Motherhood is really just being the person you are with the person you created

beach 2

When Little Pencil was just a toddler I was still convinced that parenting was meant to be about memorable parenting moments shared at parks and beaches and other traditional “happy family” places.  I was still at the stage where I judged my parenting experience alongside the fantasies of the pictures of other families I saw. I thought it was all meant to be sunshine and roses and learning experiences and laughter.

It often wasn’t.

We’d often return home from an outing in tears – both Little Pencil and I. He hadn’t “appreciated” it the way he was meant to and we were tired and hungry and frustrated. Actually I was hungry – he not so much. Outings in the early days were more like military-like excursions with tight timetables around naps and meals, there was baggage – so much baggage – nappies and snacks and water and suntan lotion and toys and changes of clothing and kitchen sinks and that was just the “baby bag”.

Of course we had some amazing times and I have about 56898 photos to prove it. I also have memories of laughing with him and marveling at him and just being so damn happy to be his mother.  But there was always a lot of stress associated with it – maybe because I hadn’t slept through the night for four years and I couldn’t get the damn child to eat a thing. But I digress.

Today Little Pencil had his first free day these holidays. It’s becoming increasingly hard to find time with him as he flits from one social arrangement to the next, so the thought of stealing some time with him was hugely attractive and I had just the lure to get him to want to spend some time with me.

He’s been nagging me since we bought the new house in March to find out if he can walk down to the beach from the new house with his friends. Today was going to be our opportunity to try out the route ourselves so we could make an informed decision about what the walk involved.

We parked at the new house that we don’t yet live in and set off. Just him, me, our phones (for photographic purposes), a bottle of water and some money for lunch. He did query my outfit before we left home so I knew I was dealing with a teenager.

What I hadn’t imagined was how wonderful it would be to spend time with this teenager without any of the normal distractions. There was no timetable, no friends pulling at his side, no work pulling at mine. We just walked and laughed and walked and took a zillion photos.  He went onto scary dangerous rocks and instead of screaming I took photos of him smiling, he challenged waves on the slippery rocks and I only screamed internally.  He talked constantly (as is his want) and I listened because he was actually really interesting and entertaining.
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We fed birds, we fed ourselves and he fed my soul with a love that the just keeps building as I discover more and more that parenting is not just about looking after a baby, that it’s not about perfect moments that the books define, that it’s really just being the person you are with the person you created.

Little Pencil raved about the walk – he loved every minute of it and even though it’s certainly close enough to walk there with his friends he’s told me he wants to do it with me again. Actually he told me he wants to do it with his dad but I think I’ll be allowed to join them.

I never thought I was going to learn to love him even more in his teenage years. Guess I was wrong.  And I realise I have changed my mind about teenagers completely since I wrote THIS post. (I prefer this way)

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The white van strikes again

WhiteVan_1744527cI may or may not have been in a particularly bad mood last night when I was flipping through Facebook and spotted a post which made my previous bad mood seem rather tame.

I was in a bad mood because of Tony Abbott and the way he talks about asylum seekers using emotional blackmail, and actually everything else he and Scott Morrison say and do, I was feeling sad from watching the footage of Sri Lankan women and children, I was anxious about the situation in Israel and on the Gaza Strip, I was horrified by the stabbing death of a three-year old boy in Adelaide.  There were real things on my mind. Real and horrific things that I couldn’t quite shake.

And that’s when I saw a post from the NSW Police Force shared by one of my friends because as neurotic as I am I don’t follow the police on Facebook.

The message read in part

“Police are appealing for information after a teenage boy was approached at Rose Bay yesterday.

Police from Rose Bay Local Area Command have been told the 16-year-old was walking along Old South Head Road about midday (Tuesday 8 July 2014), when a white van stopped near him.

He told police the man driving the van offered him a lift; the teen declined and ran away. Police were advised of the incident about 7.30pm.

