Frazzled

Some nights are just tough - particularly when I'm doing the dinner/bath/bed/storytime thing all by myself. Patience wears thin, and I find myself struggling to keep a civil tone as the kids go nuts (they're tired and crabby, too!).
Colin Buchanan's written a song for families to remember in times like this:

Press On, Mums

Press on, Mums
In all the chaos
Look to Jesus through the tears
Press on, Mums
God will guide you
Through those precious, tender years

Chorus
And in all you do do it for Jesus
Who won you life and free forgiveness
Yesterday, today
He is the same
All you do
Do it in Jesus' name

Press on, Dads
Love your wife
Serve your children
Set the pace
Press on Dads
Seize the moment
Show them Jesus
Run the race

Chorus

Press on, kids
God adores you
He will hear you when you pray
Press on, kids
Love your family
Honour, serve
Forgive, obey

Chorus

...and when all your human energy is gone
Look towards your Jesus and press on

Words and music by Colin Buchanan (c) 2007 Universal Music Publishing (Aust)

Those last two lines are what I need to remember on nights like this. Strength to love even when you're bone tired...

:)

Signs of Growth

Funny how things change.

When we were new parents, eagerly watching our firstborn for signs of growth, we couldn't wait to see the next stage. "Ooh, look! He's walking!" "Aaaw, doesn't he look like a big boy in his new toddler bed." "Wow! Aren't you clever brushing your hair all by yourself!" It seemed that we were always anticipating, always encouraging, always watching for the next step.

I feel differently now.

Yesterday, we put our baby girl into a toddler bed for the first time. Yes, I was proud of her growing up. I was also relieved that she managed to sleep right through the night in it. But my overriding thought was "No! It's too soon! Where did my baby go?"

Yup. I'm Pathetic. Obviously I'm doomed to be one of those blubbery mothers who tearfully watches their kids at school events, embarrassing them horribly and scarring them for life.

Doing Nothing for Fun

Having a holiday was disastrous for my waistline, but it was great for everything else. Experiencing warm sunlight, getting toes sandy at the beach, actually finishing several books. The best result of the holidays, though, has been the discovery of the joy of unstructured time.

As parents, we're threatened with the devastation of having a child "behind in their development", as if there is some golden standard of excellence to which we can and must push our toddler. We're supposed to maximise their learning, so any play they have is to be educational, not just fun. Toys can't just exist, they have to have some teaching component to them (even if it's just ABC-123). Our children have great expectations thrust upon them: they have to expand their vocabulary, they should learn to count to 20 before preschool, they must learn their alphabet and how to read, and above all, they must, must, must BE CLEVER!

It's a big burden to place on a small child. It's also a heavy guilt-trip to lay on parents. And it really isn't necessary, because sometimes it's better just doing nothing.

We did a lot of nothing this holiday. Nothing, that is, except spending time with each other giving our full attention to the children, and letting them be themselves. No agendas. No pressure-cooker flash cards. No super-engineered educational toys. No "Sorry kids, I just have to..." Just us listening to them, interacting with them, and experiencing life together. And you know what? In two weeks our daughter's vocabulary expanded quite considerably. Our son can now ride without training wheels. Not because we forced these things to happen, but because we slowed down long enough to let our children be themselves.

It doesn't take much. Tonight, I delayed dinner by half an hour so that I could sit down and wrestle with the kids. It was only half an hour, but we were all giggling at the end. It also meant that I didn't have to say "Sorry, honey, Mummy just has to..."

I highly recommend doing Nothing. It's a great way to discover who your kids really are.

A model to follow...

Ruth Bell Graham (wife of Billy) passed away recently, and her funeral was held yesterday. She left behind a great testimony of a life lived for Jesus. One of the things that really hit me was the testimony of her children. One of her daughters summed things up this way:

Anne Graham Lotz, second daughter
“I would go down to my mother’s room early in the morning. Her light would be on, and I would find her at her big, flat-top desk. She would be reading and studying her Bible, with about 14 different translations spread out around her.

“When I would go down to her room late at night, I would see the light on underneath the door and I’d go in, and she would be on her knees in prayer.

“As I look back on my childhood, I cannot remember any impression whatsoever that my mother was ever lonely. She may have been lonely, but I never saw it.

“I believe that our heavenly Father, our Savior, saved my mother from loneliness because of her daily walk with the Lord Jesus, He was the love of her life. I saw that in her life. It was her love for the Lord Jesus, with whom she walks every day, that made me want to love Him and walk with Him like that.”

