hug adjustment

A friend and I were chatting on the weekend about the challenges of divvying out equal hug rations to our children.

The small girl is an easy hug, she still fits (barely) into the crook of my arm, she can be hoicked up onto a hip. She's still in a nappy, still rounded, her head fits under my chin. I don't have to think about it much.

But hugging a 5 year old with gangly limbs and sharper angles, with longer hair to get in my nose, heavier in body weight and conversation, is more challenging. She still wants hugs, but logistically it takes more care.

I guess there's an evolutionary aspect to it. Our children grow up, and like chicks who no longer fit under their mother's wing they have to start learning to find their own way. They need to learn to self-soothe, to be confident in their place in the world and the family without the continual physical reassurance of mum's arms.

But as those hugs get fewer they also, as I think about it, get more meaningful. Now I need to take the time to sit down, kneel down, lie down, to physically accommodate my big baby. I'm incapable of doing anything else at the same time so I focus more. 

I sniff that nose-tickling hair, stroke those sharp shoulders and thin, strong limbs. I listen to what she's saying, really listen. I tell her to stop fidgeting and tell her, again, how small she was when she was born, how her hair was black and her face so very red.

She doesn't stick around as long. There's a world to conquer, a sister to bully, some ducks to chase.

She still wants hugs, long may that last, but she needs them less. Her world is expanding as those limbs grow.

Powered by a growing sense of self, she comes back for recharging less frequently, and I'm learning to appreciate it each time she does. 

Even as my thighs go numb from her bony bum.

well done us

We survived the move. We kept our collective sense of humour in tact. We weathered our moments of emotional fallout and rallied around each other through injuries and exhaustion.

The girls did really well too.

We're lucky that they're adventurous spirits, quite happy to go along with the chaos if it's entertaining enough and there are enough snacks. Friday is old enough to have understood the logistics of it all, and Sunday just the gist; that we have a new house, that there are lots of boxes and that we 'Can't wait!' - a phrase she repeated endlessly in the last days.

And now we're in - finding our feet, our rhythm and hopefully one day finding the nail-clippers. We're in and we're back online and we're oh so very, very happy.

We're a lucky family, and we count our blessings every day.

utter telkom fail leaves blogger silent. fans weep.

Dear Blog,
This isn't personal. Please direct any feelings of neglect to Telkom, the world's worst phone and internet provider.
Soon we will be united in love and bloggy goodness once more.
Missing you,
Molly

summer of SAHM

This past week has been the last 5-day school week of the year for Friday. The last week of 3-day nanny (for Sunday) and cleaner (for me).
This past week has been a week of many, many lasts.

From Monday we will be in our new home, and the girls and I will be driving through to Mowbray just twice a week for a short (so short) school morning until the end of this term.
My Mum, who lives across the lake from us now (or will soon - so soon!), will be abroad for a month from Wednesday.

From the end of September there is no formal childcare, no school, just ... me. And them.

Logistically and financially this makes sense for our family right now. Emotionally and mentally it's started making sense to me too.

Next year Friday will start Grade R (we've found a school!) and Sunday will attend nursery 5 days a week. I will work more formally. There will probably need to be aftercare.
We will enter a spell (just 15 years or so) of early mornings and rushing and traffic and deadlines and proper shoes and extra-murals and packed lunches for all.

We have been spoiled these last years, my girls and I. Spoiled to have so much of each other (admittedly sometimes in chunks), spoiled - as a friend so wisely pointed out - to know each other so well.
A small home loan, some sacrifices, a determination to make it work all helped make this possible, but the times they are a-changing and we are all getting older and developing new needs.

I've had moments since these plans were hatched of real, chilling, terror at the thought of being a FULL TIME STAY AT HOME PARENT. I've shed some tears and worried whether we'll all come through it alive (the lake is right there you know) or at least psychologically intact.
But as the reality of this move has set in (36 hours to go!) and the truth of our new space has been revealed (it's every kind of wonderful). I've started to make peace.

