Wondrously Other: February 2014

Strangers Are Not The Danger, We Are

A few of my friends have mentioned recently that they are teaching their children not to talk to strangers. I instantly felt like I was missing a trick because I have never thought to have those conversations with my own children.

Naval gazing in the shower I realised that my dreadful parenting omission was down to a combination of life experience and believing that Stranger Danger (how lucky for the marketing team that those words rhyme) is an overblown concept.

That’s not a contentious statement by the way, according to key organisations, the instance of children abused by strangers runs between 5 and 10% worldwide*.

So why the emphasis?

Well it’s easier to believe in a bogeyman that looks a bit funny, or talks a bit strange, or smells a bit nasty. It’s more palatable to believe that the family is a safe place to be and that nobody you know and love could betray you in such a horrific way.

But it’s not the truth.

Pretending that it is the truth not only distorts the meaning of danger for children but it robs them of one of the most important skills they will need growing up.

For reasons I will go into next week, Alfie and I were at a briefing session last night. After an hour of learning about recycling with some very “alternative looking” people, the lady asked if there were any questions.

Up shot Alfie’s hand and a very self possessed little voice said “Excuse me”.

A room full of earnest adult eyes turned and waited in silence for him to begin.

Please don’t have a brain fart, I silently prayed.

“Some people” he began indignantly, “put milk bottles in their bin with the lid on!”*

The room collectively melted.

The lady said “I know, who does that, right?”

And the conversation moved on leaving a little boy with a reinforced belief in the value of what he has to say and a mama who could have cried with pride.

Pride because my son is developing the skill to judge people and situations on a deeper level than how they look or smell or talk.

An attacker will not come for my children with a hunched back and warty nose and smelling slightly of wee. There won’t be a big sign hanging round their neck. I can’t give my children a checklist that will keep them safe.

The notable exception to the stranger rule
© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved

So better just be safe and not talk to any strangers at all, right?

I can’t do that either.

What if one of my children gets lost and needs to ask for help? Longer term, how am I preparing them to live in society if I fill them with fear of strangers?

Some of the most exciting experiences I have had have been with strangers: I have laughed until I cried striking up a conversation with the person in the next seat. I have an amazing friend who I know for no other reason than we bumped into each other on a dance floor one night and one of us was carrying a box of red wine. I travelled to LA on my own and spent a blissful Christmas at a youth hostel.

Because I wasn't scared of strangers.

I believe it is more valuable to my children to learn lessons about bodily integrity and person limits than about fear.

I believe they stand a better chance of staying safe if they have the experience and context of good stranger interaction: After all, good judgement is a learned skill like any other that gets stronger the more we practice.

And the rest? That 5-10% who fall prey to the roaming predator? As hard as it is to accept, I have to leave that one to fate.

*NSPCC, Childmatters, Australian Institute of Criminology

*This is a big recycling no-no, it devalues the resale value of the plastic

Thursday, 27 February 2014 Comments: 2

Alfie Co sleeping Olive That's Life

It Would Appear That Weirdness Is Hereditary

I can pretty much guarantee that when my mum sees this photo her eye is going to twitch.

When she reads that after I photographed Alfie’s feet I left the room without covering them she is going to get full on ‘nam style flashbacks to the early 80s.

It was pretty much a nightly battle in my house; my parents would sneak into my room and cover my feet after I had fallen asleep, I would poke them back out again.

Rinse and repeat.

My parents even used to joke that I breathed through my feet which basically means they spent years trying to suffocate me.

Awesome moment of realisation there.

So, my children. My darling quirky little weirdos.

Two of them have followed in my sleepy ways:

Alfie sneaks his flippers out the side of the duvet every night just like I do.

Miss Olive has slightly less flair and hitches her legs right up to her chest, pauses to fart, and then stamps down repeatedly until she has cleared herself some duvet free space.

For her it’s not so much uncovered feet as actively repelling duvet from her entire body.

