Category: The Parenting stuff

Fun in the sun

We always joke about how our children have no end. When we socialise our lot will last to the bitter, bitter end. They will not go to sleep like other people’s children who eventually collapse on a couch at about 21h00. Oh no, our kids are like Energizer Bunnies, they just keep going. Even if we eventually put them to bed at 22h00 (I know, bad parents, go right ahead and judge me, I really don’t care) they will be up bright and early the next morning, ready for the next round.

Point in case:

Yesterday we went to friends for lunch. As luck would have it there were 8 adults and 12 kids so from a parent:child ratio we were in deep shit if we had to entertain them. But, there was a monster slip ‘n slide that the kids loved and once Tertia established the Rules of The Slip ‘n Slide we didn’t see our kids FOR FOUR HOURS. We dragged them off the slide briefly to try and feed them something off the braai and then again for an ice cream, but otherwise we did not see them. They ran up and down and around and around, taking the odd tumble into the garden and out over the edge of the slip ‘n slide, but there were no tears and no drama. Not once.

In the end we had to deflate the whole thing just to get them to stop. And only then did they realize that they were (a) very cold and (b) very hungry. We stuffed them into the car and sped home, dunked them in the bath and fed them on the couch, which we never never do. They ate and ate and ate and ate and then promptly passed out.

We are SO getting a slip ‘n slide. Or a pool. Imagine!

In other news, I felt like crap last night, stomach cramps, bloated, headache, the works. I couldn’t figure out why until I started thinking about what I ate. I only had 2 drinks the whole day, so it wasn’t that.

I realised that I had tucked into the most delicious little ‘rooster koekies’ made from beautiful white dough and my body was having absolutely none of it. I haven’t eaten bread or anything with wheat for quite a while now and am horrified at what it did to me. I still felt ‘hungover’ and miserable this morning. This makes me very, very sad as warm white bread is one of my favourite things. In fact, the only thing better is fresh, warm white bread dripping with butter, apricot jam and cheese.  But I digress.

So, as it turns out, those horrible things they say about gluten are true, or at least for Daniel and myself.  Sigh.

ps: I was reading fairy tales with the kids tonight and they were all talking about the wishes they would make when they next put a coin in the wishing well at Cape Garden Centre.  Isabel wished that her Grannies and Grandpas could be young again, which I thought was just too lovely.  But then she also wished that Ouma Hannie could have pink hair…  Bless.

The inevitable visit to the ENT and some advice please?

About 2 weeks ago Daniel’s tonsils flared up for the third time this year, which of course meant a course of antibiotics and Etienne and I decided that it was time for Daniel’s (and our) first visit to the ENT.  It’s not just the tonsils though, his allergies are really really bad this year and his eczema has flared up in a big way.  I also realised that I should stop shouting at him for eating with his mouth open as his nose is probably too blocked to eat any other way.

We have also been worried about his hearing, although to be honest, we wrote it off to him just not listening and have been insisting that he look at us when we speak to him.

But the cherry on top was a weird thing started happening to him: his eyes would swell shut completely for no apparent reason.  It only happened 2 or 3 times, but we figured out this week that he is probably allergic/intolerant to eggs.  He hates eggs, has never eaten them and won’t even sit next to you when you eat them, but lately he has taken to eating baby potatoes with mayonnaise.  That contains egg. (the potato/mayo thing is of course ALL Etienne’s fault)

So, off we went to see the ENT yesterday, fully expecting to have his tonsils removed.  As it turns out, we are going for the whole hog (I would have said trifecta, if it weren’t for the fact that there are 4 things) : sinus flush, adenoids, tonsils and grommets.  His ears are so full of gunk that he actually cannot hear us; it’s not just that he isn’t listening to us.  Aren’t we just awesome parents?  I know, you’re just dying to give us an award, aren’t you!

While he is under the doctor will also draw blood and do a comprehensive allergy test.  I shudder to think what the results are going to be, he is already so limited in what he can have.  But, we will do what we always do: we will adapt, come what may.

