narrating kayoz

Last day of the month (another post in dot points)

Today is the last day of my post-a-day month. It's been interesting but I don't think I will keep it going, quite. I have liked that it's forced me to post some things I wouldn't have gotten around to otherwise, but I wouldn't have gotten around to them otherwise because - well, time is in short supply. Right now I am posting instead of having time with my husband (though granted, right now he's cleaning the kitchen, but he'll be done soon), which I can only justify for so many nights in a row! On the other hand, I think I'll keep the calendar there in the sidebar for another month, just to see how it compares.

However, here is my last post-a-day post, in dot points, because I couldn't narrow it down to one topic.

• Mikaela went to sleep by herself today for perhaps the second time in her life. The first time being when I popped her in the hammock when she was sleepy on about the third day of her life. I was so thrilled she went to sleep on her own that day, but then she never did it again. Until today that is. Today she just did not want to nurse to sleep - she didn't want to go to sleep at all. She wanted to play in her cot. She kept saying she wanted to be in the cot, so I'd put her in and go do something else for a little while, then dutifully try our nursing down routine again when she started to protest. Finally I got sick of that and left her there for longer. I figured she would either go to sleep, or she wouldn't. Usually when this happens (which isn't very often actually) I'm not prepared to let it go on for so long because it gets too late for her to have a nap, but today I decided to just see what happened. She yelled out for me from time to time, then got distracted by a book or maybe by her own sleepiness. And eventually she went to sleep! It was about an hour and a half after we initially started the nap routine, but hey, she slept.
• I am not all that impressed with TypePad's new 'compose post' screen. It is too slow and can't keep up with my typing. This may be a problem listed in their 'known problems', I haven't checked, but if it is, you'd think it would be something they'd fix before releasing it. I rarely have a bad thing to say about TypePad, but this is irritating (so much so that I am typing directly into the html- lets hope I don't stuff it up).
• I have not yet become a dog person, but I am much more of a dog person than I was, say, a year ago. Still, some days I do wonder insanity gripped me when I said we could get a dog. But, today Chris got a little more work done on our permanent chook run fence. When it's finished the chooks and Lochie will be separated, and we won't need to tie him up and listen to him bark while they eat (in order to prevent him from eating their food) and he won't get all their eggs. That will improve things around here quite a bit. Plus the little bit of lawn we have will be able to recover from the sad state the chooks have it in, which will also be nice.
• Now I know I was planning to write a post tonight that was something about Kaely and Liam, but I can't remember what it was. So even when I do post every day, things still slip annoyingly through the cracks of my mind, to dribble unseen onto my dirty floor, never to be recorded. Damn.
• Have I mentioned that my masters project is meant to be completed by Monday? Yeah.

Now I'm going to take my tired brain and drink the cup of tea Chris is just making me (I think) and watch some West Wing on DVD. The good thing about not getting a lot of time to watch television is that these series take a long time to run out. I think we are still watching season two.

That's all folks.

In mourning already

Even though I have very much been looking forward to having my master's project completed, so that we could have family weekends (or at least family days) again, so that we could get some things done around here, the fact is, I am really going to miss my writing time.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that I'll be going back to work in July and that could be interesting and challenging, and will still give me some days (two and a half hopefully) away from the monotony of housework and building cubbies, which quite frankly, I need for my sanity On the other hand it could also suck - it mostly depends on the people I end up working with, individually and as a team. And as yet, I don't know who they will be, or even what work I will be doing. If it's back to the job I left two years ago then the work will be relatively enjoyable - writing and editing and reading about art and culture and recreation in Australia. So that's not all bad. As to the people I don't know. I know the team has changed significantly since I left.

However, regardless of how that job works out (and in all honesty if I could avoid going back to work I would, despite what I just said about sanity), it's not going to be the same as having two days a week to focus on my own writing project/s. Granted, most of the past year I have been focussed on this masters project, which is also not the same as having two days a week to focus on whatever writing project I want, but - it almost is. If I had another year to work in here (without the requirements of a university course) I would probably focus on something a mite more practical than an academic essay - perhaps freelance articles, perhaps turning the fiction part of my project into a novel, or perhaps one of the other novels that are ticking away in my head. But I don't have another year, so whichever of those things I want to focus on (probably the first), I'm going to have to do it in my copious spare time.

Yeah, I am really, really, going to miss my writing days.

Still, the money's going to be nice.

The lovely Orana

We went on a primary school* tour** at Orana yesterday, and oh, it made us wish we'd gone to school there. The hand work they do, the languages and the music, even the academic subjects - it all seemed so wonderful.

