It's bad ... so it can't be good!

For a few weeks now, we’ve had trouble with our 3-year-old having ‘bad dreams’. Sometimes even before she’s got to sleep, she’ll come out and say she’s had a bad dream (which I found a little hard to believe and I’ve put it down as excuses, excuses, anything to get out of bed and have some attention)

.

We’ve put up a dream catcher and explained that it catches the bad dreams and only good ones get through.

We’ve talked about if she has a bad dream and wakes up, she needs to say ‘whew, that’s over’ and turn over and think about nice things to dream about and go back to sleep.

We’ve given her cuddles in the middle of the night, 2am, 3am, 4am …

We’ve had varying success with all of these.

Tonight, the familiar “but Mum, what about bad dreams?!” as I tucked her in. I started in with the same old line and asked her what good things she could dream about but I could tell it just wasn’t sinking in. So I had one of those mummy moments that you thank your lucky stars for later on …

I said “Leah, what’s a bad dream?”

The answer?

A quiet, scared little whimper “I don’t kn-o-o-o-w” from my baby.

No wonder she’s scared – who knows what a bad dream is? It’s got ‘bad’ in it, so it can’t be good. People on TV and in books have them and cry and have cuddles. Ruby talks about them. They must be scary things. And they apparently come in the night when it’s dark. I’d be scared too, knowing there are these things out there that come at night and make people cry. Bad dreams – urgh!!

I’m crossing my fingers that now I’ve explained they’re stories her brain makes up while she sleeps and that she can tell her brain what kind of story she’d like to see … perhaps we’ll all get a little more sleep and spend a little less time putting her to bed … again … and again … and again. However, I do realize she’s three – so I’m not putting too much faith in that being the end of the bedtime dramas, but you never know!

But it does go to show – never assume your three-year-old knows what they’re talking about … !

Things I've learned ...

I’ve finally learned a few of the age-old truths of bringing up children, and thought I might share them with you.

1. The art of disguise

Take mince, peas and potato, dish them up on a plate and you will get cries of ‘yuk’ and ‘I don’t like it’ and ‘I’m not hungry’, and the inevitable battle to get your children to eat meat and vegetables will ensue. Wrap said meat and veggies in some pastry, mash the potato, stick it on top, call it a pie and you get ‘yummo!’ and ‘can I have another one’. God bless pies! (and God bless Sophie Gray, the Destitute Gourmet, who has recipes for brilliant things like this with basic [cheap] ingredients).

2. Give a kid a box …

We started buying bath toys before our kids were even old enough to realize a bath was a good place to play. We bought great boats, squeezy toys, stacking and pouring things … I dunno what else, but a great deal of time has been spent deciding what would be fun to have in the bath. Over the last few days, as I’ve watched the kids play in the bath, I’ve realized that I haven’t seen these toys for a long while. What I have seen are these: plastic cups (filched from the kitchen), a funnel (filched from the kitchen), straws (filched from the kitchen), several empty juice bottles (saved from death by recycling), a ping pong ball (where on earth did that come from?!), and a plastic jug (yes – the kitchen is looking emptier by the day) and the best and easiest toy? Facecloths.

They play amazing games with this stuff … they blow bubbles with the straws, pour endlessly from one bottle to another (actually, we really should get another funnel – that might stop some of the screaming … bathtime is ‘tired’ time, not our best ‘sharing’ time!), have tea parties, they’ve covered the cups with wet facecloths and learned how to make fart noises by lifting them up while the water sucks them down (entertained us all for days!). So – if you’re in the market for some bath toys … go to the kitchen shop.

3. Everyone has a competitive streak

As the day wears on, getting kids to do the necessary end-of-day activities can get more tricky. Eating dinner, bathtime, PJs on, toys away … it requires endless patience, judicious discipline, outright bribery and clever thinking. However, it appears that even the most tired child can be enlivened by the prospect of beating their sister at something! Everything can be a competition if you really try … can you put your PJs on first? Can you pick up more toys? Who can get into bed first? I know – I’m probably setting them up for a lifetime of sibling rivalry but I’m a strong believer in doing what works right now and fixing the rest later … and right now, sparring them off against each other works a treat!

4. If all else fails – bribery

Yeah, yeah, I know – it’s not the best parenting philosophy. But I challenge anyone with kids, too much to do, not enough sleep and a handy piece of chocolate/cake/ice cream/biscuit to not revert to it at least once!

5. All they want is you

This is the most important. It doesn’t matter what you do or how much money you’ve got to do it with, if your kids get to spend time with you while you do it, it’s gold. From hanging out washing, to cooking, to doing dishes, to mopping and vacuuming (have to admit, that one took me by surprise), to sitting on the couch reading (these days we’re each reading our own book) … our little rattlebags just want to do what we’re doing (they call it ‘helping’) and some of the nicest times we’ve spent together have been hanging up washing or parked up on the couch together reading books.

Hmm, it would appear I’ve only actually learned five lessons, but I guess one for each year of parenting isn’t too bad going … wonder what the next five will be?

Does your husband pick up fairies in the carpark?

My husband came home from the shops today with a fairy. Remember the dandelion heads we used to blow and call fairies? My little’uns have decided that the tumble-weed thingies that blow along the beach, which look like these dandelion heads but are about 100 times bigger, are also fairies. So when their Dad saw one in the carpark at the shops, he stopped, picked it up, put it in the car and brought it home to present to two delighted girl-children.

The other day when I got home, the three of them (two daughters and one husband) were sitting on the couch watching ‘Ordinary Girl’. This is a very girly-child TV programme about teenage girls who are ‘ordinary’ until they get in the water, at which point they magically turn into mermaids. I asked a question about one of the girl/maids – I directed the question at my eldest, who is 5 and tries not to engage in conversation while watching TV, silly me, I forgot – and my husband launched into a synopsis of the story so far, complete with the last few episodes of drama, relationship tangles and opinions on all the above. I quietly looked at him, digested the entire scenario and informed him he’d just lost his man card.

He was never a particularly manly man; he’s not really interested in rugby, beer drinking, car racing or whatever other manly pursuits manly men pursue. In fact, he was worried in case my rather large bump turned out to be a boy because “what if he turns into a rugby-playing, beer-swilling teenage boy and we don’t have anything in common?” But over the last 5 years looking after our little ones full time, he has taken the pink pledge to heart and become au fait with the fairy-, princess- and mermaid-related passions of little girls.

