Month: November 2011

7 random things blog award

I was nominated by the fabulous Tanya Kovarsky to tell you 7 random things about myself. I’m mentally chewing my nails as I’m wondering if there’s anything I haven’t written about myself in the last 3 years I have been blogging.  Not I have a problem talking about myself, but you know how it is.

 

So here goes:

  1. When I worked in London in the 90’s the hotel I worked in (the Bailey’s Hotel) had a fire and I was the manager on duty.  I managed to evacuate everyone by ordering all the staff around and then some.
  2. I have never owned a bikini.  When I was 6 or 7 I had to have polyps removed that left me with a fugly scar on my stomach.  The only time I have ever worn a bikini was in Mozambique and only because it was my backup cozzy and the one-piece broke. And I was 25 kgs less than I am now.
  3. I had a big round brown birthmark on my right cheek that was removed when I was little.
  4. I have had plastic surgery to correct the above 2 scars.
  5. I abhor admin and paperwork.  Etienne ends up getting lumped with most of it.  I’m happy to arrange things and make stuff, but I run screaming when I see a piece of paper or a household budget.
  6. I am having a very public love affair with turqouise.  It’s the most beautiful colour.  Sigh. (hints at Christmas nad bats eyelids at Etienne)
  7. I really don’t like pasta.  I don’t think I know anyone that doesn’t like pasta and it’s taken me a long time to accept that it’s just not me, it’s the pasta.

Tanya already nominated most of the Fabulous Mommy Bloggers I follow, so I can’t give you 15 more, but do yourself a favour and head on over to the Parent24 blogging platform where I used to blog and take a peek at Deblet, Luddite Lass, Cams, Deids13, Suki, MinkiMinki (to name but a few)and all the other Moms that blog there.  They kept me sane and it was a lovely place to find my blogging feet so to speak.  I miss them every day!

Edit to add:  There are at least 2 extra special Moms I left out yesterday and I realised it in the middle of the night!  Here they are: Hopeful Mom and Shazzie.  Sorry!

15 reasons to go to Greyton

We went off to Greyton this past weeked with some of Etienne’s colleagues and had an awesome time.  I fell in love with Greyton.

We stayed on a farm called Oewerzicht and even the mountains felt inviting.

1.  It’s like a cross between a little bit of England and Clarens.  Without the snobbiness of Clarens.

Be prepared for a photo overkill!

Reason 2: Just look at this street.
Reason 3: View from our cottage at Oewerzicht
Reason 4: View from our shower. For real. The shower had a glass sliding door!
Reason 5: all the stuff from England you can find in the Village Store.
Reason 6: Need I say more?
Reason 7: Cows. The most good-looking cows I have seen in a long time.

 

Reason 8: The kids were in heaven. I was battling to balance my drink..

 

Reason 9: The village market on a Saturday morning. These were duck and cherry pies and the lovely lady that made them. To. Die. For.
Reason 10a: Miniature Dolls houses
Reason 10b: More Dolls houses, just check out the detail!
Reason 10c: You guessed it..
Reason 11: Post swimming chip rolls.
Reason 12: there was a piano. The kids had a ball!
Reason 13: Sunset over the mountains
Reason 14: Peace and quiet
Reason 15: Proof that the kids had a great time

And it’s closer than Hermanus!

 

Education Fail

Picture this:  December, 1990. (said in the voice of Sophia from The Golden Girls)

Matric exams and all the after parties are done. The day the Matric results come out we all descend on the school and buy the newspaper with a mixture of excitement and a little trepidation as now we have to start growing up.  We knew that we had studied hard and we knew that we had been in a good school and felt safe and supported by our teachers.

This morning I read this article on News24 and I am furious. To say the least.

I have written several posts this year about schools with Daniel going to Grade R next year and we have found a great school. We will also agree on a great High School when the time comes.  Not a private school, because we simply cannot afford it with 3 children, but a really good government school.  A school where there are teachers for all the subjects, where children can depend on teachers to teach them and not behave like delinquents themselves.  A school where teachers will care enough to
point out to us when our children need an intervention of sorts.  As parents we want to be involved in what our children learn, we want to teach them things they will never learn in a classroom.

We will choose a school where many of the children won’t drop out in Grade 10 or be in their mid-20’s when they finally Matriculate. There will probably be the odd fail or teenage pregnancy or child that disappears for a few months to go to rehab (hell, one of those might even be one of ours), but they would be the exception.

