Month: April 2011

Babyshower Bliss

I was lucky enough to crack the nod to one of my favourite people, Daniel’s teacher Kerry’s baby shower today.

When I received my invite I was a little miffed because the instruction was to only buy books as gifts. I mean, what are baby showers for if not for oohing and aahing at cute baby stuff? But, for once I behaved and did as I was told.

And what a fantastic idea! This little boy received some amazing books today, so very sweet.

Kerry will be one of those people I hope Daniel will remember as one of his favourite teachers for the rest of his life. She has been a beacon of light and support in the last 2 years. Through all the milestones of Daniel’s in this time she’s been there to explain and support and offer advice.

She has been direct when I needed a whack on the head and soft and subtle when she knew Daniel has needed it. She has been an extension of our parenting philosophy and when we have been ready to throw the towel in with bad habits/night nappies/whining/bullying she pulled us through.

She is now going off to have her own little boy and we are sad that we won’t see her every day but really happy that she is being blessed with being the Fabulous Mom she will most definitely be.

All the best Kerry, we love you to bits!!

A pic of the books:

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A pic of Kerry and me:

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The Toothpaste Wars

Like all families we have our little routine at night.

We have supper, the kids that eat enough food get a ‘snack’ (a token, mostly little rice-cakes), we wander down the passage to brush teeth and then congregate in Mignon and Isabel’s room where either Etienne or myself lie on the floor with the kids and read stories.

Story-time is mostly a team sport.  Everyone participates loudly and calls out animal names, numbers and letters whilst at least one child is jumping on the defenseless reader.  Usually with knees to the kidneys.

But before we get to reading time we have to survive The Brushing of The Teeth.  I hate The Brushing of The Teeth.  This is not a team sport at all.  It usually requires much pleading and threatening before there is any participation whatsoever.

Take tonight for example:

Daniel refused to brush teeth.  Deep down I know it was a ploy for attention which I was just not able to give him at that very moment as I was trying to get the girls’ teeth brushed and get them sorted out.  So I put my foot down and did the whole “If you don’t come and brush your teeth this very minute you will not get a story”-thing.  Which you probably know is like playing chicken with a truck.  And once those words come out of your mouth there’s almost no way of changing your mind without looking like a total wuss and inconsistent parent.

So I did what any Parent would do:  I stubbornly stuck to my guns in the vain hope to retain some dignity.  Which ended with Daniel crying in his room because he couldn’t have a story and my heart breaking just a little.

I did go in and have a cuddle and a chat, but there was no story.  I explained why and reassured him how much he is loved, but I still feel like the Big Bad Wolf.

But did I do the right thing?  Was I too harsh?

My Mother’s Day wish list

I came across this brilliant blog post today courtesy of twitter (Thanks Nikki!) and thought it would make a nice challenge.

I’m not good at saying what I want for special occasions and generally we scoff at Valentine’s Day/Mother’s Day/any other soppy occasion that get shoved down our throats by shopping malls.  Last year we also had a rather unfortunate Father’s Day gift episode which resulted in me vowing NEVER EVER to buy anything that is not socks or handkerchiefs for such similar occasion again. So far it’s worked really well for me.

But back to ME. What do I want for Mother’s Day? (except for a day off I hear you ask)

I have made a little list of do’s and do nots to guide my darling Husband and some gift suggestions.  Please feel free to add to the list or even better, do post of your own and leave the link in your comment.  I challenge you.  We are worth it!

  • Do let me sleep in
  • Do not let me do dishes, wipe down surfaces, mop up pee accidents, cook any meal or make my own coffee (wait, maybe I’ll make my own coffee, I know I’m full of shit)
  • Do pack the 3 lunches for Monday
  • Do not hog the remote
  • Do not subject me to any form of whining. And that includes the children. Ok, just kidding, but a day with children that excludes whining would be great, but I’ll probably just dream on.
  • Do let me have a long LONG afternoon nap, but wake me soon enough so I can still manage to go to bed at a reasonable hour.  I’ll leave that tricky decision up to you.
  • Do not require me to feed, brush the teeth of or dress any child.  Please present them to me for perusal fully dressed and looking angelic. (snort)
  • Do ask for sex, I might be in a good mood if all the above conditions are strictly adhered to.  Maybe.

Gifts:

As you know I’m rather easy to please gift-wise.

  • I do NOT want anything that remotely resembles a mug or a tea pot.
  • I DO want need PJ’s for winter.  You know my size..
  • I do NOT want chocolate in any shape or form unless it’s that Lindt Bunny I didn’t manage to find for Easter.
  • I do want an iPad2.  Fair enough, I know it won’t happen, but hey, I’ll keep asking.
  • I do NOT want lingerie unless it’s another lovely bra from La Senza.  You got it SO right last time!
  • I do want something Gatineau.  Anything Gatineau.  Sigh.
  • I do NOT want flowers.  I promise.
  • And lastly, I do want Mac Foundation.  And lipstick.  And several other items from the Mac counter that would leave your credit card in a sorry state.

