1 Easy Step to Mucking up the School Holidays

Even though it is currently summer school holidays here, my youngest daughter has been doing homework almost daily for the past month. It’s safe to say, it hasn’t been the ‘funnest’ holiday ever for her, but with her diagnosis of severe functional dyslexia being confirmed days after school ending last year, everyone (above the age of 40) agreed that she couldn’t afford to miss 7 weeks of schooling.

So I get to play teacher. Yay.

Some days start with tears and end with shouting. Sometimes we mix it up, and start with shouting and end with tears. ‘Why did I have to get the broken brain?’ she’d mumble after crawling into my lap for a hug. Every session ends with a collective sigh of relief – and I can’t tell whose are louder – hers or mine. But every day she amazes me with her persistence and tenacity.

Today I gave her an activity that she enjoys because she gets to use a packet of brightly coloured alphabet stamps. Hell, even I like brightly coloured alphabet stamps.

I gave her a page that had the following:

B E _

_ R I P

_ A M P

W _ G

_ E N T

She uses her stamps to make ‘real’ words (such as bed and red, drip and trip). It can be rather hit and miss, but it’s good for her to swap sounds and see how they affect words.

But little did I realise that the letter stamps were alive, all with unique personalities.

‘I want to go first’, she squeaked waving the letter M around. She hopped the letter over to the first word. ‘B-E-M’ she sounded out. ‘BEM.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Too bad M, back in the box.’

‘I’m scared,’ she whispered, waving the T around. She glanced sideways at me. ‘T is just a baby.’ She said by way of explanation. ‘Go T’ she cried in encouragement. ‘You got this!’

Having established that indeed BET was a real word, she turned to me – ‘I’m on fire!’ she said.

We made our way through the words. Very. Slowly. She’s very fair-minded and wanted to give all the letters a chance.

‘I want a turn’ the orange letter C cried.

‘Can I bring a friend?’ asked green S.

‘I’m X and I like being crazy!’ whooped the purple X.

‘Ladies first!’ huffed the pink J.

Soon, all the pink letters were lined up with a respective blue ‘boyfriend’ and were about to start a conga line. I was tempted to tell them all off, but the thing is – she was actually enjoying herself and she was making the words she needed.

‘Off you go D,’ she said encouragingly to a pink stamp as she bounced it towards _ AMP.

‘I have a good feeling about this,’ she whispered to me.

‘DAMP! Yes!’ she cried.

The next word was W_G and after a few false starts involving unpopular letters Z and Y, I told her she would need vowels to make it into a word.

‘Right then,’ she cried to the box of stamps. ‘I want all the vowels please. Line up! Come on O where are you? Don’t be shy,’ she pleaded.

Having made wig and wag, she moved onto the last word which was _ENT. She lined all the vowels up again to have another go.

‘You won’t need the vowels for this one,’ I explained. ‘It already has one.’

She cupped her hands around the stamps. ‘Shhhh Mum, you’re making them sad.’

Slowly she marched them all back to the box, whispering gently to them not to feel bad, and they’d get another chance.

And even though dyslexia will be a hard slog for both of us, I cannot but feel hearted by the fact that she has a love for letters and words. And maybe one day, with lots of work – the feeling will be mutual.

The Shocking Day I Realised How the World Appears to My Daughter

My youngest daughter is severely dyslexic. We noticed a difference between her and her peers a couple of years ago, and the older she gets, the more marked it is. Diagnosing her dyslexia was a costly and time-consuming process, and despite intensive intervention at school and at home, progress is painfully slow. 

Having a child with reading and writing difficulties is extra strange considering I spend my life reading and writing. It’s my chosen career, and for the most part find it blissfully easy. So it’s been hard for me to take a step back and comprehend how the world might be for her.

Until I was sitting on the toilet recently. 

I know that sounds strange, but we have an Auslan finger spelling poster in the toilet that I often find myself staring at.

I pride myself on being able to rattle through the hand signs for the alphabet pretty quickly, just like my daughter now is (almost) able to recite the alphabet. We are both pretty good when asked to go from start to finish.

But if you ask either of us to read (or sign) one of the ‘trickier’ letters – for her it might be H and F, for me it would be signing H or G, we will pause, no longer certain, without the context of the surrounding letters.

If someone proficient in Auslan sign language came up to me and started spelling ‘Hello, my name is Sam’ I would probably panic. I’d have to ask them to go very slowly, one letter at a time, translating the hand shapes to sounds, and trying to hold them in my head while I concentrate on ‘reading’ the next sign.

In an ideal world,  when reading H-E-L-L-O, you're still meant to remember the ‘H’ by the time you get to ‘O’. 

But if I was watching someone sign the letters to me, I would probably be concentrating so much on recognising the ‘O’, that the ‘H’ would be long gone. The word I had just 'spelled' would be an incomplete collection of sounds and make no sense. I then imagined how hard it would be to keep an entire sentence in my head.

My heart sank.

That’s when I realised that's what it must be like for my daughter every time we ask her to read. 

And while I don’t have to learn the Auslan finger signs, she HAS to learn how to read and write English. There is no avoiding it. For her, it is a mountain that must be scaled. Every day for the rest of her life.

For her, reading is excruciating and labour intense, and without any certainly that sounding the individual letters will actually makes any sense once she’s done.

