Category: The Parenting stuff

Change, she is inevitable

keep-calm-and-smooch-18We officially reached a milestone yesterday that made me a little sad.  A necessary and completely natural milestone, but still.

Picture this: (said in best Sophia Petrillo voice – and if you don’t know who she is, you could possibly be too young to read this blog)

Yesterday morning I went for my morning walk and when I came home there was a child and a husband in our bed.  When I opened the bathroom door after my shower there were 3 children and a husband in our bed and it was all giggles. (which reminds me, we need a bigger bed)

Etienne got up and, as is our morning habit, we had a little smooch in the bathroom, much to the loudly proclaimed disgust and dismay of the 3 children watching our every move from the bed.  This is the first time ever they have reacted whatsoever to any affection Etienne and I have shown each other (except for that One Time We Shall Not Mention I have been forbidden to blog about or discuss in public)

At the same time there was also much discussion about boobies and tummies and mommy’s bum. Which was hilarious (mostly) and I don’t really mind as I want the kids to be comfortable about their bodies and what they look like, even if it is at the cost of a little of my dignity.

We are quite an affectionate couple in private, I guess affection is the love language we share, so we are often touching or hugging or kissing in front of the kids and they have never before said anything about it, much less asked us not to touch or kiss.

All the parenting books always say you should show affection in front of your kids (much like they say you should breastfeed), but they never tell you how to react when your kids suddenly react negatively to it (much like those same books never tell you how to deal with stopping the milk when baby refuses you and you know it’s time to give up), so we are going to choose to ignore the gagging sounds and just Keep Calm and Smooch.

But my babies!  My babies are growing up way too fast! Next thing we’ll be dispensing marriage advice, which hopefully they won’t need too much of because we would have set a fairly good example.

Has this happened to you yet?  How did you handle it?

Chores and Pocketmoney – advice please

My friend Sue (hi Sue!) asked me about chores and pocket money recently as her daughter (and Daniel’s BFF) is also in Grade 1 this year and we agree that it is time to really start teaching our kids about the value of money*.

This is something I have been wondering about as well, so I’m crowd sourcing some answers pretty please with cream on top.

At the moment our kids don’t formally do chores (beyond putting their dishes away) and we don’t want to create an environment where they only do chores because they won’t get money otherwise (I know, who am I kidding, they are kids, right?). We want it to be about getting your pocket money because you did your chores and not use it as a stick. Yes, I can see you old hands laughing in the corner over there…

I grew up a very lucky and spoilt little girl, everything was done for me and I hardly had to lift a finger when I was growing up. As lovely as this was it didn’t necessarily equip me for beginning to cook or mop floors or pick up dog poo or take out the trash. So I’m going to put my own Working Mother guilt aside and do our kids a huge favour.

Here are the questions I have:

At what age did your kids start with chores?

What type of chores do your kids do? (Age appropriately)

Do you make use of charts and if so, how do you make them work? (I’m not sure that will work here, purely because there would be too many adults involved in monitoring, thus more room for error)

Do you link chores to pocket money or do they just get an allowance. If so, how much at what age?

 

Thank you!

*Daniel very smartly told us one morning this week after he had left his takkies at school the previous day that he doesn’t really care, Mommy will buy more.  Horror does not begin to describe the looks on our faces.

The obligatory first day of school post

20130116-204149.jpg

Before we discuss the spectacularly uneventful and drama-deprived first day of Grade 1 and the girls’ Grade 00 (fledglings) I should tell you about Isabel this morning.

Before we left for school I went to the loo and as I got up to zip my pants Isabel asks me ‘Mamma, hoekom is jou magie so vet?’ (Mom, why is your stomach so fat?). When I managed to gather my dignity off the bathroom floor I explained that she, Daniel and Mignon all came our my tummy. But not at the same time of course. There was a moment when she looked like she wasn’t going to accept that perfectly (!!) good reason for not having a concave stomach, but then she smiled and nodded. Phew.

How was our morning? Amazing. We were on time, no-one was shouting, there were no tears and no hysterical clinging to legs. And that’s just me.

We all walked Daniel to his class where he had no problem waving us off after a little spell of uncertainty. Etienne and I then walked the girls to their class where Mignon immediately hugged her new teacher and Isabel dodged the hug (not that into affection that child) and headed straight for all the cool stuff in the class. We hung around for a while, dispensed many hugs, kisses and high fives. They then discovered some play dough and promptly dismissed us.

Etienne and I were a little, well, bemused. As first school days go this was a complete breeze. He is dropping off for the rest of the week, so lets hope the good luck continues!

How was your first day of school?

Ps. My Mother, bless her, bought each of our children a microphone for Christmas. And a guitar for Daniel. Aren’t we lucky? This is how lucky we are:

A very heavy heart

Tonight I sit here, unable to sleep, in my dark and quiet lounge, with a very heavy heart.

