Time Keeps On Slipping...

Dear Lily Bug,

Last night, just before you fell asleep, you began to cry. I reached out to hold your hand, and asked what was wrong. You told me you didn't want to turn five. You didn't want to stop having Unicornie and Bolt to cuddle at night. I told you that turning five didn't mean giving up your bedtime buddies, and you stopped crying - but only long enough to take a breath and start afresh. 

"What's up this time?" I asked.

"I'm afraid to be a big girl! I'm growing up too fast mum! I don't want to start school. I don't want to stop going to kindy. I love my kindy!" And again you erupted into sobs.

My heart broke for you, because I understood your fears - it's hard facing the unknown, and most of all it's hard that you have to step out of - and leave behind - your comfort zone in order to do so. I felt so sad that you carry these fears when you're still so very young. How difficult it must be to realise when you're only four and a half years old, that these are stages you'll be leaving behind as you grow!

I wanted to hug away your fears but I couldn't. I was pinned down by your little brother, who was clinging on to me in his own nearly-but-not-quite-asleep haze with a limpet-like ferocity. To leave his side at that moment would mean to set him into a melt down, and that wouldn't provide any consolation to anyone...

So I continued to reach across the gap between Guy Smiley's bed and yours, and hold your hand, and talk you through it. Reminding you that it's still a long time before you're five and so you have lots of time left to enjoy kindy (and it broke my heart to say that too, because it's not long at all, and I too would rather that things stay as they are now, than let you go!) and school will be exciting and fun... That too was a little white lie. I know you're going to expect school to be as awesome as the likes of kindy and Playcenter, and what a culture shock it's going to be when you discover you can't just play all day! But hopefully you'll enjoy the likes of math as much as you enjoy painting dinosaurs and rainbows ...

And even though positioning you in one spot long enough to practice writing your own name requires a titanium backbone and a wee bit of bribery at times, I'm sure the teacher's sharp voice will be more effective than mine... It's not that I don't have a sharp voice (which can probably be heard from four houses down when I used it) it's just fairly ineffectual most of the time. And that trick of using a serious but quiet voice doesn't work either, because neither of you can ever hear me over your own yowling.

Anyway, I digress.

The truth is, I don't want to let you go to school either. I don't. I try so hard not to think of next year because I want you and Guy Smiley to stay exactly at the stage you're at now. Not forever. Of course I want to see you grow into the beautiful young adults I know you'll become. But a dominant part of me can't help but wish these next six months could last for at least another year and a half. Unfortunately that's not going to happen. So I can only hope summer starts early this year, and we can make the most of your final months of being a pre-schooler, before February 4th shifts the tectonic plates of our comfort zones into a completely new formation.

Love always,

Mum

PS: At least my one consolation is that once you start school, we'll you'll be one step closer to total world domination. Whoo hoo!

Oh no! Timmy's down the well!

The kids had a friend over today and they spent much of it busy playing and ignoring me completely (except for when I was required to mop tears or wipe mud from feet). Initially, I had this plan to spend my day "getting stuff done". But short of having the assistance of Rumpelstiltskin, it is pointless - POINTLESS - to try and get anything done when there is not two by three little whirlwinds in the house. A play date gives children the perfect excuse to thrash the house in ways they'd never think to do on their own.

Scenario 1 - the muchkins, bored despite a house full of toys.
The Lily Bug: "Hey, should we tip out every single toy box we own, and toilet paper the walls?"
Guy Smiley: "Monster trucks!"
The Lily Bug: *tips out one box. Is bored by lack of accomplice, gives up.*

Scenario 2 - the munchkins + friend, bored despite a house full of toys.
The Lily Bug: "Hey, should we knock down the precarious leaning tower of toy boxes in the wardrobe, scatter the contents all over the bed and then bounce on them until we hear cheap plastic snap beneath our feet?"
The Friend: "Yeah! Then we can take half of them outside and dig a hole and bury them - along with as much stuff from the cutlery draw that we can carry!"
The Lily Bug: "Yeah!"
 Guy Smiley: "Yeah! MONSTER TRUCKS!"
*Cue wanton destruction*

It usually takes a few weeks to locate the last missing monster truck, and I'm still missing teaspoons.
No doubt the lawn mower will find those...

Don't get me wrong. I love it when the kids can busy themselves all day by dreaming up creative new ways to use toys as stepping stones in order to cross the great lake of lava that is the entire floor surface of the house. Even if it means I have to spend the next week approaching very short men and offering my first born if they'll help tidy up the aftermath.
And I never really meant to imply I intended to waste my day on housework. Pfft! Who wants to waste precious time doing that?

