The Homework Conundrum

I've been very me-centric here for a while, so let me just very quickly explain what has been happening with school homework here. The boys, year 1 and 4 (ages 7 and 10) have been complaining more and more about homework. They don't have very much to do but it has become a very big issue in our house, with far more time spent arguing and cajoling than actually working. I've done a little bit of reading (Louise Porter is my go-to on all things child development related. I find her approach makes a kind of visceral sense to me and works for family).

It came to a point where I re-read Louise Porter on homework and decided we had to change something for everyone's sanity. I talked to other parents and realised that I have too much going on in my life to take this up with the department of education or the school, but I could address it individually for my kids with the teachers. I don't like singling my kids out - part of the reason they go to school is to learn to be herd animals - but this was causing significant disharmony, so first I spoke to the kids about what parts of homework they thought were valuable (spelling words and writing - reading doesn't count because it's one of our leisure activities) and talked to them about the idea of 'opting them out' of homework. We agreed it would be a good plan. At this stage they have the option to do any homework they want to do and need to do the big annual projects. They don't get out of spelling tests or any other regular classwork. The other big change is they need to help more around the house. More home work less homework and it is now their responsibility to cook dinner on Monday night. It has started well, and although they require lots of help they are getting the hang of the idea, and that cooking dinner includes planning, shopping and cleaning up, which makes my heart sing.

I spoke to their teachers, who were surprised but supportive and I followed it up with an email. I'm going to include the email here (names etc redacted) in case I can inspire others to have a full and frank discussion about homework in lower primary school and potentially provide a template for them to opt out too, if homework is causing trouble. Significant thanks to my dear friend Tanya for her copy editing genius!

Dear Jxxx and Txxx
Thanks for meeting with me - this is just a follow up to that conversation. Firstly, let me thank you both for working with our kids this year. Axxx and Kxxx have been extremely happy with their classes and they both have great respect for you, their teachers. I feel like you’ve really heard our concerns that at present, homework is detrimental to their learning and causing distress for both boys at home. Both Sxxx and I feel strongly about this, and he’s asked me to make it clear that this email comes from us both.
Accordingly, we’ve discussed homework with the children and the two things they feel are valuable are reading and spelling words. They will also be expected to continue with any tests and work done by the other kids. They will also participate in big projects ('all about me', dioramas etc). As a family, we’ve decided to make any other homework optional and focus on more holistic learning opportunities at home instead. For example, they will need to cook dinner one night per week. My hope is that this can help them with maths (shopping, measuring ingredients), literacy (reading recipes, interpreting recipe information), science (heat/oxidation reactions, physics of liquids etc, biology, ecology), PHPE (nutrition, self-efficacy and fine motor skills improvement).
We want to decrease our family conflict around homework, leave space in all our lives for other pursuits, including letting kids be kids and leaving them outside to play freely as well as relieve you both of one set of homework-marking.
Thanks so much for reading this. I'd very much like this to be the start of a conversation about homework, and I'm more than happy to work with you to ensure there is minimal disruption to your classroom.
Warm regards,

Lived experience

I've been meaning to write about tattoos, but an assignment I'm doing on the difference between grief, sadness and depression and a lecture I went to this morning have me thinking. The idea of the lecture was to give student nurses an insight into mental illness that we may not otherwise get, a lived experience story from the point of view of a 'consumer' and that of a carer. Jayne Newling came to speak with us. She lost one son to mental illness when he took his own life and both of her other sons have lived with mental illness and now consider themselves recovered. Jane has a journalist background and wrote a book called Missing Christopher that looks brilliant. I have it and plan on reading as soon as study is over for the semester.

I'm going to cry when I read the book. I know I am because I cried during the talk today. I wasn't doing ladylike eye-dabbing, my body was vibrating with silent sobs and I was worried that snot would drip down my face coz I didn't want to disturb the room by blowing my nose. There were a lot of tears in the room so I didn't feel terrible, but it wasn't great.

Part of the reason it was so difficult for me to listen to was that I saw it from both sides. I am a mother to two boys and I'm deeply sure that my biggest role in life is to protect my boys from harm, and give them the tools to deal with the bad times when they come along. There is a history of mental illness in their family (not only me!) which increases the likelihood of them suffering from mental illness and the death of a child, is every parents worst nightmare. If you are a parent reading this there is every chance you will get a lump in your throat just reading this, let alone having someone tell you the details of their child's suicide.

Then there is the other side: I was a child with mental illness. I don't remember a time when I didn't at least toy with ideas of my own death, and by 10 (yep, ten years old) I had not just thought about taking my own life, I had a very concrete plan. I was too little to be able to have much agency, but the one lethal thing I had access too was heights. At age 10 my father was living in a 7th story apartment and I would go out on to the balcony and try and work out if I would definitely die if I jumped off. I thought I probably would but I didn't know how to get a definitive answer - if I asked someone they might see/guess my plan and remove access. I thought adults could pretty much read my mind. The time I remember getting very close to going through with it was summer, the window was open, my brother was asleep but I was awake and unhappy. I climbed from my bunk to the window and sat in the gaping window. One leg hung down inside the room and the other was hugged to my body. My head was under the level of the open window, my scrawny little bottom fit comfortably on the flat of the sill, half in and half out. I remember so clearly being desperate to end my life, believing that the world's population was already too big (remember this is around '83 and we had just come out of fears about peak oil etc) and that we could just fix that with all the people who didn't want to be alive being able to die. Euthanasia.

