found in my notebook

Turns out witnessing someone learn to read and write is just as exciting as it was watching them start to walk and talk all those years ago.

The world just opened its arms to her a little wider.

diy fizz ballz: don't do it!

In preparation for Friday's 6th birthday party in a couple of weeks we've been making fizz balls (bath bombs) to go in the party packs.
'Something I've Wanted To Do for Ages' meet 'Perfect Opportunity'. I'm sure you'll be very happy together.

Or ... not.

Frankly these were a mission, and after 4 batches (mostly unsuccessful) and still a few hearts short of the number we need to fill all the party packs, I'm SO OVER THEM.

Don't be put off by the vast quantity of ingredients - they're all easily obtainable (brandy optional, not actually for the fizz balls you understand) - and the instructions I followed here were very clear and helpful.

And the ones that worked are very cute and pink and rose-smelling. Friday has carefully labelled them all 'bath' due to concerns that her friends may eat them.

But each batch was tryingly hit and miss and I'm not really sure why. Obviously sometimes the mix was too dry, sometimes too wet - but we measured very carefully, honest. Possibly the recent weather was a factor too - rainy days are not very conducive to drying powder.
I'm tempted to say that all in all the project was a bit of a balls up but you know ... cheap joke.

Luckily similarly to baking experiments, there are always those in this household prepared to make the most of the failed attempts - the girls have had some very pink 'n fizzy baths recently.

But still we must make more! Just a few more ... and then NEVER AGAIN I tell you, never again.

bitchslap

So someone called me a bitch this week. Not to my face, not even this week really. Someone called me a bitch (twice apparently) a few weeks ago but someone else told me she did this week. Comprendo?

What I don't comprendo is that the woman who called me a bitch is in her 40's, and the person who relayed this kind message to me, is 6.
Yup, a grown woman called me a bitch in front of her daughter.

THIS is why we women have issues with each other.

There is so much focus these days on raising our sons to be respectful to women, what about raising our daughters to be nice to each other? And let's not forget just raising our kids to be respectful of other people, regardless of gender, or perceived bitchiness.
Let's not give our kids the language with which to hurt and degrade each other.

How's that for a not unreasonable suggestion?

food guilt? no thank you.

You know ... I'm getting a little tired of all this food drama. I know, I know, I should probably be taking it all more seriously but my god, how much time are we expected to spend on this?

Let's break down all the things we know or have been told about food:

We should drink more water.
But not from plastic bottles, mountain streams or taps in most countries of the world. We're told Cape Town is one of only 33 cities in the world with drinkable tap water. Then we're told that's not in fact true.

We should eat lots of fruit.
But not those with waxy skins. Not those grown too far away. Not those grown in the 'wrong' countries (like oranges from apartheid SA of old). Not those whose fructose content is too high. We must take note, collate and memorise the long lists going round of fruits which should Only Be Grown Organically.

We should eat lots of protein.
But not red meat. Not battery-reared poultry. Don't eat chicken reared on animal by-products, oh but watch out for the grain fed ones too. Only fish from the right SASSI list, and those which contain no traces of dolphin. We must not eat animals which were slaughtered inhumanely. We must find this out how? We must not eat meat which is too fatty. We must not eat meat which is too lean. We must not eat meat cured with numerous different hard to pronounce substances. We must definitely never eat 'deli meat'. Pate is to be regarded with suspicion.

I'm not even getting in to eggs.

We should eat lots of legumes.
But only organically grown ones. Also ditto, no beans with too great a carbon footprint (they don't even have feet) or grown in countries not regarded as fairtrade.
We shouldn't eat beans canned in certain metals and we should always, always be on high alert for Additives.

We should drink milk.
Just not un/pasteurised, possibly bleached, incorrectly bottled milk from cows which may or may not be hormone-fed.
Ditto cheese.

We shouldn't eat too much wheat. But heaven forbid we touch maize.

All honey should be BEE approved.

Sugar is evil. But also good. And sugar-replacements are direct from Satan.

Makes grocery shopping a whole lot of fun huh?

I'm being flippant, but I'm also quite serious. I could spend an immense portion of my time getting my knickers in a knot about this. I could add food-guilt to the long list of things we parents fret about. Guilt that we can't afford to buy all organic. Guilt that we don't spend every free moment growing and rearing our own food.
Guilt that I'm not forcing my family to only eat organically-grown-fairtrade-anti-oxidant-humanely picked-additive free-unflavoured-'healthy' meals which we can't afford and they probably won't eat but I spent 100 hours this week planning, shopping and preparing them so shut up and eat it and you'll thank me when you live to be 105?

