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Showing posts with label Alfie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfie. Show all posts

The Hunt for Bush Asparagus



There is a point during every holiday weekend where I feel like I am starting to petrify. Once upon a time, it was Christmas Day, with its inevitable bad weather, overeating and basic lack of movement. Now that honour falls to Easter weekend, which this year blessed us with sideways rain, too much chocolate and three bouncy ass children who needed some outdoors time in the worst possible way.

Which was when I came up with the bright idea of taking Alfie and Olive on a day trek; in theory, a flawless concept, and in practice completely banjaxed by Keith and Esme getting a bad case of FOMO.


9am - Drag self out of bed to break up yet another squabble over the last of the cereal. Admit that early start is not going to happen since husband is still in bed and making noises about Hearty Breakfast in the shape of vegan pancakes.

9.15 - Give in to pleas of starvation from children and start to make pancakes. Clean up debris from first two rounds of breakfast and mutter darkly about hollow legs. 

9.30 - Admit to self that pancakes are well worth the effort for the peace that falls over the breakfast table. Wonder if I should launch a bid for Best Mum in World by cooking pancakes every day. 

9.32 - Eldest child requests that I cook pancakes every day. Feel slightly miffed to have overachieving opportunity reduced to merely achieving.

10.00 - Persuade husband to stop brewing rounds of coffee, and children to put on basic clothing. Realise we are out of trail food and agree heartily with eldest son that carrots are just as good. Glare at husband until he takes his sceptical look away from the children. 

10.10 - Corale family out of house and into car. Start car. Shout at children to stop fighting or HAND TO GOD I will turn this car around!

10.11 - Glare at husband,, who is laughing heartily at the astute point made by middle child that I can't turn the car around before we've even left.

10.15 - Smile smugly as husband has to wade in to stop children from hitting each other.

10.17 - Husband initiates Plan B discussions around splitting up the family for the afternoon. Do not resist the opportunity to say I told him so.

10.40 - Get dropped off at start of walk with firstborn son. We are filled with enthusiasm as we take lung fulls of heavily perfumed autumn air and watch the rest of the family disappear from the car park in a plume of dust.

10.45 - Set off on walk. My enthusiasm is slightly tempered by the realisation that I will spend the entire walk being educated in Minecraft.

10.50 - Stop for snack. Remind son of previous treks and advise caution in the frequency of snack breaks.

11.00 - Reach the first of many gorse patches. Help son weigh up the choices between gorse scratches and a return visit to the hospital if he plummets off the side of the path.

11.05 - Realise I am bad parent for tuning out the constant flow of chatter about how to make sticky pistons and supercharged fire arrow launchers. Resolve to listen harder as precious firstborn son shares his great passion with me.

11.10 - Nope. Can't do it.

11.20 - Stop for snack. Suspect this is less about hunger and more about the "gorse bushes" up ahead. Try to reason with son that it is actually manuka and therefore not likely to puncture any soft squishy bits.

11.22 - Indulge in some long hard sniffing as we walk through manuka patch. Fail to notice that the manuka patch ends and is replaced with gorse.

11.23 - Hold distraught son as he weeps about punctured soft squishy bits.

11.30 - Distract sniffling son with a hunt for bush asparagus, which he adores.

11.35 - Find a cheeky little number hiding in the bushes and hand it over to son, who finally stops sniffling.

11.40 - Continue to walk in blissful, contented, bird song filled silence.

11.45 - Get overtaken at speed by a Young Couple who are involved in an excitable debate in VERY LOUD VOICES.

11.50 -  Use constant reverberating chatter from now vanished couple to talk to son about acoustics. Try very hard not to grind teeth.

12.00 - Burst from bush into a clearing, which gives us a stunning view over the Hutt Valley and the entire Wellington harbour. Can still hear Young Couple but can't see them ... or a single other path that they could have used.

12.10 - Stumble onward through bush in what seems to be the direction of Young Couple's voices. Realise there are no orange triangles, get the fear and double back to the clearing.

12.15 - Stumble along "path" marked on map to a gate marked private property. Decide to use well-worn gap in fence to walk onto Private Property. Go 10 paces, get a flashback to Wolf Creek and run back to safety at speed. Realise that Young Couple are a much more likely target, seeing as they still haven't stopped talking, and break it to firstborn that we will have to go back the way we came. Firstborn does not care.

12.30 - Start of conversation about God ... or more accurately Gods ... in all their various persuasions. Am confused about how we could have ventured so far from the world of the Ender Dragon.

12.45 - Still talking about God(s). Have now promised to take son to church on the Sunday of his choosing: This was not how I expected this day to turn out. Pick up my pace before I discover I have been accidentally been raising the next Panchen Lama. Realise this is unlikely, but it doesn't pay to take chances.

12.50 - Ignore calls from son to slow down and challenge him to a race. He may be an undercover lama, but he's also a Batsford and cannot walk away from a competition.

1:00 - Arrive back at the car park and into the now loving embrace of the other members of the family. Realise that whoever said "absence makes the heart grow fonder" was in actual fact a genius.
Thursday, 20 April 2017 Comments: 1
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Learning Diaries: Obsidian

Alfie is, by nature, a secret learner. He likes to turn a concept over in his mind and try and idea on for size before he brings it out into the cold light of day.

For us, as parents distracted by juvenile female carnage most days, it can sometimes appear to us like Alfie just woke up one morning and vomited knowledge.

Last week, we were sitting at the dinner table having a fairly average mealtime. Olive was crying because her water was in the wrong cup, Esme was trying to gross me out my doing disgusting and unspeakable things with her food, and Keith was trying to keep some kind of order, using a tone of voice that clearly indicated he knew that he was fighting a losing battle.

Through this chaos, Alfie suddenly piped up:

"D'ya know, obsidian is lava that has mixed with water and cooled very fast."

Keith and I looked at each other with suspicion, and then at Alfie with scepticism.

"Say that again, Alfie"

Affecting a look of indifference, he pushed some vegetables around his plate and repeated himself.

"Obsidian. It's made from lava that has cooled very fast".

I'll be honest, I fished out my phone and did a search for the definition of obsidian at this point. It's not that I have an inherent mistrust of the things that my children tell me, but this was about as far outside our usual sphere of existence as I could imagine him getting. I would have reacted in a similar way if he had rocked up to me and recited the Lord's Prayer in flawless Mandarin.