Police are now appealing for witnesses to the incident to come forward. The van is described as being a white VW-brand with yellow and black number plates.

Anyone who may have witnessed the incident, or who has information about the man or vehicle, is urged to contact Rose Bay Police or Crime Stoppers.”

The post then went on to discuss how we should talk to our children about “Safe People, Safe Places”

As far as I can tell a 16-year-old boy was walking on a very busy road when a white van (because it’s always a white van) pulled up near him.  I assume the boy went up close enough to the car to determine that the man offered him a lift. He declined the lift (I assume) and ran away. Smart child. His mother reported it to the police. Smart mother (one can assume the whole family is smart)

They ensure better tadalafil tablets prices quality drugs for the treatment of erectile dysfunction across the world. It has natural aphrodisiacs and exotic herbs in lowest price viagra right combination boost ejaculation force and help to enjoy enhanced sexual pleasure in copulation. Remember eggs live for 12 levitra free consultation to 24 hours, so your eggs may no long be viable, once body temperature rises. The endocrine system basically powers the entire system and influences the working of the heart, growth of bones and tissues, and even the ability of the soft cialis india man and how much of the potential the man probably holds. Did the man force him into the car? Because that’s not written in the report*. Did he expose himself to the boy? Also not in the report.I really hope not. Although from the hysterical comments that were posted in some of the Facebook responses I have seen,  you would think so.

I do not want to trivialise the many heinous things that could happen to a child on the street if the wrong person got to him. But I refuse to believe that everyone driving a white van is a pedophile or the abductor of small (or in this case – big) children.

The paranoia we feel about the “man in the white van” is actually hugely disproportionate to the actual danger our kids face.

The data around attempted abductions is difficult to capture – some attempts might not be reported,  and some may be reported under different sub categories.  I’m not sure that this incident was reported as an attempted abduction because there is nothing in the report that points to an attempt to lure the boy away.

Recent figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology state that just over 750 abductions occurred Australia wide during one calendar year and that just over half were by a stranger. Children made up less than 20% of the cases.  Less than 20% of the cases HALF of which were committed by people known to the child.

If anything happened to this 16-year old boy to terrify him or make him feel uncomfortable I am hugely and profusely sorry – for him, for his parents and for anyone else affected.

But to the hundreds of people who have gone into a major panic about allowing their children to walk outside because of this incident I implore you to recognise the facts.  Educate your children like this boy was educated, teach them to ignore people they don’t know and to call for help if the person won’t go away (scream ” I do not know this person”), to use busy roads, to learn about safe adults and obviously not to get into the car of someone they don’t know.

But educate them in reality not in fear.

Rant over.

*UPDATE: As I was finishing this post the mum of the boy contacted me via Facebook. Scary shit when you realise how close you are to that person who is in the “news”, we have about 10 Facebook friends in common.  She says the man offered her child a lift and then demanded that he get in the car. That is some scary shit and I am even gladder now that he ran away. But it doesn’t negate my point that education is key – education not fear.

When someone tells you your child is lying

There are many things I try to teach my child, almost every day. Ever since he was able to talk I have wanted him to know that what he says is important, his words count and that I believe him.

The reasons for this are numerous and obvious – of course he is important and should know that but there is something far more significant and important about him knowing that I believe him, I trust him and if he tells me something I will actually listen.

Some people may complain about the fact that our kids are too forward, that “back in our day” we would call our friends’ parents using the Mr or Mrs moniker, we respected our parents more and our relationships were different. Yes they were different – but they were not necessarily better. The idea that children should be seen and not heard, that they should not talk out of turn and that there were certain things they shouldn’t talk about at all surely caused more damage than it did good. Abuse and inappropriate behavior swept under the carpet – things that troubled us as kids never brought to light.
[Read more…]

The night a sociopath came to stay

teenage-brain

It is a little ironic that a few days after I wrote about not posing a threat to my son’s confidentiality and privacy I took to Twitter to seek help in regards to his behavior.

