Boys In Tights - the Spiderman sequel

I wouldn't put my face so close to that, Spiderman.

Hamish meditating on his spidey-senses - Ka-chow!

Spidey-senses at the ready! September is apon us. And you know what that signals in the minds of all my German friends? Yup, it's the beginning of the 2011 Boys In Tights season. I've written about this curious German phenomenon before and how as soon as there's a teeny change in the weather all the mothers put their little boys in tights. September is the month that this starts, and this year I am going to embrace this funny trend and join them (though maybe I'll wait until it is a little colder).

I've also written about the way shopping works over here. Once things are gone, they're gone, and god help you if you miss your chance to buy something vital and seasonal. I was in H&M (looking for PE shorts) and noticed that there were practically no boys tights left. I had previously noted that they had some nice teal and grey stripey ones, but on the website all you can see are the Cars ones. My sister thinks you can't get these in the UK, but they have them on the UK version of the site too.

Anyway, what I did find were practically the best boys tights money can buy. I got them! I got them! These are the very same tights for boys that I saw last year on a boy in Kita. The Spiderman tights with the face on the bum! Hamish was completely and utterly OVER THE MOON! Seriously. Aside from the face on the bum, they have Spiderman shooting his web on each leg and little Spiderman faces on the top of the foot. I nearly cried when I noticed that all they had left were 2 pairs both age 1-2, but I opened one out and even without stretching they were long enough to fit Hamish this year.

I figure they will do him under trousers when it's cold out, but not so cold that he needs his snowsuit on. Though Hamish really wants to show them off (and who can blame him) so may insist on wearing either just the tights or tights under shorts (I may have to draw the line there).

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As a side note, a lot of people find my blog through Googling 'boys in tights'. I'm not sure if it's little boys in wooly tights that they're looking for or something a bit odder, perhaps in American Tan, but they sure do boost my daily stats up. Now be off with you, pervs! And don't darken this doorway again!! (.....Unless you're going to become a Follower.... in which case, come on in! Welcome!)

Slightly annoyed from Berlin

I've just written an email of complaint suggestions for ...um.... service improvement to Orla's new school. As in the one she's not even started yet. Yes, I believe in starting off on a good foot! Don't think I haven't been stressing over whether she'll be in negative house points on day 1 though.

We had our appointment at the school uniform shop today. Us and everyone else. You have to collect a number when you arrive and then wait until it's your turn. When it got to us, it turned out that they only have about half of the school uniform in a size that would fit Orla. Now Orla, although small, is not unusually so. I have her GP and Kinderarzt growth charts to prove it. But nonetheless, the school shop doesn't stock her size.

I half-joked "Where are M&S when you need them!" to which I was told by a member of staff that they had previously bought school uniform from there (whether for the shop or for personal use wasn't made clear) and should order some. Now that really annoyed me. Both the school handbook and the uniform order sheet state that the uniform must be ordered through the shop. And given that it's just 4 days before Orla starts, I don't have time to get her uniform from there. If we'd had this appointment even a month ago then we could even have bought it in the UK, tried it, taken it back and exchanged it. And for a lot less money too.

Instead I felt compelled to spend 44 Euros on two skirts that are too big and which I either have to spend more money on to have them professionally adjusted or have to re-sew myself. And for that price she could have had 14 M&S skirts that do fit.

On top of that they seemed to have no navy shorts for sport left for her to even try. I was told just to go and buy some plain navy ones from somewhere else. Unless you live in Germany, you probably don't realise that this is mission impossible. Germany doesn't believe in stock replenishment (I may have mentioned my horror at this in earlier posts) and now the shops are empty of anything summery and are currently in the midst of selling fleeces, rainwear, and tights (for boys). They don't even have schoolwear as the German schools are already all back from the summer break. Handy, huh? So far I have checked 3 stores, and frankly, I had better plans for how to spend my last few days with Orla before she starts school than scouring Berlin for shorts.

There were a few other things that annoyed me like the fact that they couldn't have decided what house Orla will be in before school starts, which means I need to beg Stevie for a loan of the car just to get out there to buy a coloured t-shirt, but hey, I hate to moan....:-)

The Doctor's Outfit Debate

Is your blood boiling? Are you enraged? Does it offend you?

I just finished reading a blog post about how a mother was looking for some doctor dress-up costumes for her boys and noticed that there weren't any in the girls section, only in the boys section. In the girls section they only had nurses outfits. The blog post author wrote "Is it only me who finds that offensive?". Well, no, probably not. In fact there was a commenter who said that this sort of thing "makes her blood boil".

