Archive for the ‘Personal stories’ Category
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19
Dec
2010
Getting even more traditional – could yum cha be the key?
possibly my favourite tradition. I know, I'm shallow like that.
I saw this great post the other day on a website. It was all about the traditions this mother is starting with her family. Some of them were a bit ummm full on (compulsory family hikes are not really going to cut it in our family) but some of them got me thinking about what we’re doing in our house. I’ve covered some of these in earlier posts but for those of you who don’t immediately memorise and take notes (what is WRONG with you people? Don’t you know this stuff is gold?), here are some ideas we are planning on taking up in our little family. (OK, not so little our family as we currently stand at four and are soon to be five but DON’T REMIND ME, I HAVE THE FEAR.)
- Sunday family roasts – as per last week’s post, I am loving this new tradition. Granted, following the first week’s massive success, we can only go backwards from there (witness tonight’s event where daughter refused to eat anything but individual peas. One at a time. Very slowly. Until you wanted to throw each and every pea at the wall), but I am still loving it. Perhaps in warmer times it will become Sunday barbeque night. I love any excuse to break out the tomato sauce.
12
Dec
2010
New family tradition and a shameful confession
I have a shameful confession to make. Although I am boastful and annoyingly proud of my children’s eating regime, we *whispers* never eat as a family. I KNOW. HORRIFYING. I bang on and on about their table manners, I make them eat copious amounts of vegies, I supervise their eating at their little table, I am smug about their love of plain yoghurt.
But it’s not at the big table. It’s not with me and the Captain eating beside them (well, except for obvious shameful stealing of anything that looks good and doesn’t involve broccoli).
It suddenly struck me when we were discussing Christmas lunch – this will be the first year that son will be allowed to sit at the table with us all rather than banished to naptime in his cot – we never ever eat together as a family. Well, except for yum cha/dim sum, where getting food in as fast as you can, drinking juith with a bendy straw and spilling food at the table, is all positively encouraged. Not something I think aunt and uncle will appreciate at carefully laid Christmas feast table.
9
Dec
2010
ENTERTAINMENT UNDER HOUSE CONFINEMENT
photo credit: insidious_plots
Things that child does to entertain himself when he has bronchitis and it’s 5 degrees outside, making you both completely housebound:
Empty all the cupboards parents have deemed “safe” and therefore are in toddlers’ reach: Tupperware, pots (child will bang lid on floor once extracted from drawer or cupboard), sieve, grater (parent forced to cross room in single leap in frantic realisation that grater shouldn’t be in reach), blender (good grief, blade is in there – parent will again run across room again and ply from child’s iron clad grasp), Tupperware (take each smaller size from larger size containers in which they have been carefully stacked), kitchen paper (removed from child only after has rolled half out over floor), plastic kitchen wrap (removed from child’s grasp as they run tongue along serrated box edge), all recycling to be strewn across the floor of the entire house, coke cans stored behind the door clearly should not be kept on the floor so load in to front-loading washing machine (follow by closing machine door and pressing buttons).
Empty all books from Bookshelves
5
Dec
2010
Saying goodbye – and trying not to get caught looking shifty
There are a lot of goodbyes when you’re an expat. When you’re a young thing backpacking and travelling, it seems there is always
someone new arriving in town – ready to replace the last ones out. But as I drift towards my mid-30s (until I reach 38 I am in my MID THIRTIES so bugger off the lot of you), circles seem to shrink and getting replacements becomes trickier.
We said goodbye last week to two of the core members of our gang. I’m feeling very melancholy about it. I know their time was up. They arrived in this wonderful city single (ish) and fancy free 12 years ago and left married, with two children, home owners and undoubtedly with a dog in their future. (I predict a golden retriever and another child, but no-one has ever accused me of being Nostradamus so don’t hold me to it.) The leaving was painful – selfishly, I think those of left behind in the minus three degree slush are feeling it more than those of us headed to a couple of months off to play beach cricket. Slackers.
28
Nov
2010
In which I give you a warning and make an announcement
Sometimes I blame my husband – he said his next wife would do it if I wouldn’t – but mostly I blame my daughter.
There is a point at about nine months when your child, if lucky, is sleeping, eating, crawling, happy and content. Easy to get around, they sit happily in a pram for ages at a time, allowing you to shop, have coffees, shop… so you decide this parenting thing is a lark, may as well have another one.
And so you get pregnant.
And then she wakes up and you discover it was all part of an evil plan to lull you into a false sense of security and propagate the human race.
See, angelic daughter has decided she hates the pram. And the car. Not a huge fan of her cot either while we’re at it. And as for crawling round gently prodding her toys – she’d rather rip wine bottles out of the wine rack, pull appliances off the bench using the 1cm of cord you left dangling, launch herself out of her high chair, scale the stairs at 60kms an hour whenever your back is turned, and my personal favourite of which I never tire – empty out every drawer and cupboard she can lay her hands on. Especially neatly organised Christmas wrapping drawer, ensuring every single roll of ribbon is festively strewn around the living room and red tissue paper is poking suspiciously out of her mouth.