- Quote courtesy of Christianity Today

What a great witness to her children.

As I read through all the tributes on the CT website, there were interesting things that came out about her marriage to her husband, and I don't know whether that's a model that I would want to emulate. Phrases like "for all practical purposes, as a single parent". On the one hand, she was praised for her role as the "rock" to her husband, and the love the couple shared is beyond question. But her children make it clear that there were long periods when they were without a father, as he went away on his many crusades around the world.

I don't know. I'm still thinking through this. God used BG greatly to bring many people to know Christ (including my grandparents). His work was incredibly valuable, and there's no doubting the importance of evangelism. Maybe that was rightly priority number one. Maybe I'm just looking through the worldly eyes of a mother and wife who'd find it difficult being away from her other half for so long. I guess God gave her the gifts she'd need for the task she had, and from the sounds of it her children benefitted by her ministry, too.

Favourite obsessions

My kids are cute.

There, I've said it. I've exposed my inner one-eyed-mother. I am now able to officially join the ranks of all the other one-eyed-mothers out there beaming proudly as their little one brings in a sore knee for a "kiss-it-better" (eldest child just did this as I typed).

A few days ago, I bought my littlest a new item: a bright, shiny, pink and blue raincoat. I think she likes it. At least, that was my fleeting impression from the fact that she's worn it, carried it, and hugged it everywhere for the past three days in a row.

It starts after breakfast. Sitting at the table, slowly coming to consciousness with my precious cup of coffee, I am startled to unwelcome awareness by the sounds of desperation. It's stuck on its hook. Having struggled gamely to free the raincoat from its prison, she brings her prize over to me, grunting and gabbling for me to put it on. I oblige, and all is right with the world - at least for the five minutes it takes before she realises she wants her gumboots.

Now, she is a picture of cute toddler-dom, clomping around the house in raincoat, one gumboot, with teddy bear firmly clasped to her chest. Is it wrong to just sit and watch your kids, silly smile plastered over your face?

Planning a "little friends" party

In just over a month, my eldest turns a grand 3 years old. I thought this might be a good opportunity to have a "little friends" party for the first time. I've got the invitations ready, the party theme (Cars, of course), and the guest list. But I'm beginning to wonder if the whole thing is such a good idea.

Parents used to be able to be insensitive to the needs of the young guests (and their parents) in previous years. The party fare consisted of artificially coloured and preserved confectionery of various sorts, guaranteed to produce hyperactivity followed by hyper-crankiness. Games included whacking papier mache creations with large sticks, using sharp objects to pin fake tails on fake donkeys, dunking heads in large buckets of water to try and find apples, eating donuts hung from clotheslines, or careening around dangerously blindfolded. The list goes on. Every party I went to as a child resulted in enormous sugar headaches and sulky behaviour before bedtime. But they were also great fun.

We live in a less innocent, more aware time, now.

Looking at the guest list, there are several that have equal and opposing food sensitivities. I can't be irresponsible or unfeeling and say "they'll just have to miss out". That would have been my worst nightmare as a child; never being able to eat party food. It also frustrates parents who feel they can't take their children anywhere, or face the consequences. I have to find a balance between "fun" and "helpful". Chocolate is out. Artificial colours and preservatives are out. Dairy is out. Gluten seems OK at the moment, but peanuts and anything resembling them have been banished to the farthest corners of the universe. Which basically means that I can't be lazy and just pick up a bunch of packages from the supermarket lolly aisle. What on earth do I put in the loot bags??? I can't put those little party favours: they all contain small items that constitute a choking hazard.

Then there are the games. Pass the parcel is fine. A pinata is just asking for trouble (preschoolers with blindfolds and large sticks = very, very, very bad idea). I'll look up some preschool games lists and find other safe, non-violent activities. Hopefully one or two of them should be fun.
The main problem is that running around outside in June is a reeeeeeally bad idea in our particular climate. Yet another way to frustrate parents is to force sickness upon their children while they visit your house. So I'm volunteering the interior of my house for destruction.

