February Fly on the Wall

Welcome to another monthly instalment of Fly on the Wall.  For any of you who are unfamiliar with the premise, each month a group of bloggers join together and share the crazy things you'd see or hear were you a fly on their wall.


This month there are twelve bloggers joining in, all listed below for you to check out once you're done here. 

http://www.BakingInATornado.com        Baking In A Tornado

http://www.juiceboxconfession.com        Juicebox Confession

http://www.menopausalmom.com/          Menopausal Mother

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com      Someone Else’s Genius

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/     Spatulas on Parade

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com             Never Ever Give Up Hope

http://www.gomamao.com                       Go Mama O

http://dinoheromommy.com/                     Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com Not That Sarah Michelle

http://www.southernbellecharm.com        Southern Belle Charm

http://mybrainonkids.net                           My Brain on Kids

Miss K: Mum what should I draw? Me: Draw an existential crisis. Miss K: Here, I drew a pizza. (about 2 minutes later) Miss K: Mum what should I draw? Me: Draw the fall of man. Miss K: I can't draw that, so I'll just draw a sheep ok. Me: Well that could be the fall of man, you never know.  Miss K started kindergarten this month, and it has been a very exciting time for her. Every morning when we arrive at the kindergarten gates, she likes to announce at the top of her lungs for everyone within a three block radius that she has arrived. On one of her first days there, she noticed a no smoking sign that is posted on the fence of the kindergarten, so she decided she'd add to her normal announcement "I'm not smoking today!" She couldn't understand why we all laughed at her.  Sam was at our house trying to do a crossword puzzle Sam: What's another word for refund, that starts with R? Me: Rebate. Sam: Oh yeah. I was going to put rabbit. about five minutes later Sam: Another word for plentiful, 5 letters starts with A Mum: Ample. Sam: Bugger, I was going to say apple. My big sister Sam has started getting clucky again (it happens on average about every four years) and she's decided to start a campaign to get me to have a second baby. Miss K is adamant that this does not happen, as she has recently discovered that babies are boring, and they take the attention away from her. I feel that there are larger problems standing in the way of me having another child, so I decided to bring one of the many issues up with Miss K one day. Me: But Miss K, if I'm going to have another baby, we need to find it a daddy, we don't have a daddy for the baby yet. Miss K: How about your daddy? Me: That's slightly illegal, try again. Miss K: Ok then, my daddy. Me: Yeah, no thanks, been there, done that. We eventually settled on my best friend Frankie being the best daddy for the baby, now just to break the news to him... So Nat has been having troubles with breathing the past week, and the doctor sent her off for a CT scan to check for blood clots in her lungs. She called me after she'd finished at the clinic to tell me all about it. Nat: So the nurse said that it would eventually feel like I've wet my pants, and after the saline solution worked its way through my face and my arms, it spread down to my pelvis, and sure enough it felt like I'd wet my pants. I felt like asking her if she was sure I hadn't just wet my pants, I was certain I was about to stand up and there would be a wet patch on my jeans. But it was just the saline.   Things I never thought I'd have to say to my child #468635 As I'm taking a fry pan off the stove; Now remember, the frying pan is hot, so please don't sniff it.
Me: Can you please put this lid back on the butter? Miss K: Did you say put it in the bathroom?
Well that's all the crazy I can muster for one month, I'm now off to tell my best friend he's been selected as the finalist for the baby Miss K doesn't want. Wish me luck!

3 ways to encourage whole brain learning through play

Hi guys, today I have a guest joining me to discuss whole brain learning and how you can incorporate it into your play time with your children at home, so please be upstanding and welcome Amanda from Shichida Australia.

When my daughter was around 1 year old, we began story-time at the library. It was a half hour of singing, reading, talking and some bubbles play. At first it was a way for me to get out the house and be around other people and not feel so isolated as a mom. I continued coming for another reason. I noticed that my baby was remembering signs and interacting with the presenter. My first thought was “I have a baby genius’ and my second thought was “i wonder what else she can learn through play?”

I began integrating music, dance and play into our everyday tasks. I would sing to the tune “If you’re happy and you know it’.

If you see the color (insert color), pick it out! (while pointing to the color)

If you see the color (insert color), pick it out! (while pointing to the color)

If you see the color (insert color), give a wiggle and a giggle

If you see the color (insert color), pick it out! (while pointing to the color)

I used this basic tune to talk about not only colors, but shapes and body parts. Before long, my itty bitty baby was starting to recognize shapes, colors and body parts. It is how she learned almost anything: we danced, sang and pointed stuff out.

