Last night I remembered to be grateful

Last night I went to a function. An exhibition in fact. There amongst the beautiful canvases were some of the most, er “interesting” people that I have spoken to for quite a while.  People that I don’t know and will be unlikely to see ever again.

There was one woman in particular who took quite a fancy to me, I think that she could tell that I never run away from conversations with strangers. (I’m very polite like that.)  After she introduced herself to me – wait, she didn’t she just talked a lot and told me her life story, but she launched into a story about her grandson. And I have to say it was a very sad story – he’s only 8 years old and he has some awful medical conditions. I could name them and explain them in full detail like she did but I want to keep you here reading what I have to say.

The first million hours of her story centred around her grandson’s birth and the fact that he was in the special care nursery.  “The level that they don’t give babies much chance in” she said . The same level that my Little Pencil was in 11 years ago.

Maybe it is because she was really boring the hell out of me (she did mention her daughter’s farm at least once every 3 sentences) but my mind started to wander and of course it wondered to Little Pencil and the time that he spent in the special care nursery.

I know that I bang on about his prematurity and early years a lot, and I am well aware that he is so much more than his first year of life but God I am proud of him. And I don’t think I express my gratitude for the perfect person that he is often enough.

He was just the size of my hand when he was born (and I don’t have particularly big hands).  A tiny, struggling little angel that wasn’t ready to come into the world. A baby that fought so hard and endured so much just to stay with us. A baby, that according to the thoughts of Ms Talk Till You Drop wasn’t expected to make it.

And last night as I listened to this lady ramble on I caught sight of him running around, making small talk with the adults and desperately trying to get his father to agree to let him drink Coke and I almost burst with pride. And gratitude.

He’s a feisty little boy, he talks NON STOP (but that’s a post for another day) and he is strong, intelligent, healthy and full of life.

He makes me proud every day of his life and I hope that when I bore people with his story I always remember to say how grateful I am for everything that he is.

My husband could never be a doctor

Mr Pencil is good at many things, he is smart, funny and both interesting and interested in most things. He is intelligent and analytical – and he would probably excel at any vocation he chose. But he could never be a doctor.

Yesterday we had to take Little Pencil to a medical centre. He’d had a temperature for 5 days and it looked like this virus he was sporting might actually have developed into a bacterial infection.  Mr Pencil knows this because he’s very smart and he knows all about secondary infections but still, he could never be a doctor.

You see a doctor would need to be comfortable in a medical setting and er, around sick people. Mr Pencil, well he forgets about logic and science and even antibodies and he becomes a neurotic Dettol wielding, germ dodging mess as soon as he sees a medical receptionist.

As we walked into the doctor’s rooms and sat down to wait out turn Mr Pencil stood. He hovered. He started talking frantically about what he could get from the shop across the road. It was clear that he wanted to leave. He needed an excuse to go shopping. But we didn’t need anything and so he continued to stand while we sat. You could actually see the repulsion he felt for the seats that “sick people had sat on”.

When Little Pencil instinctively reached for some play thing off the shelf, Mr Pencil visibly paled.  He insisted that nobody was allowed to touch anything  - it was bad enough that our bums were touching the seats. We were however allowed to use the communal hand sanitizer which he promptly made Little Pencil slather all over his feverish body.

Eye contact with other patients was strongly discouraged while we sat waiting for our appointment – lest someone’s breath maybe reach us through any form of communication.

It’s not just the doctor’s rooms though, we once went to visit a friend in hospital and stopped off at the ATM in the foyer to draw some money. Mr Pencil  stretched his jumper down below his hands to cover his fingers so that they did not make contact with the keys. Apparently the sickest and most contagious patients in the hospital all use the ATM before they seek medical treatment?

He’s just not a germ man. In fact, as well as being unable to be a doctor I am pretty sure he could never be a bathroom attendant. Although to be honest the opportunity has never opened up to him.

Mr Pencil exits public toilets elbow first and then kind of sidles through the door trying to make himself glide through the entrance without so much as the toes of his shoes touching any surface.  He will not touch anything close to, in the vicinity of or within a 10 meter radius of a public toilet.

He has taught Little Pencil NEVER to wash his hands in a public bathroom unless they have those fancy sensor taps. It is his firm belief that the taps are touched by a thousand unwashed hands straight after using the toilets – and I kind of have to agree with this one.

But the doctor’s rooms? All I can say is that Little Pencil is already better after two days on an anti-biotic, in fact the visit to the doctor seemed to improve his health. Mr Pencil on the other hand seems to have developed some kind of rash. I think it must be from the sustained and methodical over application of Dettol.

Don’t talk with your mouth full and other important life lessons

It is my job as a mother to teach my child certain things. And I do. I try every day to teach him to be compassionate and kind, to be respectful and caring, to make positive choices and not to talk with his mouth full.

