I was watching a music channel countdown of the top 20 hits of the 80s the other night. “Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles came on and it reminded me of the times I would get up early to tape music off the radio.

I can clearly remember one morning desperately waiting to tape “Walk Like an Egyptian” (it was number one on the charts at the time) and making sure I paused when the ads came on so that I could ensure a seamless (well, as seamless as recording on a tape deck could be) listening experience on my pink ghetto blaster.

The point is this took commitment and planning. There was work involved in the creation of a mix-tape. (It was 1986 and I was 10 so I had limited funds to get cassette singles.)

These days, you simply have to load stuff on iTunes or click a few buttons to buy stuff online and voila! You have an instant mix-tape. (Well, mixed MP3.) I’m not bemoaning the technology. I access it and love it too but I can remember the days before technology made things so…easy, I guess.

Having two kids of my own now I am quite worried about how technology will be integrated into their lives. I didn’t used a computer until I was 14 (remember the black and green screens?) and didn’t own a mobile phone until I was 19. I really feel like my generation are the luckiest because we grew up free of distractions like Facebook, MSN Messenger, mobile phones and iPods. (I use all of these things and think they are great but in small doses.)

All I can think is thank God there were no mobile phone with cameras to capture mistakes I made, or YouTube to upload my youthful indescretions. I am so relieved I could make my mistakes and learn from them without the constant reminder of a photo snapped on a phone. We had a refuge from troubles at school and that was at home without Facebook, MSN or MySpace as another vehicle for people to harass you.

I have no idea what it will be like when my preschoolers hit their “tweens” or “twihards” or whatever that age is called these days…I still like the term kids!

 (At the moment I am adament they won’t get a phone until high school. Or go out with boys until they are 18. Hell, we just want to keep them indoors until they are at least 21! )

I flip between worry that this interest is going to give her unrealistic expectations about what it means to be a girl and her role in the world, and then enjoyment in watching the dvds (Little Mermaid, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty mostly) and playing with the dolls. We role play the stories (she is the wicked stepmother and I play Cinderella) and when I ask her what she wants to be when she is older the reply is “a mermaid and marry Prince Eric”. (My friend said it’s good she wants to be a mermaid because they can’t have s-x!)

Lately she has been very choosy about what she wears and if there is an item I put on her that she doesn’t like there will be tears, tantrums and screams of “I don’t look pretty in that”. This attitude worries me. The general advice from friends and the staff at her childcare is that it is a phase.  I am not a “girly-girl” or someone who is very fashionable or cares that much what I wear so I am  finding it challenging having a child who changes her clothes five times a day and only wants to wear dresses (I rarely wear dresses and when I do she says “mum, you look pretty. I want to look just like you.” That melts my heart and then I realise I should relish the moment because she ain’t going to be saying that in 10 years!)

I have written previously about not worrying about gender-specific toys and I think there is a mini-hysteria from parents who want to be seen to be hip and cool and edgy by eschewing the kinds of toys that we played happily with as kids (dolls, My Little Pony, Barbie, Fisher Price).

What I do like about the Disney Princesses is that there is a sweetness and innocence to them but also gutsiness. Ariel is inquisitive and adventurous, Snow White is kind and Pocahontas has dreams and drive (I realise Disney has taken some liberties with the hitorical accuracy of the story though.) Bratz on the other hand… they are never setting their platform-wedged feet in our house!

1. I found the news that Brangelina is allegedly breaking up to be a mood-lifter. Nothing like a celeb break-up to lift the spirits!

2. We were at the playground and a little girl and my daughter (similar ages) were climbing on the equipment. Little girl looked down to her mum, pointed at my daughter and said, “I can climb up this but THAT girl can’t”. I smiled and ignored the comment in the way parents do but in my head I thought “Yeah, but you look like a sour-faced little whiner, kid!”.

3. I ate the lollies from the party bags my kids received from a 4th birthday party.

4. My husband was accepted into a Bachelor of Nursing course starting in five weeks. I am proud but my immediate (selfish) reaction was:

“My life will be hell for the next two years, what with him working and studying! Why couldn’t he be like most people and do a job he hates, or even doesn’t really like and put up with it until retirement? Then he can take up golf or something.”.

