hooked on washi

I've long been wary of washi tape. I just knew once I broke that seal and bought my first roll I'd be ... stuck.

Then my Mum told me one day she'd met a 'lovely lady' in the post office queue, 'She sells some kind of decorative tape online? The biggest SA supplier? She lives just down the road from you!'
Uh oh.

I drooled all over her website. But still I resisted. I vowed I wouldn't buy a single inch until I had a specific project in mind.
So when, on the weekend while painting our hallway, Husband handed me the ancient grotty light switch back plate (you know the one which obviously isn't a std size so not easily replaceable) and said, 'Here, don't you have a nice decal or something for that?', my heart started beating a little faster ...

A couple of rolls of tape (plus a couple more because, you know, I was ordering anyway right?), a tutorial found through Pinterest (of course) and 5 minutes on a rainy afternoon and ....

I'm on a roll ... 

Washi tape, I love you like I always knew I would. Oh crap.

the wee one

I'm lying on my Mum's bed while Sunday uses the en suite bathroom. Suddenly I realise the sound I'm hearing is not the comforting tinkle of pee on porcelain. More a discomforting splashing on tiles.
'Muuuuuum?'

Once again, she didn't quite make it.
Is it over-confidence? She's been potty trained for months. Is it stubbornness? She's an ace at that. Is she just distracted? Or is she actually doing this to make my life just that little bit harder?
Some days I'm guilty of thinking just that.

Once, in a fit of exasperation, when she was dancing and knuiping and looking panicky, all the while denying she needed to go, I resorted to: 'Sunday, I can see you need to wee. If you have an accident I'm actually going to be really cross and I might have to smack your bum.'
She looked me in the eye, crossed her arms (and her legs) and declared: 'Well, then you will get wee on your hand.'

Diabolical.

After I'd done mopping up the bathroom my Mum reminded me, 'Now do you understand why I resorted to telling you that if you didn't wee when you needed to your bladder would burst?'
I do. A myth which haunted me for most of my childhood, one which I'd lambasted my mother about a number of times, now makes perfect sense.

One more accident and I swear, as much as I hate to, I'm repeating the lie.

I'm that pissed on, I mean off.

big girls and small girls

Raising girls is challenging!

(You know what else is challenging? Not having reliable internet for over a MONTH. But I'm trying to get over that, and proceed as if nothing happened. Which it did, for a MONTH. Thanks a lot Telkom.)

Anyhoo. Girls. Challenging.

Yesterday evening for example. I accidentally smashed an empty peanut butter jar all over the floor, and it took me 3 times longer to clear it up due to the inordinate amount of distracting glitter twinkling and shining all over the place.
Girls.

But I loved this article I just read off Facebook today. The forgotten years of girlhood. 10 to 14 the author reckons. Years in which girls should be sorting out some of the fundamentals of their personalities, while probably being at their most easily distractable ever.

It was the line about 'learning to be women' which really struck me. As the author says, there are so many inappropriate ways for girls to learn about womanhood - glossies, most TV programmes, their peers who by definition will be floundering just like them - that it's really important to consciously introduce more balanced influences.
Enter the Aunties.

My womanhood was, is, so strongly influenced by my mother, her friends, and a life time's observation of the the relationships and dynamics between them. These aunties - strong, creative, funny, intelligent, sometimes vulnerable women - taught me so much.

Which is why I was so happy when, after my birthday tea in May, an afternoon with some of my closest girlfriends, Friday declared that 'I love your friends Mum. I wish they were my friends too.' And even happier when I could say, 'But they are sweetie, I think they'd all call themselves your friend', and she beamed with delight.

I love my friends. I'm so grateful to them for all the ways they've supported and spoiled and saved me over the years. And now I'm grateful to them for something else. For being strong, creative, funny, intelligent, sometimes vulnerable women in my daughter's lives too.

Chicks rule!

dinosaur cake

My brother and father both have birthdays this week, and this year their combined age is 100! We begged volunteered to bake them a cake and Friday, completely lacking in irony, declared it would be dinosaur themed.
And then proceeded to art direct the crap out of it.

No cut-out dinosaur shaped cake (as envisioned by me), nope - she very specifically brought home this dinosaur picture from school and declared that we'd use it for the shape 'on top of the cake Mum'. 
And in the bank of buy-by-weight candy in the supermarket she honed in on these chocolate-covered sunflower seeds for being 'just the right dinosaur colours'.

All I was to do was to provide the sheet cake (baked, I must add, almost entirely by Sunday who's become an ace at cracking eggs - although her two year old tactile sensitivity still makes her shriek after every addition 'Clof! Clof Mummy! Egg on haaaaaaand!')