I teach him about road rules and water safety. I instruct him in manners and courtesy, I have even taught him how to ride a bike. Okay that’s a lie, his father taught him how to ride a bike.

I’ve taught him about where we come from (literally and figuratively) and about other races and cultures. I’ve encouraged him to love books and reading and I’ve also taught him how to blow bubble gum bubbles that reach his nose.

I’ve guided him through the intricacies of making toast and persevered every morning in teaching him how to make his bed. I’ve taught him the value of money. Okay that’s also lie – he has no clue.

But the lessons he has taught me are much greater.

Through him I have learned huge, unwavering, heart-stopping love, I’ve learned patience and humility. I’ve also learned about sleep deprivation and in the very early days he taught me quite a bit about mastitis.

He’s taught me about survival and pushing through and he even introduced me to the wonder of nutella. To his credit he also reintroduced me to zoo biscuits.

But the two greatest lessons he has taught me are about family and friends.

Late last year we went to America.  Little Pencil, being the son of a blogger decided to transcribe the events of every day onto my computer. Every night we would lie on his bed and he would spill out the contents of his day.

No matter what great sight or wonder we had witnessed Little Pencil always wrote in vivid detail about the things that mattered most to him. Whether it was that his dad taught him about a new Judo move or that I had to tickle him to get him to wake up, my Little Pencil would just write glowingly about how much fun he had with us.

He doesn’t want me to share his dairy online but God I would love to. I would love to show everyone the lessons that my son taught me that holiday. That it doesn’t matter where you are or what you have – if you have your family and you can laugh you have it all.

These holidays I have been working. My guilt factor has been at an all time high because I learnt from his diary just how important family time is to Little Pencil.

But I am lucky, very lucky, because for two weeks I worked at home.  In that time I got to watch my son interact with his friends.  (The fact that I have shafted him on to friends for the rest of the holiday meant that during the time I was working from home I could repay the favour one or two times).

Watching him and his friends brought to mind an article about only children that I had read with (joyful) interest.  It was written by only child Emma Kennedy and said in part:

 ”… there are things about myself I am convinced stem directly from being an only child. First, I love my friends beyond words. There is a handful of people to whom I am devoted to the point of madness.

I suppose the feelings I have for those friends are not dissimilar to what friendly siblings experience. Except I know plenty of people who don’t see their siblings from one year to the next. Yet nobody seems to feel sorry for people who can’t bear their own family.

Second, because I grew up with no experience of sibling rivalry, I have no professional jealousy. I have never, not once, looked at one of my peers and begrudged them their success. It never fails to amaze me how common this is.”

Watching Little Pencil interact with his friends is pure joy.  He doesn’t just like his friends, he loves them with all his heart and soul. He puts every fibre of his being into his play. He concentrates intently on what they say, he laps up their words (when he isn’t talking over them) and he imbibes their presence. He has no jealousy, there is no rivalry – just sheer delight.

And to learn from that has surely got to be one of the greatest lessons of all.

10 reasons why the front row at the school concert is bad. Really bad

Front row seats at the end of year school concert are over rated

1. You get a crick in your neck from trying to see what’s happening on the stage
2. You have nowhere to hide your feet
3. If you cry with pride there is nowhere to hide your tears and you can’t pretend that it’s the person in front of you
4. You can’t lean on the chair in front of you if the performance is so hysterically good that you actually cannot sit straight
5. If you need to leave in a hurry to go and alert the media that your son is a genius you have a longer way to walk
6. If you laugh too hard you put off the performers on the stage
7. There is a chance that someone on the stage will sneeze and if you are in the front you will be unprotected
8. You are very conspicuous with your camera in the front. Also the flash may cause damage to sensitive retinas on the stage
9. If is a service to the performers on the stage because if they need to smile at you (which they do) looking down at the front row makes it seem as if they are looking down. If you are in, say Row F, they can smile at you and make it look like they are smiling at the audience in general – better performance all round
10. The front row is often reserved for special guests who get very grumpy if you point out your son in every scene while squeezing their hands to tell them how proud you are

Okay. You may have seen through me but this is what I am telling my son because the front row seats I booked didn’t actually go through – my computer froze at the important paying part.  Which school uses an online booking system that can’t cope with the volume of traffic that allows every parent to book at the same time anyway*

No amount of tears and screenshots of said booking would suffice because some other mother who doesn’t mind getting sneezed on got my tickets. But I am lucky because apparently Row F has the best seats in town. And I believe that because my son’s parents will be sitting in them.

*That is not a trick question. The answer is Little Pencil’s school

 

5 days of play

You know that old saying “while the cat’s away the mouse will play”? Well my cat is away… You see Mr Pencil is away at a conference for five days leaving me, Little Pencil and Fluffy Pencil to play.

What does this mean you ask?

