WE LOVE CHARLIE AND LOLA

Lola is sick and Charlie and Lola are trying to count the germs in Lola's mouth!
A game on CBeebies that Beauty is currently playing. It may sound a little weird but at least it isn't the Terror Tubbies or Die Tubbie Die! Beauty and I now have an understanding, if I hear a 'naughty 'video then I shout CBeebies and she knows she must stop watching the 'naughty' video and turn back to CBeebies. How do you explain to an autistic 6 year old that they must not watch a Tellie Tubbies video because it has probably been made by somebody with way too much time on their hands and the video is just not nice? I may not be the biggest Tellie Tubbie fan(sorry Ariel and Fiona- favourite childhood toys) but seeing a Tellie Tubbie head explode is once too much and don't get me started on Die Tubbie Die!

Today is Dotty's christening, SnoWhite is going to be a Godmother!
I will explain the full significance of this later..................
All the girls will be wearing pretty new summer dresses and I shall be wearing my dress that I had for my birthday for the first time, Fiona says that I 'look like a mother in it'............. as a mother of 6 girls I couldn't possibly begin to fathom what she means by that statement.
Talking of unfathomable statements, we were in the car last night and Ariel had a Tourettes moment and told Fiona that she smelt of bums(don't ask!) , when asked where the rationale (to prove she was not a Tourettes sufferer) came from to say such a random thing she proceeded for approximately five minutes to explain why this insult was chosen and not another! I then joked that she would not be much good in the army as I could see her sat behind a wall, gun in hand and she would suddenly shout something random and bizarre like 'Saddam is dead'!
A confused look came over Ariel's face and she said,' But I wouldn't say that because I wasn't there'.
'You weren't where Ariel?'
'There when he died'
If anybody can decipher that statement............answers please on a postcard!
Oh the joys of motherhood.

On the subject of Ariel, since finding out she was going to be doing an Arabic degree she has been deciding which Arabic speaking country she would like to visit as part of the degree. Having had Anastasia visit Russia for a year, to a town where they repeatedly attacked foreigners, I am obviously nervous about Ariel visiting volatile areas of the world. I did however teach English a number of years ago to mostly Arabic speaking females and so I am aware of the different communities living in Cardiff. One of my best workers when I was working in one nursing home was a Somali women from Cardiff bay and she also worked in the Women's Centre in the Bay and I have been teasing Ariel that she doesn't need to go abroad to get experience of Arabic but can just go to the Women's Centre. She is not happy with this suggestion!
However I did enlighten her this week that it was a joke.......... I couldn't imagine that these women who have come from places such as Iraq, Iran, Palestine etc. would be too comfortable with somebody working with them who was going to be joining the British Army, however good their intentions. I can understand and appreciate this.

I watched Wife Swap on TV this week and it was a swap between a Muslim wife who had come from Pakistan approximately 20 years ago and a a liberal wife who was either atheist or agnostic(sorry I can't remember which!).
The Muslim wife seemed to think that she also was liberal(small l) but that really wasn't the case. I thought it was quite funny the way she talked about her girls, about 6th form age, I thought that she really does not have any idea of the lives that teenage girls live when they go to school. Belle and SnoWhite went to the same 6th form and in the school there were a lot of Muslim girls and a lot of Snowhites friends were Muslims. Control seemed to be a big part of the Muslim families life but the parents just did not seem to be aware that once those girls go to school then their life is hugely influenced by western culture no matter what they want.
The Muslim wife was also under the impression that because the other families 16 year old daughter had a dirty untidy bedroom then that made the other mother a bad mother.
That's it, I am officially a bad mother.
I have promised my girls that I would never go on Wife Swap.
During my nursing career I only came across 2 attempted suicide cases and both were Muslim girls, one was pregnant with her non-Muslim boyfriends baby and overdosed and died and the other threw herself off a bridge and she said she felt 'trapped'. Obviously this is purely anecdotal evidence and it is possible that suicide or attempted suicide rates are just the same in non-Muslims. After researching many religions, I have come to the conclusion that the teachings of Islam regarding the family are brilliant and really are the basis for a happy family life but as the Muslim family agreed on the wife Swap show, it isn't religion that causes problems but individuals.