Coping Mechanisms

One of the main triggers of me going a little loopy is when there is too much inside my head. Brain dumps are my best friend, I need to hold my head over a sheet of paper and let everything that’s inside it fall out of my ear and allow itself to become more organised somewhere other than my skull. The house is always liberally scattered with sheets of paper with random scrawlings, doodles and numbers that at one point made sense to me, but now out of context, and usually with the same thought spread over different scraps of paper, they may as well be written in another language.

Inspired by this beautiful diary on Kikki.K I have resolved to empty my brain on a daily basis and give those currently wandering thoughts a home where I can make a little more sense of them. Unfortunately, I know that if I drop $30 on a book with nothing but numbers and a pretty cover I’m going to freak out about using it, the perfectionist in me will rise up and it will sit untouched forever more.

Instead I’ve gone for the McValue meal version: one $3 Derwent sketchbook and a sharpie, no new notebook=neat writing guilt, no beating myself up if I miss a day, just focusing on making my mental state a little more stable and clearing up the debris that is currently fighting for attention within my cranium.

I do hope that 2010 will be 365 days of awesome for me and for our little family. Although in comparison to the mental clusterfuck that has been 2009, even a mediocre year will look like peaches and cream. I know that nothing will magically become wonderful in three days time when the clock ticks over, but  I can’t help but feel excited about the fresh start, and hopefully this little book will be part of it.

And Breathe.

The festivities are over for another year and we came out of it relatively unscathed.

Once again I learned the hard lesson that the kids really couldn’t care less about whether the honeycomb set properly, whether the tags matched the wrapping paper or whether we left out oats or carrots for Rudolf. They (and my husband) care more about having a sane wife and mother instead of me stressing out because one silver ribbon is more metallic than the other.

Fortunately I got my meltdown out of the way on Christmas eve, allowing us to have a fairly calm Christmas day in the heat with Dan’s family. Christmas morning was a little overwhelming for Declan, meaning he refused to take a nap before we left for my in law’s house for lunch and more pressies. Before the seafood was even served he was crashed out on the rug and snoring.

I know officially I should probably be bothered by having Christmas lunch without my eldest, but eating an entire meal without getting up and running around to tend to his every whim was probably the greatest Christmas miracle ever, it’s amazing how much better food tastes when it’s fresh.

Now we’ve had a few days off and it’s back into the swing of things. Bring on 2010!

Not Such A Happy Christmas

Last night was Declan’s Preschool Christmas Pageant. He’s been practicing the songs for weeks, he had the actions down perfectly and spent all Friday afternoon telling me about Santa coming to visit preschool that evening. The whole family was excited about it and we’d even dragged the in laws along for the event.

I’m sure you can guess how the evening went.

I wasn’t prepared for how packed it would be, you would have thought we were attending Elvis’ comeback tour. I went into a full blown anxiety attack before we’d even got to the gates.

The PreSchool owner got up on the little stage to welcome everyone, and with a crack of thunder the heavens opened, it continued to rain for the entirety of the kids’ songs.

Not that it mattered of course, because Declan refused to get up on stage with the other kids, he wasn’t having bar of it, not even with the coaxing of his teacher. Instead he gave us our own performance under the shelter of the veranda, including some awesome Thriller-esque moves.

We were meant to wait for Santa in the individual classrooms, which Declan did great at, right up until other people came into the classroom. Seeing his room packed with the legs of people he didn’t know lead to another meltdown. No amount of promising that Father Christmas would arrive soon was enough to calm him down and we were out of there before you could say Rudolf.

No pageant, no raffle winnings, no visit with Santa.

Seriously. I made cupcakes for this and everything.

A Mum’s Take On The Clean Feed

Everyone’s busy shopping, finishing up a hectic final week at work and visiting with friends and family to celebrate the season. Steven Conroy is sitting in his office gleefully rubbing his hands, what better time could there be to roll out a new government policy that will affect everyone in Australia with access to an internet connection?

This evening the Australian government greenlighted the plans to go ahead with an internet filtering scheme.

From the SMH (emphasis mine):

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year’s elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.

The blacklist, featuring material such as child sex abuse, sexual violence and instructions on crime, would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies.

