The LEGO Christmas

The Lion Chi Temple - constructed in 48 hours

This Christmas will go down in the family history books as the LEGO Christmas.

For months now, Littleboy 1 has been carrying round a LEGO catalogue and memorising the names of various sets that he had in his sights. He was very clear about what he wanted for Christmas - the Legends of Chima Lion CHI Temple - and had been telling us for months that, should he receive it from Santa, he intended to build it all in one day.

And he very nearly did - it was finished by Boxing Day evening, despite being about 1000 pieces. In fact, we barely saw the boys over Christmas, so intent were they on completing their new architectural projects. It was brilliant - one morning we lay in bed until 10AM because they decided to get up and do their LEGO rather than bounding into our bed at 7AM demanding breakfast.

Their room is now like a miniature Legoland, full of various creatures, scenes from The Hobbit and lineups of characters looking like a tiny yellow army.

Sometimes it's rather freaky; watching The Return of The Jedi, which as far as we knew they hadn't seen before, they seemed to know all about the various characters and what was going to happen next. "I've seen it on LEGO Star Wars," would be their explanation. Or "It's in my LEGO sticker book."

I do sometimes wonder whether LEGO is slowly taking over the world by stealth? Will we one day see a LEGO President in the White House, and little LEGO representatives of each country at the UN? Perhaps it is a conspiracy by the Danish government, and all that selfie-taking is just to throw us off the scent?

I don' t know, but I'm gradually giving in to the madness after years of wondering what's going to happen to all his deconstructed LEGO we buy (is it recyclable?) and complaining about how expensive it is.  After all, building LEGO is healthier for them than endless computer games or TV, and they MUST be developing their fine motor skills or whatever we're supposed to be doing with our children at this age.

So when I took them to Toys R Us yesterday (cue endless questions about the spelling of said shop's name; Littleboy 2 thought it was called Toys Are Rust) to spend their Christmas money from various relatives, I knew exactly where I was heading.

I steered them straight over to the LEGO and said: "There you go. Why don't you just buy more?" 




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Pre-Christmas Dramas

We were so nearly there. At the beginning of the week, the end of term had loomed like a horrible deadline, before which I needed to fit in doing the rest of the Christmas shopping, attending various end of term events without forgetting anything, writing the Christmas cards and writing a final feature for work.

But now we were an hour away from the end of Littleboy 1's term. I was finishing off my last few bits of work before a break for the holidays, while Littleboy 2, having broken up a day earlier, was happily esconsed on the sofa with an iPad, having slept in till 9am. All was quiet in the deep dark wood.

And then I got the call from school. The nurse's office. "We seem to have a very unusual problem here, Mrs NVG. Littleboy 1 appears to have a 5p coin stuck to the roof of his mouth, and we can't get it out. We think he may need to go to a dentist, or even A&E."

Littleboy 2 and I rushed up there to find a distraught Littleboy 1 with, indeed, a coin somehow suctioned to the inside of his mouth. Whether or not the crying was to do with embarrassment, pain or the fact that he knew I'd told him a million times not to put money in his mouth, I'm not quite sure.

Having not registered the boys yet with a dentist in London (I was waiting until 6 months after their last American appointment), I was faced with a dire wait at the busiest A&E department in London, and had visions of a dreadful Christmas ahead with Littleboy unable to eat or drink anything, having had the coin surgically removed somehow.

Luckily the school nurse thought of a local dentist who helps the school out with fitting rugby mouthguards. A phone call later and we were down there; the dentist removed the offending coin in seconds.

"Have you ever seen this before?" I asked her. "Er, no", she replied. "I can't say I have."

This is the second time I've been told by a medical professional that something unique has happened to a child of mine. The first was when Littleboy 2, as a baby, managed to get a hair so tightly wrapped around his little toe that it had to be removed by a plastic surgeon.

However, it may run the family; my father-in-law tells me he swallowed a penny (old penny, so quite big) at much the same age. He had to have it removed under chloroform, a most unpleasant experience. So, I think we got off lightly.

Anyway - Littleboy 1 is fine again, and we are excitedly counting down to Christmas. But I don't think we'll be putting any coins in the Christmas pudding....

The Great Transatlantic Christmas-off

Not my neighbour's partridge; but it's a good old English tradition

"Look, it's a partridge! In a pear tree".

This was about the third time I've pointed out to Littleboy 1 this most inventive outdoor Christmas decoration from a house near us. A stuffed bird sits atop a tiny tree, which is hanging with golden pears, outside their house. (While America still wins on the classy decoration front, England is definitely improving - I've seen lots of fairy lights on trees and bushes this year, and not so many flashing garish reindeer).

When he finally managed to see the thing, he asked quite simply: "What's that got to do with Christmas?"

The boys have certainly missed out on some English Christmas traditions during our time in the US, but they're making up for lost time now. Although sadly too old to actually be a shepherd/wise man in the Nativity, they've sung in choirs at school as younger children perform it. We're one carol service down, two to go (Littleboy 1's was at a large London cathedral, a really special experience, while the other two will be a tiny country churches). Although I realise I'm a hypocrite for wanting them to experience carol services, given that I'm the most Dawkins-eque critic of religion, I do feel they missed something in the US, with its strict banishment of anything religious from school. After all, you can't be critical of something you've never been exposed to, can you? (And after all, I like singing carols).

