Saturday, October 30, 2010

channelling martha

... with a distinctly Molly's-life twist.

On Friday we ...

 ... sent Frieda off to school in a home-made jack o' lantern costume ('Just like Lola's Mum'), complete with hand-sewn stalk & leaves.
The meltdown was because she didn't want to wear the !#&* stalk ...

... later she had a yoghurt ice-lolly, ingeniously made (by moi) by freezing a plastic spoon in a small pot of yoghurt.


Seconds later she dropped it on the cat and declared it 'too hairy'.

... later still I took the girls for a run/roll around at Kirstenbosch Gardens.


We had a great time but a chill wind came up and this morning they're inevitably both snotty ....

... we ended our day baking Smarties cookies for my brother's birthday.


Very yummy but we left them out unsupervised and the dang cat made off with a couple of them.

Kids 'n cats, looming snot, meltdowns and furry popsicles, yummy cookies and arts 'n crafts; it may not be exactly Martha-esque but it was a fun Friday none-the-less.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

yet another one about camping

We're happy campers. I've said this before once or twice.

And just back from a fabulous little camping trip - our first in over a year (bit of a record for us) and our first with Stella - I've a couple more thoughts ...

~ how is it that the loudest voice in the campsite, or at least the one that carries the clearest, is always the most boring?
This is not when you overhear a revelatory explanation of Derrida, a fascinating political theory or a hilarious anecdote. No, the voice that wafts across to your fireplace is money down bitching about the state of SA sports. Or who should have won a recent reality chef contest. Or rehashing boring previous holiday stories, exactly how many kilometres were traveled between one boring destination and another, how many boring meals were eaten and at what price.
Also, you quickly realise the correlation between how many glasses of wine The Voice has had and how boring it becomes. By the 3rd evening you can almost set your watch by it.
If you were wearing one.

~ this is of course only a problem when you're staying in one of those camping spots where the sites seem to be right on top of each other, just the merest hedge - if you're lucky - separating you from your neighbours. At Addo this last week this is as tastefully done as possible, but none-the-less you are likely to learn far more about your neighbours then you may have chosen to. As no doubt they did about us.
'Are you going to give Stella some boob now Mum?'

~ when you go somewhere like Addo, out of season, mid week, you find all your fellow campers are retirees, living the dream wandering round the country in their camper vans - replete with satellite dishes, fold-out dish-washing racks, homemade curtains and high tech camping chairs. We were surrounded by these and I was imagining their hearts sinking as we pulled up with two kiddies live-wired on the back seat.
But of course this combination of olds and smalls worked surprisingly well. The oldies missed their grandkids and smiled indulgently at our girls. And they kept the same hours - early to bed and early to rise. No loud music keeping our kids awake, and no need to hush the children's excited early morning shenanigans.

~ when camping one can often expect strange night time adventures ... Pre-babies Husband and I once lay tense and awake in our tent for long minutes convinced someone wearing flip-flops was creeping around our campsite. Eventually we shone our torch beam out, only to catch the small glinting eyes of a tiny little hopper mouse.
On arriving at Addo I taught Frieda to read the different signs for the Men's and Ladies toilets. We were later to rue the pedanticness of a 3 year old when Husband carried her off to the loo at 1am only to return unsuccessful, even half-asleep she wouldn't let him take her into the Men's, and he didn't want to go into the Ladies for fear of encountering a weak-bladdered Granny. We had to stifle our giggles in the silent dark.
But my favourite nocturnal adventure of this recent trip happened to Husband on the night he spent camping alone on his drive up. The place he stayed at had two horses roaming around the campsite. They were friendly and seemingly inconcerned by him. In the night however he woke to a really strange and undecipherable noise. He could tell the horses were distressed, but what was that clanking?
One of the horses, overcome with curiousity, had become entangled in his camping chair and was getting more and more freaked out, eventually running wildly around the campsite, whinnying and tossing its head. Husband was just wandering what(tf) to do when the horse shook itself free, leaving the chair unscathed in a muddy heap, nothing damaged but equine pride.

Fun times. I like to camp. And we're so happy that our daughters seem to too.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

how divine

So here I am, in the eye of the storm so to speak.

The last few days have been somewhat busy, busy packing and planning, lists and to-do's. You'd think we were staging a major expedition, not a mere 6 day holiday.
Something to do with doing all this packing and planning with two small people in tow perchance?

We packed until midnight last night (my absolute limit of endurance on the amount of sleep I get at the moment) and scooted around doing last minute things this morning.
Ridiculous things like deciding to swop the contents of two packing crates and 5 minutes later swopping them back. Necessary things like bubble-wrapping the base of our new sofa lest the cats wreck their revenge on being left behind. Nostalgic things like unearthing my late father-in-laws binoculars from under our floor (yeah, we've got storage down there) to take with us.