In the handwork department, they start finger and french knitting in kindy - Liam can already do those. Then they move on to knitting (plain stitch) and basic sewing in class one, and make themselves a lovely craft bag. They also, I believe, make their own knitting needles. As the classes go on they learn more complicated knitting, following patterns, different stitches and so on (I know they make socks at some point and a beanie at another point by I don't remember when). They also learn embroidery and I think crochet maybe? And felting and fabric painting. And then from class six they start woodwork, which is compulsory through to class ten. They start out making set projects for the first two or three years (in class six they make a wooden spoon and egg - all with hand tools, though they have machines for later years), then they can start designing their own projects. They have photos of things kids have made, like chairs, tables, chests and so on, not just cutlery!

They do music all the way through, starting with recorder in class one. But you know how there are different kind of recorders? Well they learn all three kinds, in classes one, two and five respectively. In class three and four they aer busy doing violin and cello. Of course, they aren't supposed to become proficient in all these instruments, but they get an introduction, including an introduction to the relevant music theory.

They start German and Japanese language and culture studies in class one (though they don't start reading and writing in those languages until class four, initially it's mostly just playing games and stuff) and they are both continued until the end of class seven, at which point they must choose one to continue with.

Class three is the gardening and farming year, so they vegetables that year, but I think they start studying biodynamic growing in class six.

In one of the classes we went into - class six I think - they were doing a main lesson on astronomy, but the teacher explained that at this point they don't talk about things like the sun being at the centre of the solar system, they start with stuff that they can physically observe, like the angle at which the sun sets and rises and the constellations and whatnot. And one the blackboard he had drawn, and coloured in, with chalk some gorgeous pictures - that was common in lots of the classrooms actually. They use a lot of visual - and attractive - aids in the teaching. But one of the highschool maths teachers (whose daughter is in kindy with Liam) was telling us that they also want the child to be able to experience the lesson 'in their body' - even in high school maths. So she has them up and outside measure things and charting things in their trigonometry main lesson, for instance. So it's not that it's all teaching using the visual sense or anything.

In Steiner the key word for the first cycle, the first seven-ish years of life, is safety. The child needs to feel safe. The next seven years (so roughly the primary years, age seven to fourteen) the key word is beauty. And they really do focus throughout those years on making the school and all the classes beautiful.

I am not doing this school tour justice, you really need to be there to see how inspiring it all is. Suffice it to say that we were more than ever convinced that we have chosen the right school for Liam and for our family.
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*primary school=grade school
**As opposed to the kindy tour which we did before Liam started and the high school tour which we'll do at some point in th future.

Re-skilling for simply living

Rhonda, from Down to Earth is asking "what you have at your home that helps you live simply. Do you have water tanks, knitting needles, a sewing machine, solar panels or a solar oven? How have you reksilled yourself? What do you know now that you didn't know last year?"

She's talking about the aspects of 'simple living' that are not about food, and the money quote (from my perspective) is:

Simple living isn't all about cooking from scratch and stockpiling, it's a holistic approach to life that relies as much on your silent partners working away in the background, and your ability to reskill, to look after what you have and to produce as much as you can at home. Sometimes there is a price to pay to have the hardware installed, but often our lives are made easier and greener by just learning how to do something we couldn't do before.

This is part of why I am knitting a dishcloth - not for the sake of the dishcloth as such (we don't need any new dishcloths at the moment), but to improved my less than impressive knitting skills. There's a part of me that doesn't really think I have it in me to be a good knitter - too impatient, not detail oriented enough, completely unwilling to unpick (or whatever you call it in knitting) if I see that I've made a mistake. (Knitting dishcloths is about perfect for me, because in a dishcloth it really doesn't matter how badly or how often I stuff up the pattern - it's only a dishcloth.) And in fact, sewing would probably be a better skill to learn, because as Rhonda says, being able to mend clothes can make them last a lot longer. But I prefer knitting, so knitting is what I am doing right now. And you know what? We can always use new dishcloths.

Reusing soft plastic (eg bags)

Via Riana I just came across this etsylabs tutorial on how to reuse plastic bags (or other soft plastic). It's all about how to fuse several of them together, using an iron, and then make them into all sorts of things - reusable shopping bags being the most common thing mentioned, but I was thinking maybe I could make some big and heavy enough to cover part of the chicken run. Someone else suggested covering a greenhouse, but didn't actually report back on whether it worked.

The only problem of course is that we mostly use fabric bags now for our shopping, so we don't end up with many plastic bags, and the ones we do get are used up on dog poo or general garbage pretty quickly. But then someone mentioned the bags dry cleaning comes back in, and bread bags. Other people commented that they found the slightly heavier bags (Target got several mentions) more reliable than the thinner, cheaper bags (I assume supermarket bags) which sometimes wrinkle. So it might take some experimenting.