An adaption of the Laundry Tornado.

This morning - while the munchkins were watching Sunday morning kids telly - I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to finally catch up on my favourite blogs. This is what I decided as soon as I woke, because at night I'm always elbow-deep in graphic design or Wordpress customisation and I never ever ever seem to get my head away from Photoshop layers or div layers. And you know, sometimes I just want to see what Catherine's been up to.

So, with the Lily Bug snug under a blanket and glued to the Wild Thornberries and Guy Smiley busy driving his monster trucks across a line up of Hot Wheels cars, I thought I could safely blog hop for a little while (while trying to figure out what's gone wrong with a Wordpress plugin in a separate window) without interruption.

And then, I walked away for a moment to make a coffee. Dumb mistake. Guy Smiley noticed the whirling thumping hum of our computer (I think that fan is going to #!!$% itself soon) and I returned to find my seat had been taken by a little boy who was suddenly extremely fascinated by Catherine's apples. (Wow, that sounds way ruder than it was mean to.) It then took five times longer to finish reading her two latest blog entries because Mr Two Year Old keeps wanting me to scroll back up so he could count the blumin' apples. Seriously, if I was in the kitchen he'd have no interest in what I was doing at all! Typical.

By the way, Catherine's apples are not apples at all, but White Sapote. I'd never heard of White Sapote before this morning, or Earth Gems for that matter (thanks Catherine for always teaching me something new!) but I'm curious now. I wonder if these could be found at the local Farmers Market? Though, the chance of me being organised enough in the morning to make it to a Farmers Market is slightly less than the chance of waking up to find fairies have made a wee house in our garden...

But you know...You never know. ;)

In other news, we've had winter bugs run rampant through the house for the last fortnight... (I now have a mental image of little scarf-clad bugs, tearing through the house like something the Cat would pull out of his Hat. Judging by the state of our house, I'd say that was entirely possible ;))

Anyway, here's an collection of the last fortnight's antics (you know, when we weren't at home being unwell - possibly due to too much running around wet playgrounds in the winter)

Look! I even managed to get a pic of the Teen in here! Not that I took it myself, no she usually hides her face behind her hair and grumbles about how she's having a bad face day whenever I wave the camera in her direction.

We have some lovely little reserves and playgrounds in our neighbourhood, and just the other day we discovered a new bushwalk. Okay, not new, but new for us anyway. We had no idea where this track was going to lead us, and then it opened out onto our road! Sheesh. I've lived on this street 12 or so years, and never even noticed this particular slice of native bush. You know, despite the "Manutewhau Walk" sign and wooden walkway leading into it...

Did their eyes light up when they discovered the track had turned to mud!

A couple of weeks earlier, a friend showed us another nature reserve, tucked away down an Avondale side-street where I would never have thought to ever find a forest. Waterfall and all.

Seriously, people who think Auckland is all about traffic congestion, arsehole Maserati-driving JAFAs & high-density housing, just really need to get out of the house more.

That narrow concrete thingie that the kids were walking across wasn't as dangerously scary as it looked. Honest. It was only a small drop onto lots of soft nature-stuff. And there was an adult standing 6 or 7 metres away, waiting to catch a falling child with her go-go-gadget extendable arms.

 Okay, it's late evening now, and I began writing this at about 10am this morning. In between popping away to sort out children's arguments ("she pushed me" "he smacked me in the head with a car"), sorting through the last months worth of photos & trying to make some kind of half-arse dent in housework, I've completely managed to ignore the small backlog of website/design jobs and uncleared emails that I'm usually stressing and panicking over. But I have managed to spend a reasonable amount of time enjoying the laughter of Guy Smiley as he chased after Lily Bug and Friend with a hose, and rambling in my blog for the pure sake of it. And sometimes I really really need to do that more than anything. It's like brain food.

My only worry now - other than whether or not the kids current game of swan diving from chairs onto a pile of beanbags and blankets is going to at some point require medical care - is what to name today's blog entry.

Hmm...

In those quiet moments, fear eats me alive.

Guy Smiley made a bolt for the road a couple of days ago. 

We were on the driveway of a friends house, about to hop in the car and go to a park. Distracted, I jabbered away about car headlights until my friend noticed Guy Smiley had edged well away from us and was waiting for me to notice him meters from the driveway's open gate.  I headed towards him. He bolted. I could see a 4WD coming and I ran, but he had a head start and in the nanoseconds before he reached the sidewalk I knew there was no way no way I was going to quite reach him before he reached that road. And he would have run straight out on to it, if it weren't for the fact that he faltered slightly when he hit the sidewalk - a fractional moment of hesitation that gave me just enough time to reach his side and grab him, and within seconds of the car that drove past in almost that same instant.

