Monthly Archives: October 2011

Boo!

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Hot buttered cinnamon toast (from the good bread place, not just the normal stuff) and tea is a perfectly reasonable Halloween lunch, right?

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I’m thinking of bribing Mabel with Halloween candy to wean her down to just a couple of times a day instead of all the “I want mumeet while I’m watching TV before dinner” times. That’s good parenting right there, I know it.

Dash is off school today, because for some reason even though Halloween is not an offically sanctioned holiday, it warrants a day off. We dropped Mabel at school and went to IKEA, because that’s where the fun is. He got a chocolate milk, I got bacon and coffee. We failed to buy a rug for the guest room.

No wonder my mother always says I was no trouble at all. A single child surrounded by grownups is light-years away from two siblings ratcheting each other up to high doh every single second. If it hadn’t been for the sinus headache boring a hole in my left eye-socket, I would have had a really nice morning hanging out with my big grown-up (kindergartener) son.

As it was, we had to go home quickly so I could take a Sinutab and make a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow. Blech.

Effing and blinding

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I was wondering about swearing this morning. I mean, in the abstract; not that I was jumping up and down having just driven an errant nail through my little toe and thinking that there used to be a good word in my vocabulary for just this occasion that had been eroded by all these years of sanitizing my language for use around children. Swearing. The Irish are known for their love of bad language, and I don’t think it’s all down to that one time Bono said that thing on American national TV. If you’ve seen In Bruges , you’ll know what I’m talking about.

But it’s not fair. Other nations swear a lot too, they just do it in their own languages. I’m not saying that all Americans and every Englishman – not to mention the wily Welsh and surly Scots – have speech that’s unmitigatedly fair and delightful, but on the whole we Irish are the ones tarnished by the effing brush when it comes to English-speaking countries. (Oh, and the Aussies. They’re pretty bad.)

But have you ever heard a Spaniard swear? They’ve turned it into an art form. It’s a point of personal pride to come up with the most elaborate and creative profanities imaginable. (Which made me wonder if it’s something common to Catholic countries…) I’m sure other nations in other languages are also quick to blaspheme and find release in using rude words, we just don’t hear about them. Do the Irish legitimately have a bad rep?

(You know the way every generation thinks it invented sex? Or at least the orgasm? I was pretty certain as a teenager that swearing was a modern innovation and that my parents had probably never heard any of the words my schoolmates bandied about with such vigour. Convent girls, you know, are the worst. This was not helped by the fact that our Shakespeare was sanitized and somehow they managed to choose only those very few poems in the world that are not literally or metaphorically – at least on the first, second or third readings – directly about sex for our exam texts. I was very surprised when I went to University and discovered that everything anyone has ever written that qualifies as English literature is actually about sex. But I digress.)

So what do you think? Does every language have its potty-mouths? Are Latvians the Bonos of the Baltics, perhaps? Do the Flemish put the phlegm in vitriol? Are the Japanese really calling each other by arcane words for genitalia when they do all that saving face and refusing to say no? Or does every nation think really they could do with cleaning up their vocabulary, at least in front of the children?

Cliff Hanger

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I know you’re all dying for a potty-training update. It’s the most suspenseful narrative since, um, that time Angel was trapped in a box under the sea for a whole summer. For instance.

Our efforts go something like this:

Me: “When you’re three, there will be no more pullups. Then you’ll wear underpants all the time.”
Mabel: “No, when I’m six , I’ll wear underpants.” 

Mabel, this morning, from the other side of the room where she has barricaded herself behind a fence made of two small chairs, a baby stroller, a large toy car and some items of dollhouse furniture: “I’m just sitting here not doing a poo.”

Mabel, just now, as she tripped lightly past me to wash her plastic horsie in the bathroom (she enjoys washing all her toys, frequently, wetly, using up all the soap): “Don’t smell me, I’m not pooey.”

So you can see how well that’s going. She’ll be three in a week. We’re going away that weekend, but once we come back, will I stick to my guns, or will my carpet forever regret it?

Assimilation

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One of the other mothers at school (didn’t I start yesterday’s update with that line too?) said to me yesterday that they had been slacking off this year on their family pumpkin-patch visits. I tried to explain how this tradition strikes non-natives.

Well, I’ve only been here, what, almost nine years, and we’ve only had kids for the last five and a half, and pumpkin patches really don’t impinge on your consciousness as a child-free adult. And then there’s the requisite number of years spent thinking that it’s a particularly ridiculous American thing to take your small child, dress it up (preferably as a pumpkin), stick it in a pile of hay with some real pumpkins and take photos. Because that’s what happens at pumpkin patches, right? So at this point we’re only really starting to work past our natural Irish cynicism and embrace the autumn tradition.