And yes, I know that it’s Daniel’s birthday this month and we need curtains and and and so I don’t really expect the iPad.  Or any of the expensive stuff.  But I made this list and I’m quite proud of it.

What’s on your list?

My spectacular weekend

I’m sitting here sucking on my special Easter Bunny chocolate with popping candy, clutching a well-deserved glass of wine and pondering the long weekend.

And wondering what I actually did this weekend.  Sure, I met some great people at a tweet-up on Friday morning that I’ve been dying to meet for ages, we had friends over for supper on Saturday night, all the Grandparents over for Easter Sunday lunch and popped out for an Easter Egg hunt this morning with friends.

But we didn’t really go anywhere or do anything spectacular.   We had a weekend of lolling around the house like sloths and spending time with the kids.  We took naps and turns to sleep in.  We ate really simple and easy food.  We read our books.  We watched the rain.

And that’s just perfect.  We had a perfect weekend.  Just what we needed.

Oh. I almost forgot.  Daniel had this weird thing going on with his neck along with tonsillitis and ear infection.  The side of his head was almost touching his shoulder and we initially thought it might be mumps (Wednesday and Thursday) then we thought he was being a drama queen (Friday, and in all fairness it looked like his neck wasn’t stiff the whole time), but by Saturday we were really worried so I took him to the doctor on Saturday morning.  Turns out the little guy had a hectic muscle spasm.  Bad, Bad Parents.

I’m off to work tomorrow but off again on Wednesday, loving this short week and another long weekend, woohoo!!

ps I didn’t do Meat-free Monday today.  Etienne made a pasta dish with leftovers (yes, I ate leftovers, I can hear you gasp!) and it had pork in it.  And it was delicious!

pps I finished a book called “City of Bones” this weekend by Cassandra Clare and it was perfect escapism.  I don’t normally enjoy fantasy-type books but this was just what I needed, loved it!

Easter, balance and stuff

Seeing as how I am spending so much time thinking about being Good Mom/Bad Mom, I was having a conversation today about work-life balance and remembered that my friend Leo sent me this link recently.  It’s a talk Nigel Marsh gave last year at TedX about balance and it is well worth the watch.  (Just note that it’s about 14 minutes long.)

This morning was really, really tough for me.  Daniel is still not well at all and as I left for work he said:  “Mommy, I’ll miss you so much today”.  BUT there’s a whole long weekend ahead of us and we managed to have a great catch-up this evening.  By Saturday morning I’ll probably be whining about how loud the kids are again!

We are beginning to worry that he might have mumps and admittedly I did Google it to death and saw some truly scary images of children with mumps.

The whole neck thing he’s doing freaks me out no end.

Interestingly enough I started Googling “do children who have had the MMR still get mumps” and I got as far as “do children” when Google very helpfully suggested that I might be searching for “do children go to heaven”.

True story.  Go ahead, try it, you know you want to!

 

We are staying home for easter and plan on a lot of family time and catching up with friends, can’t wait!

We also (hopefully, barring the potential case of mumps!) have our annual easter egg hunt aka a bring-and-eat on Monday which is always fun.  This year there will be wine.

What are your plans for the long weekend?

Good Mom Bad Mom

Daniel spent the morning with my In-Laws and the afternoon with my Mom.  Which meant that when the first call came 30 minutes after she had collected him I was already rolling my eyes.  (For incase I haven’t mentioned it before, I love my Mom dearly, but she is a case study on hypochondria waiting to happen)

When the first call came “I think his glands are swollen” I rolled my eyes.

When the second call came: “His glands are swollen, he keeps his head to the one side and it looks stiff and his fever is going up” I started listening.

And dreading that I might have to leave work.  As you do.

Cue desperate sms’ing of the Homeopath which resulted in a decision to leave work earlier to take him for a quick check-up.  Just because you never know.

As I drove away from work I felt like a very bad employee, but I felt like a worse Mother. I had an entire thought-process about at what point I would become a Bad Mother. (if I wasn’t one already), because if there’s something we all dread it’s the mere thought of being labelled The Bad Mother.

Until I saw him.  And I knew that no matter what, my sweet little boy needed me and I had made the right decision.  A quick visit to the Homeopath confirmed that we should rather get him off to the GP and off we went.  A 39.3 C temp, a script for antibiotics and 1 Voltaren suppository later he looked a lot better this evening.  It’s scary when doctors start saying things like Scarlet Fever, Meningitis and Monitor in the same sentence, but thankfully it just (!) looks like really bad tonsillitis and an ear infection.

Casting my mind back over the day I realise that, instead of feeling like a Bad Mother for being at work, I should rather feel like a Good Mother for making the call and collecting my sick child.  And as much as I don’t like antibiotics that sometimes it isn’t about what I like, but about what my child needs.

And that’s completely fine by me.

Roll on long-weekend!!

Meat-free Monday and bugs

The wonderful Ishay has this amazing recipe on her blog, you should really give it a try!