I love him for it. I love that he’ll stop in a crowded carpark and not give a toss that someone might see him picking up some driftweed. I love that he understands a girl sometimes has to buy a skirt simply because it twirls high when you spin. I love that he gets that you’re not completely dressed until you have on your 55 hairclips. I love that, although he can’t contain a bundle of hair into the most basic of pony tails, he recognises that it’s essential to female well being to be happy with your hair and will take a brush and hair-tie to school and ask one of the other mothers to help.

So, while I have his man card safely tucked away, I haven’t discarded it. Because it takes a real man to pick up fairies in the carpark.

File not found ...

Sleep deprivation is a powerful thing. I, without being a total showoff, am an obsessively organised person. I have to be … I’m a Mum to two kids and have a 40-hour-a-week job organising things. Not only is it in my nature, it’s in my job description.

So when I start being a complete ditz, the world can be a dangerous and chaotic place. And when I’ve had two weeks of very late nights and very busy days, followed by a week of very broken, interrupted and scant sleep, I become a complete ditz.

Let’s see … last weekend, I decided hubby and I should go to the movies – this was a big deal; we go to the movies about once a year. I had purchased a deal online that meant I could get movie tickets for $8 if I also bought them online. EIGHT dollars – crikey, that’s almost how little I used to pay when I first started going to the movies. So despite being perpetually broke, I decided that was worth it. So it came about that about midday Saturday I took to the phones, found us a babysitter and bought some tickets online.

Now, the first problem was that the only lovely friend I could find to watch our kids lives in West Auckland (and we live in quite-far-north-Auckland – about 30–40 minutes’ drive away). And she could take our kids if we went to the 1.40pm movie. Now the other problem was that at the time of purchase, it was midday. Not so bad, but we’d opted for the slow-start kind of Saturday morning and we had yet to get showered, dress the kids, feed the kids lunch, return the DVD to the shop and put petrol in the empty car. So we panicked … bought the tickets, had the showers, made sandwiches for the kids to eat in the car, zoomed to the video shop and took off down the highway, praying we’d make it to the petrol station on the way. I didn’t want to go to the local petrol station, I wanted to go to the one that was halfway there … get a bit of mileage under our wheels, so to speak. So we ended up at a petrol station we’d not been to before. When we went to leave we discovered that, instead of an exit to the right, back onto the highway from which we’d come, there was only an exit to the left. Into the wilds of suburbia, full of ‘no exit’ cul-de-sacs and curvy crescents. Being late for a movie, sleep deprived, stressed and … lost … is not a good mix. We remained lost for about 10 minutes until a random guess got us out onto a highway on the other side of suburbia. When I get a moment, I am going to write to that petrol station and tell them that a simple sign would be nice! Some direction along the lines of “How to get the heck out of here” would be good. Please.

So, we were on our way, finally. I concocted a great plan. I’m really good at fast plans. In fact, together, hubby and I are great at fast plans. And back-up plans as things change – which they do when you have two kids. You have to make plans up on the run. So that’s what we did. I said “I’m going to drop you off at the movie theatre, you go and pick up our tickets, while I go drop the kids off, then you see the first bit of the movie and I’ll text you when I get there and you come out with my ticket and let me in – okay?” Once I repeated my plan, he got the idea and reluctantly agreed. So, we had a plan. And then I missed the exit for the mall. Why the sign didn’t say “Mall” instead of “Henderson” I’m sure I don’t know. So then it was onto plan ‘c’. Which was actually plan ‘a’ back again in a slightly faster form. This one entailed pulling up at our friend’s house, turfing the kids out and burning rubber back up the highway to hopefully catch most of the movie. It mostly worked. We even found a park right outside the theatre! We quick-marched into the theater and gabbled “we’re really late, but can we still get into this movie – we bought tickets online”. The lady was really nice. But her words weren’t. They went something like this “You’re at the wrong cinema. These tickets are for the cinema in Massey.”

Sigh. We listened to the directions for Massey (supposedly about a 10-minute drive – if you know where you’re going … we didn’t). We listened to the alternatives (buying tickets at full price for this movie and hoping for a refund on the online tickets. Even in my ditzy hopeful state I figured a refund for being an idiot wasn’t likely and I sure as heck didn’t want to shell out full price for a movie I’d already bought at half price!). We decided to go for it. So we took off like our tails were on fire. And discovered that you can’t turn right out of the mall to get back on the highway (sound familiar?). You have to go left, drive to the roundabout and do a giant u-turn. So when we got to the roundabout and saw a sign for ‘Massey’ we figured to throw all caution to the wind and ‘go the back way’. To a mall we didn’t even know existed. While the map reading, prone-to-road-rage-and-stress-when-lost half of this relationship was driving. And the hard-to-stress-out, I’ll-be-calm-if-it-kills-me-but-not-particularly-good-at-giving-directions-to-the-driver half was reading the map. Yeah – I know – recipe for disaster wasn’t it! But we actually made it!

But – remember, this movie started at 1.40 … it was now 2.20. How long are movies these days anyway? On the way, I could actually physically feel the decline from ‘this is funny and we’ll miss a bit of the movie but who cares, we’ve got time away from the kids for the first time in months’ through to ‘this isn’t really funny, but it’s a bit of an adventure’ and off the edge into ‘I’ve wasted my precious pocket money and we’ve missed the movie and I’m such an idiot and I’m going to cry’. So when we got to the movie theatre, my shoulders were slumped, my sad face was on and I was quite prepared to cry on the ticket person. But I didn’t have to! The nice man told us we were not alone; that about ten people a day go to the wrong movie theatre! Oh – I forgot to tell you, the one I booked was at WestCity and the one I went to was WestGate. Or vice versa. I’m actually still a bit confused. But you can see how it happened, right? Anyway, he issued us tickets for the shoot-em-up American rubbish we’d been hoping to see and then promptly swapped them for the next movie about to show, which happened to be Sione’s wedding 2. So we saw a movie. We had ice creams (the ice creams were better than the movie, but by that time I’d moved back up to “who cares, it’s time away from the kids” so it was ok). And we had a story to tell.

