Scariest moment so far

It’s been a year or so since I wrote. Tome, interest, undisciplined...some combination of all those.

But now I have need to get some things out of my head, in that way that is public, but actually, I’m just yelling into the void.

Atti might be sick. He has a weird symptom, the skin on his palms started flaking off last week. I assumed the rewound tell me it was some kind or reaction, but he didn’t ask anything like that. He wanted blood tests. Which was it’s whole own nightmare, but that’s another post. But now we are waiting for the results.

And at night, when I’m alone with him as he falls asleep, I’m terrified. I’ve googled and gotten some scary stuff - but I also know that it’s not very likely. But...

But, what if it is something bad. Really bad. What if the dramas of the last year, the not-very-original dramas of a bright funny wriggly little boy having a tough time dealing with the restrictions of formal education are about to be swamped by real, non-of-that-first-world-bullshit problems?

I’m so frightened I’ve started talking to, pleading with (praying???) my dead grandparents to help me protect him. And I don’t believe in this stuff. No matter how clearly I can see their faces in my mind today. As I beg them to help me.

So now we wait. And cry silently in the dark. And have all my stuff made look so so small by this big question mark I’m staring at.

New funnies.

Middle of the night. “Mummy....mummy...mummy” (til I wake up). “Yes bubs” “I want Daddy”.

Nanna has been visiting recently, and so he has been showing her lots of things, including a morning of scootering to school where he went the whole way alternating btw his ‘graceful’ leg (when he would scooter smoothly and swiftly and his ‘clumsy’ leg, where he would wobble and slow down. It was pretty funny, but mostly impressive that he could keep it up the whole way.

Funny sayings

So a few worth noting lately;

Today, while driving with three kids in the car, his friend J dropped (or possibly threw) two of Atti’s Star Wars books onto the floor of the car. “That is very unprofessional behavior J” Atti stayed. I was all ‘unprofessional’? While J’s Mum was mostly impressed at the combination ‘unprofessional behaviour’. As usual, no clue where it came from.

There was a public holiday here recently and we had lunch and a swim with friends. During the afternoon Atti was playing with another child’s fan, and I took the opportunity to show him how to snap it open and shut, and then I was vamping with it, peeping over the top and the like and Atti said “that’s what geishas do”. Where on earth did you learn about geishas? “Dinosaur kings” (tv show).

And we went to a play date with a little girl recently who was being a pain in the bottom. Told Atti he wasn’t allowed in her room, played games on the iPad in front of him but wouldn’t let him touch, cranked up her volume when he played on my phone instead. In the end we went to leave and Atti said he was hungry and the Mum offered him something from her snack drawer. He asked for sultanas - the last packet, and the little girl had a total meltdown. As we were about to drive away, Atti said “A(little girl) is a powerful girl” - which her mum heard and thought was hilarious.

It was actually really interesting bc Atti and I talked about her behaviour on the way home (so I could make the point that he acts like that sometimes and it wasn’t nice, was it?). Atti was pretty bloody gracious about it all. He had been very good humoured about how she treated him at the time, and talking about it on the way home he was suggesting reasons that she was ‘grumpy’ that were pretty generous.

Dr Atticus

I got the loveliest email from daycare this week. A few photos and a story about Atti taking over the hospital corner for a morning, and telling one of the carers that she was very very ill, and he needed to look after her. Apparently her heart was broken (Oh oh oh!) by a monster.

He had her lie down and he covered her with blankets and gave her medicine, but he also told her that she needed all her friends to make her feel better so he rounded up the kids to come and visit her to feel better in the hospital.

I was all

But I also figured we could build on this a little, and took him with me when I had to have a blood test this morning. He was very interested in the blood (he seemed to be expecting it to be green apparently) and he was very concerned that I was ok afterwards, which was nice.

xx

Atti and the cats

I had many pets growing up. I'm not sure why we were that family that had lots of pets, not just cats and dogs, but rabbits and guinea pigs and mice and various birds. I have generally had a cat as an adult, one that I had for over 15 years and then I got our current cat. She looks just like my old one but acts nothing like him, and I have never really bonded with her. But she is fine, and very tolerant of small children poking at her.