You see up until recently my son has been the most delightful child that you could meet. He’s been loving and caring, compassionate and kind and he seemed to really want to make me happy. I know it’s a bit selfish to want your child to make you happy but geez it was nice.

If we argued (and we did) he would be contrite and apologetic and genuinely seem to learn from whatever had caused the issue.

But that seems to be over.

Now he’s just a shit (although I think he’s just hormonal not genuinely shit)

When he is told off (generally for being rude) he shrugs and literally says “I don’t care”. It’s quite hard to handle.

Although to be honest the day after his major hormonal outburst now known in the Pencil household as “the night the sociopath came to stay”, he was so insightful as to his own behaviour that he made me marvel at him all over again. He also showed maturity beyond a sociopath level.

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I’ve changed my mind.

I need help from people who understand adolescent behavior and it seems to have been making it’s way to me almost as if there was a teen god sending it over. I’ve been stumbling across articles and essays that I may have seen around but never paid attention to. So much science and research into the brain which actually explains why the sociopath took hold of my son’s brain.

teen mouse

I remember people saying to me when Little Pencil was a baby – “small children small problems” and I wanted to whack them. It was condescending and unhelpful and not really true. All parts of parenting have their own issues and their own rewards. When he was small he was so attached to me, now that he is bigger that attachment has to change. I hope that is what they meant.

I love my adolescent son more than I could ever put into words. We have been lucky enough to enjoy an incredibly close and meaningful relationship. We have a bond that I am grateful for every minute of every day but I know that part of this stage of his life means our relationship has to change and that in some way I need to allow him to lead that change.

We don’t have to stop being close and loving each other an unhealthy amount but I do have to let him grow up. I need to allow him to be a teenager, to find his feet, to determine his strengths and his weaknesses, to come to me when he needs me and to pull away when he needs to find himself.

I just hope that he knows that I am on his side. And that I can still be a LITTLE bit scary when I shout only because I love him.

Facebook is literally messing with your mind

My son sent me this video the other day – he sent it via email with the subject heading “inspiration”.

I am not at all sure what point he was trying to make when he called it that but I really hope that he watched and understood it before he sent it to me. It’s something I try and drum through his head all the time so maybe he thought that this clip was my inspiration.

It certainly could have been.
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Thank God my mother never had Facebook

no facebookWhen I was a little girl I was apparently prone to a tantrum or two and there are a fair few photos of me mid total melt down. I guess being third child my parents thought it funny and tried to capture my ridiculous cuteness on film rather than give me that damn toy I wanted, but I digress.  One such photo exists of me naked and screaming in the backyard. It was printed of course because I am old and there was no digital imaging when I was in my prime tantrum years (although my husband might disagree).  I hated that photo.

I didn’t hate the fact that I was nude so much as I hated what I looked like, how sad and angry I seemed, how no one was listening to me but they were photographing me and how isolated I looked in that frame.  Clearly I have childhood issues which I bring to the photo but don’t we all?
[Read more…]

Getting close to building date.

The building project we are about to embark on is thisclose to happening. Every day we hear that the complying development certificate that we need to start will be ready the next day. We have amassed a following of people to nag the certifier including the draftsman and the builder and if we haven’t nagged them into submission it should be ready tomorrow. Or Monday. Or Tuesday. But it was meant to be ready last Wednesday.

I think that the council with all its red tape, bureaucracy and numbered forms actually help would be renovators and builders prepare for their projects by adjusting them, very quickly, to the fact that everything takes a long time and there will be endless days of absolutely no progress.
[Read more…]

The 14 emails I hate most

 

The other day during on of our more scintillating conversations (where more means less) my very close friend Kerri Sackville and I were discussing the relative sizes of our inboxes (where inboxes means the boxes where our email arrive – sorry to disappoint).