Moving on to a bit later in the week … I had a dentist appointment after work. And after the dentist appointment I popped in to see my friend who had a baby last week. I had a lovely time. I helped out a bit. I held the baby. I gave some advice. I listened a bit. I talked a bit. Then I realized it was 7.30 and my own kids would be in bed by the time I got home, so I thought I better get on my way. I was halfway home when I realized … my hubby was supposed to be in a rehearsal at 7.30. In the city. It takes about half an hour to get to the city. Which meant that by the time I got home, he would be about … ooh … I dunno, quick calculation … AN HOUR AND A HALF LATE. Oh. My. God. Worse than the horror of realizing what I’d just done to his evening, and that of the band with whom he was rehearsing (or not, as the case may be) was the horror of realizing what I’d just done! Things DON’T just slip my mind. I don’t just forget stuff!! In my head, I have entire filing cabinets of useful things going on. I have wall planners lining the insides of my brain. I have entire issues of journals lined up and ready to publish. I have work meetings, appointments and deadlines stacked in neat piles. I have Ruby’s school schedule all mapped out. I have our social calendar on tap at a moment’s notice. And I know when his rehearsals are, when his nights out are and where I’m supposed to be. And I had stalled. I had got a ‘no files located’ message. I drove home with my mouth hanging open in shock. Me – human? Fallible? Surely not. Tired – yes, ok, I’ll go with tired.

It actually got worse. When he came home that night, at 11.30pm, I was still up. Funnily enough, I was writing the previous blog post about not getting any sleep. Go figure. We chatted (he’s very forgiving, my husband!), we talked about the coming week. I talked about going to see my friends with the new baby tomorrow night and taking them dinner. About the same time as he realized I thought I was having the car, I realized he needed the car. Tomorrow was Wednesday. Wednesday is Kindy day. Kindy is miles from nowhere and you need a car to get there. My mouth went back to hanging open in shock. Strike two – was I getting Alzheimer’s??? We went through plans a, b, c, d, and finally got to e – where I worked from home on Wednesday until he got home from kindy and then I took the car. Thank goodness I work with a truly enlightened team leader in a family- (and idiot-) friendly workplace.

Happy with the new plan, we got into bed. And then he said “Oh, by the way, happy Valentine’s Day” and I said “oh shit”

Ahh, sleep ...

One of my wonderful friends has just had a baby, and she and her husband are now experiencing the rite of parenthood that is ‘going without sleep for days on end just when you need it most’. Ah, the joys. Their experiences, their texts “got 2 hours sleep last night”, “finally got to sleep at 5am”, and their tired but deeply besotted faces are bringing it all back to me. I have posted on this topic before, but as every parent knows, it’s one that is dear to our hearts and we all have fond memories of lying in bed all day and some of us have vague hopes of doing it again in some distant future.

Sleep has become an odd demon for me of late. I recently dropped my dose of antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication down by 50%. Yes, that was quite a drop and apparently not the way you’re supposed to do it. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it – I felt like vomiting for a whole week and instead of dropping off to sleep, every worry and anxiety that I had ever entertained came back to say hello in the dark of the night. Not pleasant … if you’re ever thinking of doing something silly like that, go see your doctor first. However, I digress. My point was going to be that, on my previous dose, these lovely drugs would make me sleepy. Quickly. In fact, I would take one, get ready for bed, lie down and … schlop … asleep. Magic. If I got woken up within the next two hours, I would feel intensely ill, which does make it hard to be nice to whichever little person has arrived at my bed, but that’s another story for another day. On my new half (lowest possible, yay for me, might I add!) dose, I don’t get any magic sleepiness. None. Zip. Hello, wide awakeness! It’s been over 2 years since I had to think about how to get to sleep and I’m having to work hard to remember to do things like relax, think happy thoughts, breathe steadily and from the belly … etc.

So on Sunday night, when I went to bed early because I knew I’d had way too many late late late nights, I wasn’t happy when it panned out like this …

9.30pm. In bed, lights out

9.45pm. Bugger – still awake, forgot I have to put myself to sleep. Chat to husband. Get grunts in return. Try to make body go loose and floppy.

10.00pm. Still awake. Try lying on my back.

10.15pm. Oh. My. God. Still. Awake. Go back to side.

11.05. Crap, still awake! Right – concentrate … lie flat, relax forehead, relax eyes, relax mouth, relax neck. I wonder what will happen about that email I sent at work. Oops, supposed to be relaxing. Relax forehead, relax eyes, I think I could have worded it better. But I’m prepared to stand by what I said. Perhaps we could have a meeting, that might be better than emailing. Oops, supposed to be relaxing. Relax forehead. No, that’s not working. Lie on my side. Come face to face with small child. Oh! Hello! What are you doing standing silently by my bed?! Cold? Come and have a cuddle. Yes, lie on my arm so I lose all feeling in it, perfect.

11.30 Ok, time to go back to your bed. Yes, you can lie so you can see Ruby. Yes, I’ll put your duvet on you. O-kayyy, I’ll put it on you the right way. Yes, you can have a kiss. Yes, you can have a kiss on the other cheek too. Are we right now? Ok, night night, off to sleep, good girl.

11.35 Lie on back, let’s start from the toes this time. Relaxed toes, relaxed feet, feel warmth moving up legs as whole body starts to relax, hey this might be working, am feeling sleepy … ahhh, dozing.

Midnight. Bright light … well, hello Leah, did you have to shove the door WIDE open like that? Yes, ok, another cuddle. Ok, I’m going to put you back in your warm bed now. Yes, that noise is just the wind. No, you’re quite safe, look, Ruby is fast asleep. Ok, you cuddle caterpillar. Ok, night night. You stay in your bed now, ok? Ok.

12.05am. Back in bed. Assuming restful dozing position – starting to doze. Feck, I can hear footsteps. Hello Leah – you’re scared? Ok, it is a bit windy isn’t it. Want to sleep in our bed? Ok, in you get. Daddy, move over. Bless the lovelies who gifted us a super king-size bed. Yes, I’ll get your pillow for you. Yes, and caterpillar. Ok, you want to hold my hand, fine, done. Now go to sleep. Ahh, quiet child, quiet husband (kind of) … dozing.

Full sleep.

More blessed full sleep.

