Archive | June, 2012

Lize’s word on the web: Am I what now?

29 Jun

I could hardly believe my ears.  Was listening to late night radio on my drive back from a business meeting.  Ryan Seacrest (of Idol fame) was talking about a phenomenon on YouTube: girls posting their videos, asking whether the www (world wide web) thought they were ugly.

Say what now?  Come again?  yikes!

This seems like a perfect topic for D&Z’s From my lips section (although that sense of helplessness washes over me if I think about what that post would be about and how little it would help those poor girls … who need their own mothers fighting for them).
I didn’t watch many of these; in fact I only watched the one that was on top of the long long list of videos …

Some are from a year ago!
Totally and utterly sad.

Lize

Tags: , , ,

Daisy’s guide to lookin’ after your baby’s curls

28 Jun

Doing a bit of research online trying to find a hairdresser here in Hungary who I’d trust to cut my hair (mission still unaccomplished, by the way) I recently got lost in a quagmire of informative sites, forums, and blogs devoted to the topic of curly hair (here’s but one example of the genre).

Here and there, I noticed that every now and then in this (surprisingly voluminous) tract of curly discussion, a straight-haired mother would rear her (smooth, shiny, un-frizzy) head asking questions about how to care for her children’s curly hair – these were women who didn’t have a a curly-headed gene to their name but had somehow, poor things, managed to spawn a lil’ moptop.

I have rampantly curly hair. And Miss Bee’s hair is increasingly a frickin’ clone of my own, in terms of structure, colour, texture, frizziness and pigheaded stubbornness.

Here’s the baby version:

And here’s the grown-up version:

Today I thought that, for the benefit of any sleek-headed Daisy and Zelda readers out there bringing up a little Taylor Swift, a  little Adrian Grenier, or, god forbid, perhaps even a little Kenny G, I’d share some wisdom based on 31 years of personal experience:

  •  The best guiding principle I’ve heard about caring for curly hair is to think of it as requiring the ‘Delicates’ cycle. Straight-haired people, lucky bastards, get to chuck their hair in the ordinary old everyday wash. We curlies need to take more care, and similar principles apply: not too much heat, not too many chemicals, and the less handling, the better.
  • Don’t brush it, ever.
  • Don’t use a hair-dryer on it, ever.
  • If you MUST brush it (and the only time that’s permitted is when dreadlocks have developed or are imminent) brush it with your fingers while it’s wet. If that ain’t working (ie, you’ve got, like, a baby Captain Jack Sparrow on your hands), brush it with a good sturdy brush, while it’s wet. NEVER brush it dry, unless you think this is a great model for a human head to aspire to:

  • It will look fluffy and dry (read: hideous) after being washed and potentially for days after that; commercial shampoo strips it of its natural oils. Newsflash: you don’t actually need to wash a child’s hair (even if it’s straight) with shampoo; it’s fine to just wet it, to rinse out the sand or the food or whatever else has found its way in there (and with curly hair, it could be anything; I once found a small rodent in the depths of my mane. Well I’m kidding, but you know).
  • This won’t be appropriate for babies, because it involves a bit of time and patience, but let me tell you about my own routine for washing my hair. I don’t like to use shampoo at all: after years of experimentation I’ve found that the best thing that works for me is a weekly 20-minute mask of egg yolk, olive oil and honey in equal proportions. That’s gonna sound either crazy crunchy (if you’re not very crunchy yourself) or needlessly smug (if you already have crunchy tendencies), but it’s god’s truth. It doesn’t smell as pleasantly of the salon as Pantene does, but it works. If I’m lacking time I’ll run conditioner through it instead, just to feel like I’m doing something to combat the constant threat of brittle dryness curly hair faces.

It won’t happen overnight … and it probably won’t happen.

  • The best way to accentuate curls and to minimise frizz is to wet the hair, preferably in cold water, and leave it. Don’t even towel it dry: let the sun do the job. I give my own hair a blast of cold water just before I get out of the shower and then leave it to dry naturally, with a towel around my shoulders to catch the drips. For Miss Bee, I wet my hands with cold water and pat the water on to her head, picking out stray curls here and there with my fingers: this is enough to define them and somewhat tame them.
  • Plaits (normal, French, fishtail, you name it) will look terrible in curly hair. Fringes are also a no-go; ponytails often are. The best thing you can do is always just to keep your hands off it and let it speak for itself (if it could speak it would probably have one of those really loud nasal voices with a wicked New York Jewish accent, like Fran Drescher – ‘Oh Mr SHEF-field!’).
  • Find a hairdresser you absolutely trust to cut it, and never ever let them leave the city, emigrate, change careers or die.