I thought, imagine how fun school would be if we played to learned beyond preschool?

New research is supporting the idea that play and learning are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand. Research is showing that children that engage in playful learning are developing memory skills, their language is developing and they are able to adjust to an academic learning environment. This whole brain approach to learning is changing the way we learn and remember things. In fact, research is showing that all functions of the brain are connected.

A pioneer in childhood whole brain learning, Dr. Makoto Shichida, has committed 40 years to developing techniques to stimulate early development of the brain. Dr. Shichida emphasizes parent-child bonding and when a child feels free to express himself, he is more able to learn. This is a balanced approach to whole brain learning.

Here are easy ways to incorporate this whole brain, play based learning into your schedule without feeling you are adding more to your plate. Try to engage at least two senses at a time. 

1. Schedule time for physical play, integrate music into your play. Hot potato with music or musical chairs are two examples. Silly time and having your child using hand-eye coordination, while waiting for musical cues stimulated different parts of the brain at once.
2. Have adult and child interactions. Pretend you are in a restaurant and your child is the server and chef. Pretend you are a patient in a hospital and your child is the doctor.
3. Recreate an experience, such as travel or a vacation. Pretend you are in another country and practice using simple words from another language. This helps engage the multi-language circuit of the brain.

The most important things to remember are to let your child’s imagination run wild, make sure your child feels safe to express himself, and let your child be the guide.

(http://www.shichida.com.au/)

About the author:. Amanda works PR for Shichida Australia ((http://www.shichida.com.au/), spreading her love for childhood learning through fun, music and play.  When she isn’t chasing her two kids and (trying to) prepare healthy meals, she is cuddling her fur baby, a 9 year old boxer.

What Parenting Means

So the other week while working at a craft stall with a good friend of mine, we had a heavily pregnant woman come and sit down at our table to make a card. Some gentle probing later we discovered she was about a week away from popping. We decided this was a perfect time to terrorise the poor woman by telling her exactly what being a parent meant, right when it's too late for her to back out. Of course it was all in good fun, and we didn't reveal any of the real horrible truths (we like to leave some mystery for new mums). But it has been on my mind a bit since that weekend. The word parent is universal, and while customs and traditions can vary from person to person, there are some things that stay the same no matter whether you live in an igloo in Antarctica (do people really do this?) or a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. So as a handy guide for anyone who is thinking of being a parent, or for those of you who are already parents, and just want a reminder of why you're not going back for a second (or third) I present the following.