2.00am. Wide awake. Not sure why. Hmm, had 2 hours – bliss. Lifting very asleep very heavy child … bugger, who shut the door? Probably me seeing as I was the last one through it. Manage to open door while holding very asleep very heavy child in both arms, not quite sure how. Maneuver comatose child into sleeping position, cover with duvet, retrieve pillow and caterpillar from our bed, place in correct positions, creep out door.

2.05am. Curled in fetal position in my bed. Calculate it’s 3.5 hours until alarm goes off so I can go and run in the dark. Reach out and adjust alarm to ‘spent all night traipsing up and down the bloody hall’ time and resign myself to staying fat for a bit longer.

2.45am. Meee-orrrrr-owwwwllllll-grrrr-arrrrgh. Holy Mother of God what is that noise?!!!!! Who’s murdering my children? Spring to fully awake in seconds. Hmm, even without much medication that’s enough to make me feel sick. Oh, not murder, effing cats. There will be murder. Is it murder if it’s a cat?? Lie in bed and swear every bad word I know while husband opens door and chases cats away.

3.00am. Body has evidently decided it’s pointless going back to sleep.

3.05am. Relaxing forehead …

6.00am. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. More swearing.

6.05am. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. More swearing.

6.10am. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. More swearing.

6.15am. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. More swearing. Slowly drag myself upright. Peep in on completely comatose children. Consider poking the youngest one so she knows how it feels. Realise that would be decidedly counter-productive. Get ready for work. Mumble to self about bloody kids, bloody cats, who’s bloody idea was it to drop the drugs, bloody work, bloody sleep. Get text from friend with new baby, happy to have 2 hours sleep. Buck my ideas up and be glad they mostly sleep through these days!!

A bad case of verbal diarrhoea

My youngest daughter has come down with a bad case of verbal diarrhea. Almost terminal I’d say (cos it’s tempting to strangle her at times).

As a parent you wait and wait and wait, each day more agonizing than the last, to hear that magical first word. Then, as their vocabulary increases, they’re so damn cute, so endearing, the funny little things they say as they learn the art of the spoken word. You take on their little mistakes and they become part of the family language. For instance, our eldest, for the longest time, said “sheeshu” for ‘thank you’. So now we all often say ‘sheeshu’ … even though it has been at least 3 years since she learned to say it properly.

Ring-around-the-rosies will never be the same for us, as our biggest little one was convinced that it wasn’t ‘ashes, ashes’ or ‘a-tishoo, a-tishoo’ in the middle … it was ‘angus, angus, we all fall down’. We used to roll around laughing, wondering who on earth Angus was and what he had to do with the plague that spawned this nursery rhyme.

But there comes a time when all this cuteness wears away and you realize that someone flipped the verbal switch on and it’s stuck. There’s no legal off switch. I suspect my long-suffering husband actually has panic attacks in the morning as he waits for the verbal onslaught that comes with living with three females.

My husband and I often have muttered moments together when we’re rolling our eyes and murmuring “duct tape, where’s the duct tape … will you just shut up!!” I know – it’s not very PC, it’s not even good parenting, but I defy anyone who owns a female 2- to 3-year-old to look me in the eye and say they’ve not once considered a muzzle.

Our littlest not only has no ‘stop’ button on her verbal flow, she now also tells you what she’s just said. Or what someone else has just said, someone sitting right next to you, someone who you had no trouble hearing the first time. Car trips have become their own special kind of torture. Owen will say “look, Leah, there are some lambs!” Silly boy. It’s like a spark to dry tinder. The wee mouth pops open and for five minutes we get “look, mummy, there’s lambs! Did you see lambs? Daddy say there’s lambs. I see lambs. Did you see lambs? Did you hear daddy say there lambs? I heard daddy say there lambs. I see lambs. Do you see lambs?”

In the front seat, there’s a muttered “you just had to start it off didn’t you!”. Or, if it’s a good day, I’ll join in “Look, Daddy, did you see the lambs?” … just to see the tortured look on his face. What fun!

Yesterday morning, we were desperately trying to pretend it wasn’t getting-up-time (it wasn’t, for most sane adults without small children! I guess we forgot who we are!). Leah’s in our room blurbling away and I’m under the covers with my ears blocked, crying “make it stop, make it stop …” (most ineffective, by the way). We finally hit upon the grand idea of telling her to go find a video to watch (hoping for a long period of choosing in which we can sleep just another few minutes – optimistic fools!). She toddles her pleased way out of the room and pauses at the door to say “bye bye. Sank you for having me” … and like magic, we’re laughing again. The new catch phrase for the day “sank you for having me” has just been found.

When Good Clothes Go Bad

The trouble with tights? They just don’t do what they’re supposed to. In my experience, those sheer little suckers snag, run, get all ‘static-y’ on you, they fall down or strangle you round the middle or whatever, however, somehow, they – just – don’t – fit!! And you know what? If you DO manage to find the miracle pair that avoid all the above pitfalls, by the time you realize they’re the dream pair, you’ve long since chucked out the packaging and for the life of you, you won’t remember what brand they were, what size you bought or even, sometimes, the exact colour they were … because the people who make these female torture items don’t stick any freakin branding in them. No. I know we all hate having tags and most of us cut them off, but come on, a hint or two would be good!!

Now I recently did a little ‘research’ (i.e. I asked some people) for a presentation I had to do at work. And these are some of the things women said:

“Sometimes they’re great; other times all you have to do is breath in and they shred.”

She’s not wrong. Breathing, let alone pulling them up just a little too roughly when you’re in a hurry!

“They always slip down so you have a crotch midway to your knees. To remedy this I wear a pair of knickers over the top of my tights as well as underneath, which makes me feel like I’m wearing a nappy!”

Now this is a brave woman. Not only for admitting it in public, but I don’t know many women who would be brave enough to wear three layers over her butt and that’s without counting the skirt.

“And what about the nice shiny stockings that make whispery noises when you walk. Or am I the only one with fat thighs?”

Um no, you’re not the only one. I too have heard the whisper.

“Sometimes you can pull them up high and help keep some of the belly in – all good until the moment when it’s most inconvenient they roll down and make the sticky-out bit of your stomach look worse.”

Ha ha ha, oh she’s so on the button!!

“That if I’m wearing a singlet, they appear to repel each other – singlet goes up, tights go down.”

Ah, such wisdom … and that’s where the tummies like to peek out off. Eeeeuuuuuw!!

