Organising ALL THE THINGS

I have been falling down internet rabbit holes on organising recently. I'm reading about Project Organize me Entire Life, reading reviews of ring bound vs disk bound day planners and gazing at endless filing systems on Pinterest. I spent about three hours in Officeworks last week. This obsession is sucking my time and I recognise it as something with more complex motivation than just wanting a new way to get paperwork in order. As I was wandering around the house looking for the plastic-y stand-up sticky notes that I remember seeing somewhere (If you must know I needed a temporary way to label my folders before I commit to catagories using permanent marker) I had a sudden epiphany - there are things in my life that I can't just organise away, much as I wish I could. As Sanjay and I are splitting up, and I'm currently waiting on paperwork from him, I don't know when I am going to move out of this house, I don't know how much money I will have available to rent or buy an apartment, I don't know where the kids will go to high school, I don't know whether I will pass uni (it's likely - I haven't failed a subject yet!) and graduate at the beginning of next year, I don't know if I will get a new grad nursing position, hell, I don't even know if I'll be able to do a new grad program considering I will have 50% custody of my kids.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

- Donald Rumsfeld

Writing it down makes it obvious. Organising is channeling the anxiety related to the vast quantity of really major unknowns in my future (including the 'unknown unknowns' - worrying about them came free with my anxiety!). It is also serving to focus me on something I can do, although it distracts me from more useful pursuits (I'm an expert procrastinator but this is ridiculous. I have heaps of uni work!) and it's a weird form of escapism, just like looking at IKEA catalogs where we imagine perfect lives for ourselves filled with light and swept floors.

So now I will try to get some uni work done without being quite as distracted by the various online rabbit holes. I will be a bit kinder to myself, now I know it's not just laziness that is pulling my attention away from what I need to do, acknowledge what the distraction is giving me and make time as I drift off to sleep to imagine a world where paperwork doesn't rule my life.

At least one thing is for sure, I now know I want an A5 sized planner with a whole heap of fancy custom inserts from Etsy.

UPDATE: Tuesday morning

I realised at ten past one this morning that I had just spent 5 hours looking at folders, after countless hours over the weekend. I peeled my eyes away from the computer and went to bed, only to lie there awake and bug-eyed for another hour or so. Either the anxiety is out of control, I have a very special procrastination superpower, it's a weird ADD symptom or I'm having the most boring manic episode in history. Not sure whether to ask for dexies, benzos, mood stabilisers or just give myself a swift smack around the chops for being lazy. I will ask kind Dr S when I see him.

I'm baaaack (again)

Life over the last year has been pretty fraught, but isn't it always? I feel like I just lurch from one crisis to the next. Not that these crises are always terrible, or necessarily negative at all, just times when life requires more than I thought I had to give.

There are tough times for a whole bunch of people - a dear friend had a rather serious breast cancer scare and another close friend's preschooler had open heart surgery and yet another one of my closest people has a horrible infection that is proving very difficult to treat. There are others having dramas in their personal relationships and tough times with their kids. I don't think I dwell on this stuff too much, but I'm conscious of all of it all the time, sending my love and good thoughts out to these people I love that are having difficult times.

I have also been the recipient of lots of love and good thoughts - as many people know Sanjay and I are in the process of divorcing. I'm not going to go into detail here and now, except to say it's been a long time coming, it hasn't been an easy decision for us to make and that our focus now is on the kids and making sure that we do what we have to do without too much negative impact on them.

This week I'm back at uni, which is great (structure to my weeks! learning is fun! closer to graduating!), but increases the stress level (assignments! classes, readings and self doubt!) and I received a challenge to write a bit more so I will be procrastiblogging a bit over the next few weeks. I want to write about nursing and bullying on prac, and how it relates to feminism and the performance of gender identity. I'm doing a mental health subject, one on the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, I had a crappy time on my last placement and I have just finished Clementine Ford's 'Fight Like A Girl' so it's all swishing together in my head in some pretty interesting ways.