I always have loved a challenge! :)

Childhood paradoxes

My son is shy. Not the quiet-withdrawal type of shy, the glare-you-in-the-face-and-refuse-to-budge type of shy. At home, however, we can't stop him from talking. He chats about everything.
He's beginning to talk about events that happened in the past, like, "Mummy, member me, Mummy, Nanny, Pa, Daddy, Essie went zoo?" He's also very observant about his surroundings. One of the reasons his meals take at least an hour and a half to complete is that he talks so much between mouthfuls. This evening I took him down to the supermarket with me, and he talked incessantly - until we ran into someone we knew. After we said goodbye, the non-stop verbiage commenced again with "Who's that somebody?"

The problem, I've discovered, is that I've taught him how to speak improperly. For him, everything is a question. Unknowingly, as he grew into speech, I would say "What colour is that flower?" instead of saying "That's a red flower." My reasoning at the time was that I wanted to know how much he knew, and wanted to get him to produce a response. Now it's come back to bite me. Rather than announcing his own observations, he interrogates: "Who's that somebody there?" or "What's that?", waiting for me to give a response before he tells me. I find myself now having to help him unlearn ways of speech so that he can learn them properly. His speech patterns frustrated me until the penny dropped that it was a problem partly of my own making - though he does have an inquisitive nature!

Mind you, his current favourite phrase is "I know..." followed by a suggestion for play. There is hope yet...

It's started already

Yesterday, my eldest son started an imaginative new game:

"Mummy, can mees have some money?"

I have a feeling that's a question I'll be asked quite a few times in the next decade or so...

The situation of Mummy-ness

Firstly, my apologies for the poor grammar in the title. It's been a big day.

I've just been thinking about the mental knots we tie for ourselves as parents. I'm not sure whether it's unique to the feminine side of the parental spectrum, or whether it's a universal parent-type phenomenon. It's something that can leave us discontented, exhausted, and sometimes with patchy bald spots where we've torn out our hair.

Let me outline a common chain of events to illustrate:

1. We have sleep, intellects, jobs that satisfy, and the taken-for-granted feeling that we can handle the world.
   
2. We have children.
3. We love said children deeply, and think the way they crinkle their little noses is the most beautiful thing we've ever seen.
4. We have no sleep.
5. We lose intellectual discussion/feelings of mastery as we struggle to learn how to wash clothes 57 times a week while covered in mashed pumpkin.
   
6. Love for aforementioned children is muted beneath ever-growing desires to regain sleep/intellect/mastery.
7. We desire "a break". Grandparents/significant others step in to give us one, and send us out of the house.
   
8. We wander aimlessly through "the break", wishing we smelled like mashed pumpkin and desperately missing that crinkled little nose. If at shops, we may pick up baby knick-knacks.
   
9. We rush home early from the break to see the little crinkled noses and hope that they missed us as much as we missed them. We're often disappointed.
10. The cycle begins again at point 3.
    

I know. It's a little pathetic. It's an interesting mix of love, selfishness, and fatigue that puts us there. We're dissatisfied when we're at home (particularly at 3:35am), and we're dissatisfied when we're away. Who'd be a parent?

Still, I don't think I'd change it for the world - I might miss a nose crinkle!

Hats and girlie things...

I've never really considered myself a girlie-girl. For a long time my favourite pastimes really had nothing to do with hair/makeup/dresses/dolls etc. I am proud to say I never owned one of those crying-weeing-feeding baby dolls, either.

But baby girls are cute.

When S was born, I came over all girlie. Suddenly pink re-entered my life after a 20 year absence. I don't know why - some kind of hormone flush, or something.

Now that she's getting older, I have the privilege of seeing her learning to play in her own way. And it's totally different to her brother. J throws things: cars, Lambie, blocks of Lego, crayons - they all take off on some far-off rocket journey across the play room. But S plays differently. Her current favourite thing to do is to try on different hats. Usually she picks up whatever hat is lying around on the floor: her brother's sun hat, mum's green gardening hat, bicycle helmets, or a discarded pink frilly thing. Today, however, she discovered her hat drawer - and it was on for young (S) and old (me).

Who would have thought that watching a baby try on hats would be so much fun?

Developmental Psychology for dummies (i.e. me)

Back in the dark ages (ok, 13 years ago) my psychology studies were bent on determining how much of ourselves are based on nature vs. nurture. Having small children is like a long-term qualitative study of the above issue. Sometimes it's fascinating. Sometimes it makes me think that people should not become psychologists until they have had children themselves. Sometimes it's just baffling.

Case study no. 1: Oldest son. When asked to do something, he will attempt to whine plaintively, until told to cease immediately. Oldest son therefore does so, and performs the previously requested task.