Now, when you think of all the other uses to which a plain pair of tights can be put, you wonder why the manufacturers haven’t hooked into the fact that tights don’t actually make very good tights. But they do make very good ... 

• burglar masks;
• fan belt replacements;
• paint strainers;
• shoe polishers;
• ties for keeping trees tied to stakes;
• pin cushions (put stuffing into a yoghurt container, stretch some pantyhose over the top – whippee … pin cushion!);
• exfoliators (put a cup of oatmeal into the toe of a pair of pantyhose, tie it off, put it in your bath … the oatmilk comes out – full of vitamin E or something great for your skin [if you don’t mind smelling vaguely porridge like] and the hose is mildly exfoliating!);
• I have it on good authority that kava is strained through it in Fiji;
• and I have it on other good authority that they make darn fine pool filters.

Frankly, if I was in the employ of some pantyhose maker, I’d be ditching the ‘leg-covering’ market and going for the ‘wonder-product, can do anything; incredibly strong, yet amazingly soft’ market. And if my employer wouldn’t buy into that, I’d at least force them to add some teeny tiny piece of branding. Hear that, pantyhose makers? Put a damn clue in the things!

"I was waving ..."

Ever wanted to have your say with the pain-in-the-arse driver that just displayed an appalling lack of manners and road etiquette?

We were driving to pick up the eldest girl-child from school this afternoon. Friday is my day to pick up Ruby and we both look forward to it. But it’s a fraught journey from my work, as it seems to take forever and I only just make it on time each week. I hyperventilate, I worry, I speed (shhh) … all because in my head I can hear my little 5-year-old crying at the school door when her Mummy isn’t there to collect her. So I know – it’s important to get to school on time. I realize that.

Today, the chap behind us from Silverdale thru to the school was hyperventilating slightly more than me … thankfully my husband was driving, as I think my road rage would have got the better of me if I had been driving. Anyways … this plonker is right up our butts. Then won’t let us ‘merge like a zip’ … he’s determined we’re not getting in. Thankfully, hubby of mine decided enough was enough and damn well merged like a zip … We started to mutter about the rude bugger behind us.

Then we got to the lights at which we turn right … and as we’re going into the right-turn lane, who’s there, but plonker head, trying to overtake us on the wrong side of the road. Hmm. In a 50km zone. Ok, we know you’re trying to get there by 3, but now you’re being plain stupid and dangerous. I look behind me … ok, I throw him one of my mummy ‘you better not mess with me’ glares. He pulls the finger at me (ooh!). I glare some more. Then Owen says “that’s xxx’s dad.” “who?” I say … “xxx … she’s in Ruby’s class.” Ha ha ha ha ha, I start laughing. I glance behind once again to get a good look at his face. I decide I’m going to have my say with this ‘gentleman’.

I wait outside Ruby’s class like a good Mumma (dickhead disappeared to park somewhere else, apparently). Ruby greets me as she always does on a Friday … “Mummy!” Big hug, excited chatter. I hug back, casting an eye over her shoulder to see if I can spot him. I do. Ferk – he’s huge. Big ginga fella with muscles and boots. I re-think my intent to have my say. Then I decide, no, bugger it. So when he comes out with his daughter, I step into line with them … “you look mighty familiar” I say. “Nope, don’t think I do” he says. “yes … you look just like the chap who gave me the finger about 5 minutes ago” … “no, I was waving” Here, I decide that I want to make this ‘friendly’ as we may well meet again, so I say “nope, that was definitely the finger … don’cha hate that? Turns out to be a parent in the same class!?” with a small (and slightly terrified and shocked at my daring) kind of laugh. He just said “yep” and walked away. However, him being a ginga … and kind of fair skinned … the bright red blush over his entire neck and face gave me the satisfaction I craved.

I hope next time I’m driving to Ruby’s school he has a few more manners. Or I’ll have to make him blush again. Him in his muscles and his boots.

To go? Or not to go!

Taylor Swift is coming to New Zealand! This has led to a whole new round of discussion in our house. Because our 5-year-old is Taylor Swift mad, and has been since before she was 2. And going to a Taylor Swift concert would just blow her mind. Owen would love to take her; I’d love to see her face when she realizes Taylor Swift is a real person!

However, the point of our discussions is not which of us is going to take her, it’s whether 5 is too young for a concert. I maintain that it is. Owen thinks there’s nothing wrong with it.

The funny thing is that it’s a moot point. Our household scrapes by on a weekly basis, as we have chosen that our priority is to have one parent home with the kids. And my salary is definitely not at the higher end of the scale. So taking a 5-year-old to a concert is not something that’s going to happen this side of the single-salary experience! And yet, the debate continues.

I took Ruby to The Wiggles about 2 years ago and that was amazing – and she loved it. But I’d be hard put to argue that she wouldn’t have felt the same way if I’d just taken her to a movie (which, these days costs almost as much as a flipping concert, and, yes, I do know I’m showing my age when I start ranting on about the cost of movies! Seven dollars. Seven. That’s what they used to cost in my day! On the expensive nights. But I digress).

Admittedly, I was a little socially … erm … deprived … as I too grew up in a household with very little money, with 4 kids plus hangers on, and anyway, it was 30+ years ago and NZ didn’t have concerts back then. Or maybe that was just what my parents told me! So I was about 18 when I went to my first concert. I know … that’s just embarrassing, but it was amazing! The lights! The sound! The atmosphere! The excitement! And that’s what I think concerts should be like. A fantastic new experience that you remember for a long, long time, if not the rest of your life! They shouldn’t be something that you start going to when you’re 5 and by the time you’re 16 they’re old hat and you’re looking for something new and far more exciting.

If they’ve ‘been there and done all that’ when they’re in their early teens, what’s next? Is that where the drugs and the drink and the sex come in? The next big excitement?

Ok, so I’m not advocating that concerts should be R20 … my particular experience was perhaps a little extreme and ridiculous! And I’m certainly not maintaining that 5-year-olds who go to concerts end up doing drugs when they’re 14. But I would expect that a 14- or 15-year-old would be heading off, flushed with huge excitement, to their first concert. Or am I just terribly, horribly old fashioned and my teen-to-be is going to teach me some hard lessons in the next decade or so?