It turns out, Alfie's is almost a dictionary definition, which led to my two default follow-up questions in all matters parenting

1. Where had he even heard that word?
2. What kind of monstrous mother am I, that I instantly doubt my child?

The answer to the first question was "Minecraft". Because OF COURSE Minecraft. Apparently, you make swords from obsidian in Minecraft. They're hard to make and precious, and Stampy told him all about it. Thank you Stampy for delivering yet another teachable moment to my first-born. Should Alfie ever find himself giving an acceptance speech to some great academic institution, I will make sure you are rightly credited as his first, and greatest, inspiration. 

I'm more than happy to play a supporting role to Stampy and Minecraft because my real joy comes in being a partner in Alfie's learning, rather than his leader. 

Alfie and I talked about why this weird pixelated world he inhabits might pick glass to make a sword. We both thought it an odd choice, especially considering the amount of glass our family can get through in an average week. We looked at how obsidian might be different, and if those differences might be applied to changing other materials too.  

I'm such a knowledge geek, these learning adventures often leave me with thoughts buzzing round my head for hours and days. 

One such thought jumped me later that evening (in the shower if you must know) about why the name Obsidian seemed so familiar. As any self-respecting Brit will know, is from Ripper Street which has a shadowy company by that same name. Which is how, the following evening, I came to be explaining the concept of a metaphor, and how obsidian being an opaque glass was analogous to the shady dealings of Obsidian Estates.

I'm not sure how much of this he took in because at the time we happened to be walking home on a stunningly clear night, and we both kept getting side tracked by the milky way, whether there might be life on other planets, and the concept of infinity.
Saturday, 30 July 2016 Comments: 2
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The Life of a Working Mother


To my friend, on the eve of going back to work.


I don’t want to scare you, but this thing you are about to do, going back to work, this is will be your hardest parenting moment so far. 

I don’t just mean the logistics of it, even though they are hard, I mean e-veh-ree-thing about going back to work will feel impossible at one point.

It feels like both a lifetime, and an eye blink ago that I left my first born to go back to corporate life. We had taken the decision to be a one wage family. We knew it would involve some belt tightening, some rejigging of priorities, and a near daily confrontation with other people’s expectations, but it was the only choice we had.

When Alfie was 9 weeks old, I went back to work full time, and Keith became his primary carer.

I remember my alarm going off that first morning, and my eyes feeling a hundred times more scratchy than they ever had before. I didn’t have the luxury of hitting snooze after this bad night, and my duvet felt like concrete as I forced it aside. I didn’t want to be doing this, it was too soon, I wasn’t ready.

In hindsight, I would never have been ready.

I dressed carefully and left early, scared that I would be late, that I would walk in with baby puke down my back, or an unseen piece of rusk in my hair. It felt important that I showed everyone how little motherhood had changed me, that I was still the serious professional I had always been.

I don’t think I fooled anyone, although, for a time, I managed to fool myself.

It felt natural for a manager, such as me, to try and organise my way through the emotional turmoil I was feeling. I left lists, I sent texts, I arranged play dates and appointments. It was a tiny thread of connection between me and my baby that I held on to as if I were drowning, even though it frustrated the hell out of Keith. 

It was never about control or about trust, I just wasn’t ready to become an also-ran in my child’s life. 

And I did. Because the time came, when Alfie ran crying into Keith’s arms instead of mine, and I felt like my heart was going to stop. The moment arrived when I had to look to Keith to translate Alfie’s toddler babbles and I felt like an absentee parent. The hated foods, the favourite toys, the latest songs, came and went while I was always a step behind. And it hurt. 

Because I was caught between two worlds, always feeling like I was failing at least one of them.

I loved my job, and I wanted to succeed, but it felt hollow compared to being with my baby. I wanted to be in the meetings, but I would be constantly aware of the growing ache that signalled it was time to express. I wanted to write my reports, but my eye would keep tracking to my mail, waiting for the next update from home.

I was neither here, nor there.

If you feel any of these things, I want you to know that it will get easier. 

Be kind to yourself in those first weeks and months, because this thing you do is going to be hard. 

You will survive it. 

Your will go to work with odd shoes. 

You will forget your lunch. 

You will miss deadlines. 

You will accidentally copy type the lyrics to a nursery rhyme because you are so bone tired you can’t think. 

You will spill expressed milk. 

You will cry over it. 

You will go home and scoop up your child and breathe him in like you haven’t seen him for a year. 

And you will ache all over again when you have to do it again the next day.
Wednesday, 20 July 2016 Comments: 0
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On Having a Child In Hospital

This week has officially reduced my background level of “tired”, to a new low of “barely functional”. 

On Saturday, while I was on a little mama date with Olive and my friend at a local food show, Alfie rode down a hill on his bike, ran out of talent, grabbed a handful of front brake and turned himself into a human cannonball. 

I'm reliably informed that nobody thought anything of the fall - Alfie himself was sure that he would be fine if only he were allowed to have a drink of orange juice - but Keith very wisely decided to go and have him checked out anyway. 

By the time they reached the Urgent Care Centre, Alfie wasn't quite so sure that all was right with the world. 

By the time I spoke to Keith, he had revised his position again, and was wailing; but the story I was told, made heavy use of the words “suspected”, “broken”, and “fine”.

So, as the mother who isn't prone to panicking over suspected anythings, I carried on mooching round the food show with my friend, before catching a bus to engage my first born in some casual teasing.

Lesson The First: Use an appropriate level or urgency when telling your life partner that there has been an accident.


By the time I arrived at the Urgent Care Centre, I was greeted by a very pale and quite boy, who was waiting for an ambulance ride. Apparently, there was now less suspicion and more certainty: Alfie had broken his femur.

Now, I want to preface the rest of this story by saying that Alfie is my utter hero for the way in which he dealt with his first hospital visit. He’s a pretty independent and stoical child, as these things go, but his composure and strength over these few days was breath-taking.

That said, he is also a six year old boy, who had broken the biggest bone in his body.

Lesson Two: Seeing your child on drugs is scary.


The ambulance that arrived to blue light Alfie to hospital, also heralded his first experience in hard drugs. 

First up, ketamine, which quickly turned his pupils to yoyos, and his attitude to something approaching the habitually drunken uncle who sits in the corner of family weddings and occasionally pipes up with a few choice nuggets of Anglo-Saxon before retreating back into an internal monologue.

Having arrived at hospital, the doctors cracked open the morphine, just to ratchet up the party. I’m glad they did, because the things that needed to be done to Alfie were best done with a side order of oblivion.

I stood by his bed, talking a constant stream of drivel just so that he would hear my voice, while his leg was put into traction. He, in response, would close his eyes and drift off, only to come round a few seconds later in a full scale panic, kicking and thrashing about, until I was able to talk him down again.

