Chapter Forty

B is growing up so fast. Everyday he seems to be taller and that little bit wiser. Some mornings when Little Miss, B and I are all having a cuddle in the big warm bed together (an absolute favourite part of my day) we do the "foot check" to measure if their feet are as big as mine yet. B's are up to my toes already and he is only 7. I am a bit hesitant to imagine how big his feet will be when he is 16. I hope he will still do the foot check with me then, but I doubt the foot check would occur in the "family bed" as he calls it.

B's reading and writing skills are really improving. Excitingly reading is opening up new worlds for B. I can't tell you how happy I am to see him snuggle down into his own bed with a book. His favourite reads are all non fiction. B just cant get enough facts into his head about stuff, particularly space, transportation and machinery of any kind.



Writing is no longer a chore that I have to encourage B to do. He is writing unassisted for his own pleasure and for his own means. Admittedly he makes mistakes and his writing has interesting motives. But I am impressed. I am also continually surprised by this child. He really values his own space. He likes to have a bit of quiet time on his own, much to the disappointment of Little Miss who can't seem to get enough of him. I wonder if this is the beginning of them growing apart. The signs he makes certainly show a tendency to be left well alone.



B's bedroom door



























The wall outside his bedroom




























B is a stickler for rules and safety. He likes to make up any rules that go along with our loose household arrangements. Of course he can now express these rules with signs that I find attached to all manner of places.

No drinks in the lego room



























Dangerous things























































Keep away from the gas heater 







































Lots of literature about boys suggests that boys like to know the rules and have the rules be enforced. We try to respect this in the Chapter Forty house, however Little Miss is very good at reminding B if he is verging on the edge of one of his own rules. The Little Miss Police are not well received by B and conflict seems to be the natural state of our house at the moment. B likes to remind everyone,
"You are not the boss of me."
Then Little Miss says,"No Mummy is the boss."

Children are very time intensive and so is blogging.

Little Miss will let me know I've been on the computer too long, by coming and sitting on my lap. There is a fine line between being a mummy and a blogger as a mummy blogger. I thought blogging may have got the better of me when all I started thinking about was activities to post about, rather than activities to do with my kids. I was missing the point duh.

There is a balance to be struck like most things in life, I'm not sure if I've found it.  I do try to make sure I am not photographing everything we do as then I will not blog about it. This has helped to reign in the blogging at bit and to balance up the mummy vs blogger part of my life. It's important to remember why I am blogging in the first place. I would be interested to know how other mummy bloggers find their balance.

But then one day when Little Miss was sitting on my lap and we looked at a some blogs, she asked,
"Is that me and is that my brother?"
"No" I said these are pictures of children on the other side of the world."
"She's an elephant" Little Miss exclaimed as she saw a photo of a little girl with elephant ears on, "I want to be an elephant too."
"Thats a great idea" I said and hooray I thought, as my Little Miss was inspired to do something from a blog. I think getting inspiration is one of the best things about blogs and it happens to 3 year olds too.

So Little Miss got busy to become an elephant.
She cut out then painted some big ears I roughly drew for her.


Stuck them with sticky tape onto a paper headband I made


Then she got the arm nose swing thing going on and transformed into an elephant.



Yeah for blogs.

Childhood101 provides us with lots of inspiration too.

I learned something lately that I am really impressed with.

What I learned somehow reinforces the feelings I have had about how women are all linked and connected in some way. And what I learned also reinforces how special and wonderful it is to have a daughter.

I learned that when my mum was born she held the eggs in her ovaries that became my brother, sister and I. Therefore part of me and my siblings is actually made in my Granny's time. During about week 19 of my Granny's pregnancy the tiny baby inside her womb had ovaries with eggs developing inside them that would be her future children. Yes it is only a tiny minuscule part, but its so amazing to think some of me was made in the mid 1930s by my Mum inside my Granny.


And when I was born I held the eggs that became B and Little Miss. My mum helped make a little bit of them in the late 1960s as she made me and I developed eggs inside me.

So when little Miss was born she was, and still is, holding the eggs that will become my grandchildren. Grandchildren that I had a hand in developing. I can't tell you how excited I am about this amazing chain of female life. It really is a wonderful revelation to me.

Women really are amazing.

