Boys like skirts too...

Turi had his first 'grown up' ballet class today (we've been going to 'mummy and me' classes for a while but he's finally graduated).  He was so excited and so well behaved.  The only slight hiccup was that he wanted to wear a skirt like all the girls.  I can completely understand where he is coming from.  All the little girls get to wear special ballet outfits with leotards, crossovers and twirly practise skirts while the boys just have to wear black leggings and a white bonds singlet.  He wanted something that felt special.  So I let him wear fairy wings to class today so that he didn't feel too left out.

Which brings me to my point tonight.  Everyone is so caught up with raising their 'non-gender' stereotyped girls that we often forget how narrow the gender expectations are for our boys.

We are going to a friend's wedding on Friday.  I took Minty out shopping and bought her a new dress… velvet with tulle and flapper fringe for extra fantastic twirling.  When we got home she paraded it for Turi and he asked me hopefully, 'do I get one of those too?'  I'm fairly sure that the pair of slacks and shirt that I had in mind isn't going to cut it.  So I took him out shopping today to find something that would meet with his approval.  He whispered to me with excitement, 'I'm going to look fabulous!' and then proceeded to pick out a faux leopard fur vest from the girl's department, some oversized sunglasses and some black shiny gum boots.  Suffice it to say we came home empty handed.  Gender stereotypes aside, I wasn't about to let a child of mine go to a wedding in an ensemble that looked chillingly like something 'Scary' Spice may have worn in the early 90s.  He cried all the way home.

I like to think of myself as a liberal minded parent but the few times I have let Turi go out in a skirt it elicited such alarmed and tortured looks from (I thought) otherwise progressive parents that I'd rather not subject him to that and burst his bubble of innocence.  People's facial contortions generally resemble someone trying to politely swallow an unexpectedly unpleasant mouthful at a formal dinner party. 

Which begs the question what is it about a boy in a skirt that is so unnerving?  And why is boys' fashion so boring?  And even more importantly what on earth is Turi going to wear to this wedding?!?

Taming the wild beasts...

 

Firstly, I just wanted to thank everyone for their messages of support after my last post.  After much reflection I've concluded that the behaviour was basically just an extreme form of attention seeking.  Lately I've been so busy packing, working and generally keeping the house running that I haven't been spending much quality 'face time' with the kids.  So rather than dwelling on the negative I'm trying to turn things around and channel their creativity and extreme energy into good rather than evil.  Both Minty and Turi have always had a wild adventurousness and a strong desire to explore and experiment.  Though it can be a bit trying at times it is one of my favourite things about them.  So although I'd like them to be a bit more compliant, I don't want to beat the spark out of them and crush their spirits!  So in the coming weeks I'm going to be turning off the TV and spending plenty of time running off their legs and working their brains with creative play so that they have no energy left for mischief!  I'll keep you updated on the success (or lack there of) of this strategy…

 

In other news, the kids hosted a little mother's day afternoon tea at kinder yesterday.  The class sang a few songs and did a little dancing and then served the mums cupcakes that they had baked.

Minty really loves kinder but I've made the difficult decision to pull her out so she can repeat again next year.  As you can see in these pictures she is tiny compared to the other kids (since her birthday is in february she is a full year younger than some of them) and until I can reign in her sleep and behaviour issues at home I don't think she'll be ready to start school next year.  Just to really confuse matters her kinder teacher pulled me aside yesterday to tell me how well she thought Minty was doing!

 

And finally a bit of a house update -  the stairs are in!  These lead from the kitchen up to the raised lounge room.  They make such nice, informal extra seating.  The door you can see leads to the kids bedrooms and bathroom.

Here is another look at our lovely pantry door and the cavity for the fridge.

In which there is food art and trust dies...

I think I mentioned in my last post that the kids have been getting up ridiculously, 4am, early.  A better mother would probably leap from the bed to watch the sun rise with her progeny, but honestly after a week of dealing with late night nightmares and people jumping on my face in the middle of the night to whisper 'I want my wheatbix', I am operating in somewhat of a coma.  At one point in the blackest of night Turi decided to practise his articulation.  He starting chanting, 'shit, shit, shit', and while I am fairly sure he didn't know what he was saying, it was a very accurate vocalisation of my internal feelings.  I digress.  The truth is that yesterday I let the kids get up at 4am and I, horror of horrors, remained in bed to sleep in until the scandalously late hour of 7:30am.  You might be wondering what the children got up to alone in the house during this time.  Let me paint you a picture.

So it's 7:30 in the morning and Turi trots into my bedroom and says, 'Mummy, wash my hands, I'm grubby!'.  Still in the befuddled haze of sleep, I roll over and say, 'ok sweetheart. Have you been playing outside?'.  Turi replies in the affirmative and I stagger out of bed to the bathroom.  At this stage I notice the intense smell of peanuts and notice that Turi is smacking his lips together in a way that suggests his mouth is dry and sticky.  I glance down and see that his shirt is streaked in green, (grass stains perhaps?) and his hands are caked with black (maybe from making mud pies?).  And then I notice flecks of white on his hands.  I look closer.  The flecks are oats.  A flood or dread sweeps over me and I am well and truly awake.