Good luck, straight-haired comrades!

Daisy

Tags: , , , ,

From my Lips: more whining

26 Jun

Our guide on how to get your mummy to sleep through the night was featured on New Zealand news website stuff.co.nz today – yay for us!

Knowing we were going to be featured, the comments section was kind of in the back of my mind as something to be feared. Stuff commenters are so often either silly or mean – and very often both.

What would they say about us?

Well, I never would have guessed the genre of comments the piece would elicit … and first, let me say that I wouldn’t even be writing my bit in reply if there hadn’t been more than one, which to me implies an issue to be addressed, however much of a minority view it may represent.

So, one commenter said:

I assume your columnist is unaware fathers are also parents. Otherwise this story would have been titled ‘How to get your PARENTS to sleep’.

I am certain you would never publish a story about business leaders or professionals that implied business leaders or professionals all belonged to one gender. So why do you accept this in a story about parenting?

And another said:

Mums might be an important part, however, Dads also need to get to sleep. Sadly too many of our media feed the misconception that Dads dont matter, maybe its dont talk about them and they will go away. They are here and they are here to stay – start utilising them!

Readers (commenters?), the one point I have to make – can only legitimately make – is this:

I am a blogger; we tend to write about our own lives. I am a mummy. Point ends.

The side point that I just can’t resist making though – and I’m wondering really why I have to make it, but I’ll make it anyway – is this: in our household, it is my job to get my daughter back to sleep each time she wakes during the night, because I have the boobies. I’m going to go out on a limb and make another blanket statement and say that a similar situation applies in the household of every mummy I personally know. Maybe I don’t know enough people? I am by no means saying that I don’t believe dads face sleep battles; that would be ridiculous. I’m talking about the norm.

woman sleeping

(By the way, to clarify: getting up multiple times in the night ain’t pleasant but I am grateful that I can breastfeed and for the benefits it bestows, and I have never fought for any other person to take on the responsibility of getting Miss Bee back to sleep when she wakes in the night.)

To turn the commenters’ points around: is it an equivalent scandal that in the average article in the media about a male business leader or professional, journalists do not consciously make the point that there are also women in business? Is it a travesty that in so many spheres of human life (um, business politics sport science the arts shall I continue?), the media is not mentioning women, ‘feeding the misconception that they don’t matter’?

Seriously, every time we talk about a battle women face in parenting, are we obliged to mention that dudes sometimes face it too?

Nope, I’m sorry, that’s not feasible. That’s just not the model you dudes set up for acknowledging (or not) the best efforts of the other team.

I have this sneaky suspicion that if I were to publicly make this complaint, though, whiny commenters (perhaps even the same ones) would accuse me of being a whiny feminist.

Guilty as charged, I guess.

Daisy

Tags: , , , ,

Lize’s word on the web: you can only say ‘WTF?’ so many times a day …

25 Jun

Is it just me or are these going around a lot lately  (am referring to Facebook of course)?

On the one hand it makes perfect sense, on the other no sense at all.

Often true, sometimes stereotyped to the point of insulting.

Most of them smirk-worthy, poking fun.

Easy wee things to post, for a surefire reaction.

The snob in me isn’t quite sure how she feels about these seemingly harmless bouts of cheap humour.
But the honest me can tell you I laugh at almost every single one of them!

So lame!

Lize

Tags: , , ,

Breastfeeding Support Centre to open in Welly

23 Jun

Mummies in Wellington – if you didn’t already know about this, we are pleased to be spreading some good news! There is a new breastfeeding support centre opening in Wellington next month.

It will open on July 25th, and operate from a room at the Trinity Union Church in Newtown,  every Monday and Wednesday morning from 10am to 12pm. (The Trinity Union Church is behind the Lychgate shopping centre. The area is well serviced by buses and there is also free parking in the church carpark.)

It will be run by Rona, a GP and Liora, a lactation consultant, and will provide services totally free of charge (although they’ll appreciate a koha toward venue hire costs). If you want to see one of these specialists to talk about any breastfeeding problems you’re experiencing, you won’t have to make an appointment – just drop in to talk it over. As if that wasn’t a lovely enough thought: there will also be morning tea involved! Sounds like a great opportunity to relax over a cuppa and have a chat with other mummies …

Rona and Liora set this service up to address the problem of the lack of free and expert breastfeeding support in the community in central/south Wellington. Liora has recently moved to Wellington with her family. She is a mother of three children and has been working in Hawaii. Rona is a local GP and a mother of two young children who is training as a lactation consultant. Rona says: ‘We want all women to have access to help with feeding their babies if they need it.’