Despite the difficulties she has, she is determined to persist. She blows the rest of us out of the water when it comes to working hard. We are developing little rules that help her remember each letter shape and sound. What is automatic and easy for most of us, involves a number of laboured steps for her.

Funnily enough, one thing she can write with no issue is the phrase ‘I love you’. She writes it a lot. On cards and pictures, on scraps of paper, on the shopping lists, on post-it notes that she leaves next to my bed. 

Yet the other week, when she had to read ‘YES’ it took about 10 steps.

First I wrote the phrase ‘I love you’ next to her word list. Then I circled the ‘Y’ in Yes and the ‘Y’ in You and joined them together, and then I waited. I watched her eyes dart from one phrase to the next, as she mouthed the sounds to herself. ‘I love you’ she whispered under her breath, ‘You’ and then she got to ‘Y’. Then she looked back at the word YES and started ‘Y-E-S’. She turned to be with a big grin ‘YES’ she shouted.

To which there was only one appropriate response: ‘I love YOU’ I replied.

The Phone

I had filled one side of my notepad with dot points, each detailing a single point in time of the night:

Taking a photo of the puppy when I discovered her in the remains of the bubble bath, happily sliding in the bubbles and eating great mouthfuls of soap.

Walking into my eldest daughter’s room, using my phone to email the pictures to her.

Walking out of her room shaking my head, as my youngest daughter stretched out on the bed asking to be photographed. (The answer was no).

Hearing a strange beep when I was saying my goodnights to my middle daughter, and then thinking ‘that sounds like my phone.’

Then the realisation.

I had lost my phone.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, my hands devastatingly empty, I consoled myself with the knowledge that I KNEW it must be in the house somewhere.

I had even called it on the landline, straining to hear it in the sleeping house. Nada.

I stood in front of my iPad remembering the ‘Find My Phone’ app, but quickly walked away remembering I’d never actually set that up. Too hard.

After writing down my steps in great detail, knowing that in the morning I would have already forgotten what I did, I did one (or three) last checks of every room. I prowled around each sleeping child, checked the bathroom, my bag, the bench. The laundry. I turned on the outside lights and peered at the grass to see if the dog had taken it outside to chew on.

I admit it – I even checked the fridge. Who knows if this was actually the start of something more serious?

Nothing.

I went to bed the old fashioned way. I couldn’t check the weather for the next day. I had no idea what I had written on my to-do list. I couldn’t reply to my sister’s text message.

Hell, I couldn’t even bitch about losing my phone on Facebook!

My sleep was poor.

It was in the early hours of the morning when my door slid open and there was the telltale sound of small feet on carpet. I waited for the covers to be drawn back, but instead they retreated and the door slid shut.

That was weird.

I called out her name.

‘Don’t worry Mum,’ she called back ‘I’m just bringing you back your phone.’

I looked at the clock. 3.45am.

‘Wait,’ I called. ‘Why do you have my phone? Where was it?’

She avoided the questions like a pro. ‘Lucky I found it,’ she called. ‘Go back to sleep Mum.’ Her voice got smaller as she disappeared down the stairs.

Go back to sleep? Seriously?

I lay in bed for a few minutes, alternating between fuming and bewilderment. I could only guess why she took it. She probably wanted to watch Kids YouTube, or take a video of herself or who knows – check the weather for tomorrow or update my Facebook status. Maybe she was trying to frame me for a crime. Who knows what five year olds get up to these days.

But she obviously hadn’t counted on the whizzbang new technology of fingerprint identification. She knows her Dad’s phone password (I don’t)… but she couldn’t get into mine.

Why she chose to bring it back in the middle of the night shows a scarily crafty mind… did she think I wouldn’t notice? Blame myself for just being forgetful? She does seem to think I am going die soon now I am "old" (I just turned 40).

It’s now 4.40am and I have been up writing for almost an hour. There was no hope of me ever getting back to sleep, but she did – the face of an angel peeping out from under layers of blankets and toys.

I can’t wait to interrogate her.

And just a little afraid.

Why You Should Let Your Four Year Old Self-Diagnose

‘I have a scratchy bottom,’ my four year old told the bemused girl behind the counter.

She leaned forward to emphasis her point. ‘Every time I do a poo,’ she said.

The poor girl was silent, flicking glances at me every now and then.

‘From here!’ she exclaimed turning slightly and pointing at her butt.

‘It’s scratchy,’ she said again, giving her butt a good rub as if to prove a point.

The bewildered girl looked embarrassed. She’ll have to get over that if she wants to work in a chemist, I thought to myself.

‘Is it her cheeks or where… where the poo comes from?’ she asked quietly.

‘Where the poo comes from,’ my daughter replied loudly. ‘Poo!’ she repeated for the benefit of the old lady who had walked up behind us. ‘My bottom is scratchy,’ she told the old lady conspiratorially.

The old lady nodded knowingly.

We all looked at the girl waiting for a solution.

‘I’m going to have to get the pharmacist,’ she said and scuttled off.

Even the old lady rolled her eyes.

The pharmacist was much better prepared, stooping down to the level of her newest patient and not looking the slightest bit embarrassed at the discussion about poos and holes and whether it was appropriate to stick your fingers in your bottom if it was scratchy (hint: it’s not, especially at Kindy or at dinner-time).

