Letting it all hang out

Day Seven of 'The Daily Post'.

Since we’re on the subject of laundry, let’s talk washing lines. Green Stone Woman pointed out in reply to my last post that your need to iron is reduced if you tumble dry your clothes, and commented “It's different if your clothes dry outside on the line, but nobody in the States does that as far as I know”. Well there is one person who does that… One in 300 million… Yes, you’re reading her blog.

I know it’s all a question of what you’re used to, but it does seem to me ridiculous to put a load of laundry in a tumble dryer when it’s 95 degrees outside. There’s just something in me, that couldn’t, just couldn’t, use a machine to dry laundry, when drying conditions outside are so perfect. Perhaps to appreciate the luxury of it, you have to have lived in Scotland, and done your laundry according to the weather. You probably just wouldn’t understand, unless you’ve had the experience of listening to the weather forecast before putting on your washing machine, feeling smug as you hang your washing out in bright sunshine, and then sprinting out an hour later to rescue it as the rain begins to fall (only to find that it’s still very damp because the sunshine, though bright, didn’t actually have any useful warmth in it). Midwesterners don’t even have an excuse in winter, because they heat their houses so high, that washing would dry perfectly well on a rack. Many homes have a spacious laundry room where the rack could be left out of the way. It’s not as if the damp laundry would need to be draped on radiators round the home, British style.

I understand, from the blogs of Americans in Britain, that line drying leads to crunchy socks and rough towels. Toughen up, people. It was crunchy socks and rough towels that got our men off the beaches at Dunkirk, and made steady the hands of our archers at Agincourt. In return I say to you, at least fresh air doesn’t shrink all your clothes as the drier does, and making use of it will certainly shrink your electricity bill.

Hanging out the washing is one of the few household chores that is pleasurable. Why on earth would I give up that one, and give myself more time for all the other tedious jobs? It wouldn’t be that much more time in any case; hanging out the washing isn’t very time consuming. I’m not going to wax lyrical about how much I enjoy hanging out the washing, because that does sound a little pathetic, but I honestly would miss it, if I converted to tumblianity.

I’m not going to get on an environmental high horse. The thing is, round here, people look on a tumble drier as a standard modern day convenience, and hanging out the washing as something that their mother’s or even grandmother’s generation did. I wonder what my answer would be if someone challenged me over my use of the vacuum cleaner. “Just think of the amount of electricity you use” they could say. “What’s wrong with a broom and a dustpan, and a carpet sweeper? Don’t you care about the environment at all? And why do you have a machine to wash your dishes? All that electricity and all that water too!” My environmental complaints at tumble driers would sound like those, to American ears.

In a lot of neighborhoods, it would be awkward to have a washing line, as plots aren’t fenced, so yard space is very open to public view. I’m lucky in that my neighborhood, being an older one dating back to the 60s, has fenced yards. Nonetheless, I have wondered if there’s a rule somewhere that prohibits washing lines. Fortunately, our back yard isn’t very overlooked, and the trees hide the line, so I think I’m safe. I have an argument prepared, in case I’m challenged. I’m going to say that in Europe, hanging out laundry is a historic craft handed down from generation to generation. I’m very concerned that it is dying out, as spinning and weaving have done, and so I’m taking care to teach the art to my children. I will toss in terms like ‘cultural heritage’ and ‘ancient lore’. If pressed, I could demonstrate the various techniques for hanging, I could show the traditional tools: the clothes pin and the clothes peg. I could quote Shakepearean references such as “The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose”, explaining how Shakespeare’s audience would have understood this as an allusion to the politics of Queen Elizabeth the First and her relationship with Spain. I think that would swing my case.

Of course it’s Shakespeare.

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An iron will?

Day Six of 'The Daily Post'.

When I lived in Scotland, I knew quite a few American families. They came over to do PhDs and took the opportunity to have babies on the NHS. I'm not being cynical - a few of them were very open about how conveniently that worked out for them. One of them shared with me how they enjoyed listening to the local women debate whether it was worth paying 30 pounds a night for a private room in the post-natal ward; she reckoned it would have cost her $5,000 to have her baby in the US.