[...]

“Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet material which is not acceptable in any civilised society,” he said.

“It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material.“

There are so many flaws here that have been listed by plenty of other bloggers and websites, and I won’t even start on the issues that would arise from a public complaints mechanism, there’s no point in me repeating everything that’s already been said, and probably far more eloquently than I can put it.

What I can give you is a mother’s take on the whole thing.

My sons are growing up surrounded by computers. My almost two year old know that Mummy and Daddy use them for work, he has his own laptop to play DVDs on and he’ll even ask to watch a certain music video or film clip on YouTube – recently The Proclaimers have been on high rotation.

As odd as this may seem to his grandparents, it’s not odd for his generation. He is being raised in an age where the computer and the internet is king. The entire world is just the touch of a button away, and I’m quite happy to sit down with him and allow him to explore that world, under my supervision.

Not under the supervision of the government.

Because I am fully capable of looking after and monitoring my own children, I don’t need Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy to do it for me.

My issue lies with the fact that once censorship is brought in the lines become very grey. If my teenage son starts to think he may be gay and goes to seek an online support group to help him come to terms with who he is, will that be banned? If one of the boys decide that they’ve had enough of my heathen ways and wish to look into some religious groups, will those searches bring up red flags? If I ever have a daughter (or one of my sons doesn’t shrink wrap it) and she ends up in a situation where she needs to look into the options available for ending an unwanted pregnancy, will she still be able to see an unbiased argument from a range of different opinions?

In all of these situations I would hope that my kids would be comfortable in confiding in their parents, but I also know teenage-hood doesn’t work like that. If their first step is using the internet as a form of support through a difficult time in their life then I don’t have an issue with it, what I do have an issue with is the government cutting off that support, because some of those opinions may differ from what is considered “right” by the governing bodies.

I want my children (and of course myself) to have access to the WORLD WIDE web, not the PG rated version filled only with content that our government deems safe.

I like to think that I’m a capable mother.

Capable of teaching my sons what is and isn’t acceptable.

Capable of sitting down with the boys to teach them about internet safety.

Capable of looking after my family without Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy fighting a battle to “save the children”, a battle which does nothing more than infringe on my, and my family’s rights.

I strongly advise every Australian (or not) to contact their local representative and let them know that this is not a wise use of our tax dollars, to encourage them to move forward instead of back, and let them know that the rest of the world is laughing at us as a country.

A Hot Sweaty Version Of Scrooge

…and I don’t mean hot and sweaty in a naughty way, I mean hot and sweaty in that it’s hot enough to cook steak on the pavement and I’m knocked up and dripping bucket after bucket of sweat from every available pore.

I am still adjusting to the Australian Christmas. Christmas in the UK is just such a different experience. I can’t help but feel like it’s just some big elaborate make believe that the entire country puts on just to wind up tourists. I love Australia, I am very happy to call it my home, but December always brings with it a strong longing for the motherland. Homesickness, combined with being 7 months pregnant and the ridiculous heat ends up with me becoming Scrooge.

Last year the Christmas tree went up when Declan went to bed on Christmas Eve and came down 24 hours later the following day, and even in that short space of time Declan still managed to pull the entire thing down about five times. This year we have double the trouble with a now mobile Connor to add to the mix, and there was no way I was putting that much work into a tree just for a day of the pretty. So instead the scrooge in me splashed out fifteen bucks on ebay and replaced our tree with stickers.

Best. Idea. Eva.

It took me five minutes to put up. It looks festive without being too in your face OMG CHRISTMAS!! Declan’s delighted with counting the balls and telling me what the pictures are. And best of all, come January the 6th it will take me five minutes to pull down, and there’s not even a hint of having to battle with fairy lights or vacuum up glitter until June.

Christmas decorating win!

Five Things I Should Have Done More Of Before Spawning

My friend, Tamsyn, is scheduled to have her first baby on Tuesday. It’s been awesome reading her blog and bringing back all of the feelings I had whilst pregnant with Declan. Her last weekend of being without a small being dependent on her for his every need has got me thinking about my life before kids, and what I wish I had taken advantage of whilst I didn’t have children.

