Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day in New Zealand, and America I think. I joked to Tareka that he could make me a card while he was on night shift. I half-expected him to make me a little card, but I NEVER expected what he did do.
Remember, he finished work around 2am and got in around 3am

Table set for breakfast for me and the girls

Little note letting me know where to find the food.

Hand made card

Enough pikelets to feed a small village!!

Yes he had come home from work at 3am and cooked me and my babies pikelets, then set the table and arranged everything so all I'd have to do when I got up was boil the kettle for my cup of coffee.

I think I'm falling in love all over again :)

Father Christmas

I've just read a post on a friend's blog that reminded me of something Mapera did recently.

We were in the bank, waiting to see someone about the mortgage, when an elderly gent with a white beard, and driving a motorised wheelchair came in. Mapera immediately spotted him and asked her current question de jour "what's his name?". I said I didn't know, and what did she think and she thought about it, took a good look at him and said "Father Christmas".

Now, baring in mind that when she met "Father Christmas" at a Christmas party last year, she howled and did not like him at all, this next bit made me very happy.

I said did she want to ask him if he was Father Christmas, and she said yes, so Tareka waited til he'd finished at the counter and asked the nice old man if our daughter could ask him a question. She asked "what's your name?" and he told her it was Robert, but that most people called him Bob, then Tareka prompted her to ask her other question and she did, very shyly ask if he was Father Christmas...he asked if she wanted a present and her little 2 year old eyes lit up. Bless the dear old fella but he reached into his pocket and gave my daughter a $2 coin. Tareka and I thanked him profusely and got Mapera to say thank you too. I said to her "he really was Father Christmas, wasn't he?".

The look of amazement on her face was priceless.

This is what I love about kids. She didn't even notice the wheelchair, she just wanted to know if he was Father Christmas, and you know, he never said he wasn't :)

Doctor, doctor

Well this weekend Tareka and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary, and a total of just under 9 years together. As he is working tonight (the 10th) we arranged to go out on the Friday for the day, leaving the girls with their Nana and Poppa.

We had a great day out, ate lunch where we felt like it without checking for highchairs or child-friendly food items, watched a film in a real cinema (rather than a DVD on the computer after the kids are asleep), came home to give the girls a goodnight kiss then back out again for a fantastic dinner out at a new Indian & Thai restaurant (a strange combination, but it worked beautifully).

The girls slept well (we all stayed over) apart from a 3am wake up by Mapera having done poos. This is very unusual for her, but I know she will have been holding onto it. She's not very good at going anywhere but at home at the moment. Fortunately, Mapera sleeps in Nana and Poppas room when we stay over, so darling Nana dealt with it.

I was planning a morning lie in, but the baby needed feeding and Tareka needed to sleep in as he's on nights, so I got up. I don't think I slept well as I woke up tired, sore and grumpy. All bad ingredients when it comes to tired toddlers and demanding, teething babies.
I got home in the new van, planning to have a bit of a sit down, then do some tidying while the girls had their afternoon sleep. I was then going to work after they went to bed and then have an early night myself in preparation for an early wake up on Sunday.

This Sunday is Mother's Day over here, but I was to be spending the day with one child staying at a friend's house while I attended a committee meeting 3 hours drive away. More about that another time. I didn't mind, I'd known about the meeting for months, and Tareka was working. Besides we'd just had a lovely day off for our anniversary.

Now, last Monday, Mapera cut her foot at Puna Reo Playgroup and I'd been trying to keep it clean and covered ever since, but since I live in a land where people go baref0ot all year round this had been proving difficult. I thought the cut had been healing until I took Mapera's plaster off tonight and was confronted with an evil looking, weeping blister-like sore, along with an ominous red line radiating from the wound across the bottom of her foot.

This caused me to do 2 things. The first thought was of a children's book I had read where a character had an infected thumb and the red lines started running up his arm, and his children were told that if the line reached his heart he would die. I even remember what the book was called "Emil and his clever pig". Strange the things we remember in times of stress.
Secondly I made a lot of phone calls - Tareka to tell him I was going to the emergency doctor and wasn't going anywhere tomorrow, the doctor to get the man to the clinic asap and the father-in-law to tell him to send my apologies to the committee (he's going too).

I packed the two kids into the new van (I am now eternally grateful for my husband's need to get this new van bought immediately) and raced down to the doctors. He reassured me in his delightfully calm and Dutch manner that the red lines were nothing to worry about, and even told me to look up lymphangitis on the internet to reassure myself further. He also gave me a course of antibiotics for Mapera there and then (no going to the all night pharmacy in the next town YAY!). So I bundled them both back into the car (amid much tantrumming from Mapera who wanted to "go and see the doctor" "you've just seen him darling" "no I haven't" "yes you have now sit down in your car seat before I count to 3" ARGH) and went home again.

I started trying to tidy up and get back to normal, so I popped the nappy bucket under the hot tap to fill ready for the nappies from today, then phoned Tareka and the Father-in-law to update them, then started looking up lymphangitis on the internet.

About 4o minutes later the baby woke up so I went to her room to check up and OH NO! I'd left the tap running into the nappy bucket and the water was now cold and brown. I had emptied the hot water cylinder completely.

So. Now I am here, having tried to clean up while listening to a soothing Radio 4 play and failing. I am overwhelmed by tiredness; the amount of cleaning and tidying I need to do just to get the house to "normal" standard; the work I haven't done; and the underlying feeling of terror that my child will get very sick in the night and I might not hear her...