Let's not get into the health care debate. I'm trying to tell you the story of a conversation I had with a Canadian friend, who was - very tactfully - asking me why British women did so much ironing. The North Americans couldn't understand it. At the time, I considered myself a middle to low intensity ironer: I ironed shirts, tops, trousers, some children's clothes, but not nightwear, bedding, or anything where it wouldn't show. I had friends who ironed tea towels, pyjamas, sheets, towels, the lot (yes, even towels). I was explaining to my Canadian friend how I hardly ironed anything, really, and she replied

"But I literally don't iron anything at all. It's amazing what you can do with a bit of pulling and stretching and smoothing out. This top, for example, I haven't ironed this and I think it looks ok."

That was a seminal moment for me. Before this conversation, I had noticed her top. She was pregnant, and beginning to show, and I had observed that top, thinking how fresh and new it looked, and assuming she'd been shopping and bought some new maternity wear. So there was she, using her cotton jersey top as an example of things she didn't iron, and there was I, admiring the very same top as a pristine garment, straight out of the packet.

I still couldn't quite give up my own ironing habits, although I did try and reduce the amount I did, and I practised that whole pulling and stretching and smoothing out routine. Then when we moved to the US, I decided it was a good opportunity to ditch the ironing altogether, on the basis of 'when in Rome'. And I've never looked back.

In this household, button-up cotton shirts get ironed and trousers if they need it. (Notice how we've moved into the passive voice here, because it wouldn't be strictly true to say "I iron the shirts".) Otherwise, I simply pull and stretch and smooth out, and if the kids' tops and trousers look a bit wrinkled, then I think 'when in Rome', and send them to school anyway. I haven't yet been called in to see the Principal about it.

I don't miss ironing at all. I do miss irony though.

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Intermission - but please read

Recently (within the past 2 or 3 months) I read a post on a US mommy blog which encouraged parents to take advantage of a scheme in the US which subsidises eye tests for children. I made a mental note of it, and thought "if I don't remember the details, I can always google it". Sadly, google hasn't helped me with this one.

Was it YOU who wrote that post? Or can you remember where it was, if you read it too? The scheme had a snappy and memorable name like I can see, or Can you see?, or Eyes R Us. Snappy but, as it turns out, not terribly memorable.

Mommy-brain, mommy-brain, mommy-brain...

How's your constitution?

Day Five of 'The Daily Post'.

For today's post, you need to go over to Pond Parleys, where I am guest blogging. My subject is the intriguing matter of the unwritten British Constitution. It's a subject I know next to nothing about, but since when has knowledge ever been a prerequisite for blogging?

An unusual childhood complaint

Day Four of 'The Daily Post'.

There is a place here which is a favourite for kids' parties. There are lots of games where they earn tickets, and then they trade in the tickets for small prizes. It's like Chuck E Cheese's, without the mouse.

8-yo went to a party there yesterday. As we were setting off, he was desperately looking for a collection of tickets which he earned last time he went. That time, over a year ago, he spotted an electric guitar and decided he would save his tickets, until he had enough saved up for it. Now, a year older, he has worked out that if you earn around a hundred tickets each time, and the guitar is priced at several thousand, it's not a goal you're easily going to reach. Plus we have a kind babysitter who has an old electric guitar she doesn't want any more, and she is going to give it to him.

He couldn't find the tickets anywhere, and eventually had to leave without them. After the party he told me

"I'm really annoyed I can't find them, because I thought I was being smart. I looked them out the night before, and I put them in a safe place, and now I can't remember where that is."

My child has a touch of Mommy-brain.


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Centres

Day Three of 'The Daily Post'.

This was our conversation at dinner the other night.

Me: I'm going into 5-yo's class tomorrow, to help with 'centres'.

8-yo: What are they?

Me: I'm not entirely sure. The teacher said 'reading centres', so I'll probably be listening to the kids read.

8-yo: Reading centres?

Me: Yes. Why?

8-yo [laughing]: I thought you said 'centaurs'.

I can imagine that if the classroom contained reading centaurs, the teacher would indeed need a few parent volunteers to help out.

School sweet school

Day Two of 'The Daily Post'.

Writing yesterday’s post about the Pizza Hut Book-It scheme reminded me of how shocked I was when I first arrived in the US at the amount of sweets and treats handed out in schools. I am keeping my ear cocked for the rest of the day after I publish this post, to see if I can hear the sharp intakes of breath, and the tutting, that I suspect it will cause amongst UK readers.