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,

Tanya asked what an Atheist Hindu was...

..and I told her I didn't really know, but I would try and think it through. She asked in the context of me claiming that my Pundit acknowledging 'Atheist Hindu' as a thing. It's something I've been thinking about a bit recently, as I try to make sense of the difficulties I face and when I revel in feeling like I am fulfilling my dharma as I study nursing and raise my kids. I was brought up by a non practicing C of E father, a mother lapsed from her strict Methodist upbringing to vague eastern hippiehood and I went to an anthroposophical school. I was not destined to get all fundamental about any religion, but to give all of them a certain grudging respect.

I don't think there is a divine plan, or really a divine at all. I don't believe in anything supernatural, but I know there is stuff that science can't explain (yet). I suspect our minds are more powerful than we give them credit for.

Hindu gods can be approached as a manifestation of a feeling, or a desire, or even perhaps a social construct. As such I give a respectful little (mental) nod and a wink to Ganesha (Remover of Obstacles) before I start some new endevour. In distracted moments I wonder how I would depict Saraswati (Wisdom and Learning) if I were creating a likeness of her (traditionally she has a musical instrument, but that doesn't work for me). Really what I'm pondering in these moments is what obstacles I may have to overcome or the nature of wisdom

I look at my life in terms of fulfilling my Dharma (looking for, and following, my life's path). I don't believe in literal reincarnation, but I do believe that in so far as our actions impact the world, those impacts can easily last beyond our deaths and they are something to be mindful of.

Please, I know very little about Hinduism really, so standard disclaimer: all errors are entirely my own. 

If you aren't comfortable with me claiming Hindu status then I am perfectly comfortable sticking with Atheism

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.

I hate post titles! So awkward. Weirdly, I like emails to have good clear subject lines though. How about 'Therapist visit recap' - will that do?

On Wednesday I met with the psychiatrist I had been seeing during my hospital stay. I didn't get any more clarity about the vague hint of a diagnosis he gave me but there were some really good things about the visit.

I was able to be really clear with him about a few things that he'd said to me that I thought were insensitive. I wasn't accusatory, just clear about how I felt. It was difficult and awkward, but he responded really nicely, explaining why he had asked what he'd asked and acknowledging that given the topic, it had been inappropriate (sorry for being vague, but it was bad enough talking about it the first time around). I also was able to explain the things I did like about seeing him - he's a clever, sharp and insightful guy, with a good heart. The weirdest thing was saying goodbye to him. It was incredibly awkward - a wave or nod is far too casual for someone who you have sat and sobbed in front of while talking about the reasons for your self-loathing but a hug is off the cards with shrinks. Anyhow, I shook his hand, feeling weirdly male, or perhaps German, and realised, suddenly, that he was only my height, perhaps even a shade shorter. When I was in hospital and described him to someone and I remember saying that he was really tall, well over 6 feet/1.8m in my estimation. To realise he was only my height was to understand quite viscerally how differently my mind was working now, compared with when I was admitted. I still have bad days, bad hours, some times are really shit, but I feel, both literally and metaphorically, big enough to cope now.

Now, how to get some exercise factored into my days. Any tips? I'm thinking it might be more important long term than giving up booze. I'm not feeling any clarity or goodness that the people I know who have stopped drinking talk about. On the up-side, I'm not feeling bad about it either, and it hasn't been particularly difficult or fraught.

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!

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.

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!

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...

Preparation for Preschool

Tomorrow my 4.5 year old has his first ever day of preschool. He's been in childcare for a while but this is different. He will take his own lunch, he needs to be more responsible for his own belongings and, most importantly,  there is a very different focus. At childcare the focus is on keeping the children safe and more-or-less occupied whereas preschool is unashamedly a place for learning skills for school. This is what he's looking forward to at preschool. He happily tells people that they have 'two group times' (group time at childcare was as close as they got to 'lesson time') but of course he is still anxious about the change. I'm anxious about the change too - school hours, school holidays, having to pack lunch and turn up punctually for drop-offs and pick-ups all add to the difficulty. If I didn't think this was a very important move I certainly wouldn't have bothered.

