**@%%&&!

One of my least favourite things about some Bosnian parents is their propensity to think that teaching their children to swear is funny. Now, I'm no angel on the swearing front, I try to contain my expletives to 'oh blast' or 'ffffffffiddle dee dee!' and similar, but occasionally the ability to stop my mouth moving before the words come out goes missing. I do try hard not to swear in front of my children as I do not think children swearing is in the slightest way funny, cute or amusing.

Most of the time the Bosnian children swearing doesn't really impact me. I mean I can swear a bit in Bosnian, but most of the insults just form a part of the series of sounds that I don't understand. But when Adam comes back from nursery and suddenly yells at Luke 'eat my pooo-see', I suddenly have a problem on my hands.

Luckily for me (and much like Nappy Valley Girl's boys) he is in a real toilet humour phase so has developed this particular insult to be 'eat my poo'. I'm less fussed about this, it is something he could have come up with on his own and as we have discovered that the only way to get him to eat Spag Bol is to tell him that it is made up of worms covered with worm poo, I can see why he is thinking the way he is. I've had a few conversations with him about not saying nasty things to other people, but keen to not draw attention to this particular phrase I'm ignoring it completely and hoping it will soon be forgotten.

I am interested to know though what others have done to stop their children from swearing, and also from any Bosnians who might be able to clarify whether I'm right in thinking that some people think it is funny to teach children to swear and whether they also like to teach them to swear in English.

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And a late shout out for people wanting to check the latest British Mummy Bloggers Carnival - it went up last week over at A Mother's Ramblings, if you haven't already been over there, then skip over to check out the stories from the parenting front line.

Dear So and So: Bosnian Version, Part V

It's a Friday. The boys are at nursery. The dog is outside. The house is quiet. All is well with the world. So, happily ensconced in my temporary haven, I feel equipped to start my series of postcards directed at those who've caught my attention over the past couple of weeks.

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Dear Bosnian Drivers,

I'm pretty sure that driving on the pavement is not a part of your Driving Test or condoned by your authorities. Just wondering why you are all such fans of it.

Yours, forever surprised to come across an Audi coming towards us at speed with all four wheels on the pavement,
Fraught Mummy

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Dear Weather,

Got to say, you've been amazing this last week. The car told me that the temperature was 32C yesterday. It has been rather blissful. I'm just wondering how exactly is it possible that we can be having this balmy, blissful weather and yet still be having a forecast of snow for next week?

Yours, in for a bit of a shock if the forecasts are accurate,
FM

PS - got to ask, does this have anything to do with the fact that I packed away all our summer clothes last week and we are now all sweltering in thick winter ones?

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Dear Nursery,

I want to support you in every way you can. You do an amazing job with very little resources. However, when you ask me to contribute 12KM towards buying a TV and DVD player, I'm just not sure I can help. I think nursery should be for play and activities and don't want my boys watching TV there. They do enough of that at home (ah-hem).

So, I am sorry. Is there anything different I can donate the money towards instead?
FM

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Dear boys,

We made a great castle didn't we? I was ever so proud of it. Such a shame that it had to be thrown around within 5 minutes of us finishing it, and now I have to spend most of my mornings fixing it. Lets try to be a bit more careful with it in the future. Please?

Your not very crafty but trying hard mother.

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Dear Bosnian Entrepreneurs,

I'm pretty sure that there are already enough hairdressers, cafes and Driving Schools in Tuzla. Can I suggest if you want to start a new business you come up with one that doesn't have quite so much competition. An indoor playcentre or children's centre would be one idea, particularly with winter rapidly approaching. Or how about a cinema? I'd use them. A lot. Go on, someone must want to do it!

Yours, starting to worry about what I am going to do this winter when the weather gets bad,
FM

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Dear Outside Dog,

Chewing up The Economist was unforgivable. Chewing up The Economist with the Technology Quarterly supplement nearly made Dave spontaneously combust. You are on thin ice. Bear this in mind.

Yours with nothing to read in the bath,
FM

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Dear Bosnian authorities,

You need to sort the stray dog situation out. Not only do we have Outside Dog setting up camp, but now there is a puppy that wants to join her. I really don't want any more dogs, but can't turf them out onto the street again either. Surely you can get a programme of registration and sterilisation sorted, which will truly benefit the town.

Yours, wanting to remain a one dog owner,
FM

PS - sorting out the stray dog situation does not mean sending the hunters in either. At best that is a short term solution.

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Dear Bosnians,

This weather has been amazing hasn't it? We've enjoyed heading out for some impromptu picnics as well. The difference is, we pick our rubbish at the end and put it into the bins that are provided. You have an amazing countryside, which you are ruining by chucking the trash onto it. It isn't difficult to throw it in the bin, if you ever want tourists to start spending their hard earned cash in this country then you need to start doing it now.

Yours, fed up with picking my way over last weeks picnics,
FM

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Dear lady who lives down the road,

Thanks ever so much for your gift of the big yellow fruit that looks like an enormous pear but is hard. I have no idea what it is. How do I go about making it edible?