5. I deleted my husband and daughter’s tv shows from the Foxtel iQ box to make more room for my stuff (that I never find time to watch!) and said, “the three-year-old must have switched off the power point and the recordings failed”.

See our bookshelf below (Note the Go Duster. It has become more of a toy for our daughter than used by us as a cleaning aid!):

Children's books are impossible to stack neatly, no matter how many times you rearrange them.

Several times a day my husband and I find ourselves re-stacking the shelves and trying to work out new ways to make it look neat. (Since having kids I have discovered that I like neatness and order. Sorry, Mum for all those years where you could not see my bedroom floor for all the clothes and books and stuff!)

The bookshelf actually looks relatively neat in the photo because the kids are at daycare today.

(The Jack-O-Lanterns were a fantastic op shop find yesterday for 99c each. Our three-year-old is very interested in witches and Halloween and ghosts at the moment. I hope this is not a sign she will become a Goth or an Emo?!)

1. Go to bed earlier. I find that I stay up really late because that is when the kids are asleep and I can get some stuff done (mainly watching shows I have taped on my Foxtel iQ). I like to call it “me” time. However, this backfires the next day because I can be crabby and a bad mummy. (I cave in and put on cBeebies or Nick Jr. See resolution number 2.)

2. Watch less television. I love TV. I love watching it, reading about tv shows and circling stuff in my Foxtel guide. The other night my husband said, “If the interest rates go up more we may have to get rid of the Foxtel”. I told him to wash his mouth out and NEVER speak of it again. I will scrimp on other things but don’t mess with my TV! However, I need to be more discerning with my viewing. Quality over quantity. No more news broadcasts in languages I don’t understand or shows about bridezillas, stupidest criminals or anything with “whisperer” in the title.

I let my eldest daughter watch TV (she is nearly four) and I am also going to try to limit her viewing. At the moment she would watch an hour in the morning and an hour (maybe a little more…) in the afternoon. I would like have her watch only one hour a day but seriously, when would I be able to cook dinner, tidy up or surf the internet in peace without my High Definition friend?

3. Remove makeup and wash face before bed. How else am I going to get the benefits of the Dermalogica products I buy and more importantly, justify the money I shell out on them?

4. Stop taking my husband for granted. I have a great husband. I really do. Everything he does is for us. But am I happy? Of course not! I am cursed with  Billy Idolism. I want “more, more, more”. When I complained the other day that we weren’t going out enough and doing fun-filled activities as a family he looked up from the bathroom floor (he was re-grouting) and said, “would you rather a slob who sits on the couch drinking and playing video games?”. No, I wouldn’t. Thank you for the reminder.

5. Watch Ingmar Bergman’s Silence of God Trilogy that has been taped on my iQ for months. (This contradicts resolution No. 2 but it’s art, eh?). You never know when you’ll be at a gathering where Swedish cinema will be discussed?

6. Lose 10 kilos and tone up. As much as I didn’t want to have this as a resolution, the post-baby belly and bingo wings (flabby arms) have to go. Fact.

What are your resolutions?

This woman has 14 kids and can manage to put on a face mask and have coordinated pajamas? (Not just any pjs – Stripey Victoria’s Secret pyjamas, as reported in The Daily Mail).

I’ll admit, I was born a cynic and it has only grown with age. I only have two kids and I can’t manage to look even a fraction of how Octomum looks in those pics. I don’t own coordinated pajamas and I have serious tummy overhang from just two bubbas. I find her abhorrent but she looks amazingly together.

Personally, I would have ditched the baby bottle filled with juice (just another thing for people to slam her for…and I have no sympathy for her, just her poor kids)

In this age of spin and the micro-managing of all aspects of  “public” figures’  lives, I want more Cherie Blair moments.

Cherie Blair opens to door in her nightie the morning after Tony Blair's 1997 election as PM.

I have two young daughters and am very interested in the apparent sexualisation of young girls through media images and advertising.