Source

1. Putting yourself last. Forever, and ever, and ever.
2. Never getting to blow out the candles on another birthday cake. And forget about unwrapping your own presents. That job now belongs to your children.
3. Being woken up by a tennis racket to the face (seriously)
4. Acting like you know exactly what you're doing, despite the fact that inside your head you're screaming as loud as the baby is right now.
5. Boring all of your friends with all of the super adorable things your little one did in the few hours since you last spoke to them.
6. Using your clothes as a tissue or napkin for someone else.
7. Catching vomit in your hands.
8. Eating baby foods to find out exactly why your darling one is spitting it out. (Hint, it's because it tastes like butt. You'll find this out the hard way.)
9. Having someone new to blame any time you break wind in company. (This one only works until they learn to speak.)
10. Having your heart explode with pride and love every time they do something new. It never gets old.
11. Having a deep seated hatred for toys that need batteries to work.
12. Watching the same movie twice in one day because it's their absolute favourite and they'll scream the house down if you don't let them watch it again.
13. Ice cold feet pressed into your back when they sneak in to sleep with you at 3 in the morning. 
14. Waking up to a little person sitting on your head, because they're hungry and you're being boring by sleeping right now.
15. Discovering that toy makers hate you, I mean really hate you, by making you build every darn thing you ever buy for your child. It seriously took me over an hour to put Miss K's bouncer together when she was a baby. I'm not a stupid person, but that thing needed an engineering degree just to assemble four parts. And don't even get me started on her bike.
16. Spending the day convinced that you have given birth to the spawn of Satan, only to forget every horrible thing they did that day the minute you see them sleeping like an angel.
17. Feeling like the worst person in the world every time you have to discipline them. 
18. Spending the first four years of their life complaining that they are so needy, only to realise that was only temporary, then spending the next few years panicking that one day your kids aren't going to need you any more. 
19. Feeling like your heart is going to break in half every time you see them growing up right before your eyes.
20. Being someone's super hero, simply because you were able to fix a slightly broken toy.
21. Hating yourself the minute they realise you aren't a super hero, and are in fact (gasp) human.
22. Being a policeman, chef, maid, clown, magician, chauffeur, referee, cheerleader, hostage negotiator, and anything else you need to be just to keep your house running.
23. Looking at every other parent you ever see and wondering how they can possibly have it all together like that. (Little hint, they don't, they're just as confused as you are.)
24. Hour upon hour spent worrying about things that once upon a time you never though worth your time. 
25. Lying awake at night convinced that today was the day you screwed up your child. 
26. Finding yourself singing the theme song to your child's latest favourite TV show, while in public.
27. Apologizing to a million strangers because your child walks like a drunk old man, and keeps crashing into everyone they find.
28. Feeling mortified the first time your child swears. Bonus horror if it happens in public. 
29. Months spent carrying your sleeping child to the toilet because if you have to wash one more pee soaked sheet you are going to lose your mind.
30. Discovering exactly how fierce you can truly be the first time someone hurts your precious little one. You're normally a placid person, but right now you could cut a b***h.
31. Feeling a mixture of pride and revulsion the first time you realise babies are capable of farting like full grown men after a meal of baked beans.
32. Endless games of "What is that mysterious smudge on my new shirt?"
33. Dancing like a one legged man in a butt kicking contest all around your living room because it makes your child squeal with laughter.
34. Feeling like you've lost a part of yourself the first time they spend a night away from home.
35. Rediscovering the joy of jumping out at someone as they come around a corner. This one never gets old with kids around.
36. The joy of hearing your kid tell you that you're the best mum/dad in the world. 
37. Bony elbows, knees, backsides, all in your internal organs. You wouldn't believe something that chubby and squishable is really able to inflict immense pain with one well placed limb.
38. Being able to heal all boo-boos with a kiss.
39. Having to wait until your child has been kissed, cuddled and questioned before any adult will speak to you ever again. 

And finally...

  40.  Loving someone, and being loved more fiercely than you ever thought possible.

Before the new, a bit of the old

Happy 2014 my lovely people, I know I've been pretty absent the past month but things around here have been CRAZY busy these past weeks, and sadly when the chips are down this blog is the first place to get ignored. So thank you all for your never ending patience while you waited for me to get my head above water yet again, and to reward you all I have decided to grace the interwebs with yet another nugget of sparkling wisdom.

So to say that December was the worst month I've had in a long time seems like a slight understatement. There were pretty sad lows, a few health scares and lots of tears. My big sister lost her brother in law to suicide at the beginning of the month, and the whole family are still trying to come to terms with their grief and loss. I knew her brother in law, having gone to high school with him for a few years, and I even did my debutante ball with him back when I was 16. He very kindly stepped in to be my partner when all my other potentials fell through, even though by that stage he'd moved to a different school. As an added bonus, when his big brother finally married my big sister we were partnered together again for the wedding party and I already knew he was a good dancer. It was a life cut tragically short and his absence is strongly felt by everyone who knew him. My heart has broken time and time again for my big sister and my brother in law this month watching them feel such pain and I can only hope the day comes soon that this all becomes a little easier for them.

Also receiving a major hit was my sister in law who discovered in November that she would need to get her leg amputated. She had a bad infection in her foot and it hit the bone. It shouldn't have been so urgent except that she also discovered that she is pregnant again in November (Yay!!) and infections tend to be pretty bad for developing babies, so they had to chop the leg off. No one knew what was going to happen to the baby, whether or not it could cope with the anesthetic and the shock of major surgery, but luckily both mum and baby came out the other side OK and we now get to welcome a new baby into our family later this year. I have already advised I will not be joining her in getting knocked up this time (Miss K is 3 months younger than their daughter) but I will happily watch her swell up from the sidelines.

