The Friendly Frugaleers, watching the pennies as we wait for sunshine!

[Cagliostro]

Hello, all welcome!

Yes! Watched the rest of child genius last night. Omg the kid who won!!! No. He is in for some serious beat-ups when he's older. Both dh and I said we'd beat him up. #smugtwat and the dad.... hilarious. Absolutely living vicariously through poor kid. But he had reached greatness. You know, having played table tennis for Barnet city council and all that...

I'm assuming the other finalist had some sort of special needs (is that the right term? I'm never sure what I'm allowed to use...), he'd competed at a team gb level at modern biathalon hadn't he? But if I'm honest he wasn't that great...I'm absolutely jumping to conclusions. May be wrong. Also sorry if I've offended anyone. Not my intention at all.

Currently sitting in kitchen making jam. Free blackberries. Free apples. No jam sugar needed as have plenty of other sugar. Dh has gone to buy a lemon. So I should be able to get about 9 jars of jam for...under £1.

New preggo low this morning. Had issues putting my pants on after my shower. Couldn't quite bend the right way to get them up. Dh was in bed still and was laughing and watching me struggle git but I'm fairly stubborn and wanted to do it myself he would have helped if I'd asked. Finally managed to bend to do it and farted. Then couldn't stop laughing. I swear I almost wet myself. Ffs. Fml. #whoeversaidbeingpregnantwasglamlied
#byebyedignity 🤰💨

We looked at everything for baby boy yesterday. And most of it is blue. And that's stuff I've bought....

Oops em pregnancy is so glam 😂 Still at least you have found a cure if you suffer from trapped wind #silverlinings

Yes his dad!!! Just awful, he actually laughed gleefully when the other finalist got a question wrong - smug twat indeed 😡 Not sure about SN really this year, not offended at all though :)

All the gender stereotyping gets right on my nerves. It's actually quite difficult to find non pink/blue baby clothes. I'm actually considering a social experiment along the lines of swapping the babies' clothes over and seeing if people react/speak to them differently!

Dh very elequently said that the winners dad made "jizz face" when his son got an answer right and a couple of times looked like he'd got his wang stuck in a tin can. I'll admit too we were heckling the tv "hey [winner] yer mums yer dad!!!" Etc...

They will, they've done studies on that on tv. People are rougher with boys than girls if you swap the baby grows over.

2p & £10 nectar points. Jeggings & tissues.

snuggly watch the BBC show. The researcher did this. The toys participants encouraged the babies to play with fit right in with gender stereotypes.

I've said to dh that I want baby boy to be aware that boys and girls can do whatever they want play with whatever they want and wear whatever they want. I'm concerned about him being happy. Not him being a "bloke boy"

Your DH is quite an eloquent chap em :o jizz face :o (what does "yer mums yer dad" mean though? )

Snuggly you'd be amazed. If you like reading popular science kind of books, Delusions of Gender is intriguing. The treating them differently even begins with the bump - using different words and even tone of voice IIRC if they know what sex the baby is.

I can't get the image of "wang stuck in a tin can" out of my head now.

Yes I watched it last week. It's what gave me the idea! I should have said that, sorry. Funnily enough both our dds love being zoomed around etc but ds doesn't. So the opposite of how they are "supposed" to behave.

ah. "Yer mums yer dad" is a thing j e heard quite commonly in nz. Dhs family say it. Apparently it's common to shout it at sports events -

I guess its meant to confuse people.

£25.75 in Asda on my card, on all sorts really. Underwear, socks, new stationery for DS and a couple of paperbacks for holiday reading. Oh and frozen chopped garlic for £1.50.

I don't really approve of programmes like "Child Genius", to be honest. I don't really like anything that puts children in the public eye for 'entertainment' purposes, so I don't watch them.

£16 on the rest of the school uniform from Sainsbury's.

Ds has holes in his trainers and his crocs. Is it awful that I'm mainly upset because it means I won't be able to sell them afterwards

We're doing a great lego sorting and trying to rebuild all the models. It's quite a job.

I got the last bit of school shopping yesterday - shoes, shirts, copies and misc. stationery bits. I also got some socks in M&S because they had flamingos on them and obviously my life is not complete without flamingo socks.

