Archive | August, 2012

W in the P

30 Aug

Wees in the potty! Wees in the potty!

Any of you out there who has been through this will know that that’s so much more than just a phrase. It’s poetry (‘WEES in the potty … WEES in the potty’ – it has a great rhythm).

It’s a catch cry. It’s a call to arms. A manifesto.

Pages from I Want my Potty by Tony Ross

It’s a victory yell!

On Tuesday, it happened for the first time ever at our place! *Pauses politely, acknowledges applause*

Three times over the course of an afternoon! *Pauses politely, acknowledges standing ovation*

We have been in the ‘pretend’ potty phase for months now. Maja owns one. She knows what it’s for. She has seen others using it (not us, not us! I’m hands-on but I ain’t that hands-on. She has a little two-year-old friend …). Hell, she even has a certain fondness for it (likes to sit on it, pants round her ankles, browsing through a Tesco catalogue, for example. And Bunny and Ted have become seasoned potty-users with her help). But until now: nothing doing.

On Tuesday she was running around naked, as is her wont, and the spot where she paused to take a leak (somehow that turn of phrase seems more appropriate for a toddler than a grown man, no?) was just beside the potty, so after an initial – um – squirt, I said ‘don’t you want to sit on the potty?’ And she did, and another squirt came, and it hit the potty, and … and it was beautiful. She immediately picked the potty up and tipped its contents on to the floor. I didn’t care. We cheered, we sang, we triumphantly went and told Apa the story of the Wees in the Potty, we popped champagne, we released a flock of doves into the sky we had biscuits  and celebratory cups of tea.

With that, she seemed to get it. Soon after came Wee-wee the Second and Wee-wee the Third. All three of us were delighted.

Nothing since … but what a great start! Bring on that next great epoch, the Potty Training Period?!

Daisy

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Night-weaning: business time … kinda

28 Aug

So, night-weaning.

Tuesday night. We had got some stressful work days out of the way; we had got some camping with friends out of the way; all three of us were fit and healthy (sleep deprivation, as always, aside) … conditions were perfect (as Jemaine says at 0:40).

At 7.30 I gave Maja a bath. She sat there with her stubby little legs out in front of her, slick little tummy breaching the piles of fragrant white bubbles, little fingers playing with her scrubbing brush. I washed her hair, and her ringlets got dark and long and shiny and her face took on this cherubic aspect that seldom presents itself to me when she’s racing round the house during the day, a ball of fluffy energy.

She looked up at me with huge starry eyes, dismayed that I’d insisted on the hair-washing but trusting in me, somehow: trusting. Absolutely putting her faith in me; believing that my decisions concerning her health and wellbeing are correct and morally sound.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

At 8 pm I snuggled her into her sleep sack and kissed her little face and the soles of both her wee feet (I can’t remember how or when this ritual developed) and said ‘Goodnight, Maja’ and told her I loved her, repeated the routine for two teddies, and settled down to feed her to sleep like I always do. Realising perhaps more fully than I ever have before how much tranquillity and slow-spreading contentment I get out of doing this, too.

At 8.20 pm I went out and watched Episode 8 of True Blood with Mr A and the blundering melodrama of the Authority storyline pissed me off increasingly but there was some excellent werewolf sex and our cups of tea were warm and our chocolate biscuits were sweet and we were snuggled up together … and everything was just right. And Mr A said ‘So, tonight. Are we doing this …?’

But he already knew the answer.

God DAMMIT.

Meanwhile, I continue to wake up feeling as exhausted as I used to feel after a long hard deadline-day at the office, and I realised yesterday that I’d made a stupid mistake in my work that I never would have made in the past, just because of tiredness, and it  all seems to imply that there is something here to be fixed … doesn’t it?

Daisy

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Media for the coming storm

26 Aug

What a melodramatic title! But its quite literal … here in north-western Hungary, a storm’s been brewing for days. The temperature has been building up and building up, until yesterday it was sweltering: multiple emergency icecreams and immersions in the river were required. Today it’s 15 degrees cooler and there’s a raging wind, which we’re hoping will eventually bring our parched garden a little rain.

In the meantime we’re hunkered down inside, consuming media. I have three recommendations to share with you that we’ve enjoyed over the past couple of days: a film, a YouTube clip and some good old-fashioned telly. As follows:

My film selection: Being Elmo

This documentary, which came out last year, is something rather special. I think that can be attributed to two particular magical elements in its alchemy: the timeless magic of the Sesame Street phenomenon (yes, yes, once again I have to shout it from the rooftops: I’m the Street’s biggest fan), and the particular magic of a human being who simply deserves to be celebrated, he’s so clever and lovely (let me tell you, you thought Elmo was sweet…).  The film shamelessly plays on your emotions (I’m thinking particularly of the music in the sad bits), but I didn’t begrudge the tears it wrung out of me … at the particular point that I was physically wracked with sobs I think I would have been affected even if the soundtrack had been something specially commissioned from, like, LMFAO.