After a lengthy chat with my daughter, the pharmacist stood up and gave me a smile.

‘I think the best option is to treat her for worms. If nothing changes after that, then we consider treating her for a dermatitis.’

Awesome, I thought. Worms.

‘And I’m sure you know you will need to treat the whole family,’ she said.

Even better, I thought.

Clutching her chocolate-lookalike medicine as we walked back through the shops (someone deserves a medal for making worm medicine look and taste like chocolate) my daughter was very excited. It could have been the prospect of no longer having an itchy butt, but more likely was the fact that she got chocolate medicine.

At home, the rest of the family eyeballed the chocolate squares I put in front of them.

‘And why are we taking this exactly?’ asked my eldest daughter, sniffing it suspiciously.

‘Just take it,’ said the middle daughter, her mouth already full. ‘It’s yummy.’

My husband knew exactly what it was. ‘Awesome,’ he said drily. I just shrugged.

Two days later and my four year woke up complaining.

‘I have a scratchy arm,’ she pouted. ‘I think the ants went on my bom bom and now they went on my arm and that’s why I’m itchy.’

‘Ummm… I don’t think it’s ants,’ I started.

‘It is,’ she replied with the determination that only a four year old can muster. ‘I think the ants bite me because they think I’m a sandwich.’

She shook her head sadly.

‘I don’t like being a sandwich.’

Why You Will Never Win an Argument with a Four Year Old

‘I don’t want to go to school. I hate school!’ came the voice from under the blanket.

My husband and I exchanged looks.

‘It’s booooring,’ came the voice.

‘You know what’s boring?’ I asked. ‘Having this conversation every day,’ I muttered.

Half way through four year old Kindy, and my daughter seems to think she is done. I don’t want to imagine her disappointment when she realises she has at least 13 and a half more years ahead of her, even without university.

A loud farting noise came from under the blanket, where she had secreted herself in front of the fireplace.

‘Was that your bottom?’ I asked.

‘My bottom HATES you,’ came the reply.

My husband, packing his bag and about to escape to work, stifled a giggle. I raised my eyebrows in a ‘see what I have to deal with’ look. He just gave me a big cheesy grin and walked out. ‘Bye!’ he smirked.

‘And my arms hate you. And my tummy hates you. And my head hates you. We all hate you,’ the little voice continued.

There was silence as she waited for a response.

‘I just want a ham and cheese toastie from canteen!’ she shrieked.

Ah, so that was what this was all about. Getting lunch from the canteen.

But I was silent.

‘I don’t want to listen to you!’ she yelled from under the rug.

It was a very one-sided conversation and I was beginning to wonder if she was hearing imaginary voices.

‘I WANT HAM AND CHEESE TOASTIE’ she shouted, finally sitting up, the blanket falling away, revealing her little face pink with anger and warmth from being under the rug.

I raised an eyebrow and put on my best ‘mature Mummy’ voice, though it was far from what I really wanted to do.

‘You know that when you speak to me like that, I don’t listen - so you won’t get what you want,’ I said calmly.

Her face dropped.

‘So I won’t get dinner?’ she wailed.

What?

‘No pyjamas?’

Hang on, where is this going.

‘No fishies. No cuggles? No painting?’

She made her eyes look big and sad and pouted her mouth, trying to imply I was an evil mother who wouldn’t feed or love her child. I wanted to grab the blanket off her so I could hide under it.

I just looked at her and held up her lunch bag which I had been packing with sandwiches and fruit and cheese and crackers and a piece of cake fresh from the bloody oven.

In defeat, she tossed her hair. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’m going to hide from you and you will never ever find me and I won’t go to school.’

‘Where are you going to hide?’ I asked.

‘Here.’ And she pulled the blanket back over her head.

What My Child Learned from Angry Birds – and it may surprise you

We took our family to see Angry Birds – the Movie the other day.

I wasn’t overly impressed, there were probably too many gay-dance-club-naked-buttocks-in-leather-chaps scenes than there should have been for a kids cartoon, but hey, I’m not judging.

I was a little concerned about the linguistic (and cooking) nightmare the movie set up between pigs referring to eggs as ‘omelettes’ and birds referring to eggs as ‘children’, but I can live with that as well.

There were plenty of fart jokes and nastiness and bottoms, but that’s just a typical day at our place.

What I found most fascinating about this movie, was the message my four year old daughter took home with her.

She already has a bit of a reputation for being a wild one (or a holy terror, depending on who you talk to) so taking her to a movie that celebrates anger and blowing up and hitting things that displease you, was always going to be a risk.

Yet, the one thing she took away with her was the meditation scene.

Shocking, right?

A few days after we saw the movie she told me how she taught her grandma how to ‘breathe’. Mildly confused, and probably distracted by some hilarious meme on Facebook, I nodded and smiled and said ‘that’s awesome.’

Knowing she was being ignored, she sat cross legged on the floor, stretched her arms out with her palms turned upwards and closed her eyes.

Considering this was the quietest she had been since birth, I could not help noticing. I was so shocked in fact I needed a glass of wine and a lie down.

The holy terror… was meditating.