And I would also only do it outside on the deck, where we conveniently have an outdoor powerpoint, to avoid fumes - someone posted this warning in the comments:

What a cool idea! I hate to spoil anyone's fun, BUT I think it should be mentioned that this should be done in a

WELL VENTILATED

area or that you use an organic vapor mask or a respirator. Melting and potentially burning plastics creates sometimes harmful fumes, some of which are linked with embryonic mutagens.

Better safe than sorry.

But all in all, I have to say I'm feeling inspired. Better finish my dishcloth first though... not to mention my masters project!

Re: the essay

When I say I've nailed it, of course what I mean is I know what I need to do to fix it, not that I've actually done it. Up to re-write number four, I think...

The cost of being a writer

Somewhere* recently I read a quote from a writer saying something like "to be a writer, you have to give up a lot of life and personal time" - the writer made it sound harder than that though.

Sometimes I think this is self evident, and other times I think - but if only I could win lotto, I could give up my day job (which I am due back at in about five weeks) and have time. And then other times I think - if I'd spent my two days a week for the last year working on writing to get published, instead of on my masters project... well, I might have actually made some money and got some clips.

But then again I have loved working on my masters project, even though the essay has been driving me up the wall (I think I have it nailed now - though have I said that before? - I'll be getting back to it shortly), and I have learned a lot about the writing process I think.

And *maybe* one day I can turn the fiction into a novel. But to do that, y'see, I will have to give up an enormous amount of that personal time the writer was talking about. And in a few months we're going to be starting to try for another baby (probably), and once my masters project is done, we will have at least one day weekends as a family for the first time in years (unless you count the first few weeks after Mikaela's birth, and I don't), for about eight months - until I start studying again, but that will be for my last unit in the course. And and and... well, I'm not sure how or when I am going to motivate myself to sit down and do it.

But even if I don't, I am hoping to get some parts of it published as is (as are), and either way, I learned heaps along the way. In another quote (which I'm sure came from Dawn) a writer said something about writing being a craft you have to learn, just like any other craft. So I'm learning, and it's good.

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* I think this might have been in Dawn's writer quotes, but all my refreshing hasn't brought it back again.

Updated to add: And then I refreshed once more and there it was:

"I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer." ~Doris Lessing

And the other one was

"Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else." ~Katherine Anne Porter

Essay/silkie/knitting/colds a post in dot points

So much to say, so little time. So tonight, a post in (largely unrelated) dot points.

• My masters project is due in in one week and one day. Luckily my supervisor said (without me asking) that I could have an extension of two or more weeks, because they're all going to be too busy with marking other papers to get a panel together before then anyway. This is lucky because I've just realised that to get it bound and posted is going to take the better part of a week. Also because I am not as close to being happy with either the essay or the fiction as I had hoped to be by this point. On the other hand, I *really* don't want this to eat into my month of two day weekends before I go back to work. So I may ended up working quite hard on it this week.
• My sister gives really good feedback. Think I might impose on her to read my essay as well...
• Our little silkie chicken (who has moved to the front of our house, which is really around the side of the block, to avoid the bigger chickens, who can't fit through the fence) has taken to coming right up onto our front doorstep sometimes. Today she was sitting up there as I came out of the house, with our cat following me. The cat - who has rarely gotten that close to any chicken, that I've seen, almost touched noses with Fluffy (as we affectionately call her), then walked on, disinterested.
• All of us in the family seem to have yet another cold. So far it is mild, but by g-d I am sick of it.
• I am two thirds of the way through knitting a pretty little dishcloth with multiple stuff-ups in the pattern. Diana sent me another pattern (or three) which sounds easier, so I will try that next. My cousin (who has two small children, four months older and twelve months younger than Kaely, and whom I see every week) laughed at me when I told her I was knitting a dishcloth (in the nicest possible way). So I said I would have to write a whole blog post to explain my interest, starting with my urban by composting childhood, in which my parents read grassroots magazine and fantasised about moving to the country, much as I have often done. That post yet to come.

Kinder chat - creative discipline

On Monday night Chris and I went to a 'kinder chat' at Liam's school, given by a kindergarten teacher, Riita, who was one of the founders of the school and has been teaching kindy there for twenty-five years.

There wasn't anything especially new, but there were a few good reminders for me. Some of them were around basic stuff like needing to have good routines, a beautiful/not chaotic environment (we fall down on that one), good food, proper amounts of sleep and so on. Others were perhaps slightly less obvious:

• This is the age of imitation. Therefore how I want Liam (and Mikaela) to be, is how I have to be. That includes how I want them to talk, how I want them to deal with anger and frustration, and whether I want them to yell (at me, at each other).
  