My husband and I are careful about what is watched on TV, the clothes that we buy for them (No slogans like “It’s all about me” or “I’m a princess in training” etc.) and how we parent them. I read books and I talk to other parents and I can be a bit, well, paranoid.

But when it comes to the toys and colour of clothing my daughter favours, I have become less intense. We have always had a mixture of toys – dolls, cars, musical instruments, animals etc.-  but at the moment, my three-year-old is very drawn to “pink toys”  like Disney Princesses and My Little Pony and she loves looking after her dolls.

I’m not so worried about this but according to a British campaign called PinkStinks, by purchasing pink toys and allowing my daughter to indulge in things pink, I could be damaging her body image and self esteem.

Obviously, PinkStinks is not saying that the colour should be banned or anything extreme like that but its name is very provocative. PinkStinks says one of its aims is to “challenge the ‘culture of pink’, which is based on beauty over brains..”.

I disagree with PinkStinks’s current campaign against  Early Learning Centre (UK chain of toy stores) because it offers “passive beauty-centred products and and a website where the search facility groups toys by gender…” . ELC offers many choices of toys (we shopped there often when living in London) and yes, it has “pinkified” toys that may not have needed gender specification but is it really that bad?

I have bought some pink toys because they are cute and I think my daughter will enjoy them. But I also buy her Lego and matchbox cars.

The other day I was in Kmart and all my three-year-old wanted to do was look at the make up and twist the tester lipsticks up and down.  I don’t let her play with makeup at home (real or fake) but she does watch me when I put it on and wants me to pretend to put it on her.

There’s much that I like about the sentiment behind PinkStinks, especially its push to celebrate women who are inspirational in ways other than the fact they can look good, appear on reality TV or marry a sportsperson (we’ve all seen how that can backfire in recent weeks… just ask Mrs Tiger Woods!)

I loathe much of celebrity culture but I also work as a journalist and realise that celebrity has always intrigued people, including me (think of celebs like Elizabeth Taylor and scandals involving Lana Turner and Fatty Arbuckle. Newspapers covered these rabidly many, many years ago).

At my daughter’s daycare centre – a fabulous community-run place – the most popular activity for weeks with girls – and boys – was hairdressers. Parents were asked to donate empty bottles of shampoo and hair items because the children were really engaged in the role-play and creating different hairstyles.

Is it pink that really stinks or, is it worse to deny that many girls, at some stages of their lives, are going to want to “conform” to gender stereotypes and play mummies and makeup?

I would be more focused on letting kids be kids and enjoying childhood, rather than an obsession with keeping girls away from products and activities deemed “girlie”.

I’m sure that the people behind the Pink Ribbon campaign that has been raising awareness of breast cancer since 1991 don’t think the colour pink – and its feminine associations – stinks.

“It’s doesn’t look good mum. It doesn’t look cool!” she said.

She is three-and-a-half years old.

Once I got over the shock that she didn’t like something I had picked out for her to wear, I was disturbed by the fact that she had an opinion on what her clothes looked like…and used the words “not cool”.

Does this mean I have failed to shield her from media images of women that promote the s-xualisation of girls and makes them grow up far too quickly?

She certainly doesn’t get any fashion sense from me. I am no yummy mummy who looks put-together when I leave the house.  I’m not one of those mums profiled in magazines who slip into their Citizens of Humanity jeans, French Sole ballet flats and organic designer cotton tee and zip out the door.

If I am lucky I put some mascara and blush on, have remembered to wipe off baby spew from my top, put on deodorant and clean my teeth.

A particularly stylish day for me is when I have jeans on with a tee that is long enough to cover the sight of the open zipper. (I am still wearing my maternity cargo pants and my baby is now five months old.) My shoes are from Target (on sale) and tees from Kmart.

I am no fashionista.

So I am perplexed as to where my daughter gets this concept of “cool” from. Is it from daycare? TV? I am already freaking out that she’ll grow up too quickly, despite our best efforts to keep everything age appropriate. (My husband thinks most little girls’ clothing is too grown up!)

I’m also wondering how old she will be when I become embarrassing or “uncool”.

Probably next year.