"you've got a bug on you"

I love a good challenge and when Opeie told me that he was changing his costume idea for comic con this weekend with 7 days notice, I revelled in the excitement. His friend Cara had decided to go as Hilda from his favourite graphic novels/TV show, so he decided as they were going together that he wanted to be Hilda's friend David. Tuesday morning we headed out combing the charity shops looking for all the bits we needed. While hunting we found some brown womens trousers that I altered, and a top a similar colour. 

I used the left over fabric from the trouser legs to make the patch, The waist strap from an apron hanging on the back of the kitchen door to make the necker and used a magic tape centre for the woggle (it wouldn't stay in position so I glue gunned a lego tyre inside it to stop it sliding). The glue gun was still hot so I glued a bug to a head band (he's always got bugs on him). Cara's brother Fynn gave us some brown socks and then we finished the outfit off with some white plimsoles, job done! and it only cost £7 boom!

We still felt like we needed to accessorise though, so as David is always eating Frazzles I 'made' Opeie eat a packet so that I could stuff it and make something fun to hang from his trousers (Its all about the little details).

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

I try and avoid having the TV on during the day as home schooling is very important stuff don't you know! We do have half an hour some afternoons while eating lunch though when Netflix goes on. There is also of course those odd days where Opeie is feeling under the weather and making a den on the sofa with blankets and pillows is set in to motion. On the evenings if Netflix is on they can watch what they like but if it does go on during the day I try to avoid episode after episode of Pokémon. So what do we watch? Well I try and stick to shows that a little more educational (and Netflix is full of great informative shows).

So here is our top 10 educational shows (in no specific order) that have been keeping us entertained when filling our daytime gaps.

Ill be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Mr Peabody and Sherman but Opeie loves it. The over intelligent beagle Mr Peabody and his human Sherman travel in their time machine to various important times in history while meeting some famous characters (Confucious, Alexander Graham Bell etc). I think its the bad jokes and slapstick humour that I don't like but I will say one thing about the show it is great for getting Opeie asking questions and anything that sparks interest about this sort of thing, is as far as I'm concerned, a great show.

I'm not really sure how Opeie stumbled upon the Wild Kratts but I am so glad he did. The Kratt brothers travel the globe saving animals from often awful predicaments learning about animals, their habitats and how they live. The show deals with big issues through its in show villians, like deforestation and animal skin being used for fashion. The show covers a variety of animals that we had not already covered in books that we have read so it is great for getting Opeie asking questions.

Dinosaur train has been at the top of Opeie's favourite TV shows list since he first became interested in dinosaurs. The show is AMAZING! and I have learnt a lot myself about those 'terrible lizards'. The show focus' on Buddy, a T-rex who upon hatching finds that he is in a Pteranodon nest. Buddy wants to find out why he is different and also learn about all the other dinosaurs that were around in the mesozoic time period. Dinosaur train is so interesting and is great addition to any dinosaur topic.

If you want your young children to learn about different countries and cultures then Mouk is definitely a great add on to help with the introduction into that. If you can get past the slightly irritating theme tune Mouk the adventuring bear and his friends, Based on the french books illustrated by Marc Boutavant will take you on an adventure around the world learning about celebrations, food and how people in other countries live. A great source of TV based education for young children.

Its not all bright colours and cute characters when we are taking in information via the TV. There is a huge selection of great documentaries and scientific shows. Dinosaurs are still playing a big part in our home schooling so shows from the Walking with dinosaurs series have been great for a bit more of a grown up look at what was going on before we started to inhabit the planet.

If there is a problem that can be solved using basic mathematics then the Monster math squad will most likely be there to save the day. We've not watched this for some time but it was such a great show for a Opeie a year or so ago that I thought I would include it in our top 10. Monsters and numbers, who's not going to learn from that?!

As I said before Dinosaurs are still going strong in our house but after watching David Attenborough's The life of birds Opeie has now started swaying more towards the dinosaurs closest living relative. The great thing about being interested in birds (over dinosaurs) is that we can actually see them just by opening the back door or taking a trip to any of our local RSPB sites. The life of birds is a really interesting look at many of the birds we see daily which is great and some more interesting birds, their habits and how they live.

When your kids get into things like sports for example it is great when you can switch on Netflix and find documentaries about the things that they love. The last couple of weeks has been dominated by skateboards and there are a few skateboarding documentaries available to watch. Motivation 2 was the one with the least bad language in but I still had to watch this a couple of times before letting the boys watch to avoid any of the more adult language. Its always handy to have the remote by your side to skip these parts.