It doesn't make my blood boil. In fact it doesn't bother me at all. I consider doctor's outfits to be unisex and if all the dress-up isn't in the one section then do you know what? It has to go somewhere. And where some merchandiser, or some shop worker has placed it doesn't actually make me angry or offended. So if it's split into male and female and you have a pile of doctors costumes in one hand and a pile of nurses dresses in the other then chances are you are going to make the same split. Or else you are really thinking about it a wee bit too much. Does it really matter? If my daughter wants a doctors outfit I know where to find them - same if she wants a pirate outfit or a racing car driver outfit.

But as I said in my comment, perhaps the offensive blood-boiling point should no longer be that we are surmising that girls can only be nurses and boys are naturally doctors, but rather that boys cannot dress up as nurses. How many male nurse outfits do you come across?

The way I see it is that nowadays girls can be anything they want. Especially in our culture. Of course there are still places in the world where women don't have the right to be equal to a man, but let's be honest, if my daughter wants to go to university and study medicine, engineering, or whatever, it's all there for her. What can't she do?

But maybe you think that with these gender stereotypes being laid out in childhood, that she is being pre-conditioned to think 'hmm....maybe I'm not meant to be a doctor. Damn, I'll have to speak to my school careers advisor about where I find openings for princesses'. Well, for me, I think that confidence in thinking you can be whatever you want comes from home. By being told by your parents that you can try and be anything you want (presumably, brain-power and determination permitting).

Of course I understand the perspective of the these women. It's the "Have we not moved on?" viewpoint. It's the stand that says "it's things like this that prevent women in society earning the same as their male peers". I could go on about how lucky then I have been to always get paid a salary I am happy with and build a career where I have been paid equally (and probably better than my male counterparts). But.

What I don't understand is why people aren't outraged that there aren't male nurse costumes for boys or why their blood isn't boiling that they simply cannot find any princess costumes for their son in the boys dress up section. Ok, so I am making fun, but surely, there should be the same anger that boys aren't being offered the same breadth of career choice. That their options are limited. No?

Is that because it's ok to reinforce masculinity on to boys. That in actual fact the norm seems to be to encourage boys to be, well, more boyish? Pretty much all the girls I know are able (because they have them) to play with diggers, and dinosaurs, train sets, and cars. There's no issue. But I know an awful lot of boys who aren't allowed to play with baby dolls, little pushchairs, or play with anything pink. Amongst my friends, when they would come round for coffee often the boys would go straight for the pushchair and race around the house with it, ramming it into the doors or doing races, or just taking a teddy for a walk. All perfectly normal, and good for encouraging caring behaviour. But also amongst my friends are those who just can't bear their sons to be seen pushing a little pushchair. Often they would say "Thank God his father can't see him doing that!"

Oh, and especially if it's pink. Pink of course is just a colour. It really makes no odds. It means no more to your toddler child than green or blue or yellow. You can buy blue baby clothes for girls. But most people like to dress their baby in the appropriate gender colour. I mostly put this down to not wanting your baby mistaken for the opposite sex, because usually when they are really young well, sometimes it can be a bit hard to tell.

When Hamish was a baby I still had an awful lot of bibs from when Orla was a baby. Technically, she really still was, and given they both suffered massively from reflux, well, you can imagine, we had a lot of bibs. A friend was round for lunch one day and saw me (once again) sticking one of Orla's old bibs on Hamish. "I'm going to buy you blue bibs" she said. "You can't put him in girls bibs". Why not? We were in my own home, nobody else could see him. He certainly didn't care, and I didn't care, so did it matter?

So my question is, why are we all busy 'boying' up our boys and narrowing their options, when to make our girls girly is now seen as a negative. (I'll put money on one of the things that makes the 'blood-boiling' commenters blood boil is the proliference of candy pink toys). Is it really that we want our girls to have it all, preferably in boyish hues as well, but really none of us can really get our heads around our boys being a little more effeminate? And what's wrong with boys being girly? Because surely girls can be anything they like, which is more than you can say for boys!

(A bit ranty and serious for me, I know. Normal service will be resumed shortly). Oh and of course, this is only my opinion. I know hee-haw about feminism, didn't live in a time/place where women didn't have the same opportunities as men, and of course can only talk about what I have experienced or observed. But reading about women getting offended about stupid kids costumes seems to make my blood boil! Ha!ha!)

Number-crunching with 'boys in tights' at the 'Commerzbank' 'is giving me gip'

'Like' at your own risk, elf perverts!

Howdy dear readers, I wonder how you found me today? I've been meaning to write about 'stats' for a while but, well, you know, I'm always busy with something else. Don't worry though, I am starting to get on top of my mountain of tasks - why even as I write this I am on hold to the Tax Office. Actually, that's not true, I tried to write while I was on hold to them but their hold music/messages are so fluffy and hard to hear that I couldn't concentrate because I was never sure if I was still on hold or if it was an actual person. I did eventually get through to someone who told me to phone back in February or March, so I have effectively ticked that one off my list of things that really need doing (right now). So that's at least one thing slightly sorted, the rest can probably wait until after I get out of jail for failing to sort out my double taxation issues in January.