It is singularly terrifying to be caught between the maternal drive to comfort your child, while knowing that they are out of reach of both your words, and of reason. 

Lesson Three: Self-care is vital


There is an old saying that you can’t pour from an empty cup, but I was shocked at how quickly my ability to support Alfie was compromised. Something as basic as not eating properly, or sleeping a full night, hell, even something as small as not having open access to hot drinks, add up fast; which I learned to my cost once we moved to the children's ward.

Admittedly things weren't helped by the fact that I had accidentally sent my wallet home with Keith, or that Alfie wouldn't let me out of his site for even a moment, or that we were living in rooms with no access to daylight, but I see these as marginal influences against the endless emotional onslaught of looking after an acutely sick child, in a room full of other acutely ill children, all fighting their own battles against pain, and fear.

It took me a while to grasp it, but the reality is that I did my child no favours by running myself into the ground. There was no value to me being the martyr who didn't take breaks to eat, drink or read a chapter of my book. And despite everything my ego wanted to believe, Alfie was just fine while I was away.


Lesson Four: Responsibility is daunting


In the few days we were guests of our local hospital, I felt like I was on one long episode of Mastermind. For your specialist round, you have chosen Alfie Batsford's Lifelong Ability To Walk, your time starts ... NOW. The questions came at me hard and fast, and I was against the clock. I felt very young, very ill prepared, and I found myself looking around for someone to adult; a more adulty adult than me, someone with quiet wisdom, who wasn't motivated by a singlular desire to throw ANY-DAMN-THING at the situation that would a) stop my child hurting and b) not leave him with any long term consequences. 


Perhaps in some ways, the rapid pace of the decision making was a blessing, because it stopped me from endless agonising; and being the less squeamish of our partnership, I was definitely the right choice to be with Alfie. Still, there is still that seed of doubt; a small voice that says "This is for real. This matters. If you get this wrong, you will have to live with this forever. You will have to account for your actions". That isn't a world that I am used to living in, where I dwell, there is usually the chance of a do-over.  


Lesson Five: You are enough


While I was mired in self doubt about what the hell I was doing, I received some wise words from a friend who has far more experience than I do, when it comes to supporting a child in hospital:
Stay strong and don’t let him see you cry. All he knows is that you are a rock, he needs you to steady his nerves, do anything you can. Do explain to him what is going on, honesty will help later on. Ask him if he has any questions for you, not just the surgeons. He will be able to communicate much better with you than any others.
Which was exactly what I needed to hear, but found nigh on impossible to do. I tried really hard to pretend I wasn't upset, but it turns out that I'm not that good an actor, so all I was left with, was honesty.

Things came to a head when I walked with Alfie into surgery, and he got very upset at having to remove his treasured pounamu. 

In reality, I think that for both of us it was simply an excuse to vent the tension of the previous 24 hours, because we went from "fine" to floods of tears in an instant. He was crying, and I was crying and I could. not. stop. 

Instead, I opened my heart to him and said "I'm upset that you are upset, Alfie. I know that you are going to be fine having this surgery, but it makes me super sad to see you cry like this." Which I don't see as a raging success on the "being a rock" front, but it was pretty much all I had in me to say, at that point. 

My friend was right about knowing my child, and communication, though.

When one of the nurses confused Alfie with her “on a scale of one to ten” pain ratings, I helped him translate it by using my hands.

When Alfie was feeling low and wallowing in self pity, I helped him find the motivation to pick himself up with the threat of having to be under the care of a particularly “bossy nurse” for another night.

When he was using strange words to describe how his tummy felt, I advocated for him to the nurses until they got an ultrasound, and realised he had over 300ml of pee in his bladder, and a ton of bruising stopping it coming out.

And when we were alone, his body held against mine, and I heard him quietly whisper "I love you mum", I knew that all the millions of ways that I beat myself up as a parent counted for nothing, because my presence, my support, and my love, were all my son needed from me.


I wanted to write this as a way of capturing the feelings and thoughts of my first time as a helpless bystander. There are several mums (and dads) I know who could, I'm sure, add a lot of other thoughts to my rookie experiences. I just want to say to each of you, that you are truly superheroes. Being a hospital parent is un-fucking-believably hard, and you guys rock it like it ain't no thing. Now, more than ever, I am in awe of you all.
Thursday, 26 May 2016 Comments: 6
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I Don't Care If You Judge

Something really curious has happened to me over the last year, and like a lot of incremental changes, I'm not quite sure when it happened, only that it has.

On Sunday we went to an incredible street festival in the centre of town and, as befits the law of averages, one of the three children was on the verge of melting down on a rolling basis throughout the day.

First to go was Alfie who, on discovering that his sister had eaten all the dumplings while he had been off watching a batucada band, flipped both his lid, and the remaining dumplings clean out of my hands.

While soy sauce dripped off my nose and pooled in my bra, I took a deep breath and refocused on what needed to happen.

“Alfie” I said gently, getting down to his level “look around you. This is my favourite top, and those were your sister’s dumplings. I know you feel sad, but now we feel sad too.”

And then we hugged, and he said sorry to me and to his sisters.

And then I said sorry because now he had soy sauce all over him too.

Throughout this little scene, I’m pretty sure – no scratch that, I KNOW – that there were people around us looking on in disgust. I could hear them, I could see them, and I could feel the waves of disapproval at my parenting approach.

You know how much I cared?

About as much as I care who wins the current series of the latest must watch “reality show”, which is to say, not even the slightest bit: It is actually impossible to quantify the lack of fucks I was able to give at that point, numbers do not go down that low. Minus fucks only extend so far, and I was way off the end of that scale.

Later on, Miss Olive reached the end of her day which, because she is only 2, was about 4 hours before the rest of the family reached the end of their days. I don’t think it is an over exaggeration to say that there was a hella ton of woes, with a generous side helping of doom expressed attached to the situation.

We were in a makeshift bar garden, where extremely cheerful adults were in the process of enjoying some extremely alcoholic drinks and some extremely pleasant music. None of them had planned to add an extremely loud toddler tantrum into the mix.

I wanted to share how I reacted to that one too, because for some reason, one of the other adults who was there with us grabbed my camera and took a photo:


This is what it looks like to finally get my parenting priorities right.

I was shocked when I downloaded my photos and found this; shocked enough to want to mark this as something important, both in my life and the children’s.

Right here, is me giving all of myself to my children, and none of myself to the judging of others. Right here is me being 200% present for the people who need me. Right here is me being able to do that without the knot of nausea I used to feel when my children “kicked off” in public.