We are booked to go in on the 19th and he is only getting done in the afternoon, so I’m looking at a long day with a hungry and grumpy child.  Apparently I’m also meant to go into theatre with him when they put him under, which I was going to try and do anyway, but I would honestly rather stick pens in my eyes.  The ENT himself is very cool and really good with Daniel, so at least that’s not something I have to be too worried about.

I’m very nervous as this is the first time one of our kids has to have an anesthetic, so I need some advice please, any advice is welcome!

What advice could you give me about what to do in hospital and afterwards?  What should they eat and not eat?  How long are you meant to keep them home?  Anything else I need to look out for?

Grumpy McGrumpypants

I’m taking a moment to whine.

My Saturday hasn’t gone very well so far. It started with a burst water pipe in our street and went downhill from there. I thought there was more water in our geyser, so imagine my joy at being covered in conditioner and soap at the very moment the water ran out. Charmed.

I’m going to skip past the middle bit which also wasn’t pretty, but I briefly felt better after a nap. I then made the mistake of wanting to take Daniel to the hardware shop late this afternoon as I had taken the girls out with me this morning. I was at the same time looking forward to spending time with him and dreading his obstinate behavior. I have no idea where he gets this from. ‘Whistles and looks away’

We arrive at the hardware store and he says he is not getting out the car. So, I suggest that he either gets out the car or I can take him home and he crosses his arms and asks me to take him home. Which I promptly did.

Halfway home he changes his mind, no, he will get out the car, we have to turn around. Under normal circumstances I would have huffed and puffed, but I would have turned around gone back.

Not today. Today I thought fuck it. So I said no, it’s too late now.

We drive home in icy silence.

We pull into the garage.

He says he is not getting out the car.

I get out the car and stomp into the house.

Etienne asks what’s wrong and I tell him. Apparently this is a regular thing with them and Etienne normally just gets out the car and then Daniel hurriedly changes his mind and gets out too. But I also just know that if I try this he will call my bluff and simply stay in the car. So I huff and I puff some more and Daniel comes into the house.

I take my bag and leave the house on my own and needless to say there was much crying and gnashing of teeth.

I drive to another hardware store, only to find them closed.

By now I’m really pissed off, so I realise that I’m probably meant to drive back to the original store and see if I can still catch them open so I have some time to calm down. Which I did.

I arrive at the original hardware store, face still thunderous and look for some paint to finish a project that I’ve been procrastinating and some paint stripper for a new project.

In the 5 minutes to spare I couldn’t find the right colour, but I did find some paint stripper. I could probably have just looked at the frame I want to strip and the paint would have dropped off anyway, but now I have paint stripper, but no paint.

Go figure.

I guess what I’m really asking is this: do you ever leave your kids in the car?

Ps. I’m spending my Saturday evening at the Spur. This also does not please me. But I hear they have wine.

The balancing act

This might as well be renamed The Week Of Manners. I’m doing this as an exercise in mental stability, so it’s not a pretty post. (My mental stability, not the kids’, they are on their own.

Once again, is it just us, or is it normal?

Things we chose not to fight about tonight:
Children eating with their hands
Shrieking (ok, maybe just a little)

Things we did (constantly) remind the kids to do:
Eat with your mouth closed
Don’t jump on the couch
Don’t stab your carrots with the sosatie stick
Don’t scrape your fork on the wood of the dining room table
Don’t jump on the couch
Please, for the love of sanity choose a friggin toothbrush. (They have several each, we seem to have an issue with throwing them away)
Did I mention don’t jump on the couch?

Things we didn’t have to worry about tonight and are immensely grateful for:
Kids playing together
Eating of food – they cleaned their plates
Laughing out loud
Hugs
Reading time, without a single argument

In-between we have been shouting at the dogs barking at passersby with dogs and loud guinea fowl.

I live in a zoo. Happily so.

Grocery Hell

On Saturday afternoon I had a lapse in reason. Not momentary lapse in reason, an epic lapse in reason:

I offered to let Etienne have a nap and I would take the kids shopping.