Since we co sleep, that means that I end up uncovered as the night goes on and since Miss Olive shares her father’s stubborn streak, we basically play Dance of the Duvet all night. It’s one of the times I mutter darkly that she’s lucky she’s cute, likes cuddles and smells of unicorn farts.

But the thing of it is, I wasn't expecting this.

I was expecting my children to inherit looks and personality traits, but weirdisms don’t usually feature in the nature/ nurture debate.

The first time I gave the children a Jaffa Cake, Alfie picked his up, nibbled round the edges before pulling apart the layers, eating the sponge and then the chocolate covered orange. I know it’s not an official technique but it is my technique. My never-seen-by-my-son-but-somehow-passed-down-anyway technique.

When I turned, open mouthed, to point this out to Keith it was to see he and Esme with matching hamster cheeks.

It makes me heart glad to know that somehow these little quirks might live on down the generations.

Tuesday, 25 February 2014 Comments: 2

Not a Cooking Blog Working Mama

Confused Thai Beef Stew

This is a stew with a minor identity crisis.

It was the offspring of a shopping expedition of Keith’s which resulted in an eclectic collection of ingredients and a complete lack of desire on my part to waste an afternoon in the kitchen when there was some glorious sunshine to enjoy.

I served it up with some buttery mash and there was nearly all out war over seconds.

Image courtesy of Piyachok Thawornmat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ingredients

15g fresh ginger

6 cloves garlic

1 bunch Thai basil leaves

1 red chilli

2 kaffir lime leaves

2tbsp fish sauce

2tbsp agave syrup

2tbsp sherry

Juice of 1 lime

1tbsp flour

2 tomatoes quartered

3 carrots

400g stewing beef, cubed.

Water

Method

1. Take the garlic, ginger, basil, chili, and add to a blender with the Nam Pla, agave, sherry, lime juice and make a paste.

2. Add to a stew pot and cook off on a hob for a few minutes on a low heat.

3. Add the beef and sauté for a few minutes until browned.

4. Add the flour and mix until everything is coated.

5. Add the lime leaves, tomato, carrots and enough water to just cover.

6. Put on lid and put in 150^oc oven for at least 2 hours.

NB I think this would be awesome with a really meaty fish as well, or maybe some octopus.

Monday, 24 February 2014 Comments: 0

Baby Led Weaning Olive

Baby Led Weaning the Third Time Around

One of the truly amazing things about having more than one child is the way they take the Book of Truths you have written with your accumulated parenting experience, turn it over in their grubby little paws, stare at it thoughtfully ... and then rip it into confetti while cackling.

Olive has brought a whole new perspective on Baby Led Weaning: Alfie enjoyed food, Esme relished it, but Olive needs it.

I use the verb in the same sense as a crack addict needs their hit: Miss Olive took the Baby Led Weaning rule that said "until one it's just for fun" and ate it.

She simply cannot see food and not have some of her own, which makes sneaking treats a bit of a challenge.

I was nursing her the other evening when Keith brought me one of my favourite treats and I made the mistake of thinking she was too zoned out on milkie goodness to notice.

As soon as the delicate scent of chocolate hit Miss Olive's nostrils, she whipped her head around to see what she was missing.

While still trying to nurse.

Satisfied that she had my attention, she finally unclamped her jaw from my boob and fixed her eyes on my Afghan biscuit

And then on me.

And then on my biscuit.

And then on me.

And then on my biscuit.

And then on me eating my biscuit and trying to ignore her.

Not satisfied I was getting the message she grabbed a handful of biscuit right where I was trying to eat and refused to let go.

These are crumbly biscuits so I was left with pretty much no choice but to abandon nursing, sit her up and break off a small piece for her to eat.

If I hadn't, next would have come The Noise.

I can't describe The Noise to you, and I can't type it either: If I could, it would come out something a bit like

MMMMnnnnmmmmnnnnnnnnnneeh!!!!!

which basically translates to "more" but with more of a growl and an underlying threat of wanton violence.