But all in all we hope to raise children, with the help of great teachers, that will turn out to be responsible, respectable, adults that will go out into the world and be the best they can.

We will probably be on the very strict end of the parenting scale, but I hope that we will make our children carry the consequences of their own actions and not cover them in cotton wool so that they leave our house ill-equipped to deal with LIFE.

According to the News24 article  “We are calling on all learners not to buy newspapers on the day results are published. These newspapers are only interested in making money while the students are enduring trauma,” said Mani.

I’m curious.  How have we failed these children that they will be traumatised by their Matric results?

Who is to blame?

The teachers?

The parents?

The collective angst of society that makes these children feel  that they will amount to nothing anyway?

A government that is more concerned about hiding things from the public through the Protection of State Information Bill than building a proper education system and making sure that their teachers teach?

I know I’m taking a very simplistic view, but I have been watching all this madness in South Africa this week and I am very worried for our children.  We as parents can teach our children what we want, but how do we make them believe what we try to teach them when we live in a country where (even less than) mediocrity is acceptable and often even the norm?

Woe is me says the Drama Queen

This is one of those blog posts where I’ve had to do a lot of introspection and still don’t have the answer, so it might seem like a bit of a ramble.  Please bear with me.

I have been in the most disgusting state of anxiety this week.  I’m talking taking a ½  Rivotril in the morning just to get me through the day, something I have always refused to do.  I recently changed anti-depressants (from Zoloft to Molipaxin) and they keep me on the saner range of slightly nuts. Etienne now even gets lucky on occasion.

But this week has been BAD. Can’t focus, vacillating between teary and bitchy, want to shove every type of food imaginable in my mouth as comfort, you can probably guess how it goes.  I started making a mental (snort) checklist of things that could possibly leave me in this state.

It looks a little like this:

There is a lot going on at work, but nothing insurmountable and there is light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s not that exclusively.

Christmas.  I need to get my ass into gear as I’m making Christmas
gifts for most people this year and I need to get organized as time is running out.  I’m also busy crocheting things people ordered that are thankfully almost finished.  But it must get finished and out of the way
now.

I want to make little brown packets with sweets instead of an Advent Calendar.  The idea is to have a little bag per child per day on the Christmas Tree that the kids can take off and replace with an ornament.  That way they start decorating the tree from 1 December.  But I need to
get that done.

There’s too much going on between now and Christmas. I’m craving peace and quiet and it’s not even December yet.  That would be the peace and quiet I won’t be getting any of anyway.

I’m only able to take a few days leave after Christmas because of work, which leave Etienne to take care of the kids all by himself for the entire week before.  Can you say BAD MOTHER?

We are also going away with the people in Etienne’s office this weekend.  They are lovely, lovely people but for some reason the thought is freaking me out no end. It has a lot to do with the “please bring swimming costume” sentence.  I fervently pray for rain.  I already feel judged as “The Fat Wife” before we have even left Cape Town.  How pathetic is that?

Am I being a complete drama queen?  (And you know how much I friggin hate drama!)

Uncles and Aunties and all things polite

If your life was anything like mine growing up you spent a LOT of time saying ‘Oom’ (Uncle) this and ‘Tannie’ (Aunt) that and kissing older people on the mouth and having your cheeks pinched by those very same Tannies reeking of lavender and spice.

Etienne and I make the kids call older people Tannie/Oom and it has never bothered me that other people’s kids might not call me Tannie.

Tannie Tania. The thought alone makes me squirm. And then puke a little in my mouth. How’s that for double standards?

Over the weekend we were with English friends and it came up in conversation. They aren’t too fussed about the whole thing, but asked me to ask everyone on the interwebs what they do.

So. Do you expect your kids to call people Aunt/Uncle or are you comfortable with first names?

Tori Amos and Gratitude

So we went to see Tori Amos last night.

I’m not a concert connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but I have seen my fair share of live music to know that what we witnessed last night was something spectacular.  It was absolutely amazing.  Pitch perfect and crystal clear.  She was seated between a keyboard and a Bosendorfer piano and she pretty much played both instruments for the whole concert, one hand on each.

There was a deferential hushed silence whilst she was singing.  Afterwards there was much talk in the girl bathrooms of how long they had waited (20 Years!) to see her and how they wished they had brought tissues.