Yours,
FM

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Dear Random Imam,

I know my boys make a lot of noise and don't listen very often. But they are boys and that is what having a garden is for. Standing on the steps outside the mosque over the road and miming at me to smack them isn't really terribly helpful.

Yours, knowing there's some cultural differences that I ain't that keen to try and bridge,
FM

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Dear Tuzla authorities,

Your new square is really great. You've really done a good job there. We are looking forward to more afternoons spent lolling around the fountain and sitting on the benches under the trees. I have to point out though that to say this square will become one of the most visited in Europe is ambitious. There is a fair amount of competition out there and I'm not sure people will visit Tuzla solely to see the square. It isn't that exciting.

Did I say that I love the benches around the tree trunks?
FM

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Dear Municipality Heating,

I know the weather has been amazing this last week. But as soon as the sun goes down it gets pretty cold. We've been sitting around covered in blankets all evening. They are forecasting snow next week. Please, please, please can we have the heating on, and then we can choose whether to have the heating on or off.

Thanks,
FM

PS - I know I'm being a big old wuss here. Noone else seems to think it is that chilly.

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Dear Boys,

We did have a fab afternoon yesterday, didn't we? I have no idea why it all worked and everyone had such a great time when we didn't really do anything different to normal. But I loved it. You were both great.

Lots and lots of love,
Mummy xxxxx

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Have a go yourself. Head on over to Kat's at 3 Bedroom Bungalow in Crazy Town and sign up with all the other Dear So and So fans. And do try it, it is surprisingly therapeutic.

Or you can head over to Have A Lovely Time, who have very kindly let me write some top tips for visiting countries like Bosnia with kids.

red red tape.. stay close to me

Back to our battle with the never-ending, soul destroying, employment creating Bosnian bureaucracy. Using an unexpected flanking manoeuvre, Bosnian bureaucracy has actually opened up a new front in this war, which is occupying most of my time, much to my enormous irritation.

For once it isn't the visa application that is causing my misery. That is not to say that the process is finished, rather the quagmire continues, involving more police reports, extra notarised documents and vast sums of money. It is too unbelievably dull for words.

No, this little skirmish has come from the boys nursery, where we need to reapply for our places next year. This process includes handing over various documents, including passports and birth certificates and having a health check. I could cry. We're still recovering from the last time we had to go and have our health checked out and that was only 2 months ago. The battle to get them to accept the certificates we got that time is ongoing. But this battle is nothing compared to the battle to get them to accept our birth certificates.

The problem is that in Bosnia your birth certificate is re-validated every 6 months. Yup, every 6 months every single Bosnian must go back to the relevant ministry and get a stamp, or whatever it is that they do to show that they are still, well, born. Because, you know, just maybe they have been born again and not in the religious sense. When I produced my birth certificate, the original one and now 37 years old, their jaws nearly hit the floor. The boys' certificates, looking considerably less dog eared, are also not valid.

They would also like us to produce our ID cards. But of course we are British and therefore don't have ID cards (and long may that remain the case, despite the fact it would make my life here a lot easier). That has caused a fair amount of head scratching and ponderous scratching of chins. No ID cards. Possibly, I said, we could use our passports instead. Well they thought that might be ok but could they get back to me on that one. I await their verdict.

I have filled out the form though. But it was in Bosnian and therefore a bit hit and miss, so I've probably applied for them to be taught in German and only on Tuesdays.

I'll just keep on turning up at nursery. They'll have to let us in in the end.

The Legend of Lukey

Luke reached the grand old age of 2 yesterday. Only 2 - it feels like he has been around for much longer (that may be to do with his disincilination to sleep). Full toddlerdom awaits us and I feel he will embrace the terrible twos with enthusiasm. He is a sweet little boy, loud, rumbunctious, stubborn, charming and a real one for an audience. He does exactly what he wants to do. On a walk, he will decide he wants to go back to the car and set off, without looking back or stopping and with or without the rest of us. Luke has taken to Bosnian life with enthusiasm. He likes nursery, he likes the food there and he is loved by the Bosnians who are charmed by his attempts to speak Bosnian and penchant for blowing kisses.

We had a small party for him on Sunday. I made a cake (which tragically collapsed, I have yet to get to grips with the different types of Bosnian flour, and am still trying to work out what might constitute self-raising flour, which most my cake recipes call for). Still the 15 or so people who came round sang Happy Birthday and gamely ate the stodge.

The tradition is that you take a cake to nursery on the day of your child's birthday. I'm quite happy to submit my friends to my baking attempts, but thought better of public humiliation at nursery so I asked Tanja, our lovely cleaner, if she would mind doing the honours. The cake appeared, the biggest cake I have ever seen, resplendent with Bob the Builder on top.