Sweets (candy to US readers) are a usual and acceptable reward for good behavior or work in school. I can’t really blame the teachers. If I was a teacher, and if it wasn’t frowned upon, I’d hand out plenty. I'd like to be popular too. One of my children was in a class when we first arrived here where the teacher gave out small suckable sweets called light sabres, on the basis that they helped concentration. (They turned out to be called life savers – more appropriate for polo-shaped sweets when you think about it.) Then there is the tradition that children take in treats for everyone on their birthday, usually brownies, doughnuts, or cake. Any and every excuse for sweets or cake seems to be taken, and if there isn’t an excuse to hand, well, they just give it out anyway. In my early outraged days, I considered telling the school that my kids were allergic to sugar, but I never did, and as time has ticked by, I suppose I’ve just had to get used to it.

It’s not just the sugar. It’s the food colouring. Take a look at these.

Birthday cake from Dillons.





Hallowe'en - it's nearly that time of year again.









Breakfast cereal called Fruit Loops. Yup, lots of fruit in those.





All considered normal fare for children. Last Hallowe’en, one of my children’s teachers sent home a sheet about how artificial food colouring can affect children. It contained examples, statistics, and websites for further information. It read like a document seeking to persuade people who had never heard anything on the subject before (“We all know that children’s behavior can change when they’re on a sugar high, but have you ever thought about what else might be affecting them in those trick or treat bags?”) Surely the whole thing about food additives can’t be news to American mums?

I thought I was acclimatised (or acclimated, as they say round here), but 5-yo shocked me this week. We were discussing what she liked best at school, and the conversation went like this:

5-yo: I like Art.

Me (swelling inwardly with pride at creative child): What do you like about Art?

5-yo: The teacher gives us all bubble-gum.

Me: All of you?

5-yo: Yes, everyone. It’s only for the Art lesson. We have to put it in the trash when we leave.

Me: Oh. Um. Do you really need to be chewing bubble-gum in an Art lesson? (Not a fair question for a 5 year old, but I was in shock.)

5-yo: Well, she does have RULES about it.

Me: What are the rules?

5-yo: You’re not allowed to put your fingers in your mouth, because that makes them sticky. [Sensible rule in a school where there are reported cases of swine flu, though I couldn’t help thinking that not giving gum in the first place would be better.] And if you want to take it out, you have to ask the teacher first, and then you have to put it in the bin.

What can I say?

Pizza Glut

Day One of ‘The Daily Post’, and what better way to start than with a rant?

The Pizza Hut Book-It scheme. When your child is at preschool, in kindergarten, or in first grade, your teacher informs you that he is taking part in the Book-It scheme. It’s a wonderful idea, to encourage reading. You set goals for the number of minutes your child spends reading per week, and if your child achieves those goals, at the end of the month, your child is rewarded with a voucher for a free pizza at Pizza Hut.

I feel my blood pressure rising even as I type. I am so annoyed by this scheme. It’s just blatant marketing to young children, without any opportunity for parental control. Those marketing people at Pizza Hut are by-passing and manipulating me.

The voucher is for one plain child-sized pizza. But you’re not going to take your one child to Pizza Hut, and buy them one plain child-sized pizza. Oh no. You’re going to take your whole family. So for every voucher Pizza Hut gives out (and remember, we’re talking monthly, to every child between the ages of 4 and 7), they probably get a significant number of entire families buying a meal in their restaurants. Even if you did leave the family behind, and take your child on her own to Pizza Hut, you would still end up spending money. You could try insisting on one small plain pizza and a glass of water and getting your child to see this as a big reward, but Pizza Hut know as well as you do, you’re probably going to end up spending on extra toppings, a drink, a dessert, a coffee for yourself.

I know that American families eat out much more often than we do, and Pizza Hut is an obvious kid-friendly choice. My guess is that eating regularly at Pizza Hut is just part of life for a lot of families round here. I’m trying to be culturally sensitive here - perhaps Pizza Hut are just generously helping along families to do what comes naturally to them - nope, I'm afraid it’s not doing much to lower my blood pressure.

