Stranger Danger!

Stranger danger is everywhere, if only my son were able to digest this information. Every person he meets is greeted with a ‘Hello, do you want to be my friend?' He is a sociable boy and it is adorable in one sense but also extremely alarming. If he were making friends with other children this wouldn’t concern me but his frequent question is generally aimed at adults.

A person wouldn’t have to promise my child any confectionary item or puppy viewing for him to gladly accompany them home!

I’ve tried starting the ‘chat’ about not talking to strangers but he is too young to understand. Danger and consequences are not within his realm of experience, as becomes apparent when approaching main roads! We live in a brutal world where you can lose somebody forever in an instant without as much as a goodbye. I can’t really get my head around it so I don’t expect him to.

I did lose him once for a whole two minutes in a park. I literally took my eyes off him for a second and he was gone. Frantically I ran around the park, heart going like the clappers asking everybody I saw if they had seen my son. He was going through his pigeon chasing stage and had just followed the birds. He was blissfully unaware of the torment I had gone through when I found him but I had aged five years in those two minutes!

You hear about the good old days when children could play in the street without any fears of being abducted. In England, women used to leave their babies in their prams outside the supermarket as they did their weekly shopping. My mum never left me as I had a really good pram and I don’t think she wanted to risk getting it nicked! A friend of mine was left at the butchers once and it was only when her mum got home that she realised her mistake! I like to imagine her going through her list saying ‘Now I’m sure I’ve forgotten something but I just can’t put my finger on it”.

 On some occasions my brother and I would wait up to forty minutes to be collected from school. You just couldn’t leave children on the side of the road these days but back then it was perfectly acceptable. I’d had the stranger danger chat though as on one occasion my parents’ car had broken down and they phoned the school. The kind elderly caretaker came with left over cakes to tell us the news and offered us a spot in the warm. I refused to believe him and we waited outside in the cold. My mum reprimanded me for not believing him but she had done her job well.

So how do we protect our children but at the same time not make them anti-social?  A big question and not nearly as heart meltingly cute as ‘do you want to be my friend?”

Steep Learning Curve Ahead!

When I went on maternity leave with my first child, I stupidly believed that I would have time to work on that screenplay I’d always wanted to write. I thought babies slept all day with the occasional feed; that I’d have so much time on my hands I’d be bored senseless.

I might have been bored but it wasn’t from having nothing to do!  Your life becomes one endless cycle of feeding, changing nappies and attempting to get them to sleep. If you’re really lucky you might have time to shower or have lunch. Before you know it your partner is coming through the door and you feel like you’ve done nothing all day. The house looks like a war zone and the dinner is in the Supermarket. You feel inadequate and judged, particularly if you’re still wearing your pyjamas.

Caring for a baby is a full time job with no allocated tea breaks or lunch hour. It is hard to anticipate how much work one tiny individual creates and something that even the most supportive of partners could not comprehend. This is why it is in everybody’s best interests to give your partner home alone with baby time. My advice would be to also leave your mobile at home otherwise you will probably receive a call before you’ve reversed the car out of the garage!

Nothing can prepare you for the reality of having a baby. You can read books, trawl the net and have strategies in place, but once they arrive it all goes out the window. This starts at the birth stage - when you have a fixed idea of how you want your labour to run, but the baby selfishly doesn’t want to work to your schedule. You might yearn for a natural, drug free birth but your little bundle of joy may have decided that squeezing themselves down the birth canal just isn’t them! It is a common mistake to not factor the baby’s personality in to the equation. You might think you’re the boss, but they are in control from the very beginning.

The most common assertion would-be parents make is that their baby will not be given a dummy. I was in this camp, but two sleepless weeks and two ravished breasts later I caved! I was also adamant that my child wouldn’t have fish fingers for dinner, but after preparing three refused dinners in one night, out came good old Captain Birdseye! You come to realise that you have to do what works for you and to throw all of your idealised visions of parenting in to the recycling. When they’re a little bit older you can reason with them but toddlers are not rational creatures.

Another biggie is discipline, having watched many a Super Nanny episode in my post university days, I thought I had all the answers.  I knew all about the naughty corner and imagined my child sitting quietly on a beanbag reflecting upon their misdemeanours.  I had been horrified by my sister-in-law’s method of locking her misbehaving toddler in the laundry and thought she was a monster.

Well, now I own a laundry with its very own lock and my son spends many a ‘time-out’ in there. I’m not convinced the laundry even works, but it stops me from smacking him and I’m able to sneak a biscuit whilst he’s locked up!