You see, tomorrow I go back to work after 3 weeks’ holiday. I have had the best 3 weeks with my family and feel more connected to our kids than I have in a really long time.

Tomorrow morning Etienne will drop our kids off at aftercare and I will feel like the worst Mother on the face of the planet for not dropping them off myself because I have to be at work at a certain time.

I took the girls to go and hang out at their new aftercare on Friday (because school only starts on Wednesday) and I looked at the other 4 year olds there that were dropped off at a brand new school that morning, some of whom have to be dropped off at 7am and will only be collected at 6pm because those are their personal circumstances. My heart ached for those Mothers that have to leave their kids there, because I know how it feels. We are lucky that they will only spend the morning there tomorrow because our Megan will collect them, but still. My babies.

The kids have been asking lots of questions this last week about why Mommy can’t fetch them from school and why they have to go to aftercare. Why mommy comes home so late every day. And it feels like I’m being stabbed every time they ask. We have explained to them that if Mommy doesn’t work there are a lot of things we wouldn’t have, like food.

But still. It hurts like a bastard.

Would I want to not work? No. I love my job and for my own sanity I need to leave the house every day to go to work, otherwise I would never fix my hair or my face (as I haven’t done the last 3 weeks) and I wouldn’t be a happy person.

I just wish I had more hours in the day or I could be in 2 places at the same time or have more balance. I wish I could magically shuffle my life around so I could get it all done. I wish I had my head around all the school things and work things and marriage things and friend things and never drop a ball. Sadly though, no amount of being super organised is ever going to solve that problem. Someone will always suffer. Or in my case, 3 little someones.

So kids, if you’re reading this and you are teenagers that hate my guts or parents yourselves one day that are battling the same demons, this is how I felt tonight.

Now push off, the pity party is over, life carries on.

And remember: Mommy loves you very, very much.

What is in your holiday first-aid kit?

So.  I’m on holiday from today and we are leaving on our much-anticipated and hard-saved-for holiday on Sunday.  Expect to see many random pictures of the kids on twitter and Facebook, consider yourself warned.

I blogged about my slight (cough) fascination with lists recently, and am now busy putting the final touches to my medicine list.  Now that the kids are bigger I don’t feel compelled to drag the nebuliser with us (no judgies, you try traveling with three kids!) and I’m not in the mood to drag bags of homeopathic medicine with us either, so I’m trying to put together a list of minimum medicine requirements as I’m also not in the mood to drive up and down to the shops.

I also do not have the mental capacity to deal with much more than lying on the beach staring into space, so I’m crowdsourcing the rest of my list.

Here is my list so far:

  • Deselex (for allergies)
  • Pholtex (cough suppressant)
  • ACC200 (loosens phlegm)
  • Panado (fever)
  • Sterimar Nasal Spray
  • Similasan Insect bites roll-on (love this stuff, better than anything else)
  • Valoid (don’t know why I bother, they just puke the stuff up)
  • Buscopan (see above, but hey)
  • Micropore, the brown roll (best plaster EVER.  I just bought a bigass roll for 41 SA Ront, the last one lasted 4 years)
  • Reuteri chew tablets
  • Napacods for Etienne and myself.  Just for incase we have a headache one day..

 

What is on your list?  What did I forget?

If being stubborn was an illness..

.. then Isabel would have been terminally ill.

We try really hard not to a) compare the girls with each other, especially because they are twins and b) predict what they will be like when they grow up. It feels like we would put them in a certain “box” and we want our kids to be free to grow up to be who they are, not what we think they should be based on our perceptions.

But.

Isabel is by far the most stubborn child I have ever come across. Eeeever. Take last night for example:

We made lovely ostrich steaks, mash and salad for supper. (yes, I actually helped, it might rain) Madam decides, no, she’s not even going to come to the table. At this time of year we all use leverage created by the Christmas hype such as no gifts, no visit from Santa, no sweeties from the advent calendar and so on and so forth.

We don’t often use this leverage, it’s not how we want to parent, but it shames me to say it has come up over the last few days. Whenever we do use it it works to varying degrees, so imagine our surprise tonight when none of it worked.

Isabel just ignored us flat out. She wandered around the house whilst the rest of us had a lovely supper and knew not to come near the table otherwise there would be trouble. We didn’t shout, we didn’t get mad, we just said that there would be no other food and no choccie from her advent calendar. Was she upset? Nope, she was not bovvered. Not one little bit.

She just politely ignored us. We were waiting for her to finally give in and have supper, she has done this before, but always caved in and had supper in the end. But she stuck to her guns.

