a good moment

What with the pox 'n all, the girls and I spent rather a lot of time house-bound last week. These two sisters, who for the most part are starting to play beautifully together, got a little frayed around the edges and eventually snapped like the string of a cheap bead necklace. Oh, and that also happened.

Tears, beads everywhere, accusatory finger-pointing, despair and then - what do you know - busyness for the next hour or so.

First the beads needed to be collected, counted, colour-categorised, and then re-strung. All favourite activities.

Little beads proved a bit tricky for little fingers, so I dug out the shape-sorting bucket and a shoe-lace.

Happiness.

But we weren't done categorising (these are girls after my own heart). Quick colour and shape reference cards were made and they were off.

A squabble which turned into an hour's diversion of fun, learning and sisterly cooperation. A bad moment which needed just the gentlest input from me to change course.

We all learnt something that afternoon.

baking brags # 3: rainbow cake

It's nearly June. And as our house buying / selling situation gets no closer to resolution but infinitely more tedious and nerve-wracking and all-consuming by the day, I've decided to direct my energies (yup, all of them) to something far more fun and important: Friday's 5th birthday party.

My greatest concern is how on earth I'm going to top this beauty, the 6 layer rainbow cake I baked for last years party.

 

 pre-outer icing, with the wooden rainbow puzzle which inspired it all

the birthday girl

It was a surprise, lovingly (and with not too many expletives) assembled the night before her party and stashed in the guest bathroom until The Great Reveal.

I was a little concerned that a plain white (albeit very big) cake would seem a little disappointing to her, but I think her face once we cut into it says it all ... later that evening she told me that she wasn't at all concerned when she first saw it as she 'knew it would be special'. My heart.

It was a winner cake, and a fabulous Rainbow Birthday Party ... now what to do this year .... ?

guess what we've got?

Well, admittedly not all of us, just all of us under 5.

Happy spotty weekend ....

portents & dreams

On the morning of my wedding, a fish eagle flew over my parent's house, calling and calling and wishing me well.
My most precious childhood memories, long summer holidays dirty and free on the banks of the Botriver Vlei, are always accompanied by the cry of the fish eagles which roosted there.
Weeks ago, the first time we stopped outside the house we're hoping to buy, we heard one overhead.

We bought our current house 9 years ago, from an elderly man who'd lived here for over 30 years. The house was filled with net curtains and knick-knacks, potted African Violets and lots of polished brass.
The house we're hoping to buy is owned by an elderly lady, who's lived there for over 30 years. It's currently filled with knick-knacks, many many potted African Violets, and lots of polished brass.

Today is my birthday. Driving home through the rain under gloomy skies, we saw a magnificent and bold rainbow, arcing over our car. One foot, zinging with colour, seemed to trail just behind us, and seeking out the other I found it over the lake, hovering right over the house we hope will become our next home.

Our dreams have been strange these last few weeks. Our days, filled with estate agents and banks and hopes and fears, filled with packing and sorting and tidying our home, are processed nightly through our dreams.

Husband dreams of closed doors, of boats and objects just beyond his reach.

I dream of flooded gardens, the inability to express myself. I wander through dreams in a cheap white wedding dress, sensing my partner's frustration at waiting, unfurling his palm to discover a sliver of soap I recognise from our bathroom, 'Where must I put it?' he pleads with me, 'I can't find anywhere to put it.'

This state of flux makes us restless, and tired. We hope for a quick resolution. We try to believe in the future without getting unduly excited.
We hope our portents don't become dreams, hope our dreams remain firmly in our heads.

say hello to my little friend(s)

WARNING: Arachnophobes, keep walking. Seriously.

Sitting on a sunny bench in Kirstenbosch on Tuesday afternoon, watching Sunday devour a mielie and marveling at the yellowness of it in the late afternoon light, I casually glanced up and gahhhhhhhhhh!

Golden Orb Web Spiders. About a grazillion of them. Look. They're really beautiful.

I can't recall ever having noticed these ladies in Kirstenbosch before. And we go often. I wondered whether their being out in such force was seasonal, but after a bit of research it seems not, just that they're far more common in the Cape South Peninsula in the last few years than ever before.
They're not toxic (unless you're a small winged creature) and they get their name from the golden strands of their amazingly intricate webs.

While going through my photos I recalled Heather posting photos of spider webs in Kirstenbosch last year - here - and was interested to see it was more or less the same time of year when she took those.