Here’s another annoying thing. Because there’s always a 'meal deal', you usually end up not even using that voucher, because the helpful waiter points out that it works out more expensive. So you get to take it home for another time. That irritates me more than I can tell you.

What does this piece of marketing cost Pizza Hut? Almost nothing, I imagine. It's just the cost of printing the vouchers, because here’s the really clever thing – it’s the teachers who do all the administration. Nice one, Pizza Hut. You get the teachers to do the work of keeping track of all those weekly reading minutes. What’s more, if there’s any negative publicity to be had, if a child hasn’t achieved their goal, then it’s the teacher who is the bad guy, not you. Very clever. I just hope the schools have been clever enough on their part to negotiate the most enormous big fat donation up front, with extra pepperoni.

There are ways to deal with the vouchers: my best one is to praise the child for the reading achievement, and to put the voucher away “for a special occasion” (for which read “till you’ve forgotten about it”) – which sometimes works but sometimes doesn’t. I am also aware that there are families for whom a free pizza is a welcome gift, the ones with children on free school meals, the ones whose children take home a 'food for kids' bag on a Friday afternoon. For all that, I still think schools shouldn’t be in the business of promoting Pizza Hut. So, my friends, next time you’re choosing between Pizza Hut and another purveyor of edible food-like items, think of me, and choose the other one. It won’t dent their profits all that much, but you can email me and make me feel better.

Since I’m on the subject, I’d like to extend my rant in the direction of dentists. Why do you give my children a voucher saying “you’ve been brave!” and entitling them to a free kids’ meal at Applebee’s? For a start, I have never implied to them that the dentist is anything other than fun and friendly. I don’t want them (yet) to associate the dentist with the need to be brave. I’m amazed that you do. And I’m amazed that you think encouraging them to go to Applebee’s is in the interests of their dental health. But besides all that, I have this to say to you. A free kids’ meal at Applebee’s? Do you think I’m stupid? Kids eat free at Applebee’s on a Tuesday anyway. You’re having a laugh.

Iotie and Iota

If someone had said to me “Write down a list of all the issues that are playing out in your life at the moment, and we’ll weave them together into a story for a movie. Choose one of your favorite actresses, and we’ll get her to play the lead. Oh, and pick a European capital you like, and we’ll throw some luscious shots of that in too”, then Julie and Julia would have been the result. I saw that film over the week-end, and I loved it. It was all there for me: a good story, two good stories actually, a clutch of well-drawn characters, a bit of romance/relationships, some clever moments, some funny moments, some emotional moments. It was a bit clunky in places, but mostly, a thoroughly good watch. For me, there was more to it than just a good movie, though. I connected with it deeply.

As for that list of issues, it would go like this: blogging and whether there’s any point to it, being a trailing spouse and whether there’s any point to it, writing a book and whether there’s any point to it (and whether it’s remotely possible), the different feel that living in Europe has to living in America and whether that matters, how to stir up your mojo when your life feels full of nothing. As I wrote that, I realised that ‘dealing with the emotional aftermath of being treated for cancer’ doesn’t feature, but I’m thinking that the more perceptive among you will possibly spot subtle elements of it between the lines. The rest of you will probably think ‘denial’. (Denial? Me? Never.) There was something about cookery in the film too, but that’s not on my list of life issues, as it happens.

Julie and Julia, at different times, in different places, and for different reasons, each added purpose and oomph to her life, by adopting a project and getting on with it. As a result of watching Julie and Julia, I have decided to publish a blog post every day, for a month. That is my project. I was going to wait till 1st October to start, to make it tidy. I was also sneakily thinking I could use the intervening time to write a little advance stock of posts. But that isn’t the right spirit for the challenge, is it? So I’m going to start tomorrow. Watch this space.

I’ve also dug out a tapestry, which Husband gave me the first Christmas we were married. That was 13 years ago. I’ve done about one square inch in those 13 years, but I’m determined to finish it now. To keep me up to the mark, I have bought 5-yo a tapestry kit too. I pictured us sitting next to each other, companionably stitching. Of course I hugely underestimated how many minutes (seconds, sometimes) a 5 year old can manage on her own, before reaching the end of a row, or needing to change color, or getting into a muddle. If I’m going to make any progress on my own tapestry, I’ll need to do so in solitary sessions. I think it’s a good project, though.

