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.

one city block: muizenberg

During December the girls and I watched this amazing piece going up. A couple of times we stopped to watch the artists at work and it's still a regular request.
Friday: 'Mum, can we stop to look at the octopus?'
Followed always by Sunday: 'And the 'normous toes?'

On the side of Stoked Backpackers, piece by Mak1one and The One Love Studio. More pics of it here.

We stopped again last week and I quickly snapped another few pics, each one of something lovely.

Across the road, this beautiful Grande Dame.

At our backs, the Muizenberg Station building, with wooden clock tower.

Or amusing.

Sign in the parking lot. 

Around the corner.

And across the street.

Just one small block of beautiful Muizenberg, just up the drag from our new home, just another small snippet of the beauty of Cape Town.

AND, if you'd like to see more of this part of the world, visit my friend Wendy at Make.Believe. She just spent a morning in Kalk Bay and took some magnificent photos!

lessons in rice

These photos are from back in February. I have a feeling it was the first morning I got an inkling that my next few months at home with Sunday weren't going to be all plain sailing ...

It started off alright, a little girl very busy doing funny little girl things.

See that tray of coloured rice? I left it there naively thinking it would extend her solo play time, while I got some work done.
2 colours rice and some pouring and scooping toys. What's not to love right?

It was all going swimmingly until I mixed the rice. And something in her then-nearly-3-year-old make-up VIOLENTLY OBJECTED to such an outright parental disrespect for the natural order of dyed rice segregation.
In short, all hell broke loose (no photos supplied).

In those early days of tantrum hell my first response was to IMMEDIATELY FIX THE PROBLEM and so ...

... we quickly set about dying new batches of rice.
(See that sweet clear-eyed face, showing no trace of recent demonic fury and rage.)

Each colour carefully and prettily segregated as they dried in the sunshine. And then very carefully and prettily separately decanted into a plastic muffin tray from the recycling.

Whereupon what was the first thing she did? MIXED THE COLOURS OF COURSE.

In retrospect there were a lot of lessons learnt that day, about the deep complexities of the 3 year old mind. About trying to apply adult logic to a very non-adult small person.
And in the months since we've learnt how very many games, crafts and fun times can be had with a simple batch of coloured rice.

For all of us.

We've also learnt how spilled uncooked rice will stick to your toes and spread throughout your house in ways we could never have imagined.
This batch of rice served us well, but finally, today, I swept up and chucked the last of it. And like the tantrums which held us all hostage these past months (but have started to abate) I hope not to see any more dyed rice around here for a long, long time.

weekend of industry

It was a project-based weekend.

All of us had one. Most, more than one.

And predictably they are all still just like this, scattered about the house, thumbing their noses at the looming Monday morning.
Except for that delicious pulla of course, just enough remains to have with my coffee tomorrow. As I contemplate the happy mess.

keep 'em in the dark I say!

I didn't talk to my kids about the Boston bombings. I didn't talk to them about Sandy Hook. Closer to home I didn't talk to them about Reeva Steenkamp or Anele Booysen. I don't talk to them about crime stats or how our president's an asshole. I don't talk to them about corruption. I don't voice concerns about our political future in their hearing. I don't talk about rising sea levels or global warming.

Not yet. They are too young.

We've talked a little about 'baddies' - we have to in the light that we lock our doors, live behind burglar bars and set our house alarm at night. We've talked about homeless people and children without parents, we've talked about poverty - we see these things everyday, and obviously the girls ask questions.
We talk about water conservation and littering, recycling and sustainability - these are part of their everyday lives.
We talk about being safe, about trusting one's instincts, gauging people and situations.

We talk about what I believe they're capable of understanding, processing, contextualising.

But for the rest, yes, I'm shielding them. I'm intentionally keeping them in the dark. I'm nurturing my little mushrooms.

I'm hoping to build their faith in humanity as much as I can before life inevitably starts wearing it down. I want them to have the strongest possible foundation of love and order and empathy before it gets shaken.
I know there's only a little time left to do this, Friday turns 6 this year and with 'big school' and her growing awareness of the world it's not long before we have to tackle the big stuff. But by then I'm hoping she'll have a confidence in the way the world can, or should, work which will sustain her through the tough lessons of how often it doesn't.

I know some people who think this is naive. But frankly I don't know how else to do it.

I do know how children can worry when they don't understand the news. I do know how fleeting and precious childhood is. I do know how easily I can access the news through my phone or the internet without having to have CNN in our living room.