Don’t get me wrong, my kids are (mostly) awesome, but there are a few things I am kicking myself for not doing more of before they fell out of my froot loop.

1. Gone to the cinema: This is our number one regret as a couple, we used to go every fortnight or so to see a movie, and it’s something I miss terribly. It’s not that we can’t go to the cinema, it’s just that it now it’s a huge production with many players. We have to arrange a time to go, arrange my mother in law to babysit BOTH children (Connor isn’t an issue, Declan is a whole other ballgame), prepare the kids, pack up toys and snacks, listen to Declan screaming as we leave and this is all before we’ve actually agreed on a movie. Before we would go out to lunch, drive past the cinema and decide on the spur of the moment to go and catch whatever film was on next. Of course I can also rejoice in how much money this is saving us, last time we went to the cinema it cost us $40!

2. Indulged In My Hobbies: This one is a little different, I’m very lucky in that Dan is more than happy to watch the kids whilst I indulge in sewing, but I long for a day when I can sit down in the morning with an idea in my head and spend ten solid hours bashing it out on the sewing machine. Everything is done in bits and pieces now, what would have previously taken a day now takes a week or even two. I can get some stuff done in the evening assuming everyone is in bed in a timely manner, but my creative brain works better in the early morning for some reason. Unfortunately, Declan was my reason for learning to sew, so I only got a month of uninterrupted sewing before he came along.

3. Eaten Hot meals: Like most mothers I have adjusted to lukewarm food and drink. We eat about half our dinners as a family around the table, and the other half I cook for the kids and then cook for Dan and I when they’re in bed. Family meals are spent fussing over who wants what, replacing Declan’s green fork with a pink one to avoid the breakdown and telling Connor off for throwing food at the wall. Meals with just Dan rarely go without being interrupted by Declan coming out of his bedroom with various requests or Connor deciding that sleep is for the weak. Although they’re more regular than they were during the newborn stage (try breastfeeding whilst eating Honey Mustard Chicken!) those hot fresh-out-of-the-pan meals are still far and few between!

4. Had wild monkey sex: I’m sure you know the kind, the kind of shag that pisses off the neighbours. Similar to the cinema trips, sex is a huge production: Both kids asleep? Check. Total silence to ensure things stay this way? Check. Suitable position to navigate around the gigantic pregnant belly? Check. Complete lack of enthusiasm and spontaneity? Check!

5. Enjoyed the floor: I promise this isn’t related to point four – perverts. Not until you’ve stepped on a Duplo brick in the middle of the night, tripped over the Corn Popper and taken your shin out on a Tonka Truck will you truly understand this one. I haven’t seen my lounge room floor in three years. I can spend 3 hours cleaning it all up only to walk into the kitchen for a drink and return to find it covered once again. On those odd occasions that I do manage to get the floor free of toys I roll about on the carpet like a cat in heat, right up until a stray lego that’s leaped out of the toybox jams itself into my shoulder.

I love the kids, I love the change that they have brought in me and my life, but every so often I wish this whole Mum job had better holiday benefits. Just give me a week off with movies, wild sex, hot food (and cold cider) a quilting bee and clean floors and I will be a happy woman.

What’s your advice for Tamsyn, what should she spend her last couple of days enjoying?

Fairy Tale Creatures And The Lies We Tell

Recently a discussion came up on my online mother’s group about Father Christmas. One of the Mums had picked up her 5 year old son from a playdate only to find that he’d informed his playmate that Santa didn’t exist, and in return had copped a beating. Her son has from day one been told that the jolly fat man isn’t real, his playmate had been brought up being told that he very much existed, and his response to the differing opinion was to lash out.

It’s made me think about the myths and legends that develop in childhood, and how to approach them with the boys.

My Mum was a little funny on the whole Santa thing. She didn’t like the idea of teaching us that a strange bearded man comes into our room once a year and leaves presents, and although she let us visit “Santa’s Grotto” (an English tradition, usually a gingerbread house or huge Christmas tree shaped structure surrounded by elves and set up in the centre of town or a shopping centre, you’d hand over your couple of quid and in return got to queue for half an hour, sit on the fat man’s lap, put in your requests for Christmas and pull a toy out of the lucky dip box, they didn’t do photos 15 years ago, but that’s probably changed now) it was always teamed with a discussion about how we don’t go up to strangers normally, sit on their lap and accept sweeties and gifts from them.

