Nadiya Sparkles Green : Ponyo washes over my soul, ahhh soothing like chamomile and rose

God bless my giddy aunt ...
Actually, thanks Nayyar Khala for sending me that random link about Ponyo being a great replacement for Iggle Piggle - frankly, Jaan still loves the toys, but is waaay over Night Garden as a show. Ponyo has in fact saved the day at ours, which is a great relief, as my drug-addled near-sanity and potentially fully-functional life had been shifted far, far, FAAAAR out of kilter.

It all got stressful at half term, which is a damned time for all Mummys of pre-schoolers. Everything we go to is SHUT and this drained away all the positive benefits of 'getting out and about' recently. It took me all the weeks of the last term-half to build up to outings, participation in Daisy centre activities, making friends, seeing my actual friends .... hanging out with rellies.

Oh man, an army of women helped me get that far - - - Half Term. Blew it all to smithereens, didn't it? So the pressure immediately mounted, to progress again.

Then what? A low blow struck me - in the form of (don't laugh) two rather terrible XFactor episodes. A soul already desperate enough to turn to XFactor starts to feel battered. Tag on fresh sadness at the Stephen Fry debacle (despite it being absolutely nothing to do with me directly), and urgh, even Eastenders can't stir anything in me right now, a sure early-onset sign of the deep gloom in descent. When I'm stuck to a sofa or a bed .... I don't appreciate lack of media-soothation. Not to mention I am FLUEY, have bitten off more than I can easily chew with the Papworth WI (my vain attempt to recapture my former personality and expertise), and I am struggling with the forms, policies and paperwork associated with registering as a childminder - not just technically, as believe it or not with all my academic achievements, I appear to be actually struggling with the process - but more than that I am struggling emotionally. It's such a big deal ... omg why in heaven should it be?

I was capable and efficient and motivated once.
I still am, but what I meant by all that is SO DIFFERENT to what I manage now ...
Gaaaaah!

My gorgeous baby is milling around throughout this period - alternating between being the delightful chap, hero of my life, with his independent-play skills that he CAN be, and the Mickey Mouse-crazed fanatic, maniacally changing DVDs again and again and again and again and ... Oh yeah, there are tantrum fuelled crazed interludes too!

We're so proud of his speech - it's coming along something fine. Hurrah he can say Bottle. Aaargh he chooses to say 'Mickey Bottle' every time he asks for milk.

This bottle RULES OUR LIVES right now ...oh, hang on, Jaan does .... the bottle is just his weapon of the month

I add here, he has about 7 bottles of milk per 24 hours!!!!! - choose any 7 in any given day - on waking, at breakfast, as a mid-morning snack, after lunch, after nap, with tea, at bedtime and another if he wakes at night.

So I did what any couch-potato-due-to-PND Mummy would do. I changed the 'priority' on all our LoveFilm requests and Lo and Behold - salvation in the form of Noddy, 100 Toddler Tunes and Ponyo arrived yesterday.

We've investigated them all today. Noddy was a known entity and much appreciated by Jaan over brekkie. He soon wanted a change and appeared on the fence when I put the toddler tunes on. At least it was a change from Mickey. And a change from the bizarre retro songs DVD we have been watching ad nauseam for a while now - the Sing Along Day of Songs by Abbey Media - circa 1993 (going on 1983 by the way). If I had to listen to entreaties to 'Join (their) sing a long day-o of fuuuun' again today I might have had to lie down at someone else's house, leaving Jaan to it .... You see, "There's PaddingTUN and RUperrrrt Bear, Dusty Brontasaurus WILL BEEE there" and these promised frighten the beJesus out of me when I am under the weather ... sniff.. Please Dusty, lets just leave it for another day, eh? Dusty Brontasaurus, please just don't be there, don't wait for me, I don't want to know how happy the two of us can be ... don't be anywhere I can see you and your snaggletooth ..... [for those, who like me, can't stop the song going through their heads .... here is mercy in the form of the lyrics.]

If you've seen this DVD with me, you may know that dinosaur gets EVERYWHERE in literally every scene .... aargh. He has a snaggletooth. I have a snaggletooth. So does Iain. HOW CAN I COPE WITH DUSTY BRONTASAURUS' FACE TAUNTING ME ABOUT ME AND MY HUSBAND AND OUR DEFORMED SNAGGLETOOTHS??????

SO at this point THANK GOODNESS for PONYO

- loved the animation, loved the characters, the pace of the film, the song at the end (sniff!! in a good way ... I teared up of course).

Jaan watched the whole thing with me, we loved it, me specially so, as I can understand English far better and am more experienced in watching this sort of animation, frankly, and got a lot more than Jaan out of it all.