narrating kayoz

Why does the second trimester ever have to end?

I'm 26 weeks pregnant now, approaching the end of the second trimester (when does it end exactly? I forget). It doesn't seem right that it should be almost over already when it's less than 2 months since I really got rid of the nausea. But the third trimester is just waiting there in the wings, I can tell.

The truth is, I'm in no hurry now for this pregnancy to end. Hard to imagine my ever feeling that way in the first trimester, and I suspect as the weeks wear on I may change my tune. But at the moment I am really enjoying it. I'm enjoying having the baby all to myself, and I'm enjoying having time with Liam without the interruption of caring for a newborn. Earlier on I would occasionally get that sense of what a newborn was like - the good parts - and get all excited (this was towards the end of the first trimester when my depressive hormones started to lift). But now I feel more like the baby is already here, in a way - now that she moves all the time, and is a constant physical presence for me (even when she's not moving) - and so I'm not as excited by the newborn idea, and besides I'm trying (for once) not to be rushing ahead in my mind.

But, my body is pushing on - it and the baby. A few days ago I was relishing the second trimester and wishing it would last for longer. Then Monday and Tuesday my pubic symphasis problem really started to play up, and now I have some lower back ache as well (related, I'm sure - it's right in the sacro-illiac area). And I'm starting to get more tired again - I've been feeling pretty energised for the past few weeks.

Still, there are compensations - less than 8 weeks to go till maternity leave kicks in. Yippee!!!

the writing process

For the course I am currently working on (fiction writing B) I have to keep a reading and writing journal, a small part of which I eventually have to turn in as a polished piece of work. Something that I keep coming back to in this journal is the frustration of not knowing where I'm going. I have to also turn in a short story for this course. And the sort of emphasis of this course is experimental writing, which is a little outside my comfort zone.

What I'm finding is that my intellect is telling me that I just need to do lots of writing. I need to experiment, play, and see what comes out. But: I have an idea for this story - I've already written maybe 2000 words, in bits and pieces - but I'm not sure where it's going. And I keep coming up with this frustration that I feel like I might be wasting time. I know on the one hand, that as long as I am writing and experimenting and trying things out, I'm not wasting time. But on the other hand I have eight weeks left before my - somewhat self imposed* - deadline of getting a solid draft ready, one ready to submit for critiquing, as well as a completed, polished, 2000 word 'reading and writing journal'. And I only get to work on Sundays. So that's eight days, basically.

So I have this dual sense of needing to be efficient, not waste time writing something that's going nowhere, and at the same time knowing that I need to just write write write, it doesn't really matter what in someways. That I need to experiment, that I should expect to write perhaps five times the word limit of the story and delete 80% of it. And that that's okay. That that will be facilitating the learning which is, after all, the whole point of doing this Masters degree.

Unfortunately, every Sunday these two different senses collide and I end up with something like writers block. I find myself procrastinating because I don't want to work on something that is just a waste of time. Idiotic no? Still, I got somewhere today, and even though towards the end I did start to freeze up with that sense of 'But what is actually happening here? Where is the plot? Where is the tension?' I did get somewhere. And I feel like this process - of recognising what is going on with my frustration - is a useful one, perhaps even the most useful thing I will get out of this course. Now if I can just keep making myself work through it...

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*The deadline's self imposed in that the course doesn't actually officially start until a few weeks after the baby's due, and that deadline is when I'll be 34 weeks pregnant. But I know from past experience that I am not going to be wanting to sit for long hours at a computer past that point, especially if my pubic symphasis dysfunction keeps getting worse (as seems rather likely, since the baby will keep getting bigger). And it seems unlikely that I will be functioning at my academic/creative best with a newborn, and I'll still need to be doing some other work - submitting comments online, and later critiquing other students' work - during the semester. So I really do want to get this done now.

night time nappies

For the record, Liam made it through the night with no trips to the loo nor bed wetting. Of course, at nap time today he said since he wasn't wearing nappies at night anymore he wanted to wear one during the day... but I convinced him that wasn't going to happen.

edited to add: of course tonight he says he wants to wear nappies for the rest of his life...

Pregnancy comparison

Someone asked me a while ago whether I'd noticed differences between this and the previous pregnancy, and I said no, not particularly. But I'm starting to now. I think this baby moves more than Liam did in the womb. I also think she's lower down - or maybe it's that Liam was head down from early on and she is feet down - cause it feels like she spends a lot of time standing on my bladder, and very little time kicking up towards my ribs.

fourth birthday

Liam, by the way, had his fourth birthday party today, which was a great success.

He turned four last Tuesday. He said when he turned four he would try peanut butter and chocolate. He tried PB and mixed with jam pronounced it quite okay (and no allergic reaction, so that's all good), though he hasn't wanted to have it again. Chocolate he still doesn't like. He's also going to bed without a nappy tonight for (moreorless) the first time.

Skilpy dreams

Liam called Chris to his bedroom tonight, after being in bed for maybe 10 or 15 minutes (he had not yet been asleep) saying he was scared.

When Chris got there Liam said he was afraid of a dream called Skilpy. Skilpy dreams, he said, were bad dreams.