I shop as consciously as we can afford to. I pick my food battles, my principled stances, and I stick by them. I enjoy preparing well-balanced as healthy as possible meals for my family. I feel positively ecstatic when everyone eats these meals.
I am NOT going to add food guilt to my list of parental burdens.

I'm saving my guilt for when I'm at the checkout of the supermarket with my trolley full of groceries and the woman behind me has a baby on her back, a toddler at her side and only a 5kg bag of (not organic! genetically modified!) mielie meal in her basket.
That's what I choose to fret about.

a necessary list

Yesterday evening, a little terrified at the prospect of being stuck indoors all weekend in this rainy weather, I got out the whiteboard and commissioned a list.

A List for a Rainy Weekend.

The first thing on the list quickly became 'play with board', but then we got down to business. My favourite item is Friday's idea, to 'wear cuddly clothes'.

So far we've completed items 1, 3 and 5. And as it turns out that 3 ('watch circus') meant Cirque du Soleil and Madagascar 3 (polkadotpolkadotpolkadotafro), we've kind of stalled there.

It's good to know we've got a few more plans in the works for when we need them though.

If you're in Cape Town, stay warm and dry!

flower wreath of sanity

Back in March when I was going a little mental with the full-time-mothering-a-wild-monster thing I reminded myself that the thing which consistently makes me happy (besides Converse), and the most productive (in the restoration of heart and soul sense) thing I could do with my scant free time – was to make something.

So over the last few months I made this.

Egg carton flower wreath found, of course, through Pinterest.

The process of making small, precise snips through the (surprisingly) tough carton was deeply satisfying, especially after particularly frustrating days. As a friend remarked: ‘So instead of throwing lawn furniture around you’re cutting flowers?’ Yip, I'm a cutter, not a chucker.

I kinda liked them unpainted too. Maybe that would've made a more sophisticated piece!

It was also great to have a project I could work on in small stages, finding a moment here and there to cut some petals. Later the painting also happened in fits and starts – sometimes while the girls were busy painting too, sometimes after they were in bed. They even painted a couple of blooms themselves, which I fixed up afterwards!

This was my project and I was surprised and pleased at how they respected that. We have always been firm on respecting other people's ‘work’ – something Friday first picked up at her Montessori playgroup, and I think it’s paid off.

Every step of the project was fun and while the end product is a little ‘crafty’ – only just stopping short of painted macaroni really – it’s made me very happy, relieved a lot of my tension through a difficult time and will brighten up a corner of our home over the coming winter months.

in my shoes

Take kids to school. Dash to Checkers for some necessary groceries. Deliberate through aisles, make snap decisions, ring through checkout, reach into bag ... no wallet.

Abandon purchases. Drive home cursing. Find wallet. Rue the time lost and the lack of milk for that desperately needed second cup of tea.

Turn on computer. No internet. Inquiry reveals Telkom has suspended account due to missed payment. More cursing.

Embark on 45 minute forensic investigation of the last 6 months bills and payments with morose internet-less husband.

Did I mention husband is home with manflu?

Weep.

Do mountains of laundry.

Dash to pharmacy. Inadvertently bust virile looking young man buying Impotex. Am reminded that some have it worse off than me.

Realise not enough time remains to buy necessary groceries so proceed to collect small girl from school first.

Return to Checkers. Put child in trolley. Push trolley over unforeseen bump, child flies forward and splits lip on trolley. Screaming.

Cursing.

Child calms but refuses to be cleaned up. Proceed through shop with blood-smeared sobbing child.

Collect big girl. Return home.

To find this waiting.

And so, between that frustrating morning, and before an afternoon walk which continued in the same vein. A walk which included being rained on and dog getting small branch wedged in her throat (more cursing, sotto vocce this time).

Before that walk there was this ...

And inside, this ...

Thank you Converse for never failing to make me happy. Thank you Marimekko for collaborating with happy-making Converse. Thank you Heather for cluing me onto these in the first place. And thank you Citymob for a speedy and excellently-timed delivery.

Life can kick me in the head with these anytime.

TGIF

Hey, remember my other kid?

You know, the one I've not really mentioned for posts and posts because of all the erhmagerd-3-year-old-from-hell type stuff that's been going on here lately?

Well she's still around. And she is just ... adorable. Really truly, 5 has been so very wonderful that I must admit to being a little apprehensive about 6. Surely this high of chatty curious sweet-natured playful fun must precede a low of emo angst?