This will be my maternity leave - a few years on from the traditional definition - but a time to put the rest of the world on hold a little and just be with my babies. Nurture them, grow them, play with them, not kill them.

This will be my summer of SAHM and I will, I must appreciate the privilege and wonder of that.

Will you help remind me of that when I come here to whinge?

if I were blogging ...

... all I'd be blogging about would be ...

Packing. And how I'm starting to wonder whether 'slow and steady wins the race' was the best approach. I feel like I've been packing my whole life and the real crunch only starts now ...

The Massive Cold Sore my body bequeathed me with just in case I was under the illusion that that I'm not stressed.

The Asshole Parent in Friday's school who bought her 6 year old daughter a BRA. The kid in question doesn't even have puppy fat boobies. I weep for humanity.

How I got 6 disturbing hits on this blog from a totally gross p-o-r-n site. Maybe I shouldn't be using words like b-o-o-b-i-e-s. I blame this post. Or maybe this one.

To confess that last week I became one of those parents who takes her 2 and a half year old to the doctor because omg there must be an explanation for the monstrous behaviour we've had inflicted on us recently right??
This is how that went ...
Me to doc: 'Either way I'm prepared to leave this consultation embarrassed. Either my kid has a raging ear infection I've been totally unaware of for the last week, or she's just 2 and a half and I'm an asshole.'
Doc: 'And you're hoping it's an ear infection.'
I love my doctor.
However, she examined Sunday from head to toe and declared her absolutely healthy.
'She's just preparing you for her teen years,' she said with a small smile.
I hate my doctor.

Not this kid surely? This delectable bundle of energy and imagination and observation and general delight?
The very same.

If I were blogging I fear I'd be totally boring and self-obsessed right now.
So I'm not.

teach them to talk

I'm a big talker. Always have been. Many of my kindergarten reports said kind things like 'bit of a chatterbox!', or, 'always has an opinion!'.
Nice ways of saying 'oh my god could she just stop talking for 5 freaking seconds already??!!'

(If I only I could find all those dear ladies now and let them know karma has totally sorted me out on this one  ... times two actually ....)

I digress.

I've always been a big talker - I credit myself with being a pretty good listener too - and while these things are to a measure personality based, I think how to listen, and how to talk, are on the (endless) list of skills we need to learn, too.
Preferably starting at home.

I learnt about debate at my mother's knee, literally. My parents enjoyed lively discussion, had no qualms disagreeing on things, managed their disagreements with wit and humour, and knew when to agree to disagree (one of the most necessary conversational skills one should master I reckon).

I spent many evenings listening in on the lively political and social discussions which took place around our dinner table, and the braai-fires and living rooms of our family friends.
My parents lived in an age of disinformation - what news they were able to access was often heavily censored, there was no internet, and the ability to listen - really listen, to read between the lines, to intelligently ask the kind of questions which would give you the information you needed and crucially, to talk it all out, was all the material they had with which to form their opinions and views on their world and its future.
I didn't always understand what they were talking about, but from early on I picked up the ways in which one conversed, the rhythms and patterns of debate and discussion. How to disagree, how to stick by your guns, how to see something from someone else's point of view and if necessary tailor your argument to make sense in their terms. How to back down, to concede, how to walk away with your dignity intact.
I learnt that one doesn't always need to speak louder to be heard. That it's the strength of your argument, not your language which'll win your audience over.
I learnt how good language can cow the greatest conversational bully, how and when to let your emotions show, or not.
I learnt exactly how much wine one should consume to be razor sharp and entertaining, and how just one glass too many can turn you into a droning incoherent bore.

These are some of the most valuable lessons of my childhood, I never underestimate for a second how incredibly lucky I am to have learnt them at home. And today, as we all feel very raw about the violence at Lonmin mine yesterday, these are the things I'm pondering again, and recommitting myself to teaching my two chatterboxes how to talk.