But my kid (whether I like it or not, let alone whether she likes it or not) is going to attend her first concert when she has enough cash to buy the ticket for herself (ok, we might chip in for half of it if she looks at us with enough tears in her eyes and the performer is so old he or she probably won’t be around by the time my eldest can save up enough for the outrageous price of tickets [there I go again!]). So for now I’m going to stick to ‘you’re not old enough and we can’t afford it’! Actually, for the moment, I’m going to stick to ‘yes, that’s a poster of Taylor Swift’ and not mention the word ‘concert’ at all. That should work until she learns to read. Next week.

Living it real

As I watch my kids laugh, fight, play and learn, I’m often struck by how honestly and in-the-moment their lives are lived. I have a laminated poster at my desk that says ‘live in the moment, the future will take care of itself’. Nice sentiment, but it’s been there so long it’s like wallpaper to me and I no longer notice it at all. Ruby and Leah, however, and all kids of their age, live that to the full. It set me to wondering what it would be like to live like they do …

Work

I got given a very nice bottle of wine the other day for doing a good job. I was pleased but kinda embarrassed and so I tucked it away out of sight and carried on quietly doing a good job.

But if I morphed into a toddler/kid … not only would I not have been impressed with a bottle of wine (too fizzy on my tongue), I would have been far happier with a sticker … or, total excitement … one on EACH hand!! Then I would have run round the office whooping it up, jumping up and down in front of everyone, shoving my hands in front of their face, forcing them to admire my prize, nodding proudly, grinning like a lunatic, shouting “look what I got, YES, I done good job!!” and then gone back to my desk, feverish to do more ‘good job’ and looking up every now and then to make sure my boss was watching – possibly yelling at her to “watch me!!” if she happened to look away …

Eating out

Most people will have, at some point, forced their way through a meal out of sheer manners. Gulped it down and politely finished what really wasn’t finishable. Or worse, eaten and paid for a very sub-standard meal and been too timid to complain. But we’ve all seen the ‘bugger everyone’s feelings’ attitude towards food displayed by our littlies. So next time I go out for dinner and don’t like the food, maybe I’ll take a leaf out of their books … make gagging noises, open my mouth and push the food out with my tongue, letting it land where it may. Wipe my tongue on my sleeve and announce “ooh yukky. Don’t like that. Not eat it.” Then I’ll look at my neighbour’s plate, sidle over to sit on their lap and intercept their forkload of much better looking food. Or, while they’re looking away to have polite conversation, I’ll finger through their dinner and pick out the bits I like, spitting the bits I don’t like back onto their plate … and when they look back in horrified surprise, I’ll grin cheerfully at them. With their dinner smeared across my cheeks and all over my hands.

Visitors

My daughters, like most kids at some point, have been the source of great embarrassment when they won’t display the good manners I’m trying to teach them. Etiquette around the issue of visiting and being visited, in particular, is a tricky one. Wonder what will happen if next time a friend comes to visit me and I walk out of the room to go do something else. Just cos I don’t feel like their company. Perhaps I should just say ‘don’t want to talk to you any more. Go home.’ Conversely, when a lovely friend comes to visit, we have a great time but then she has to go … I’ll use kid tactics! I’ll stand in front of the door and not let her out. I’ll refuse to say ‘goodbye’ and instead yell ‘No! You stay! Play wiv me!’ I’ll hide her shoes and tell her she has to find them before she can go. Yup – should work a treat!

Imagine making small talk at a party when you realize you’ve quite simply had enough of this person. In our world, we carry on making small talk until we can find a polite excuse to move on. But in kid world you simply say ‘don’t want talk to you’ and turn your head away. Or you cover your eyes so they can’t see you. Very effective.

Yes indeedy … a bit more living in the moment, a bit less PC … at least we’ll all know where we stand!!

Things you should know

I’ve been pondering recently on ‘things new parents should know’, and of course, once I start pondering on things, they tend to escalate until eventually my head will explode if I don’t tell at least someone!

Absolutely everyone with the slightest smidgeon of experience with children (and quite a few with no experience!) has advice they want to impart. You will quickly find that most of it is conflicting, sometimes ridiculous, often offensive and still more often it is just plain laughable. Regardless, I now feel compelled to add my two cents’ worth to the confusing mix!

1. Do what you want

This is by far and away the most important of my little gems of wisdom. From the minute (and even before!) you get pregnant you will be the recipient of the above-mentioned unsolicited advice. From the most well meaning of people. Be as polite as you feel the need to be and then ignore it. Or try it, if you feel it might work for your family. But don’t, for goodness sake, feel that it’s gospel just because it comes from another mother, your parent, Plunket or even your Doctor. Opinions are just that. The clinical trials and the textbooks have never studied your child or your family or your relationship. Educate yourself. Find out the facts. Listen to others’ experiences. And then do whatever the heck you want if it works for you and your family! One of my very good friends told me “read the books … and then throw them away and get to know your baby.” Things finally started going right for me and mine when I followed her very wise words.

2. They don’t break

When my first baby was only hours old, the nurse strode into my room and proceeded to manhandle my child in ways I never thought possible (or legal). She seemed to throw her around the room and tie her in knots, flipping her over and under and around and upside down. She eventually handed her to me looking like Ghandi after he’d been through a tumble dryer in his white robes. That kid was done up tighter than a straight jacket and with not a buckle in sight (it’s called swaddling, by the way). I couldn’t figure out whether to have instant heart failure or to lay a complaint over the careless way in which my child had just been flung about. I would have checked her for bruises if only I’d known how to undo the darn wrap! But actually – it turned out my bubba liked being wrapped up tighter than an Easter egg! She stopped crying (well – once she’d pulled and grunted and tugged and snarled and got one arm free). So I had my first lesson in swaddling and simultaneously learned that they don’t break. Granted – it’s not good to drop them on the floor, but really, they’re pretty bendy, forgiving little things!

3. It’s not a doll

Okay – having said all that about them not breaking … nor are they dolls. You know how you used to balance your doll on its head so you could pull her trousers over her legs? Nope. Won’t work. Re-read the thing above about them being bendy. Just watch how the nurses do it. If all else fails, wrap them in a towel. So long as they’re warm and dry, they don’t give a flying fig about the art of clothing.