Had lunch with DD - €10 each for starter, main course and a soft drink. I'd garlic mushrooms and a chicken burrito. DD had nachos and pasta carbonara.

I talked her out of the cinema and instead we watched 'My Girl 2'. We had it on DVD already but hadn't watched it yet.

DH made some very tasty steak sandwiches for dinner today.

There's a weather warning today and tomorrow because we're due to get the tail end of Hurricane Gert. It's been raining steadily for the last few hours. We're going to have a quiet evening at home and watch some stuff on Netflix.

£158 house insurance. £50 cashback from tcb.

I think house insurance is going up.

Hi all, am nodding away to all the gender stereotyping stuff. I think its actually worse now in terms of boy/girls stuff than when I was a kid, my brothers and I all played with similar toys and wore similar clothes (same t.shirts, dungarees etc) Dd has always been very anti 'pink' which came as a surprise to me, hates anything princessy and gets very annoyed with the fact that 'boys' stuff is generally more exciting

Good to hear Em that you are happy for your ds to play with the toys he wants to, the amount of friends I have that wouldn't buy their very young sons a doll or toy buggy is really depressing.

We have had a lovely day National Trusting, we went to Dunster Castle which isn't too far from us and had a really nice time. Spent £4 in the coffee shop, stopped at Blue Anchor on the way back and spent another £5 on drinks and chips. Took lunch with us

Feel like we never really got going today and like we've wasted the day as we haven't done any jobs or been anywhere/done anything fun.
I decided at 4pm to do some gardening. Has just got into it when it started to rain quite heavily. Should have got on with it sooner really, it was lovely and sunny this morning!

It's feeling very autumnal here and I can't help feeling excited. I absolutely love the autumn, it's my very favourite time of year. We've already been blackberrying and had a few crumbles and I'm already thinking about stews, dumplings and things to do with pumpkins!

Did you see the autumn thread Snuggly? I love Autumn too. Although every season has something good.

Same here. We're having some nice warm days but the mornings and evenings are chilly

Up in Watford M3 M25
. The traffic was appalling its a summer weekend
.more travel tomorrow up A1 then funeral.. ho hum ar least i have this evening

Jam is amazing. Sweet but not. And although it sort of got out of the pan while it was cooking it was tasty.

We want to bring baby boy up to be relaxed happy etc and to learn that everyone is different but everyone is a human so the same.

Watching the astronaut training thing on BBC now.

I'm a huge fan of autumn. Time for lovely jumpers, scarves and boots.

I love autumn too. I like getting excited about Christmas too (sorry to those who don't like the C word ).

I am going to break ranks and say that I am finding my baby bath very useful. While you can just dunk a baby in the main bath with whoever, I generally find that most of DD's baths in the early weeks are in response to a poo explosion, and she rarely times those thoughtfully. Much easier than running the big bath especially if you are holding the baby at arms length the whole time it is running

Gender stereotyping infuriates me. I must watch that documentary - I am sure I must do some subtle stuff without realising, but in general I actively encourage 'other gender play' just to counterbalance the prevailing pressure! I bought DS a doll and buggy, and a toy kitchen, but he had no time for either. His favourite toys were always hid wooden trains. I think in his case the ASD played a big part, as he's not good at imaginary play at all (even with his trains he really just lined them up for a very long time!). It will be interesting to see how DD turns out. I am a scientist so will actively encourage that interest in both my children.

Also, while I've no objection to a bit of pink, i painted DD's bedroom with a teal blue feature wall

Productive day here as I have found the source of the leak into the garage. Plumber is coming tomorrow so hopefully he can stop it. I spent a couple of hours clearing out more boxes etc and sweeping out the stagnant (stinky!) water and swilling Dettol about. It was a really gross job but I am very pleased it is done. Garage has never been so empty but house looks like a jumble sale.

I have decided not to try and sell anything clothes-wise (mine or kids') as it will never happen. Just donate /give away to help with the organising and Decluttering.

Right, sleep time, back in 90 mins. Bank holiday weekend coming up next, yay!

Checking in. Back to busyness. September is quite manic but I'm clear from October, thankfully.

Yeah fluffy, house insurance is increasing. I've had to change anyway, when we bought the extra art, current insurer refused to cover. Ironic, as it's no where near as expensive as some of the tech people own.

Should be NSD. Off to work.