The big question is what stopped me, what are protective factors for a 10 year old? For me there were two things: fear of failure and preemptive guilt over the pain I would cause my mother. The horror of having to face my family after failing at suicide made me sick with anxiety (and still does) and the thought of my mother living without a child of hers was too sad (and still is).

The rest of my childhood is a dysthymic haze. There was anxiety, bullying, perfectionism, guilt, isolation and then some things that brought joy - connection to friends and family and anytime I managed a sense of self-efficacy (oh how little things have changed for me!). My next episode of serious suicidality was at 16/17, then again at 21, then 26/27 (that one was bad and lasted over a year), 28 (when I got my first diagnosis). Then things were up and down, with bouts of premenstrual dysphoric disorder until I was postnatally depressed at 33 and then depressed again at 37. By 42, last year, I ended up only feeling safe in hospital. Now I am in remission, or as the current best-practice term has it, recovery. I'm mostly happy, I deal with everyday stressors but don't really feel recovered, I feel like the meds I take and the self care I do keep me well for the moment, but if something comes along that messes with what is important for me I could get sick again. Anytime something crashes into my feelings of self-efficacy or the connection I have with those close to me, I can't promise my brain won't slide off into the crazy again.

So what is this history lesson in aid of? Jayne Newling and her son Nic strongly feel that talking about mental illness, including experiences of illness will help people get more and better help, younger, and this will save lives. Nic worked for the Black Dog Institute and has recently set up a group called the Champions. There is no way to know how much easier my life might have been if I had been diagnosed and given good help when I was a kid. Imagine if I wasn't totally terrified of telling people that I hated my life so much I wanted to end it. Maybe I did and they thought it was just a strange kid-thing? I now wish I could have told my loving and supportive parents. Admittedly, they were busy with their divorce and new lives and I didn't want to be a hassle. Yep, I was 10 and thought telling my parents I was suicidal would be an unnecessary burden for them. I don't want any other child to feel that, and I don't want any other parent to live with the guilt that my mother has lived with, since she's known how depressed I was and that she couldn't do anything to help.

In my own way, at a personal level, I have been doing the same kind of work as The Champions - sharing bits of my story and creating a community of like minded people who have lived experience or 'loved one experience' where 'R U OK' is an everyday question and where people feel safe and supported when they admit that they really are not OK  (I like to call this group my 'friends'). If I can normalize this within my own little sphere of influence then just maybe it can spread. I want to end this by thanking my near and dear ones; for coming with me, for letting me out you, for outing me and for always having my back.

Short post: atheism, kids, diwali and my nursing studies

I'm kinda joking with that 'short' part, but considering almost all the big life issues are jammed into the post title, and some of them are somewhat contradictory it will be short. You will be pleased to know I don't have anything to say about politics today.

Have I mentioned before about how I sort of consider myself an atheist Hindu (atheist first, Hindu second)? It came about when the wise Punditji who performed our wedding ceremony telling me, when I mentioned I was an atheist, that the Hindus 'have room' for that but the Christians probably didn't. It's only relevant because I am still trying to work out how to talk about religion with my kids. There is nothing better able to to joyfully force one to consider one's own position on difficult issues than trying to explain where you stand to some bright and inquisitive school kids. In this case I was explaining to Asher why we celebrate Diwali ( AKA Deepavali and other spellings and pronunciations. translating Sanskrit into the various Indian languages and then into words that can be spoken in English is tricky). We bought some lottery tickets to give to Sanjay and his dad as Diwali gifts and a lovely candle for Sanjay's mother.

It also seemed to be a good time to talk about the bigger meanings of the festival, so I reminded him of the two stories I know about Diwali, both familiar to him from 'Amma tell me about Diwali' by B. Mathur. One of the stories sees the goddess coming into the home of a poor woman, working late even on a festival day, and granting her wealth. The other story, the main story, is from the Ramayana and describes people lighting lamps to welcome their banished King and Queen home after fourteen years in exile (er, that was... brief. It's a massive, intense, tragic, brilliant epic!). I was trying to think through appropriate ways to talk about the meaning of these stories as I was talking to Asher and I came to the idea that they are both about shining a light on the path of right - either in terms of personal hard work or using the ancient city of Ayodhya as a metaphor for self and the lights help to lead us to 'right action' - whatever right action looks like to us.

Which brings me, neatly, back to my nursing course. People keep asking me how my course is going; everyone from the crossing supervisor at the kids' school through to my family and my therapist mentions it and for sure sometimes it's just politeness but often people want to really know about the course and how I'm feeling about it, and wondering if I'm going to enjoy clinical nursing. I generally answer with a flippant comment about being busy, stressed or the fact that I've just finished first your again (!) and sometimes I go to say 'I should have done it years ago' but the reality is slightly more difficult to talk about. I feel like whether I enjoy it or not is almost irrelevant. I am fulfilling my dharma. I am on my path. The course is tough, tougher than my first degree and although I don't have the memory I did then I am wiser. I still agonize over my assignments. But whatever stress and drama it causes me, I am where I'm meant to be. I don't think I should have done nursing straight out of school - my dad was very well known in the field and in my 20s I wouldn't have been able to answer the 'but why didn't you study medicine' without shame. I didn't get the marks and also I wanted to distance myself from my family, not follow them into the healthcare field. So now, in my forties, with ten years of tech career, then ten years of mum-ing I am into my next phase - nursing. Maybe for ten years. And because I spent some time thinking about Diwali, and talking to my kids about the idea of a life path and dharma, next time someone asks me how my degree is going I can reply that I am on my path, without feeling awkward or being flippant or dismissive.