As a matter of principle we don’t fight about food, we only ask that they have at least a little of what is on their plate and generally they all eat really well. But this is a whole different ball game.
I know I over analyse stuff, but I worry that she is trying to control or manipulate us. I worry that she might have issues with food. I worry that she trying to tell me something I am missing. I worry if she is getting enough attention. (Etienne, if you’re reading this, stop rolling your eyes!)

Or maybe she just wasn’t hungry. But she said no to chocolate. What type of kid says no thanks to chocolate? (Actually, Mignon does, but that’s another story)

Do you have a really stubborn child? How do you handle these situations?

Ps: This is the same child that politely informed me this evening that she will have an iPad and a diamond necklace for Christmas. Boy, is she in for a nasty surprise.
Pps: it’s December. In Cape Town. Rain is highly unlikely. Just so you know.

Lets talk about last night

Etienne made us Mac and Cheese for supper last night. I saw a lot of that Mac and Cheese over the course of the night last night.

Before the kids went to bed Daniel complained of a sore tummy, we ushered him to bed, thinking it’s a delay tactic. At 9pm he comes into the lounge and proceeds to deposit much of the above mentioned Mac and Cheese on Etienne, down his back, his chest, on the couch and on the rug. We quickly jumped up and took the 3 steps out the front door for the main event to finish, Etienne gagging, Daniel crying and me (in one of my finest moments) laughing my ass off, all the time shrieking like a girl and repeatedly stepping in puddles of vomit.

Those moments are always special. You know a shower is inevitable, but you cannot compute the journey from front door to bathroom without any, er, spillage. So, I ordered my boys to strip and briefly considered hosing them down in the front lawn, but decided to let them back in to use the shower. But only just.

After their shower, a mopping, rinsing and carpet cleaning exercise, brushing Daniel’s teeth and changing his clothes we promptly stuck him back in bed.

30 minutes later Isabel vomits. In our bed. On my favourite pillow.

Rinse and repeat, more clothes and this time a set of bedding in the bath to soak. Bath, brush her teeth, change her clothes.

Another few minutes later, Mignon vomits all over the carpet in their room. More rinsing of clothes, brushing of teeth and sponging of child. We rolled our eyes and accused her of being a sympathy puker.

Things then briefly calmed down. At that point we were still giggling, but I had an inkling that we were in for an interesting night. Our kids are not prolific vomiters since their reflux days, so to say this was a surprise would be a grand understatement.

It pretty much went downhill from there. I stopped counting at 3 vomits each, in the end we gave up rinsing all the bedding and just added it to the ever-growing pile in the bath that would have to be dealt with in the morning.

There were vomit buckets which they missed with alarming regularity, instead opting to chuck up on their bedding or do the mad dash down the passage, only to decorate the bathroom, passage, door and walls. (That was a truly special mopping event, thank you Isabel)

And then it was my turn. Right after I took my last happy-help-me-sleep-pill. The only upside to this was that I was awake and standing by the side of their beds just in time to catch puke as it happens. Nothing would stay down, especially not the Valoid we desperately tried to get them to take. Or the pain and fever meds that we had to force down Daniel’s throat.

That he promptly delivered back to us.

Plus some leftover Mac and Cheese.

Did I eventually sleep? Not really, I was on high alert and my darling husband was snoring just loud enough for me to huff and puff. Plus, I was too nervous to sleep, we had just about run out of bedding and I was not taking any chances.

The only room in our house that wasn’t ‘decorated’ last night is our kitchen. So you can only imagine the horror on our poor domestic lady’s face this morning when we broke the news to her. Although I think our house wasn’t smelling too fresh by that stage anyway and the frantic opening and closing of the back door, dashing up and down the stairs and hosing things down outside her room must have been a giveaway.

It was like a scene from CSI, I had to stumble around the house this morning, pointing out all the spots she had to wash to remove all trace of our nocturnal adventures. I would have needed a LOT of those little numbered markers.

I’m pretty sure it is food poisoning, here’s hoping that we are all better tomorrow.

Over and out.

Who carries the weight and a quick poll.

There’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while and I’m really hoping I will get it out right and not offend anyone (or that I haven’t already).

Here goes:

I’m forever going on about how fabulous my darling husband is and he really is (except when he is snoring at night).  He is just so much better at most things parenting than I am.  He feeds kids in the mornings and doesn’t lose his temper when there are last minute outfit changes or meltdowns.  He plans a menu for the week. He juggles cooking supper and keeping kids happy until I get home at night.  He cleans as he goes in the kitchen (big plus in my opinion, he even cleans up after me).  He mostly gets up at night, because I take happy drugs to help me sleep otherwise I won’t sleep and I won’t function.  He did poo.  He changed nappies.  He jumps on the trampoline.  He talks and listens to our kids.  He knows what movies they like and has seen them all with them whereas to me they are background noise.