And then Husband, with a very excited doggie grinning on the front seat, drove off to start the adventure. And I? I took the road more travelled by and went inside to change a nappy, collect Frieda from school and spend the afternoon on the beach with my Mum.

But tomorrow the girls and I will have quite an adventure of our own. We're taking the bourgeois civilised route and flying to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, Where, if all goes according to plan, Husband, having booked excited grinning doggie into lux kennels, will be waiting with open arms at Arrivals, and we'll bundle into overloaded vehicle to spend a few days with the elephants (and assorted other wildly exciting animals) in Addo National Park.
Yes, my darlings, we're off on safari.

Toodle-loo!

Monday, October 18, 2010

material girl

Back in August I did a bit of work for Heather. In a fit of anti-capitalism we decided payment would be made in fabric.
I can't help feeling I scored here.

I give you ... the ratty little two seater we got off Husband's sister when we were first setting up house.

And now ...


This is fast becoming my favourite corner of our home.
 




Wednesday, October 13, 2010

here's the thing

The thing about sinus infections.
They lurk. They irk. They prey on your depleted resources, hide when anyone's looking and then ambush you when you least expect it. One day it's blocked ears, another it's a wheeze. You think it's all unrelated, but actually it's the same sinus infection. It's been here for weeks.

The thing about resilience.
The body is an awesome thing. It can truly adapt to almost anything. The problem is not the adaption, the problem is the transition.
One can learn to function on never sleeping for longer than 3 hours at a stretch. But then you get 3 good nights in a row. The body collapses, weirdly you've never been so tired, then it adjusts, and adapts. You feel amazing.
Then the sleeplessness starts again. And while your body clock resets itself you feel so very, very old, until again it becomes the norm. And you carry on.

The thing about holidays.
They take a lot of planning. The more exciting the trip, the more planning required.
And ours is exciting. And requiring a lot of planning.

The thing about 3 year old's.
They're wily unpredictable little blighters. And money down, when you decide at 3.30 on a Friday afternoon that you simply must take your throbbing sinuses to a doctor before the weekend and beg and plead until you get an appointment for 4pm but you've got both kids so you rush around getting ready to leave and ask your eldest to please, please go and find some shoes you will walk into her room 5 seconds later to find her stark naked.
'I want to be bare Mummy.'
Of course you do.

The thing about parenting two smalls.
It's so, so time-consuming.

The thing about blogging.
I miss it.

The thing about sleep deprivation.
It fucks you.

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

I swear this is not the only thing I do ...

... but sometimes it feels like its the only creative thing I do ...


Chocolate cupcakes. Coffee glaze icing. Strawberry hearts.

For a Baby Shower last weekend.

Kinda cute don't you think?

Sunday, October 03, 2010

f*ck that

At 06h05 this morning, this Sunday morning, awake with the baby after another horrendous night of multiple wake-ups and feeds and winds and bad sleep I followed the link sent by a friend to read this article, Why Parents Hate Parenting from the NY Times Magazine in July.

The title felt apt.

But what a load of shit.

Seriously the 1st world needs to get its head out of its own ass sometimes. I am sofa king over this kind of 'journalism', quoting all kinds of 'studies' into the human psyche.
And really, does anyone, anywhere, really trust stats and research groups anymore? Any twat with a theory can manipulate both to his or her own end.
And on the subject of twats, imagine spending all that time and money to train as an academic sociologist only to base your field of study on whiny privileged middle-class 1st world assholes?
Am I ranting here?

Why is it 'surprising' that parents are no happier than non-parents? Where, pray tell, did it say we should be?
Who really thinks it's odd that (according to women in, shock - horror! Texas) child-rearing rated sixteenth of a list of nineteen pleasurable things to do, rated after housework (this time their italics not mine). Try doing anything 24/7 and see how pleasurable it becomes - you wouldn't want to orgasm that relentlessly (be honest now).

I also have a problem with the assumption that happiness is our natural default state, were we all so happy farting rainbows until stinky old parenting came along and changed the flavour? Are childless people just sooooo happy all the time?

What a load of shit.

Go ahead, read the article. No really. 27 000+ people Liked it on facebook so it can't be that wrong. And it got 630+ comments so it obviously hit a nerve. Although granted lots of those are from the same guy with an axe to grind, and quite a few of them are from commenters with plunging cleavages bragging about their wanton desirable childfree lives.

I'm not even weighing in on this debate. The reasons for and against having kids are so many and varied, and so intensely personal, that to rehash this one in the public domain is too boring for words.
I'm just continually astounded at how many people in the world have the luxury to indulge this kind of naval-gazing and self-absorbed crap.
Just get out there and live you stupid privileged fucks.

Ja ok, I'm ranting. And I may not even be making sense. Blame it on the kids sleep-deprivation.

And maybe I am currently 'one of those women who were once smart and interesting but have become zombies' but I seriously couldn't wait to finish this article so I could follow the link to Man Denies Owning Bag of Crack Found in Own Butt.
Now that's more like Sunday morning reading.