Medication

So many times people ask me if I shouldn't 'have a rest' from my medication. These are often the same people who suggest people with depression should just remember how good they have it compared with people in Syria/current the international hotspot, or suggest that we harden up (We are the toughest people you will ever meet. We do battle with our own minds). The short answer is 'no' but it's slightly more complicated than that.

Imagine I was an asthmatic (I'm not).  Would anyone suggest I needed a rest from my preventer medication? Even if I wasn't getting symptoms or having asthma attacks no one would question the decision to be on medication, made in conjunction with the relevant health professionals. In fact, if I felt all better and started talking about stopping my preventer medication someone would remind me that without it I sometimes get really sick.

Have you ever thought an asthmatic should just toughen up and keep breathing? Have you thought they should just appreciate the oxygen they can get and stop worrying about what they can't have? Have you avoided talking about difficult subjects because you didn't want them upset, thinking it might trigger an attack? If an asthmatic needs to take some time off work or study while they get their symptoms under control how do you view it? What about if they decide they need to use a variety of approaches (medical and lifestyle) to deal with their illness? I have several friends who won't come to BBQs or bonfires on the cooler months because they say they can't breathe. I don't judge them negatively for that.

My illness isn't that different. I use meds, lifestyle and talk therapy to deal with it. When I have a major depressive episode I try to catch it as early as possible and put some things in place to help me manage while things are difficult. I try to remember, when I feel good, that my meds are preventative because when things are good it's easy to forget how bad things can get (what's that saying about forgetting pain?).

All that being said, there are many different ways to manage mental illness, and more and more research is being done on gut-brain interactions, and I am not going to criticize anyone who chooses to deal with their illness in other ways - as long as it is working for them and their loved ones!

More travel!

The whole family was SO excited! Thailand then Singapore! Seeing Clare! Then Tim and Jen in Singapore! Elephants! Legoland! Singapore zoo! We found a someone to house-sit, got packed up and went to the airport for our 9:40pm flight. We started the check in process only to find that the kids couldn't travel on their passports because they only had five-and-a-half months validity. Apparently they would have just flown us all straight home once we got to immigration in Thailand. Now it's one thing to have a 9 hour flight, 4 hour layover in the early hours of the morning in the KL budget terminal then another couple of hours on a plane before reaching one's holiday destination, it's a completely different kettle of fish to be sent back after that kind of ordeal. We called the passport office, we pleaded with the airline, we looked at Asher's face as his big eyes flilled with unshed tears. We then caught a taxi home. The passport office was monumentally unhelpful, telling me that the quickest they could guarantee a passport was a week away (her: "we can have it done quickly at extra charge, which will take you two days from the interview but the soonest I can book you an interview is Friday, so you will have the passports on Tuesday" me: "WHAT?!?")

After we accepted that we were not going to get on the flight (and I stopped arguing tearfully with the passport office at 8pm) our luck changed. The kind lady at the airport post office stayed open to take passport photos, and we got the passport forms, the kind Air Aisia supervisor told us we could change the flight to the next night for free, our house-sitter is the director at Kiran's preschool and she and I sat up til midnight filling in forms and using black humour to take the sting out of the situation. We didn't really tell anyone (except to let Aunty Clare know at the other end) because we were so unsure of what was going to happen next, and to be perfectly honest I was mortally embarrassed that I hadn't seen that one coming and organised around it. The next morning a lovely, lovely woman at the passport office took pity on us and we had the kids passports within five or so hours. We picked up the passports with luggage in tow and caught the train to the airport. The kind supervisor booked us in (no queue) and gave us express passes so there was/will be less queueing at every airport. Even the hotel was very accommodating and changeged our booking without charge.

So after what felt like two and a half days in transit we arrived in Chiang Mai and we are having a fabulous time. More to come about our great visit to Baanchang Elephant Park later....

Organic Gardening at our Place

Let me tell you a little secret: I don't have an organic garden. There, I've said it. It feels better to be out with it. Actually, even more shocking, I'm not really trying to have an organic garden. What I would like is a garden where herbicides and pesticides and commercial fertilizers just aren't needed. More of how I'm trying to get to that point later.

There are actually two main ways that my garden isn't organic. Firstly the typical way, where some of the things I put on my garden don't have organic certification. Certainly the compost I make isn't organic because I put in things to compost that aren't organically certified (fruit and veg are only part of it, last time I checked the SMH wasn't even claiming to be organic. In fact, some of those columnists are downright poisonous!) but also there is so much INORGANIC MATTER in my soil left from the last owners of the house, that I can only hope to minimise it, not to get rid of it entirely. The solid things like glass, metal and asbestos (!) aren't the biggest problem, more difficult to get rid of are the things the previous owners used to attempt to keep the weeds down. Well, I can only assume that they carpeted many of their garden beds in fake grass, or lined them with plastic, to keep the weeds down, although I may be wrong, they may just have had a very different aesthetic. The astroturf stuff is actually really problematic as sunlight (UV radiation) has started to break it down, leaving many thousands of little 'tufts' of fake grass throughout the soil of my garden. From my reading it seems that UV light breaks some of the polymer bonds, so the plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, which to me suggests that it gets into the food chain more easily. The problem with plastics getting into the food chain is far to big for this blog, but google on the gyre, pthaletes, BPA and endocrine disruption (Not safe for people with anxiety disorders! This is some freaky shit!). So, I remove what I can but I try not to think about it all to much so I don't wind myself into an anxious knot.