It's been a tough few months for us. While my Asher is finally getting more social and outgoing, he is also becoming harder to deal with, wilder and harder to settle. I think this is because he needs more balance in his daily activities. At the moment he climbs trees, rides his scooter and plays cricket with his dad and plays happily either by himself or with friends but what is lacking for him is more formal instruction. For some kids this might not matter as much at this age but for my son it does. Asher is a bright kid and he thirsts for knowledge, so I feel that this will be a great move for him but the settling in period could be tough for all of us. I'll try and let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Time to call in the experts

I've done what I'd tell any of my friends to do, were they in my situation. I went and talked to my favourite nurse at the ECHC and I have a referal to Tresillian's residential program. The nurse also talked to my therapist and they have decided it's urgent and that I need to get in ASAP which means I'll get in on a cancellation.

I actually know what the problem is and what needs to be done, but I'm incapable of doing it. Kiz needs to learn to get to sleep without my nipple in his mouth, ideally by himself in his cot, and he needs to eat more food so that he doesn't get quite as hungry during the night. I need to stop feeding him between the hours of say, 11pm and 5am and he needs to be able to get back to sleep and stay asleep without indefinite screaming. Unfortunately I can't do this on my own. It's a tangled circular problem and I can't go in to help the poor little guy get back to sleep in the night, exhausted, wanting to do anything to get back to bed, smelling of comfort and his favourite food and expect a few pats to settle him. I can't imagine waking up with a hungry rumble in my tummy and ignoring the smell of toasting bread and bacon frying and I don't believe I can expect the equivelent from a baby.

I could do it, I could wait it out and cope through this period of next-to-no sleep but I'm not sure my sanity, my relationship with my husband would remain unscathed - in fact, I'm not even sure that my children would remain safe from harm with their mother this bone tired. Until we work this out and I get some more sleep I'm going to maintain my holding pattern, trying to get as much sleep as I can, feeding Kiz as much food during the day as I can and getting him to sleep the only way I can (breastfeeding him to sleep). I'm also instituting some of the suggestions from Elizabeth Pantley's book - today's job might be to sketch out a going-to-bed book, and we already attempt an hour of going to bed ritual time, I'm working on developing his relationship with his teddy and helping him to love his cot. Tonight I'm hoping for better than last night - seven wake ups in 11 hours and, like Aprill said, you gotta know when it's time to hire the experts.

He's now been on the outside longer than he was on the inside

The little Kiran, as anyone who has spoken to me knows in exhausting detail, is not sleeping for long stretches at night. Part of the problem is that at 9 months he isn't really eating much solid food. He is breastfeeding pretty much 3 hourly around the clock. Meaning the longest streatch of sleep I get is about 2.5 hours.He refuses all our attempts to feed him. Back when I was childless, and knew far more about parenting, I thought that a baby like that just needed a firm hand and a bit of persistance but it doesn't work that way. This kid is really really stubborn. Stubbornness, I believe, is a tempramental thing, not something acquired, and I'm holding on to the thought that it can be a really positive trait, something that will serve the little guy really well when he has gown-up goals he wants to work toward. It's kinda grasping at straws, but I need something to get me through this time.

So, being the problem solver that I am, I've been thinking about why he doesn't eat and how I can help him eat a bit more food. I think at the beginning he didn't like the sensation of swallowing, because of the sense-memory of mucous and suction from when he was sick with whooping cough as a tiny baby. Now he's a bit older I think the reason he doesn't eat much is to do with his stubbornness. It's a bit freaky having power and control dramas with a kid under one - I had always associated that kind of thing with toddlers, with two-year-olds asserting their independance.Anyhow, the other day I plonked a bowl of weetbix down in front of him and let him at it. To my surprise he knew what to do with it. He stuck the spoon in the bowl and then in his mouth and then actually swallowed what went in his mouth, rather than spitting it straight out.