Then a few days after that I spoke with her grandma about this amazing scene. I had assumed that she had taught my daughter the restful pose, but needed two glasses of wine and a lie-down when I was informed, that it was my daughter who was doing the teaching. And that she had learned how to meditate from Angry Birds.

I doubt she will be becoming a Buddhist monk any time soon, her meditation sessions never last more than 30 seconds, but it has filled me with hope that amongst the fart jokes and naked cowboys and cannibalistic pigs of the world, a small child still notices a moment of silence.

Lock them in their rooms

My (almost) four year old and I were playing.

Normally I don’t do this type of thing, but every now and then I put my ‘good mum’ hat on and try and do the things they tell me to do in all the parenting books.

So we were ‘mum friends’ and we were dropping our children off at school. My ‘daughter’ was a stuffed duck, she had the pig.

‘Bye bye darlings,’ she sang. ‘Time for school.’ She dropped the toys unceremoniously on the floor and then turned to me.

‘C’mon mum friend,’ she said. ‘Let’s get coffee.’

I swear this is all my family think I do with my time – drink coffee with my friends. It’s not true. Except on Thursdays.

So we sat at the kitchen table where my coffee was waiting for me.

‘Uh, I’ll have a milo,’ she told the imaginary shop girl.

She nudged me with her elbow. ‘Get me a milo, please.’

Sitting down with our beverages, she turned to me and said ‘we’re having a meeting now, mum friend.’ This is slightly closer to the truth with what I do with my days: ‘meeting’ covers a multiple of events involving other adults.

‘What shall we talk about?’ I asked innocently.

‘My kids! They’re crazy,’ she suddenly shrieked. ‘And your kids – they’re crazy too.’

‘Oh my,’ I said, mildly concerned at the sudden change in direction. ‘What shall we do?’

‘Lock them in their room,’ she said bluntly. ‘They’ll never do it again.’

Okaaaaaay.

I was a little shocked at her draconian measures. Sure, I have sent the kids to their room when they’re being naughty, but locking them away forever is a little extreme, even for me. Apparently to an almost-four year old though, they’re practically the same thing. Point taken.

‘Do you think that will work?’ I asked

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘They’re so silly.’

‘What else shall we talk about,’ I said sipping my coffee.

‘We should scare them,’ she told me conspiratorially.

‘Who? Our kids?’ I wanted to know.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why? I’m not sure that is a great idea.’

She looked at me. ‘Ok. We’ll just lock them in their room.’

I tried to change tack. ‘Mum friend,’ I said. ‘I need your advice. My kids don’t listen to me. How do I get them to listen to me?’

‘Just pat them on their heads,’ she said. ‘They’ll be good.’

‘Does that work with your kids,’ I asked her.

She hung her head dramatically, peeking out under her fringe. ‘I only have one kid,’ she said. ‘And she be very sick.’

‘Oh my,’ I said. ‘What does your husband think?’

‘Ewwwww,’ she cried indignantly. ‘I don’t have a husband! And my dad died,’ she added.

‘So you don’t have a husband, your dad is dead and your kid is very sick? That’s so sad,’ I said to her softly.

She put on her best sad face, looking up at me with her big eyes, her mouth pouting.

I waited for her next grand statement – maybe a dead dog? Burned down house?

Except she farted. A huge, bubbling fart that rippled against the plastic chair.

We both cracked up.

The game was over.

 

The Third Child Starts School - Part 1

It was easy to tell the first timers from the old hats.

The new parents shuffled in cautiously, unsure what to expect, their children’s school supplies tucked under their arm. Their eyes would scan the room, hoping for a familiar face. There wasn’t one. If they came with their partner they would move towards an empty table, and busy themselves reading handouts on developmental milestones and State frameworks, pretending that this wasn’t killing them inside, wondering how they were going to cope on Monday when they needed to say goodbye.

Us old hats blundered in like we owned the place, which we kinda did.

After the initial disbelief of being given directions by someone who was clearly completely new to the school (our lovely new teachers assistant it turns out) we pulled up chairs and rearranged the library, making space for old friends, laughing loudly at the exploits of our children over the holidays.

I remembered the whole time how it felt being one of the new mums, knowing no one, feeling in awe and slightly intimidated by some of the old hats, who clearly felt relaxed and knowledgeable in their role as school mums. I just remember feeling distinctly sweaty and out of control.

I looked around the room at the group of parents whose children would be attending Kindy with my youngest child. There was the young dad, asking questions about security and child/adult ratios, wondering whether kids would be able to scale the fence and escape before a teacher realised.

There was the older dad, who calmly told the younger guy not to worry so much, because the fence was electric. A ripple of nervous laughter spread throughout the room, until the smiling teacher reminded everyone that no – the fence was not electric.

There was the shy young aunty, sent in as a representative for parents who were obviously at work. She was clearly out of her depth and I felt for her as she smiled eagerly at every new face who approached her table.

Behind us the heavily pregnant woman, perhaps only weeks away from delivering. That was me four years ago, taking my eldest to full time school for the first time, while I was 100 months pregnant. I bumped bellies with a small lady also holding hands with a little girl. The girls eyed each other as I eyed the other mum. Her bump was so small, so tidy. She was looking at my sprawling mass.

‘It’s my third,’ I told her as though it would explain away my giganticism.

‘Me too,’ she said. I hated her immediately.