...and when people ask me if I work, I say no.

Light of my life

Life is toddling along at a normal pace now. School holidays are over, so I now have regular activities to occupy my perpetual-motion toddler. Seriously, how is it that she can literally never stop moving? If I jumped around and ran and skipped and hopped and rolled and danced and wobbled and joggled and wriggled and squirmed half as much as Mapera does, I'd be stick-thin!! Maybe that's the secret to losing the baby weight - losing weight the toddler way...hmmm.

She is definitely improving with her behaviour, and I put it down to better sleep. Up til recently Mapera has been waking every night (without fail) at around 2 or 3 am (just when you're getting your high quality REM sleep) and standing at her door shouting for us to let her out. She has a gate on the door after I nearly suffered a nervous breakdown following a full week of getting up 5 or 6 times a night to put Mapera back in her own bed.

We were racking our brains as to how to break this habit with her, and we found an answer one day when she was playing dens. She sleeps in the bottom of a set of bunks, and Daddy hung a sheet all around the top bunk so her bed was completely enclosed. She wanted the den up when she went to bed, so we happily left it in place. The next morning we were awoken to the usual "Mummy! Please you take my gate off?!" but I didn't feel like it was the middle of the night. When I looked at the clock it was 5am! Although this was still to early for me to even consider getting up, it was a marked improvement on the previous wake up time. Fortunately, Mapera went back to bed without much fuss and woke up again at the normal time of 6.30.

So, we had moved the initial wake up to a slightly more civilised hour, but I really want Mapera to learn to stay in her room until it's time to get up, even if she is awake. She was coming in to our bed for a morning snooze, but recently, she's not been going back to sleep, and it's not easy to relax with a 2 1/2 year old poking their fingers into your ears.
She has all her toys and bears and dollies, so she could theoretically play happily in her bed til it was time to get up for breakfast.

Tareka hit upon a plan to put a light on a timer in her room. We got an old bedside lamp, a plug in timer and rigged it up well out of reach. We sat Mapera down and explained to her that the light would come on when it was time to get up. If she woke up and the light was off, she had to stay in her bed, if it was on she could call out to us that it was time to get up.
She was really keen on the whole plan and happily repeated the instructions back to us (especially the bit about getting up and calling "Mummy, the light is on!"). So we crossed our fingers and went to bed.

At ar0und 3am a little voice called out in the darkness "Mummy, the light is on!"

Bother.

I got up, checked that it wasn't actually on and pointed this out to Mapera, who agreed that it was off and that she should get back into bed.

Then at 7am, just as the news came on the radio alarm in our room, our little voice piped up again "Mummy, the light is on!". Looks like we may have got it after all.

We've now been using the light trick for about a week, and apart from that first night, Mapera has not called us before 7am ONCE!! I'm going to give her another week with the gate on the door and if she's still waiting til the light comes on, I may be able to take it off at last!

Hurrah! Website!

Thanks to THIS wonderful person I have a little corner of the internet all to myself!

www.giggigoofer.co.nz


It's still under construction and as I am learning html as I go along, it's slow going. BUT IT'S THERE! Let me know your thoughts!

Bad Mummy

Well, this blog seems to be a bit of a schizophrenic caper from my life as a Mum, to various ways of attempting to make money.

Today is about parenting. How not to do it.

Bad Parenting 101:
1. Ensure you go to bed late every night (hell, the kids are only going to wake you up anyway!)
2. When your baby wakes every hour, go in and stuff a dummy in their mouth (it's night time, they don't need anything else)
3. When your toddler climbs into bed with you at 4.30am, whisper angrily at them to be quiet every time they say "Mum" (they definitely know they are supposed to just snuggle up and go back to sleep, you've told them enough times)
4. Get up at 6.30am and stomp into the kitchen telling your skipping 2 year old that they can only have cereal (you can't be bothered to follow their usual routine, surely they can deal with that, can't they?)
5. Decide that you will stop giving the baby a dummy on the same day your toddler gets an ear infection, and after you've all had 3 nights of nicely broken sleep (I'll cope, what's one more sleepless night?)
6. Spend 1.5 hours at bedtime repeatedly taking toddler to bathroom for "poos" and waking tired baby (who is suffering from dummy withdrawal) in order to avoid a potential toilet accident, but knowing toddler is really stalling.
7. Give up and give baby the dummy.

Ah, bad parenting at it's finest.

I now have 2 sleeping children - thanks to the Pamol (Calpol) and the dummy.

One good thing to come out of all this, after spending a day getting Kaitereo to settle herself without a dummy, now when she wakes at night, I can leave her for a few minutes and she'll go back to sleep....won't she?

HATS FOR SALE!

Hats available now: (please note sizes are approximate)



Large Green - fits 9 to 12 months








Large Gray (pink ribbon detail) - fits 9 to 12 months











Large Sage - fits 9 to 12 months








Med Multi - fits 6-9 months











Med Red - fits 6-9 months (button fastened)











Med Blue - fits 6-9 months






Med Sage - fits 6-9 months (button fastened)









Small Red Speckle - fits 3-6 months








Small Green - fits 3-6 months







Small Cream, Blue Band - fits 3-6 months







NB Blue Striped - fits newborn









NB White with Lace & Ribbon edge - fits newborn








NB Cream Speckled - fits newborn







NB Gray Speckled - fits newborn





All hats are priced at $10 (that's New Zealand dollars) and include postage within NZ. If you are overseas, drop me an email with your details and I'll send you a price based on current exchange rates, and the cost of postage to your country.