You start out with pre-conceived notions of what parenthood entails and what kind of parent you would like to be but it is rarely as you imagined. It’s like starting a job with little or no experience, you gradually get better at it but you’re constantly learning new skills. I think I’m working much harder than I ever did at work but there is definitely more job satisfaction. As for the screenplay, that might just have to wait a few more years.

Sleep Nazi.

It’s official; I am now a sleep Nazi! My whole day revolves around the sleeping pattern of a ten-month-old baby. Every day is planned with military precision so that my little cherub can get his two hours of cot time twice a day. On a typical park outing, Jake can have exactly ten pushes on the swing, three turns on the slide and one tantrum before being bribed back in to the car. I find the lure of a rainbow paddle pop in the garden always does the trick! Gone are the days when Alfie doesn’t sleep full stop or just falls asleep in the car. Some days those car sleeps would last up to three hours and I would have to check on him every ten minutes. So annoying when you’re trying to get around IKEA!

The reason for my newfound strictness and clock watching behaviour can be attributed to our success at sleep school. Possibly the best parenting decision I have made so far and I am not alone. Nearly everybody I know has taken at least one of their babies to sleep school.

 Sleeping is a learnt behaviour and not a skill that babies are born with. This is just one of the many pearls of wisdom I learnt from my time at Masada.

Control crying never worked for me at home because I only had the crying and not the control. When you are sleep deprived you’re just too fragile to see anything through and consistency is the key to success. Sleep school teaches you the difference between crying and grizzling. They do sound very similar at one, two, three, four and five in the morning! All you hear is a distressed child so your maternal instinct is to cuddle and placate your child. You will spend hours rocking them, patting them and doing whatever it takes until they fall asleep.  What they really need is to learn to fall asleep by themselves so you really need to resist your natural reactions. Control crying gets a bad press and needs to be done correctly. A child should not be left to cry itself to sleep but there is a difference between crying and protesting.

Masada has a ninety five percent success rate and one mother in our intake questioned the five percent who didn’t succeed. Ironically she left after two days! We all felt for this young mother whose child was so tired and resisted the Masada method. We tried to support her but she was too anxious and not ready to change her thinking. Her actions were understandable. The guilt racks your body as you leave your baby in their own little dark gaol like cell overlooked by the staff. A Sodom and Gomorrah pillar of salt moment flashes through your mind screeching ‘don’t look back.” We all went back ten minutes later just to make sure it wasn’t our baby screaming. You might be wondering how we could possibly sleep even though we were all so sleep deprived. Drugs that’s how, which the nurses kindly distribute on nights one and two.

The other good thing about Masada is the mothers you meet there who support each other through the program. Many cups of hot chocolate were sipped after the bubs were in bed and friendships were formed. An incredibly strong group of women who for one reason or another found themselves at Masada. Their honesty and sense of humour concerning their situation will always remain with me. As will the story of the husband who made his wife brush her teeth as she was giving birth to their son! Apparently her breath smelt so badly that he was unable to hold her hand while she pushed! I think you can probably guess how we all felt about him!

The program worked for us and I am happy to report that Alfie can now get himself to sleep. There are always going to be bad days but you just have to be consistent and keep your eye on the clock. So if I say I can’t meet you for lunch there is probably a very good reason.

Party time.

Children’s parties are not what they used to be. For one thing, every child has to win a present during pass the parcel. I distinctly remember crying at my ‘fifth’ because I didn’t win! My mother took me to one side and gave me a good hiding (you can’t do that anymore either). Okay she didn’t smack me, not at the party anyway but maybe later when my spoilt brat-ness reached its’ birthday peak.

Nowadays, you can hire somebody to come and entertain your kids while you sip on your champers in the background. VCA is producing some really excellent children’s entertainers who will do anything for the right money.

If you can’t afford a professional or an unemployable actor, you can do it yourself. There is so much information on the net, websites dedicated to making your little cherubs’ day the best it could possibly be. All you need is a theme and you can bet your bottom dollar some parent will have bragged about every minute detail on-line. There are some very competitive parents out there.

Another option is to limit the number of invited children and pay for them all to partake in some experience like circus skills, cookery or crocodile bating. There is also the play centre party where all the food and entertainment is provided. These parties look pretty tacky but the kids love them and there is no stress.