Tonight, she was sitting next to me as we swapped stories about our third children. I confessed I was nervous about Number Three’s offensive new habit of calling people ‘Buttface’ when she didn’t like what you were telling her. My friend was concerned about her son’s habit of pulling down his pants and weeing on everything.

We laughed as we imagined ourselves being called to the Principal’s Office to explain our children’s behaviour.

Meanwhile I could feel eyes on me. In awe, maybe. Intimidated, perhaps. Wishing we would shut up, quite likely. Awe and intimidation are only temporary until you get to know someone. Wishing they would shut up, I have been told, is permanent. As I looked around the room, I wondered if my new BFF was in the room. I wondered what experiences I would share with these mums and dads, which of their kids would become part of my daughter’s life.

This is the third and final time I will be doing this – taking my child to ‘the first day of school’. There is a luxury in doing things for the third time, a sense of familiarity and control. Even though the school might not be ready for Number Three and her potty mouth, I am ready for this final journey.

Bring on Monday.

I Still Hate Playing with My Kids.

‘Let’s play mermaids’.

My heart sank. My intense dislike of playing with kids is well documented.

This was Number Three, just shy of four years old, and I was suffering some serious déjà vu.

Ironically, the cause of my previous angst – Curly Mop, newly six, was sitting at the table building Lego. The Bombshell hadn’t even dragged her eight-turning-fifteen-year-old carcass out of bed yet. I was stuck.

I would have preferred it if someone had asked me to wipe their butt, but in deference to the fact that she was asking so nicely (and I was curious why she was holding up a naked Ken doll), I spun around on my seat and said (as convincingly as I could) ‘ok!’

She handed me two dolls. ‘You play with this mermaid,’ she said. ‘And that’s the Mum,’ she said dismissively dropping a completely nude Barbie on the table.

‘Let’s swim!’ she said. ‘Pash pash,’ and off she went. I think she meant ‘splash, splash’ but the fact that her mermaid was locked in a tight embrace with the naked Ken doll left the entire thing open to interpretation.

A blue quilt was spread out on the floor, with some strategic cushions. ‘That’s the water,’ Three explained. ‘And these are the rocks. Put mum on the rock. She needs to work.’

I guiltily dropped the naked doll on the rock, her point well taken.

We wiggled our mermaids across the quilt.

‘Look!,’ she cried. ‘See-saw horses.’ I didn’t have the heart to correct her.

‘Shaaaarks,’ she hissed. ‘They’re sleeping over there.’

‘So we have to play quietly?’ I said.

She moved her mermaid gently along on the tip of its tail. ‘Tip toe tip toe,’ she whispered.

‘Aghhh they’re awake,’ I cried, wishing for a bit more action.

‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘You sharks stay on the grass,’ she said in a big voice.

‘Awwwwww,’ she replied for the sharks in a small sad voice.

‘Let’s go to school,’ her mermaid said.

I was getting bored. ‘A school of fish?’ I asked, laughing at how clever I was.

She shook her head impatiently. ‘No. Mermaid school!’ she huffed.

‘Pash pash.’

Suddenly the Mop came past with two of her Lego horses. Thank god.

‘Look,’ I cried. ‘Seasaw horses!’

Three frowned slightly, then burst into laughter. ‘Muuuuum,’

The Mop began playing with Three and her mermaids.

‘Careful,’ she cautioned the mermaids. ‘People might see you.’

Three stood tall on the couch and held her mermaids up. ‘Cheese,’ she said, smiling for imaginary cameras.

By now I had slunk away, but The Mop had had enough. ‘Bye,’ she said.

‘Stay,’ pleaded Number Three. ‘I’ll give you chocolate,’ she said.

But it was too late. The Mop had wandered off, and seconds later, Number Three reappeared in front of me holding the naked Ken doll. ‘C’mon Mum. Let’s play.’

 

Running Away From Home

‘I go to Gammas. By my own!’

Angry because we had told her she couldn’t have dessert if she didn’t eat her dinner, Number Three had decided she would go to her Grandma’s house (where apparently such rules don’t exist).

By all accounts, Number Three was ready to go. She stormed off to her bedroom – ‘I get my bag, then I go to Gamma’s’ she warned us.

I followed, more out of curiosity than any real fear she might leave. She’s three and can’t reach any door handles.

I slowly pushed open her door – she had wedged a pile of pillow pets behind it to make sure people didn’t interrupt her. She was busy stuffing dresses into her Elsa back pack, while she flung her little doggie handbag over her shoulder.

‘I pack my bags,’ she told me determinedly. ‘Toys and some clothes.’

‘Have you got knickers?’ I asked. ‘A torch? It will get dark soon, are you sure you want to walk in the dark.’

‘I don’t want to show you,’ she said quietly. But she got up and stuffed a pair of undies into her bag. ‘Only one,’ she warned me.

She stood up, as determined as I had ever seen her. Suddenly a small part of me believed that she really would leave and walk to grandmas on the other side of the city. I needed to stall.

‘Do you know what Gamma’s real name is? In case you need to ask a grown up where she lives?’ I asked.

She thought for a second then gave a solid nod. ‘Grandma,’ she said. I sighed inwardly.

I looked around the room in desperation. My eyes fell on a Dora toy.

‘Have you got a map? Dora always has a map,’ I said.

