FUD: Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt

Stream-of-consciousness, some weeks later November 30, 2007

Put shoes on?
(Wrong foot, love)
That one? There?
(Yes)
I got shoes on.
I got Ethan’s shoes.
I got a hole.
Got a hole!
Can’t get my shoe off.
Can’t get out.
(What are you doing now?)
I just getting the baby.
Ethan, the baby’s waking up.
Go to bed on the floor! On the couch?
I’m shutting your door.
Don’t get up…
I’m making again.
(Making what?)
I’m helping Ethan make his…make his again, a game.
Baby going in there. (They’ve built a house for a baby doll out of blocks.)
I’m putting my shoes on.
Baby’s sleeping. I shut his door. ‘Cos…baby’s not get out now.
Door’s shut.
Good? (Building a block door around the baby)
Baby door okay? It’s all done!
It’s not finished.
That’s not one, that’s not two, peekaboo. (Pulling blocks away)
(Block house falls over)
Oh no, poor baby.
I’m making again, the same.
I make it up again.
I can’t get up. Aw, poor baby, can’t get out.
Baby’s can’t get out now, ah! Baby’s get out now!
Ah, Amy’s make this again. I making again.
I’m making another, for a-me.
Aw, it’s broke!
Baby, go in there.
Not now, coffee table. Coffee table, coffee table, coffee table, coffee table.
It’s done, it’s done now, it’s all done.
You go in now, cos baby, it’s done again, baby. Lay down, okay?
I shutting your door now. It’s night-time.
Turn light off (she switches off a pretend switch) Bink! (sound effects)
(Has baby gone to bed?)
Yep, cos it’s night time. He’s got a door shut.
Baby’s going a-toilet now. (Taking baby’s clothes off)
Baby, go to toilet. It’s sleep time now. I’m not rocking you, it’s sleep time.

My kids are weird, part 17 November 27, 2007

Yes, it’s true. Biking with a bucket on your head is the new black.

High art November 21, 2007

Mum by Ethan

Originally uploaded by tracicle.

Every morning I make sandwiches for the kids’ lunchboxes and wrap them in paper (good for the preschool’s worm farm), and I usually draw something on the wrapper that’s relevant at the time — at the moment, it’s a bike for Ethan and a teddy bear for Amy. Ethan likes to take over this critical job whenever I let him, and this was his drawing a few weeks ago.

The Whole Tooth November 19, 2007

A week and a bit ago, Ethan and Amy and I trundled off to the dental nurse (in NZ, dental care is free until age 18 and most primary schools have a permanent dental clinic on the property) for the kiddies to get their regular checkup. For Amy it was a case of counting her teeth — twenty, “and oh my goodness what lovely spacing she has between her teeth! Just lovely…” — but for Ethan it was a shocking, incredibly shocking, five fillings.

Five!

I was agog, aghast, astonished, all those things, and then felt the parental shame of implied neglect when the dental nurse asked: Does he brush twice a day? (Yes.) Does he drink juice? (No, only water.) Does he use adult toothpaste? (Yes.) Does he have sugary snacks? (No.) I second-guessed everything I’d ever done in the space of about a minute and came up with no significant reason.

Today was his second visit to get teeth filled. Last Monday he got two done (bottom left canine and incisor — the holes were in the space between the teeth) and today two more (same again, bottom right). Dental nurse kindly said that if we were indeed doing everything right, then we should consider fluoride tablets.

In most of the South Island of New Zealand, and I don’t know how much of the North Island, the water is not treated with fluoride. New Zealanders typically are suspicious of any form of nannying by the government and consider fluoridation thus. Every time a district council suggests treating the local water, about half the district will support it and half will vocally and viciously reject it, calling on all kinds of conspiracy theories.

I’ve never cared one way or the other, to be truthful (I like the fact that our water is generally chemical-free and “pure”), but I think I’d support fluoridation now if indeed that is the cause of Ethan’s problems. It will be interesting, if we start taking tablets, to see how his teeth are a year or two from now.

I guarantee you the closest shave you will ever have. November 14, 2007

Once again the time has come for my annual “OMG squeal it’s a Johnny Depp movie!!!!” month of joy. This time around: Sweeney Todd, demon barber of Fleet Street. How could anything so awesome combined with Johnny Depp be bad? It can’t!