Dash’s first year at nursery school, he was in the youngest class, and their “field trip” to the pumpkin patch took place in the school playground, where some straw was strewn and pumpkins placed. I didn’t really even notice it, except that a pumpkin appeared in his tub at the end of the day. We took it home and put it outside the front door, where it probably sat and rotted sadly until about January. His second year, the day of the field trip was our second day back after a trip to California for a marathon , so he wasn’t really feeling up to school. I ended up walking him down to the lake where the patch for the “big kids” was created, and accidentally discovering that it was quite a nice thing.

2010 pumpkin patch

They bring a lot of hay and a small pumpkin for every child (and a few over) down to an area beside our local lake that’s a short walk from the school. The kids walk down, find a pumpkin and have their name written on it by a teacher or parent (to avoid disputes later). Then there’s playing in the hay and snacktime, and then we all walk back up, pulling the pumpkins in little wagons. Somehow, it takes most of the morning, and it’s delightful. Last year I was happy to find I was scheduled to co-op on the day of the walk, and this year, with Mabel, I embraced my role as self-appointed event photographer (along with most of the other parents there) and went along just for the heck of it. They’re always happy to have a few extra helpers to stop the kids from pitching into the lake or burying a classmate irretrievably in the hay.

2011, Mabel helps

So we’ve still never been to a real pumpkin patch, the sort where the pumpkins actually grow. I’m ashamed to admit that I bought our big pumpkin in the supermarket this year – on the other hand, it’s the first year I’ve actually gone and purchased one to carve at all. At real pumpkin patches, there are scarecrows and hay rides, and probably farm animals to pet, and all sorts of things I can’t even imagine. Maybe next year we’ll assimilate a little further and do that. One step at a time.

MTV generation

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Never mind school; my children learn everything they know from television.

Dash impressed the zoo employee at the cheetahs’ area last week no end by knowing not only why the cheetah needed such a big nose (to breathe in lots of oxygen to run fast) and such big teeth (to eat meat) but also what sort of meat it ate (antelope). This is directly related to the fact that the episode of his favourite show – Wild Kratts -  that he’d watched the previous day was the one about the cheetahs.

One of the other parents from Mabel’s school told me that she had brought her violin in to play something for the children when she was co-opping last week. When she took out the bow, she asked the children if anyone knew what it was. Mabel piped up:
“I know! It’s a violin thingy!”
The mother was impressed.
“That’ll be because we took the music and art class last year, and the teacher had a little violin that the children could try out,” I told her, proud of my little Rimsky-Corsikoff.
On the way home, I asked Mabel how she had remembered the violin. Was it from music and art?
“No, it was from Little Einsteins .”

Of course it was.

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Mugshots

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Mabel’s Irish passport is due for renewal in a few months’ time. (To recap: our kids were born in the US to two Irish parents. So they have two passports each.) The first US passport lasts five years, but the first Irish one only lasts three, which is good, because her current passport photos show a squishy two-month-old with dark brown hair and dark blue eyes. Like this:

Excuse crappy quality. You wouldn’t believe the lengths I will go to to avoid scanning things.

When Dash was three and needed his new passport, he was in the midst of one of his stranger-averse bouts, and was especially shy of men he didn’t know. I took him along to our local CVS hoping to get the nice lady who was usually behind the photo desk, but there was a male employee instead, and the endeavour was doomed from the get-go. (Or from the gekko, if you prefer. Those lizards.) Dash just refused to stand in front of the white background, and that was that.

An outtake
In the end, I took a shot at home against the white wall, sized it on the CVS machine that actually has a very useful passport photo setting, and sent it off to the Irish embassy with his application with some trepidation. 
   

This is the one we ended up using. (Awww.) They sent it back ensconced in its very own new Irish passport, so they must have decided it was okay. (Either that, or they give you a little leeway on three-year-olds’ photos. I began to understand why the US didn’t require it till five.)

This year, I thought it would be a doddle to get my gregarious daughter to stand on a stool and smile at a camera for a few seconds. I mean, the girl bids a cheerful “Hi!” to every stranger we pass. Anxiety is not an issue here. Plain old grumps, on the other hand… We got to CVS and the nice lady was there. Mabel was put standing on a box on a chair and asked to look at the camera, while two other employees watched closely to learn the correct technique for taking a good passport photo.

Because I have grown as a person in the two years since we did this with Dash, I had the good sense to bribe her with something small from Target, where we were going next, to get some cooperation. With the promise of a new baby fresh in her head (I didn’t say new baby, but she decided I had – we ended up with playdough, which made everyone except the carpet happy for an hour or two) she acquiesced. Eventually, I came home with this.

I decided it was too blurry and her hair was obscuring her eyes, and then it turned out it didn’t quite fit the size requirements for the Irish photo (which of course, are a tiny bit different from the requirements for the American one; for one thing, they’re in metric). So it was time to make my own again. I thought I couldn’t possibly do any worse.