As a child I loved doing crayon rubbings. They seemed a bit magical to me. I loved seeing what money looked like, the contrast of the rubbings exposed the design for me. We did some fossil rubbings recently at the museum and then the Artful Parent gave me this idea...

I set a space with 2 areas of odd items blue tacked into position, one for B


















and one for Little Miss.


















Then I secured a piece of butchers paper over the top and put a few crayons on top.


















When B came home from school I told them both I had set up something for them at their desks.
They rushed downstairs in excitement and at first just saw the paper. B actually said in a sarcastic voice, "Oh its just drawing paper." He is getting harder to please as he gets older and wiser. But I felt the paper and said, "I think there is something underneath." Of course then they tried to tear the paper off, so I ended up demonstrating what to do.




















They had to be careful as the butcher's paper was too thin and ripped easily and my choice of objects should have been flatter.


















Guessing the objects as they rubbed was an interesting game.

But they were really desperate to see what was underneath so in the end had to rip the paper off like it was a present.















  



Even though I didn't think this activity went really well, wrong paper and impatient kids, once they saw the arrangement of objects they immediately asked for me to set them up another one.


Find out what else kids have got adults doing at childhood101

Designer children's furniture is something I love and yet hate at the same time. I love the clever thinking and beautiful aesthetics but hate the high price tags. And I love the creative approach to redesigning something that already exists. A play table can be fresh, new and offer a twist, or scope for further functionality and creativity by being designed slightly differently. Not to mention just more fun that your regular run of the mill table. So even if I have a perfectly functioning table and chair arrangement for B and Little Miss, I find myself wanting something else. Like this deskhouse with pencil holder chimney by nine to nine.



























Or these letter storage stools from Art can break your heart.

















And what about this beautiful range of furniture from BM2000
These bedside cabinets with faces are adorable characters.










Little Miss would love to sleep in a pink fairy castle bunk bed.



















Or I am sure she would be happy sleeping on top of a rainbow bunk bed.


















Both my kids have grown out of being in a cot, but this one is so funky and it converts to a toddler then adult bed.


















There is something about designer children's furniture that encapsulates childhood. And when I think about it there are many parallels between designer children's furniture and the kids themselves.

The furniture is small in size - just like the little people.

The furniture is happy, fun and makes you smile - kids laugh so much more than any of the adults I know.

The furniture is often adaptable- just like kids, sometimes much more than we give them credit for.

The furniture is often brightly and playfully coloured - anyone who has children knows they can be very very loud, as well as have a wardrobe full of brightly coloured clothes, not ever to be mixed in with a white washing load of Dad's shirts.

But the problem with little people is that they turn into big people, stop laughing and eventually leave the home containing all the expensive children's furniture.

So I guess that's why Ikea is so successful.

...I'm out somewhere like waiting to see a doctor, or in line at the refunds counter of Target and one of the children says the dreaded word combination "I'm hungry" and I really love it when I'm equipped with the right food.

The two words "I'm hungry" almost send chills down my spine.

For one thing I can distinctly remember being hungry as a child, a lot. I am sure I was a well fed with 3 healthy meals presented every day, but all those in between times were never satisfied. And I remember that, very well. So when one of my spawn presents me with the hunger issue I love being able to conjure up a satisfying healthy snack out of my handbag.

There are not many foods that can manage to be stored in a handbag and also be a satisfying healthy snack. I remember my sister once finding a forgotten Kit Kat when we where at the beach and let me tell you that was the best Kit Kat ever eaten. But I would never give my children chocolate without them earning it in some way, like eating broccoli first or being really well behaved when its important to be. Fruit is a great snack and I never not let B and Little Miss eat it, but fruit is not really very transportable and you leave it in your hang bag at your own peril. Sultanas would be great if my kids ate them, sadly they don't, and they even reject all kinds of baked goods containing them, even those with thick pink icing on top, go figure.

Adding to the problem is the fact that Little Miss and B have very different tastes. Little Miss prefers plain bland food, whereas B is into full salt or sugar fixes.

So the other day while we were out and both children chanted those dreaded words,"I'm hungry" and I had a rice cake for Little Miss and a muesli bar for B I was thinking I had mothering nailed....

...for that moment anyway...

...until someone said they were thirsty.

At dinner one night Little Miss announced, "When I grow up I want to be a superhero."

For which Little Miss's Daddy replied, "Well the world needs superheroes."
And I couldn't agree more.