Sitting there, having gooseflesh travelling up and down my arms for 2 hours, I had for the first time in a very very long time the opportunity to just be still and reflect and just BE.  Not the mindless reflection you do when sitting in front of the telly, but that meandering of the mind we never allow ourselves because we are always running to get something done.  That lying-on-the-beach-soaking-up-the-sun nothingness.

I reflected on the very special people in my life that were there with me.

I reflected on London in the 90’s.  On Alanis Morissette. Man did we listen to a lot of Alanis Morissette back then.  On Bon Jovi’s Bed of Roses blaring out of a window in a street in Earls Court on Christmas Day 1994. The Gloucester Hotel in Gloucester Road. On working hard and playing harder. Going clubbing until 06h00 in an old church off Leicester Square and going straight to work via a shower.  And then still going out after your shift ends for a beer.

On being 21.  And then 22.  On the boys I knew (let’s face it: we were pretty much still girls and boys then).  Friends I made and lost along the way through circumstance or through choice.

On being independent for the first time.  The togetherness of friends and the ease with which you let people into your life at that age.  People that camp out in your lounge because they are backpacking and passing through. (even though I bitched and moaned about this extensively at the time)

The giddiness of total freedom and feeling invincible.  And missing home so much that you physically ache but knowing that you wouldn’t change where you are at that moment for any money in the world. 

The feeling that time is truly on your side.

Watching sleet go past my office window on Christmas Eve in 1995.  Kensington Gardens.  Camden Town on a Sunday.  Haagen Dazs.  Pret-a-manger. Chocolate Chip muffins from Cullens in Gloucester Road.

And then I thought about how irrevocably different our lives are now to what they were then.  And all the way we have all travelled since then, since the 90’s. And how I don’t feel like I could possibly be approaching 40 at the rate I am, somewhere inside me is still that young person, just (hopefully!) vastly improved with age. 

And how amazing it all turned out and how I wouldn’t trade my life now for anything in the world and the rest is actually just Middleclass Problems.  That I should stop the bitching and moaning and be thankful for all those incredible memories that no-one could ever take away from me.

Ps: Yoav opened for Tori Amos.  He was also completely amazing and another product of Cape Town.  I’m sure he is from behind the Lentil curtain…

A question about extra-murals and Tori

I know.  What a bizarre title, but anyhoo.

Firstly:  No more sleeps until the Tori Amos concert.  And I’m sitting here in my office being happy about it all by myself because half of the staff here were still in nappies when we were listening to Little Earthquakes.  The best of it all?  I’m going with 2 of my all-time BFF’s from school days.  We have been friends for 24 years (24 YEARS people!!) and they are still 2 of my all-time favouritest bestest people.  L and I: it’s the 80’s ALL over again for us tonight!

Then, a more serious question:

We have to choose which extra-murals Daniel will do next year and we are completely spoilt for choice.  I have always wanted Daniel to do karate, but between that and computer classes and rugby and cricket and swimming and all the other stuff Etienne and I are a little ‘deer-in-the-headlights’.  And we don’t have endless funds to pay for activities either.

So, I would like to know:

How many extra-mural activities is age appropriate for a Grade R child?

Which ones would you or have you picked for your child and why and how did it impact on their choices when they grew older?

Thank you!

Music and dancing

I have realised lately that we don’t listen to enough music at home.  Sure we listen to “normal” music, like the music channels on DSTV or Lollos and classical music on a Sunday, but I’ve noticed that the girls, especially Isabel, like to dance.

It’s more of a little jiggle than anything else and the cutest thing to behold, but I think it would be great if we could crank the music up and just wriggle our worries away.  And it would be great for a laugh.

Thing is.  I’m an ex-wanna-be Goth and I’ve never really been into “happy” music.  I’ve always leaned more toward the tortured music genre.  And mostly tortured female.  And Led Zeppelin. And The Cure. You see what I mean?

The kids will definitely end up getting exposed to “our” music, but for now I really want them to experience music for the sheer reckless joy of it.

So.  I need help.  I want to put together a play-list of happy but harmless ‘adult’ music.  By Adult I mean ABBA-type stuff and by harmless I mean no Jack Parow.  After hearing “Cooler as Ekke” once on Gareth’s show Daniel recited “jy’t ‘n tattoo van ‘n slang op jou tette”.  Pitch perfect.

Any suggestions?

ps: if I have enough suggestions I want to create an extra page and credit the suggestion-giver.  Aaaand.. GO!

pps: I was jiggling away to something the other day and Daniel stared at me in horror and ordered me to stop immediately.  I. Don’t. Care.