As we got to talking about it once I had kids I found that a lot of it was resentment. My mum was a single woman raising four children, there was no way she was letting some bloke from The North Pole take all the credit for how hard she worked to give us the Christmas she felt we deserved.

The alternate Christmases spent with my Dad was another matter. He was (and still is) a big kid, he delighted in the magic of Christmas. He once spent hours cutting strips of wrapping paper so that he could wrap the lilac coloured bike Santa left for me when I was about five, he didn’t just throw a sheet over it, he wrapped the handlebars, the pedals and every single wheel spoke. I clearly remember faking my belief in Father Christmas for years past when I knew the truth simply to foster the magic that surrounded Christmas for him. I remember thinking to myself that I couldn’t let him know that I knew in case it ruined his Christmas.

Of course these two completely opposing views have had an affect on my thoughts on the Santa fable and how to deal with it with the boys. It’s not something that’s really come up before this year, but Declan is coming home from preschool talking about Santa bringing presents and for the first time has an awareness of the holiday and of St. Nick.

So, with my kids, this is how Father Christmas will be operating:

• - Santa brings a stocking and one large present, the remaining gifts are from Dan and I (other family aren’t an issue at this point as I’m fairly adamant about spending Christmas morning with just the four of us).
• - I will happily foster and encourage the magic and excitement of Father Christmas, we leave homemade honeycomb and milk out for him and a carrot for Rudolf, have a “Santa Key” left on our doorstep for him to allow him access to our chimneyless house.
• - I don’t intend on visiting Santa or doing the photo thing unless Declan (or Connor when he’s old enough) requests it. Whether I’d buy the resulting photos is still out for debate – I’m not too keen on the idea of paying $30 for the privilege of having a photo of my kids sitting on the lap of a complete stranger.
• - If (when) the question comes up, I will be prepared to tell them that no, he isn’t real – if they ask a direct question I wouldn’t feel comfortable lying to my kids. At the same time will take care to remind them to keep the magic and spirit for other children and their younger siblings.

Of course, this is all theoretical right now – give me a couple of years and the first time I hear the dreaded “but Jack at school said Santa wasn’t real!” and we’ll see how I do!

As for the mother in my mum’s group. As far as I’m concerned, both little boys were in the wrong. Her son should be aware of other children’s feelings on the matter and not be a smart arse about it, and I think explaining that should be part of letting your kid in on the secret. But his friend had no right to react in such a violent way, and needs to be taught that there’s a right and a wrong way to deal with beliefs that differ from his own.

Of course, both of these are fairly advanced concepts for a five year old to take on board, so whilst it may sound wonderful in theory, the reality might be another matter all together.

Does Santa visit your home? If he does how do you intend on dealing with the inevitable questions that will eventually arise?

It Aint Easy Being Green

You’d be stretching to call me houseproud. I do the absolute bare minimum to make my home livable, I don’t ever see myself being featured in an issue of Better Homes.

But I have a want.

More accurately, a need.

I need a lime green sofa. I can’t look at my lounge room without mentally ridding myself of the grey ’80s sofa that is currently sitting in the corner and replacing it with a bright acid green sofa. Not mint, not a hint of green, something that makes any visitor ponder whether I’ve skinned Kermit The Frog to make a comfortable seating area for my home.

Our current sofa was the one Dan had when I moved in with him five years ago. It has a grey fan pattern with pink highlights, it’s modular and every time you sit on it each section shifts, meaning that you need to move it back into place multiple times each day, it has a lingering smell that I can only describe as two year old fishfingers. I hate this sofa so much that I actually avoid photographing the kids on that side of the room because I don’t want to look at the pictures in the future and see it.

But that isn’t the worse of it…

Last week my Mother In Law moved into a new house, of course this brought out all the old photo albums as the boxes were being unpacked. I was looking at pictures of my Sister In Law at her Debutante Ball, at sixteen years old, and there, in the background, was they grey five seater monstrosity that currently lives in our lounge.