  • Riita said at school they talk about inside and outside voices, and when the kids yell in the classroom they say to them "That's your outside voice Johnny, it's time for your inside voice now." I've done that with Liam, but somehow I don't think we (he or I) have ever made the connection which Riita made, which is to me also having an inside voice. So I told Liam on Tuesday that I am going to try to keep to my inside voice in the house too. We'll see how I go!
• She talked about concentrating on the positive behaviours and accomplishments. As an example she said at school the children pour their own water from the jug. The only time a teacher will help is if the jug is so full it's too heavy for a child. And when they first do this, they tend to over fill and spill. Then they learn to go and get a cloth and wipe up the water. Next time they pour the water, they will often pour too little, and need more. So when the jug comes back around again the teacher will say "A half a cup is a good amount." And then, when the time comes that the child can pour half a cup successfully, they will say "Look, Johnny can pour a half a cup of water now." (Or something, I don't remember exactly, maybe she says it directly to the child, rather than in the third person.) But they don't ever comment on the times when the child pours too much or too little.
  
  • I know this is really pretty obvious stuff, but I am belabouring it a little because I realised that I am forgetting to do it. And I also notice that once I am a little cranky or impatient, if, for instance, it has taken me 20 minutes of nagging to get Liam to clean his teeth after dinner, then I am even less patient with what are merely a child's normal accidents, like squeezing out too much toothpaste from the new tube, or accidentally wiping it on a towel. Or even things that aren't accidents, like walking around the house with the toothbrush in mouth instead of standing at the sink, as per our rule. It's not an accident, but it's only a minor infringement. Yet I can become quite, quite cross about it, mostly because I am already cross from the twenty minutes of nagging. Anyway...

• Creative discipline. Riita talked also about when a child is having a tantrum (this is a kinder aged child - around 4-6 - not a one-year-old, for instance, though no doubt this approach could be modified), and how you can distract them. She suggested: You might cup your hands together around something special - maybe a gold ring, or even your watch - and you look into a small opening in your hands to see what is there. You might put your hands up to your ear and pretend your special gold ring is talking to you "Oh," you say to your ring, "I can have three wishes?" By this time the child just has to come and look to see what is inside your hands, and you might engage them in the conversation too. "well," you tell your ring, "I wish that we might go to the playground later today," or "I wish that we might go to Grandpa's house this weekend," or whatever. But mind, you then have to follow through on the wish, so that it is "true" and not just a trick.

Basically it gave us a few new ideas, but mostly some good reminders about our own modeling of the behaviour and values we would like to see in our children, and about using distraction rather than chastisement, and acknowledgement of good behaviour and successes rather than failures, as ways of discipline.

Now if only I can get better at putting it all into practice!

To night wean, or not?

I've been thinking about night weaning Mikaela for - oh, a few months now I suppose. I decide to definitely do it this weekend and then she gets sick/I get sick/we forget, or something. And we don't do it. And the thing is, I am conflicted about it, and yet I so long to do it as well.

We night weaned Liam at eighteen months. At that point he was still waking every hour or two to nurse, but he had stopped going back to sleep afterwards. It felt like an open and shut case. Also, it was very easy. I told him we were going to do it. On the 'last day' I reminded him each time we nursed, and again with the last feed before bed (which we did in the living room, as was our habit - Chris then taking him to bed and lying with him till he fell asleep).  Then the night in question Chris slept in the bedroom (our bedroom) with him, and I slept in the study. The first and maybe second time he woke up he cried for me, and Chris took him into the ensuite to distract him (he loved looking at all the stuff on the window sill in there). After that he was fine, and it really only took that one night, though I spent another four blissful nights sleeping in the study. The only times we went back to night nursing was when he had a vomitting bug, and it wasn't ever hard to reinstate the rule afterwards.

I think I first started considering night weaning with Mikaela at about the same age, and for the same reason - she didn't seem to be going back to sleep easily any more with the nursing. But with one thing and another it didn't happen then, and then things improved. But they have unimproved again several times in between. She's now twenty-three months old (moreorless - I've lost track of what date it is). Part of the issue is, I don't think it will be as easy with Mikaela as it was with Liam. For one thing she sleeps in a cot, so no-one can lie down with her. We have a rocking chair in her (our) room, which is where I nurse her, and where Chris rocks her. But when she wakes after midnight (and she almost always does, at least once) she tends to chuck a wobbly if Chris shows up instead of me. And by that I mean she gets totally hysterical. Ditto if I show up but refuse to nurse - as I have done on occasion when she has chewed me raw or just worn me down with too many wakings, though admittedly I haven't tried that in a while.