My YouTube selection: Flight of the Conchords’ ‘Feel Inside and Stuff Like That’

Bret and Jemaine interview the children

Flight of the Conchords put together this song for New Zealand’s Red Nose Day: Comedy for Cure Kids. This longish video shows the process of the song’s creation: which you need to see before you enjoy the finished, celebrity-filled (in the New Zealand sense of the word) song. While I was watching this I had the epiphany that part of the beauty of Flight of the Conchords’ whimsical funniness is that their characters’ thought processes are similar to the naive, unexpected and often hilarious thought processes of a child. Flight of the Conchords and NZ primary kids = perfect creative match. ‘John, stop blowing all the money on couches!’ Classic.

My TV selection: the Teletubbies

Wait, wait, wait, come back!!! Don’t click away! I know. They are awful; truly awful. Unlike Sesame Street, only one of us in this household appreciates ‘em. And let me reiterate that that person is not me. But I’m including them here coz they saved my butt this morning when we were in a particularly dark place cabin-fever-wise. I turned on BBC Entertainment (one of only two English-speaking channels we get here; the other is CNN) and there they were. The Teletubbies! As nineties as … the Spice Girls, and chupa chups and hair mascara! Maja LOVED the sun with the baby’s face. And there was a sweet little live-action segment featuring worms and slaters (two of our faves) to balance out all the inane dancing around in circles holding hands, every now and then falling down tubbily… It was enough for Maja to yell out ‘Come back, duppy-duppies!!’ at the end of it.

Tinky Winky: how did anyone ever think he wasn’t gay?

So anyhoo, that’s been our entertainment recently … hope we’ve recommended something here that you’ll enjoy too!

Daisy

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Guest post: Trying to be Good’s open letter

23 Aug

I’ve been meaning to reblog this for a while … it appeared on Trying to be Good in June and is so nicely put and filled with empathy (this lady REALLY doesn’t have kids??) that it makes me want to fall to my knees and weep and snivel ‘Thank you. Just … THANK you.’

I wish all good things for this amazing lady. I hope it’s not too ironic to say that the greatest thing I wish for her is … lots and lots of babies. People this sweet and intelligent owe it to the world to breed.

Daisy

Open letter to all parents from a non-parent

I just finished babysitting your baby today.

I have salmon stuck on my neck and in the crease under my left breast.

My eardrum is damaged due to high frequency screaming.

I had to hold her while I was peeing because from her perspective it seemed like Satan himself would rape and kill her slowly if I put her down thus I did not get the chance to wipe myself properly…

…no matter though as I am covered in a thick layer of sweat from pushing the stroller up the hill so a bit more wet between the legs even things out.

I washed my hair this morning but all of a sudden it looks like a stringy bag of shit pile.

I haven’t had a chance to eat anything except snatching a few cold peas from her snack pack and my head is pounding.

I watched her draw on her vulva with sidewalk chalk and I didn’t bother to read the ingredients to see if it was non-toxic.

I fed her a pizza crust to keep her occupied and I know you want her to be gluten-free.

I felt her shit herself and then I left her in her shitty diaper for when you get home.

My entire body is an exhausted heap of jangled muscles and burnt out nerves.

You were only gone for 3 hours.

I am sorry.

For judging you because your style went down the tubes.

For being annoyed when you forget to call me back.

For thinking you are not being a very good friend anymore.

For saying “I’ll lose all my baby weight, I’ll make the time.”

For telling my partner “we’ll be much sooooooo more relaxed about parenting than they are.”

For wondering why you don’t mind leaving the house looking like a drunk homeless 10-year-old.

For assuming you must be a hoarder now with your piles of clothes and teetering books and dirty plates and gummed on toys strewn all over the house.

For calling your life chaotic.

For thinking that I will do it better and it will be easier.

For secretly considering your parenting techniques to be kinda’ weird.

Photo Credit: Martin Schoeller/Time Magazine

For agreeing that I won’t lose my creative focus when I have a kid.

For being frustrated when I watch you forget your keys every goddamn time you leave the house.

For wishing you could just feed him and talk to me about my next career move at the same time.

For not getting it. Any of it. At all.

You are a superhuman and I bow down to your grace and patience towards friends like me.