So I've just been running with that, letting him make as much mess as he wants, helping him out when he seems to want it. As soon as food starts coming out of his mouth again I wipe him off, wipe the highchair, wipe the floor, remind myself that there will be less wiping up one day and we do something else. At best he's eaten about 60ml (3 tablespoons) volume of food in a day (yesterday) which doesn't seem to be enough. I know a five-month-old who eats that much each meal. Hopefully soon it will start being more satisfying to him and he can get more of his calories during the day so he won't wake so much at night. And the No-Cry Sleep Solution will help me to get him to sleep better by himself and if it doesn't then we'll be off to Tresillian because I'm getting pretty close to the end of my tether here.

Parenting Angst

Sleeping Asher
Originally uploaded by karmakeda

Ever since Asher was tiny I've always worried about whether we are parenting him 'right' although I have a little difficulty understanding what I mean by right. I just want him to grow up into a kind person who is reasonably sane. It's hard at the moment though. Asher is 3.5 and having tantrums and in other respects being age-appropriate and pressing all my buttons. Luckily I get to see him sleep sometimes and gaze at his face when it's at rest and wonder that we created this whole person who is growing into himself. I wonder if I'm going to get as frustrated with Kiran when he gets a bit older? Probably, and I'll appreciate a reminder me to gaze at his sleeping face and soak up the peacefulness.

I think I'm ready to Move On

Nah, not giving up blogging, getting divorced or quitting my job, just ready to get the worm farm going again. Back at our old house we had a worm farm for a while. It lived on our balcony for a bit then, during summer when we had no shade for it, we moved it to the garage. Sometime during that hot summer all our worms died. The cause, I'm pretty sure, was dehydration. I felt so bad about it that I couldn't even look at the damn worm farm for ages - those little wrigglies were in my care and I LET THEM DIE! Ugh. I still feel bad about it. Luckily their decomposed little bodies went into the garden when we moved house. So, that was maybe three years ago now and I think I'm ready to start again. I've located the plastic worm farm tubs we had (they were sent to my mothers' garage because I couldn't face looking at them) and they are being delivered next week. I'm back to checking out vermicomposting sites and forums (I learnt heaps from them last time, the hottest tip was to leave a light on for the first few nights so they don't all try and escape from your worm farm - it worked a treat) and planning where it's going to live (just outside the apartment on the kitchen side. Must get a piece of old carpet to put over them to protect them from the summer sun. Wetting it down will be like aircon for the little fellas). Wish me luck - I'll report back when I have something to actually report.

Also, for future reference, do not put metal things in the microwave. Even if that metal is just a tiny bit of aluminium on the top of a bottle from the bottom of the crown seal. If you do you will scare yourself so much that you aren't quite sure whether you got an electric shock turning the microwave off because you are so freaked, wired and jumpy. You would think that was something I wouldn't have needed to learn the hard way, wouldn't you?

Status Update

A few days ago, it must have been Tuesday, I was pottering around the house and heard what sounded to me like our neighbors moving house. I was dissapointed and angry at myself for not inviting them around - they brought us cake when we moved in, flowers at Kiran's birth and have been just lovely but we haven't got around to having them over. The next day I realised that it was the neighbors on the other side, who we don't know at all, who may have been moving - it certainly wasn't the lovely people from number 46! So, realising that I was really angry at myself for not making an effort I decided that this weekend we would invite them over for cake in the afternoon. I am generally really crap with my good intentions - all plan, no follow-through so I'm putting it our here so I do it.

Anyone who isn't interested in micro-detail regarding my kids can stop reading now!