She was even allowed to assist in the decor, while big sister hovered by.

Not bad huh? I shudder with fear that soon I may have to relinquish full control over their own birthday cakes.

With some flaked almond 'spines' and a single candle eye, Dino was ready to face extinction on my Mum's pretty birthday tea table.

Happy hundredth birthday lovely men in my life!

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.

the reading bug

My Mum hooked me up with The Reading Bug by Paul Jennings and I'm so grateful to have read it. A blurb on the front says: 'A must for all parents who've ever worried about their children's reading', but I don't think you have to be a worrier to warrant reading it.

Friday's been trying to read since she could first hold a book - no really - and The Reading Bug's been such a great resource for this parent who hadn't the first clue how to gently guide her evident interest onto a constructive path to actual reading.

Just as a baby who is never spoken to will not learn to speak, so a child who is never read to will not show much interest in reading. No surprise that Paul Jennings places a lot of emphasis on the importance of reading to our children. But he does so while acknowledging how busy modern parents are, how people these days struggle to find or make time to read themselves, let alone read to their children.
He does so by saying this, one of the most beautiful things I've ever read about reading, or indeed about parenting itself:

Reading aloud to your children gives them an incredibly strong message. Without words you are saying, 'I am not washing the car or reading the paper or watching the news. I am sitting here with you, reading a story about a little dog whose family don't recognise him when he gets dirty. I am enjoying sitting in bed with you, sharing the fun, the fears and the fellowship of this magic moment. You are the centre of my world.'

And when you look down at the sparkling eyes you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are the centre of theirs.

This act of love forms an association between the child and books. The word book brings pleasure. The feel, look and smell of books is forever linked to feelings of warmth, security and love. You have started a lifelong love affair between a child and reading.

I was reminded of this passage recently.

And realised it need not just refer to a parent reading to a child, but also to a sister 'reading' to her little sister, generating all those associated feelings of warmth, security and love, and making their unobserved mama's eyes sparkle at the sight.

just swingin'

We spent last weekend at a house near Stanford with my family. We've been going there every year for my Mum's birthday weekend since 2006.

The first year it was just my parents, two brothers and my husband.
The next year my older brother's girlfriend joined us and I was pregnant.
The next she was with us again as his new wife and Friday was 9 months old.
A year in between.
Then one with me heavily pregnant (we went in Feb that year for that reason).
Last year we celebrated my Mum's birthday and Sunday's 1st together.
This year my younger brother was absent (abroad) but we made enough noise, ate enough food and laughed enough laughs for a crowd twice our size.

There's a pond down the bottom of the property, with a swing rigged up in a giant Gum tree next to it. Each year since 2008 Friday and her Dad have conspired to give my father conniptions by swinging out over the water on it.

 2008

 2009

 2010

 2011

This year she swung out herself.

2012

Fly my precious girl, fly.

4 going on 14

Last week I had a moan on facebook about how I thought we were supposed to be in the 'Fabulous 4's' with Friday, and a whole bunch of mum friends commented that sadly I seem to have been misled.
Apparently it is in fact the 'F*cking 4's' we find ourselves in the middle of right now.
Which does seem to make a lot more sense ...

We are having a bit of a tricky time with Friday, and it is disrupting family life somewhat. She's moody and uncooperative, prone to sulks and huge sobbing fits over ... nothing. She's not taking instruction well at all and has developed a hard and defiant little facial expression which instantly makes my palm tingle with an almost uncontrollable urge to unite the two.
Those in the know say kids experience a hormonal surge at this age not unlike those that come with the teenage years, and if you scan the list above I could very well be describing a 14 year old right? Joy.

I think all of her behaviour is rooted in one thing, an admittedly very teenage thing too: she's just loving the sound of her own voice.

She doesn't hear us when we tell her to eat her supper because she's too busy talking to herself inside her head.
Or just too busy talking.
She'll lie sobbing on her bed for 30 minutes because she's quite intrigued by the sounds she's making.
She'll scream at me for the same reason.
She'll argue just to try out her voice and see how much influence she can wield with it.
She barks instructions for the same reason.
She shouts at her sister, she squeals in the bathroom, she 'sings' as loudly as she can so as not to hear us.

She basically cannot stop talking, through the good chats and the bad spats, and I think it wears her out.

I'm a little averse to all this talk of the Terrible 2's, then the F*ck You 3's, and now the F*cking 4's. They feel like handles with which to explain away a whole lot of (trying but normal) growing up behaviour. And they fall into that old trap of focusing on the negative, never a healthy way to view the world.

Growing up is hard, I still feel like I'm struggling with it everyday. But I'm resolved, on this one, to remember that I'm more grown-up than her, I'm the Mum, and just like my long-suffering mother did for me, I'll try and muster the creativity and patience to deal with this.