21
Nov
2010
Not a good week in the mothering stakes
with any luck, I won't end up in these
We had gastro round here last week. Or more precisely – I had gastro. Everyone else had a touch (clearly a touch was almost death’s door for husband) and got through with a day or so of feeling unwell. I, however, spent the better part of nine days lying prostrate wherever the moment took me – on the sofa, on my bed, on the bedroom floor, on the front step (much to the confusion of both the 90 year old next door neighbour and the Italian parking attendant).
17
Nov
2010
Highlights of my pregnancy
Defintely at the waddling stage CC photo credit: Tim Green aka atoach
With only five weeks to go, its time to reflect on the highs and lows of nine months of carrying a large bump around my front. Here are some of my more memorable (and mentionable);
First trimester: The usual blissful sameness of the first four weeks was followed by two months of awesome nausea and misery. Have been tiptop every since the end of the third month though so, thumbs up to the body for a sterling job.
Maternity Shopping Online: I had hoped shopping online would be a highlight but I didn’t do all that well with only the following completed purchases:
- Black and white waist bands (to extend life of ordinary tops – genius idea in theory, in my case not so effective in practice). From six months the gap between my trousers and my non-maternity tops has been a breezy few inches more than the width of the bands. Never very effective before that anyway, often finding their way to well below where they should be, resulting in a kind of arse sling, or, in the other direction, ending up under my armpits, I’m hoping they may instead come in handy as miniskirts once I have recovered my pre-pregnancy, pre-pregnancy (still hadn’t recovered from the one before) body. Because white lycra mini-skirts should be a wardrobe staple for any mother of two in her late thirties.
9
Nov
2010
It starts with pirates.
A while ago the lovely Gigi from mumsrock asked me to write a piece for her cool site. Obviously I told her that if she paid me a large fee, gave me the copyright and licensing fees then I might be able to manage something. Or maybe I just said ‘sure, when would you like it?’ I can’t quite remember. Anyway, the piece is up at the mumsrock site now, and here it is below for your reading pleasure…..
I’ve got pirates on my fridge. No, not some weird Johnny Depp type apparition – fridge magnet pirates. I used to have a study. The place where I used to sit and write witty and informative pieces on the state of the world. It now houses a cardboard box car, a wheely ladybird, several sacks of leftover sandpit sand and three hundred and seventy two pieces of puzzle waiting to be sorted. Possibly three hundred and seventy three. I am the Queen of Minimalism. I can’t bear nick-nacks and I’ve only just come around to having my fruit bowl on display. That’s been something of a breakthrough. So it has come as possibly the worst shock of motherhood (just before the horror of ugly nappy bags and the indignity of the electric breast pump) to find out that the main aim of the little buggers blighters is to TAKE OVER YOUR HOUSE.
5
Nov
2010
The less furry animals at the zoo
We went to the zoo on the weekend. It was my child’s very first zoo visit, one of life’s milestones surely. His obsession with animals and animal noises, plus a complete loss as to what to do with a small toddler on a long weekend, forced me to overcome my aversion to zoos and take the little one to go see the real thing.
There’s also an obsession with cars almost as potent as that for animals but I can’t see myself taking my son to a car show any time soon – not least because they are usually named something like ‘Big Boy’s Toys’. So to the zoo, for the first time in 15 years or more, I went, with son and husband.
My long hiatus from any zoo stems from my dislike of seeing animals behind cages or, even, confined to beautifully designed, well thought out and hugely expensive enclosures. I managed not to get too upset this time, helped along by my husband’s own complete lack of interest in all things nature which meant not stopping for more than two minutes at each viewing point, and we all had a lovely day – the bub’s reaction to seeing some of the animals up close will be forever unforgettable. On the other hand, I did also discover a whole new reason to dislike zoos; and that reason is people.
31
Oct
2010
World’s Worst Housewife Award
just like this but solid chocolate
So I think we safely established last week that I am not working at the moment. Which leaves me in a quandary when I am asked what I do. Which, I have discovered recently, is quite often. You can get by with ‘I’m on maternity leave’ for only some time, before people start sizing up the large lump sized child beside you or ask exactly how old your child is. Anything past a year and it starts to look a bit dodgy. So I’ve been experimenting with potential answers.
Last week I said I’m a mother’ in answer to ‘what’s your job at the moment?’ I tried to say it with pride, really I did. I am proud of being a mother. But the patronising look on the questioner’s face (a nurse in case you were wondering), made me want to stab her do-gooding thermometer-waving face. And her even more patronising response (she was about 15 by the way) of ‘well, that’s the hardest job of all, isn’t it, hmm?’ well, let’s just say I’m not welcome at that particular clinic anymore. Overreaction – I mean, heal thyself surely?