I have no idea when it happened, I just know that it has.
Wednesday, 23 March 2016 Comments: 1
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Elections, and Raising a Media Savvy Child - Pt 2

So tonight I sit humbled at the endless ability of my children to surprise me by zigging when I expected them to zag. Metaphorically speaking, of course, I haven't started teaching the children combat manoeuvres, we have just been talking more about the US elections.

I had a little time with Alfie over the weekend, so in keeping with his preferred approach to learning, we had a chat about how two of the presidential hopefuls make us feel. I actually hadn't intended on showing Alfie much Trump footage, because despite being fine with watching the likes of Jurassic World, watching footage of that guy's rallies puts the fear of God in him, but BAD!

He actually caught me taking a break from cleaning toilets, on my phone, propping up a cold cuppa while I took in this video. Sidling up to me, he craned his neck to see my screen, shooting me one of his "watcha doing there?" looks before taking my wrist and slowly lowering it to his height.

OK, I thought, you want in on the action, let's go watch us some Trump.

The video is 13 minutes long, but it took us for-frickin-EVAR to get through it, because there were so many talking points to each segment.  


I have to admit that is the one positive thing I can say about Trump: He is a one man syllabus for social studies. 

We didn't just focus on the video; we chatted, just keeping things loose, and making the space to see where the conversation took us. We talked about minorities, social justice, and the idea of universal healthcare. 

It's probably important for me to tell you that Alfie has many talents, but the top two are climbing, and winding people up - not necessarily in that order - so when I say we talked about universal healthcare, what I really mean is he played me like a damn fiddle. 

According to Alfie, people should have to pay for healthcare.

No, I'm serious, he actually said that.

His logic - when I asked him in the sort of calm a voice I usually reserve for situations that would otherwise get me arrested - was that people have to work and pay for other things (like houses and clothes), why not healthcare?

I'm not sure whether I was more outraged at the fact that he had said those words, or that he had managed to push my buttons so damn easily. Alfie simply gave me the six year old version of mike drop and walk away.
  
Once I'd calmed down and stopped flaring my nostrils, it did get me to thinking; logically, he had a point. 

While I will defend to the death the moral imperative of universal healthcare, is the idea of paying for your health the more ... umm ... base logic? Alfie was quite right that other basic human needs are accepted as chargeable in our society, so why not apply the same logic to healthcare? Is the idea of a socialist society even something we can think of as "natural" or is it a human construct based on our attempts creating a more "advanced" society?

While Alfie sat at the Lego table exuding the air of smugness that comes with an argument decisively won, I took to the internet to do some learning of my own. I found an awesome video over on the Khan Academy looking at the concepts of Capitalism and Socialism and I did some thinking about the animal kingdom, and where they sit on the scale. 

Obviously I'm not saying that it is a perfect comparison - most animals don't have pockets in which to keep change for starters, which does somewhat limit their ability to embrace capitalism - but stripped of the intellectual choices of humankind, I wondered if I would find an example of an animal society choosing to support the less able members of their society.

The short answer? You bet your ass I did!

What I find interesting is that Orca sit waaaaaay up towards the top of the "animals who could totally beat you at chess" scale, so while it may not be a purely human desire to create an equitable society, maybe it is fair to say it is a more cerebral desire.

Either way, I just know that next time I come up with the bright idea of discussing life's big topics with the children, I will be more careful to do it without agenda. I will also be looking into debating groups for Alfie, y'know, so other people can enjoy his natural talents as much as we do.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016 Comments: 0
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Elections, and Raising a Media Savvy Child - Pt 1

Congratulations America, you finally made me break my resolve not to talk about that unholy mess of a human who plagues my social media feed.

What is that made me want to talk to my children about this distant cluster f*ck, you ask? It was this video where a couple of Trump supporters were only too happy to support Trump's aspirational quotes ... until they found out they were actually said by Hitler.

Hitler for Christ's sake!!
  
You would think would make someone re-evaluate their core values: In this case, not s'much.

Which is not to say I am going to wade in with some half baked opinion on who should rule 'Murica: To be honest I'm woefully unqualified, comparatively ineloquent, and it has very little to do with me other than the fear shared by many non Americans about how Trump The President would approach the small matter of foreign policy.

No, what this three ring circus has really put front and centre in my mind are the unique responsibilities that I have in raising children in the current media age.

If you don't already subscribe to the YouTube channel Smarter Every Day, I would really suggest you do because it is nothing short of awesome. Destin recently had the chance to interview President Obama and what they discuss around feedback loops (or lack thereof) and how that is changing the nature of political debate (by generating lots of shouting) really clarified a couple of things for me:

1. My children need to be invested in how countries are run.

2. My children need to be able to see past pomp and circumstance in order to make sound choices.

That was the easy part, working out an age appropriate way to start having those discussions was what kept me awake half the night.

I wanted to find a way to look at the importance of government, not through the ritual of how they operate, but in a way that would speak to the children on an emotional level and on a level that was relevant to their own lives. I also realise this is a pretty heavy topic so I was going to have to keep things reactive and fluid in order to keep their attention.

All of which means rather than a lapbook, or a long list of worksheets, I decided to look at the subjects of government with the aid of a spider diagram.

Hey don't knock it, I wrote every essay of my degree using one of these! OK so they looked a lot more complex, and made a lot more reference to 17C women's writing, but in principle, same whole deal.   


These questions were designed to generate discussion with the children, with no obvious answers or logical conclusion. They were also meant to be vague and to give them the chance to take the conversation off in whatever direction they needed.

That's a long winded way of me saying that I don't need a précis of all the important questions I forgot to include; which are many and varied.  

In Part 2 I'll post about what we did with that information (spoiler, it involves a load more questions and a ton of YouTube videos) but that will have to wait for another day because it's hella late, and mama gotta work in the morning.
Friday, 4 March 2016 Comments: 0
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When Your Six Year Old Won't Sleep

Back in the dim and distant past, when I spent endless hours reading about the milestones and development of my offspring, my head kinda created a graph that looked a little like this:

Which is to say, I fully expected that by the time we had children who didn't require full wardrobe, bathroom and transportation accoutrements for a simple trip to the shops, we would also have broken the back of other basics like, oh I dunno, walking, talking, eating and sleeping.

Not trying to be the over achievers over here.

Having spent a lot of time trying to empathise with other sleep deprived parents from the comfort of a family life that involved, well, minimal night time interruptions I'll admit that until recently I had no idea what it was like to be a sleep deprived parent.