TantrumSchmantrum

As the oldest child Daniel has always been remarkably good natured and mostly accepted the arrival of his sisters in his stride.  I often comment on his angelic behaviour and his downright awesomeness.  Besides my own guilt for various reasons and his ongoing eczema and allergies which I am convinced must be in some way all my fault and linked to his emotions.

Until lately. Lately he has become quite the foot-stomping whiner at the ripe old age of 5 and a half.

As a rule we have a zero tolerance approach to tantrums.  And I mean ZERO tolerance.  We encourage the kids to express what it is they want (or so we thought) (smugly), thereby eliminating this unseemly behaviour.  And I can tell you exactly why we are like this:

We were in Kingston in a Borders Bookshop in 2004, way before we had children and I vividly remember this huge table in the entrance to the store.  I remember this specific table as it had a child of undisclosed age lying under the table and throwing the tantrum to end all tantrums.  Her parents, with another baby in a pram, had that petrified deer-in-the-headlights look about them.  There was a Starbucks coffee shop inside Borders, conveniently located very close to the entrance and we were in no rush, so we decided to watch the scene unfold with a mixture of awe and horror.  To say those parents were freaked out would be an epic understatement.

They did the whole bending-down-and-reasoning-with-errant-child approach.

Then they did the hissing-warnings-of-dire-consequences approach.

Then they kind of desperately hung around waiting for their child to miraculously emerge from under the table.

Then they stalked out of the shop full of bravado and hid around the corner, hoping the child would run out after them.

Before each action there were hushed negotiation between the poor parents.  And for the duration of the performance the child Did Not Stop For A Second.

In the end the Dad stomped back in and simply dragged the screaming child out from under the table and disappeared down the road.

So, having seen this scene unfold we promised each other that this would simply not be tolerated.  Ever.  And up until now we have done pretty well.

Up until now.

Suddenly Daniel has mastered the Whining Tantrum.  It is completely random and not set off by a specific thing that we can establish and as much as we roll our eyes and try to ignore him it is truly unbearable.

Until now we haven’t really taken it seriously and have mollycoddled him through it, but tonight we had finally had enough.  We left him huddled in his room, whining away (I know, just slap me, BAD Mother) and ignored him until he was done.  No bed-time story for him, which caused another flood of whining, but now all is quiet.  And he even came out for a cuddle and a kiss when he was finished.

And all I can think is: what am I doing wrong?  Is he feeling unloved/unheard/lonely/scared/rejected and I’m not dealing with it in a positive way?  Or he simply just full of shit?  Or is it just age appropriate for boys?

What do you think?

Edit to add: Look what I just found in our bed.  How can you not adore this?

Glass Full to the Brim

It occurred to me again today that life is all about perception.

I’ve been a little pissy lately about a couple of things I can’t talk about here at length, but I took a long look at our life of late and I have decided that, instead of being angry/hurt/sad about things that aren’t the way I think they should be I would be spending my time a lot more constructively by choosing to see them in a positive light.

For example:

I could choose to be upset about my Mother pulling The Full Hypochondriac on our GP yesterday when she had to take Mignon or I could choose to be grateful that she is there to help us out and take our kids to the doctor when it is impossible for us to do so.  So I choose to be grateful. (and roll my eyes quietly)

I could choose to completely lose my shit over spilt porridge in the morning or I could choose to be grateful that the kids demand to be independent. (Wow.  And how)(They get that from me) (Of course)

I could choose to feel sorry for myself when I leave a sick child at home or I could choose to be grateful that at least I work close enough to home so I can pop up and spend a little time with her and steal a hug and a cuddle. (it’s just sad that they only sit still when they are under the weather)

I could choose to resent Etienne because I *have* to work or be grateful that he is the kind of Dad that chooses to have balance and actually enjoys spending time with his kids. (truth is, I would have worked anyway.)

I could choose to get annoyed that our domestic lady isn’t great with understanding medicine and taking temperatures or I could choose to be grateful that our house is immaculately clean, our washing is done and our clothes are beautifully ironed and packed away.

I could choose to worry about money and Christmas coming up or I could be grateful for the awesome job I have and trust that we will be just fine.

So.

I choose to be grateful. I choose to feel rich.  Especially when I find all this in our bed in the mornings:

 

Daniel trying to hide, Isabel in the middle and Mignon looking as sick as she is at the moment. And Etienne. Poor guy.

What are the things you are grateful for today?