When I have a baby, I hope we get to hang out more. Maybe you can wipe my crotch for me before he cracks his head on the bathroom tile. Maybe I will have a chance to make you a cup of tea before she spills it all over the floor.

Let’s smell the top of their heads together.

And we won’t care what our childless friends think of us because we both know that we know nothing now.

We have nothing left to prove.

And that is such a relief.

Emelia Symington Fedy

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Tuesday page-scrunching: Meg, Mog and Owl

21 Aug

I’m going to the Frankfurt book fair in October! I’m ridiculously excited about it on personal and professional levels … I decided that this year, seeing as New Zealand is the guest of honour, I’d be crazy not to. Cannot wait!

In celebration of that and, well, books in general, I’m gonna do some regular book reviews and general booky posts between now and then.

To kick that resolution off, I’d like to talk about our love of Meg and Mog. Do you know them? You should.

This is seminal seventies kid-lit. The colours are as bright as they can be, but the palette simple: and that description rather perfectly sums up the stories too … Meg the witch and Mog the cat (and Owl the owl) have outlandish but very straightforward adventures. They visit a castle, they visit the moon, they hatch eggs that turn into dinosaurs … and they’re often home in time for tea.

Maja and I often end up looking at these books and talking about what we can see, rather than reading the actual words. They’re not ideal for reading out loud: around half the text is not story but rather speech bubbles and ‘Booms’ and various other sound effects, which make for a rather jagged narrative.

Even the titles of the books have evolved in our house: Meg’s Veg has become Garden Book, and Meg on the Moon is Moon Book, of course. Maja’s become quite a lunatic (literally – obsessed with the moon) recently; she loves to talk about the moon.

We love them. Like Mr Magnolia and The Runaway Bunny, Meg and Mog transcend generations. Meg’s Little Black Dress is style, not fashion. Ditto Mog’s black and white stripes … and I need hardly mention that Owl was being … owly long before owls really started to have their moment.

Timeless, lovely stuff.

Check out Meg and Mog on Youtube too-tube.

If you’re a booky person and you’re going to Frankfurt, get in touch! Maybe we can hang?

Daisy

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Sick for my home

20 Aug

Excuse me for the space of a post while I wallow in my misery … I’m in the grip of terrible, all-consuming homesickness.

These periods of misery overtake me every so often when I’m living here in Hungary, unexpectedly: they come straying like some big black dog, and they stick around. They will not be shooed away. Churchill’s famous metaphor for depression seems appropriate. As the Black Dog Institute (yep, actual name) in Australia puts it on their website, the image of the black dog:

… seems an eminently apt description of depression: an ever-present companion, lurking in the shadows just out of sight, growling, vaguely menacing, always on the alert; sinister and unpredictable, capable of overwhelming you at any moment.

Without wanting to trivialise the impact of clinical depression at all, replacing ‘depression’ with ‘homesickness’ in this description seems to provide a fairly accurate description of this fragile expat’s state of being most of the time.

And then there’s another metaphor that I can’t shake: that of the little mermaid.

The original Brothers Grimm version of course, rather than the Disney one. My hair is not coke-can red, and my breasts are somewhat less perky than those two clam-shells would be able to help me out with.

I came here, to the other side of the world,  for love alone: I crossed the oceans, I chucked caution to the wind and a whole lot of possessions to the Salvation Army and I left almost everybody I love behind, to be with this man: who I once opened a door to and fell irrevocably in love with.

And the Witch of the Deeps (in my mind she kinda has the face of ex-prime minister Helen Clark) let it happen. But ‘Be warned,’ she said:

You will suffer horribly, as though a sword were cutting you apart. And every time you place your feet on the earth, you will feel dreadful pain … In exchange for my spell, you must give me your lovely voice. You’ll never be able to utter a word again!

The old hag knew what she was talking about. Travelling 20,000 km from home to be with him for an initial year was the first time I had ever left New Zealand. And I suffered horribly. In 2004, that first time I came here, I remember sitting alone in our flat and weeping aloud for hours at a time in sheer loneliness, longing for my ocean-dwelling kin. And every time I placed my feet upon this flat earth, yes, I felt a dreadful pain. I looked towards the horizon seeking mountains to reassure me, and there were none.

My lovely voice. Truth be told no, it’s not a lovely voice (even if it does the odd Adele song fairly recognisably in the shower, and serves the purpose when Maja needs some musical amusement). But it is – it was – my voice. Hours of wine-fuelled philosophising deep into the night, long lazy afternoons of coffee-fuelled gossip, whole weekends full of shared reminiscences … I left all that behind me too.