To really, really talk. To listen. To glean the facts from the excessive amount of news, opinion and information which abounds today (the exact opposite from my childhood but arguably no more clearer), to know how to identify the truths and the lies, to decide for themselves what those are.
To debate - with themselves, their contemporaries, their world.

I can't arm my daughters against natural disasters, car crashes or freak accidents, but I hope to be able to arm them against lack of communication. Something which I regard to be as dangerous, and almost more destructive, than anything else.

now I lay her down to 'leep

Sunday, aged two and a bit, decided to drop her afternoon nap. Her sister did the same thing at that age.
I was 7 weeks pregnant at the time - can you feel my pain?

I really thought Sunday would hang on longer. She loves(d) sleeping, and was still rocking a 2 hour nap the week before she quit.

But now baby don't nap no more and that, plus the sudden onset of TWO-ness, is making our evenings a little ... strained.

Tonight I lay on her bed in the dark, totally still, totally silent. While she thrashed around the bottom of it, emitting the guttural animal shrieks of frustration and utter over-wroughtness that I so clearly remember her sister making.
I lay on her bed in the dark, holding a fluffy turtle in position with my toe so she didn't bang her head too hard against the foot of the bed, waiting for her to calm.
I lay there and wondered how other parents deal with this, as we always perpetually wonder right?

I know there's no soothing her until she's ready. Strictly no touching her until she asks for it. I know there's nothing I can do but keep that turtle in position, silently apologise to the neighbours and lie there in the dark so she knows I'm there.

And when the shrieks turn to wails, when the thrashing becomes less violent, when the hand beating my leg starts caressing it instead, then at last will come the moment when she whimpers, ''leep wif Mummy', and I can bring her up to lie next to me, head on the pillow, hand on my face, and watch as she drifts off, still sobbing a little.
Then I lie there and let a big tear of my own slide down my cheek.

It was a long day for a little girl. And a long day for this big one too.

stepping up

Shew, this young lady is becoming one independent little being.

Our house regularly echoes with her desperate plea: 'I'll me do iiiiiiiiiit!' (utilising all possible pronouns - and her multi-functional black 'teps - in her quest for self-determination).

I find this stage so exciting - she's courageous, confident and oh so proud of herself when she completes a task to her (very exacting) satisfaction.
But it's a tough one too.

Sunday is having to learn one of the hardest lessons of her life: the world won't always work the way she wants it to.
Even as an adult this pisses me off, so I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for a 2 year old.
Actually I don't really have to imagine, I'm witnessing it nearly daily at the moment and, as always with this parenting gig, am often the meanie who's refusing to let her open the hot oven, use a teaspoon amount of toothpaste, wash her hair in the dog's bowl or ride in the front seat of the car.

Maybe the crux of the so-called 'terrible two's' (yukky phrase) is having to work out the complexities of context. Sometimes its totally okay, indeed encouraged, to be independent, self-sufficient and involved - sometimes it's okay to use knives and glasses - but other times (and suspiciously when you most want to), it's not allowed.
Why is that?
Whhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

packing with kids

Apparently the heart is because we love baking.

We love it so much that it's probably not a bad thing all the gear is packed away. Possibly we should archive this box once we get to the other side ...

But who am I kidding right?

crespella café creperie

With one month to go in Observatory I've compiled a 'bucket list' (dreadful concept really) of places I'd like to visit and things I'd like to do before we move.

Number 1 on the list was crepês at Crespella in Lower Main Road.

We've been meaning to go there for years ... I walk or drive past it every day for pancake's sake.

Vast menu, utterly vast. So much sweet and savoury goodness to chose from. Selections finally made (Italian owner makes his own dulce de leche!), we scoffed them down before I thought to take any photos ...

If gorgeous presentation is what you're looking for however, you'll be disappointed - there's no bells and whistles here - but if wafer-thin crepês rock your world, look no further.

And don't just take my word for it ...

They're 'Crespelicious'!