There are two good reasons for doing it though. No three.

1. Often it seems as though the nursing is keeping her from re-settling properly.
2. I suspect that like Liam, she might start sleeping through the night more often if there wasn't the promise of mummy-milk in the middle of the night.
3. I would like to be able to just snuggle with her like Chris does.
4. I would like Chris to be able to take responsibility for her for whole nights (or series' of nights) (though admittedly she may still resist that even without the nursing), especially if I am going to be trying to get pregnant again in the not-to-distant future.
5. I forget what five was.
6. She was up from 2:30 to 5:30 last night, and again at 5:45
7. (Okay six is not really relevant, as I don't think it was a nursing issue - it;s just to show that I do have more good reasons but I am too sleep deprived to remember what they are. Which is also the reason I have given up on trying to re-write my essay half an hour before my work time is up.)

So, more than three then. Actually I think only 1. (one) above was one of the three I had in mind when I started writing that list, but as I said, my brain is mush.

So what are the reasons against?

1. I think it will be really hard.
2. I think she may cry a lot and indeed get quite hysterical
3. I think it will be really hard.

I think there are some other reasons, but again, I cite my mushed brain.
I may come back to this if I can, but now I have to go pick up Liam from school.

Sleep deprivation. Will it never end?

A meme about books

I got this meme from Pavlov's Cat, though I've seen it in at least two places since then..

These are the 106 books most often listed as 'unfinished' on LibraryThing. The rules seem to vary, but I'm going with bolding the ones I've read and underlining the ones I started but didn't finish. I must say it's interesting to me to see how many of the latter are books I was supposed to read for uni.  Hmm... All in my undergrad degree though.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities [I never finished this, but I know it's actually called A Tale of Two Cities]
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin (but i still have this out from the library, so there's still hope)
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Dishcloths and what not

Did you notice I added a calendar view in the side bar? Or am I the only old fashioned sort of person who still looks at actual blogs instead of feed readers?

It's only a temporary add-in anyway, just this month while I am trying to write something every day. And today it almost remained blank. I spent the whole day at a friend's (a regular playdate for Liam, though it doesn't usually go all day), then had my weekly pilates and grocery shopping night tonight. Exciting I know.

What is exciting (to me) is that I have started knitting my first dishcloth. I'm using this pattern, except all one colour (blue of course) and with lots of stuff ups in the first 13 rows (which is all I've done so far) and especially in the first 7. Still, it's only a dishcloth I tell myself, and just get on with it. I'll post photos when I'm done, so that the knitting types among you can have a good laugh!

Crafty autumn days

Liam's school had their annual autumn picnic on Sunday. Normally I would say 'we' had it, especially since as class co-ordinator of Liam's class I was involved in some of the organisation, but actually I didn't go - I was at home trying to re-write my essay for my master's project (which is driving me up the wall at the moment, but that's a whole other post!).

The autumn picnic is usually a lovely family day, with everything from sack races to sausage sizzles to home made soup to the craft table (the organisation and running of which is job of us kindy parents). This year it turned out to be the coldest day of the season so far, but a good time was still reportedly had by all.

Liam made this gnome and gods-eye at the craft table. Someone showed him how to do blanket stitch and got him started on the gnome and he did the rest himself, and the gods-eye he did completely by himself, having made his first one at the school's Spring Fair last year.

This is one of the things I love about Orana. All the 'hand work' they do. This year Liam has mastered finger knitting and French knitting in kindergarten, he brought home a little basket his teacher sewed for him out of his finger knitting, and is now working on the French knitting - two strands of wool at once too (for both finger and French). They don't learn to write until class one (next year), but this handwork is part of the way they prepare the hands and mind for that sort of handwork. And in class one they also start 'proper' knitting. I think they start with knitting socks or something, and progress to a hat at some point (maybe in a later year though).

I was never very crafty as a child - oh I learned the basics of knitting and French knitting, but I never actually completed a project. I all but failed 'textiles' (sewing, weaving etc) in year seven. I did do a short course in sewing with stretch material when I was about 18, out of which I got a few clothes and my still very basic sewing skills. But that's about it. So I love the fact that Liam is learning some of these basics right at the beginning of school, and will continue to do so through the years.

Meanwhile I, as you know, am going to knit a dishcloth. And I'm going to attempt to make Kaely a sleeping bag. She is fast outgrowing the one she's in now, and I haven't been able to find any in op shops (thrift stores), so I put a request for a size 3 sleeping bag on freecycle,* and someone responded with the offer of a pattern, and said she may even be able come up with some old bits of fleece for me to use. So I'm going to give it a go. I may just become a handy person yet.