Last week we were scrolling through the documentaries and stumbled across 72 dangerous animals: Australia. Opeie wasn't sure what to make of it at first and said he thought it was a little scary but that all changed when it showed a man who had been bitten by a shark and had lived to tell the tale. Opeie was engrossed and all I got was "Cool!". This was a great source of information about poisonous frogs and reptiles, sea creatures and insects that come from a hotter climate. The downside is I don't think we could spring an Australian holiday on Opeie any time soon.

I know that there is always bad press in the media about 'the amount of screen time your kids get' but I believe like anything, if it is done in moderation what's the harm? and with great shows and documentaries like this available at your fingertips then you would be crazy not to take full advantage of the resources available.

"Mommy you are AMAZING"

Mothers day! the most important day of the year in our house for me and the boys as Mrs M really takes care of us all and although I like to think that we show her how we feel about her every day its nice to have that one very special day of the year where we can really make a fuss of her.

She's not my mom though so its only right to let one of the boys write this post and our eager 4 year old was quick to step up the the plate as he wanted to write about his lovely mom (in his own words) and pick some great pictures...

Opeie just asked me to add on the end "I think mommy is beautiful!"

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

"Can we stay up till midnight tonight please?" is not something that we hear a lot but when it comes to new years eve it is used regularly. There is no way the boys would hack staying up till midnight without being like a pair of miserable zombies the following day. So every year we deceive them by using the London firework display on Youtube from the previous year. I'm sure we are not the only family that pull out some craftyness on the final day of the year. This year though thanks to Netflix we didn't need to use the fireworks display as they had come up with a genius way to see in the new year at any time of the evening so as we all relaxed watching the TV we counted down the hours approaching (Ahem) midnight.

This year we saw the first new year in with Mr. Peabody and Sherman with a special Netflix countdown helping us parents dupe our little ones into thinking they have made it all the way to 12, genius. With 6 different characters to choose from including Care bears, Puffin Rock and Inspector Gadget. The Netflix new years countdown was a great addition to out celebrations.

And with the little ones tucked up with smiles on their faces it gave me and Mrs M the chance to relax. We were planning on being in bed before 12 but we received a facetime call from our friends Sam and Jamie from South America and we stayed on the phone for 2 hours. We opened wine and ate Nachos, it was like being out to dinner together. A pretty perfect end to a pretty perfect year.

“The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.”

I'd love to have time during the day to sit and plough through blog posts but with two demanding and adventure seeking children its just not on the cards. When everyone is in bed though (Mrs M included), I curl up on the sofa with my laptop and write. I don't generally like writing in silence so Netflix has been a great friend on these quiet lonely nights. I do try my best to pick something that isn't going to grab my attention too much, if I have work I desperately need to get done I will opt for something I love that Ive seen many times as it wont distract me and is just noise in the background. Sometimes though I click on shows I have never seen before and I get transported to another plane, where absolutely no writing gets done at all.

Here's my top 5 Netflix shows for binge watching (and getting minimal work done)...

1. 'Lie to Me' dragged me in by the title picture, I thought to myself 'there's that guy off of the Hulk movie, I like him' and BANG! that was a good few weeks of my evenings taken up with minimum work completed! Cal Lightman as a character won me over from the first episode. The show is about a deception expert who can read all manner of facial expressions and works with the police and private clients, it is extremely clever and well written and Tim Roths character is just the right amount of crazy.

2. Its really hard to find a show that me and Mrs M can sit down and watch together. I love action and gritty drama but Mrs M has a very nervous disposition and things tend to play on her mind so its usually the Carebears or Spongebob for us! (Seriously, if there is anything that Mrs M cant stand more than violence on TV its Spongbob). If Mrs M had it her way we would watch Gavin and Stacey or Sex and the City episodes each night. One evening though (again while I was trying to write) we came across 'White Collar', a show about a convicted conman working for a white collar division of the FBI to shave time off of his sentence. I'm not sure if it was the episode content or just the main character that hooked Mrs M but it was 5 seasons that took up many of my working evenings. It was great to have something to watch with Mrs M, who doesn't love snuggley sofa time!

3, From the list so far (and including this one) it seems that my top 5 is going to be police/crime heavy. I'd  actually not thought about it until I started writing this but I guess that must be what I like. 'Person of interest' was a great show for having on that had my attention but I still managed to get a little work done. The thought that we are being watched continuously is something that concerns me all the time. Im surprised this show didn't freak me out but I loved every minute of it and I am hoping the next series pops up on Netflix very soon.