Kerri won that conversation because her box was bigger than mine (where box still means email depository) but I got a highly commended because of the contents of my email.  (By the way Kerri was, until the point that she read this post, completely unaware we were having a competition – she probably doesn’t even realise we are competing for best text messages either yet).

My inbox in not huge because I am fastidious and anal and keep it small and manageable and very good looking.  Also because I mostly communicate via Twitter, Facebook and Skype

But in order to keep this tiny, neat little box I have had to institute a hierarchy of emails so that I know how to deal with them as the come in.  They are (in very strict order)

  1. Your parcel has been dispatched
  2. Anything friendly or personal
  3. The meeting has been cancelled
  4. Thank you for submitting that piece we adore it
  5. In other words, these drugs are limited to adding or modifying natural body substances with the hope of effective purchasing viagra australia physical responses. Some men still viagra großbritannien think that online drugs can’t work as good as their branded counterparts can. Currently, available statistics vary between 10 – 20% as a marker for those who have a genetic component for their susceptibility to develop Gout. cialis generic cheapest Those coping with impotence, can buy Caverta online to rid plaque development in arteries, generic levitra after its consumption.

  6. You have been paid
  7. Your order has been processed
  8. Something to do with the building process we are about to embark on. I never understand them but I am quite happy to receive them I believe somewhat erroneously that  it takes me that much closer to the process being over
  9. School emails – usually about a billion a week alerting me to anything from lice to menu changes at the canteen
  10. Group activity email – usually sent by one of my son’s friends parents who want to attend an event en masse. I wanted to put this at number 11 but in the interest of my son having a good social life I didn’t
  11. Everything I have ever subscribed to – still not sure why I do that
  12. Nigerians and Russians proposing to me
  13. Nigerians offering me money
  14. PR companies being paid to promote a product asking me to promote it on my blog or on Facebook/Twitter for free.
  15. Please pay this bill

I actually delete most of them but I file everything related to number 7 because my husband is more fastidious than I am and he might one day ask me what the builder said about the structural beam on the 6 June 2014.   I will find that filed in it’s own special folder titled “stuff I hate  – renovations”.

 

I remember

Tomorrow is my birthday, I am fast approaching very old in years but not maturity. This whole ageing thing has led to a lot of thinking and reflecting on past birthdays.

Turns out that my memory is not that great because I can’t even remember what I did on last year’s birthday. I am sure there was cake involved. There wont be cake this year *sobs about diabetes diagnosis and the sudden dearth of cake in my life*

I remember a few birthdays from my past – notably the one where I was around 8 and a magician came to our home and made a bunny appear out of a hat which was an incredible trick. Until the family dog ate the bunny. That was not as much fun. And to be honest that could have been one of my sister’s birthdays – they all seem to blend.

I remember the cake my mother made me one year for my pre-school party. It was a house with a roof made out of flakes and I swear there was smoke coming from the chimney. There were windows made of foil and lollies everywhere and now I am grown up I have diabetes. No, I am not bitter.

I remember very little of my teenage birthdays.  Probably better that way, my teenage years were a bloody miserable debacle.

But trying to go back in time without getting too deep has unearthed so many other “trivial” memories of my youth. Memories that could possible be imagined as a montage of my childhood without too much of the grit – I will spare you that for another time (read: never)

