Now that Easter is over and I am no longer giving up buying jeans from Glassons for Lent, I bought some jeans from Glassons last night. Size TEN! Woo!
Now I need to get into a fitness routine which involves a) ten thousand crunches per day, b) magical removal of the flabby bits at the sides of my thighs, and c) burning enough calories to negate the king-size block of chocolate I’m currently devouring.
Today I’m going to throw myself around a netball court after a hard white ball, trying to remind myself that pushing and kicking are not appropriate behaviour in a “non-contact” sport.
HA.
Saturday: Sat on bum. Ate stuff.
Sunday: Day trip to Quail Island, ex-leper colony. Did not contract leprosy. Was much relieved. Did contract extremely sore calf muscles from pushing stroller around island.
Monday: Took Ethan and Amy to music in the morning. Both kids behaved like pod people: no crying, squealing or mad escaping. Had quick lunch, took Ethan to kindy, went and got photos developed. Monday was stinking hot — and the stinking was me — so we went to the pool for a swim between dinner and bedtime. Amy loved it so much that I now have to sign her up for Tiny Turtle classes.
Tuesday: Daycare! Ethan was gone for the day, so Amy and I went to the library and hung out all morning, then visited a neighbour and bought groceries we desperately needed in the afternoon.
Wednesday: craft group! I’m taking a free art class, and after dumping the kids mercilessly in the creche, I sat at the artist’s table. He bunged down a glass bowl of apples and told us to go for it. He’s Korean and speaks little English, so his instructions were rather cryptic. Mine were astonishingly good.
Today it’s cold and grey and windy and Ethan is sitting on the floor reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, part 2. Fortunately he can’t actually read, but I still fear that Hyde will give him nightmares, if the tripods don’t.
I recently read a piece on Ask Moxie about sleep regression (and if you have kids and you’re not reading Moxie’s advice blog, you’re crazy), and Moxie says this:
If he can’t sleep because he keeps waking up on his hands and knees rocking back and forth, you know it’s because his body is learning to crawl[...] Leading up to the actual new skill the baby is going to go through several weeks of intense brain work and prep that you can’t necessarily see. One of the side effects of this brain work is that they don’t sleep as well as they do during times in which they’re not about to master a new skill.
Guess what Amy’s been doing?
So I heard about a study the other day that found that many kids with reading difficulties at school age were the same kids that never learned to crawl — that went straight to walking. The idea is that a crucial part of development that we gain through crawling is learning to coordinate both halves of our brain, crossing or eradicating the midline.
Imagine you’re crawling. Or do it. Right now. Get down on all fours, go on. When you crawl, your right leg and left arm move forward roughly together, yes? And vice versa, too. You’re using both sides of your brain to coordinate both sides of your body.
Now sit back up and look at this post: when you read, both your eyes follow the words from left to right (this being English). If you haven’t learned to crawl and work both halves of your body, your eyes will have difficulty reading all the way across. You might read the left half with your left eye, then switch to your right eye to read the right side. The two sides of your brain (and body) try to work independently of each other.
A lot of schools in Australia are introducing cross-body exercises to get kids to integrate the two halves. Good exercises to encourage toddlers are singing songs like “Skinny-ma-Rink” (one hand touches the opposite elbow, then switch), games involving cross-crawling, or marching on the spot while touching hands to the opposite knee.
It’s a pretty good indication how much you love your significant other when you spend two hours ironing their shirts. I’ve spent the last three years sending my husband to work in wrinkled clothes, looking like I’ve forced him to sleep on the couch every night of our marriage, with nary a blanket to keep him warm so he has to sleep in his clothes. But! I have resolved to make Wednesday my Ironing Day.
Or use the dryer more, I’m not sure yet.
At the same time, I’m trying to go for a walk every day, if it’s not raining. (And trust me, it rains a lot in Christchurch.) Mike and I got Ethan a trike for Christmas and I’ll be damned if I can keep up with him when he’s riding it. He pedals that thing like he’s on his way to the fish and chip shop to pick up his regular Friday order (battered sausage and chips), and we all have to maintain a steady trot to keep up. Amy is enjoying the whole exercise-Mum’s-wobbly-thighs-away process because she gets to sit in the stroller, suck her fingers and observe nature from a safe place. Meanwhile Ethan speeds along, hogging the footpath, leaving me reeling in a wake of shin-slapping tree branches.
But after two days I feel like I’ve lost a brazilian kilos, so I love Ethan a little bit more for it. Today our walk was to the local primary school to throw ourselves at the playground for a while. The weather was a superb 21C, not too breezy, and the sun was shining and the birds singing and look Ethan! A cicada! See how educational this walking thing can be!
But by the time I’d had enough (which was about ten minutes before Ethan was even contemplating having enough), the wind had made a quick rotation to the south and was blowing small trees and children along the road like tumbleweed. Ethan was getting tired so I bribed him with the promise of a DVD if it rained. As always, it worked like a charm: we sprinted the kilometre or so to our house, parked his trike and dashed inside, where we celebrated our fantastic fitness regime with Lilo and Stitch.
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