That green stuff is tufts of plastic grass

Given that I can't ever hope to have a garden that could be considered organic I do try and stay green in my garden. Just like I firmly believe in 'good enough parenting' (google it!) I am aiming for something I think of as 'organic enough gardening' which allows a certain amount of flexibility, considering what I'm working with. So I minimise the external inputs of pesticide, herbicides and fertilizer to saves energy, both in terms of production and transport and doesn't add even more weird chemicals to my garden. What I do, and plan to do is:

• Weeds: I manually weed my garden, use mulch and newspaper and I'm planning to try black plastic for some tricky bits too. High strength vinegar on a hot day is very effective on things that I can't get to easily in other ways (such as between the pavers). I'm also going to use green manure for some areas, so the weeds can't get a hold.
• Pests: Again, manual removal is excellent for insect pests. Apart from the decrease in pest numbers, it also means I spend more time in the garden. Obviously this isn't always possible, but as Peter Cundall says, just wandering around observing is very important for gardeners, so that's what I aim for. I am also doing things like a bit of companion planting (Marigolds! Yay!), exclusion (especially for chooks, possums, other birds and bandicoots) and hopefully the chickens will also help by eating insect pests.
• Fertility: We have two compost tumblers that are working well, and the added joy of chook poop means that we should have some really good quality compost by the begginning of summer. I do purchase sugar cane mulch, which I use for the hen house as well as the garden, but that should decrease when I start growing green manure and when my comfrey starts growing.

Currently we have two raised beds, soon to be three. One is planted out with lettuce seedlings, coriander seedlings and cucumber seeds the other is still resting so the compost has time to loose it's heat and the worms can start their work. We have some eggplant and capsicum/pepper seeds germinating inside and plans for sweetcorn, bush beans and sunflowers (I'll put the sunflowers out the front to protect them from the chooks and provide some much needed cheerfulness to our front yard). Yesterday the kids helped me plant some pretty, low maintenance, pollinator attracting, flower seedlings (a white, scented allysium, a small white salvia and a white and pink coastal daisy). We are also planning to put a tent-style trellis between two of the beds, made out of some weldmesh that we found hidden in our garden somewhere. We also have some herbs around the place and a potato tower that is growing brilliantly. I would also like a passionfruit vine, and I think that it would be nice near our front door, where it would enjoy the northerly aspect and keep a bit of our wall shaded.

Raised beds, with coop behind the clivias

Potato tower, needing mulch

Hen Happiness

I picked the 'chookens' up the day after my birthday, so we've had them here for about 10 days and I'm still  besotted.

Chook looking pissed off after
spending 40 mins in a box.

The people we picked them up from (City Chicks in Marsden Park) were just lovely. They showed me how to clip their wings, they let my little boys go exploring in their yard, showed them baby chicks and the advice they gave about feeding and husbandry all seemed very sane and matched with what I have read already.

The henhouse

We got home late afternoon and popped them in the coop. I fussed around trying to make sure they knew where food and water was located (we are using Dine-a-Chook and Wet-a-Chook for food and water - a bit different to what the chooks were used to, so I put some scratch grains (AKA chicken treats) around the feeder and even inside the feeder and the hens got the idea at once). The black chicken (an australorp cross) managed to escape and I realised that she was the feisty one. The kids had their first lesson in chicken catching (slow, quiet, no sudden movements and try to corner her) and I discovered that hunting a black hen through the shrubbery at dusk was something akin to trying to catch a shadow. Luckily it only took us a few nervous minutes!

The next morning I heard some noisy clucking, and when I went to check on the girls I found TWO EGGS! 

First Eggs!

We haven't had two eggs every day since, but we've had one egg most days (and one hen hasn't come into lay yet). When chooks are stressed they stop laying, so the fact that despite the big move, and despite the kids wanting to pat them and talk to them they are still laying, albeit not perfectly regularly, is fantastic.

Six year old learning to catch and carry a hen

They were named mostly by the boys - Kiz said he wanted the brown chooken to be called Henny Penny, so that was fine. I wanted the black one to be called Kali and Asher wanted them all to have the word 'hen' somewhere in their name so the Light Sussex became Henrietta and the black chicken became Henny Kali.

So far the thee chooks are doing everything I'm 'paying' them for. Providing eggs, teaching the kids about caring for animals and providing all of us with amusement (Asher said to me yesterday "We have the most fascinating chooks mum!"). Of course, I now need to get the planned raised beds with bird netting sorted pronto, and some more fencing organised - the chooks are scratching up my seedlings, stomping on my new lavender, discovering new and creative ways to escape, pooping in  remarkably inconvenient and I strongly suspect Henny Penny has started laying her eggs under a bush or somewhere because the last few days have only been one-egg-days. Despite all that, they are funny and friendly and the whole family is glad we have them.

The girls saw the treat bucket!

Today is my birthday...