And as the extra English, super swoony icing on the cake o’ Depp, it costars Alan Rickman, the bestest Sheriff of Nottingham/Die Hard baddie/hairdressing ex-champion ever depicted ever.

You can tell I’m on holiday by how many times I’ve posted. November 10, 2007

I had meant to update a couple of things.

1. Amy’s “goopy eye”: Mike took her for a follow-up appointment at the ophthalmologist’s last week. The optham eye guy said, basically, that a) it isn’t a blocked tear duct, b) it hasn’t been conjunctivitis when her eye has gunked up, and c) see you later, not. Seriously, he gave us a bunch of open-ended non-answers and then said he saw nothing wrong and that he was going to take her name off the register. Mike said, uh, NO. So we have another follow-up down the line. A letter we have received since (after I phoned the eye guy’s office and politely bitched out his receptionist) says it’s probably just some weird freaky thing that happens when she has a cold. Gah. We’re going to try a private specialist instead to get a second, more polite and less abrupt opinion.

2. The 8:20am starts at College next year: have been postponed until 2009, after we can have a nice long consultation process. So many people complained via email (me) and verbal abuse (actually not me) to the head of the College that he changed his mind. Lucky man, now he gets to keep his testicles.

3. Ethan’s first school visit. We met some teachers, signed some papers, toured the junior school and hung out in the school library. The new entrant classrooms look welcoming and comfortable, and the kids were in developmental time while I was there (it’s a standard session in the junior school day; time for social development through free play) so Ethan now things school is as cruisy as daycare and that the kids play all. day. long. Sweet. I have a parents’ night on the 29th (it’s at 5:30 which is inconvenient; we can’t both go because it’s dinnertime) and Ethan will have an afternoon in class on the 4th and 6th of December with the other kids that will start when he does. I’ve been told a lot of soon-to-be schoolkids like to wear their new school uniforms on these visits. I have no doubt that Ethan will too. Of course, when he’s fourteen or so, his school uniform will be just another way that The Man is sticking it to him and that he’ll feel like a conformist sheep trapped in the industrialist educational system and then he’ll get addicted to crack and, well.

Also, Ethan and Amy have decided that the most awesome activity in the whole universe right now is walking or riding around with buckets over their heads. I have proof. I will show you. Soon.

Ahoy!

Ahoy!

Originally uploaded by tracicle.

Today Ethan wanted to dress up as a pirate (as one does) so we obliged. Then, of course, Amy wanted to be a pirate too, so we improvised a headscarf and sash for her, but the inflatable plastic sword wouldn’t fit. The two of them built a pirate ship from four dining chairs with a blanket for a mains’l. No photos of that though.

Question: Why do people make babies? November 8, 2007

Someone asked me, in a nutshell, what the heck it is that makes parenting worth it? And I tried to say something along the lines of, well, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it is worth it at all. But if you gave every single experience to do with parenting a score out of ten, and then averaged them all out, you’d probably get, like, a seven. And the good stuff really does outweigh the bad.

I can tell you the horrible things, the awful labour stories, the spit-ups, the poo, the dribbling teething cut lips and rashes the viruses the trips to the doctor that turn out to be pointless the tantrums the tummy bugs the bad dreams the toilet training. From a distance, while we’re not in the midst of them, while we’re in the eye of the storm (as any peaceful moment seems to be), they’re insignificant. When they happen they are your entire world, and you daren’t think about anything else because the moment your attention is elsewhere there’s a new pool of vomit or another broken toy. But those moments turn out to be relatively and mercifully brief.

(There’s that awful saying that God won’t give you anything you can’t handle.)

I could bore you senseless, on the other hand, with funny and dumb and cute things that I bear witness to every day. For example:
* Ethan is trying to hammer two bits of wood together with a nail the size of Texas. For no obvious reason, but because it would be cool to bang stuff with a hammer.
* Amy is teaching herself to ride a scooter. She made me stand and watch her take tiny pushes with her foot, all the while steering straight into a pile of very prickly lemon-tree prunings.
* Amy is tall enough now that I am teaching her to wash her own hands at the bathroom sink. Until she learns the routine, I supervise each step: wet hands, squirt soap, rub it in, rinse it off, turn off tap, dry hands. Now she says the whole process for me, singing it as we go.
* I said to Ethan yesterday that tomorrow we’re going to fill in his enrolment forms for school. He looked at me blankly, but then his eyes slowly got bigger and bigger and he suddenly grinned with excitement and then, since he couldn’t think of a better way to express how thrilled he was, he flashed me two thumbs up while jumping on the spot.