It was an exciting day when I casually asked B if any of his teeth were wobbly, only to find that one was.

We were both really surprised and B became very excited. The wobbly tooth then became his occupation for several weeks. I could see him playing with it in his mouth, giving the thing no rest at all. He ate food a little differently careful not to knock or bump his precious wobbly friend.

Remember having a wobbly tooth in your mouth? I can remember my tongue constantly playing with it until it dangled, held on with an invisible thread, not quite ready to let go and make way for the adult within, restless to emerge.

But out it came, all of a sudden, one night at story time. We had a moments surprise then we all looked at that tiny tooth, set free, so small in the palm of his hand. The big gap in B's mouth became the new playground for his tongue. Of course the tooth fairy would come now so excitement interrupted our bedtime routine.

And as that tooth fairy came and left B a gold coin, I couldn't help feel like I was being forced to let go a bit too. My boy is growing up. His adult teeth are making their way. B will be ready for more challenges and responsibilities and I will be letting go little tooth by little tooth.

I am greeted with "Is anything planned" by B at the end of every school day. So school holidays offer me a task to keep my busy boy occupied. He is thriving in the structure, challenge and occupation of school. His misbehavior during past school holidays seems to me to indicate that he 'wants' in the loose freedom of long uneventful days.

This distresses me somewhat as I would like him to enjoy the routine-less days and creatively occupy himself with his own imagination. And to a certain extend he will do this, inventing new machines, building with recycling, drawing hundreds of drawings to work out how a steering wheel turns wheels or playing schools or other role playing games with Little Miss. These activities are all really great...

But as he naturally tends to turn to me as his teacher mother for the next topic of exploration, I thought I would take the pressure of us both by actually planning some outings these school holidays. So we have been busy, but we have had so much fun.

Firstly we looked down exploring fossils and dinosaurs at the South Australian Museum's school holiday program. We searched for bones and fossils in special pits. Did fossil rubbings, made a dinosaur mobile, put together puzzles and played with clay.

































Another day we turned our gaze up  at the University of South Australia's Planetarium learning about star formations visible at this time of year and viewing a 360degree movie about what it takes to be an astronaut. The scorpion is in the southern hemisphere's sky right now and the Planets are starting to line up this month.



















Then we were challenged by reality altogether as we went to see Patricia Piccinin's exhibition Once upon a time.... at the Art Gallery of South Australia. This was a little bit scary as we saw life like sculptures of people and fantastical creatures interacting together. Little Miss really liked all the small baby like creatures and B got confused by the boys who were his height playing a DS and he didnt like all the exposed bottom parts.




















It was B and Little Miss's turn to make their own kind of creature at a local library when they attended a craft session there. They were to decorate a chicken Easter basket, and unfortunately the art exhibition did not influence them, as chicken Easter baskets we got.

A wonderful Auntie Easter bunny offered up an extravagant countryside egg hunt with clues or guide strings providing a years worth of bribery material chocolate that exhausted B and Little Miss for a few minutes. We had a wonderful family Easter gathering on a beautiful warm day, made all the more special as two babysitters teenagers played for hours with B and Little Miss.





B and Little Miss's Dad took a few days off work after the Easter break and we went on a very long car trip to spend a few days in the seaside town of Robe. We stayed right on the beach. The sand offered up all kinds of entertainment.


Kangaroo
























Seagull
























Little Miss

























Robe is a stunningly beautiful place and we all had a wonderful break away.















At home we also took a short train trip.


Short though it was, this train trip bought back many memories of traveling around on trains. I had some very odd sensations remembering being so young and free on the train, and especially catching the train with my Mum. Now jolt to the present, I'm feeling the responsibility of children and I am being the Mum. Life really is a journey of circles. I think from now on I will start to feel old, as I have vivid memories of my Mum at my age, it feels so poignant yet reassuring to become my Mum. And I miss her so very very much.

my kids eat green.

Every night they face some sort of green thing on their plates

Different greens get different reactions. There might be a little moan accompanied with, "Ahh not peas" or "I don't like broccoli"

But sometimes when it is cucumber or snow peas, or salad leaves,

a little mouth opens.

A fork loaded with green is raised.

The green goes in.

The mouth chews.

Then swallows,

and the mother is happy.

Well it makes up for all that cake I have let them eat.