Hear, hear! We think you guys are amazing. Mummies, we hope that some of you out there will benefit from this service, or know somebody who will be glad to hear of it.

Find out more at the service’s website or on Facebook.

Daisy and Zelda

Tags: , , ,

Update: ‘feine 1, Daisy nil

21 Jun

Update on the giving up coffee situation:

Ok so I’ve been working reeeeeally hard recently.

And I can’t work without coffee!

I’ve tried.

My mum, bless her heart, is sending some Rooibos tea (which is caffeine-free and very good for you) to me from the other side of the world. Freshpak, the real South African deal (I know it’s authentic coz this colourful box is a mainstay in Lize’s kitchen):

‘Feels so good’.
Just not QUITE as good as caffeine. Sigh.

Here’s the plan: I’ll be guilted into mainlining rooibos tea instead of the feine through the horrendous thought of the food miles those teabags have travelled to get to me, as follows:

  • From growers to exporters in South Africa;
  • From South Africa to New Zealand by plane;
  • From an importer in Auckland to Napier Pak n’ Save by truck;
  • From Napier Pak n’ Save to the little beach community half an hour north of there where Mum and Dad live, by car;
  • From their place back to Napier to be posted, by car;
  • From Napier to our little village in Hungary, by van, plane, van;
  • From the village post office to our house, in the capable hands of the world’s loveliest postie (me, accepting package: ‘Thank you’; she: ‘Oh you’re VERY welcome!’), by bike.

Guilt: one of the most effective tools available to womankind for getting shit done. Right?

Daisy

Tags: , , , ,

How to get your mummy to sleep through the night

19 Jun

If your mummy doesn’t sleep through the night – you are not alone.

This momentous milestone often takes a long time to achieve. Months. Maybe even years. That’s normal. It’s something that you and your mummy will achieve together in your own way, in your own time … but here, in the meantime, I’ve put together a little handful of tips for you: a collection of strategies you may wish to try, along your personal journey.

  • First up, and perhaps most importantly, know this: It’s no use committing to training your mummy to sleep through the night unless the fact that she currently doesn’t bothers you. If you’re quite happy to be up multiple times throughout the night tending to your mummy, maybe this project is something you can consider later on: if ever.
  • Set a bedtime routine. Keep it short and simple: bath, story and bedtime for you; chocolate, wine, some crappy TV and bed for your mummy.
  • As part of the routine, you might want to sing your mummy a night-time song (‘Waah, waah, waaaaaah, mummeeeeee!’ is a personal favourite).
  • Some physical ways in which you can manipulate your mummy’s sleeping environment that might help: make sure the room is dark, make sure she’s warm enough but not too hot. Maybe tuck some familiar and comforting object in beside her – her phone? A hipflask?
  • Increase your mummy’s daytime feeds, so she doesn’t wake up hungry. You might also want to consider increasing her alcohol intake during the day.
  • When your mummy wakes during the night, start teaching her that although you are always there for her, she doesn’t need you to get back to sleep. If she cries, pat her gently and tell her everything’s fine, but it’s time for sleep. Be gentle but firm. You might want to try another song at this point (‘Bwaaaah mah-meeeee, wah, wah’ is another goodie).
  • During night-time wakings, ensure that stimulation is kept to a minimum. No TV, no radio, no poring longingly through her childless friends’ drunken party pictures on Facebook.
  • Consider sharing the role of comforting mummy back to sleep with daddy now and then, to give you a break. Once your mummy is old enough to have forgotten the physical and emotional trauma she experienced squeezing you out, she might be ready to learn to be comforted in a way that only daddy knows how to do. Give this some time.
  • If you wake up yourself during the night and your mummy is sleeping, resist the urge to wake her up just to check that she’s breathing! Yes, she’s breathing; yes, she’s alive. Yes, she knows you love her. Go back to sleep.
  • Finally, when you wake up one morning and you realise, miracle of miracles, that your mummy has slept through … revel in the strange feeling. If she’s still sleeping, take a beautiful Anne Geddes-inspired pic of her wearing a crocheted hat from Etsy, or a bunny suit or something. Give her a kiss, wake her up gently, and quietly celebrate the awesomeness, together.