I noticed someone on Twitter this week (a South African) asking how to explain the Boston situation to their 5 year old. My suggestion: don't.

Just don't. Until you have to.

cupcakes and crafts and rainbow sprinkled farts

Okay, okay, I've had my moan ... back to normal programming about how wonderful and idyllic our lives are.

Hanging out with the love of her life - David Attenborough.

Peanut butter and jam muffins. With chocolate chips.

Mongoose encounters at the World of Birds.

Camping on Easter weekend. We love camping.

Making tambourines, as per Friday's instructions.

Screw the end product, hole-punched paper plates and pipe cleaners ftw!

But for the true muzo, it's a serious business.

Pelicans drifting aloft. Reminding us to look up, and remember our blessings.

the Next Big Thing

'Twas many months ago that Katherine Barrett, Canadian writer, editor, mother, blogger, tagged me to write about my Next Big Thing.
For a while back then my Next Big Thing was going to be both girls starting school and getting some of my life back, but alas that didn't happen.

Since then my Next Big Thing has pretty much amounted to managing a shower once every 24 hours, not drowning anyone in the lake, not developing a real alcohol problem and losing a couple of kilograms. Not totally riveting stuff really.

But! Now I'm on to something! Now I think I've found the Thing and boy is it going to be Big! Finally I can complete the task Katherine set me all those months ago.

May I present, what I predict will be the NEXT BIG THING ... drum roll ...

The Toenail Fairy!

Yup, you read it here first.

She lost it today after an incident a number of weeks ago involving a falling dining room chair and an ill-timed dash across the room - the intersection of big toe and chair was one of those bizarrely unfortunate quirks of fate.
The nail has slowly been saying its goodbyes, loath to leave the feet of such an adventurous young lady I'd guess. In the interim a few teeth have come out, necessitating a couple of visits from the Toenail Fairy's more well-known cousin ....
'There isn't really a Tooth Fairy hey Mum? It's actually you isn't it?'
'What would you like to believe sweetie?'
No answer.
A sly smile and the subject is dropped.

Like the toenail really.

Why shouldn't there be a Toenail Fairy anyway? It's a rarer and more momentous event then most teeth falling out. Usually accompanied by an exciting back story and always the subject of morbid fascination in the weeks it takes to finally fall off, why shouldn't the lose of a toenail be marked? Celebrated even?

But what does the Toenail Fairy bring is still a question.

Well, Hot Pink nail polish for one. Of course. Some chocolate money and a small plastic ballerina. To vouch that one day she'll be up on her toes again, even if it's a bit painful right now.

So what do you think? The Next Big Thing or setting a dangerous precedent? Time will tell ...

blogging as therapy part 2

"When you only have to do crazy for 2 hours a day it's totally bearable." - working mother of 3 under-5's, with nanny and au pair, to me, this week.

I am NOT opening up to a whole debate about working v stay-at-home parenting here, and I am NOT for a moment assuming that this woman's life is as easy as that sentence made it sound, to me, from my fragile perch here, in a space in which I'm drowning in this parenting thing right now.

But as I gazed at her great haircut, her nice shoes (heels!), her manicure, I felt frumpy and sorry for myself and pissed off that I felt that and, while I do mostly feel pride in being my children's primary caregiver, the phase I'm in at the moment? I just feel had.

I feel had by the narrative which claims such vast benefit to our children for being raised by a present parent.

Does it still count if that parent is gatvol, past her sell-by, running on auto-pilot, numbed to her own needs, gritted teeth and eyeball, silent screaming in her head as she fills another juice bottle, makes another slice of honey on toast, breaks up yet another sibling dispute?
Couldn't an au pair do all of that with more grace and favour, happy in the knowledge that she's being paid and gets to go home at the end of the day?
That sounds like a far healthier scenario to me right now.

Waltzing in, in heels, stimulated by adult interaction and a sense of achievement outside of the home, bearing Woolies dinners which I could afford and an overload of treats to appease my guilt of abstentia, swooping their screeching bodies up in my arms and playing with them furiously until bedtime. God that sounds so very good to me right now.

But I KNOW it's not all that. I KNOW this too shall pass. I KNOW I'll be happy and grateful in years to come that I had this time. I KNOW I don't appreciate this privilege enough. I KNOW, I know, I know, I know ...

But sometimes, one just needs to have a little moan, you know?