Grocery shopping.

On a Saturday afternoon.

On the way there we had a long chat about using inside voices, not whining for toys/juice/chips, not running off in the shops and I promised to buy them each a juice if they behaved. I had a feeling I was in for an interesting time when Daniel ran off to grab a box of strawberries the minute we set foot in the door.

It rapidly deteriorated from there. There was much whooping and shouting. And running. Omg. The running and the talking. ‘MAMMA! LOOK AT THE (insert toy name here)! Please can we have it???

I eventually make it to the pharmacy counter, only for them to run off to the other side of the store, but unfortunately I could still hear them. At this point I should tell you that this was not a small grocery store, it was a big store. And it was BUSY.

So, I’m stuck at the pharmacy counter and I say to the bemused Pharmacist ‘Those are my Husband’s children’

‘Oh’, she says, ‘are you just taking care of them for the day?’

Now. At this point I could have said yes. But I’m a wimp, so I said ‘No, I just say that when they annoy me’. She didn’t find it funny. I blushed and scuttled away from that counter and made my way through the queue to go and find my Husband’s children.

In the toy aisle.

Completely unperturbed about the whereabouts of their Mother.

I walked past them and eventually they follow me into the juice aisle where I promise them each a juice if they don’t run off again. Which they promptly did.

So.

I stalked off to the till, half of my shopping undone. Did they look for me? Did they worry? Did they cry? Did they wail like abandoned children? No. A resounding NO. They were having too much fun.

By then there were several people with trolleys behind me and I could still hear the whooping and shouting. I was praying that I could just finish paying and then herd them to the door with the minimum of fuss. Then I heard them, thundering down the aisles shouting Mammmmmaaaaaaa!!!

The woman in the queue behind me helpfully pointed me out to them and I looked playful daggers at her and said ‘I’m hiding from them’

I know, I know. It sounded much MUCH funnier in my head. The look of abject horror on her face was priceless.

If you were that customer, I apologise. We love our kids, really, we do, I wanted them to just realise for a nano second that they could lose me, not the other way around.

Was I cross? Not really, but I do worry that they make such a noise in the shops, I can only imagine how loud they must be to the untrained ear.

The worst of it all: I wasn’t even wearing lipstick. Scandalous, I know.

How do your kids behave in the shops?

Just a random post about parenting styles

There’s a lovely Australian site, The Hoopla, that I follow and today they had this article about a custody battle. In a nutshell, an Australian married an Italian and raised children in Italy and after a separation took their 4 daughters to Australia on holiday in 2010, but never returned to Italy.

There is a lot of talk about how it was handled and that the Mom is now in Australia and her girls back in Italy with their Dad. It is a bit of a sordid tale of how they had hidden the children in Australia in a bid to avoid them going back to Italy, but as always there is probably a lot more behind the story than anyone will ever know as they are now back in a villa in Florence behind locked gates. My heart ached for everyone, there is no happy ending.

I also read this story with such mixed feelings partly because I had a conversation with a Mom yesterday that has been battling with a difficult divorce for more than 2 years now so it’s been playing on my mind. This is besides another friend that recently settled a divorce after a hard 3 odd year battle. A battle that was often not played fairly by the other party and has left a very bitter taste and not many warm and fuzzy feelings toward this person (yes, I’m being vague. Think “I want to stab this person with a spoon” type not warm and fuzzy feelings)

So why am I blogging about stuff that really has nothing at all to do with me? There was so much going through my mind when I was reading about this, so many questions.

Many of us have lived overseas and I know plenty of people that were involved with/married/divorced people from other countries because they either met because we were traveling or they came here. (I was also not averse to dating the odd Australian)

Then I was thinking about how I would have parented if I had ended up having children with someone not from the same background as me or even from a different country. That must place an enormous amount of strain on a relationship, especially if both parents are very involved in raising the kids.

Often we will come to a little cross-road in raising kids about basic things like manners, that I know that there would have been a potential for conflict if Etienne and I weren’t raised so similarly and evolved from there. It comes naturally that we would agree, we don’t have to stop and figure it out first before we present a united front to the kids, it’s just THERE.