The Noise usually begins at a gentle level, and increases both in volume and nostril flaring until you take the hint or she has alerted a more sympathetic member of the family (usually one of her siblings) who will use their superior mobility to GETHERFOODNOW!!!

What The Monkey was to escaping toys, Miss Olive is to sugary treats. It might just be the best diet I've ever tried.

Tuesday, 18 February 2014 Comments: 2

Peripartum Cardiomyopathy

Joining a New Community - The Heart Sisters

This week I became a Heart Sister.

Photo by kind permission of www.bysharyn.com

That is to say I joined a website for those of us who concern ourselves with PPCM - or pregnancy induced heart failure to the uninitiated.

It may seem like an odd thing to do to join an organisation that involves itself with a condition you used to have, but for me it feels entirely fitting.

When I had Esme and my heart went into failure, the single hardest part was the big fat question mark that suddenly hung over my life.

We don't know what happened. We don't why it happened. We don't know if you will recover. We don't know how to treat you. We don't know if you can have more children. We don't know, we don't know, over and over.

Hindsight being what it is, now, I know.

I know I either had a Takotsubo reaction, or PPCM during Esme's section. I know that I could have taken Beta Blockers and still breastfed. I know that I could have more children and I know that for me, recovery has been complete.

I know these things because I went out and found the answers for myself.

Becoming a Heart Sister means I can share what I know with scared and vulnerable women who are left facing the hell of "don't know" when they should be enjoying becoming a mama. I can talk to professionals about how to avoid making "don't know" feel like a black hole of despair. I can talk to other PPCM survivors and we can look past the "don't know" together.

Thursday, 13 February 2014 Comments: 0

Attachment Parenting Olive Toddler DoOm

How to Change a Baby

It's not hard to freshen up a baby's undercrackers, right? The procedure is pretty basic:

Lie down
Rip, rip
Unfold
Gag
Wipe
Lift
Lower
Fold
Stick, stick

You can then stand back and admire your handiwork safe in the knowledge that there will be no poo-splosion on your watch.

Fast forward eight months and the picture isn't so rosy.

Oh it is OHN!

Maybe it's just my children – although the popularity of tie down change tables in public toilets tells me otherwise – but my babies don't just lie still for nappy changes.

My babies delight in turning nappy changes into a bizarre ritualistic game, the rules of which remain a complete mystery:

Lie baby down.
Watch baby flip over.
Turn baby onto back again and pin with one hand.
Remove old nappy with one hand.
Ignore the slightly squishy feeling on the end of finger.
Reach for wipe with one hand, realise you forgot to take one out of the packet.
Try and prise single wipe from packet with one hand using a flapping motion.
Give up when wipe decides to bring some friends for the ride.
Calculate that you can remove hand from wriggling baby, grab wipe with both hands and get back to baby before they flip over and crawl away.
Realise you have miscalculated as you watch the baby crawl away before the wipe is out of the packet.
Recapture baby.
Bribe four year old to come and wave a toy over the baby's head as a distraction.
Remonstrate with son for lack of enthusiasm.
Grab baby as son wanders off to play.
Decide to try pinning baby with one leg in a strange sideways changing formation.
Give that up as a bad job as it doesn't stop the baby flipping over.
Call two year old and give them permission to blow raspberries at will.
Sit back and smile at semi naked baby laughing hysterically at her big sister.
Sneak nappy under baby's butt mid raspberry.
Untangle baby's fingers from screaming two year old's hair.
Contemplate giving up on nappies and starting Elimination Communication.
Call husband over for help while pinning baby down by all four limbs.
Assume superior expression as husband takes over.
Watch as baby lies still, coos and allows husband to change nappy without so much as a toe wiggle.
Call baby uncharitable name and try not to smile at the gummy grin.

This is not parenting, this is a full contact sport and I'm taking a kicking.

Tuesday, 11 February 2014 Comments: 11

That's Life Working Mama

The Moments That Take Your Breath Away

One of the reasons we decided to move the family to the other side of the globe was something that often gets called “work/ life balance”. It’s one of those modern phrases that people nod enthusiastically about, and everyone understands on a general level, but not many take time to quantify.

