2 things I’m loving right now…

1. Holly Throsby’s kids album – ‘See!’

In our house we have had the luxury of many years of being music snobs. Going to indulgent indie gigs and staring at our shoes or jumping erratically to Iceland’s finest exports (hello Jonsi…). But since the kid was about 4 months old she has started to be very clear about her musical preferences. And those preferences are not Die Antwoord – XP€N$IV $H1T (NSFW kids) or old school wu tang. Give the kid a bit of Twinkle Twinkle or Old Macdonald and she is happy as f*****g old Macdonald’s pig in sh*t.

So I was excited to find that there is actually a bit of an industry of non-horrendous kids music out there. I am just getting started exploring, but have discovered this one by Holly Throsby and love it. She has a beautiful voice (goes without saying) but this record is catchy, appealing to the small one, and not repellent to me. In fact I have caught myself singing ‘Hello Tiger, hello tiger, gosh it’s nice to meet you’ more than once. I also love the song ‘Can I do that too?’ and feel that it is prescient of about 1 year into the future – ‘whatever you are doing, can I do that too??’…

Highly recommended and also think it would be great if you need a sleepy time record as it is pretty chilled out. We lay on the floor at about 5.30pm (after dinner and before daddy gets home) and have a good time singing and rolling around.

2. Reddit – parenting subreddits

Now I was a bit late to the reddit bandwagon. I used to look at it every now and then to see the funny pictures of french bulldogs or something horrific on wtf that Ben would NEED to show me. But I didn’t get my own log in until before Leila was born. Now however I love it. There is truly a subreddit for any of my strange and varied interests.

But specifically I have been interested in the parenting ones. There are the mainstream ones: Parenting (which is a bit preach-y), Mommit (which is a bit whingy), Beyond The Bump (getting better) and my personal favourite BreakingMom .

There is other cool stuff like IAMA also which is where people put themselves out to answer questions from the general reddit population. Sometimes it is famous people but sometimes it is just people who have done something interesting.

I used the Alien Blue app on my phone to read these and found them a godsend during late night feeds. The Americans are up and about in our night so there was always plenty of content.