Are your parenting styles the same or different? If you are from different backgrounds/countries did you battle with some things? Did you manage to figure it out?

When a perfectly good Parenting idea completely backfires

In a bid to have a lie-in this morning Etienne came up with (what sounded like) a great idea:
The child that sleeps the latest gets a surprise.

We were taking bets on who would be awake first (Daniel or Isabel) and would was the likely winner (Mignon. That child loves her sleep).

At 6:00 this morning Daniel is in our room. Can we please put the duvet back on his bed, he is NOT awake yet.

At 6:15 Isabel comes waltzing in and climbs in on Etienne’s side, sniffing and sneezing.

At 6:20 Mignon crawls in on my side.

At 6:23 I give up and get up. Mignon ‘can’t get up, her leg is sore’. So, off we go to the lounge, me carrying Mignon. As we pass Daniel’s room, there he is, lurking in his doorway. A clear winner.

So I congratulate Daniel on being the clear ‘winner’ and he beams happily from his bedroom door.

Chaos ensues. The girls are sobbing: they also want to be winners. Why aren’t they winners? They must also be winners. All accompanied by the most heart wrenching crying, all before 6:30 on a Sunday morning.

Sigh.

Having an existential parenting crisis explaining the concept of winning, keeping the ‘un’-winners happy whilst not taking away from the ‘winner’. All before 6:30 on a Sunday morning. Not ideal.

So, we have agreed that Daniel gets a bigger ‘surprise’ than the girls and now everyone seems happy.

Pass the coffee please.

Just some random family stuff

 

At Fairview last Sunday

This is just a post about random things the kids have said recently, partly because they are too good not to share, partly because that is the actual purpose of this blog and partly because it’s Friday and we could all do with a giggle.The girls are really into the concept of “heaven” at the moment.  Last week Sue and I took our girls to a market at Welbeloond (Etienne had taken Daniel to his very first rugby game at Newlands) and on the way they were chatting in the car.  The conversation was around heaven and going to heaven and Isabel asks R (Sue’s daughter) what you do in heaven when you get there and she pipes up: Nothing, you’ll be dead.

Uncomfortable little silence.

So I suggested that you would be an angel and there’s lots to do.  Thankfully no-one pursued that line of questioning at the time.

This morning I have Mignon and Isabel in the car and on the way to their school we have a lovely view over the Stellenbosch mountains.  So, they ask if we can please go to the mountains this weekend.  At first I prattled on about all the other things we have planned for the weekend and then I thought, hold on, so I asked what they wanted to do on the mountains.  Why, be close to heaven Mom, they pipe up.

And then they proceed to ask me if they are really going to heaven at the end of the year.  Er, not yet my darlings, but thanks for asking.  I had a moment of panic about what they are taught at school, but I think it’s because we talk about our beach holiday at the end of the year and Christmas so much.

Yesterday afternoon I arrive home to the sound of Lady Antebellum booming from the kitchen and as I come up the stairs Mignon comes leaping from the back door: “Mom!  Did you walk ALL the way from work?” And then we all had a little twirl in the kitchen to our favourite song whilst Etienne poured the wine.

It might be because I’m feeling a little agitated in general or because I’m simply turning into a Table Manner Nazi, but nothing irritates me more than hearing someone chew (a) and hearing someone chew with an open mouth (b).  It drives me completely insane.

After numerous requests for Daniel to please PLEASE take smaller bites and chew with his mouth closed I eventually aggressively whisper to Etienne under my breath that “Ek gaan van my kop af raak” (I’m going to lose my mind).  Daniel turns to me and asks “Mamma, hoe gaan jou kop afval?” (how is your head going to drop?)

Sigh.

Daniel left me this little gift on the bedside table last night. Etienne calls him the Slug Lord. They all have a ridiculous obsession with slugs.

 

And then, lastly, we all worry about whether our kids eat enough as it seems to be a never-ending battle to get them to eat a proper, balanced meal.