Is it a statement of time, and how much you dedicate to each activity? Is it a statement of quality? The longer I spend away from my former life, the more I understand that the balance I have addressed is the amount of influence each has on my mental state. I spend roughly the same amount of time in an office as I used to, in the same sort of setup, but psychologically, I'm a world away.

The social experiment conducted by the Washington Post in 2007 is doing the rounds of social media again – for those who missed it Joshua Bell played in a Subway station and collected $40 – and still provoking discussion. Hardly surprising though when, as the article so succinctly says:

“It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?”

I have my own view (of course), the summary of which is that beauty is absolute, but needs to be observed in order to be recognised. Put simply, you have to have the space in your head to let it in or it will pass you by.

Earlier this week I answered the phone to Keith, his voice thick with emotion:

“I’m standing on the deck looking out on about 25 dolphins playing in the bay. It’s the most amazing thing I've seen in my life”.

And he was right, it was amazing: Not the dolphins themselves, but the reaction to them.

My bus ride home took me along the shore of the bay where the dolphins were playing. It was lined with people of all ages just looking, and pointing, and smiling. The bus slowed to a crawl as we all stood and looked out of the windows open mouthed.

It was 5.30 on Monday evening when I stepped off the bus to join the bystanders: Rumbling tummies, homework and all manner of “better things” were left undone.

For a few minutes we all stood and smiled and if only for a few minutes, gave beauty a little space in our lives.

Thursday, 6 February 2014 Comments: 2

Alfie That's Life

When I Was a Caterpillar

Alfie came home from school the other day and joined me on the sofa where I was feeding Miss Olive. Unusually for him, he wanted to talk about his day without my asking.

Apparently they had been looking at caterpillars at school. There had been furry ones in the garden and one had stuck to his friend's jumper and the teacher had had to put it outside.

Now if you think this is a post espousing the value of listening to the detail of your children's lives, it's not. This is a post about how frickin weird life is with children because what Alfie said next completely twisted my melon.

He looked at me, weighing up how I might react and said:

"I remember a long time ago when I was a caterpillar"

Saywhatnow?

My brain took that statements and went in fifteen different directions, none of them forward because I'm that parent. I'm the parent who wants to believe, to validate, to indulge even, but right there sitting on that sofa I couldn't think of a damn thing to say.

How do you validate the life of a grub for heaven's sake? It's not like you can engage in a conversation about life experience: They eat, they pupate, they fly. Finis.

But now I'm painfully aware that I've already been quiet for far too long and there are two eyes watching my every facial tick.

"Oh"

Nice non committal opener asshole.

"Umm, so do you mean you were playing at being caterpillars or that you actually used to be a caterpillar?"

"No mama I was a caterpillar. And I ate lots of leaves and then I went away and when I came back I was a butterfly and I flew up and up and up"

So right here is where I set out my stall and say that I believe in past lives. I have even had my past lives read before and it brought me a lot of calm when I was struggling with some can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it feelings. I have long dreamed of being able to ask my children about lives beyond this one and have often asked them if they remember before they were born.

I say all of this by way of qualifying what a bittersweet moment this was for me.

Half my brain is shouting "PRAISE BE!! AN ACTUAL PAST LIFE CONVERSATION!!!!" while the other half is still stuck on "What the HELL do you talk about in the life of an insect?!?"

So I asked the only question my brain could form at that given moment:

"So what did you enjoy more, being a caterpillar or being a butterfly?"

And yes, I heard how stupid that question sounded, so when Alfie gave me a withering look and replied in a voice that said this was the single stupidest question he had ever answered, I wasn't surprised.

"A butterfly mama. Because then I could fly"

Image courtesy of dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

And just like that, he got up and ran off to play leaving me wondering, and not for the first time, what the hell had just happened.

Tuesday, 4 February 2014 Comments: 0

Social icons

Ingredients

Method