Incidentally, what happened to the word cookery? Everyone says cooking these days. Even cookery books have become cookbooks. It's a shame. Cookery is a great word. We should have a word bloggery as well, and why not tapestryery while we're about it?

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part lV

Last one in the series, I promise.

I am wonderfully weird, because I actively seek out opportunities to talk to my children about sex, while they are young. Don’t get the wrong impression. I don’t sit them in a row on the sofa, and address them with the aid of a flipchart, or a power point presentation. No. It’s more just a question of, quite literally, the birds and the bees. There’s always some hanky panky going in nature, which you can use to bring the conversation round to where little fledglings come from, and from there, you’re just one tweet away from where human babies come from. (Interesting phrase, come to think of it, “the birds and the bees”, because for all my own sex education, I do know how birds reproduce, but I don’t really have a clue how bees do it.)

We have a book for young children, which I occasionally slip into the bedtime reading pile. On a given evening, I might read The Three Little Pigs, Where do Babies Come From?, and Dazzling Diggers. It used to cross my mind that it might be hard for the kids to distinguish whether the Babies one was fact or fiction, especially if interspersed between the pigs and the diggers, but children are remarkably good at filtering information over time. Perhaps they start off thinking it’s a fairy story, and a rather bizarre one at that, but at least I’ve introduced the subject to them. Now we also have a couple of books suitable for older children, which are more detailed. No doubt the second and third children in the family will read those ones at much younger ages than the oldest has done (I’m a third child myself, I know these things).

The reasons I decided not to wait until the children asked, and then deliver ‘The Talk’, are fairly simple. I didn’t want to miss the boat, and find that some well-meaning but ill-informed friend at school had done the job for me. Or worse, some ill-meaning one. It’s so much easier, as a parent, to pick your own moment. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself cornered, and the moment will pick you. It’ll be the night before the lesson when they’re going to cover it at school, when your child thrusts a grubby letter into your hand saying “Mum, you’re meant to have signed this by last week to say it’s ok for me to be there, but I forgot to give it to you”. Or it’ll be at Sunday lunch with relatives, when your 5 year old pipes up “how did the baby get into Auntie Moira’s tummy?”, and you have to mumble something about “tell you later, now get on with your spaghetti” while Uncle Peter says he’s just getting another beer and disappears to the kitchen.

It’s just easier to talk to younger children. It’s like apologizing. The longer you leave it, the harder you make it for yourself. Younger children are unembarrassed, and don’t say “that’s gross” as often. You don’t have to go into any more detail than you want, because at a young age, they are happy with very little, and often not terribly interested anyway. And here’s something experience has taught me. It’s not a question of having ‘The Talk’. It’s more a question of ‘The Talks’. For a start, you’re never going to cover it all, in the right level of detail, with all the associated thoughts on relationships and responsibilities, on one occasion. So unless you want them to find out most of their information from other sources, you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to more than just ‘The Talk’ in any case. You might as well start early.

Incidentally, if anyone knows where bees come from, then do let me know. Or do you think I should ask my mother?

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part lll

I thought I’d find one or two kindred spirits on the views expressed in my previous three posts, but on the basis of experience to date, I’ll be surprised if I find anyone alongside me on this one. This is, I think, my unique wonderfully weird moment in parenthood.

My three babies were all late. Gloriously late. Frustratingly late for everyone else, but gloriously late for me. Each one was, give or take, two weeks late, born around the 42 week mark. And here’s the weird bit. I LOVED those last two weeks.

I was lucky. At that stage of pregnancy, life can be uncomfortable for many women. If that’s you, then I have to tell you, it’s because your abdominal muscles are too tight. Don’t worry: you’ll reap your rewards in the years to come. Decades to come. Women like me, with abdominal muscles the slackness of a lettuce leaf (and I’m talking lollo rosso, not iceberg), let the baby hang out in front , and our internal organs have their usual space and go about their usual business uncompromised. I never had heartburn, I had a huge appetite, I never had to get up in the night to wee, I slept like a proverbial baby (and I was soon to find out how proverbial that baby was). I felt full of health, and surprisingly energetic. It seemed like a reward for the miserable early weeks of nausea and fatigue. I did have to counter comments such as ‘you are HUGE, oh my goodness, look at the SIZE of your BUMP, are they sure it’s not twins?”, which under other circumstances might have been a little upsetting, but in late pregnancy, a happy hormone is released in huge measure into my body, which turns me into a cow-like creature. I could serenely chew the cud all day long, watching the world go by, and crowds of onlookers could hold placards and chant slogans about the size of my bump, without me really noticing them at all.