And possibly invest in some earplugs.

but sooooo slowly ...

You know us humans are nasty, self-absorbed little critters. Well at least I am.

As my girls grow up, especially as Sunday determinedly leaves the Baby Zone, every day life is getting decidedly easier.
But do I notice this? Do I send gratitude and squishy hugs out into the universe? Do I? Noooo.

It's only when things get crappy that I realise how seldom it happens anymore, it's only when the universe says 'Oi! Remember this?!' that I take a moment to reflect on how much smoother life runs these days.

Example:
Yesterday I had to drop in at the supermarket with both girls. A scenario I usually avoid but you know, school holidays ...
I had some groceries to buy and a pack of wrong-size nappies to return.

When we got there Friday declared she'd like to wait in the car. Not going to happen. A fast and furious debate followed, her getting more vocal about not wanting to go into the shop, me getting firmer, all the while trying to avoid too much detail about exactly why she couldn't stay out in the car by herself (sometimes I think it would be so much easier to just be one of those parents who says; 'Someone will take you' and be done with it).
I get Sunday out of her car seat. Wet. Through.
Sigh.
Change her nappy on the front seat, put wet pants on dashboard to dry in the sun (I'm classy like that), strap her into the pouch and go round the car to get Friday out.
Discover that she's been spending her sulk picking holes in the pack of nappies I'd been intending on returning.
Lovely.
Finally we leave car, get across the busy parking lot and into the shop when ... my shoe breaks.
Of course.
Let's recap: one (still slightly damp) toddler, one grumpy child, one operative shoe. Groceries required. Mood = foul.

And then I realised, I haven't felt like this in ages.

There was a time not very long ago when I regularly had moments of feeling that life with two small children and their different demands was very trying. I admit to a lot of feeling sorry for myself (like I was some kind of victim - so silly really), and a liberal sprinkling of disbelief when people assured me things would get easier.
I realise now it really does get easier, but as my Mum always says, so slowly you often don't even notice.

I hereby pledge to notice more often. And be grateful. And keep spare shoes in the car.

not-so-free tree

Some well meaning hippie gave Friday a tree this last weekend. We were at the Puppet Parade for the Out the Box Festival, a strange and beautiful event, when a woman dressed as a tree made out of recycled plastic bags started gathering all the (wide-eyed) kids around while her minions handed out Cape Ash saplings.
A free tree accompanied by instant environmental guilt and all-consuming 4 yr old anxiety.

'Mum, I must water my tree.'
'Mum, if I don't water the tree it'll DIE Mum.'
'I didn't water the tree today Mum, I PROMISED that lady I'd water the tree.'

Really? This is how we teach small children about greening the planet? Small children who, I might add, live in a really built up urban area, few with gardens large enough to accommodate a 15 metre tall tree.

It's a lovely sentiment, seemingly good activism, handing out trees at public events. But not so much for small kids.
My Mum was a primary school teacher in the 90's and she used to get really cross when people lectured Grade 1's about the hole in the ozone layer. Just one pfffft of an aerosol and ka-zam! hole in sky, searing heat, all your mummies and doggies burnt to a crisp die die die ...!

Sure we should teach out kids social responsibility in all forms from as early as possible, but I don't agree with burdening them with guilt about things they can't actively influence yet.
Get them to recycle - yes. Teach them not to litter - goes without saying. Explain about trees and oxygen and green spaces - of course.
But only give them what they can manage. A tree in a can is not such a thing.

And so, as a nice conscious middle-class mummy, I find myself watering the tree, worrying about the tree, appealing to friends and family to adopt the tree.
It doesn't even seem to be a Western Cape native or I'd plant it in the forest.

Cape Ash tree anyone? Free to a good home.

ask mummy

There's some upheaval in the structure of Friday's school, some changes are being made which we're not very happy about.
In discussions with some of the other mothers of kids in her class I couldn't help but notice that we all mentioned consulting our mothers on this, we repeated their opinions and were all interested in what each others mothers had to say.

We're women in our mid to late 30's and we need to, and are able to, discuss our thoughts with our mothers. We value their input and respect their opinions. We heed their advice and allow it to validate our own thoughts. We accept their criticisms and sometimes change our viewpoints accordingly.

I know I'm utterly privileged to have my Mum along for this journey of parenting, to have the relationship with her that I do, to have her around at all.
I sometimes think I could not have done it without her, she scoffs at this and says of course I would have.

Maybe, but I would definitely not have done it so well.

Thanks Mum, for still being so very present for me, I hope I can do the same for my girls.

But my word that means there's many, many years of parenting yet ahead!