Two weeks to go...

Crafty people - they're doing an awesome raffle over at The Red Thread to raise money for flood victims.  Link here .  You can win a sewing machine, sewing patterns, sewing kits n' everythink...  I was once a crafty person, cross stitch and tapestry being my main vices, however, since the advent of kids... well you know the story.

siiiiiigh.

Two more weeks of school holidays to go... 

• Miss 5 is chucking daily tantrums that she does not want to go to kindi, despite having spent all last year in a 'transition' year at the same school and is moving into the next door classroom.  
• I have spent all my gardening money on school shoes.  
• I have dragged out all the uniforms, and untold random white school socks that I am trying to match according to their level of greyness.  
• And I have whipped out the iron (for the second time in twelve months) to start ironing on name labels. (It was also my inaugural use of my Brand New Mosman-ish Ironing Board Cover - which, incidentally, matches my oven gloves - never let it be said I don't have this interior decorating thingy down pat)
• All of this is in the hope that it will make the next fortnight go faster
• Also my children are nagging me about Easter.

Because I am not quite exhausted enough, I am also making my next assault on the Vile colour schemes in this house which I have lived with for seven long years.  This week I am painting over The Brown in the main bedroom.  This year is the year of me, and me can no longer endure The Brown inflicting itself upon my boudoir. 

Oh and I'm changing the name of the Year of Me - is sounds a bit, yanno, self absorbed (what?), am now calling it the Year of Wellbeing.

Laters :)

Mondayish

Cold wet and utterly utterly miserable today.  A 50kmph freezing dry westerly (which caused me to be zapped every time I touch any metal surface) was eventually overtaken by an even colder rainy southerly.  I put the chooks to bed early, well, they were already in there, and I just shut the gate of their pen.  Our two Australorps like to roost on the top of the door to their little coop, and in this wind they are presently spending the evening being blown briskly back and forth, back and forth.  They seem deeply unimpressed by this, but are hanging on for grim life regardless.

Well, at least the poo will be evenly spread over the floor.

Bit of an end of an era in the Nicholas household this weekend.  Miss 6 has moved out of her car seat and into a booster seat. She was having too compress her spine and sort-of wedge her shoulder blades into her rib cage to sit in it. I also realised that once I'd clipped it shut she couldn't really draw air into her lungs properly - which was why she was always so quiet in the car.  Alas now she is a lot noisier when travelling, and prone to criticising her mother's music selection on the iPod and demanding I play the 'shut the damn door song' - I have no idea which song this is.

Speaking of outstandingly slack parenting, I also realised today that Miss 4s feet were physically larger than the school shoes she was wedging them into.  Ah yes.  This morning she looked at me with a pained expression and said 'please may I have some new shoes,' (imagine Oliver Twist asking for more porridge).  Naturally it was the first I'd heard about ill-fitting shoes, and it was just before we were due to leave for school.  So, I advised her to take them off as soon as she got there and we'd get some more asap.  Glancing in the rear vision mirror as I drove out of the carpark, I saw Miss 4 sitting on the footpath removing her shoes and two bemused car-line supervisors trying to figure out what she was doing.  I went just a little bit faster.  Needless to say we've been to visit the wonderful Jill at the shoe shop this afternoon, and Miss 4 is now fast asleep in bed wearing her brand new shoes.

:)

Baking Makes It All Better... well except for Mother Guilt

Bread rolls, made with fresh yeast about to go into the oven.  Right now my house smells beautiful,  yeasty and bready and cosy.

Have been in the kitchen this morning.  Its been a rather tough day in the children department and though I had grand plans for cleaning the bathrooms and washing beds, instead I've just pottered in the kitchen, mulling things over and keeping my hands busy.

Miss 5 is an anxious child, and since her school had its practice "Stranger alarm" - where the kids practice what to do if there is a 'stranger' on campus - her anxiety has exploded into a full blown phobia centring on the school bell (she tries to hide each time it rings). It also includes a terror of our back garden (after the black snake incident) and bugs/spiders of any kind.  These days she refuses to go outside at all.

I spoke to Miss 5's teacher about the bell thing on Tuesday, after she came home and told me that she'd been so scared by the school bell ringing for a little longer than usual that she'd hidden.  Her teacher was aware of the problem and we chatted about a few strategies to deal with it. Then this morning there was a car alarm going off in the car-park and Miss 5 fell apart, convinced that it meant there was a stranger, coming to get her. 

I marched her up to school, being all no-nonsense about it, but when we got there she was white faced, shaky and crying.  So I stayed to calm her down and talk to her teacher again.  As we were waiting outside the classroom the first bell rang and in a state of overwhelming panic Miss 5 sprinted off across the playground looking for somewhere to hide.  Not even the fact that her mother was standing right there was enough to stop her.