During those two weeks, I would roll my eyes appropriately in response to the ubiquitous question “are you still here?”, and accept people’s kindly-offered sympathy. But inside, I would be hugging to myself my delicious little secret: this was the best bit of all. Being pregnant isn’t a picnic, but there is a loveliness to it, and to me, labour would inevitably mean loss as well as gain. I loved those kicks and squirms, the hidden relationship with my baby, the moments spent wondering whether it was a boy or girl, what he or she would look like, how much it could hear of my voice, the traffic, the radio. The complete and perfect ownership of a priceless treasure, which, once out in the world, would never belong solely to me ever again. I think this is why we never settled on a name before our babies were born. Somehow naming them was giving them a public identity. Until birth, they were all just mine.

Another factor in my contentment during those final two weeks, was that I loved my body. I loved my huge, huge bump. I would wallow in the bath, waddle along the street, sink irrecoverably into sofas, rejoicing in my whale-like being, and loving nothing better than to run my hand over the stretched, soft skin of my bump. For all of our lives, as women, we feel so inadequate for not having the perfect body. Along comes pregnancy, and, for me, the realization each time that my body is a marvelous thing, feeding and nurturing another human life, keeping it safe, giving it all it needs. In pregnancy, as never before or since, my body feels to me purposeful, beautiful, sufficient, perfect. I feel so sad for new mothers these days, all so obsessed with losing baby weight, getting their bodies back to how they were. Is no time of a woman’s life safe from the grinding competition and pressure for a toned body?

But back to me. Picture me, if you will, huge and happy, fending off any doctor’s attempt to induce labour, each day wondering “is this the day?” and toying with the date in my mind. Would this be a nice birthday to have, for life? I'd see the changing mat on the chest of drawers, all ready for the tiny bottom and tiny indignant cries. I'd touch the waiting baby clothes, clean, sweet-smelling, and impossibly small. I'd shut my eyes and try to remember that delicious eau de newborn, and know that it didn’t matter at all how impossible that memory is to recreate, because it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, more than a few days until I had a soft head to bury my nose in for real. I like anticipation. I think I prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day.
Perhaps that’s it. The last gasp of pregnancy is the ultimate in anticipation.

I expect it was all my doing. Midwives say that both baby and mother have to be ready, and maybe my babies were in there, head down, champing gummily at the bit, and it was me resisting the trigger of labour. Midwives know that women can do that kind of thing. I told them it was genetic, that my mother’s babies had all been late, but that was something of an exaggeration. She had one 42-weeker out of four; the rest of us were a respectable 2 or 3 days late. All I know is that I have never met anyone else who has actually hoped for a late baby, and I just can’t understand why. Anyone out there?

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part ll

The next way I'm weird is that I didn't really want my children to believe in Father Christmas. I never did, since my older sister had been terrified at the idea of a strange man coming into the house, and so my parents had never had the chance to spin the story. I never felt I missed out. Parents talk fondly of the magic of Christmas, but I always had plenty of that in the sheer excitement of waking up on Christmas morning and kicking at the end of the bed to feel the lumpy stocking there. It hadn't been any less fun for knowing where it had come from. As a family, we enjoyed the whole charade, and played along with the story, while we all knew it wasn't true. It was like a great shared secret.

When our first child reached Christmas-appreciating age, I'd rather planned to go down the same route. Then I discovered that to the great majority of parents, it was hugely important to keep the Father Christmas myth alive for as long as possible. I honestly had had no idea before then, that this was of such consequence. I didn't really want to get my son to believe the story because of my own experience as a child, and because I anticipated a day when he would find out and would then wonder what else I'd been fibbing to him about. I wanted him to be able to trust me 100%, always. It made me uneasy to sell him a fiction as a fact. I also knew of older children deeply upset on finding out they were the last child in their class still to believe.