For a moment there, as I ran after him and saw that oncoming car, I truly thought I wouldn't reach him in time. It was a waking nightmare that lasted only seconds, but it has quite literally become a waking nightmare. Every small silent moment that I've found myself trapped in between then and now has caused those seconds to play again in my mind, and all the possible "what if" scenarios have churned over and over until I've felt my stomach begin to churn. Over and over.

Yes, it was all a happy ending in the end; what with me scooping him up in time, and hugging him, and repeating "oh god oh god" while he happily laughed and smacked me playfully in the face, as I walked back up my friend's driveway and buckled him into his carseat. Safe and secure. Not to be set down upon a front lawn when a gate is wide open ever again.

But the "what ifs"... They're going to torment me for a really long time. And rightly so.



                                                                                 End note: I'm terrible at self-editing. As you can probably tell by 90% of my waffle. However I have managed to remove about 9 paragraphs of what I wrote here originally, as I decided I didn't want to burden the world with all my self-doubts and blinding anxieties after all.

Then in one of those Nek Minnit moments...

Try as I might to find the kids a playground where they won't - for once - find a swimming pool of mud to wallow in, they will sniff one out

And as much as I sometimes protest to begin with (citing 'nice clean clothes' and 'nice clean car' as reasons for staying, well, nice and clean for a change) I always have the camera out ready and waiting to capture all the I-want-to-remember-these-moments-forever shots.

Photos taken 13 June 2012.

I protest, but I don't mind at all really.

And the kids don't really mind when I have to peel off their clothes before allowing them in the car because silly mum has forgotten to bring a spare change of clothing. And towels. And travel soap. And a camping shower. It's all part of the adventure that is 'going to the park'.

In fact, sometimes we don't even make it to the park. Sometimes if I'm super lucky, the kids manage to get completely covered in muck along that stretch of lawn between house and car.

This isn't the set of photos I've been looking for, where the Lily Bug and Guy Smiley made a mudslide out of a tyre track on our lawn while I was still inside trying to find the car key so we could go out. Those pics are trapped on a camera memory card that won't work. Instead, these are from the Lily Bug's playdate last week.

 

I seem to have this "thing" about zombies.

New car! We were hoping to get something that could drive over lava and plough through a zombie mob without being rolled, but we've settled for a nice practical 8-seater soccer-mum mobile... :P

Is this a people-mover? Hell yes! This will move people right out of our path, left right and center. Especially with the addition of bull bars ;)  It's big, but not so big as to topple over in a strong wind, and the undead aren't smart enough to roll it, right? And if we get the windscreen cover with our insurance, we'll be protected for when the Infected crack it with those severed limbs they like to swing about.

I'm cautiously satisfied that this is all we need to survive a Zombie Apocalypse.

Crossing a river of lava - not so confident.  According to Dante's Peak, we'd need a heavy duty pick up truck to pull that one off...

But, when you think of which disaster scenario is more likely in Auckland - Volcanic Erruption or Zombie Outbreak - I think we'll do just fine with the choice we've made.

And if repayments become a struggle and we're forced to downgrade from three-bedroom rental to cardboard box, there's quite a bit of space with the back seats folded down into the floor. Plenty of room to freedom camp for the rest of our lives - yee-ha!

Crack(ed) Heads and Enchanted Gardens

Yesterday I thought the worst I had to worry about was facing the frowning judgement of dusty old stuffed animals as I chased two over-excited young monkeys through the cold marble corridors of Auckland Museum...

And then the car kind of.. blew up.. I suppose. I mean, there was no fire (nor brimstone for that matter, much as the event seemed Hellish at the time) but once smoke starts spewing from an engine, I guess we can call that engine thoroughly blown.

Thankfully, old Aggie's final saving grace was that she managed to limp us home rather than leave us stranded on the side of the motorway. I'm not quite sure what we'll do about getting the Lily Bug to kindy when the holiday break finishes in two weeks though. Unfortunately there are tumbleweeds blowing through our savings account, so unless someone would kindly like to steal Aggie from our driveway before I cancel the car insurance this week...