Miss Bee

Tags: , , ,

B.A.B.Y: Making tough decisions

17 Jun

Hi guys,

Super single mummy Charlotte wrote a little piece for us a while ago on how to Be Awesome all By Yourself. I’ve constructed what is possibly the cheesiest acronym ever from that previous post, and commissioned another one from this savvy mama.

The subject of daycare and the working mum is so pertinent to so many of us. Here Charlotte covers the issues involved from many angles (and makes me cry a little bit along the way) …

Daisy

In parenting, as with much of life, there is no clear-cut wrong or right. If only it was that easy. I’ve recently had to make a very difficult decision, and I still don’t know – may not know for a long time – if it’s the right one. I know many mothers have to make this tough decision, but it’s further complicated by being a single mother.

I’ve put my son in full time daycare so I can go back to work.

We’ve both wept many tears over this decision. He cried for the first two weeks when I left him, and this goes against my entire parenting philosophy.  I was reassured that he’ll get used to it, he’ll adjust, he’ll cope. He did – he did adjust. He rarely cries now when I leave him, although he does sometimes. He tells me he’s excited to go to daycare, and that he’s going to give a big cuddle to his friends and teachers. He loves painting and playing on bikes and eats lots of food and has a sleep every day. I haven’t noticed any adverse effects in his behaviour or apparent level of happiness. My issue is not that the centre is a bad place – the teachers are great, it’s a small place with all the age groups for him to interact with, and I like all the things they do.

‘Honey-bee for a day’ activity on Play at Home Mom

 

My issue is that he is going to be spending more time with other people than with his mummy. I’m forcing him to do something he’s unhappy about. He’s only 26 months and he wants to be with his mummy. I’m not a permissive parent – I don’t give him lollies because he wants them or let him terrorise other children or throw his food around the kitchen (okay, maybe the last one sometimes). But this is a fundamental and natural desire, to be with me. I strongly believe in the importance of solid attachment and although I’ve spent two years at home with him, I worry that him spending most of the day away from me is going to irrevocably weaken our bond.

I keep thinking about it and wanting to cry. I have cried.

He’s been in full-time care for a month now – I’ve been working on my business while I job hunt. Now that I have a great job, the reality has hit. I’m not going to be able to drop him off at 10am or pick him up at 4pm. He’s going to be in there from 7.15am to 5.45pm every day, so that I can travel to and from my job. I don’t know how long I’m going to be in this job for, but I feel like I’m going to miss out on his toddlerhood.

“We do not remember days, we remember moments." ~Cesare Pavese

Image from Hands Free Mama

Yes, I’ll see him every morning, but not for long. It will be a matter of getting him up and having a cuddle before hopping in the car so he can have breakfast at daycare and I can get to work on time. I’ll see him every evening, but not for long, because it’ll be after six by the time we get home. There will be routine, we’ll cook dinner together, there will be cuddles, there will be laughs, activities done, and time spent together, but it won’t compare. I won’t even get to spend the whole weekend with him, because he goes to see his Dad overnight on a Saturday, and it’s not fair on either of them to stop that. I’ll have evenings and I’ll have Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon. I have to make sure I maximise the time spent with him and do special things, and not go near a computer or my phone.

I’m going to be snatching at moments with my precious son, while other people raise him.

I’ve been a single mother for over a year now. Living on the DPB in a city is a difficult thing. I’m constantly just a little behind on bills, living week by week, just trying to stay afloat. There is no ceasing of financial stress. I want to provide a good life for my son where I can afford to buy nappy cream when he gets a rash, where I can afford to pay for school trips, buy warm clothes, feed him quality food. I want to have a good life myself where I can go to the movies with friends occasionally, where I don’t have unrelenting worry about how I’m going to pay for my car registration or a higher power bill than usual. I want to save money to take him to visit my family in England, or buy a house, or just be able to get him a bike. My income and lifestyle is unsustainable, and I’m not extravagant.

As I read back over that paragraph I want to say to myself – these are things. Maybe you should have tried harder to live cheaper, so that he can have you around more. I go back and forth with myself. I have tried, and I’m sick of it. ‘Try harder, he needs you.’ I considered working part time (I have been working part time), but that wouldn’t give me much more than the DPB. It would ease some stress but wouldn’t allow me to get ahead. I’m also not really cut out to be a full time stay at home mum anymore – after two years of being with him all the time I need adult interaction and purpose. I’ve set up a business, but it won’t make enough money to support us for quite a while. I want to work and I want to earn money.

Toy cash register (complete with Eftpos!) from Tree Frog Toys: eco-friendly, organic and fair trade toys from Australia

But he’s so little, and I love him so much.