It may be that the Golden Orb Web Spider doesn't spin her web in specific seasons, but some seasons just display them better.
I think this magnificent Autumn light in Cape Town brings out the best in all of us.
Get outside!

when you're 2 ...

When you're 2 it doesn't occur to you,
To try and hide when you're having a poo.
In the car, at the Spar, at school, by the pool,
When you're 2 any loo with a view will do.

When you're 2 you don't know how to behave in a queue,
'Big boobs!' 'Chubby man!' you shout for all to hear you.
Pick your nose, stand on toes, run up and down rows,
When you're 2 no queue can contain the very two-ness of you.

When you're 2 everyone wants a piece of you,
They smile and they wink and they coo-coo-katchoo.
You can frown, you can scowl, you can launch a blood-curdling howl,
When you're 2 they'll keep on coming at you,

Unless you happen to be having that poo.

buying & selling in a time of children

We've put our house on the market. As of this morning there's a big yellow sign on our front gate and I'm imagining the neighbours are all a-twittering out there (as in twittering like birds not tweeting like people with nothing better to do, but you never know ...).
We've had our offer accepted on a gorgeous place on the other side of town, but as it all hangs in the balance until this place is sold we're walking a strange line between elation and apprehension. Interesting times.

Trials and tribulations of buying and selling in a time of (small) children:

We're trying to only give them as much information as they need, or can deal with, or we can deal with, but are still having to answer some pretty interesting questions .... 'So our new house will still have my room in it hey Mum? My room will still look exactly like this, just the rest of the house will be different right?'
'And we'll still have a pool hey Mum? I mean, we can't leave this ugly pool behind?'
Overheard to little sister: 'Just hide that juice bottle under your bed, we don't like it, it can stay here when we move.'

We're trying not to nag them too much about keeping the house tidy while we work ourselves to the ground getting show-house ready.
We continually weigh up the pro's of them being preoccupied in a game which allows us time to get other stuff done, versus the cons of the game in question being moving the entire contents of the playroom onto our bed.

We have sotto voce cryptic half-Afrikaans conversations about bonds and agents and try not to swear - they understand swearing in any language.

I discover that there are few things as demeaning as completing bond application forms when you're a stay-at-home-mum with a tiny personal income and a BA English degree. A walking stereo-type.
The first time we applied for a bond I was a business lady, in a not quite business suit but with with a folder of relevant docs and a meaningful signature and a sharp haircut. This time I wrote N/A (not applicable) more times then I care to mention on all the forms while attempting to entertain a 2 yr old with some paper clips and a bank deposit form.
As we arrived at the bank I'd turned to my husband and said, 'Damn, should I have power-dressed a bit for this?' He looked at my jeans, sneakers and sticky-faced toddler and said, 'Nah, you're dressed for work.' Then he ducked.

I discover that the standard rules of parenting apply to all situations. The toddler will fill its nappy seconds before the estate agent arrives. The nearly-5 yr old will want to 'be naked' at the most inopportune time. Someone will fall and crack skull and scream hysterically as you answer an all-important call from the bank. Someone will discover the box of toys you've been collecting (with stealth and subterfuge) for the charity shop and declare the contents to be The Most Favourite Toys in the Whole World and How Dare You even consider doing away with them?!

Fun times. Interesting times. We go on show on Sunday. Hold thumbs for us!

a little TMI for now ...

I've mentioned before how Friday's pretty clued up on the whole procreation thing. As illustrated by that experience, to my utmost relief at the time, she's still a little fuzzy about the actual mechanics, but she has the biology down pat.
We've been waiting for the penny to drop, for her brain to tick over and produce the much-anticipated question: exactly how do the mummy egg and the daddy sperm join in blissful union? I've totally been expecting The Question to come at the least convenient and most socially inappropriate time, but I wasn't expecting this ...

A book we checked out of the library on Saturday.

I guess, in retrospect, I should probably have scanned through it first. Before I found myself tucked up in bed with her that evening, innocently charging through this (it must be said, very funny and delightfully illustrated) book. In hindsight it's pretty frikkin' obvious it's a book about where babies come from right?

Especially when we got to this page:

I took a deep breath, reminded myself I'm a grown-up and soldiered through until I flipped pages and ... er ... wham!
 

Come on Babette, what did I ever do to you?