Then Miss K and I had an emergency visit to the Sunshine hospital on Christmas Eve after she fell and hit her head on the tiled floor at Nonna's house. I didn't see the actual fall as I was in the laundry doing some washing, but Miss K's Nonna insisted that the fall was only minor and took Miss K off for a drive to cheer her up. Unfortunately for us Miss K has a habit of falling asleep in the car, and sure enough she dozed off this time too. For anyone with basic knowledge of head injuries, you'd know that you never let anyone with a bump to the head go to sleep, as you can't properly observe a sleeping baby. Sure enough Miss K woke up with vomiting and dilated pupils and we rushed her to the emergency room to make sure everything was ok. The staff at Sunshine hospital were absolutely amazing, and knew exactly how to examine a sick two year old. There were stickers and bubbles and everything else a little girl could love, and she didn't even realise she was undergoing medical tests. Luckily for us she only had a mild concussion, there were no signs of bleeding to the brain or fractures to the skull so we were given permission to give her some pain killers and after watching her tear around the emergency room in a Cosy Coupe for an hour and a half they were happy enough to let us go home. For Ady and I the visit to the hospital was an awful trip down memory lane, as it was nearly three years ago we made our first visit to an emergency room when Miss K got meningitis. As horrible luck goes, Ady's car broke down that morning so he couldn't even drive us to the hospital. I had to throw Miss K into Nonna's car and get her to take us to the hospital and Ady caught up with us there. Watching him walk up to our bed on the ward was the most relieved I had felt since the whole disaster started and I burst into tears. By then we had been told that she was going to be ok, but I still couldn't relax until we were allowed to go home and I could see my mum. Of course for me, home was still more than two hours away, so it was a white knuckle trip home. Poor Ady tried to make conversation the whole drive but I was too busy waiting for Miss K to throw up again to really talk.

Despite having taken a knock to the head, Miss K did bounce back pretty quickly, and because I was waking her up every 4 hours to take more pain killers, her Christmas started at 2am when she saw her first present, her very own Cosy Coupe, which my little sister Kim had been putting together while we were driving home. It was just dumb luck that she had already spent the better part of her afternoon screaming around the hospital in one the day before so she knew how to drive it, but I'd had the car on lay by for a whole month before Christmas, because I am just an awesome mum.

Pictured: The daughter of the best mum ever!

Christmas went pretty smoothly despite everything I've mentioned above, we had lunch at our place with almost all the family, Ben and Tristan decided to spend Christmas with Tristan's family so we won't get to give them their gifts until they come down for mum's birthday next week, but Ady did get to come and spend the day with his daughter, and watching the two of them play together was a wonderful way to spend Christmas. She got more presents than I could possibly find homes for, including a kitten, which has been named Bertie Beetle (because why not?) and he is quickly becoming one of the family. 

He's pretty cute for a fur ball.

Given that I am very allergic to cats and usually go out of my way to avoid them at all costs, I will admit that he's pretty cute for a cat, and because I am the one who feeds him and cleans his litter tray, I get most of the cuddles off him, but Miss K is trying her hardest to get him to play with her, even if her methods are rough to say the least. Surprisingly enough Bertie puts up with most of her rough housing, only crying when she grabs him by the tail or the legs. I have had to rescue him from her death grip on more than one occasion but I'm sure they'll find their groove soon enough.

So that's pretty much summed up the past month. Ady is still in town, so Miss K has been spending time with him every day this week, much to her delight, and I'm loving it because it makes a wonderful bargaining chip for me whenever she refuses to go to bed. Any time she gets up one too many times I tell her she can't see dad tomorrow if she misbehaves and it pulls her head right in. I've also gotten some much needed quiet time while they go off together so I'm feeling almost relaxed at the moment. Except that we're also trying potty training right now so there's always something to worry about.

Well I'll be back again tomorrow with more gems for you guys, so stay tuned for that. Also I'm taking part in three blog series put together by Karen from Baking in a Tornado this month, the first one coming up very soon, so keep your eyes peeled guys. But until then, as always, stay awesome and happy new year.

Breast is best for some

Here we go, I have another bee in my bonnet today, and I'm fit to explode if I don't share it with you guys. For any gentleman readers, you may want to skip to another entry at this point because things are about to get very female if you understand me.

So I have just been stalking reading another lovely bloggers latest entry this afternoon, and in it she happened to mention that she is struggling to supply enough breast milk to keep her 6 week old son happy. She made one of the biggest errors I have ever found you can make around breast feeding fanatics young and old, she admitted that she is supplementing his feeds with formula. Once I saw this I skipped down to the bottom of the page to check her comments section, and sure enough snuggled amongst the congratulations and well wishes of other kind readers, there was one woman who had decided to take it upon herself to lecture this poor woman about the dangers of mixing formula milk with breast milk. Now given that this blogger is up to her fifth child, I'm sure she's perfectly aware that there are supposed risks associated with mixing milks, and doesn't need anyone, no matter how kind their intentions are to point this out to her.