First, it took two days to let me trim her fringe (bangs). You might think it would be easier to just use a hairclip, but maybe you haven’t met Mabel. Second, we have no more white walls. Luckily enough the basement door is opposite a window and lacks visible smudges. Then she had just woken up and was suffering from nap-head, but wouldn’t let a brush within a million miles of her.

 

So we have: unruly hair, sticking-up fringe, mouth open (not allowed), head not straight, and a shine on the door behind her. Not to mention whatever weird thing is going on with her nose there. I swear it doesn’t normally look like this.

Next comes the mugshot. This could be right up there beside Lindsay Lohan. She looks like she just knocked over a 7-11 for some fried chicken, and they’d run out of ketchup and then she got caught to boot. Not helped by the scab on her chin. I don’t know what she did to her chin.

I think this is the one we’re going with. Head straight, mouth closed, looking at the camera. How do you rate my chances? At least her hair is brushed, right?

Just say no – to housework

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This morning has been one of those accidental housework days. I thought to myself “Ugh, should clean the downstairs toilet,” and “Maybe I’ll hoover the stairs too,” and now I’ve spent an hour and a half noticing things like grimy baseboards and sticky fingers on doors and – here’s the kicker – doing something about them instead of shrugging and deciding to leave it to the housework fairies, as I usually do. And now the stairs still haven’t been hoovered and I’ve doomed myself to do the shopping with two children in tow because I have no more free mornings this week, but a girl’s gotta blog. And those darned housework fairies, they keep cancelling on me. It’s so hard to find good help nowadays.

I walked to school with Dash this morning; possibly the first time I’ve brought him to school without Mabel, and therefore on foot. It was nice to chat uninterrupted – we get far too little one-to-one time these days. And I took the opportunity to talk to him about drugs.

Yes, he’s five, and I don’t think he’s getting into bad company just yet. (Five-and-a-half today, actually.) But according to a notice that came home from school on Friday and I found this morning as I rooted for his lunchbox, this is Red Ribbon Week, and we will celebrate not taking drugs this week (I paraphrase) by wearing a team jersey on Monday (don’t have one, Batman will have to do – Go Team Gotham!), crazy socks on Tuesday, something red on Wednesday, sweats on Thursday, and the costume you were going to wear anyway for the storybook parade, which is the school’s “not Halloween” (I see through their cunning scheme) on Friday. How this helps beat drugs I’m not sure, and I really have no idea if the kindergarteners will be participating in anything about it, but I thought I should give him some warning in case someone comes along to tell the five-year-olds not to do drugs.

Seriously though, it’s probably another of those things, like sex, and bullies, and religion, that you should mention to your children early and often, so that it’s something we talk about at home, not something that’s never mentioned and therefore (a) your parents have never heard of or (b) totally tabboo. And actually, the subject has come up before, earlier this year when a friend’s husband was mugged and I was trying, with difficulty, to explain something about people’s motivations for crime, to Dash.

The kids know about cigarettes and how they’re bad for you but adults are allowed smoke them if they want to. I tried to extrapolate from there to illegal drugs, first mentioning other sorts of drugs that are fine, like medicine the doctor gives you to make you better. It went something like this:

Me: … but there are other sorts of drugs that some people like to take because they make them feel good…
Dash: Oh yes, like an inahler.
Me: No, not like an inhaler. An inhaler for asthma?
Dash: Yes.
Me: No, not that. These drugs make people feel good but they’re bad for their bodies. And it’s against the law to take them.
Dash: Oh.
Me: So I don’t think your teacher will talk to you about this at school, but just in case she does, I thought we should first.
Dash: Right. … I saw a punknin!

… and that was that. Another parenting triumph.

Mrs Tweezers

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I can’t help thinking that I’ve done something wrong somewhere. Again. Just for a change. The thing is, I’m so fond of having a quiet life and working things out so that everyone remains (as) happy (as possible) as often as possible, and not getting myself into face-offs with toddlers, because we all know they never end well, that it appears young mistress Mabel has never heard the word “No” in her life. At least, that’s what it feels like lately whenever I do say no to her.

It brings to mind the story of and how Mrs Tweezers next door asked his parents if they’d ever heard of saying no, and they hadn’t. Mrs Tweezers (ominously enough) filled them in.

Owen’s parents eventually found a compromise to keep everyone happy, and Mrs Tweezers and her antiquated notions of childrearing were sent firmly back to the other side of the garden fence – but sometimes, whether it’s not staying another five minutes or not getting another cookie, saying no just has to happen. And Mabel is displeased. Depending on her level of nappedness, Mabel is wheedling, whiny, whingy, screamy, shrieky, or appalling. And sometimes I reach a compromise, and sometimes I just can’t.