Littleboy 2's been to one pantomime with school, and I've booked tickets for all of us to go to the Theatre Royal, Stratford, to see Dick Whittington. I'm not sure panto even exists in New York where the Christmas theatre experience is either The Nutcracker, or The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

This week we're off to The Snowman in Covent Garden (at least they know what this is, having watched it repeatedly on video since they were babies and played the theme tune in their piano recitals in America). In a fit of Christmas enthusiasm I bought the DVD of the rehashed Snowman (The Snowman and Snowdog) in the supermarket, having not seen it on television last year. Disappointingly it was a far inferior version; Littleboy 1 immediately announced that music wasn't as good, and the adults among us were dismayed that the original house in the film was now depicted in the midst of urban sprawl. We don't want realism from our cartoons!

Work-wise, I've been incredibly busy, mainly because my American colleagues are fascinated by the glut of over-the-top Christmas ads coming out of the UK. Why, they asked me, are British Christmas ads such a big deal? I tried to explain that in the UK, Christmas IS the really one really big occasion of the year when we go totally overboard. Americans have so many; Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine's, even Mother's Day have special advertising created just for the occasion, and then of course there's the Super Bowl.

The UK has also has Special Christmas Telly for advertisers to get their teeth into, with guaranteed large audience numbers. We show special episodes of all our favourites on the 25th, whereas in the States it's all repeats of A Charlie Brown Christmas and Miracle on 34th Street. Hell, America has to wait until March to get the Downton Abbey Christmas Special. While I've gone off Downton rather, I'm looking forward to Call The Midwife and the return of Benedict Cumberbatch (sorry, Sherlock).

Yes, for all that I miss about America, in the great Transatlantic Christmas-Off, the UK definitely has the edge.

On Guilty Secrets

David Emanuel: Jungle camper and all round nice man

I'm not a big watcher of reality TV. I'm not into the X-Factor, or Strictly, or Celebrity Big Brother, or American Idol, Britain's Got Talent - anything like that. It's not that I haven't watched them - usually I watched one series in the past, then got bored. I couldn't see the attraction of the Great British Bakeoff, beyond being mildly amusing. I do watch The Apprentice, but not so religiously that I can't miss a single episode.

But then there's my November guilty secret. My name is Nappyvalleygirl and I'm addicted to I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

 I love I'm a Celebrity, and this year has been no exception. It might help that it's on at a particularly grey and gloomy time of year, I suppose; I seem to remember that when I watched the very first series, I had a stinking cold and the idea of being glued to the TV for three weeks was extremely appealing.

But what I really love is the way that all the "celebrities" (and I deliberately put that in quotation marks, because usually I've never heard of half of them), once they've been in the jungle for about a week and deprived of decent food, hot water and their dignity, lose their "celebrity" veneer and almost forget they're being filmed. Never mind the "bushtucker trials", it's fascinating to watch their real characters emerge as they subsist on a diet of rice and beans, wash in a stream and have to empty out the "dunny".

Who would have thought that previously not-very-famous boyband member Kian Egan would win this year, closely followed by rather camp wedding dress designer David Emanuel? I certainly wouldn't have had my money on those two at the beginning of the series, against TOWIE reality show star Joey Essex (not that I'd heard of him either, but apparently he's hugely popular) or gorgeous model Amy Willerton. But three weeks in the jungle revealed that Emanuel and Egan were the most down-to-earth, lovely, helpful people in camp. And so the public voted for them.

I'm A Celeb has also got me through some difficult times. In 2006, when I was pregnant with Littleboy 2 and banged up in St Thomas's Hospital, not even allowed to leave the ward, it was a lifesaver. I watched it every night on my bedside screen - it was literally an escape from the fact that I was trapped in hospital away from my husband and 17 month old baby for a whole month, sharing a room with three other women and worrying about my baby being born prematurely. Maybe it wasn't even a coincidence that Littleboy 2 was finally delivered just a few days after the final episode. Last year, when the onset of my mystery illness was making me deeply anxious and I felt as if my world was falling apart, it was the one thing I looked forward to all day.

These experiences mean that however mindless the series might be, I will always have a fondness for Ant and Dec (although I do hope they get sent to the jungle themselves one day). One thing I've never done is voted (except once, in the infancy of reality TV, for Will Young on Pop Idol). I try to restrict myself just to watching. At least I can keep one aspect of my dignity intact.

But I reckon everyone has their reality TV guilty secret. The Doctor's uncle, an eminent left wing academic, loves watching Strictly, while other serious-seeming friends of mine seemed obsessed with the Bakeoff. In America, otherwise sensible working Moms got all giggly over The Bachelorette and the Real Housewives series.

So go on, then, what's yours? Or are you so admirable you eschew them all?

Missing Thanksgiving

No November turkey for us this year!

