here though we'll be going and driving places, so I thought it was necessary to purchase a childs booster seat for J, so that the seat belt fits properly and he's is nice and safe. I went to my local branch of Halfords and purchased such an item. Upon telling K of what I had bought she gladly informed me that it was just the beginning of a long journey that will slowly see my life invaded by all sorts of brightly coloured, high density, robust plastic items. Be they toys, or things to carry toys, or things to keep toys tidy, or things to keep children safe and secure. I thought about this for a while and I have to say that it doesn't bother me at all. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, wiser and more mature and I realise that having children in my life is a huge responsibility and that everything I do from now on has to be about the children, their lives and their welfare. Or maybe it's just because I'm a big kid at heart and can't wait to play with all that shiny plastic myself.

The things you find.

Having not used this site for many months I was busy searching for my blog, as I could not remember what I had called it. After entering a search string in Bloggers search engine, which I was certain would find me my blog, I instead found this at the top of the list.

Venturing onto the site I was startled to see a photo of mine (with full credit) sat there. The photo was taken for a forum thread on iStockphoto.com. The disscussion was about Samsungs 3.2MP phone/camera, or camera with built-in phone, or phone with big camera built-in, or whatever it is.

The irony is that since joining iStock it's alway a quest of contributing members to find their work being used, something I have tried to do myself many times, yet the first photo I find of mine in use, wasn't actually taken as an iStock submission... WWW, it's a crazy world.

Here we go...

...Again.

Having used MSN Spaces for a while, I have to say I don't think it's too bad, but, there's always a but. I'm begining to get frustrated at the photo size limitations. When you upload a photo, they resize it to something smaller. Also to upload you need to use IE on a PC, something I'm getting more frustrated with. So my plan now is to use this for my blogs, and to use this software to host my photos on my website. That way I get to have my photos at whatever size I want, and I'm free of the IE/PC limitations too. Whoop!