Until recently, I had the luxury of skipping past the articles on how to function on three broken hours a night without resorting to repeatedly slamming your head in a door, and I even had the temerity to think that a twice nightly feeding routine qualified me to call myself “tired”.

Ahhahahahahahahahaha.

Me from five years ago, fuck off. No seriously, fuck RIGHT off. You may be well intentioned but you have not the first solitary nugget of an idea about sleepless nights.

Unlike today.

So by way of backstory, we long ago gave up the traditional “it’s 7pm, time for bed” approach to sleep. Instead, we have invested time and effort in helping the children to learn about how their body feels when they are tired, how they act (while trying not to use the word “asshole”), and what they should do about it (without turning into Samuel L Jackson)

All of which has been a raging success.

While we were busy working on the non-bedtimes, however, we were also very deliberately giving the side eye to the genesis of our Early Riser.

I'm not talking about 5am, yawn, stretch, morning world it’s a brand new day - oh no! - I'm talking 3am, ninja moves to escape from bedroom, raiding the cupboards for sugar and turning into Gollum by breakfast time. 

Like everything else, we stuck a big fat “phase” label on it and just figured it would work itself out, right up until the point where things got so bad, Keith was ropeable and Alfie was basically destroying any semblance of family time by acting like a really obnoxious drunk for the first few hours of the day before passing out in a corner.

I probably didn't take the whole situation as seriously as I should have done, but then I have the privilege of walking out of the door every morning. For Keith, the end of many tethers were reached, and it was right about the time he threatened to install a bolt on the outside of the bedroom door that I finally realised he wasn’t being melodramatic. 

You’ll forgive me for that, it is something of a default setting with my husband.

After I had successfully argued that it wasn't an acceptable bathroom alternative to stick a bucket in the children's bedroom overnight, I offered another solution in the form of myself as ballast.

That probably makes more sense if I tell you that I'm a very heavy sleeper and while Alfie is fully able to sneak past me without waking me, he was going to have a hard time picking me up and physically dragging me away from the door without my realising it. 

Or at all; let’s be honest here.

In order to make sure there was no underlying reason for his ongoing desire to drive his father to insanity, we also took Alfie to the doctor who, predictably, told us his waking was behavioural and grudgingly gave us a prescription for Melatonin. 

That was about a month ago, and so far, the benefits we have seen from this new approach have ranged from “bugger all” to “marginal”. 

On the plus side, Alfie is staying in bed until at least 6am these days. He’s also not raiding the sugar supplies, or waking his sister up by turning the light on, nor is he managing to stash his tablet away and play games at 3am. He even manages to act like a mostly rational six year old for large chunks of the day.

On the down side, it is taking – oooh let’s call it “active management” – to achieve any of the above. 

Two nights ago, for instance, Alfie woke up at around 4am needing the toilet and asking me to move. I slid off the toddler bed, dragged it quietly away from the door and let him out to stumble across the hallway. 

Thirty seconds later he and I were temporarily blinded when he had an early morning brain fart and turned on the light on his stumbling return from the toilet. Ah well, I thought, I might as well go to the loo while I'm up.

Safely back in the bedroom, I once again shut the door, pulled the bed back into place, settled down with my feet dangling in mid air, went through the 30 seconds of “sleeping bag overshoot” until I had it properly centred before I looked over and saw ….. Alfie’s empty bed.

Turns out Alfie had ducked into the spare room on his way past me in the corridor. 

When I poked my head, Jack Nicholson style, through the door and hissed into the empty hallway for him to get BACK.IN.TO.BED, he glided out of the darkness like some kind of child of the damned, before realising there was no choice but to either a) make a run for it or b) give up on his escape plan.

By the time my alarm went off two hours later, he had slept enough to make it through the day. I, on the other hand, was praying for the sweet release that only an espresso can bring.

I'm still determined to believe that this is just a phase. And as I pointed out to Keith recently, if this is the worst that we have to deal with as parents, then life is pretty sweet.

He didn't look convinced, which is why I had to walk away during a recent visit from his mum, during which she pointed out that he wasn't the world’s best sleeper as a child and maybe the apple had simply fallen close to the tree. 

I'm pretty sure he didn't find that quite as funny as I did.
Tuesday, 23 February 2016 Comments: 0
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The Great Outdoors

I have come to the conclusion that going camping is one of life's great exposers of truths.

Camping has never been a part of my family vocabulary; growing up we stayed with relatives, or rented cottages and caravans, so my experience of camping was reserved for my twenties and consisted exclusively of visits to sporting events of varying kinds. My sleep was made possible by alcohol, high octane fumes and dancing until the early hours, and I viewed anyone who chose to go camping without these accoutrements with a healthy degree of suspicion.

I still do, even though I am now one of them.

I try very hard to see the benefit of sleeping under canvas, but after several nights of trying to persuade my over tired children to indulge in some sleep, while the radiant summer sunshine beams down and turns our tent into a giant glowing uterus, I have to admit I come up short.

I appreciate that there are people who feel grounded having nestled into mother earth for a solid 12 hour stretch, but after three nights of discovering every rock, twig, gradient and puddle on the forest floor, my eyeballs begin to itch, and I am not much fun to be around.

No really it's true.

I hate being too hot, too cold, being coated in dust, but the clincher for me, the absolute deal breaker, is the nightly internal dialogue between my nailed-to-the-pillow overtired head, and my overfull bladder. I'm not overly fond of playing russian roulette with my internal organs, but not am I keen on the ballache of getting up, finding my shoes, a torch, the toilet paper and then hoping I don't lose my balance over the long drop.   

I suppose the logical question at this point would be to ask why I put myself through this drama if all I'm going to do is complain.

Well, the answer would be threefold:

First; I am British. We are nothing without complaints.

Secondly, because of moments like this  


and the rope swings, and the campfire curries, and the adventures, and the climbing, and the "smarshmallows" and importantly - no, vitally - the fact that I get to make memories with my amazing whānau.
Wednesday, 27 January 2016 Comments: 0
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Our Homeschooling Exemption

So we're a home schooling family now: I know, check me out just casually throwing that in there! Yup, we do a bit of unit learning, some workbooking, mix it up with a bit of un-schooling, y'know, just keeping it casual.

Ahahahahahaha! I jest with the casual. This is me, I'm not good with the casual. I'm good with the planning and the writing and the documenting and, yes, even the over-analysing, and stressing, but casual? Not my forte.

This is one area in which Keith and I compliment each other very well, and after three months of this home schooling game, we are starting to find out how each of us fits together to make the perfect puzzle.