I rang the school counsellor the moment I got home and the upshot is that Miss 5 is, at this very moment, starting on their program for kids with anxiety issues.  She'll get ongoing support, activities to do at home and a chance to talk things through with someone trained to be no-nonsense or sympathetic at the right times - which will be something of a change from her mother who, it appears, is gifted in getting it wrong every single time.

Holy Crap this parenting business is hard work.  I know kids are born the way they're born (hell, look at Miss 4, who invented a new game last night where you hide under the table and then try to poke your opponent in the eye with a pen - mummy didn't handle that well either).  I know that I'm rattled because even though I've loved and protected Katie all her life, she ran away from me in panic and not to me.  I know, as well, that she is in the grip of a phobia, and an unreasonable level of anxiety, and that she's not thinking straight, or even thinking at all. 

But, I do still wonder, as I'm baking away in my kitchen, if I have failed somewhere.  If I could've done it all a bit differently.  Yes. Mother Guilt. I has it badly.

Sigh.

Cannot. Stop. Sneezing.

Urgh. I think we should all brace ourselves for the misery of me having a summer cold. Its not so much that I'll think its cute to blog about oozing, mucous, sinuses, tonsils etc, but more that when I'm blogging and sick I just tend to get all ranty. Not only ranty, but also a warped sense of how hilarious I actually am. It ends badly. Always does. Frequently with key members of my family not speaking to me.

sigh.

So today has been busy. First thing this morning, at a time when I am usually wandering about in my pjs, I was at Miss Nearly Four's new pre-school (which is at the same school as Miss Five's kindy) for an orientation. It was lovely, I met her teacher for next year, and just wanted to snuggle on her lap whilst she read me Meg and Mog (kidding, mostly).

Miss Nearly Four did sensationally well, making me a fetching hat, learning french and banging her drum at the correct moments during singing 'I Am The Music Man.'

I sat through yet another talk on life in pre-school, and found myself ridiculously excited about the thought of helping out in the tuck-shop and being a parent-helper in class and going on excursions with all these darling little girls... yes, I know, how the mighty are mellowing in their old age.  I also totally bought into the talk about after-school activities and was on the verge of signing the girls up for tennis camp, mandarin lessons, musicianship, art classes... until hubby stared and in horror for a full five minutes and then concluded I had to be kidding - I went with kidding.  But I mean they'd thank me later, wouldn't they?

We made it home in a tired heap by lunchtime, whereupon Mum arrived with my littlest sister who is over from her home in London.  Haven't seen her for more than a year, so there was much talking and eating and talking and drinking tea and a short break to put together a sodding ant-farm, and then more talking.  Do not get me started on the ant farm.  You have to cook things to feed the little buggers??? Not to mention the gigantic pair of ant catching tweezers that came with the kit.  I can just see that part of it ending very badly.

So, at the end of a very long day, me and the kids chilled out on the sofa and did one of their most favourite things. Taking photos of themselves with my laptop.

Parenting Girls

October was a manic month. The family and I seemed to lurch from one big event to the next, and I spent a lot of time moving forward very quickly, permanently in sink or swim mode (which is polite for Not Sodding Coping).

Meals have been crap, all the fruit in the fruit bowl has gone off rather than being eaten, I've got a sore throat, the kids have mouth ulcers, and we are all run down, cranky and over each other.

So, my job over the next few days is to pull things together, and get this whole trainwreck back on track. The house is tidy and clean right now, so at least I can walk around barefoot without treading in cat or dog vomit, poo, or cat, dog or child wee, OR getting a barbie shoe embedded in the sole of my foot - those little suckers are sharp.

Next job is to clear off my desk, ug, who knows what unpaid bills are lurking in there. Not to mention un-filled-in forms. I dragged myself through the forms for Miss Fives Primary school a week or so ago, and now I have a similar, but slightly more evil set for Miss Nearly Four's new preschool. Sigh.

I blogged a while back about the Kindergarten induction we went to. Whilst the kids got to know the layout of their classrooms the parents were sent to the library where we were given the most wonderful seminar on self esteem and resilience in girls.

Hubby and I had been expecting a lecture on homework, teaching to read etc, etc but the only mention of such things was to say that kids are taught using a phonetic system that we would not be familiar with - and actually I was because it was how my mother taught me to read, because that was the way she was taught to read. So when they say new, they really mean recycled.

So, as a result of that seminar I am presently reading Growing Great Girls by Ian & Mary Grant.  Its fantastic, and unlike many other books on the subject, its down to earth and relevant.  It interprets the modern world and tackles tough issues like the effect of child specific marketing, sexualisation of girls in the media, in a practical head on manner.  Stuff that is quickly becoming something that I have to deal with.

I was brought up on a farm in Kent, in southern England.  Secure, protected. I didn't know who Abba was, or Buck's Fizz and the only TV I watched was the adless BBC1 and BBC2.  So when it comes to the reality of being a child in a modern urban environment I'm clueless.

So this book is putting it in perspective for me, and laying to rest quite a few of the worries that have been bothering me.

:)