Click here for the original recipe, we left out the almonds (Daniel is intolerant) and replaced with chickpeas that we roasted in the oven for 20 minutes with some olive oil, lemon juice, sesame seeds and cumin.

Not that Daniel or the girls ate any of it, but hey.

Daniel started running a fever yesterday and we ended up leaving him with my Mom today who (kicking and screaming) took him off to the Homeopath.  To cut a long story short the little man has tonsillitis and he is really not well. I haven’t seen him this unwell in a long, long time.  He hasn’t been eating or drinking much the last 2 days and if he’s not better tomorrow I think we need to re-evaluate.

Of course his sisters were completely out of bounds tonight.  I saw, for the first time ever, complete disdain for Mom and Dad and rules.

And what was the first thought I had surface through the sheer terror?

I wonder what book I can read to fix this.

True story.

To Play-date or not?

Daniel had his first play-date yesterday. It entailed a school friend’s Mom sending me an SMS earlier in the week and asking if our boys could have a play-date.
Up to now I can’t say I’ve ever had an actual thought process about play-dates and what the right etiquette would be.
Let me elaborate:
The Mom, Dad and child arrived and they checked that he was ok and then said they were going and would see us later. Etienne and I did a bit of a ‘huh?’ and I had about 1 000 conflicting emotions ranging from ‘maybe they don’t like me, but their son drove them nuts to play’ to ‘how brave to leave your son’ to ‘OMG, they must trust us enough to look after their sweet little boy’.
It was the weirdest thing for me, especially because I’ve never contemplated leaving any of the kids with someone else unless we know them REALLY well, there’s a crisis or they get paid to look after them. I’ve just kind of assumed the more the merrier, roll on in and let’s have fun.
It was funny when the Mom came back later as I think she picked up on our surprise and asked me about doing play-dates as she was also a ‘virgin’ (thanks C!) and we both had a nervous little chuckle about it. Hilarious!
But now I’m thinking that’s not such a bad idea and I’m really just completely anal retentive about leaving a child with someone else. (unless under the above-mentioned circumstances). I’ve kind of been stuck at the fact that I couldn’t unleash the sheer force of our brood on an unsuspecting family EVER. But suddenly I have options.
Mmmmm…
When did you send your child on their first ‘solo’ play-date? How did it go? Any tips?

Why

If you have been a parent for any length of time you will be well familiar with the word WHY and the indiscriminate use thereof.

For example, I arrive home tonight with gifts for my friends Camilla and Renata.  So this conversation ensues:

  • Isabel: Why are there 2 gifts?
  • Me: Because the one gift is for Aunty Camilla and the other gift is for Aunty Renata.
  • Isabel: Why?
  • Me:  Why what?
  • Isabel: Why did you buy them gifts?
  • Me: Because they had birthdays and Mommy and Daddy couldn’t go to Aunty Camilla’s birthday because we had to go to Ouma Hanni and Oupa Duncan’s 40 th anniversary party. And Mommy is going to Aunty Renata’s party tonight.
  • Isabel: Why?
  • Me: Why what?
  • Isabel: Why did you go to their party?
  • Me: Because their hearts would have been very sore if I didn’t go.
  • Isabel: Why?
  • Me: Because I love them very much and they are my Mommy and Daddy.
  • Isabel: Mommy and Daddy.
  • Me: Yes.
  • Isabel: Why?
  • Me: Why what?
  • Isabel: Why are you going to Aunty Renata’s party?
  • Me: Because she’s my friend and she’s having a party.
  • Isabel: Why?
  • Me: Why what?
  • Isabel: Why is she having a party?
  • Me: Because it’s her birthday.
  • Isabel: Birthday!

The way I know the Why’s have come to an end if she repeats the last couple of words of my last sentence.  Then I have this feeling of Winning.  Which is usually short-lived.

Sigh.

Monday madness

The kids’ school always start a day later than the normal schools, so they were home yesterday and there was a juggle between Grandparents and our Super Fantastic Other Parent aka Angie the teacher/babysitter that took all of them for the afternoon.

In the mayhem of cooking supper I hear Mignon talking about a “Omie”(Uncle, loosely translates to a term used for an older man) and Etienne tells me to listen to what she’s saying.  So I ask her about the “Omie”, my imagination going mad.  And she tells me all about the “Omie” that found her and took her back to Granny.  My heart did a couple of flips, only for Etienne to roll his eyes and say that she managed to get lost in the shops.

My Mom took the girls shopping and apparently they passed an elevator where Mignon wanted to press the button, but they had to keep going.  I’m sure you can figure out the rest.  Cue Granny almost having heart failure as some random guy (the Omie) brings Mignon back up in the elevator.

And Daniel came home with really weird-looking jelly they made at MIL’s house.  Don’t even ask.

Oh, and Etienne was home sick for the day and unfortunately (much as it pains me to not be part of the club) he was really sick.  Not the man-flu, the real-flu.

And now I have no voice.  This could be fun..