Thursday nights is Roast Chicken night in our house.  It’s the one night of the week we go big with cooked veggies and rice and potatoes.  Last night there was butternut, broccoli, the chicken, roast potatoes and salad.  Normally they each pick at a piece of chicken, have a potato (except for Mignon, she LOVES potatoes) and (under duress) the tiniest speck of broccoli imaginable (the girls, Daniel loves the stuff).  Last night they ate.  And ate.  And ate. And ate.  They polished those dishes of food like there was no tomorrow, not a lick of food left.  AND then they demanded a snack too.

Etienne and I were gobsmacked.  

Check, tonight they will pull up their noses at whatever we decide to feed them and we will live in hope of them eating a proper meal for the next 3 months.  But the memory of last night will help us live in hope.

 We are off to the Sauvignon Festival tomorrow (if the Cape Weather behaves) with a bunch of friends.  If you see us, please stop by and say hi or if it looks too crazy just tweet and wave from a distance, I won’t take offense, promise.

What are your plans for the weekend?

Big boy stuff

I made a horrific discovery today.

I was in the shops, looking for a t-shirt for Daniel, when my eye fell on a really cool loud green shirt. So, I do the mental math about what size I should buy, knowing he will be 7 in May and I start paging through the hangers. No size 7-8.

Weird.

So I look across the ocean of Spider-Man and Ben10 and spot nothing over size 6-7. Then it dawns on me: no more cool small boy stuff for my son, soon he will fall into the no-man’s land of 7-14. We are now venturing into unchartered territory.

Big boy territory.

To say I’m freaked would be a bit of an understatement. All I could think was how I should really just have another baby.

Apparently this is something that happens when your child goes to Grade 1, this wanting to re-Mother, but nothing prepared me for feeling this way. Part of me wants to push him out into the world, but an even bigger part of me wants to keep him in my arms, safe from being stereotyped and bullied and protect him from all the meanness that lurks in the world. But I know that this will also keep him from seeing all the love and the kindness and generosity, even though the hurtful things will stay with him for longer and teach him the biggest lessons.

Now I just need to put on my own big girl panties and deal with it.

How did you cope with your kids getting bigger?

An Ode to Words

I recently went to a talk on school readiness. To be honest, my friend Sue bullied me a little into going, but I’m really glad she did. (Hi Sue! Love you!)

I left feeling very nervous about whether Daniel was ready for Grade 1 or not and determined to find time (did you just fall off your chair laughing?) to tick those all-important milestones between now and January 2013. The broken arm has been a bit of a setback from a physical perspective and we are worried about his ball skills, so there’s lots of work to be done there.

BUT

Last night we were all reading on the floor as we do every night (and by “we” I mean Etienne and I take turns) and Daniel was trying to read the words. He can make out some of the 3-letter-words already and is absolutely desperate to read the rest. It was like something has just clicked for him lately and he was very impatient about being read to. I was very happy for us to spend the time trying to spell out the words of The Three Little Pigs, but the Sussies were having none of it last night and kept rushing us. I felt quite sad about it as it was already quite late, but from now on one of us will read to the girls and the other will read with Daniel.

This is a very big deal to us. I can still remember when I learnt to read, my whole life opened up before me and I have been a voracious reader all my life (Etienne more so, believe it or not). We have spent hours and hours reading to the kids, the same books over and over and over again. They each fall asleep clutching a book most nights.

So, our children might not ever turn out to be Olympic athletes, but they might love words as much as we do.

And that is more than enough for us.

Can you still remember when you started reading?

Any suggestions for easy Afrikaans readers for Daniel?

Edit to add: I called Daniel’s teacher this afternoon asking about suggestions for books.  There was a letter from her waiting when I got home asking for us to send Daniel for a language assessment with a Speech Therapist.  Would it have been that hard for her to give me a heads up when we spoke earlier?  I know it’s not about me, but isn’t it just a little cold to not say anything or bother to contact us?  Or do I expect too much?