At this point Minty flits past and says in an ominously, cheery voice, 'don't go in the kitchen'.  Of course this in where I am headed.  The closest visual I can give of what I found is this Pro Hart ad for Stainmaster.

I know as bloggers we are prone to exaggerate for effect.  But believe me when I say that the kids emptied the entire pantry onto my kitchen floor.  They mixed several kilos of flour, five bottles of vinegar, brown sugar, caster sugar, oil, all my tea (loose leaf and bags), a kilo tub of peanut butter, wheatbix, pasta, oats, nuts, dried fruit, limes, baking powder, baking soda, creme of tartar, icy-poles, ice-cubes, and, perhaps most horrifyingly of all the entire packet of my precious matcha tea I had brought back with me from Japan.  Those green streaks on Turi's shirt were matcha.  

I use a large plastic trug tub to carry my fruit and veg home from our veggie group.  This tub had been the focus of their efforts.  It sat in the centre of the kitchen floor like a witch's cauldron, filled with a black lumpy slurry of food.  The smell took my breath away.  I sobbed a large gut wrenching sob.  Part of it was shock.  It had never even occurred to me that my kids were capable of such large scale destruction.  Part of it was the realisation of the scale of the mammoth cleaning task that awaited me.  A small part of it was grief at the loss of my matcha tea!  But honestly the true origin of that sob was fear that somewhere along the way I had gone horribly wrong in my parenting and discipline of my children.  Do I command no authority or respect in my own home?  How could my kids do this without any thought of consequence?  It felt like a big, sticky slap in the face.

It took me six hours, without stopping for so much as a cup of tea, to return the kitchen to some state of normality.  They hadn't merely emptied the canisters onto the floor, they had also made experimental mixtures inside each canister.  No corner of the kitchen was safe.  They had reached into the back corners of every cabinet with their sticky fingers.  All the mixing bowls had food caked onto them, my pizza stones had been used as mixing plates, there were dirty birthday candles in the cutlery drawer and the finger printed freezer door remained open as clear evidence of their destructive path.

I'm not exactly sure how to wrap up this post.  I'm still reeling 24 hours later.  I guess today is a new day.  Today I'll try harder to be a better parent.  It's 11am and no one has trashed anything yet.  Focus on the positives?

In which Minty turns four and I gift her with abandonment issues...

Happy valentines day everyone!  Lots has been happening about these parts, hence the lack of consistent posting.  

Minty turned four yesterday and also had her very first full day of kinder.  I think it all went OK... until I forgot to pick her up.  OK so that's not entirely accurate.  I didn't 'forget' - I got the times mixed up and thought I was supposed to pick her up at 2:30 instead of 2:15.  And then Turi and I fell asleep on the couch together and we were running late for our incorrect time.  So all in all she waited for us for… ahem… almost half an hour.

I'm sure this is the kind of story Minty will be telling her psychotherapist in twenty years time.  Lucky I'm not embroiled in a custody battle since I'm sure this would be lauded out as evidence of my extreme parenting incompetence.  (I would counter with tales of the time when the Mr accidentally slammed the car door on Minty's head).  Clearly we are both shooting for parents of the year!  As it is, I'm sure I'll just beat myself up over it for the next few months until I manage to push it to the recesses of my mind in an attempt at self preservation.

Thankfully the birthday wasn't a complete write off.  We did manage to put together a nice party for Minty on the weekend with some friends and family.

I will share some pics of the party tomorrow but in the mean time here are a few of Minty in the party dress I made for her.  She insisted on carrying her new umbrella (a present), so the shadows are a bit all over the place.  I used this pattern but left off the pockets and gave it a round neckline.  The fabric is double gauze Nani Iro, which I picked up on sale while we were in Japan.  I'm not sure why I keep making things out of double gauze, possibly I'm some kind of masochist.  This one was fraying excessively as I was putting it together but I think I managed to encase it all within the french seams.  I used much less fabric than was recommended in the pattern (which always makes me feel very thrifty).  I cut the fabric so that the top and bottom panels were densely patterned, with the lightly dotted section in the middle.  Luckily the print is very forgiving since Minty has already managed to permanently stain the front with chocolate and raspberry ice-cream!

On matters of life and death...

Remember our goldfish Timmy Boomda?  Well I just discovered his lifeless body floating in the fish bowl.  I'm not going to pretend I'm sad.  Cleaning out the fish bowl is now one less job on my already too long 'to do' list.  Of course the death of a pet always inevitably leads to a series of difficult questions from the smaller members of the family.  Here is a little look at what occurred when the kids discovered the body…

Minty: mummy, Timmy has laid down properly to go to sleep

Me: Darling, Timmy is dead.  He's not ever going to wake up.

Minty: I don't mind… I'm not going to die.

Me: Well… actually… everyone dies at some point.

Minty: Sometimes daddy dies… and he wakes back up

Me: Daddy isn't actually dead.  He just sleeps very heavily sometimes

and a little later…

Minty: I don't know where Timmy is.  

Me: He's right there, dead, floating at the top of his bowl.  

Minty: but where is he?  