• We get to eat two minute noodles for dinner. One night I was pushed to cook – we had scrambled eggs
• There is NO washing up from two minute noodles. Well one bowl, one spoon. The scrambled egg night was not as pleasant
• I only have to make one bed – Little Pencil, Fluffy Pencil and I all share a bed
• I get to drive his fancy car and pretend it’s mine
• I get to put on fake tan without being told I stink (Little Pencil has a very bad sense of smell)
• I get to have a break from watching sport on TV
• The bathroom is all mine in the morning.
• I can close the bedroom window (Mr Pencil has this odd belief that we need fresh air)

But in reality I miss him. Even when I speak to him every day and he’s only gone for 5 days

• I miss eating dinner as a family
• I miss him taking the dog for a walk
• I miss him encouraging Little Pencil to get ready for school in the morning
• I miss shouting at him that I also need some space in the bathroom
• I miss the sound of the TV in the lounge
• I miss him nagging me to switch off my laptop and go to bed
• My cursor has disappeared on my screen and I miss him fixing it for me
• I miss him walking through the door

God I’m lucky that I get to miss him even if he’s only gone for 5 days. I know how lucky I am and I hope he does too

I went away with two pairs of inappropriate shoes…and not much else

I am possibly not the best traveller on earth and the weekend may be proof of that. I was going to Brisbane for just one night. That shouldn’t have been too difficult – only one change of clothes needed and well, not much more

Except there is more. For instance if you are going away for a night you should take a toothbrush and toothpaste. I forgot both.  I was incredibly grateful that housekeeping were able to supply these essentials, possibly not as grateful as the people that I spoke to during the day. Although to be honest I am not sure that the white stuff in the tube they provided me was in fact toothpaste because it tasted distinctly like soap.

Even though I seemed to have forgotten about basic hygiene I had remembered to pack an outfit for the function I was attending and I just loved it. In my head. On a skinny model with toned limbs it would have looked great, And on somebody who was not intent on wearing flouro pink tights in 27 degree weather with over 70% humidity.

I had thought very carefully about my footwear and I had the perfect shoes.  Except these shoes were in my mind not in my cupboard and certainly not in my overnight bag.  I had brought a beautiful turquoise dress, quite smart but not over the top – it neither went with the converse sneakers that I had brought nor the brown ankle boots.  Especially when I realised that I should forget the fluoro pink tights. Nothing was going to go with those.  Ever

And if my packing debacle wasn’t bad enough I also never got to grips with the time change. Or in fact the time. I woke up at 6am worrying about the toothpaste. Except I think it was 5am. I tried to go back to sleep but that was hard because I was worried that I wouldn’t wake up again.

So I read and I relaxed except I didn’t relax because the next thing I looked at my watch and it was 8:30 and I was being collected at 9:00 so I hurriedly showered and did my hair and threw on about 1kg of make up. My husband called to say good morning and reminded me that it was actually 7:30 in Brisbane.  Great, more time to worry about my shoes.

I texted Mia a picture of my shoe dilemma because I was afraid she was going to laugh when she saw me (we were travelling together). I wanted to prepare her and it was now 8:55 and I was meeting her at 9:00.  She reminded me that we were meeting at 9:45 and stopped short of telling me to buy new shoes. But I was excited about the extra 45 minutes I had acquired and thought I would do just that – shop. Perfect. There were loads of shoe shops downstairs. Except they were all closed.

So there I was in a beautiful dress with hairy, white legs and ankle boots. My breath smelled of soap and I needed to sleep.

The best part is nobody noticed – all they saw was that I had left my singlet behind and my dress was very low cut. Very.

The real reason I still lie with my son at night

My son is 10. He is a wonderful, independent, feisty and smart child and every night I lie in bed with him before he goes to sleep.

It started when he was a baby. I never let him cry.  Not even a bit – some would say I never let him turn over unattended in his cot and they’d be right. I was am a tad neurotic but more importantly I just hated the sound of him crying alone. I imagined lying in my bed and calling my husband and him ignoring me and I knew how much I hated that.

So it’s become a habit.

A ten-year long habit.

It’s not that he can’t sleep without me there – he sleeps over at friends whenever he gets the opportunity, he’s been on camp, I’ve been out or away and he’s still gone to sleep without a problem.  So it’s a habit rather than an addiction…

He is growing up so fast. He’s testing his boundaries and striving for independence and responsibility.

During the day I am becoming a bit of a nuisance, being replaced with friends and skateboards, books and x-box games. He doesn’t want to hold my hand ever and at all, he is not super keen on listening to me ramble on. He no longer thinks I’m fun at the park.  And apparently I don’t have a clue when it comes to playing rugby. Funny that.

But at night when we lie in bed he will do anything to prolong his bed time so he talks and he talks and he talks and when I don’t want to stick my head in the oven from the continual chatter and the refusal to sleep I lie next to him and think how precious this time is.

And I will lie with him as long as he will have me there.