None of this particularly explains the why.

Every day I look at the things Ethan and Amy achieve, and a tiny part of me is screaming victoriously: I made them! These are living breathing growing things that I have made (with a bit of help) and nurtured and loved and hugged and shouted at and missed when they’re not here. No matter what else I do or fail to do, I have made two perfect things. And I wonder, biological imperatives aside, how much of parenting has to do with this incredible ability to just create something amazing.

(Maybe we all have a little Doctor Frankenstein inside of us.)

A very belated update! Also a rant. Sorry. November 5, 2007

Answers to unasked questions:

Yes.

Maybe.

Certainly not.

Yes.

Um. Green.

Placement was fantastic. I was involved with a great class of 11-12 year old girls (that’s something I wouldn’t have thought possible, like ew, tween girls?) that were funny and friendly and more than a little obsessed with High School Musical 2. On my last day I got a massive bunch of flowers: each girl had brought a flower from her garden. It is no coincidence that the bunch is primarily pink and purple — being girls of That Age, the only thing missing is glitter. I am going to their end of year production next week, and they have solemnly sworn to make my night their best performance.

Today was our whole-class post placement meeting, in which we were walked through our placement folders and double-checked the contents were all there, every observation and note and assessment and lesson plan and resource we are expected to hand in. It turns out I missed a non-assessed task that I’m not overly concerned about but all was well.

After that we had a meeting with all 150 year one students, in which some higher-ups kindly informed us that next year we will be starting lectures at 8:20am, because it fits better with the university. I was actually really shocked that they sprung it on us with no warning (we’d heard rumours, but that we’d actually get to vote on it, ha!) and because our year begins the week after Ethan starts school. To be at college on time, I’d have to leave a five-year-old on his second week of school ever, at school before he’s even legally allowed to be there, or pay for extra care, or switch to distance study, or…quit college. That sounds melodramatic but there it is. I can’t leave Ethan at school in his first weeks without being there too. I can’t ask the neighbours to keep him before and after school. I can’t switch to distance because I know I wouldn’t apply myself if I wasn’t on campus, and teacher training is meant to be collaborative, not a solo effort. That doesn’t leave many options, and makes me think the university is drastically biased against older students, especially parents. We don’t get to choose our schedule; it’s chosen for us, so we are literally forced to attend at 8:20 or not attend at all. I had Michael write a stern email (mine was way too nice and airy-fairy) and sent it to the head of the college and to all my classmates, so they can reword it and send their own. I’m going to pursue this because it comes down to me continuing to study or not.

Anyway.

On Saturday we all went along to the daycare for the annual working bee, and they took a great photo of my butt as I washed chairs outside. Mike is scrubbing away beside me, and Ethan and Amy each have a rag in hand as they “help”. It was a great morning because the kids were so into helping out. Amy eventually scored her ultimate job and possible has already made a career decision: washing the plastic baby dolls in the big water trough filled with bubbles. Her thought process was probably something like:

“Oh my gosh! The water trough is outside! Woo! I LOVE water! I LOVE the water trough! I love it when the water trough has water in it! And…Oh. My. Goodness. Are those…bubbles? I LOVE BUBBLES! How did they know?! The water trough, with water. And bubbles! I think I’m going to wet my pants! I’ll just swish these bubbles around and– Uh? What’s this thing? A BABY OH MY GOSH WRAAAAA IT’S LIKE I’M IN AMY PARADISE WOOOOO! I MUST. WASH. THE BABY. IN. THE BUBBLES.”

There are not enough exclamation marks in Amy’s brain for that experience.

I need to post video of Ethan riding his bike. He has worked so hard for the past month, with no nudging from us, to learn to ride properly. Every time he’s been outside he has practised and practised until he can start from standing, turn in a tiny controlled circle, and brake without tipping sideways. Now he bikes to the park, to the shop, wherever he can. Falling off doesn’t faze him as long as he’s riding his bike. He has bruises where bruises should not be, but he doesn’t notice them because He. Is. Riding. His bike. And he is so proud. And so are we.