The assumption at my son's preschool was so strong, that we were all doing the Father Christmas thing to the Nth degree, that it would have been very difficult to opt out. I heard tales of mothers who had let older siblings tell, and how this had ruined Christmas in previous years. I heard of the devious tales that children were told to explain how Father Christmas managed to get gifts to the right place, when a child was spending Christmas away from home. It was a huge conspiracy, carefully guarded, and even if I'd been brave enough to have broken out myself, I had to think through the ramifications of that for my son. For him, it would have been a hard burden to bear to be the only 3 year old at the Christmas party who knew that Father Christmas was in fact one of the dads with a pillow up his front, and to know that he must not tell any of the other children under any circumstance. I certainly wasn’t going to risk letting him be the child who spoiled Christmas for 20 families.

So I went along with the majority, but I confess that I did sow seeds of doubt. I would tell my son "it's amazing how Father Christmas manages to get round all the houses in the world in one night - I wonder how that can be", or "you know that song about how you only get presents from Father Christmas if you've been good? well, the funny thing is, when it comes to it, ALL children get presents after all". Call me subversive, but hey, in this house, the children imbibe doses of irony along with their mother's milk, so even at 3, I was fairly sure that my son was picking up at least some vague sense that when we talked of “Father Christmas", we did so with invisible inverted commas.

The saving grace for me, was a Canadian couple who hosted a St Nicholas’ Day party, early in December the following year. I hadn’t known before then how the Father Christmas legend had developed from an early East European bishop (Saint Nicholas becoming Santa Claus). He gave money and food to the poor, leaving it tactfully in the shoes they left outside their doors, which over time became the presents in the stockings. To me, this gave the perfect half-way house between truth and fiction, with the divide nicely blurred. Now, I talk about how there was a real man, a long long time ago, who was the real Santa Claus. But when they've asked me outright what happens to the stockings by the fireplace, I've started by fudging with "who knows?", and then over time, have come clean and confessed that it is really Mummy and Daddy. But we say "it's fun to pretend it's him", and we do just that. We do the carrot for the reindeer and the mince pie and whisky for Santa, and on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, we act it out just like proper believing families. There’s plenty of mystery and magic, but no room for future disappointment.

But here’s the really intriguing thing. Even when I have debunked the myth, my children have each believed, because they have chosen to. For each of them, there have been 2 or 3 years when they have known that Santa isn’t real, but they’ve believed in him anyway. I don’t know whether it’s peer group pressure, or the desire for fairy tale, but they have taken the lead and acted the story out so hard, that Husband and I have followed along. For you non-weird parents, that may well be an argument to support your approach of keeping the myth alive from the outset. I prefer to interpret it as an argument that it doesn’t really matter which approach you take, so long as everyone has fun.

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part l

Well, it was a pony tail holder, so congrats to those of you who got it right or came close. The petals were a bit misleading, I know. Originally 5-yo had said "it's used by girls" and I, in a proper politically-correct non-gender-delimiting way, encouraged her to add in the "mostly". I pointed out that we do have a male friend (adult, not Kindergarten) who wears his hair in a pony tail, although it must be said that I haven't ever seen him wear it in a bright yellow elastic band with decorative petals.

At the wedding service of Mike and Phoebe in Friends , Mike says to Phoebe "I love the way you're so wonderfully weird", which is where I nicked the title of this series of posts from. Now I have muddled my way through all my children's preschool years, I can look back and say that mostly I have toed some kind of majority line, and gone with the prevailing flow. But there have been some things on which I have found myself out on a limb. One of the great things about mummy blogging - parent blogging, I should say - is that it gives me confidence to be a little braver than I might otherwise have been. And certainly braver in talking about it. I have learned that if I want to do something a little differently, chances are that someone else out there agrees with me. I’ve often read posts which have made me say “Ah, so it’s not just me, then”.

So I thought I’d do a little series on the ways in which I have found myself wonderfully weird, as a parent. Feel free to join in my weirdness, or to confess to your own. There’s nothing as cleansing as divulging some personal weirdness amongst friends. You should try it some time, if you haven’t already.