In a nutshell: the man is a saint.

Here’s what I want to know: how involved is your husband/wife/co-parent?  Do they share the load or are you the one doing all the “admin”? I’m referring to all the things above (and parenting/life partner support in general) and it doesn’t matter that you might be a Stay at Home Parent, in fact your job is probably a lot harder to do because you cannot close an office door.

I’ve put together a poll, it’s anonymous, but I’m curious to know (as I’m sure you are) how much support our partners give us.  I’m hoping we will all be pleasantly surprised and even if the end result is sad I’m hoping it will make people like me that aren’t as involved as I should be think about it.

My fingers are crossed!

Ps: So clearly I haven’t blogged in a while.  I could complain about being too busy, but that would imply that I am busier than other people which could not be farther from the truth, so I’ll just keep it zipped.

Truth is I feel pressure to write and when I feel pressure to write I don’t, if that makes any sense.  It’s been quite liberating to not give in to the pressure of writing my self-imposed minimum of 2 blog posts a week and I’ve been spending some time thinking about next year and blogging, but I’m still thinking about it, so watch this space.

Old wives’ tales

On Sunday we decided to have a quiet day, which meant that lunch wasn’t a grand affair. But there was Weber chicken and butternut and salad (and of course the obligatory potatoes).

Isabel and Daniel were too busy colouring in, so we left them with a threat of no desert and had ourselves a lovely chat with Mignon. I love this age that they are all at now. We love to hear what is going on in their minds and we have some really fun conversations, such as extended suggestions on what to wish for when you throw money in a wishing well (real feather wings) and what Father Christmas should bring (pixie dust and a microphone* and all things Barbie). Mignon is a very earnest and caring little girl, even though everything seems to be very dramatic at the moment and life is very serious. We do sigh and roll our eyes sometime, yes.

Anyhoo, one of the things we were talking about yesterday was how, when I was a little girl my Mom told me that I had to eat all my pumpkin if I wanted curly hair and Mignon duly looked at my hair and suggested that I must have eaten a fair amount of pumpkin as a child. It was Sunday and my hair was just left to dry, always a recipe for disaster.

It made me think about all the old wives’ tales we were told as children to scare the living crap out of us, such as

  • Don’t go to bed with dirty feet, you’ll have nightmares (I still believe this btw)
  • Don’t pull your face like that, if the clock strikes 12 it will stay that way
  • Don’t walk around barefoot; you’ll have bad period pains (still trying to get my head around that one)

What were the scary stories that you were told as a child? Do you tell your kids any scary stories?

*I have it on good authority that my Mother has bought the children EACH a microphone for Christmas. I have asked for earplugs for Christmas.

Hugs for Moms

I know, I need to post about Daniel’s operation this past Monday, all in good time, promise.

I had a small epiphany tonight and its too important (and too complicated) to put on Facebook, I need to put it here so my kids can see it one day when they are teenagers and hate me. Or when they are parents themselves.

I may be a little soppy at the moment, I have been thinking about clearing the air with someone that I need to find a way to co-exist with that used to be a friend mostly because I can’t bear ignoring that person anymore. It’s too hard. But it will be a big thing.

I’m worried about another friend that seems distant, I hope she’s ok. I wish she would tell me what’s wrong, but I’m afraid she’ll brush it off.

But what I really wanted to tell you about is how Isabel has been out of sorts lately. Not eating well in the evenings, battling to go to sleep. She is such a tough little cookie normally, nothing ever seems to phase her, she takes everything in her stride. She’s not huge on kisses and hugs like Mignon and Daniel are, she just wants to get on with the really important stuff in life like painting.

But tonight, tonight she said ‘Mamma, ek wil jou hê’ (Mom, I want you). This is huge, so I promptly got into our bed with her and we had ourselves a long chat and a cuddle. She just needed to be held and touched and hugged and loved.

And I realised, I needed it too. I needed her to need me. I needed those hugs and cuddles and love too. My own child comforted me tonight. Comfort that I didn’t realise I needed.

I’m spending the day with Daniel tomorrow as he can only go back to school on Monday and Etienne will only be home late tomorrow evening and I am really looking forward to having them all to myself for a change. (I might come here and whine about them tomorrow evening, but just tell me to shut up, ok?)

This has turned out to be quite a random blog post, but I’m going to leave it just like this. It’s how I feel right now.

Ps. Even more randomly, Etienne found a song tonight that we have been looking for for 11 years. The Goo Goo Dolls and Limp Bizkit performed Pink Floyd’s Wish you were here at the Heroes concert just after 9/11 and we could never remember who sang it. Anyway, so Etienne found it tonight. I’m really bad at embedding videos, so here is the link to the YouTube video. Do yourself a favour and keep in mind when it was performed. It is achingly beautiful.