4. Oops! another crime related show has jumped in. I wasn't impressed by the movie years back and I thought Ben Affleck had made a complete douche of the character but the Netfix Original series Daredevil was amazing. Being an enormous Marvel fan, the show really did the character of Matt Murdock justice. I debated putting Gotham in here as it was also and amazingly well written story line but for me Daredevil definitely came out on top.

5. I suppose I better put in something a little lighter and with less police presence despite going to add 'Prison break' in next. I was going for a show that me and Mrs M sat and watched together in its entirety but sadly 'Californication' is no longer on Netflix (such a shame as it was a great show). hmmmmm.... something funny??? Me and Mrs M have watched a few funny shows together. 'The unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' was a great show and I loved 'The Fuzz' as it appealed to my very childish side but seeing as I've had to replace 'Californication', 'Benidorm' solely on the fact of the amount of time it has taken up while I have attempted to write. The show is cliche british humour at its best and I think thats what I love about it most.  Plus despite trying my best most nights to write, I'd take curling up with Mrs M on the sofa for a giggle any day.

This top 5 came about because as of tomorrow with the release of the Netflix original Marvel show 'Jessica Jones', I know that all writing will be on standby. There's nothing that is going to get in the way of a new marvel show and with Netflix doing such an amazing job with Daredevil I am expecting Jessica Jones to have me hooked within the first five minutes.

Avoiding another 'Soggy bottom' with Netflix.

We've reached that point in the year again where the smell of bread and cakes is filling many of the homes in the UK and social media is blowing up with talks of The great British Bake off. Personally I'm not a fan, so while Mrs M and Seth had their weekly bonding session this week, I popped my headphones on and did some work on the blog, hoping to avoid the sound of Marry Berry's 'soggy bottom'. 

As i gazed across the room i smiled from ear to ear when i realised that that adorable mini version of myself had the same idea and was sitting contently sporting a dinosaur T-shirt, new trucker cap and catching up on the recent Netflix children's show Dinotrux.

Part dinosaur and part truck, whats not to like? Dinotrux is every boys dream and the first season, based on the books by Chris Gall is available to view on Netflix now.

"You may be different, but we're all creatures. All dinosaurs have different features."

The subject of 'how much time our children spend in front of the TV' seems to come up quite a bit amongst friends, it's a hot topic. Although we don't have a TV license at home the boys do squeeze in a bit of Netflix between all the other exciting things that we get up to. I love the fact that with Netflix we can keep an eye easier on what the boys are watching. For us, most importantly, is the fact that they are not subjected to the utter tripe on TV (including most importantly, the news).

I've been really impressed recently how well Netfix and the books we are reading have been working hand in hand and it's got me asking 'is screen time really bad for your children if you are picking what they are watching?'. The blog has been a bit 'Dinosaur' heavy recently  but Opeie's fascination in the subject has got me hooked. We've been reading all sorts of books and doing dinosaur activities, then a few weeks back we sat down to eat lunch and Opeie asked if there were any kids dinosaur programmes on Netflix. We had been watching the walking with dinosaurs series but I think Opeie wanted something a little less bleak so I searched 'dinosaur'. This is where we first found dinosaur train and if I am honest I have been as hooked as Opeie ever since. This show is what all kids TV should be like, fun, colourful and with fascinating educational content. We've both learnt so much about dinosaurs over the last few weeks and Opeie has been soaking it up.

The last month or so of Dinosaur fun has been awesome and we've ploughed though all the books we can find in our local libraries but what has blown me away is what Opeie has picked up from the show while I've been making lunch in the afternoons. He has explained to me how to tell if a dinosaur is a theropod, which dinosaurs were from which time period (including a woman's jaw dropping when me and Opeie were playing dinosaurs in Ikea and I said 'I'll be a Giganotosaurus", to which Opeie replied "they were found in South America!)". As he stood at the counter in Holland and Barrett last week he informed both myself and the staff that Archaeopteryx means 'old feather', he is full on entertainment and his passion for dinosaurs is addictive.

So is screen time really that bad?

When I started to write this post it got me thinking about all the things me and Mrs M have have learnt over the years from Netflix. All the Ted talks we have watch and fascinating documentaries, including the ones that changed my diet (yes Netflix stopped me eating meat and dairy). There are a huge amount of educational resources out there, if you have young children then Dinosaur train is a must, slightly older kids? Horrible histories is amazing. Switch your TV on and take full advantage of the information that Netflix is making available to you, it's worth every penny of your monthly subscription.