On the bright side, we had a great afternoon at the Museum & Domain. Our last visit to the Museum was somewhat rushed. The place was packed to the eyeballs, and we couldn't wait to get out into the open air to visit the Winter Gardens. Yesterday we took a more leisurely pace - or as leisurely as I could convince the kids to go, being that they were desperate to see the dinosaurs and the kids area with all the cheerfully stuffed dead animals.

The kids stared disinterested at the big old fufu dresses that I oohed over, while I bit my lip and grinned as they oohed over a wall of lollipops.

 See those big ones Guy Smiley's pointing to? It was love-at-first-sight between the Lily-Bug and those lollipops when she was his age. And she talked about them for six whole months until Christmas came along, and Santa managed to track one down and pop it in her Santa Sack. She still remembers her "Big Fat Lollipop".

Flashback to Christmas 2010 and yes, the Lily Bug is wearing the same skirt in this photo as she was at the museum yesterday...

At one point I began introducing the Lily Bug to the Egyptian mummy, until I caught myself trying to explain the embalming process and, keeping in mind her tendency to wake in the middle of the night shrieking from time to time, I realised it was yet another thing a small child probably doesn't need to know.

The volcanic eruption simulator was another area I steered the kids past, as much as the Lily Bug tried to reassure me it was okay because she had her Lava Boots on.

We couldn't go to the Museum without visiting the magical Winter Gardens, which always reminds me of E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle, and I can never help but look at the statues out of the corners of my eyes just in case I can catch one moving...

My only complaint about the Domain was that it's just far too popular. In the Winter Gardens we bumbled into the photography session of two newly wed couples in the space of 20 minutes, and out in the Domain I spotted the perfect autumn-yellow tree for us to play beneath, except everytime we approached it, we were beaten there by someone else wanting to photograph it or stand beneath it and be photographed. In the end, I admired it from afar and gave up.

Of course we couldn't go out anywhere without finding a puddle for the kids to run through and bannisters for them to leap off...

 And although the cosmic powers of the universe dumped me with a broken down car at the end of an otherwise awesome afternoon, I did at least get to snap a shot that summed up in one frame, just how awesome the friendship is between these two monkeys:

I'm down to my last clean pair of underwear...

Winter is never kind to my piles. And before you roll your eyes and think "oh great, she's resorted to writing about hemorrhoids", rest assured, it is washing piles of which I speak. (This time...)

I know, blogging about laundry is one of the most droll topics in the world and quite possibly worse to suffer through than hemorrhoids, but before you roll your eyes even further, just wait a moment. I need help. I'm in a serious situation here. There is... I can't... I'm... I'm desperate. I'm drowning. Laundry seems to have been dumped upon our house like a snow bomb. I don't know where it's come from, but I'm almost tempted to roll it up into balls and throw it at the kids while shouting "snowball fight!" (Or in truth, while shouting "do your own bloody laundry for crying out loud I'm over it!")

I had a horrific nightmare on the weekend that the children were crying out for me and I couldn't reach them. I was trapped in a pitch black room, completely disorientated and something had tangled me up so I couldn't break free.

Then the Lad flicked on the bedroom light and I realised in my sleep-groggy state that the children were crying out for me and I really was tangled up - in washing!

I had slept through Guy Smiley calling out for me through the monitor at 3am.
I slept through him crying for me.
I slept through the Lily Bug waking and joining in the chorus of "Muuum! Mummy where you?!"
Then when their increasingly-frantic voices finally switched me into middle-of-the-night autopilot mode, I jumped to my feet and veered off in the wrong direction.
The dirty washing mountain had avalanched through the night so that it was no longer contained behind the bedroom door but in fact sprawled across the floor.
It disorientated me.
To make matters worse, I was so half-asleep, I wasn't even sure at that point what room I was in (Hell. The room I was in was called Hell.) and I kept trying to head towards the sounds of the kids through the baby monitor rather than the actual door on the opposite wall.
Truly, it was a horrific unnerving experience.

Note sarcasm about that 'otherwise immaculate house'...

Now normally, in the ideal world, nice neat laundry lives in a dresser or a wardrobe (or so I've been told.) And this is the conundrum we've arrived at: When we have more damp or dirty washing than we have neat and clean, where does it all go?

There are five of us in this house (excluding cats), we don't have a drier, and although winter has been fairly mild for us so far, Murphy's Law dictates that every time I try to hang washing on the line - even if it's a fine winter day - the clouds will smash together and dump water onto my nice clean laundry. Not because it's winter and that's what clouds do, but because I pissed off a Pagan Rain God, and I don't even know why.