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*I find this a challenging part of the whole 'no shopping' compact - asking for things. A lot of stuff I haven't been able to find second hand, and while in some cases that can just mean we don't buy it, some things we really do need. Okay, true, we don't *really* need them. Mikaela could wear a couple of extra layers to bed (she won't keep blankets on yet) and we could move her to a mattress on the floor (she's not safe in the cot without the sleeping bag any more, she can climb out). But... we need them enough, if you know what I mean.

So, I decided to start asking for things on freecycle. That's the whole point, after all, of freecycle - to move things around to where they will be used. But I do find it challenging to ask for 'handouts', especially as there seems to be a general philosophy that it should be more for giving than receiving (for instance I think the rules say you can't put a WANTED on until you've put an OFFER on). So I decided that I would have to put an offer on for every wanted I put on.** Not that that's a bad thing - after all, I am also trying to declutter. But even then, I do find the asking a little confronting. See how I am going into this long explanation about how I put 'offers' on and not just 'wanteds'? I find this discover about myself sort of interesting.

** (Footnote to the footnote:) So far I've put on two wanteds and two offers and got requests for both the offers, but for the wanteds have gotten a loan (which is good actually - it's a mini tramp for Chris to work his ankle on, and we're happy to be able to give it back at the end) and the offer of advice on how to make the item. So if this goes on the decluttering could become a reality. I still need to find things to put up for offer so I can request boys size 4/5 PJs, long sleeve tops & long pants - which I am counting as three separate requests. I am sort of wishing I kept those bags of clothes I finally give to Vinnie's (charity) the other week though.

Mikaela goes potty

Personally, I think she's already potty in another sense of the word - surely you have to be to walk around with a blueberry stained bowl for a hat? Which is what she is doing right now...

Anyway, a few months ago I foolishly let Mikaela sit on the toilet, with Liam's old toddler toilet seat. She'd seen other kids do it and she wanted to have a go. Now, bear in mind that I am of the 'leave toilet training till the last possible minute' school - I just don't see the point in having to search for toilets at a moment's notice, not be able to go on long car trips without planning copious toilet stops etc, a moment before you have to. Nappies are just too convenient. Liam wasn't out of nappies until three and a half, but then he 'toilet trained' in a single day, with only a few accidents over the next few months. Despite this I let Kaely play at using the toilet even though she was way to young to really do it. And so every now and then she says "Boo, boo!" And wants to sit on the toilet again, though with no effect, as I would expect.

Well, today she was busily minding her own business, eating afternoon tea in the dining room, battering my dictaphone in the dining room while Liam had afternoon tea, when she suddenly came into the kitchen yelling
"Boo, boo."
"Have you done a poo?" I said, because she occasionally does tell me after the fact (though more often she denies it altogether), but she shook her head and continued down the hallway.
"Do you want to sit on the toilet?"
"Yesh."

And lo and behold, she sat on the toilet and did what in polite circles is known as 'passing a bowel movement'. She did a poo. In the toilet. And when she was finished she hopped off (happily with a mostly clean butt).

Maybe it was a coincidence, I don't know. I'm not going to rush into putting her in undies, I can tell you that much. But I guess next summer - when she's two-and-a-half, maybe she will be ready. And I'd guess she ain't going to be prepared to wait like her brother did!

Knitting dishcloths

I've decided to try knitting dishcloths (actually, we just call them sponges in my house, but I guess that's not a very accurate term really).

Rhonda at Down to Earth mentioned in a recent post that she makes her own (of course!), and then Diana gave me a heads up about how to do it and where the instructions are. The only thing I've ever knitted before is blankets in sold moss stitch (which is knit one, pearl one, then alternate it on the next row and so on - or is it knit one pearl one and then the same on the next row? See, I have to figure it out each time I start a new blanket!). I have knitted three and a half of these blankets so far. One for my best friend S's baby (another S friend!) who was born six months before Liam, one for Liam, one for Mikaela and I am half way through one for my sister's baby (who is not yet born).

This is the detail of the first blanket I made, for my friend's son.

Anyway, I am trying to live more simply, more sustainably, and of course, more cheaply. It doesn't seem likely that we will save much money by knitting dishcloths, since I use them until they are completely threadbare anyway, and it doesn't cost a lot to buy a new one every few months. But. I really want to become more able to make/fix/make do with things my self, and be less reliant on mass produced, probably through exploitation, store bought stuff. So I am going to give this a try. Of course, it's going to mean buying some cotton yarn, which you can't really get second hand, but I suppose I might be able to get end of run balls or something? I really have no idea. Anyway, that might be something to look into tomorrow morning after dropping Liam at school, since Chris is going to Melbourne for work, so I won't have my usual Monday writing day. I will post photos when I have something to show.