They are pretending to be frogs

...and unsurprisingly it started like a regular morning. I was woken up at some ungodly hour (not just your regular gollygoshthisisearly 6am but more of a holyfuckingshit 4:30ish am) by my eldest who has been having nightmares and coming into bed with us. Unfortunately he sleeps like he's wrestling tigers which is, ah, uninspiring in a bed mate. So he cuddled me and rode his dream bicycle and I tried to sleep, with a kind of desperate terror that this would be IT and I wouldn't get anymore sweet, sweet sleep til I went to bed, far too many hours in the future. At some point he sat up a bit and said sleepily 'happy birthday mum' and, despite knowing that was the end of any chance for sleep, my heart got warmed in a way it rarely does. My kid's first thought for the day was of ME.

Despite finding things pretty overwhelming some times (OK, a lot of the time) I just adore those two kids and I'm surprised and thankful by what pleasant people they are turning into.

(Chickens should be coming tomorrow - I'll post pics!)

Chook-shed progress

Y’know how they say ‘measure twice, cut once’ well we now say ‘measure more than three times, AND get someone who isn’t hung-over to check your workings, before concreting once’ – because a concreted-in post is hard to move, and if you don't get it right you don't have much wiggle room. 

The high vis gear was just for show.

Despite small challenges such as these Michael and I worked hard and over two (part)days, we got the chicken coop floor installed on our steeply sloping, poorly terraced site. The shed itself is a kids kit cubby house that we are re-purposing. I then spent Sunday painting the trim and giving the inside a coat of this rather unpleasant cack yellow that I got very cheap at Bunnings. It’s just to protect the cheap pine from chickens, not for looks. The outside is a storm grey with white trim, and a green colourbond roof.

Installed floor, from above. The hole is chicken-access to what will be the secure run underneath.

The next steps are to cut pop doors for the chickens and egg collection in the walls of the cubby. There will be two chook doors and a person door – the two chook doors will be on different sides, so we have the option of making movable day runs, using chicken wire and star pickets. This should allow us more flexibility to do things like to rest the run area, maybe grow hen-fodder or even attach a broody box if we ever get that far (shhhh! don't tell my husband of my expansionist plans!). The person door will now need steps or a ladder - we ended up raising the hen house higher than planned.

After the pop-holes have been made we will touch up the paintwork then install the walls and roof. We are going to use weldmesh to screen the bottom part so that the chooks will have a fox proof area underneath the coop itself, for dust-baths as well as food and water. We are planning on raising the roof , gable and all,10cm or so, and putting mesh around the gap for ventilation. I can't really imagine a chook getting too cold in a Sydney winter, but I remember cubbies being pretty stuffy when I was a kid, and apparently stuffy is BAD for chooks. There is also a window that we will cover with weldmesh, a hole in the floor for the chickens to go downstairs and the plan is to cut a hole in the person-door to allow for ventilation. If we work out that it's not enough we will add more vents.

Installed floor, showing the sloping site.

The logistics of putting it all together will be more daunting than I expected too - I was thinking I could do it myself, with a bit of help from the lovely husband, but since it's all a bit higher than planned it's going to be more difficult.

I think I might end up having that barn raising that I've been joking about after all!

The New/Old House

I’m at work. Yes, I know I shouldn’t be blogging at work, but I’m doing ‘creative’ work and for me that requires a certain amount of effing about and procrastination. At least writing something here is better than repeatedly clicking refresh on my email and favourite forums. So, if I wasn’t sitting here what would I be doing? Well, the things that have been taking up my time recently, apart from hanging out doing school holiday things with my kids, have all been centred around our garden and house.

We moved in about six months ago, and we are still unpacking and organising. Although the house is a lot bigger, there are fewer closets and places to store ‘stuff’ combine that with the fact that family members have given us piles of ‘stuff’ that they either think we should have (I’m looking at you, ugly barstools!) or things they want us to store for them (Yes, I know I’ve left boxes at my parents for years and now they are finally exacting revenge – we have their car and a whole pile of their belongings while they are off travelling).

The other thing about our ‘new’ house is that it’s old and a bit rundown. It was given a quick coat of paint, the cheapest possible kitchen and cheap carpet when it was put on the market. This is a good thing – the new bits mean that it is totally liveable for us but it also meant that it was a bit more affordable (at least the owners didn’t have a fancy remodel that they needed to recoup costs on), we aren’t too precious about our kids staining the carpet or scuffing the walls (ahem, toilet training!) and when the time comes and we have plans and money (hah!) we won’t feel bad about ripping things out and replacing them.

Our first steps in making this place just the way we want it is just to live in it. We are seeing what works and what doesn’t in each season of the year. So far we know we need to do something about the outside covered area which is roasting in summer and freezing in winter (it’s also ugly!). We would like a bit more street appeal (the last reno was probably in the late 60s or early 70s and is…. Unsympathetic) and I feel that we need an architect to help us with flow and using space better. I want a roomful of built-in bookshelves as well, but that’s not necessary in the short term.

Since we don’t want to do much to the house, considering we might have to un-do it reasonably soon, when we have more of a plan, we have been concentrating on the garden. I am desperate for chooks and veggies and we are starting that process now: we have a potato tower, a few beans, heaps of herbs, some of the over-abundant weedy vegetation that was smothering the yard cleared and a site for the chook house. We are composting and I’ve been collecting fallen leaves from the deciduous trees on the street for mulch. The chook house and raised veggie beds are next on the list, with the lovely Michael, my brother and chook-shed-engineer supremo, helping me out (it helps that he’s skint and I feed him. It’s a cheap and truly wonderful birthday present as well!).