But I have started at the end: Let me rewind to a time, about six months ago, when my stress levels were through the roof and all manner of shit was being lost over the little matter of our exemption.

Down here in Aotearoa, any child who is not attending an established school has to be granted an exemption by the Ministry of Education. I have no idea why this has been tolerated in a country where such a healthy dose of self determination usually exists, but that's a rant for another day.

The point is we had to get one before Alfie turned six, and while there is an awesome amount of peer support, you have to tread this lonely path for yourself. I'm pretty sure it's fundamental to you ability to call yourself a home schooling parent; like a badge of honour, or AURYN in The NeverEnding Story.

Like all good quests, we all choose our own paths to reach The Oracle; some people write an essay and riff on the theme of education. Some people - that would be me - turn it into a full scale annotated and referenced report.   


If you have neither the time nor the inclination to read the whole thing, I can help you out with a brief summary: I copied the key subjects and disciplines listed in the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa and then went through and wrote some stuff about how we would meet each one. Because my poor, overwhelmed brain needed me to do that, even though it took nine fucking pages!

A few weeks after sending my missive in to the MoE we got a letter asking for more information.

When I read the letter now, I'm all "sure, no problem, check out my riff on on the theme of education". 

At the time, I was all ATRAYUUUUUU!!!! .... FALCORRRRRR!!!! ... ATRAA ... you get the idea, I was on my quest and free falling into the Sea of Possibilities.

Just checking in; anyone still with me on The NeverEnding Story analogy?

Luckily, the additional information that the MoE requested was around how we planned to teach Science and Technology so once I got over my "minor wobble" I rolled up my sleeves and sat down to share with them the song of my people.

Oh yes, my friends, for I am a woman in STEM and if there is one area in which I can riff the shit out of education, it is science and technology.

If you want to read my letter (case worker's name redacted) then you can find it here.

I don't know if it comes over but I had an absolute ball writing that letter because it showed me that even in those few months between ERMIGAHD WE HAVE TO DO TEACHINGS!!!! and that precise moment, Alfie, Keith and I had already started to work out how to do this learning thing in a way that really works for us.
    
Where before I had seen only curricula and rules and fucking Pinterest posts on how to manage the perfect home classrooms (who has that much time to colour code and file?!?!?) now I was seeing this for what it truly was; a lifelong journey we were all on together. 

Our exemption became a reality thanks to a lot of amazing people feeding me wine and courage. Special thanks goes to you Lynn, without you I would have never made it past The Trials ... or indeed this NeverEnding Metaphor. 
Wednesday, 20 January 2016 Comments: 0
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Learning Diaries: South America


The house is currently in the grip of Latin fever: Keith spends his evening poring over books about Cuba and Mexico ahead of our trip, and thanks to a well timed football tournament, Alfie and I are in the middle of lap booking.

Never heard of a lap book? 

That's OK, neither had I until I became acquainted with the good folk at Homeschool Share at which point I realised that I'd actually been a fan of them since primary school.

Somewhere buried in the boxes of my school work is a project I once did about the human body. It was the closest I ever came to lap booking as a child and to this day it still ranks as the only single project I can remember doing. 

Isn't that nuts? 13 years of formal education and I can only remember one assignment?

This project was made up of pictures on top of pictures, flaps that lifted, mini books within books and fold out inserts. It was created from a stack of printouts painstakingly coloured, cut out and stick into place.

That, in a nutshell, is a lap book

Alfie and I have so far filled ours with different information about Chile and Argentina. We have looked at money, climate, found them on the globe, looked at food, language; in other words, we have picked a starting point and then let our questions take us where they will.

Sometimes I have asked questions of Alfie to see if they spark, sometimes he has taken us in a new direction with his own thoughts and questions. We sit at the table with the tablet, the globe and our lap book and we just shoot the educational breeze.

This weekend we will be looking at Brasil.

I say this weekend, I'm not sure we will last that long because I kid you not, he spent last night pleading with me to let him stay up so that we could do more work together.

Passion for learning? I should coco.

I don't just mean for him either, I mean me. 

This morning my ride to work involved me doing a lot of pondering about whether Earth has a right way up which frankly is not the sort of thing I thought myself capable of right now. Frankly, my new job is taking up so much brain power it's a wonder I haven't been found bimbling around the waterfront with pants on my head, a pencil up each nostril shouting "wibble" at passing tourists.

Come to think of it, that sounds like an idea for a Friday night on the town.  
Thursday, 18 June 2015 Comments: 0
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The Toilet Habits of Young Boys

Contrary to the beliefs of pre-children me, I appear to really enjoy having older children. It's been a bit of a surprise to me, I had myself pegged as a "baby person" which just goes to show that if you want to know about the real me, I'm the last person you should be asking.

That said, there is one point of having an older child that makes me want to weep; more specifically one point of having an older boy and it catches me out every single time.

I'm a bugger for doing "just one more thing" before I go to the toilet so basically, any time I am heading to the toilet it is because I'm in a race against time before my bladder gives out. It means I am always in a hurry and not on the lookout for puddles.

Somehow, there are always puddles.

And somehow that means there are always soggy socks, which is a horrible slow creeping moment of realisation when your bladder has made it clear that there is no way you are going to get away with making it wait any longer, and you have already committed to sitting down.

So there I sit, feet held out like a lizard on hot tarmac, trying to see how I can safely stand up again, and trying to make my call to Alfie sound like my teeth are not furiously clenched.

My teeth are always furiously clenched.

By the time he slouches into the room, his limbs seems to have almost lost the ability to support him. He looks at my indignant face as if I have lost all reason to expect him to mop up our new indoor water feature.

And this is where the idea of natural consequences becomes a simple theory to implement, because I am damned if I am getting down on my hands and knees to deal with Lake Titicaca, and despite the near constant complaints, he is fairly understanding of why that might be the case.

I know this because when I ask him how he managed to get to get pee literally everywhere except the toilet, his reply is normally along the lines of "yeah sorry mum, I got bored".

Bored: I only wish I were making this up.

When pressed for a reason as to why there was urine in an arterial spray across the entire bathroom including - but not confined to - the floor, potty beside the toilet, and two walls, his reply is that the 90 odd seconds it takes him to empty his bladder, was about 80 seconds too long to hold his attention.

And of you are wondering what the photo at the top has to do with Alfie and toilets, the answer is not a damn thing. I needed a photo and nobody needs to see the state of my toilet.
Thursday, 4 June 2015 Comments: 2
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Chase's Battle for Bodily Integrity

I really wasn't sure what to write about this week because the thing that is occupying almost all of my mind and heart, is something happening on the other side of the world, and to which I have no direct connection.