Trying to remember the effect of exhaustion on children's behaviour

Liam's in the middle of a big weekend.

Yesterday after school (which finishes at 12:30 on Fridays in the kindergarten) we had his friend R over until his Dad could come get him after work, which ended up being about 6:00. Then we up and decided to go out to dinner,  despite still being on a spending freeze, despite Liam being of course quite exhausted. I don't think Kaely's ever been out to dinner before, that's how often we do this (Liam might have been out two or three times in his life before). But she'd had a long nap - normally I wake her by 3pm to ensure an orderly bedtime, but with R here all afternoon I decided to cut myself some slack and she ended up sleeping until 4:15! - so she was fine.

Then today we had another friend, S, in the afternoon. When her mum came to get her (shortly after five) she and Liam were just about to start colouring in*, so her mum dashed off to the shops and they ended up not going till I guess fairly close to six too. We also had visits with my mum and from Chris's dad today, so it's been a social sort of day.

And finally tomorrow - forecast to be the coldest day of the season so far, truly wintry - they have the autumn picnic on at Liam's school, which is the big family event of the season. I'm not going, because it's my writing day and I only have three weekends left before it's all due in (gotta try doing a substantial re-write of the essay tomorrow). I was feeling quite sad about missing it, but now I've seen the forecast, I'm feeling sort of lucky. Chris and the kids will still go though. And I imagine they'll have lots of fun.

But, even this morning Liam was already showing signs of being tired, after his big day yesterday. By this evening he was getting quite annoying (though he was fine up until the moment S left), and I really had to try to remember that he's overtired. By tomorrow night I hate to think what he'll be like. And unfortunately he has swimming after school Monday. After this sort of weekend I would probably keep him home from that, but it's the last class of the term, and he doesn't go back until Spring as the centre is closing down for the winter to do some work. I'm almost wondering if I should keep him home from school Monday instead. I guess I'll play it by ear, but either way I must remember: Liam is tired, and tired children find it hard to behave 'well'. Must remember!

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*Before this, in the three or so hours S had been here, they had built a boat (a box with a small broom for a mast), played with cars, done chalk drawing outside on the driveway in the freezing cold (but under cover from the on-again off-again light rain), rolled wool into small balls suitable for making gods-eyes, started making gods-eyes, and very briefly played with lego. S had also had fun playing outside with Mikaela, and told me several times she wished Kaely was her little sister.

Free play builds intellect

After school yesterday we had a play date with one of Liam's best friends, B, who doesn't go to 'our' school, but goes to one nearby, and two other mutual friends (twins) who used to go to B's school but now goes to Liam's.

The kindergarten playgrounds are enclosed, but the class one & two playground is out in the open, so we sometimes go down there after school finishes for a play, and that's what we did.

The boys (and one girl, B's four-year-old sister) played really well together, for over two hours. By the time we finally dragged them away it was getting dark and I had to call Chris to warn him that he'd be home before us, and could he please get something out of the freezer for dinner.

They played with sticks and logs and rocks and dirk (mud, really) building a 'dam' below a pond that the class-two children had built during the day. They filled it with bore water from a tap, using a big saucepan they found in the sandpit. It did leak a bit, but overall I have to say they did an amazing job, working together with virtually no supervision (their mum's being busy talking and supervising the toddlers), and no noticeable conflict.

One of the things their mum's were talking about was the importance of free play. B's mum, S, (one of my S friends) was telling us some recent research she'd heard about, that found that at this age free play is the most important factor in developing intellect.  And as we watched them 'working' none of us found that at all surprising. S's kids don't go to the Steiner school (though she's torn about it), but since free play is what they are doing a good 80% of the time in the Steiner kindy, the other two of us were able to feel quite smug.

Turning a corner (Liam at six)

The other week (month) I was saying to my Dad that the toddler age is so much fun because they are developing and changing so quickly, but it's not too hard yet to figure out what to do (not like with a five year old, let alone - oh the horror - a teenager).

But you know what? Watching a five/six year old develop is really fun too.

Liam seemed to take a big leap in his social development in the first term after school went back this year. At almost exactly five & and half we started having trouble knowing what to do with him - he started throwing tantrums, which he'd never done before, and just generally being difficult. Then I read that that's pretty normal at five and a half (the 'new tantrum age') and OMG it gets worse at six.

