Not my day

Whoever thought it would be a good idea for Leo to get ill on the same day the DVD player brakes?
How do you explain to a short tempered 2 year old that he can't watch Thomas, but he can watch Mickey Mouse club house, and that he just has to sit through the commercials.....

We need to trust our teacher

I couldn't help but listening in to a conversation in the gym locker room this morning. Two mothers exchanged Kindergarten experiences and it seemed they were both very unhappy with the level of communication between teachers and parents.
Turned out that they wanted to know, on a daily basis what little James and Caitlin has been up to. Did they enjoy music, did they have a healthy appetite, did they play, and with what and with whom? Did they solve their maths problems and did they know their alphabet.
- PTC twice a year simply isn't enough, said one of them. If the teacher don't want to talk to me at pick up, at least, we could get a weekly report on, like, a Friday, to tell me what's going on.

This seems to be a common problem here. Parents wants to know everything that is going on in their children's life, and I mean: everything.

I'm not a teacher but the average school class is 20-25 students. If the already over-worked teacher had to write 25 weekly student reports, where would he/she find the time.
This is one of those situations where you, as a parent, simply have to accept that James and Caitlin are growing up, and it is time to cut the cord. And let the teacher's do the job they were trained and hired to do.
Believe me: if the teachers has a reason to talk to you - they will contact you. If you don't hear from them, chances are you have nothing to worry about.
Maybe it is time to work on James' and Caitlin's communication, and not demand more of it from their teachers.

Things that make me see red

A snotty, out of control three year old who's kicking my son son three times, and hitting him over the face on a play structure whilst his mother his happily chatting away to her friends a few yards away. Once is excusable - we all have children with their bad days and manners and moods. Twice is dubious. Maybe keep him under close watch so that you can quickly intervene if it happens again.
Three times? Come on - it's time to remove him from the playground and ban his afternoon snack.

This is why we love each other

Some of my SAHM sisters has taken it upon them to make sure that there is always dinner on the table (or at least in a Tupperware in the fridge) for their husbands when they get home from work. This is their part of the deal. He brings home the bacon, she cooks it and places it nicely on a plate for him.
I didn't sign that contract so my husband can't always expect dinner (nor can he expect the kids to always be bathed, in pyjamas, homework done and bed time story out of the way but that's another blop post).
I usually cook something easy for the kids, like pasta or organic sausages with veg. Their schedule is different from ours. They have activities, homework and are hungry earlier than we are. Reheated pasta tastes awful, so there is no point in me cooking enough for myself and my husband to have later. And I'll be damned if I cook two sets of meals every night, I love my personal time after the kids are in bed far too much for that.

- They have it good, he sometimes says, referring to one of our male friends. She's such a good wife to him.
Those of you who don't know my husband might think he's serious but those of you who do know him, knows that he's not.
- Is there dinner, or should I pick something up on my way home? he asks.
- Take out? I retort, more often than I should.
We end up eating scrambled eggs and salad in front of the TV. Or tea and sandwiches.
- You are the best wife, my husband tells me. I don't expect you to cook for me. I don't want you to be one of those wives.
If he really means it, or if he's just telling me what he thinks I want to hear, I don't care to dwell on.
As far as I'm concerned, we're a perfect match.

down in one

Elin, whatever your decision with regards to your marriage to Tiger Woods, I will support it.
But if you do decide to stay in this marriage, please let it only be so that you can milk him of more money when you divorce him at a later date.
Today, he showed, once and for all that he really, really doesn't deserve you by his side.
The apology was staged, week and insincere.
Oh, and three months too late.
Truly pathetic.