Her little face brightened and she gave me the thumbs up sign. ‘Good job Mum!’ she said. ‘I need a map.’

We wandered out to the kitchen where she grabbed a piece of paper and a fat mauve marker. She drew some long lines, and then marked a couple of ‘spots’.

‘That’s where Gammma lives,’ she said. ‘And that’s us.’

She rolled up the map and shoved it in her backpack.

‘Ok family,’ she called out. ‘Bye Dad, bye Mum, bye sisters. I go to Gamma’s now.’

She pulled a hat off the rack and slid her feet into a pair of shoes. Standing at the door with her bags and mismatched socks, she looked at me expectantly. ‘I need the keys Mum,’ she explained. ‘Open the door.’

So far we had managed this whole episode with the utmost calm and harmony. But I knew that the second I refused to open the door she would melt into a tantruming three year puddle of fire and spit. We needed a distraction.

As if an answer from the angels, suddenly the opening theme of Dora came floating from the family room. Her little head automatically swivelled in the direction of the TV.

‘Do you perhaps want to stay for a while and watch Dora, and you can go to Grandmas later?’

She glanced at the door behind her and the TV in front of her. She was losing resolve.

‘I leave my bags here?’ she asked. ‘For later?’

I nodded and gently took her hat off.

She ambled toward the TV, running away to Grandma’s forgotten momentarily.

 Thanks Dora, I owe you one.


30 minutes later.

‘Ok mum, I need the keys now.’

What? I thought it was finished.

‘I go to Gamma’s now. I need the keys.’

She rummaged through the drawer, coming up with some window keys.

‘Bye Dad,’ she called out. Dad wandered out, ‘where are you going now?’

She humphed, as only a three year old can humph.

‘I got the keys so now I drive the car,’ she explained.

‘But it’s dark now,’ her dad explained.

There was a pause. ‘I be so brave,’ she said.

‘Maybe,’ said her dad. ‘But you need a shower. Grandma doesn’t want a smelly visitor. Let’s go.’

And she went!

 

Trials of a Day-Care Mum

It’s becoming increasingly painful trying to drop Number Three off at day-care in the mornings.

There are days when I slink back to the car and I can still hear her howling with the indignity of being abandoned in a giant park-like setting with dozens of other children, grown-ups who actually enjoy playing with children (or are paid to act as though they do) and tiny little toilets that perfectly fit her bottom with no fear she will ever fall in.

She doesn’t realise how good she has it.

She tells me she would rather stay home with me. But when I probe a little deeper it’s clear that it isn’t me she wants to spend the day curled up with, but the TV. I asked her directly once ‘do you love the TV more than Mummy?’ She didn’t even have the decency to hesitate for a second before nodding enthusiastically.

All my kids have loved day-care, to begin with anyway. I am fortunate enough that my kids go to a particularly well rated community centre. They have nature play gardens, enormous cubby houses, swings in the shady trees, sand pits and bridges, teepees and enough animals to maintain a hobby farm (including what we were told was going to be a ‘miniature’ pig but someone obviously screwed up, because this pig is the size of a small car and has to be kept separate from the kids now because there is every chance he might decide one day to snack on a small child).

At home all we have is TV and a gold fish that refuses to die no matter how much we ty and neglect it.

At day-care, my three year old – who is in the ‘science’ room, learns about how the body works by handling real brains (I kid you not, there is a photograph on the wall of them poking at a brain), using sophisticated contraptions to see how blood pumps through the body, and draw outlines of themselves on giant paper and fill in the gaps (heart, brain, poo tube).

At home, my child learned about the body by figuring out that each time she poops on the toilet she gets a lolly pop. So she is learning to hold part of it in, getting a lolly, then going back half an hour later to do another poo and get another lolly. A valuable lesson for both of us.

At day-care, she is given fruit at 9am, a two course, cooked lunch in a fully equipped dining room with kid-sized tables and chairs and vases of flowers on the table, plus afternoon tea that you can smell being baked in the mornings. All the parents walk back to their cars with their heads at a funny angle, which I finally realised is them trying to sniff the delicious aromas of the kids lunch (while trying not to sniff the giant pig).

At home, we have stale bread which I can turn into a choice of a) stale sandwiches or b) toast. Which is effectively warm stale sandwiches, but since the butter is all nice and melty, no one cares.

At daycare, she has approximately 100 children between the ages of 0 and 5 to play with, boys, girls, different ethnic and language  groups, rough kids, gentle kids, kids who want to dance, kids who want to run, kids who will push her on the swing, kids who want to be pushed. 100 little people who want to do nothing but play.

At home, she has me. Who will do anything to avoid playing (including scrubbing the toilet, which needs it more often now that she is crapping every half an hour).

I try and explain this to her, but she won’t listen. She continues to howl in the mornings, breaking my heart. As I hand her over to one of her adoring carers and practically sprint out the door with the other two in tow, I leave a little piece of me behind.

She will only being going for a couple more months. Soon I will finish my last university subject, soon it will be Christmas, soon she will start pre-school.

And I am pretty sure when she realises next year that she will be expected to learn and wear uniforms and can only play in the playground for limited times every day she will begin to understand how good she had it. 

When she starts getting homework and is expected to learn to read, when there are only two teachers instead of four, when the pig is traded in for a tank of hermit crabs, she might realise that hey, day-care was pretty good.