But when Liam was almost six things started looking up, and they are still good two months on. Not that everything is peachy all the time, of course not, but it seems to me that he has come through to a new place. He is one of the 'big kids' now at school (they have two years in together for kindy, instead of having four/five-year-old preschool and five/six-year-old kindergarten separately), and he seems to be taking to the role with surprising - well, it's a weird thing to say about a six year old, but - maturity. He's starting to get into being 'good', for perhaps the first time in his life. And boy it's nice to see.

For instance, last year after school he and two of his (older) friends would put their backpacks on their front and 'boom' into each other. Their teacher (J) repeatedly told them to keep their backpacks on the back, but it had no noticeable effect. Then one day last term I got to school and Liam and two (new) kids were doing this. I said - quite mildly - "What does J say about having your backpack on your back?" Liam immediately took his off and put it on his back, and told the other kids to do the same.  This is not the same child who finished up his first year of kindy in December, it's just not.

Another example.  One morning we got to school and Liam's friend R called him over to help them 'make poison for B'. B is a child Liam has mentioned a number of times as mucking up, being 'naughty', etc. In fact he bit Liam one day a few weeks before this incident (Liam was trying to take something from him at the time). But when I got there in the afternoon Liam ran over to me saying "Mummy, I have some really good news!" He was so excited to tell me that he is now "helping B be good." He's being friends with him, and showing him how to look for bugs. What more could a friend want?

The non-post, which quickly became Me Rabbiting On

From the claytons post direct to the non-post, and I haven't made it two weeks of posting every day yet. I wonder if this spells doom of my plans to make it through the entire month?

Two people I know IRL and one online (but not through blogging) are currently pregnant and happy about it - two via IVF one via an accident (though they were planning to start trying within a couple of months, just hadn't quite got there yet).

I am tired tired tired. Yet the idea of having a newborn in the house does not fill me with dread. Maybe that's just because I'm too tired to feel dread. Actually, I wouldn't want to have one right now. Kaely is not quite two and still seems waaay to young to me to introduce another baby into the house. All those people who have the second when their first is under two (or even under three, truth be told) are amazing to me. How they manage, but more than that, how they can even contemplate having another one early enough to have produced another one that quickly is totally beyond me.

Kaely is seeming quite a bit better, by the way, but still very grumpy.

I went to pilates tonight. I've been doing it since about three months before we started trying to get pregnant with Mikaela. I told my cousin (after her second baby in as many years) that doing pilates is just a price of having children and really must be done. A very middle class perspective.

I start back at work in only about 6 or 7 weeks. Seven I guess. Not sure how I feel about that yet, but it will be for a different government department than the one I left, because of the shuffling of portfolios with the new government, so that's sort of exciting. Or perhaps exciting is too strong a word, but you know what I mean I'm sure.

Liam's school has it's annual Autumn picnic this Sunday, but I can't go because I'll be writing. The deadline approacheth fast. I'm also missing one of his best friend's birthday parties the following week for the second or third year in the row for the same reason.

And now that I have rabbited on and on I am going to bed.

A claytons post (Mikaela, sleep deprivation, and the writing life - sort of)

The post you have when you're not...

Did I mention already that Mikaela was up last night from 11:45pm until 3:15am? And then back up (for good) at 6am? Yes, well, sleep deprivation might seem like enough reason for me to be writing a clayton's post at nearly nine o'clock at night (when my bedtime is theoretically 9:30, old nanna that I am), but really it's because I spent the entire day today with Mikaela attached to me. Either nursing or just whimpering. Up until about an hour before bedtime, that is, when she suddenly decided life wasn't so bad after all (could be something to do with the paracetmol I gave her of course) and started running and climbing and jumping as though to make up for the rest of the day.

That was the main part of my day today.

There was a nice moment when a friend to whom I'd sent a draft of the piece of fiction* I've written for my master's project wrote back to say she loved it and it made her cry at places. But then she asked if she could send it to some friends who she thought would really like to read it and I freaked out slightly and said NO! For one thing it's still a draft, but for another I would like to try to get some parts of it published (it's got a few discrete short stories within the story).. but then I thought, but what about the rest? All that work, it does deserve some readers. And yet it's not a format that I can see getting published as it is - too short for a novella (let alone a novel), but structured like one, complete with prologue and epilogue, too long for a short story. And it's literary/academic in style (as you might expect, given the context of its creation), so that's a small market anyway.

Anyway, I'll have to think on it I suppose.

But right now I have to go have my cup of tea with my husband before it's bedtime. Or before Mikaela wakes up next, whichever comes first...

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*I never know quite how to refer to this as it's too long to be called a short story - over 17,000 words, though I'm supposed to be getting it down to 16,000 - but too short to be a novella.