From her tone and emphasis, my best interpretation of this is that she was asking about the thing that made Timmy alive instead of dead, the essence of him, his soul.  My internal response (you know the one your head forms before you open your mouth) was 'shit I don't know. I don't think fish have souls'.  Frankly I'm not geared for philosophical enquiries before I've had a morning coffee.  Instead I chose to pretend I didn't understand what she was asking and merely repeated myself, 'see he's floating there dead in the bowl'.  I wonder how many more probing questions I'm going to answer in a severely inadequate way as a parent.  Probably too many to bear thinking about.

If you're wondering what Turi was doing during all of this, he was basically dancing about with a big grin on his face, tossing pinches of fish food into the bowl.  Clearly it hasn't raised any existential questions for him!

In which we have a poo party and everyone is invited...

Alright peeps this post is going to be about poo.  So if you are squeamish, currently eating your dinner or think bowel motions, like money, should never be discussed in polite company you can stop reading now.

All gone… cool.  Now that it's just us, let's talk frankly.

For the past three months Minty has been struggling with a full blown poo phobia.  I haven't written about it here before because firstly, I didn't want to open myself up to all the judgey mcjudgepants readers out there who would assume I had caused this whole issue through epically bad parenting.  I know I've been guilty of casting judgement in the past - if anyone told me their child had been constipated I assumed they probably fed them a diet of cocoa pops and boxed macaroni and cheese.  Secondly I didn't want this space to become cluttered with my negativity and whinging about this issue.  In the end though I decided I wanted to talk about this in case there are other parents out there wading through the interwebs searching for solutions to what has certainly been one of the toughest parenting challenges I've encountered so far.  

It all started when Minty got a bit sick and then after not eating properly for a few days got constipated.  This lead to an anal fissure which in turn lead to a full blown terror of going to the bathroom.  The anal fissure was relatively easy to heal with strict attention to diet (no white refined products such as white bread, white pasta and white rice, limited dairy, lots of fluids, as much fruit and veg as you can pack into a three year old, linseed meal… basically the obvious things you'd do for constipation).  But even after the fissure was gone the terror of the toilet remained.  She would hold a poo for as long as she possibly could, usually only managing to relax enough to pass a motion when she fell asleep and sometimes not for several days.  She would spend the day writhing in discomfort, desperately trying to avoid going and unable to concentrate on or enjoy doing anything else.  While she was on the toilet she would weep and I could feel her little heart beating fast with fear.

I tried everything.  I tried to distract her with songs, stories, blowing bubbles - I was a virtual one-woman broadway show.  I tried reverting to using a potty and moving it to interesting locations around the house and garden.  I tried offering bribes but even the offer of chocolate or cake wasn't enough to overcome the fear.  

It had become all consuming.  Basically poo was all anyone in the family was thinking or talking about.  It even became one of Turi's only words.  He would wander into the bathroom and point in the toilet saying 'poo, poo' or pull open the back of someone's pants, peer inside and announce 'poo' (thankfully he never did this to a stranger!!).  

After taking Minty to see two different GPs the only advice I had been given was to give her laxatives.  I was really reluctant to go down this road.  After all she wasn't actually constipated, the problem was psychological.

Finally a friend put me in contact with a developmental paediatrician who gave me some fantastic advice.  Here are some of the things we tried.  Nothing on the list was an instant 'cure' but after a week or so of working through these things we finally seem to be back to normal.

1. Give your child some cream (it can be anything - we used pawpaw ointment but you could try moisturiser) and let them put it on their own bottom to make themselves feel better before they try to poo.  Letting them do it themselves gives them a sense of control over the situation.

2. Role play with your child's doll/teddy.  Tell them that the doll is having trouble doing a poo and ask them what they would tell the doll to help.  We used a tupperware container as a pretend potty for the doll.  The first time we did this it worked brilliantly but in the end Minty started trying to manipulate the situation saying her doll needed chocolate and TV so she would feel better!  

3. Try to get your child to think about letting go of their poo rather than not holding it in.  We did this by talking about how other people in the street/friends/neighbours were also doing poos at the same time and all the poos were going to go down the sewer and meet up for a poo party.  If you've met Minty more than once chances are we've discussed your bowl motions this week!  As I was wandering past the bathroom today I heard the Mr exclaim to Minty 'I think I see a party hat!'.

4. Laxatives.  I mentioned before that I was really reluctant to go down this route but in the end I was desperate and gave it a whirl.  I used parachoc and only gave Minty 5mls (which is half the recommended dose for a 12month old).  The theory is that it will make it impossible for them to hold on anymore and after a couple of successful poos they will start to realise it isn't such a big deal.  I only ended up having to use laxatives for a few days.  I think it was really more of a placebo affect with Minty seeing as it was such a small dose.

5. The main tip I would give is to try and instil a sense of confidence in your child.  Tell them that it will all be fine and that you know how to fix it.  Possibly easier said than done if you've been dealing with the phobia for a long time.

As a reward for all her hard work and successful poos we made some pink cupcakes today.  I think we were all pretty excited to have something to celebrate.

For the sake of contrast, this is the maudlin face we have typically been seeing these past months...

"I want to poo on the road like a bird."