Last week, at three months and one day Kiran flung himself over (front-to-back) he's also noticably turned from an air breathing foetus into a baby - he's more alert, he sleeps for longer stretches and he startles more easily. He also smiles whenever anyone talks to him and vocalises lovely little magpie noises, which are sometimes quite loud and assertive, when he has something important to say. I'm sad to say I've only just noticed him sleeping for longer stretches during the day because it's only this week that I have put him down for a morning sleep in his bed, rather than getting him up and carting him all over the place. I think I'm going to have to have more at-home time built into our week to let the poor kid sleep a bit more. Poor second child!

Watching him find his hands and be able to get them (and sometimes whatever they are holding, if he's lucky) into his mouth has been lovely - first he waves both hands about and then, when they find each other he clings on for dear life, you can almost see the knuckles going white with the effort. Then he brings them up to his mouth and fits as much of the 'double fist' in as he can. Once they are in there he anjoys the dual sensation - the feel of the cool fingery things writhing around in his mouth and the lovely warm sucking sensation that he feels radiating up from the ends of his arms. He can amuse himself this way for significant periods of time now, allowing me to potter about and get a few things done.

Asher is also coming along in leaps and bounds - I think I mentioned that he can use cutlery, holding his fork still while he cuts with his knife? Well, the other day he also surprised me by peddalling his trike around the back deck. This doesn't seem like much of an achievement for a three year old, but the erganomics (is that the right word?) of the trike are such that it actually looks really difficult to pedal - he needs both co-ordination and quite a lot of strength. After having a go on another kid's learner bike (with training wheels) he came home and could suddenly manage his own trike. He's also been being really good (sporadically). Tuesday we spent a lot of time together at home without anyone else around which is often a recipe for both of us to get irritated, but there wasn't so much as a raised voise all day! And by the time Sanj got home both kids were bathed! I'm kinda proud of both of us for that!

My lovely lads

I don't want to be always comparing my two boys but it's hard not to. I'm not just comparing them though, I'm comparing my feelings then and now too. When Asher was less than 12 weeks old I would dread any day that I knew Sanjay would be late home from work. This time around it's so different. Sanj told me this morning that he was going to be late, but that his parents would pick Asher up from Kindy and give him a bath and dinner. I felt a flood of relief - I didn't have much to achieve today so this evening is going to be blessedly calm. With both Sanjay and Asher getting home at around 7pm, and the baby pinning me to the couch to cluster feed from 4:30 to 7:30 most nights all I can do is sit here and enjoy the quiet house and wish I had remembered to get myself a big drink of water before I sat down. When Asher was tiny I would have had to bounce and walk him around for those afternoon hours, and even with rocking and bouncing and feeding and singing he would still have howled for quite a lot of that time.

The baby, despite being snuffly with what I think is cold rather than just more of the pertussis cough, is lying in my lap gazing at me, grinning and vocalising when I look down at him and talk to him. I think that he's developing a pattern of having a good sleep in the morning and a good long sleep in his hammock in the afternoon and a snooze in the Ergo in the middle of the day. He also seems to just wake up up twice a night most nights, and so far he hasn't been to difficult to get back to sleep. If I followed the time honoured wisdom of 'sleeping when the baby sleeps' I'd actually get enough sleep! Instead I walk around with him in the Ergo or try to eat and get some washing done and the kitchen tidied. Maybe next week I'll get a rest during the day.

And before I get even more distracted, the real reason I wanted to post was to note a few of the cute things Asher says and does before he changes and they slip away for ever. After three years of no TV he's now crazy for it. It is a fondness that I think will wane fairly quickly as long as we set reasonable limits and don't get too strung up about it. He doesn't watch actual TV though, just his 'movies' which are a Bindy Irwin DVD and a few Wiggles and Thomas DVDs. He puts them on himself and then uses the 'ke-mote' (remote) to adjust the volume or get the appropriate segment of the DVD to play. Drat, the baby is grizzling but I really need to write about how under the thumb Asher's grandfather is sometime and how great those grandparents are, particularly since we've had Kiran.