In Florida today, there is a 4 year old boy who is the subject of a legal battle over his body. More specifically, his right to refuse circumcision.

I won’t bore you with the back story except to say that neither young Chase, nor his mother Heather wants him to undergo the process. His father does.

A court in Florida has already found in favour of Chase’s father on the basis of contract law* after which Heather took the radical step of going into hiding.

I know we all like to think we are “that parent” but really I wonder how many of us really would be brave enough to defy a court order and walk out of our lives and hide in a woman’s shelter to protect our children. 

That was two months ago, and determined to fight on, Heather had already filed a Federal suit when she was found and arrested on Friday. 

Her son, Chase, was handed over to his father.

Can you imagine being Heather over the weekend? Can you imagine the utter desperation of being ripped from the child you have literally given up everything to protect and see him handed over to the one person you fear the most?

I can’t.

And Chase, who we are told is fully aware of what is being discussed, to be handed over to the absent parent who he knows is fighting against his wishes.

I look at Alfie, who is only a squeak older than Chase and I see how strong and well formed his opinions are. I think about the years I have spent teaching him about the importance of bodily integrity and I try to imagine how I could look him in the face and betray his wishes. 

I can’t.

Heather’s suit is currently under consideration and there is no guarantee at this point that Judge Kenneth Marra will even accept that it holds merit. That’s such a glib statement isn’t it? Does this suit hold merit? Like we were talking about an argument over a fence line, or who had more right to take the TV in the divorce settlement, and for the life of me I can’t work out why we are making a distinction between this, and any other matter of bodily integrity.

Perhaps because the default victim of this unnecessary practice are a demographic who have no ability to speak out. Perhaps if we were used to the routine circumcision of adults we wouldn't be used to thinking we have dominion over the body of another person.

But I genuinely don’t see it: I don’t see how this differs from rape or assault. I don’t see how we can be living in 2015 and a country who touts itself as the leaders of the free world can be engaged in the wilful blindness of the harm that is being done in the name of profit. 

Circumcising your sons against their will does not protect them from disease, it doesn't make them cleaner, and it is not a way in which your child needs to look like their father. 

Dear America, other countries have walked your path, New Zealand included, and we have been brave enough to hold up our hands and say “we fucked up, this is not the best we can do for our sons”. 

Please have the courage to do the same.



* Heather had previously consented to the procedure
Wednesday, 20 May 2015 Comments: 0
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Learning Diaries: Colours

So after a week of being hideously sick, we are back to some level of normality, and that means Alfie's unschool is back in session.

I have to admit I was a little freaked out about the concept of unschooling. That’s not surprising when you consider I am a product of a long and very structured education system myself. 

I know from personal experience that self-led learning is effective; I use it myself on a daily basis, but as an entire education system? That’s a big leap. 

I suppose in some ways you could say that I needed to unschool myself about education as much as anything.

Which is why it has been amazing to be a part of Alfie’s journey into unschooling, and for us to be able to foster his questions and his curiosity.

The other day for instance he was sitting at the dining table and asked me what colour you would get it you mixed yellow and red.

So I mixed up some paint for him and he got to experimenting.

And because he isn't a very language hungry child, we just kept it loose and I wrote the colours down for him to copy if he wanted to.


Which it turns out was a really good way to get him to write. I'm not saying he takes after his father or anything but y'know, apples don't fall far from the tree and after ten years you start to learn what works: Imajustsayin'

What I love the most about our approach to learning is that I get to play as large a part in Alfie’s education as Keith does. When you unschool, every moment is potential teaching moment and every question can either be answered, or investigated together.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and find Heavy and light objects to throw off the balcony … we’re answering the question of what will drop faster.
Wednesday, 13 May 2015 Comments: 0
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The Inevitable Pastime

Christmas 2006 was our first a very special occasion, even by the usual standards of the season; it was the first Christmas after Keith and I had moved in together.

It was the sort of Christmas you have before you grow into family sized tables, where furniture is crow-barred into a room and people are pressed elbow to elbow, perched on everything from the coffee table to a lawn chair. 

I cooked up my first Christmas dinner in our too small kitchen and it was cheerfully devoured by both of our families along with a suitable quantity of wine.

Later, while people were loosening off belts and negotiating over the last chocolate, a suggestion was made to play cards and in the tradition of the Batsford family, a game of “spoons” was decided upon. 

Perhaps it was the wine, or the near exhaustion from my morning of cooking, but I have no idea what happened next. 

Seriously, none.

I know there were cards exchanged at a furious pace but what sticks in my mind is the fact that by the end of the game my table, and several contestants, were all sporting gouge marks.

This was my introduction to a family who can turn a casual game of cards into a blood sport.

I know this is an outstanding tangent, even my usual standards, but I wanted to give a little context that will help frame my next statement:

Alfie has started playing Football.


I had absolutely no knowledge of the fact that my son wanted to take up this most hallowed of team sports, but Keith assures me that he was keen.

Suspicion aside, I’m torn between whether this is a stroke of genius, or the damnation of us all.
Monday, 11 May 2015 Comments: 0
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Helpful Tips for Lego Organisation

If you came here thinking I was going to tell you how to organise Lego, then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place; I'm the one who’s after the help. 

The children have a pretty vast collection of Lego, most of which has been inherited from Keith’s childhood, and then added to over the course of the last few years. 

Once upon a time the collection was contained in tool boxes, but the Arctic Base Camp was the final nail in the coffin of that arrangement. The orange department -which had been teetering on the edge of dangerously large - started to flow into the red department, and I think we can all agree that kind of contamination requires immediate action. 

We looked at some second hand library catalogue drawers, and some industrial tool boxes, but the call of the sale time deal was too strong for a certain member of the family, and so the Lego is now housed in a vast collection of stackable crates which fit together in a mysterious Tetris-like configuration in the drawer under Alfie’s bed. 

Are those good intentions paving my path to Hell? Why yes they are! 

The problem isn't the organising of Lego into containers, it’s the fact that children want to use it all, leaving a weekly tidal flow of Lego looking a little something like this: 

Saturday: Lego is colour coded in the correct tubs, with lids on, and stacked according to the secret logic of Tetr’Is in the drawer under Alfie’s bed. 

Sunday: The first creation of the week: Usually something small; a plane, or a car perhaps. The Lego table has been restocked with discarded pieces, and is now just a glorified holding area for planned future works. 