We're seeing glimpses ... There's been some crying for no particular reason. There was an inexplicable meltdown because I got water on her new strawberry legwarmers (while filling a water balloon for her) because 'Now they're all weeeeeeeeeet!' There are some requests for her sister to leave her alone, some calls for peace and quiet.

But for the most part Friday is my fun, my sanity, my darling. And, in the same way Sunday's delightful baby-ness helped me get through her older sister's Tyrannical Three's, Friday's Fabulous Five is helping me get through them this time round.

She is patient. She is kind. She loves her sister so much. She is always ready with a cuddle, a chat, a song. She says thank you. Her laugh has the power to crack my darkest mood.

We're reading Little House in the Big Woods - an enormously important and precious moment for me, sharing my childhood love with a child of my own.

We're talking about her teacher's gay relationship, Mr Mandela and brand assimilation (she rolls her eyes while I rant about people forcing little girls to think everything they own must be slathered in Barbie).
We listen to the radio and when she notes that 'this guy's not really singing hey Mum, more like talking', and I say it's called 'rap' music she asks, 'Is that because he's talking rapidly?
Wow, maybe it is?

There's some growing up happening, no doubt. Suddenly she knows who Taylor Swift is, and Justin 'Beaver'.  She got a brain worm the other day, saying HannahMontanaHannahMontanaHannahMontana - it does roll off the tongue quite nicely - and she dances gangnam style.

But she'll still romp in the sea in her knickers given half a chance. Collecting plough shells her lips will move as she tells herself some story.
Her eyes will still light up at the first whiff of an 'imagining'. She makes a game out of almost anything.
She'd give her life to David Attenborough if he'd have her.

Basically, in the words of Robert Smith:

I don't care if Monday's blue

Tuesday's gray and Wednesday too

Thursday I don't care about you

It's Friday, I'm in love

chalk and cheese

Sunday's new school couldn't be less like the school she attended last year. We loved last year's school, and we love this one, make no mistake, but I do marvel at the differences.

Last year's school was bright and colourful and spanking clean. This year's school is earthy and natural, the brightest colours in the place are on the kids, this year's school is muddy and haphazard and ... mysterious.

Last year's dressing up rail was a parade of delightful outfits, various characters and animals, lots of sparkly fairy wings.
This year's dressing up suitcase is a unknown bundle of weird and wonderful - second-hand hats and homemade creations, scarves in every natural dyed colour known to childkind.

Last year's play-dough was glittery and aromatic, cut with bright plastic shape cutters, this year's play-dough is ... yup, naturally dyed, and slowly all melding into the same shade of brown, moulded into gnomes and toadstools.

Last year's outside was a big netted trampoline, climbing frames and a guinea-pig in a hutch. This year's outside is a vintage swing-set, a climbable tree, a teepee and a friendly Great Dane to pet through a fence.

Last year's school had the alphabet on the wall, this year's school has a surfboard in the corner.

But what last year's school and this year's school have in common is this: a teacher whom Sunday loves. A woman who sees my baby girl, who gets her idiosyncrasies and laughs at her jokes, who guides her through these first fragile years of learning about group interaction and standing on one's own two small feet.

Two utterly different sides of the same warm, secure coin. How lucky to be exposed to both.

the here and now

Sunday started school last week. She's loving it. At 12h30 each day I am a happy calm big person collecting a happy calm little person from school.
This is good.

A dear friend treated me to a spa morning at the Arabella on Friday. I had a 65 minute massage.
This is so very, very good.

I've had a lingering malingering coldy flu bug which come this Friday will have been around for 2 weeks.
This is not so good.

This afternoon we found the eviscerated carcass of a pigeon on our lawn, not work which either of our cats, or dog, could have accomplished. Consensus is that a bird of prey had it's lunch in our Norfolk pine.
This is actually quite cool.

Did I tell you we had an otter on our lawn a few weeks back?
This is utterly amazing.

We've spent many still sunny late afternoons on the beach recently. Autumn reminds us every year of its magnificence in blue and gold.
This is a blessing.

Our small elderly ginger cat has pissed on the (carpeted!) stairs again. Every time she walks across the room Husband snarls 'Dead cat walking.'
This is potentially not good.

My big girl, at dinner this evening, regaled us in graphic detail on the two methods in which babies could be born, and tried to decided whether she would have a home or hospital birth. I casually asked, 'Is this something you're talking about at school at the moment?'
She answered, 'No Mum, we're talking about road safety.'
This is funny.

I'm going to Jo'burg this weekend to play with my bestie and pat her apparently enormous bump before she becomes a mother of two soon.
I am going to Jo'burg by myself to see my friend.
This is the very best of all.