Case study no 2: Younger daughter. When asked not to do something, she will exhibit a defiant facial expression, and then continue to perform said task with absolute gusto. Reprimands result in loud screaming, object throwing, and general tantrum-like behaviour. Encouragement may give desired result, but only if daughter feels like fulfilling the request in the first place.

What did we do differently? We've certainly been less vigilant with our daughter, simply by weight of the fact that there are now two children to supervise. We're also less uptight about parenting - not freaking out at any minor sniffle or apparent deviation in developmental milestones. Our daughter has also had the added benefit of an older sibling to potentially teach her how to be rough/hit/throw things. But I think the ultimate answer is that she is her own little personality, and the disciplinary methods that worked with J will not cut the mustard with S.

Birth order? Perhaps a little. Parenting method? Probably. But it's amazing to me at how we are created with our little personalities too. Psalm 139 was a big one for me before the kids were born, but it comes up again and again as they grow:

"For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well." (v13-14)

We're not born blank slates, ready to be told who to be. Our personalities aren't some fluid construct that don't have any real concrete existence. Even as young as 13 months, you can see a God-given personality emerging. It's not complete - experience and age will mold and temper certain aspects, as well as giving both of them fodder for future therapy (!).

I've come into contact with people who talk of various "parenting methods" with absolute conviction as if there is only one successful way to rear a child. The problem with these convictions is that they tend to leave out a very important variable: the child's own individuality.

As a parent, it is both a blessing and a challenge. God has given my children their own little personalities already. They have choices to make in growing their own way. My job is to work out how to train them both in a way that won't leave them socially inept, scarred, or psychopathic, and give them a deep love for the one who made them who they are...

Life, the universe, and mashed banana

Looking after small children brings you back to the primal things of life. Things you previously never really bothered to think about, you just did.

Like eating.

Eating is something I have no problem in doing. I like it, particularly if it involves one of the four 'C' food groups: Chocolate, Coke, Confectionery or Coffee. (I am trying hard to be a good nutritional role model for my children, obviously). I usually have no issue in getting the food from the fridge to the mouth with very little conscious effort on my part. In fact, there are often times when I take a biscuit into our study, only to wonder where it disappeared in the short journey to my office chair.

Watching children learn how to eat, however, is another thing entirely.

Our son is slowly learning how to scoop up peas and corn for himself. It's not a new lesson; we've been teaching him for about a year now. Usually he gives up on his fork and picks them up individually, or lets them "disappear" under the table where the dogs lie in wait. Adding sauce to the dinner mix is a dangerous combination. Our early photos of him covered in vegemite sandwich have been replaced by photos of him covered in barbeque sauce. He seems to like that rather a lot.

Our daughter is at a slightly more problematic stage. She's frustrated with having us spoon feed her, but hasn't got the motor skills required to put the spoon in her own mouth. Being the spirited child she is, dinner times now require earplugs or the ability to shovel food like the wind.

And we now have photos of her covered in vegemite sandwiches.

Why the title?

The babies stole my brain...


Science has for several years now documented the phenomenon that women's brains shrink during pregnancy. That's right, they shrink. So along with the usual hang-ups of the gestational period - puffy feet, tiredness, backache, nausea etc etc, - we also have the extra burden of losing a little bit of our brains each time we decide to have a child. It's not like it's a major issue or anything. We don't go from rocket scientist to vegetable overnight. But there are subtle changes that happen almost instantly:

• We lose the ability to find words easily. Thankfully, words like "thingie", "whatsit", and "dooverwackie" manage to hang around for the regular occasions when mental blocks occur.
• We're no longer able to hold full sentences (ones that contain more than four words, anyway) in our heads. Hence the growing appearance of bimbo-hood as we get halfway into a sentence before realising that we've forgotten what we wanted to say in the first place. You wouldn't believe how much deleting and re-arranging is currently going on behind the writing of this blog...
• Distractions occur more easily and frequently than they ever did before. You might think this is just because we have more on our hands with small children, but NOOOO! Tasks as simple as making a cup of tea now take four times as long as we get the teabags via unloading the dishwasher and ... oooh, that's an interesting catalogue on the bench...

Sometimes it's difficult to work out whether something has slipped because your brain has been eaten, or whether you're just sleep deprived. The trick is to see whether it remains once the children start sleeping for longer than two hours at a time. Sadly for me, it seems these changes are permanent.

*Sigh*

I'd better go and do some more sudoku and crosswords...