 This year I decided to host Jake’s party at home, every other year we have battled it out for the pergola at the local park. My theme for Jake’s fourth birthday was pirates and initially all I was thinking about was the costume. But this party caper is addictive and after doing a quick Google search, I had decided on a pirate ship cake and telescopes (cardboard rolls) positioned around the garden.  Then I was thinking about how I could turn our decking in to a ships’ galley and if I could make the kids walk the plank right in to our swimming pool. Thoughts about the party began to consume my mind, how to make it bigger and better. Scott would have to dress up as a pirate and maybe he could make some treasure chests with the kids as they arrived. Maybe we could give them all tatts, real ones naturally as I don’t want the parents to think we’re cheap. The ideas kept flowing and it was all because of one website that had a ratings system. These people had gone to extremes with their chosen theme, from the invites to what the children took home in their goodie bags.  The following party received an honourable mention:

‘…when they arrived, we had them decorate treasure chests at the start which involved cigar boxes painted gold with sequins, stick on jewels and glitter glue for them to use.  This activity gave them the chance to chat to the Good Pirate" and get to know him a little.  They then had to swear to obey their Captain and have a fantastic time. As a reward they got to have their picture taken as a crewmate. For this we used one of those things you put your head through and take a picture of you as a pirate. We got one off eBay quite cheaply. During the party I printed these off and put them into the treasure chest that they had made…. The Good Pirate told them a story.  He used pirate figures that I had crocheted especially for the story…..’

Now I could have paraphrased all of that but I wanted you to see how crazy some people are when it comes to their kids’ parties. Bear in mind this party only got an honorable mention!

I did make Scott dress up as the good pirate and quite frankly he looked like a paedophile. The moustache didn’t do him any favors but on the plus side reminded me of why he shouldn’t do Movember!  I did make a pirate ship cake that turned up trumps; I was so high fiving myself over its success all day! I come from a background of fabulous birthday cakes- my mum is simply amazing in the kitchen. Her cakes are legendary- I have had birthday cakes in the shape of a girl, a guitar and Australia to name but a few. This year she is planning on making Jake a cake in the shape of a dinosaur and she will pull it off.  I went with a ship because my reasoning was that it could always be a shipwreck! Thank you Google, you again have given me the power to rip off somebody else’s’ idea!

The party itself was a success and the children seemed to enjoy themselves but maybe next year I’ll take them all to a play centre!

Toilet training is shit....literally.

Toilet training is a nightmare and something that you just keep putting off until you just can’t put it off any longer. Unless of course you have been lifting your child’s bum in the air since day dot over the toilet and encouraging them to faecal drop! Who has the time or energy? People do it though just like some people communicate to their children via sign language for the first months of their lives. Personally I’m a little old fashioned and prefer to wait until my baby can actually talk and think for themselves! Not that I’m criticising other peoples’ parenting choices. That’s a lie. I am but surely you should enjoy the pure innocence of those first few months. A baby relies on you for everything- that’s the point. They already have a system of communicating- it’s called crying and some babies are very good at it. Not all cries are the same and that’s what you have to figure out as the parent. Much easier than sign language I would imagine!

Dear Reader I have completely digressed! They say that the ideal age for toilet training is two for girls and three for boys. Of course your mum will tell you that you personally and every sibling you have was out of nappies by the age of two. Maybe you were but that’s because you probably weren’t in disposables so the incentive to get out of all that washing was huge. Also who could be bothered with the pins- good job disposables exist otherwise my two would look like they have regular acupuncture sessions!

Son number one was three and a half before the nappies came off for the last time. He was a nightmare to train, I tried star charts, blackmail and letting him run around naked (at home I will point out). He would go to kinder in underpants and not use the toilet from nine to five. They would put him on the toilet but he just refused to go and then on the way from kinder collection to the car park he would always wet his pants. It was infuriating and I felt that the whole process was souring our relationship because I knew he could do it. Eventually, I just bit the bullet and put him in underpants all the time. It took just three days for him to realise that I wouldn’t give in like I had before. He is a very stubborn child or as my husband likes to point out “just like his mummy.”

 They can regress though as we found out on a recent holiday. Imagine the scene, we’re at lunch with the in-laws and we’ve just started our second bottle of wine(okay we’re not going to win parents of the year). We thought Jake had been playing with another little girl when we saw him waving his arms about as if swatting flies. On closer inspection we noticed that there was something on the floor, this something was making people move tables! Jake had done a steaming turd in the middle of the restaurant that had not been caught by his boardies. Oh the shame, thankfully we were so anaesthetised by the wine! We proceeded in dragging him back to the room with poo squishing down his legs….no photos of that holiday experience! It will become a funny little childhood tale that will be told at countless milestone events and to any girl or boy he happens to date in the future! 

Note to self- shut up Mandy!

I have come to the conclusion that I talk too much and not in a good way. When did this happen? When did I become the kind of person who speaks about unnecessary matters to the person at the supermarket checkout? After all, I doubt they want to know why I’ve bought some new socks.

I used to take the piss out of people like me and now on occasion I am so conversationally starved that I will talk to anybody over the age of ten.

Staying at home and watching your children grow is magical but can be quite isolating.