I didn't get Thanksgiving at all when we first moved to the US. It seemed a kind of inconvenient holiday, jammed in at the end of November when I hadn't started feeling at all festive and everyone was full swing in the middle of work and (at that time) preschool.

I remember all too well the first year we were in New York. It seemed as if everyone I knew was going off to celebrate with their families and was incredibly excited, and for us, nothing was happening. We were saved at the last minute by our lovely German expat friends, who invited us round for a turkey and all the trimmings (plus some Germanic additions such as dumplings). It was actually rather wonderful.

From then on, celebrating Thanksgiving with our friends became a tradition for us.  We had them back the following year, and then went to their house again. We became more familiar with the rituals of the day; watching the Macy's Manhattan Thanksgiving parade on TV in the morning, going for a walk after lunch in the usually glorious autumn weather. In 2011, I ran the annual town "Turkey Trot" before lunch, and appreciated the slap-up meal afterwards all the more.

So this year it seems a bit strange not to be celebrating the last Thursday in November. Not only seeing my friends' photos of their own celebrations on Facebook, I also feel left out as my work colleagues (all in the US) are on holiday and our offices are closed. While they are all being thankful, we're here in drizzly London on an ordinary Thursday, with everyone at school and work.

You see, I came around to Thanksgiving after all. It's an excuse for a big meal, a party and a festive feeling at a cold time of year when there's not much going on. (Many Americans I know say they even prefer it to Christmas, as there's no pressure to buy presents.)

Never mind. One thing I will appreciate this year is Christmas in England - my first since 2008. Mince pies, proper English carol services, mulled wine, Christmas pudding - it's all to come, and I intend to make the most of it. It's not been the easiest of years, but for that, I'll be thankful.

In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving!

Clever clogs

Littleboy 2 is getting far too clever for his own good.

I don't just mean academically, although it's true he's currently on a roll at school. He keeps coming home from school with certificates for good work, stickers from the head teacher and so forth (though is mysteriously reticent on what these were actually awarded for).

And whereas his brother is definitely the mathematician in the family, I think he may have inherited my own preference for the written word. He's recently begun a diary, and is keen to write everything down. Meanwhile a future literary critic may be emerging: he rather startled us at the weekend by pointing out, while watching Lord of The Rings, that Sauron's eye is the symbol of evil whereas the tree of Gondor is the symbol of good. Deep thoughts for a six year old.

Yesterday's spelling homework was words with apostrophes: you'll, they're, we're, I'm etc. There was a little confusion at first, so I got him to write some sentences using the various words. When we got to You're, I helpfully jumped into explain the difference between Your and You're, and suggested he write a sentence containing both. He looked at me slyly and trotted out the following:

"You're silly, Mummy, for leaving your brand new umbrella on the bus."

I had hoped the children had forgotten the little episode, which occurred a few weeks ago in Brixton. It was raining heavily, and my umbrella had broken. About to board a bus home with the boys, I was concerned that we would be soaked on the short walk between bus stop and home at the other end, so I made the children come with me to a crowded, chaotic Poundland to buy a cheap umbrella. Of course I promptly left it on the bus - so my one pound brolly was used for all of 30 seconds. Naturally, I made the boys promise not to tell Daddy that Mummy had been so stupid.

Anyway - I couldn't argue with the sentence. It's both factually and grammatically correct. But I'm going to have to watch out with this one.

Homework, grammar and toys in pyjamas

My friend Circles in the Sand has written a lovely post about doing grammar with her boys, which inspired me to ruminate on our own homework and grammar experiences.

I've come to notice recently that I really enjoy helping the kids with their English homework.  This isn't really a surprise; I loved doing English at school myself, and always felt that an English lesson wasn't really "work", it was enjoyable. The best English lessons were those when you just got to read your book - hell, that wasn't work at all! This was closely followed by reading plays out loud, or - even better - getting to watch the video version of your set text. (Actually, I think everyone loved that. Particularly Far From The Madding Crowd with Terence Stamp and Alan Bates).

Maths was another matter. Littleboy 1 told me this morning: "Today is a great day because I have double maths." I had to laugh; my worst days at school were double maths days - clearly he takes after his father, who took Maths A Level.

Yesterday I spent ages helping him come up with creative adverbs to put in a story about aliens. It's difficult though - how much help do you give them? I don't want to put words in his mouth but on the other hand, I had to give him some clues, including hinting that "nicely" was not the most creative adverb in the world (and adding that teachers don't tend to like the word "nice" in general).

Anyway, as regards grammar: Littleboy 2 had a note come home from school which said:

"Friday is Children In Need day. Children are asked to bring into school their favourite doll, teddy or cuddly toy dressed in pyjamas or fancy dress for the day."

I'm not sure whether the sentence is actually ungrammatical, or just poorly worded, but it definitely wasn't clear.  We had a huge debate on whether it was the children or the toys that were supposed to come in fancy dress. I reasoned that it couldn't be the children, because they have sports on a Friday and it wouldn't be suitable to come in wearing PJs on a sports day. On the other hand, what cuddly toy has pyjamas?

Turns out it is the toy though. Seeing as Littleboy 2's is a tiger, he (the tiger) won't be going in pyjamas.