The drying rack in the lounge is buckling beneath the weight of one load of towels, one school uniform, as many socks and undies as I could find amid the wreckage of the bedroom.The changeable weather has me darting in and out the door, hanging out washing then whipping it back in again at the sign of a shower until I feel like a human yoyo. (We had a thunderstorm this morning, then clear blue sky for most of the afternoon, then a sudden shower. FML!)

I'm down to my last clean pair of underwear. I've worn the same pair of jeans for four days straight. I haven't seen the Lad in over 24 hours but I did hear muffled screams yesterday and in hindsight, I think he may have been buried alive in the washing pile behind our bedroom door. And if that's the case. It's too late for him now. There were far too many of his rotten old socks in that pile for anyone to have survived the toxic fumes.

So as you can see, we're hitting crisis level here, and it won't be long until the house itself is buried and our family will be nothing but a history lesson for future school children. Kind of like the people of Te Wairoa. But without the volcanic eruption.

[Edited to add: Look at how much I have managed to write on the subject of LAUNDRY for crying out loud?! I need to get out of the house more...]

Things a small child probably doesn't need to know

There's really only so much a four year old needs to know. And in our family we often tend to answer our little ones questions far too readily, and without always stopping to think about the appropriateness of the originally overheard converstation that prompted them to make enquiries in the first place.

Take this snippet from tonight for example:

THE LAD: Yeah! I can get suicide bombers for my game now!
THE LILY BUG: What's suicide bombers?
ME: No....
THE LAD: They're people with explosives strapped to them -
ME: Nooo...
THE LILY BUG: What's explosives?
THE LAD: It's -
ME: Jarrod! No!
THE LAD: It's, uh... licorice.

Fortunately the Lily Bug was spared from nightmares involving suicide bombers tonight. Instead she may dream of a Willy Wonka type land involving licorice straps as personal clothing items.

Hmm. I'm not actually sure which might incur the greater nightmare.

I'm not entirely certain if it's nature or nurture, but sometimes our lovely kids come up with some strange stuff, right on their own accord and without any prompting from us at all. 

Take this snippet of crazy for example: The other morning I woke to the Lily Bug standing beside the bed, growling beneath her breath while wearing this mask (painted by Guy Smiley the night before).

I won't lie - I nearly shat a hole in the mattress. 

On a brighter and completely unrelated note, here's a wee gem that sprouted from a different conversation a couple of nights ago.


ME: You kids are geniuses.
THE LILY BUG: Wow! Really!!!
(I'm surprised at her excitement, and wonder how she knows what a genius even is. Until she turns to her brother and yells...)
THE LILY BUG: Guess what!?!? Mum said we're GENIES!!

Okay, but one last thing: Because I seem to love peppering my blog with post-dated entries like a wee treasure hunt of where the end result isn't treasure, but just a few more minutes of a reader's life wasted on my inane ramblings, here's another.

My question to the blogiverse is: What kind of cute/quirky/outright crazy stuff have your kids come out with? Come on, sharing is caring!

Blue Sky Winter

How is the weather for everyone this morning? 

What a beautiful crisp clear and oh-so-cold winter morning here in AK!! Cloudless blue sky... Warm croissants and hot coffee for breakfast... Thank goodness our bakery had them in stock this morning! $1.50 for a super-massive sticky sweet croissant - can't think of anything better.

Gonna make the most of it before the grey gloom settles back in - no working on graphics while the monkeys turn the lounge into a military-grade obstacle course today - it's picnic at the park day!

Now I'm off to pick up the Lily Bug from her first day of 'morning kindy' (yes, she's moved to the big little kids  session at last!)  and it's off to the park we go!


Water bottle - check.
More croissants - check.
Fruit - check.


And off we go!


Hope everyone else out there is having as beautiful a day as this. :)

It's been a long week...

It's been a long week with the Lad in America, and the monkeys and I'm counting down the day until he comes home (one more sleep - yay!) while snotty tissues mount up around us, and the early onset of winter sickness quells any urge to stomp around outside in muddy puddles.

Right now I sit here with nerves frayed from too many late nights trying to catch up on my tendency to schedule in too many design jobs all at once, as the monkeys swing off furniture, using my body as a spring board. Who knew my shoulders would be such a fun place to leap from?

Usually when the household turns to chaos, I grab a camera and photograph it. It's like I'm planning for my eventual Alzheimers and every little experience - even the messiest ones - are moments I never want to forget.

But not today. Today I'm missing my Lad, and sick and tired of the cabin-fever. Today it just feels like too much weight for my shoulders to bear.