I don’t think she’s spoilt, but then, what parent ever does? Yes, she’s the baby; but I try my hardest to treat them both the same when it comes to things like cookies and priveliges – not least because I know I’ll have trouble on my hands from the elder lemon if I don’t. I am trusting that we’re doing pretty much the same with this one as we did with the other, and while he’s certainly not a done deal yet, he’s just that much less of a work-in-progress that I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it seems to be a good sort of light. (More daylight, not so much oncoming train.)

Stripes for the kitchen

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Every time I upload photos from my camera (download, upload, it’s all the same to me…up to my computer, down from the camera, blah…) I get a message telling me that there are duplicates and asking whether I want to re-upload them or not. (Because I don’t delete the camera contents until I’ve printed out hard copies of the ones I want for my old-timey paper album, just in case something happens to the laptop.) Usually, I get the right answer to this question, and leave the duplicates alone. But every time I see the prompt I remember the time I uploaded a batch shortly after Mabel was born, when I gazed at the question in genuine puzzlement, unable to work out which way I should answer, and eventually chose poorly. Baby brain in action.

(There was also the time I couldn’t for the life of me remember whether it was half as much water as rice, or the same amount, or twice as much. That was baby brain #1.)

Then I upload the photos and iPhoto promptly crashes, becasue it is the red-headed stepchild of iThings and I don’t like it at all and it appears the feeling is mutual. (Sorry, Mr Jobs. Nothing personal.)

All that is to say that I just uploaded/downloaded yet more photos for your viewing enjoyment.

Remember back when we bought the house? And moved in ? And had the bench made in the kitchen? (Hmm. Apparently I didn’t blog that development, but it happened while we were away that summer.) And the next step was to get cushions for the bench? Well, here we are a mere year and some number of months later, and whaddaya know, we have cushions! I had known pretty much all along where I wanted to get them (www.customcushions.net) and the fabric I wanted, but I just kept procrastinating on finding the tape measure and clicking the Purchase button.

See the red/orange napkin over the back of the chair? That was my inspiration. I nearly second-guessed myself on the colours and went for something safer, but in the end I’m glad I stayed with my first choice.

Of course as soon as I took them out of the box, the children started to jump on them. But I’m hoping that once the novelty wears off, it might cut down the amount of walking all over the window seat that happens now. Don’t disillusion me, ‘kay?

Introducing Dash, and some new superheroes

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Monkey – no, I think it’s time for an upgrade: Dash. His new name is Dash. Monkey isn’t really “him” any more, and in my travels on the Internet I have noticed that far too many other bloggers, in a fit of originality, have dubbed their offspring Monkey. I will try not to make this too confusing for you.

Dash, then, has never shown any great artistic talent. This is not terribly surprising: I take more after my can’t-draw-a-straight-line-with-a-ruler mother than my architect and sometime watercolourist father, and B will tell you that he reached the zenith of his artistic heights with a pencil drawing of a blue-tit at the age of ten. (That’s a bird. Really. Stop looking at me like that.) So while it would be nice for my kids to take after their maternal grandfather, the odds are mostly against it. But sometimes, Dash surprises me. It’s not that he can’t draw, it’s just that most of the time he’s uninspired to put pencil to paper.

The other day the bigger boys on our road told Dash he could maybe, perhaps, be in their superhero club. These boys are second-graders, seven-year-olds, and Dash dearly wants to impress them. I think his superhero knowledge is standing to him in this respect, as he can discuss Wolverine and Iron-Man and the finer points of Thor’s hammer-flinging abilities with the best of them. Immediately after the ensuing battle involving a light saber, a Captain America shield, and possibly some sticks – I didn’t step in because at least everyone was still wearing their bike helmets, which I think is an excellent spin-off of all this safety-consciousness we have these days – Dash rushed indoors (dashed, even – see how good this name is?) and sat at the desk, demanding a clean piece of paper and rooting for a pencil.

In the next couple of minutes, and again later on, he came up with the following four new superheroes to show “The Boys”. (I’ll translate for you, because it’s possible you can’t read his writing.)

 Slick shot. He, um, shoots things. Slickly?
 Slurp Buzz. He has snakes’ tongues coming out of his hands.
LightningBoltGrip. His hands are lightning bolts. Obviously.
And Blast-Four. You can probably read that yourself.

It’s been a while since I subjected you to a sample of his artwork. You can really see how he’s come along. Okay, so the humanoids aren’t exactly DaVinci-esque, and I’m not sure why so many of them are cloven-hoofed, but what I really love about these are the names, and the fact that he sat down and so industriously and dedicatedly came up with them, and asked me how to spell the words and wrote them so well with very little input from me.

This is just one more of those times. The ones when your child acts like every other child, but because you’ve been there all along, seen him from the days when all he could do was suck and burp, watched him crawl and walk and stumble along the way and keep going – because you’ve been watching the whole time, it just seems amazing.

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