4. They will make you cry. They will make you laugh.

The experiences you have as a parent will drag you to the depths of depression and they will take you on highs that you have never experienced. You will belly laugh at the dumbest things in a way you haven’t done since you were a baby yourself. You will sit on the floor and sob until your eyes and throat hurt. You will doubt yourself 100 times over. And the minute they need you, you will go back and willingly offer them your soul all over again in a heartbeat.

5. Babies smell good.

Look out for this one. I’m not talking baby soap, or baby powder – it’s the actual baby. Some people I’ve spoken to haven’t experienced it, but both my babies smelled soooo good. Better than chocolate. I wanted to eat them (maybe I’m part praying mantis). Seriously. I used to pick up my new babies for a ‘kiss’. It looked like a cuddle, but if you had watched closely, you would have seen that I was actually having a good long drawing-in of baby-scented air. Even their breath smells good (note that I’m talking brand-new baby here, not toddler. Toddlers stink). But try it. Just a furtive sniff when you first get a chance. I hope it’s there for you.

6. Babies look funny.

You watch – the drunk look when they’ve just had a good feed. Hilarious. Get a photo; they’ll love it at their 21st. Same when they’re doing a poo – the studied concentration, then the surprise, then the relief. Get one of those cameras that can take photos in quick succession.

Ok, that’s it for the advice and tips for today. I’m dry. Downloaded. Please add your own tips and I’ll see what percolates in my head overnight!!  ;-)

Well, I didn’t expect that!

My baby started school today. In her too-big uniform, with her hair looking tidier than it has for months. With her huge school bag and her carefully packed lunch (that she’d helped to make – I firmly believe in starting ‘em young!).

I knew I would feel a pang as we left her, but my husband cares for our girls all day, so I expected that the biggest impact would be for him and his routine and that he would be saddest. But as she went to sit on the mat, it was my confident girl’s unexpected timidity in the face of a classroom of new kids that made me have to quickly turn so she didn’t see me cry. Oops, didn’t expect that.

As we left, three other mothers from other classrooms noticed the sniffle and the watery eyes and spoke up to reassure me and laugh with me and share their own experiences of their first leavings. So kind, so open, so generous! Didn’t expect that! And after trying to do that for other mums in so many ways since I first experienced the reality of mothering, it was so lovely to have it returned, and so spontaneously. These are women I hope to see again in our school journey, but if I don’t, I am grateful for their understanding today.

I received a phone call at midday – my husband – and I could hear our newly abandoned and lonely 2-year-old ‘baby’ hiccupping in the background. She’d been sobbing and asking to ‘go pick-up Wooby, want pick-up Wooby’. Oops – we hadn’t expected that and had to quickly formulate a plan to help transition our little one through this change. And I was stuck at work on the end of a phone. Tears in the eyes again – oops, hadn’t expected that!

At 4pm, I got another call – husband again – did I want to talk to Ruby on the phone? Huh? Ruby is vehemently opposed to talking on the phone. She adamantly refuses to talk to anyone via any sort of telecommunications device (yes, the irony of this is not lost on us, and we know that we will look back on these days and laugh ourselves sick while we install a second phone line so we can make the occasional call of our own). But she wanted to tell me about school. Apparently it was ‘fine’. And she made a friend at lunchtime! Yay – the shy genes of the mother have not been visited on the daughter.

A few weeks ago I had been terribly upset at the realization that I wouldn’t be home at the time that Ruby returned from school, wouldn’t be there to hear books being read, help with homework, see the paintings from today. This hurt badly on two levels: (a) I wanted to be the Mum who did all that; and (b) in a previous life, I completed 2 years of primary teacher training … this is the age group and education that I know … I’m ready and waiting to get in there … but will be stuck at work. Then a lovely friend let me in on a secret: that when they come home from school, they’re tired and just want to chill and play. That when I get home at 5.30, they’ll be ready to talk about school and do homework. Oh! Didn’t expect that! Yippee! And sure enough, when I got home, she couldn’t wait to ‘read’ to me, and we stayed up a bit later tonight, doing ‘homework’ together. What fun! Counting to 20! Sorting the alphabet (Mum, what’s elamenna? “ahem, well, that would be l, m, n, o…”). Reading little words! Putting ticks in the ‘I’ve read this book to Mum’ column. Bliss, joy, excitement, laughs. Boy – I was hoping for all that but still didn’t totally expect it!

My baby started school today, but it was a journey we all began together.

I DO like them, Sam I am!

I didn’t start this blog with the intention of making it all about ‘things that are hard for parents’. But I am a parent and it turns out that lots of things are hard in this role, and so tonight’s notes are again on the ‘tough stuff’ because we have again reached a milestone. And it’s another milestone that no-one but a parent (or perhaps a nurse or a Dr) really understands. So, what is it?

Drum roll please … Tonight our 2-year-old took medicine from a spoon … willingly …

There. One sentence is going to sort the ‘knowing’ from the ‘unknowing’. Because anyone who has tried to force medicine down a small person’s throat will, quite simply, understand that no longer having to force it is a momentous … err… moment.

The thing with medicine is that when your child needs it, they gotta have it. Back to the ‘choice’ thing! No matter how much they cry and then scream and then spit and snarl and struggle and, finally, run and try to hide at the very whiff of a child-resistant cap being twisted, they have to have it and you have to give it to them.

Our eldest is on the verge of turning 5. She is now actually jealous that our youngest had medicine tonight and she didn’t. Oh, how the wheel turns!!! That child was a monster. We tried … boy oh boy we tried. We tried EVERYTHING.

I have, at different times in the first 2 years of her life, found myself using a syringe to put medicine into a Just Juice box (the ‘she likes juice boxes and she can’t see the medicine’ theory). No good. I have mixed antibiotics with honey and made a sandwich with it (the ‘she adores honey and won’t notice the medicine’ theory). Failed. I have mixed it with ice cream. Nope. I have mixed it into a paste with drinking chocolate. Nope. I have mixed it with strawberry yoghurt. Nope. I have bribed her with chocolate. Nope. I have threatened. Nope. I have cajoled. Nope. I have tried cups, special spoons, tiny bottles with a special teat, big syringes, small syringes. I have tried it all and I have failed more times than I care to remember. I have had pamol vomited down my front. I have had painkillers and antibiotics spat in my eye. I have opened my mouth at the wrong time and had antibiotics spat into it. It is evidently possible to spit, scream AND keep your teeth tightly clenched closed at the same time. What I have not yet had is the police turn up at my door to find out who’s being tortured … and THAT I find the hardest to believe.