I don’t have a problem with using my mother in law’s old sofa. What does bother me is that my SIL is now 33, making the sofa roughly a million years old. It isn’t retro and funky, it’s the furniture equivalent of hammer pants, it wasn’t great then and it’s so much worse now, it’s slap bracelets and gigantic perms, it doesn’t belong in this time and it doesn’t belong in my damn lounge room.

I’m not insane, I have no desire to go out and spend thousands of dollars on a sofa when we have t0ddlers and babies in the house. My grand plan is to pick up a cheapy sofa from Fantastic Furniture, in lime green, abuse the hell out of it for a few years and then replace it when my life is ruled slightly less by sticky hands and stray crayons. By the time we need a new sofa I’ll be over the green and far more open to the idea of a far more sensible and neutral colour.

But my husband is a cruel man, who apparently will not “give into fads“. According to him the grey hulk sofa is wonderful, the seats perfectly mold to his body and it’s long enough that his 6ft4 frame can sleep on it, but none of that is his main reasoning for keeping it for the last 25 years. The number one reason that I, according to Dan, need to show respect to the 20 year old sofa that has seen more arses than George Michael, is because “at least when the kids vomit on it the pattern covers it up!”.

I’m not kidding, that is his number one selling point.

O_o

I just don’t know where to start on that one.

Still Trying To Send Me To An Early Grave

Yesterday Declan had a seizure at preschool. He was full of the joys of spring when I dropped him off. Three hours later we got a phone call saying to come in immediately as he’d started having convulsions during lunch.

For some reason it shook me up a lot more than the previous ones have, of course excepting the first. The ladies at preschool did a fabulous job, and I don’t doubt their capabilities for a second, but the mama bear in me keeps on thinking about how my little boy was scared and sick and I wasn’t there for him.

This morning he was once again completely fine, we played in the garden (when I took this photo), he helped me hang up the laundry, he got told off for picking my flowers. A completely average day… right up until at dinner time when he collapsed on the chair next to him, rolled his eyes into the back of his head and once again started convulsing.

He goes from being completely fine, then comes the fever and within an hour hes having another seizure. It’s reaching a point where I’m scared to be alone with him just in case it happens, I know how to deal with it, but I don’t think there is anyway I would remain as calm as Dan does whilst he treats him.

I just want my babe to be healthy and well. Not to have me hovering over him because I’m scared of what could happen if he gets too hot. I want him to be normal.

The Daily Battle

I stutter occasionally. I will be mid sentence when my brain decides to stop communicating with my mouth and I get stuck on a sound. It tends to flare up when I get tired, stressed or just mentally unstable in someway.

It happened today, and as I stood there stuck on “Ra” for thirty seconds I thought how similar it was to my mood swings. I battle to take myself to stability in the same way that I try to claw my way to a word that makes sense, only getting more frustrated that there’s a missing connection that is getting in the way of what I want, only getting more embrassed that I can’t do a function as basic as speaking or being happy.

When I fall into a pit, or even worse – the cycle of miserable followed by the manic happiness and energy levels through the roof, leading to a bigger comedown than an entire crate of Ketamine, I don’t want to be there. My brain is saying that it doesn’t make sense to be crumpled in a heap and sobbing because I burnt the toast, I know logically that I shouldn’t explode at the kids because they spilt some drink, I know I shouldn’t despise my husband because I can hear his breathing. Yet I do.

Just like the stuttering it’s absolutely exhausting trying to drag myself out of that, but with depression it isn’t a case of focusing and trying to chane the word that I was about to say. It’s a very self aware battle to take myself from darkness into a functional life, knowing that there’s a good chance that I will be back there tomorrow and the battle will continue on.

There isn’t much point to this, there’s no happy ending or fabulous conclusion where I say how much this helps me grow as a person. I hate it. I hate not functioning as a regular person, I hate the lack of understanding from people who simply can’t understand why I don’t wake up one morning and just decide to be happy, I hate that it’s reached a point where I really believe my lack of stability is affecting my ability to raise my children.

I really would just like to find that switch that evens it all out and makes me normal, I’m not asking for perfection, just something closer resembling the average person. I want to be average.