But where was I? Yup, stats. I'll try not to bore you, I won't actually give you any numbers or anything, I'm not that way inclined, but I thought I would tell you some interesting stuff from 'behind the scenes' of the blog. At least I find it interesting, who knows, maybe you'd like to hear more about the UK Tax System.

I've been inspired to write about this by Mwa who always has people landing on her blog via the most interesting search terms. I won't re-type them here, you can click the link in a minute and see for yourself. I said "in a minute"!! I am always surprised by the things that people type into Google. An awful lot of people find my blog via Google by searching for 'boys in tights'. Barely a day goes by when there's not someone looking for boys in tights. Or 'facebook boys in tights'. I wonder what it really is that they are looking for. I'm pretty sure it's not me, otherwise I would be gathering up followers like nothing on earth.

Incidentally if you search for 'boys in tights' in Facebook you find the list of pages above. Does anyone want to 'like' the North Pole Sexy Elf Boys for me? I also have a fair amount of people searching for more random things on a weekly basis. This week so far my favourites are "My piles are giving me gip" - and I hope they found comfort and a little relief here, and "The noise in my heating system is driving me crazy". Why would you even type all that into Google? Isn't it more logical to search for something like 'NHS Direct+piles' for the first one and perhaps 'heating system+noise' for the second?

Other peoples searches just have me wondering though. Someone in India (who do I know in India??) searched for 'fiona gray orla hamish'. That's a bit precise isn't it? I really don't think I know anyone in India, unless that's where the UK Tax Centre calls are directed to.

Someone else recently blogged about 'the lurkers'. The people who read your blog faithfully, yet never comment. People from strange far away lands. Well, not that strange really, America mostly. So I'd like to take the opportunity to say "hello & thankyou" to the people who check my blog every single day from various places around the world to see if I have written anything new. You're awfully shy though, aren't you? Why not leave a comment the next time you read (eh, this), or maybe something else so everybody isn't staring. It would be really nice. I'd love to know who you are.

My readers mostly come from America. The UK follows as a close second. Then Germany, then Russia, & then the Netherlands. Recently I've seen an upsurge in my popularity in China and France (Nia hao! (I only know that from Nia Hao Kai Lan) & Bonjour!). I also seem to be rocking in Belarus and Slovenia (but my language skills don't extend far enought to say hello properly).

In terms of what people like to read, well I find that a bit of an odd mixture too. My most popular post is the one about the 'old & new' Commerzbank. Like, by MILES! Why??? I wonder if it's because things go wrong in that one, but then they go much worse in the one where I get locked out the house, and then the Commerzbank waves it's magic wand and makes things a goddam nightmare.

Next up in popularity is 'Only her hairdresser knows for sure'. This is the one where you get to see some quite horrendous photos of me, and read about some expensive highlights that I thought were good at the time and then I saw the day after that they actually started half way down my hair in some places.

After that we have 'I bring my fish bowl home'. I like that one too, and I hope you are all sitting reading this with the copy of it you made from the photos displayed somewhere prominently in your house. (I wonder if I could buy a better one on etsy now?)

And then, then we get to 'boys in tights'. Considering how popular it is search term-wise, it makes things with the Commerzbank post even more unfathomable to me as people very rarely use that in their searches.

Anyway, I thought I would share that with you. I hoped you enjoyed it. While I'm off photographing boys in tights for a new post that'll have my stats going through the roof, I'd love to hear from you.

boys in tights

Today was Orla and Hamish's first day at Kita. Mine too as we have a 4 week settling in period to contend with. First off we had to go up to Hamish's class and the kids pretty much got on with it. In fact when we got told we had to go down to Orla's class Hamish said he wanted to stay there and play so I asked if that was ok and despite their aghast faces they agreed to it. So Orla and I went downstairs and I let her get on with doing playdough, drawing and playing. Alles gut!

Last night I sat and translated all the pages of documentation they gave me before and discovered the schedule that they want me to follow is:

Wk 1. Come with your child and sit with them and make them feel secure.
Wk 2. Give your child some space, but still be there in the room for them.

Wk 3. Leave the room, but be outside the (glass) door where they can see you and still get to you if they need you.

Wk 4. You may leave the room (and line of sight of the child, and then leave the Kita for short periods of time.

So today with Hamish we pretty much covered all 4 steps with complete success and I would have done the same with Orla but they would probably have locked me in. Tomorrow I am going to ask if I can nip out to the shops (German withstanding) or at the very least take a book. I have the feeling though they're going to think me terribly cold and heartless. Stevie thinks I may have to resort to saying I need to go to the bank to pay the Kita fees.

On a side note saw an awful lot of boys wearing tights. Still can't quite get my head round that, but cometh the winter, cometh the big chunky Hamish legs in wooly tights no doubt!