Monday: The creations multiply. The Lego table is still full of potential future projects, while the completed projects are now dotted around the flat spaces of the house. There is one on the dining table that starts World War 3 every time the toddler hulk-smashes it, and several booby trapped window sills which deposit their payload - pointy end down - on my toes as I draw the curtains. 

Tuesday: The creations have decided to throw a party, and have invited half the neighbourhood. The crates are mostly open, and spread haphazardly over the bedroom floor. The lids are off, of course, and any space in between them is littered with scattered bricks. It looks a little like the Lego fairy has flown in through the window, and left lots of colourful, pointy turds all over the floor, in much the same way that a house rabbit would. 

Wednesday: There are many creations leading to many threats of vacuum vs Lego doom. My children respond well to this development by wailing inconsolably, and throwing themselves onto the floor at the outrage of wasting valuable creating time with such trifles. 

Thursday: Lego has now achieved full floor coverage. I have now resorted to using the dustpan to shovel Lego off the floor, and back onto the Lego table. I'm grateful that Keith through to make the Lego table so deep and consider installing a life preserver in case any of the children fall in.


 Friday: Completely lose my shit at the fact that the tubs are empty, but every other square inch of house is covered in a random scattering of bricks. Give children well-worn speech about caring for their possessions, and how sad they’ll be if they can’t finish their sets because the dog has chewed Uni Kitty, or I have accidentally stepped on the limited edition piece and heard it dissolve under my heel in a sickening crunch (true story). Realise the only person who is sad about this whole debacle is me. 

And so it goes, week after week; and I am fully aware that this is a problem of my own making, but please, just for one minute, allow me to sing you the song of my people. 

I am trapped in a private hell somewhere between the house I think I ought to be keeping and the way in which I want to parent my children. 

For five days a week, I miss out on the benefit they see from being given free creative rein, and walk through the door in time to witness the aftermath. I’ll be honest; it makes my eyeballs burn and my brain resonate with the noise of an old copper kettle at full chat. 

It makes me want to weep. 

And I own the fact that this makes me slightly less generous than I would otherwise hope to be. I accept the fact that a sweeping look around the steaming wreck of my house puts my mother on one shoulder whispering “I didn't raise you to have a house like this” and my husband on the other saying “it’s the process, not the product”. 

I stand between them desperately trying to embrace the creativity of the food truck underneath my dining table, while at the same time resenting that the only part I get to play in their games is the crappy part at the end that makes them act like I am pulling out their fingernails. 

For me, this more is the hardest part of being a working mama. 

This is my witching hour. 

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Wednesday, 1 April 2015 Comments: 0
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A Review of Squish Delish Reusable Pouches

This is a review that comes with a tale of woe.

Of course it is, frankly the only reason I do reviews is as a cheap form of talking therapy so that I can exorcize the demons of my toe curling parenting failures.

The year is 2010, and for those who have joined the party more recently let me set the scene. Alfie - my glorious, adorable first born child - is six months old. His favourite things are throwing, trying new foods and motorsports, sometimes all at the same time

There is only one small fly in our parenting ointment and that is the severe eczema that covers our son’s entire body. It keeps us awake at night while we stop him rubbing his skin raw. It stops us feeding him vast swathes of food that contain one of the many things that makes his eczema worse and most importantly, it makes eating out a tour de force of planning. 

I'm talking nutrition factsheets for potential eateries downloaded and analysed ahead of time here people. Nothing left to chance and options picked out in advance, because no meal is worth the punishment of a screaming, oozing baby.

Sometimes though, just sometimes we knew we were going to get caught short. 

Sometimes we were going on a long journey, or to somewhere outside of a major city where “alternative” food options were going to be limited and sometimes after a working week, my brain just wanted just the smallest of breaks from having to think about where the next allergy friendly worm was coming from to satisfy my baby bird.

The solution? Take food with us, of course.

We experimented with various items. Baby biscuits were a favourite as long as they were eaten soon enough to stop them from being crushed into rubble at the bottom of the change bag. A boy cannot live on biscuits along however, which is how we come to my tale of woe.

This story takes place on a Saturday. It involves Keith and I running around the house throwing together supplies because we needed to get out of the house. 

We were running late to meet people and do things, which is how I found myself staring into our fridge look for something “sensible” to take with us.

A soy yoghurt. 

Yeah.

It was joined in the change bag by nappies, wipes, keys, wallet, dummy, toys, a change of clothes (remember I'm a first time mum at this point), small kitchen sink, Lord Lucan, a book, and the obligatory pack of baby biscuits for when I got peckish.

We ran out of the door in a tumble of last minute reminders and mental check-lists and set off to meet our friends. 

Sometime later, car parked, friends reunited and entry tickets to the local farm requested I reached into the change bag to grab my wallet.

It took my brain a little over ten seconds to process the messages it was receiving from my hand ...

Wallet is slimy. Wallets aren't usually slimy, why is the wallet slimy? Did I leave a dirty nappy in here without realising? No, not a nappy. Lord Lucan perhaps? No, he’s not even real, he’s just a comic device for the purposes of this story. Hang on, the book wasn't slimy yesterday, I'm sure of that, and what the hell is that on the end of my keys?

A yoghurt pot Tash, THAT’S what’s on the end of your keys.

The soy yoghurt that was previously inside the yoghurt pot? That was not on the end of my keys. That was all over my keys, and the book, and the change of clothes, and … you get the idea.

There was a certain shame in all of this, which only a first time parent will truly appreciate. 

A shame made infinitely worse when surrounded by other, more experienced, parents watching with delighted horror as you expose your rookie mistake, item by yoghurt smothered item.

This would have been a very different story if I had used a Squish Delish Reusable Pouch

My keys would have glanced off the thick plastic of the pouch; Lord Lucan’s ample aristocratic backside would have been no match for the leak-proof zipper; in short, I would have arrived at snack time with a full quota of allergy free snack.

Instead, I arrived at snack time with nothing more than a slightly slimy packet of rubbly biscuits and a son making known his disappointment in my parenting skills.

Five years later and I can still find a home for these pouches in the school lunch box. They’re a great size, easy to keep clean and sturdy - oh so very sturdy - even in the hands of an older child.

If that – and the knowledge that you will never have to empty yoghurt out of your change bag – is something that appears high on your parenting list, give these pouches a whirl.

Your change bag, and comic devices, will thank you.


Thank you to Kiwi Mummy Blogs and Munch Cooking for sending me that little slice of awesome. And thanks to Cole for modelling the correct use of the pouch.
Tuesday, 24 March 2015 Comments: 0
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