And just as the Witch foretold, my lovely voice disappeared – the most gut-wrenching sorrow of all. I was doomed to labour to make myself understood in a tongue that was not my own, in which I could no more express myself than a two-year-old.

But the thing is, over the years (this is the fifth time I’ve lived in Hungary for an extended period), things slowly got better for me. Unlike for the poor Grimm brothers’ mermaid, whose prince actually turned out to be a bit of a dick. (The bastard went and married someone else!)

If I’ve never learnt to love this place like a home, I’ve certainly learnt a shitload of coping strategies: English-speaking friends, striving fiercely to understand this strange race I find myself living among … and the vital importance of always having my own space to escape to; even if it’s only somewhere on the internet.

And Maja came along, of course – her wonderfulness travels rather perfectly across international borders. And we’re working on this house, which is slowly starting to feel like ours, not his … So that most of the time I’m Ok. More than ok. It’s only sometimes these days that I can sense that black dog lurking around – that I feel like I was born in the water, and I just can’t breathe this air.

Oh, but right now I’m in the very thick of it. Short of jumping on the next plane back or self-medicating til I’m comatose, what should I doooo?

Daisy

A note: images in this post are paintings by John William Waterhouse: The Mermaid (1901), Lamia (1905)and Boreas (1903).

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Four Elmo favourites

18 Aug

Elmo is Maja’s current hero.

For some reason one day in one of my ‘just can’t be bothered’, lazy-arse mothering moments (they are infrequent but crippling) I parked her in front of YouTube and sought Sesame Street. I have to confess that since that moment we’ve both been hooked.

The thing is, it’s very hard to disapprove of Elmo, even if he does only come into our lives via the computer screen, that symbol of all that is evil in 21st-century kids’ lives.

He’s so sweet! The way he talks about himself in the third person:

Celebrity guest: Hi, I’m Natalie/Ellen/Usher… Elmo: … And Elmo is Elmo!

He’s so enthusiastic! And always about such wholesome things (jumping in puddles, riding a trike).

And of course, he’s so goddamn cute!

Here are four of our fave Elmo vids.

Ricky Gervais sings Elmo a lullaby (‘Sounds like YOU need a celebri’y lullaby’) …

Elmo’s Got the Moves … short but rockin’:

Elmo encourages us to brush our teeth …

And then there’s this one: which is by no means the product of the Children’s Television Workshop, and maybe I’m a sucker, but it makes me smile, and the Kermit cameos crack me up.

Here are my transcribed lyrics to Elmo’s ‘Brush your Teeth’, since I couldn’t find them anywhere online. Please correct me if you know better! Some of these were really hard to make out. This has replaced the old classic ‘You brush your teeth ch-ch-ch-ch‘ in our house recently…

Brush brushy brush, brushy brush brush

Brush brushy brush, brushy brush brush

Brushy brush them up and down

Brushy brush them round and round

To keep teeth healthy here’s the truth

You gotta brush each and every tooth

The teeth in the back get a lot of wear

So don’t forget to wash back there!

Brush your teeth; keep them looking clean and bright

Brush your teeth; every day and every night

Now your toothpaste may taste good

When you’ve got it in your mouth

But you should never swallow it

You got, got, gotta spit it out

(Go on and spit, we’ll wait for it!)

Brush your teeth; keep them looking clean and bright

Brush your teeth; every day and every night

Now what you feel inside is what you gotta do

Let them get your toothbrush out now just keep brushing

Brush your teeth … looks like you’re almost done

5, 4 … 3, 2, 1 (spit).

Elmo, the community of parents thanks you.

Daisy

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Wordless Thursday: in the purple

16 Aug

Some purple things in and around our garden today …

This cosmos, which I planted earlier in the summer in a little spot between the old well in our front yard and the east wall (still to be plastered).

Some plums we’ve been waiting to ripen on a little sapling across the road from us. Truth be told we should keep waiting: these are SOUR little bastards just now – not that Maja cares.

My new ballet flats from Tesco, 745 forints (NZ$4.06). Score! (Nice toe cleavage?)

Our ‘lawn’ is full of violets (among a cornucopia of other weeds), which are also purple, although eight months away from flowering right now.
Maja’s new (old) balance bike, from a friend who owns a bike shop in town (cheers Gyuri!)

It’s a couple of centimetres too tall still … maybe by the end of the summer it’ll be just right. The concrete mixer was very busy around here a couple of weeks ago helping us construct the new pizza oven on our terrace; but as you can see from the weeds here it’s been taking a well-earned rest recently. But Mr A has been too lazy to move it from it’s so visually charming that we like to keep it within our immediate living environment.
These grapes were a legacy of the previous owner of this house; the vine struggled up of its own accord in our front garden, so we thought ‘what the hell’ and trained it along our manky fence (this too shall pass) a little.