Bosnian cakes are quite different to the British ones, lots of layers and cream and coconut flakes. I have to say, I'm not the biggest fan. But the Bob the Builder cake was greeted with delight at nursery and none of it was left at the end of the day. The nursery did a really great job of making his birthday special - they sang Happy Birthday in English and Bosnian, danced dances and generally had a right old party. He won't remember it, but I do feel he had a pretty decent birthday.

money money money

As Bosnia is a cash based economy, and you must pay all bills, rent and pretty much everything by cash, the beginning of each month is usually spent taking large amounts of money out of the ATMs. It does, however, focus the mind on what we are spending our money on and allows us an easy comparison for costs in the UK and costs in Bosnia.

Life in Bosnia is cheap, but not as cheap as you might think. Unsurprisingly rent is much cheaper than in the UK. Our 3 bed terraced house in the UK is let for £1250 a month. Here we have a house with sitting room, playroom, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms and garden all for 900KM a month (about £400). This is not particularly cheap for Bosnia, some friends think that we could have had a better deal, but it isn't ridiculous silly internationals rates either. Telephone bills are much reduced now we have Skype which allows us to call the UK for 1p a minute. Utilities are about the same as in the UK, but you can't pay over the Internet so we wait for all the bills to come in before making a trip to the bank to pay the lot in cash all at once, crying as we count out each individual note. Despite stats citing the Bosnian average wage to be something in the region of 700KM (£325)per month, I couldn't find a reliable cleaner for less than 200KM (£80) a month for 6 hours a week, but she does do all our ironing, a novel experience for most of our clothes.

Day to day living is also not as cheap as you might think. Anything produced locally is good value, but anything that is imported costs about the same as it does in the UK, the high import duties taking their toll. Fresh food is definitely cheaper; with local shops on every corner selling the best and freshest produce, we tend to buy what we need when we need it, which also means much less waste.

The biggest difference is nursery fees. I have just paid the fees for the boys this morning, the monthly cost for one for up to 5 hours every day is 85KM (£40). At my old nursery that would have paid for one day. Admittedly their old nursery had a staff to child ratio of 2:8 as opposed to 2:20 which may have added to their costs.

Then there are the costs that we just didn't have in the UK. We now have a monthly budget for Jessie's vets bills which were covered by pet insurance before. We also need to have a comprehensive health cover plan which wasn't necessary in the UK (God bless the NHS). Storage costs for the stuff we left behind are astronomical. No, overall, I think that if cutting living costs was a primary motivator for our move we would have been disappointed.

cultural sleeping differences

There are a lot of cultural differences between the UK and Bosnia, particularly around children. The one that I am noticing the most is bedtime/naptime. I've always sought to get my boys to bed and asleep by about 7.30. The reality is more like 8 and if I'm really off my game it can go as late as 8.3o. But that is about as late as it gets. Ever.

Here children don't seem to go to bed until their parents do. This is, I know, a very European tradition and it is the UK that is out of kilter with the rest of the continent. But I like having the evenings free to do my own stuff in some form of peace and quiet, so don't really want to change. However, friends with appropriately aged children keep asking if I want to meet them at the play centre at 8pm. I'm rapidly realising that if I want some form of child company during the week, it will have to be during the evenings. The weekends are looking like a much better alternative.

The flip side of this is that the Bosnian children continue to have a good 2 hour nap during the day right up until they go to school. This does mean that the Bosnian Mummies get a break during the day, but I'm on duty from the moment I get up until the moment I get them into bed (nursery notwithstanding) as Adam hasn't slept during the day for almost a year now.

Most of the time this difference in sleeping habits doesn't matter at all. However, I was slightly late in picking up the boys from nursery yesterday and found Adam in tears. The other children were all lying down for their sleep and he most definitely didn't think that he had to have one. The nursery staff do believe that children of his age should have a nap so were trying to persuade him to do so.

So, although I have paid for nursery until 1.30pm each day, I shall continue to pick them up at 12 as this appears to be the only way I can hold onto my English sleeping routine and maintain peace and harmony at nursery.

It's nursery time...

After weeks of dithering I've actually done it. Today I took the boys to a nursery and signed on the dotted line. They will go for 3 mornings a week, possibly more depending on how it goes. It is going to be pretty ugly for a while, especially as we're taking the sink or swim tactic and are not going to attempt to ease them in. They can both be shy and will certainly howl the place down on their first morning but hopefully... hopefully they will soon adapt and start to enjoy themselves playing with all the other children.

It has taken quite a bit of a cultural head change for me to get used to the idea of a Bosnian nursery. The classes seem so big. There don't seem to be very many adults around. I can't understand how they are going to undertake activities like painting, sticking and all those other lovely things that nurseries do. They don't seem to have very much equipment.

BUT, but but but but but. It seems to all work. I've been to see a lot of nurseries at all times of the day, usually unannounced, and I have only ever seen classes of beautifully behaved children having a great time. There isn't much equipment but the children play very creatively with what is available. I have no idea if they will do as much in the way of activities as in their English nursery, but I can easily do that kind of stuff in the afternoons, and with the Bosnian winter upon us indoor play is most definitely on the agenda.

So (deep breath) the boys (deep breath) will start nursery (deep breath) in October.