The first way I’m a wonderfully weird parent, is that I hate sleepovers. Who on earth invented the sleepover? You invite my child and a few others to your child’s birthday party. You are going to give them all pizza and have them watch a movie. Fine. Stop there. It’ll be 8.00pm or 9.00pm. I will come and get my child. Everyone will have a lovely time, presents will be opened, photos will be taken, and the birthday will be duly celebrated. But oh no, no, no. You insist on keeping him overnight. This means that he will go to bed at midnight. He will wake up at his usual time, or earlier, perverse though that seems. You will feed him a high-octane sugar breakfast of pancakes or waffles. Then I will collect him, and for the rest of the day, he will be intermittently grumpy, close to tears, unable to amuse himself, and will bicker with his siblings. If I suggest he is tired, he will shout “I’m NOT tired, I keep TELLING you”. The best I can hope for is to wuther through the day, get him to bed relatively early, and hope that normal service is resumed tomorrow. One day, may I just point out, is half the week-end.

So far, I have avoided sleepovers as much as possible. I have never hosted one. If given the option, I have collected the child in the evening. I have even stooped as low as quickly organizing something for the next day, to give myself a feeble mummy excuse about an early morning start. This week-end, since we have had a week of allergies, I sent along a night-time Benadryl tablet, hoping this would somehow encourage an earlier bedtime, or at least a modest lie-in. It didn’t. I have managed to sneak by on minimum sleepovers so far, but with a 5 year old daughter, I fear I am soon to enter the era of major sleepover activity.

What is this ridiculous enthusiasm for sleepovers? At best, if hosted by a family you know well, you have to endure a day on the receiving end of the behavior of an irritable toddler in the body of an older child. At worst (and this hasn’t yet happened to me, but I can imagine the dilemma it poses), if hosted by a family you don’t know well, you spend an anxious evening wondering what on earth possessed you to let your child stay in a strange house, and then you have the endurance trial the following day as well.

Does anyone share my weird hatred of sleepovers? Am I not as weird as I think on this one?

Tales from Kindergarten

The universe took pity on me. The computer wasn't damaged, the hives are going, the allergies are abating, the swine flu hasn't hit yet, and... and... drum roll... and... yesterday 5-yo got to put a drop in the Principal's bucket. It was her proudest moment, the fulfillment of her loftiest ambitions. The Principal wasn't there, but "there were some kind ladies who told me I'd done a good job".

There are three Kindergarten teachers at 5-yo's school. They are called Mr Davis, Mrs Davis, and Mrs Smith. 5-yo discovered that two of them are a married couple.

"Do you know, Mamma, two of our Kindergarten teachers are married to each other? I think it must be Mr Davis and Mrs Davis. What do you think?"

I've been warned that the playground is a more complicated place for girls than boys. We're only in week two, and already there is evidence. 5-yo was sad the other day that she didn't get much recess time. When I asked why not, she told me that she'd had to spend most of it carrying another girl's sweater, while that girl played. I asked her why she'd had to hold this girl's sweater, and she replied "she told me I had to". To add insult to injury, the girl was playing the while with Lily, who as we all know, is 5-yo's new friend.

Apart from this dip in her happiness, all seems to be going well. A highlight of her week has been Show and Share. She had to take in something her favourite colour, and have three clues to give the other children. They then had to guess what the object was. Her favourite colour for the past 5 years has been pink. Unwaveringly so. But it changed this week to yellow. The clues for her Show and Share were:

* it's stretchy

* it has things like petals on it

* it is used mostly by girls.

Having written these clues down, I realised they sounded a bit rude somehow, so I was rather glad to be in the realms of yellow, not pink.

Because I love a good blog competition, I'm going to get you all to guess what the answer is. Apart from those three clues and the colour, the only other Kindergarten requirement is that the item fits inside a backpack (so it's not an elephant, for example). No prizes, except the glow of satisfaction that you have out-performed 23 Midwestern Kindergarteners.

I was going to ask you all to become drops in my own bucket, by subscribing to my blog. So I went and activated the 'Followers' gadget, which I've recently discovered is really simple to do, and doesn't require any serious techno-wizard skills. And guess what? 35 of you are followers already. Look at you lovely people, over there on the right. Who'd have thought it? My bucket already has 35 drops. Any more out there? Go on, make me even happier.