 Then recently we (accidentally) rescued two week old kittens and hand reared them. They are now fat glorious kittens, who are massively social and funny and who Atti can play with and carry about and we absolutely adore them. So much for finding homes for them.... I really didn't think that through.

But it has been fantastic to watch Atti and the kittens get used to each other. For weeks he wasn't allowed to pick them up or do anything with them - it was hard to feed them so he couldn't really help with that, or toileting or much else. But once they got old enough it has been brilliant. They join in with his play (I am amazed at the variety of kids toys the cats will play with), they are mostly fine with him carrying them about, they follow him around. It is really beautiful, and he says he is their brother.

Hell is other people

It's funny how much support you get from others when you are being a hardarse with your kids, and how little you get when you are trying to be more gentle, more discursive or whatever. I tend to the more gentle side of parenting, to talking things out with Atti, to offering him choice (and consequences). And I thought I had a pretty normal 4 year old boy. Not great at listening, wants to be the leader all the time, wants more tv and later bedtimes, doesn't want to pick up the toys. Will pick up the toys thought.

I do lose it and yell though, but our biggest problem is that the Wook and I are not on the same page about parenting and don't seem to be getting on the same page any time soon.

But this week I had two friends who indicated in different ways that they thought Atti was a pretty badly behaved kid. Which threw me. I talked to a few more friends and got feedback that a) he isn't. And yes, my perception that if he was I would already know from daycare workers is correct. Also that b) I am parenting a little outside the mainstream, and am quite deliberately not parenting for obedience. So, you are going to get a kid that can be perceived as a bit naughty. c) I am not someone for whom please and thank you and excuse me are the only way of indicating gratitude and so on, so I don't really demand that kind of 'manners' - and that can be read as rude by those to whom that matters.

So I felt a little better.  Someone else had had Atti for a few hours over the weekend and was telling me how delightfully he behaved. Which was nice. Then of course we went to a friend's for dinner and he was a horror. Not a smearing-food-on-walls horror, but not sitting at the table, not eating, over tired kid horror. And it all went a bit awful.

So this morning I decided a few things have to change. Am I changing because of other people's perceptions? I'm not sure. I had intended over the holidays to toughen up some consequences, which I do tend to do each year as he gets older. It tends to happen in Dec/Jan because that is when I am on holidays. This year it was complicated by the broken arm though.

We instituted a couple of new standing rules and consequences today. First is that if Atti doesn't get himself in the shower with either me or his Dad in the mornings there will be no tv with breakfast. And there is no second chance - I'm not getting back into the shower. We will both give you a few minutes warning before we get out - but miss the shower and that is it til the next day.

And a new rule that if you call anyone an 'idiot' you will leave wherever we are right away. No more second chances, we leave as soon as you say it. (This is going to suck. He will definitely say it the next time we are out and I will have to leave before dinner or whatever. Boo).

So we shall see how those two go down. Then there are likely to be a few more.

We are having a bit of a win in getting him back in his own bed though. I went and bought a bunch of second hand cars that he wants, and he is earning one a night by staying in his own bed. Third night running tonight *woot woot*.

My other child's birthday

Valentine's day is a bit different for the Wook and I as our Angel was born and died on Valentines day in 2009. We were never big on the V-day BS anyway, but it is now much more meaningful anniversary for us.

There isn't a set thing that we do or anything. But this year will be a bit different, as we will be having Rio for a sleepover to allow her parents to have a romantic night. This was not planned but the reason that is particularly interesting is that Rio would have been about 3 months younger than Angel, had she lived and been born when expected.

I honestly hadn't considered that when we first became friends with her mother and formed a family-like relationship with her. It was actually my Mum who made me aware that my pseudo-daughter was pretty much the same age and would even have looked quite like my actual daughter. Not that she said anything, but she sometimes gets a bit teary when Atti and my niece are ever just the two of them, because she is only a few months older than Angel would have been.

So tonight, on her birthday, we will kind of have a night of the family we might have had.

Which is a nonsense really. No way would we live here with two kids. I wouldn't have gone to law school. We might never have had Atti. Or he might be older. Or whatever. But still, it is interesting.