I'm going to include a few more house and garden type posts here, just so when we have a lovely, flourishing garden and a pretty, organised house I can look back and remember. I'm having a great time withPinterest too, pinning mostly ideas for home and garden, as well as some kid stuff. So follow along, or better yet, send me things that you think I'd like!

 

Today my baby, my first baby, turns six

Last night, as I tucked the blankets around him, I hugged him tight and told him ‘this is the last time I’m going to get to say goodnight to my little five year old’ I saw his face light up. It lit up with the realisation, not just that it would be his birthday in the morning, that there would be presents, and cupcakes to take to school, but that things were changing for him. I consider six to be one of those liminal times, where the mother-centred life of early childhood elides into something more external and outward-focussed. If I remember correctly, in his book ‘Raising Boys’ Steve Biddulph talks about six being the age when boys go from being (and I wish I had a more elegant way of saying this) their mother’s children to being their father’s children.


It’s a happy coincidence that his birth happened so close to the winter solstice – these are the darkest, most home and hearth focussed weeks in the year and as the light increases, we tend to become more outward looking. Less interested in hanging around home with our nearest and dearest, more likely to head ‘out’ somewhere. This mirrors what I feel is happening for Asher.

I’m feeling really good about this blossoming. I feel somehow safe, like this is the right time for this. I don’t want to keep him a baby or push him away. I want to walk half a step behind him, ready to answer his questions and share his joys, ready to note points of interest and encourage him to get up when he falls. I want to watch him grow into himself.

I think I might start him catching the bus to school after these school holidays, just one or two days a week. That way I can let him know that I trust him to be safe as he goes out into the world.

I *heart* KL!

This will be the last post from KL and the last post from my lovely little holiday. I'm at KL's budget airport, which reminds me of a train station, rather than a modern airport. The air on is lacking, the food outlets are somewhat hit and miss, there are flies and there are a lot of people waiting around. I'm one of those waiting people. My dad, bless his worried little cotton socks, decided we needed to be at the airport four hours early. His reasoning was that the traffic out of KL on Saturday evenings is horrible, and he may have been right, but it has meant I had a lot of time to kill. He is off to Europe and we shared a taxi, but he was dropped at the regular international airport, not the cheapie terminal. I didn't realise that there were two airports here in KL until the taxi driver asked which one we wanted. I can't help thinking that it would have been pretty hilarious to rock up to the wrong airport for BOTH my flights on this trip. Anyhow, I've managed to waste over an hour and a half eating sub-standard chicken rice, looking at ALL the watches, trying on ALL the perfumes and spending an overly long time choosing which packet of nuts I would take on the flight with me. I actually spent so long in the limited number of shops that by the time I left each shop I had a staff member tailing me suspiciously. I've also eaten a scone (random!) and found that I can use the airport wifi for three hours for free. That means all I need to do is make sure I find a comfy chair and I should be fine. I'm going to head through customs pretty soon, despite the warnings of the woman at the check-in counter, because a beer or two would make the next two and a half hours slide by more comfortably. I have the most awesome trip though, catching up properly with my brother, getting to know my sister-in-law so much better and holidaying with my dad for the first time once the mid-eighties. Despite all the fabulous catching up I also got enough alone time, and was quite proud of how easily and comfortably I got around in both Singapore and KL. I am now missing my little boys terribly, I can't wait to hug their strong little bodies as they try to escape, and I'm not-so-secretly hoping both of them fall asleep in my bed this evening so I can snuggle down between their warm little bodies and breathe in their loveliness. On that note I'm going to go and attempt to clear customs and find my boarding gate - I should have less than two hours to wait there (!) and I'm REALLY hoping that the good Muslim thing is relaxed once I'm through and I can find a bar!

Update: i've found a bar and have a large Tiger beer in front of me. Cheers.

Clauunk-schk (that's the sound of gears changing, without the benefit of a clutch-pedal)

Ssoooo, it's been a while....

I'm still wearing my 'office clothes' (although I have swapped my tights for pyjama pants) and I've applied my lipstick because it's nice to look ones best for old friends with whom one has not caught up with in a while. I also have a glass of red wine beside the keyboard, and one in my belly (dutch courage - something I also need when it comes to old colleagues/schoolmates/lovers).

My life is so different now to when I first started this blog that I was considering closing it and starting again, but instead I'll just draw a line under the past and start again anyhow. I don't want to forget how far I've come - although I don't need anyone else to remember.

A (very) brief recap: born, school, depression, uni, depression, work, depression, more work, marriage, work, baby, post-natal depression, part-time work, another baby, life, depression, medication, more part time work and now, a new house with a decrepit garden.

Now I'm working as an educational designer (whatever that is) and moonlighting helping another project with SEO/social media. I spend three days per week in an office huddled around a computer and the other days working in the garden and/or with friends. Since I'm now helping other people write their blog posts I thought it was only fair that I started writing for me, too. Let's see if I can keep to my aim of a weekly post!