This is why play dates are so important. Play dates are not just about the kids. They are about coffee, salacious gossip and breaking up the day. Admittedly every conversation is peppered with yells of “Jake…No” and “Don’t eat the tanbark.” The children play together perfectly at first, fast- forward ten minutes and they’re pushing each other off the climbing frame. The play date always finishes with tears…. normally me. It is so refreshing to see how similar other children are to yours especially in regards to their behaviour. Some days you think that no other child could possibly be as naughty as yours. The play date allays your fears and allows you to share experiences about the trials and joys of raising children. It is not an easy job; frankly working was a piece of cake to full time mummying. At this point I must applaud single parents because some times I struggle and I have a capable accomplice.

The truth is being at home all day with the kids makes you a little bit crazy. Your brain isn’t being used like it once was and you have to explain everything in a clear manner to your toddler. This then overspills in to your adult world when the most inane details emerge from your mouth. Mental note to self- your three year old needs to know everything, the woman at Coles doesn’t.

Rockabye Baby for f-sake!

We’re off to Masada sleep school in two weeks time and I’m so happy. In fact probably happier than if I was going to Fiji on a luxury all expenses paid holiday. The truth is I am knackered and grumpy all of the time. Poor Jake gets the brunt of it, generally when we are having our nightly stand off about him eating his dinner. I hear the same words coming from my mouth as I did from my mothers' about children starving in Africa.

Sleep is as important as food in this world of ours and while I manage to consume plenty of the latter not much of the former is happening. Whoever made the connection between having a good night’s sleep and sleeping like a baby was joking right?  Not all babies sleep and it is a skill they need to learn. We are supposed to teach them but it isn’t that easy. My beautiful baby seems to think he can suck me dry every ninety minutes throughout the night and yes I have tried patting, rocking, singing etc

At the end of the day you just do what works in order to get some sleep. So i knock him out by putting him on the boob- I swear this child is a milkaholic!

You make excuses for them- “oh it’s their teeth”, “They’ve got a cold”, “They had a bad day on the stock market”. You don’t want to admit there is a problem because maybe that means you are failing at this parenthood malarkey.

Controlled crying is all very well if you don’t mind hearing your child scream every night or if you’ve invested in a good pair of earplugs.  We tried it with Jake but he just used to make himself sick or do a big poo- both were effective in us caving in. I took Jake to Tweddle for a day session, I was really hoping they would see how bad he was and admit us in to their residential program. They didn’t and he was the only child at the end of the day that didn’t sleep. All of the parents sat in a central room whilst their babies’ screamed- it was terrible. Jake was standing by that point and I could hear him rattling the bars of the cot. It was a useless exercise because we really needed to stay the night and they just sent us home regardless. I am hoping this time will be different.

Sanity.

“Play Mummy Play,” I hear this a lot from my three year old.  It reminds me of a repeated phrase in a drama series called  ‘Jake’s Progress ‘in which the toddler protagonist constantly attempted to kill his sibling.  I’d forgotten about this show when I named my first son Jake but it came flooding back when I gave him a brother three years later!  Naturally there is a little bit of jealousy and I do worry when I leave them in a room together for any period of time. I don’t doubt for one second that Jake loves his little brother Alfie but he does have a weird over enthusiastic way of showing it sometimes.  Peek-a-boo with a pillow is a bit suspect as is cuddling via near strangulation.

It is hard enough to teach children to share their toys never mind their parents so the transition can never be seamless. In our house, everything is declared by Jake to be ‘Mine’ including my iphone and Alfie himself.

As you are probably gathering from this post- Jake is quite a handful and I expect Alfie will be too one day. I am the mother of two boys, God help me you cry but one day I know they will go off to the footy with their Father leaving me to long boozy lunches and shopping expeditions.  In the meantime I need to keep them busy, nurture their souls and run them ragged so that come seven thirty I can crack open the cab merlot. I have been tempted recently to reach for the wine much earlier but I am breast-feeding which might be a blessing, as I don’t have time for AA.

That’s where the ‘parks’ part come in to this blog- sometimes you just need to get out of the house.

 Originally this blog was just going to be dedicated to information about where to take your kids in my local area. But I have to admit I got bored so now you will find some little companion pieces- generally rants about parenting. I’m not an expert and I’m learning every day but this part of the blog is for my sanity so indulge me or not as the case may be.

You never notice parks/playgrounds before you have kids so if you’ve just joined the parenting club you may find this blog helpful. Having just moved to this area, I am hearing about new places from other mums all the time. Yes I am that mum in the park who will talk to you, probably starting with an apology for my child whacking your child over the head with a stick but sometimes you need a conversation starter.