But I feel confident that she will truly appreciate the awesomeness of day-care when she opens her first lunch box that mum has packed, and it only has a banana and a stale sandwich.

Then she will probably cry and demand to be taken back to day-care.

Cock Porn at 2am

‘Where are you going,’ my husband asked groggily.

‘She’s calling out she’s done a poo, I’d better go and see’ I replied.

It was 2.15am. As in the middle of the effing night.

I trudge downstairs and open her door a crack. No tell tale waft of death, but I can hear her sniffing. She’s crying, I think. Oh no, what if she has diarrhoea? I mentally begin rearranging the following day, trying to determine how much work I can get done if I have a sick three year old at my side.

‘Why are you sad honey,’ I ask her, walking toward the bed.

‘Because I want cockcorn. I hungry,’ she said in her tiny adorable voice that suddenly wasn’t so adorable anymore.

What? Did I somehow mistake ‘popcorn’ for ‘poo’? I suppose when you’re ASLEEP it is easy to mistake all sorts of things.

I stare at her shadowy shape in the dark and resist the urge to throw a doll at her head. Instead, in my calmest voice I simply say ‘No. Go back to sleep’, turn, and leave the room.

Only after I close the door do I say a very rude word…

…which is drowned out anyway by an almighty shriek and indignant howls of misery that erupt from within the room.

I pause momentarily and assess my level of anger. Pretty high, I think, based on the fact that someone – either my husband or one of the kids – has woken me pretty much every single night for the past eight years.

There was no way I was going to deal with this in a calm, responsible manner, so I kept walking. I needed to pee anyway, so I just left the volcanic mess behind, which was now throwing itself against the door demanding ‘cockporn’.

Besides, I could hear my husband heading down the stairs. Let him deal with her, I thought, although it was entirely possible his way of solving the problem would be to actually give her a bag of popcorn at 2 o’clock in the morning.

By the time I had finished in the loo the house was dark and silent. Unbelievable. I made my way back upstairs and as soon as my shadow loomed in the door, I heard a chirpy little voice say ‘hello Mummy’, followed by some enthusiastic bouncing on my pillow.

F*ck, I thought. I would have rather he gave her the popcorn.

‘She won’t sleep,’ I muttered climbing in to bed and hauling the blankets off the other two.

It was irrelevant anyway. Whether she slept or not was not the point: the point was that I would not be able to sleep. And just like the 3,000 or so nights that preceded this one, I would not get a full night’s uninterrupted sleep.

If I’m being honest – and I usually am – I am a total bitch between the hours of midnight and 5am. 

The rest of the time I quite a nice person, but unless you catch me at the tail end of a rather awesome party (rather unlikely these days when parties finish at 5pm so we’re all in bed by 8pm) if you find me awake during these hours – I WON’T BE VERY NICE TO YOU. Even if you sprang from my loins (or are trying to spring for them) I don’t want to know you.

Now that my Third Child is three and my eldest is eight, I figure I have been having crap sleep through pregnancy, breast feeding and kids not-sleeping-through for long enough, and it is time for me to reassert my physical right to six hours uninterrupted sleep.

Note how I didn’t ask for eight or ten. Just six. Uninterrupted.

Before I had kids I was an awesome sleeper. I would have won an Olympic gold. My parents installed a smoke alarm in my bedroom when I was at uni because I used to burn incense in there and they quite rightly were concerned I would burn the house down. 

One night a spider walked across the alarm and set it off. Those bastards are loud but I slept straight through it (much to my parent’s disgust) because I was a teenager and I used to be an Olympic gold winning sleeper.

These days, one of the kids can fart in their sleep downstairs and it will wake me up, because I am a Mum, and Mums develop a rather useful (but annoying) desire to ensure their kids are safe.

Enough is enough.

No more farting. No more cockporn in the middle of the night. I need to reclaim my sleep.

So if anyone has any good advice, please let me know: how can I reclaim my sleep?

In Bed With Mia

‘Mum.’

‘MUUUUUMMMMMA’

It is the early morning call of the native species Three-Year-Oldus-Crazy-Makus. She has woken and now needs an adult to come in and release her from her squishy puddle of doonas and toys and pillow pets.

I open the door and a streak of light falls across her low bed. Her little face glows like the moon and it breaks into a smile.

‘Watch you doin’?’ she asks. She reminds me of Gary Coleman in Diff’rent Strokes. I keep my observation to myself. It’s unlikely she will ever get the joke.

‘I want a cuddle,’ I tell her as I climb into her bed and pull the doonas over us.

‘Me too,’ she replies and curls her chubby little arm around my neck.

We lie in silence watching each other in the dim light.

‘I need tissue,’ she whispers.

So I haul myself out of her bed, blindly reaching out on the bookshelf for the tissue box. I am knocking small toys and random objects off the shelf as I fumble in the dark.

Finding the box I crawl back into her bed and hand her a tissue. She expertly blows her nose before handing it back to me. ‘Here Mum,’ she says. Like the servant I am.

A little finger makes its way into her nose and she extracts something. She peers at it in the dark for a moment before pointing the finger – and booger – in my direction. ‘Here Mum,’ she says. I ignore the finger.