To get by with a little help from a friend

We talked about our ambivalent feelings towards out lots as mothers in play group one day. Since I was the one with the longest track record as a SAHM, one of the other, part-time working mothers, asked me: how have you been able to do it for so long, without going absolutely completely insane?
Well, believe me, my sanity is long gone, and I am a mere shadow of my former self, but my reply was, without hesitation:
- You have to find a friend. Someone in the same situation, with children roughly the same age. But not only that. She has to be someone you would have been friends with even if you didn't have children.
That's the tricky part. You have to go out there and look long and hard until you find someone that you really can talk to. Where do you find this fellow mother?
Well, she's out there, somewhere you just have to look. Pushing a screaming toddler on the swing or doing the library reading time for the fourth day in a row - she's there.
Talk to her.
But if she insists on sharing teething traumas and best food mixers for purees, politely but adamantly steer the conversation away. You want to know if you like the same music. Watch the same movies. Knitting or crocheting? Cats or dogs? Camping or five star accommodations. Should Brad go back to Jen?
This is very important.
Because if you can't talk about the other stuff, you will never be able to really support each other through the baby-shit. This is someone you will spend a lot of time with. If you find the right mate, you might end up spending several hours, several days a week with this person. This will be the person that makes your life worth living. She will see your good sides, but more often, she will see your bad sides. So it is important that you are comfortable with her doing that, otherwise you won't be able to be your self. Trust me on this one. When the guards are down and you haven't had any sleep for five days and you're about to deal with the eleventh tantrum in an hour, could you really do this comfortably in front of someone who thinks Brad should stick with Angelina?
And when you are so baby-talked out that you will hit the next person who tries to share yet another cutesy story about some trivial baby revelation, you need to know that your friend will be OK if you move on to a quick re-cap of the latest Survivors.
Think about it. It has to be a perfect match for this to work.

Yep. Your fellow mother will be right hand woman, partner in crime, confidante and shoulder to cry on. She will become your new BFF through your journey as a mother and should be picked with great care and finesse. And if you find her, your life as a mother will suddenly have a new meaning. It will suddenly feel OK to be a SAHM.
She is out there, there is always someone for everyone. Take your time, try some on for size, see which ones fits the best and then make your decision. I am a great believer in soul mates:).
Dedicated to M and J - without you things back then would have been very, very different, xxxx

Noise is noise but sounds different to everyone

Any one who has tried to keep a toddler to play quietly for more than 10 seconds know that this is something of an impossible contradiction in it self. Toddlers, and children all ages, just don't play with the volume turned down. They can be quiet for a while, but rest assured, they all go up to eleven, sooner or later.
This has been recognised in Berlin, Germany today when a law was amended to exempt children from noise pollution. They can run, play, bounce balls, and generally cause a wild rumpus as long as they comply to the normal standards of quiet time, IE Sundays, and evenings.

An older friend of mine in the UK had recently moved in to her dream apartment, a ground floor flat overlooking a beautiful shared back yard which she shared with another five tenants, when she noticed that two other families had small children ranging from the ages of 2 and 7. The kids behaved as all kids. They woke up early, played chase around the flat, ran scooters up and down the badly isolated hard wood floors, and after breakfast they would all gather in the back yard and play ball and hide and seek, all the while using the full resources of their young voices while calling out for each other.
My friend found this intolerable. She couldn't understand the nerve of the parents who'd let this go on while decent people, like herself, tried to rest up on a Saturday morning after a long week at work. She felt that her privacy, and her dream, had been invaded by barbarians. She would wake up early in the morning and just lie in bed wide awake, waiting for the noise to start. She no longer felt she could keep the windows open to the yard for fresh air, she couldn't enjoy her coffee and papers in the afternoons. Her routines where no longer her own. Even though she was single and had no children of her own, she had to take other people in to consideration, and plan around other peoples lives in order to live her own life as she saw fit. She was distraught.
I suggested that she should, politely and humbly, talk to the families and see if they could come to some sort of compromise.
- Let them know what time you usually wake up in the mornings and maybe they could stick the kids in front of the TV until then. But living in a big city, noise kind of comes as part of the package.
It wasn't good enough. She stayed for another two months, then decided to sell up and move further out.
I understand how she felt. All she wanted was some peace and quiet.
But I can also understand the poor families with their children and their games, and toys. Try to keep it down? Eh.... what?
There are limits to anyone's patience, and I am a self-confessed bi*** when it comes to unruly children. But normal noise is normal.
If you don't like children - don't live next to a school. If you can't stand kids crying and screaming, don't sit next to them on the bus.
But parents: please respect that not all people think that little Charlie's cries of joy, and his snotty nose, and his incessant rants about snacks and his tantrums are as charming as you do when we all share a crowded bus on our way home in rush-hour traffic or try to have a lie in on a Saturday morning.