Advent Calendar

Yep, I'm an atheist but, as previously documented here, I love Christmas (or should that be 'christmas'?) and love to celebrate my friends and family and create family traditions. I really want my kids to use this time of year to think about others, and to give freely of themselves, so to that end I created and advent calendar. It's a work-in-progress I started last year and I'll continue refining it, but it's based around a different activity or discussion point for each day. Last year I put the little slips, along with treats (stickers, chocolates, sweets, temporary tattoos, etc) in red envelopes and hung them on a tinsel-y string with cute mini red pegs. I did  copies for a few friends with similar age kids. The effect was somewhat amateur hour but cheerful, and the kids seemed to like it. This year, considering we are in the process of buying and selling our house, and with the various family weddings and illnesses I didn't get to create calendars for friends, I just sent them the updated 'activities' file but I made one for us, out of the little screw-together containers you can get at craft and sewing shops as storage for beads, findings, whatever.

I just used ribbon to hide the goodies and we are taking them from the bottom, so the top container is an extra specially decorated number 25. I like the simplicity, the fact that I can re-do with different ribbon next year to match my mood (or decor, if I was that organised) and also the fact that as we go through the days we get to see the proportion of days gone vs still to come. I think it helps little kids understand how far away Christmas is, considering their kooky sense of how quickly/slowly time passes.

The note book with the elephant on it is for me to record some of the things that come up in discussion - sometimes the little note asks things like what each person in the family's favourite tree decoration is and I'd love to watch how that changes (or doesn't!) over the next few years.

Today we didn't get to paint wrapping paper, but I'm not going to get worked up about it - I did manage to skip work to attend Asher's preschool Christmas Concert, drop a signed contract for the sale of our apartment off to the solicitor, do some housework, take Asher to swimming lessons AND do two sudoku...


UPDATED 20th December
I just saw this blog and really like the activities she includes! Really nice for younger kids. I might even plagiarize a little next year ;-)

Email to my local MP

Dear Ms. Berejiklian,

I saw you this morning as you were walking into your electorate office at about 7am. I was the tired looking woman, heading to an office job, after a busy weekend wrangling little kids and a husband. We exchanged a quick smile but it was another microsecond before my un-caffeinated brain put two and two together and I recognised you. It's probably a good thing though, because I would have stopped you in the street, and I'm sure you don't enjoy being accosted by voters before breakfast.

I wanted to tell you that my wonderful father, at 71, had proposed to his girlfriend on the weekend. They plan to marry in April - this will be his third marriage, after two divorces. Needless to say they don't plan to have children, they may not be married in a church, but they do want to have social and legal recognition of their union. Unfortunately my sister, in her twenties, with no history of failed marriages, is denied the right to marry her beloved. I wanted to ask you if you think this is fair.

A quick internet search tells me you have not come out (pardon the pun) as a supporter of gay marriage and I understand that it is something that is decided at a Commonwealth rather than State level but perhaps you could add your voice to that of your leader, Mr. O'Farrell and, even if you personally don't support gay marriage, call for a conscience vote on the issue within the coalition. I also ask you to follow the lead of others in your party and survey your electorate - Hockey, Gambaro and Turnbull have all done this and they have all found that well over 70% of their electorates support marriage equality. I realise that I have mentioned Federal politicians, not State, but as you well know, we live in a representative democracy and you are employed to represent all of us who live in your electorate, and this (along with climate change!) is a significant concern for many of us.


Warm regards,

Keda Chhabra

Load sharing - Paid work, parenting and the 'Mommy Track'

I came home from work today, at about 6:15pm to find all the lights on, mess everywhere and no one home. Normally at that time of day there are kids eating, a father in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and a mother racing around bribing kids to eat another mouthful while tidying up toys and putting a load of laundry on. It was obvious that the house had been abandoned in haste and my mind jumped straight to the worst conclusions. Horrible images of ambulances and glaring hospital lights were immediately running through my head. Of course, it was fine, Sanjay had just dropped the baby-sitter at the train station and no one had tidied up the toys during the day.

But when I’m at work during the day who is responsible for the cleaning and tidying that I do when I’m at home? At our house both adults have reasonably flexible work arrangements, and both contribute to the running of the house and the care of the children. I’ve started working three days a week, sensible hours, for a government department and Sanjay does wine sales for a small company. He works from home (they have no office) and there is heaps of flexibility for him, because it’s all about the sales results. So far this is working really well.

So what happens with the kids now that I’ve started a day job? Asher is in preschool three days per week, 9am til 3pm but because I couldn't get Kiz into any local childcare on such short notice we have a babysitter. She is a family friend who doesn’t have regular work at the moment. She knows the kids and she knows our routines and our arrangement has been working brilliantly so far. She arrives around 10am (I leave the house at 7am but Sanj is around) and hangs around playing with Kiz, doing her own work when he’s asleep and until it's time to pick up Asher then she hangs out with the two of them until we get home. We haven’t noticed any behavioural changes in the kids, and they both seem to really love the babysitter and get a lot out of their time with her. As I think I said before, it's a really good arrangement.

Since I’ve started at this job I’ve again raised the possibility of me being the primary income earner. Despite taking time off during these early years of my children’s lives I would like to remove myself from the ‘mommy track’ and get back into what? A career track? A daddy track? Why is it so hard to have meaningful work with adequate remuneration and some level of flexibility? I want to be able to deal with the dramas that inevitably crop up with young children and aging parents and I want to be able to spend time with my kids but that doesn’t mean I don’t have valuable skills. In my personal experience mothers who are coming back into the workforce and mothers who work part time concentrate more fully on the work they are doing and waste less time while at work. Mothers get very used to being efficient and might be more reluctant to ‘waste time’ changing jobs if they have the option of staying put. Is it up to mothers (and fathers!) to ‘sell’ these advantages to employers? Is it up to savvy employers to work this out? Will we continue to see amazingly innovative small businesses started by parents who want greater flexibility in their work arrangements?