Where does he gets these things from?

(Chris told him that he just needed to say 'No skilpy dreams tonight,' before he went to sleep, and later on, when he called Chris back again because he'd pushed his doll and dog out of bed accidentally, Liam told Chris "No skilpy dreams tonight," so hopefully that works.)

taking responsibility for managing climate change

In an article today in The Age,  'A real plan for warming',  Kenneth Davidson writes:

[Kim] Beazley listed the implications that have been calculated by various authorities of doing nothing to reverse greenhouse gas emissions, these being temperature-related deaths to double to 2500 a year by 2020, dengue fever to spread to Sydney, water supplies to Melbourne and Sydney to drop by 25 per cent by 2030, and rainfall in the Murray-Darling basin expected to fall by 25 per cent and evaporation rates to rise, threatening the viability of Adelaide.

Scary estimates, though not new. He also says that

[a]ccording to Beazley, the debate about whether climate change is real and man-made is over. "And once you accept climate change is real you have to accept responsibility to act."

This seems like a bit of a 'duh!' doesn't it? - who cares whether we caused/are causing it or not. The point is it's happening, and there will be real and nasty consequences. So if we can do something about it (and it seems we can) then we need to act. But we need to act NOW, not in 25 years time.

I was reading a book the other day called Don't bother me Mom-I'm learning, by Marc Prensky, founder of Games2train. I haven't read enough of it yet to make an informed comment about it, except to say that I heard him speak at a conference last week, and some of his ideas were challenging to someone planning to send their kids to a Steiner school. Interesting though.

Anyway, early in this book he tells an anecdote about a 4 or 5 year old who, walking past a school playground with his mother, is able to estimate that it would cost around $20,000 to build, and that it would take a lot of people working for a lot of days to be able to make it. This was based on his experience playing The Sims.

I thought - this is impressive. A pre-schooler who can understand some of the time and effort that goes into creating something.* But you know what I'd really like to see? I'd like to see that child having some understanding of the natural resources involved. I try to talk to Liam about this a little bit too (it's easiest with water) but he doesn't really get it yet. Does The Sims include stuff like carbon taxes? I have no idea, but wouldn't it be great if it could somehow provide that sort of understanding?

*An aside: It's impressive, but is it desirable? On one level, I think certainly it is - I try to impress on Liam that things cost money and getting that money involves me and Daddy working away from him. But do they need - is it really beneficial to have - that level of understanding at that point? I'm not saying it's bad, just questioning whether it's necessarily a Good Thing, something that we should aim for just because it's possible - or was for that child.

School teachers

One of the things that worries me slightly about our plan to send Liam to the local Steiner school is that he will have one core teacher from first grade through to eighth grade. What if that teacher sux (it does happen you know), or even if s/he doesn't suck, but just has a personality clash with Liam?

One of the good things, I hear, about having the one teacher move with the kids is that when they do have a 'difficult' child in their class, or a difficult relationship with one student, they tend have a greater motivation to work with the child - since they can't just pass him or her on to someone else the next year. This makes good sense, but still I do worry about it a little - a teacher can have such a major impact on a kid's self image at that stage, and on their engagement with school and learning in general.

On the other hand, Chris and I were just discussing our school experiences, and I realised that I had 3-4 teachers in my classes for all but two years of primary school. That means I was in classes of 90-120 kids, and had a different teacher for each subject. I don't feel like any of those teachers got to know me well. Aside from my year six maths teacher, I doubt any of them would even remember me.

My year six maths teacher, Mrs Edelstein (I think that's right), took a particular interest in me,  wondering why I was still on book 15 out of about 35 when I seemed quite bright (these were books we'd been working through since about year 2): she took me through a few questions from each book and discovered I knew them all, that I was still on book 15 because I was bored, not interested in working through zillions of exercises on things I already knew. And in point of fact I hadn't worked through most of those 15 books either, I'd just been arbitrarily moved up a few books at the beginning of each year.

Which makes my point beautifully. Until that particular teacher, no-one had noticed that I was in the wrong maths class. Maths was streamed, but because I was not getting through the books at the proper pace, I was never in the top class. I wasn't an overachiever by any means, but I was bright, and I loved maths. At least, I loved the theory - I never loved doing exercise after exercise for no observable reason. But I was quiet and respectful so the teachers didn't tend to notice (or didn't have time to care) that I paired that with doing next to no work.

What this meant was that when I went to high school and was put in the top maths class I was already behind - I'd missed out, for instance, on learning about negative numbers, which the kids in the top maths class in my primary school had learned while I was busy helping other kids in my (lower) class with their fractions. All of which in the long run led to me barely passing maths by the time I got to college (year 11) and calculus, and while I admit a little more self motivation (and the ability to ask for help) would have helped, I also think that a primary school where it took four years for the teachers to notice what level I was really at is a sad excuse for a school.

So while I do worry about what we will do if Liam gets a teacher who he/we really have a problem with (maybe home-school), I am also really glad that his teacher will have a chance to get to know him really well, and I hope that it will mean his needs are met more directly than mine were.