  • I remember the days before hair conditioner was invented and we sprayed our hair with No More Tangles before picking the knots apart by hand at great pain
  • I remember cutting tin foil shapes to burn into our skin in the sun after we had lathered ourselves with pure coconut oil. There was no SPF when I was growing up
  • I remember when my father first got a computer at his office and it had its own room which was set to a perfect temperature rather like a wine fridge. This room was just to the left of the telex machine
  • I remember the days before seat belts
  • I remember my father listening to the stock exchange prices over the radio
  • I remember getting my change at the corner store in chewing gum (Chappies for the South African readers playing along at home)
  • I remember wearing leg warmers without any attempt at being ironic
  • I remember my father crying when my parents got divorced
  • I remember when you could buy candles that weren’t scented
  • I remember drive-in movies and being secreted away in the boot of the car just before we drove in because you paid per person and I can only guess that my parents were trying to save money
  • I remember the emptiness of Sunday nights
  • I remember reading Beano and Beezer annuals
  • I remember being scared of the playground at school
  • I remember recording songs onto a tape cassette from the radio to make my own mixed tapes or even my own radio station complete with ads narrated by my sister and me
  • I remember believing in fairies
  • I remember playing with the chord of the home phone and winding it around my fingers, I remember the engaged signal and waiting at home for an important call
  • I remember being scared the Russians had stolen my mother and replaced her with someone who hated me
  • I remember eating sherbet out of matchbox with teeny tiny little spoons
  • I remember lying on the slastow next to the pool
  • I remember walking back home from the shop one day. One specific day that won’t leave my head
  • I remember when TV was introduced to South Africa where I grew up. Am hour in English and an hour in Afrikaans. And the test pattern the rest of the day
  • I remember getting my first doona. It was a huge novelty. My dad came home with one and we each got a turn to try it, it was like a cloud of softness.
  • I remember playing elastics
  • I remember my first day of primary school
  • I remember being scared that I would die before I got to year 6
  • I remember learning running writing
  • I remember the smell of new dolls at the toy shop
  • I remember that my mother got remarried although when I look at the photos of the wedding I don’t remember being there
  • I remember trying to black out the teenage years. It worked.
  • I remember the garden at my grandparent’s apartment was full of cats
  • I remember the best fudge in the world
  • I remember silly putty

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Hopefully I will remember all this and more as I grow older.

Hopefully I will forget all that I omitted to include this time.

I no longer have pre-diabetes

 

Today I went to the specialist again. The specialist was in fact an endocrinologist, because as much as I like trying to kid myself I go to the specialist because I’m special, I’m actually seeing an endocrinologist because my endocrine system is special. Although I just made that bit up.

I actually really wanted to see the Consultant guy below but my GP hadn’t written me a referral.

anti-ageing

Anyway I had been to the endocrinologist sometime back and he had sent me to have my entire blood supply syphoned by the pathology department. I also had to donate a LOT of wee to those pathologists. But that’s getting into specifics you probably don’t want to know about

Today I sat down across from the endocrinologist (whose parents must be my age )and I thought I heard good news

“You are no longer pre diabetic” he said.

“Yay me!” I thought fantasising about celebrating this win with a huge packet of fruit chews. And a jar of Nutella. And some marshmallows.

“You have diabetes” he said.

I still clung to my confectionery fantasy because I bloody love lollies and I thought I was going to need them to get through this diagnosis

There is a strong link between impotence and depression, and most men tend to avoid both canadian pharmacy sildenafil these problems. A Propecia lawsuit best price vardenafil has already been submitted by thousands of guys from different places. The reason sildenafil pills that you can buy generic pills cheaper at a online drugstore is that a guy don’t pay for branding, marketing, advertising or a costly sales force or overhead. The physical therapist also promotes the abilities for moving, reducing and restoring the appropriate functions to prevent any kind of 100mg tablets of viagra disabilities those exist in a human being. And then he said it about 15 more times. In fact during the rest of the appointment I don’t think he said another batch of words without including “you have diabetes” except of course when he kept repeating “we are now treating you as a diabetic”

He gave me “gifts” of medication and books and glucose meters and a nifty set of needles and strips and asked me if I wanted to see a diabetes educator as well as a dietitian.

I  asked him if I was going to die. He didn’t answer no immediately. I think he sad something like “you have diabetes”.

I cried a little bit – because I cry whenever I hear any news.

He told me that I had diabetes.

And I walked out with a shopping bag full of stuff, a referral to a dietitian (who I will find it hard to listen to)  and a diagnosis of diabetes.

Nice. *sobs over lost opportunity to eat all the lollies*

lollies