Eventually, I learned a hold from a pediatric nurse. You sit on the floor with their head between your thighs (the child, not the nurse). Almost from whence they came if you get my drift. You put their arms under your upper thighs and you put their legs under your lower legs. They literally cannot move (I hasten to add that they can still spit, just in case you were inspired to try this one). Then you syringe in the medicine bit by bit, and blow on their nose to force a swallow. However, I must add that they can choke a bit too cos they’re lying flat on their back. Still – it IS a good hold for putting eye medicine in, so don’t completely disregard it.

Two or three weeks ago, I had a mammoth show-down with my youngest. There was howling, there was screaming, there was struggling, there was sobbing (that was me), there was spitting, there was swearing (me again), there was antibiotics in the eye (yep, me again). There was giving up (me), there was running away. Eventually there was story-time followed by an enforced 2-3 mL followed by another story-time followed by 2-3 mL until finally we had 10 mL in the tummy of the one with the chest infection. I think we’d actually gone through 20 mL in the process. It took an hour. We were both exhausted and upset and stressed. There is little more heartbreaking than watching a very sick 2-year-old stand facing the wall (anything to avoid looking at you), while her thin little shoulders shudder and her head tips back to wail like an injured wolf because of something you are doing to her.

And then about 4 hours later, we had to do it all again. The wailing started … and then it stopped. She turned around, took out her dummy and opened her mouth. Accepted the syringe, swallowed the medicine like she’d been doing it all her life, popped her dummy back in and simply wandered away. Leaving me holding an empty syringe in one hand while the other hand collected my jaw up off the floor. What the …?? Did she just decide that the medicine didn’t taste that bad after all? Did she realize after fighting mummy for an hour the previous time that it was inevitable and I wasn’t going to give up so she may as well just do it? Was I being played? Was I (yet again) in the twilight zone (who are you and where is my child?!). Eventually I stopped trying to figure it out and danced a little happy jig and updated my Facebook status instead. Wahoo … took medicine like a lamb.

Tonight I said to her “I think you need some medicine tonight to make you feel better” (thinking, huh, yeah right). She simply said “yes, wiv a poon” (translated, that means “yes, with a spoon” – the nearly-five-year-old translated for me). Okayyyy, I thought – off a spoon huh – I’d like to see this one! So I duly got out a spoon, I measured the medicine, she opened her mouth, I put the spoon in, she swallowed the medicine, had a cuddle and was away to bed. Done. Zip. Sitting next to her later while she dozed off, I suddenly realized – I’m done! I very likely will never have to grit my teeth and force a syringe into a child’s mouth. It is entirely possible I will never again have pamol in my eye. We can quite probably throw away the syringes and just have a couple of spoons. Wow. My girls are growing up.

And best of all, I will never have to sit on the floor and cry like a baby because I just did any of the above to a screaming, sick, upset child.

It’s just occurred to me that Dr Seuss was probably a parent. Green Eggs and Ham, after all, is about Sam mercilessly chasing ‘the other one’ around, suggesting every way in the world to get him to try the aforementioned green eggs and ham. Finally, out of exhaustion, ‘the other one’ gives in and tastes it, and whaddya know? “I do! I do like green eggs and ham! Thank you, Sam I am!”

You think you're tired?

One of the things I have learned since becoming a parent is this: until I had children I had not experienced tiredness. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely thought I had been tired!

Yes indeedy, I proudly held up my all-nighters on essays as proof of my hardiness.

Once I worked two straight weeks with no weekend because they were paying me good money to. Yip, I was tired then!

I have run camps where I have been busy chasing children, counseling the counselors and getting ready for the next day long past when I should have been and had 3 hours’ sleep before getting up to chase children all over again. Oh boy, I was tired then, that’s for sure!

But I have discovered that one thing holds all those instances apart. Choice. I had a choice. At times I didn’t think I did, but I did. I could have walked away, I could have said “crikey dick, I really need to lie down” and gone and done so.

But as a parent, exhaustion hits a new high (low?). Because there is no choice. You may have worked a 9-hour day. You may have scrubbed two bathrooms. You may have entertained guests for dinner and then stayed up a bit longer reading a good book (verrrry verrrry silly idea, that one!) because you were on a bit of a high because they asked for seconds of dinner and the recipe.

But Murphy’s Law is so very much alive in the world of parenting that this will be the one night in a hundred that your child will develop a tummy bug. And just as your tired eyes gratefully close and you snuggle into your comfy pillow,  you will hear a strange coughing noise that sounds wrong somehow. So you will haul yourself back off your comfy pillow to ‘just go and check’. And you will find they have power-puked … all over the bed and down the wall and somehow into the chest of drawers.

So I’m sorry, you can be as tired as you like, you can be nearly fainting with exhaustion yourself, but there is no choice but to undress (while trying to avoid getting puke in their hair), wash and re-dress that child, strip the bed, wipe down the wall, sort the clean from the grubby clothes (or just grab the lot and fling them all in the machine), find an ice cream container for the next round (there is never only one power-puke), rub their back, cuddle them, convince them to lie down. Then you stand in the hall and try to figure out which is worse – rinsing out the puked-on duvet now when you’re so tired or waking up knowing you have to do it before breakfast.

But you’re tired … so tired … so you sink into your bed … and your eyes float closed … you sigh … you snuggle to get comfy … … and then … you hear a strange coughing noise. (At this point, please re-read the previous paragraph and imagine yourself going through the same routine all over again, only this time you’re digging for blankets because you only had one spare duvet).

Ok, at this point I’ll let you get a little sleep, but only for half an hour at a time because the puker is now in bed with you – it just seems easier that way – but it does mean you’re jumping at every remotely cough-like sound. Oh, but wait – what’s that I hear? Yes! That’s your alarm. It’s time to get up. And go to work.

NOW you’re tired.

((Addendum. It has been pointed out to me that in fact it is not like this in our house. That there are in fact two of us and we in fact work as a team and that in fact my marvelous house-husband in fact washed that puked-on duvet! Indignant yelp! I agree with him. Totally deserved righteousness. But we’re still tired. You know who are REALLY tired? Single parents. I take my hat off to you time and again. Usually when I’m thinking I’m tired.))