There is no obvious right or wrong here. I don’t have a husband who can work to support us, so it all falls on my shoulders. That’s okay, for me. I’m prepared to do that; I’m strong enough. I just hope that it ends up being okay for him. With children there are no do-overs, and he’s only little once.

Charlotte

Tags: , , , , ,

The Vienna and me

15 Jun

The problem with me giving up coffee is that I’ve got this thing for my coffee machine.

The machine and I have one of those troubled histories – one of those ones that makes for a great sitcom season or two, you know? Started out hating each other; hate turned to dislike; dislike became ambivalence; there was an especially comedic period in which we traded witty insults but secretly began to admit our mutal regard; and then slowly we openly started to warm to each other.

Mr A presented me with the machine as a present celebrating our second wedding anniversary.

I was horrified. It looked like scenery from some terribly low-budget TV series set in space (what is it with my TV similes today? I don’t know).

These guys need a coffee.

This beast is grey – like, eighties grey; grey like a pair of zip-up loafers your dad wore to work when you were six. With magenta accents. It’s called (wait for it) … The Vienna.

In all its glory:

It’s like, a cubic metre of second-hand plastic. (You think we could afford this much technology new?? Who do you think we are, John and Bronagh Key?) Here’s a close-up of that magnificent logo:

SUPER automatica. Faux Europeanism – in Europe! (We are actually only 70 km from the real Vienna)

And when I stumble out of the bedroom and into the kitchen at 6.30 am for that necessary fix, it whispers to me:

I think that stronger women than I have probably fallen.

That jawline! Fifty Shades of Grey indeed.
Daisy

Tags: , , ,

Homemade with the Beekeeper’s Wife: How many cob loaf recipes does it take to fill a cook book?

14 Jun

Here’s an idea for your playgroup/kindy fundraising: recipe books. Full of those recipes we all love – these little handbooks of happiness end up with food stuck all over them, pages dog-eared and well-worn from endless use …  And it doesn’t have to be for a playgroup – in fact the first time we did this was a family effort: makes for great Christmas presents!

When the project was brought up at RR’s kindy I casually commented that I could help type up the recipes. Suddenly, it was my project, the entire thing. Emailing mums to remind them again to send me their recipes. Spending hours bleary eyed in front of the computer changing ‘Tablespoon’ to ‘Tbsp’. Calling advertisers on the day of our deadline since we had to get them printed in time for the end of year school concert … sound enticing?!

If you ever find yourself tasked with creating a recipe book (don’t laugh, it may happen, and sooner than you think!), here are a few tips.

Find a good printer. Ring around. We had a fabulous printer who did our ones – 70 pages, 11 with colour photos, 100 copies – for $6 each (Easyprint, for those in Hawke’s Bay: thoroughly recommended!!) . Compare this to Warehouse Stationery, who were going to charge about $30 per copy!

Get ads. We had only four ads (local businesses) at $75 each, which took our cost per book down to $3. We priced them at $10 each, so that was $7 profit per copy. We sold out, so made a $700 profit.

Send out a brief ‘style guide’ first, asking people to use conventions like ‘Tbsp’ etc. If you care about this sort of thing, seriously, this saves a LOT of time!

DO include cute photos of the kids! As an editor, collating these was the most fun. I was particularly proud of the cheeky placement of this ‘naked chef’ with ‘Peach Pudding’.

Get onto it early! People notoriously need many, many reminders.

It’s very exciting though to see the fruits of your labours. And there’s something quite lovely about compiling people’s family recipes. Our lovely local kindy has 7 kids (one of the perks of living in the country!). Our cookbook was charmingly rural – I swear, I received three separate cob loaf recipes. Or fancy a kumara, bacon and pineapple wrap? Buckeyes anyone?!

And now I’m about to do it all over again for RR’s other kindy!! Sigh.

Cob loaf recipe No 1,

from the Tots n Dots Recipe Book

1 cob loaf

1 cup tasty cheese, grated

4 spinach (or silverbeet) leaves, chopped

half tsp basil, chopped

1 tsp mustard (whole grain is best)

1 red onion, chopped

500 g cream cheese

1 cup mayonnaise

- Cut top off cob loaf and remove bread from inside to leave a shell; set aside.

- Mix together all other ingredients and pour into cob loaf

- Put lid back on and bake for 1 hour at 180 C.

- Serve with vegetable sticks or whatever pleases you

The Beekeeper’s Wife

Tags: , , ,

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 53 other followers