The house is quiet at this time of the morning. It’s still dark outside and it’s warm in her bed, although she smells faintly of pee. It’s a smell you get used to. I wish I didn’t have to admit that.

She puts her arm around me and moves her little face towards mine. She bumps her nose against mine then kisses me. Once. Twice.

‘You smell like wee,’ I say to her. Not unkindly.

‘No I don’t,’ she replies indignantly.

‘Well, it’s not me who smells like wee,’ I say.

‘It is. It is you,’ she says gravely.

I smile at her and her beautiful face erupts like the dawns. I still find it difficult to fathom how much joy this little child both contains and emanates. She is like the sun, radiating smiles, warming hearts. 

She waves at everyone and sees everything. ‘Hello,’ she will say to the man emptying rubbish bins as we walk to daycare. ‘Goodbye’ she will wave to the teenaged students as they hurry home, weighed down with books. Her smiles spread across their faces.

‘Put light Mum,’ she asks me, so I climb out of bed and flick on the little lamp. She reaches for a plastic violin bow and starts pointing at the alphabet quilt on the wall. I think she is pretending to play X for Xylophone but she huffs at me. ‘No! A C,’ she demands.

I use the bow to point to the letters as we make our way through the alphabet. She repeats them after me, only coming unstuck on ‘U’ for Umbrella.

‘U’ I say.

‘Me,’ she replies.

‘You,’ I say and bend down for a hug. She expertly grips on and as I stand I have no choice but to bring her up with me. She is a baby koala, and will latch on regardless of whether I hold her or not.

‘You best my friend Mum’ she says.

‘I love you too,’ I tell her.

The Poo Slug

We make all sorts of allowances and break all sorts of rules for our Third Child. Despite being three years old, she is – and always will be – our baby.

And she knows it.

And exploits it.

Despite regularly using the toilet and potty at daycare for most of last year – completely without my knowledge, mind you – now that I have lost patience and taken away Baldy’s daytime nappies, she has decided that toilets are for fools and there are much better places to find relief. Like the floor outside her bedroom. And the backyard.

Yesterday after three hours in the park, and my watching her like a hawk, there had been no accidents. When we came home and I asked if she wanted to do a wee on the toilet, she gave me a sideways glance and simply said ‘No thanks mummy.’

Pretending not to watch her, I pottered around doing mum stuff, like dishes and Facebook. When I heard her run to her bedroom and start digging through the drawers for a nappy I knew she needed to go.

So armed with a bag of lollies I walked into her room and bribed her: four lollies for a wee on the toilet. Perhaps not the best parenting technique, but certainly one of the most reliable.

She did her wee and got her lollies.

I was going to need more lollies, but perhaps this was going to be easier than I thought.

Not long after, she approached me with a strange look on her face.

‘There’s a bee!’ she said, frightened.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘On my finger.’

I looked closely at her outstretched finger and my stomach lurched. ‘That’s not a bee sweetie. That’s poo!’

She looked at her hand and back at me, her eyes big and I could see I had about three seconds before she completely lost the plot.

‘Why do you have poo on your finger?’ I asked.

‘It’s in my bottom,’ she said.

Ah.

She bent over and yes, there was part of a poo squished between her butt cheeks. But where was the rest of it I wanted to know.

‘Bend over,’ I said arming myself with a whole packet of wet wipes. She bent forward and promptly cracked her head on the corner of the wall, a huge welt immediately appearing. Trying to comfort one end and wipe the other, we finally managed to clean her up, reapply knickers, and send her out to watch TV.

Meanwhile, I needed to find the rest of the poo.

‘Where were you when you did the poo?’ I asked.

She pointed. ‘On the couch,’ she said.

Awesome.

I checked the couch. No poo.

I checked the rug in front of the TV. No poo.

Soon I was running all over the house – the bedrooms, the bathroom, the kitchen – looking for the 

poo. Nothing.

I soon figured out where it was.

‘Arghhhhhhh poooooooo,’ she moaned like was facing the worst ever demon zombie monster ever.

The first bit was just the prelude. Now it was time for the main act.

As she walked towards me, little poo slugs fell onto the floor. Splodge. Splodge. Thank god it was on the tiles.

I grabbed her under the arms and ran to the nearest toilet, holding her as far in front of me as my pathetic upper body strength would allow. I put her on the ground and started to take her – incredibly full – underpants off, only to realise that she had put them on sideways so she was squeezed into them like a crotch hugging corset.

The only way to get them off was to make her shut her legs which she had as wide open as John Wayne after riding a horse for a week. ‘Shut your legs,’ I kept saying.

‘Nooooo,’ she kept howling.

As I forcefully moved her feet together so I could pull her undies down, the giant poo started breaking apart. We both watched as a giant poo slug slowly slimed its way down her thigh, leaving a brown trail the length of her leg. She howled and tried wiping it away, which merely transferred said poo slime to her arm. More bits were falling out onto the floor, and we were both crying, one from humiliation and the other from insanity and laughter.

I finally got the knickers off, and quickly decided that they were beyond redemption. The big chunk of poo went in the toilet and the knickers went in the bin. The child went in the shower.

Later that night when her Daddy asked her about her day, she merely smiled at him and said ‘My poo went in the toilet.’

Technically true but so far from the actual truth, I could have cried.

Toilets are for wimps