Chez Moi

Yesterday, I visited two websites, thanks to blog posts I read on K3 and the Metrodad’s pages. One was a super one called Storynory (thanks K-3!) that has the audio recordings (FREE!) of more than one hundred children’s tales like the Ugly Duckling, Three Little Pigs etc. I just played one for P and that net savvy child searched for a few more and sat highly entertained for a whole 30 minutes! Result!

The biggest advantage of Storynory is that we can subscribe to them for free, on iTunes. I have downloaded some of P’s favourites for us to listen to on the next car journey. So can the baby, in utero, I’m told! Not bad at all, I say!

Metrodad, as always, has highlighted a disturbing trend growing - that of mums carting their six-year olds for spa treatments and 8-year-olds for - wait for it! - bikini wax! The article, on Philadelphia magazine, made for some disturbing reading. I remember the first time I saw smoothly waxed legs on my classmates in my new, swanky school at age 16. I was like the proverbial country bumpkin and gawped all day long. I still had to wait till I finished my Class XII hurdle before I went for my first waxing session - I still remember the pain! As my mum trained to be a beautician, she knew heaps of people from her classes who had gone on to actually make money from what they had learnt. As a result, I always went to beauty parlours run by aunties my mum was pally with. This invariably meant that any suggestion of mine to tweak my eyebrows this way or get a facial (give me a break, I was in Ethiraj College, after all!) would get a derisive snort and I would end up with a home made herbal pack plonked on my face, to ‘protect my tender young skin’.

I shudder to think of 8-year-old girls undergoing bikini wax. What the hell is there to wax, anyway?! And why are mums putting their babies through this? Do we all want to end up with children who give Posh Spice a run for her money? Oh please, no!