I had a similar problem when Miss K was a baby. I discovered when we were rushed to hospital when she was 2 weeks old that along with the myriad of health problems she had accumulated over the past fortnight, she was also very dehydrated, and there was a problem with our feeding somewhere along the line. We had had problems with feeding from the get go. Because I have been "blessed" with a very ample chest, I always ran the risk of suffocating Miss K whenever I tried to feed her, and she also had problems latching on. Then with all the stress of my mother and my daughter both trying to die on the same day and spending the subsequent three weeks in hospital my milk supply started to dry up. In a desperate attempt to try and get the most milk for her that I could I started expressing the milk straight into a bottle so I could know exactly how much she was eating every day. We quickly found out that she was getting approximately 80ml less every feed than what she should be.

So finally after three very long and frustrating weeks of solely relying on my own milk, I finally bit the bullet and asked one of the nurses to bring me some formula. Well you would think that I had just announced I was going to let Miss K go off and live by herself in the wild for a month and see how she liked it. The nurse was so unimpressed with me she bought in an army of experts to try and dissuade me from supplementing her feeds with formula milk. Luckily for me, every staff member she bought in to see me took one look at my situation and realised I wasn't happy with having to make the decision, but I was doing it to keep my daughter alive, and told me to go ahead and supplement her feeds. I was glad to have all of the medical staff off my back, but it didn't stop the guilt that I wasn't able to feed my daughter the way you're meant to.

And that's the thing. Most first time mothers will start their pregnancies knowing that they will be breastfeeding their children. Everyone tells you how difficult it is going to be, but you never believe them. This is natural, this is how we are meant to feed our children, how can it be difficult? But it is difficult. Especially when you have two inexperienced people trying to figure out how to work these bloody milk bags, and one of those people can't do much else besides poop, sleep and make sucking motions with their mouth. You've had these giant pillows sitting in front of you for twenty odd years now, you've never really put much thought into their real purpose before you fell pregnant, and all of a sudden they become these huge unwieldy leaking weapons you can't control. And so on the horrible day where you realise you can't do this all on your own, you're not the perfect earth mother you always envisioned yourself to be when you dreamed about being a mum, and you've asked for the dreaded f word (formula you filthy minded people), the last thing you need is a lecture from someone about how you are going to give your baby nipple confusion.

So the next time you see a woman feeding her baby with a bottle, before you cluck your tongues in disapproval, milk Nazis, just think, it may not have been her first choice. Plus the baby is getting food so what else matters?

Something in the water

It seems to be baby season at the moment. I have discovered over the past few months that almost every one of my friends who were pregnant at the same time I was with Miss K are all pregnant again. I was very excited to hear that two of my friends gave birth this week, to healthy beautiful children. Another woman I used to go to Mother's Group with is pregnant with twin boys, and the girl I was visiting when I discovered I was pregnant is also pregnant with her third child. It is kind of crazy but I almost felt sad that I was being left out of the pregnancy boom this time around, especially as I loved having so many pregnant women around me when I was up the duff, as it makes it easier to go through the torture of carrying around 10 kilos of child and excess baggage when everyone else is doing it with you.

Of course I still stand firm on my single child policy for now, and although I miss talking about being pregnant, I definitely don't miss being pregnant. Feeling like a beached whale is never fun, especially in the heat of an Australian summer. Although I really can't complain about baby weight too much given that Miss K was happy living next to my spine whilst in utero, which meant that even when I was a week away from giving birth, I still only looked about 7 months pregnant. While this could have been seen as a blessing, I was actually quite disappointed that I didn't look like I was carrying a yoga ball underneath my t-shirt. Of course if I had been any larger I would probably have been complaining about the above yoga ball, and the things it did to my wardrobe. As it was I still had to swap my wardrobe of jeans for leggings, which have now become an essential part of my tiny stack of day wear, especially as they are so forgiving of stretchy post-pregnancy stomachs.

The other consequence of pregnancy that I really want to avoid for now is the inevitable child that comes after the 9 months of discomfort and the agony of labour. While I adore Miss K with all of my heart and would never trade her for anything in the world (not even tickets to a Mika concert), on her own she is able to make the noise of three children and the mess of ten. So while I have her in my life my hands are completely full. Having said that; I probably should make it clear that I love having such a huge handful of child to take care of and there may be a day when I find that I want to increase my little family, but right now my family of two is the perfect size for me. Plus this way Miss K always gets to lick the spoon when someone is baking.

The end result of Miss K being allowed to lick the spoon.