I don't know where I was going with this post anymore - I've been writing it over several days, with work, kids and the usual chaos. Which is kindof an pertinent to the subject of the post, really...

Happy Diwali!

Tomorrow is Diwali and here is another post about me trying to deal with being an atheist who lives in a predominantly Christian country trying to raise kids to have a sense of Hindu traditions. Today I went fossicking around the interwebs looking for information on celebrating Diwali with kids (yeah, it is the day before I clearly like to be prepared). I didn't have a clear idea of what I was looking for but rangoli colouring in pages, while nice, weren't quite it. Eventually I found I wonderful blog post from Devis with babies which was just what I was looking for. So, in the spirit of Insta-Culture Ways to Celebrate Diwali With Your Child* I'm going to list the things we do (and the things I plan to do from next year onwards).

1. Lights! It's all about light, so we already light candles and leave the doors open for Lakshmi but next year I'll put up the Christmas lights (and, because I love having fairy lights up over summer they will probably stay up over Christmas and maybe until the end of daylight savings). I'd like to get some diyas, or make some with the kids too. I'm terrified of fireworks, and nervous of sparklers so I've bought a bunch of glow sticks so the kids get some 'light' to play with. Maybe in a few years they can play with sparklers (while I hide inside and don't watch).
2. Sweets! Next after the lights in importance seems to be sweets, so I'll try making something sweet with the kids next year. I find any cake or biscuit based around almonds or other nuts to be appealing to my Desi inlaws so today I made almond and cranberry biscuits which have an almost burfi like middle, but are far more suited to my white-girl palate. I'll take them tomorrow when we go and visit my inlaws for dinner.
3. Presents are important for kids and we explained Diwali to 4 year old Asher as 'Indian Christmas' which only works because we don't really let Jesus in to our Christmas celebrations, so he thinks of Christmas as 'the festive season' and not a religious event. Last year I got both kids a little present and this year I'll do the same.
4. New clothes are a Diwali tradition too, and this year I didn't think to get new outfits but I'll try to remember next year (remind me!). Maybe the new clothes will come to be our traditional Diwali gift for the kids. I always wear traditional Indian outfits at Diwali, even though we just have dinner at home with family, and tomorrow is no exception - although I don't have a new outfit, which would be more appropriate.
5. Decorating the house is another Diwali tradition and I didn't even think about it this year, but next year I might try a few Diwali crafts with the kids. Perhaps I'll hang up a Bandanwar (door hanging) or try doing a rangoli with the kids and I'll definitely go with the fairy lights.
6. Games, particularly gambling games, are traditional at Diwali (because of the association with Lakshmi the goddess of wealth and abundance) and I'd like to remember to play boardgames, dice or cards with the kids at Diwali. Maybe when they get a bit older we can introduce a simple gambling game (like 'Queens' which is a game traditionally played by my mother's family, but I can't find any reference to it online).

Please feel free to remind me next year to get a bit organised a bit earlier! What traditions do you follow through the year? Are there any other non-Indians who celebrate Diwali?

Kiran's Mundan: After

It was a good day. The ceremony, inside because of the threat of rain, went well - there were three pundits, fruit, chanting, fire, no shoes and Asher running around taking photos. The ceremony took a little over an hour and Kiz stayed pretty quiet throughout. I bribed him by shoving raisins in his mouth.

After the ceremony we shaved the little guy's head. My 'aunty' Margaret did the shave and Kiz stayed still and quiet. After the shave there was food and drink and lots of exhausting socialising. People were lovely and complimented me on my outfit (I gave credit to Tim and Jen who sent it from Singapore every time) and asked me if we were thinking of having more kids (it's unlikely we'll have more).

Now it's all over and I'm so tired I'm quivering. Kiz is asleep, Asher is staying out at Turramurra with his grandparents and I've finished the piece of toast I had for dinner. I'm going to leave the mess and slink off to bed as soon as I've finished my herbal tea.

Kiran's Mundan: Before

My baby is losing his hair tomorrow, and he'll no longer be a baby when it's gone. Tomorrow is Kiran's mundan where I (symbolically) lose a baby and gain a toddler. Considering he's almost certainly my last baby that's *it* for me in terms of parenting babies. Unsurprisingly I'm feeling a bit maudlin and nostalgic-in-advance (there's probably a word for that) about the next step in our journey as a family. I'm going to miss my baby and I'm going to miss the special joys of being a mother to a baby.

Tomorrow morning there will be a ceremony with the Pundit at my inlaws place. There will be a hundred or two guests. There will be lunch. Then there will be our little Kiran as a child, not a baby anymore. The next step is a tough one for me because I've always always found toddlers tough going - the neediness, the stickyness, the looniness - and it was only as I parented Asher that I realised that they also have their good points. They are hilarious, loving and watching them learn is better than watching TV because there is *always* something going on.

And so, family life moves on to the next stage. I'll put an update here or perhaps I'll only manage to put pictures up on Flickr.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words...

...and if that's true, then I'm still blogging, albeit in a slightly different format. Check out Flickr for the latest updates, leave a comment or two and I'll be back here to give a more wordy update within the next day or two.