In one fell swoop you managed to;
a) drop me right in the oncoming path of Questions I May Not be Ready to Answer Just Yet (explaining the basics of the sex act just become soooo much more preferable to answering some of the questions these illustrations could inspire)
b) make me feel completely sexually unadventurous and boring (a skateboard??)
c) possibly change the way my young daughter feels about balloons forever.

Never mind all kinds of related queries pertaining to gimp balls, hallucinogenic drugs, bondage, gravity, anatomy and ornithology. Or maybe that's just me ...

However, I think Friday was as gobsmacked as I. She remained silent as I rapidly read to the end and whipped out another book, quickly changing the topic and hopefully her chain of thought.

But I know that little inquiring mind I've spawned. She'll file this somewhere, to be brought out and examined when she's ready. And one day, at the least convenient and most socially inappropriate time, she'll suddenly ask; 'Mummy, why was that Daddy in that book looking so worried while he mated with the Mummy?'

Thanks a lot Babette.

PS, I was going to apologise for how blue these photos came out but hey, it seems kind of appropriate. So I won't.

camping the three

We're nearly home with new fascinating insights into camping, rules of survival and over-shares about abandoned personal hygiene and our dog's predilection for eating poo ... but before we get to that, and if you're not bored to death by our ruddy outdoors-ness yet, one last camping post from yesteryear ...

October 27, 2010

We're just back from a fabulous little camping trip - our first in over a year (bit of a record for us) and our first with Sunday - I've a couple of thoughts ...

~ how is it that the loudest voice in the campsite, or at least the one that carries the clearest, is always the most boring?
This is not when you overhear a revelatory explanation of Derrida, a fascinating political theory or a hilarious anecdote. No, the voice that wafts across to your fireplace is money down bitching about the state of SA sports. Or who should have won a recent reality chef contest. Or rehashing boring previous holiday stories, exactly how many kilometres were traveled between one boring destination and another, how many boring meals were eaten and at what price.
Also, you quickly realise the correlation between how many glasses of wine The Voice has had and how boring it becomes. By the 3rd evening you can almost set your watch by it.
If you were wearing one.

~ this is of course only a problem when you're staying in one of those camping spots where the sites seem to be right on top of each other, just the merest hedge - if you're lucky - separating you from your neighbours. At Addo this last week this is as tastefully done as possible, but none-the-less you are likely to learn far more about your neighbours then you may have chosen to. As no doubt they did about us.
'Are you going to give the baby some boob now Mum?'

~ when you go somewhere like Addo, out of season, mid week, you find all your fellow campers are retirees, living the dream wandering round the country in their camper vans - replete with satellite dishes, fold-out dish-washing racks, homemade curtains and high tech camping chairs. We were surrounded by these and I imagined their hearts sinking as we pulled up with two kiddies live-wired on the back seat.
But of course this combination of olds and smalls worked surprisingly well. The oldies missed their grandkids and smiled indulgently at our girls. And they kept the same hours - early to bed and early to rise. No loud music keeping our kids awake, and no need to hush the children's excited early morning shenanigans.

~ when camping one can often expect strange night time adventures ... Pre-babies Husband and I once lay tense and awake in our tent for long minutes convinced someone wearing flip-flops was creeping around our campsite. Eventually we shone our torch beam out, only to catch the small glinting eyes of a tiny little hopper mouse.
On arriving at Addo I taught Friday to read the different signs for the Men's and Ladies toilets. We were later to rue the pedanticness of a 3 year old when Husband carried her off to the loo at 1am only to return unsuccessful. Even half-asleep she wouldn't let him take her into the Men's, and he didn't want to go into the Ladies for fear of encountering a weak-bladdered Granny. We had to stifle our giggles in the silent dark.

But my favourite nocturnal adventure of this recent trip happened to Husband on the night he spent camping alone on his drive up. The place he stayed at had two horses roaming around the campsite. They were friendly and seemingly unconcerned by him. In the night however he woke to a really strange and undecipherable noise. He could tell the horses were distressed, but what was that clanking?
One of the horses, overcome with curiosity, had become entangled in his camping chair and was getting more and more freaked out, eventually running wildly around the campsite, whinnying and tossing its head. Husband was just wandering what(tf) to do when the horse shook itself free, leaving the chair unscathed in a muddy heap, nothing damaged but equine pride.

Fun times. I like to camp. And we're so happy that our daughters seem to too.