Maja loves ‘gapes’. Oh lord look, more weeds! I must have, um, missed those ones out the last time I did the weeding. Yeah.

Sometimes she shares with mummy.

Happy Wordless Wednesday Thursday!

Daisy

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Guest post: An embellished blanket (& a couple of tips)

14 Aug

Hey everyone, remember Jenny from Mend and Make New? Not too long ago we featured a crafty guest post from her … if that whet your appetite, here’s another … She’s a clever one, this one!

Daisy

I’ve been collecting and making little things for when Isabelle moves into her ‘big girl bed’ … like this and this.

A while back I picked up a plain, white woollen blanket from the op shop and now I have embellished it by adding ribbon to the top and by appliqueing some teapots on it. (Check out another use made of the teapot fabric here)

I didn’t take a before picture – but I’m pretty sure you can use your imagination.


Last week over at ‘Our Creative Space’ (part of ‘Village Voices’ at kidspot.com.au) we were given the challenge to share a tip for staying creative.

It turns out I have done this before – in fact sharing 29 (albeit someone else’s) tips for staying creative.

But now I thought it was time to share a couple of my own (and what do you know they tie in with what I’ve created this week!) …

Jenny’s tip #1 – When in a creative slump, or just trying to (re)discover your creative side, take on an ‘Instant Gratification Project’ (IGP), like the little embellishments to this blanket. IGPs give you maximum results for minimum effort – something to give you the satisfaction and confidence that comes with finishing something. I tend to undertake lots of little IGPs while also having a longer, more time consuming project going on at the same time.

Jenny’s tip #2 – Something else that I find cultivates creativity is re-cycling/ re-using something and turning into something else. Whether it’s a full scale re-style/ change of use, or a simple embellishment (as I’ve done here); using something in a different way makes you think out of the square and also uses inexpensive resources.

And speaking of creativity and re-cycling, check out the latest instalment of ‘The Recycled Roundup‘ on Mend and Make New!

Jenny x

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The sun, the moon, the earth, liquid love …

12 Aug

So I’m feeling totally enthused about this night-weaning idea … 90 per cent of the time.

I keep hearing stories about how quickly it can happen (one of them I published here).

Three nights seems to be everyone’s magic number. Three goddamn nights! Would it matter how unholy bad they were, if it meant that after I was through them I’d be sleeping through the night?

I can’t even imagine how good an unbroken night would feel …

Miss Bee pretends to sleep

Getting Mr A totally on board is going to be key; another thing I keep hearing is how much easier it is for the father unit to settle a little boob-junkie once it has become clear that the dealer ain’t dealin’. Which makes sense. As my wise mother said: ‘You just won’t be able to  comfort her through her sense of loss by hugging her close to the focus of her longings’ (How wise is my mother?? What a perfectly succinct point. I’m picturing ‘helping’ a smoker through cold turkey by commiserating with them while breathing smoke in their face?)

But then there’s that other 10 per cent of me …

Speaking of my mum: she also mentioned that she got teary eyed just thinking about unlatching her (extended breastfed, all three) babies … over twenty years ago. And this is my wise woman mother I’m talking about here. She is not one to get dramatic about things or overly emotional by any means.

I completely understand it.

I can’t say this without cliche (this must be one of the most discussed things on the internet), but breastfeeding is … really, really special.

It’s my time with my daughter: when I express my love for her in the most tangible, perfectly symbolic way, and she receives every sort of nourishment I am able to give: together we are close, we are warmed by each other, we are comforted, we reinforce our identities in the context of each other … we just are. It’s perfect give and take, perfect symbiosis, the creation of a perfect circle. It’s like no other thing I’ve ever done. Or ever will do.

This quote from Paula Yount I once read on Kelly Mom has long remained in my mind:

You are not a pacifier; you are a Mom. You are the sun, the moon, the earth, you are liquid love, you are warmth, you are security, you are comfort in the very deepest aspect of the meaning of comfort …

Yes. But at 2 am??? I tend to be expressing these sentiments through gritted teeth, trying to convince myself …

I know night-weaning doesn’t need to mean weaning altogether … but Miss Bee only has her mook once or at most twice a day now … so this would represent a huge reduction in feeding episodes altogether. Would that mean she’s likely to want more during the day (as Stef found?) or less? (The purpose of night-weaning is to accustom her to the idea that she has the tools to comfort herself back to equilibrium. If she learns that too thoroughly, how much longer will she be wanting to breastfeed during the day?)

Can I do this?

Do I want to??

Hmm.

Daisy

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