Face the Future

Well I've finally caught up with the times and joined Facebook. I've been meaning to get around to it since Peter's sister Gayle was here last July. But it's been one of those things low on the priority list. I've also been invited to join by a couple of other old acquaintances.

Then last week I discovered (while playing around with www.pipl.com) that my best friends all have Facebook pages and never told me, nor invited me to be their online friend. How rude!

So I've joined up and already have almost 20 friends. I feel so important! ;-)

Still trying to figure a lot of it out though. Not sure if I'll get a myspace or bebo page. Definitely NOT going to use Twitter.

-Megz

Patience is a Virture

If someone has a lot of patience they are said to have the patience of a saint.

So what do you call someone who doesn't have much patience? The patience of a sinner?

No, a three-year-old.

Kathleen has no patience at all. She can't fathom time or how long something will take. Every night she asks how long it will be until morning and then her eyes well up with tears as she says it takes so long and that sometimes the sun doesn't want to come up. Some mornings at breakfast she asks when it will be dinner time (usually this is because she wants to watch television while I'm cooking dinner).

I used to think I had a lot of patience. That's one of the reasons I decided to have kids, because I thought I would have a lot of patience and be good at it. HA! I have since discovered I don't have any patience at all. Not when it comes to my girls anyway. I can lose my temper very, very easily these days.

-Megz

My birthday present

My birthday present ... A 6 week old border collie puppy.



We couldn't agree on a name for him for the first week. It came down to Muppet (Peter and Kathleen's choice), Timmy (my choice) or Doe-Do pronounced as in Doe [Female Deer] - Do [as it Just Do It] (Victoria's choice).

Popular opinion among those polled chose Timmy as the name but I'm still taking votes in the comments section.

Getting him was a mission. We drove 5(?) hours to Rotorua [with questions of "are we there yet" after only 20 minutes] to look at one puppy and decide he wasn't what we wanted, and then another hour to Te Puke where we found Timmy. And then 5 1/2 hours home again that night with the girls sleeping in the car, and the puppy whining for part of it, getting home at 1.30am.

Now we just gotta teach him not to go toilet inside the house and not to jump on or chew on the children. Victoria is starting to show interest in the potty - I wonder who will be house-trained first - Victoria or Timmy?

-Megz

Crime and Punishment

Kathleen is going through a particularly rebellious stage at the moment. At least I'd like to hope that it is a phase.

Everything I ask her to do, or to stop doing, is met with "NO". For example:
"Kathleen, can you come and get dressed please", "NO"
"Kathleen, come and have lunch", "No I'm busy playing"
"Kathleen, it's time to leave, can you put that toy away and come here please", "NO"
"Kathleen, let go of your sister", (screams from Victoria, Kathleen does not let go)

It gets particularly bad when we're out somewhere and it's time to go, but she just ignores me and keeps playing. For example, we're out at playgroup and it's pack up time. All the other kids and parents are putting the toys away and getting ready to leave. Kathleen holds onto the toys and stands in the middle of the room refusing to budge, and despite my explaining "Kathleen, it's pack up time, you need to put the toys away" she refuses to do so. OR it's time to leave wherever we are (creche, playgroup, the cafe) and I convince her that it's time to go and she stops what she is doing. However as soon as I turn my back (to pick up Victoria or whatever), Kathleen runs over to another toy and starts playing with it, and we have to begin the whole "Kathleen, it's time to go" routine all over again.

WHAT TO DO?

Negotiation does not work.

I've tried Time Out a couple of times at home but that doesn't really work either. I tend to only use Time Out for the big stuff like hitting and pushing, or if she gets all wound up and needs to cool off. The problem with Time Out is that Kathleen doesn't learn anything from it. All she remembers is that she was sent to her room, not why she was sent there. I know because I've asked her afterwards what she did wrong and she says "I don't know" and "you need to say sorry to me for closing my door Mummy".

Threats and bribery appear to work, for example "If you come now you can watch TV when we get home but if you muck around we won't have time to watch anything". I don't like doing this because it seems so negative and I don't want to have to bribe her to cooperate. I want her to do it because she wants to, not because she's going to get something.

Is it just a phase? Is there any other way to get through this phase without locking her in her room until it's over?


Lately I've been reminded more and more of my own rebellious teen and pre-teen years (read: "oh $h1t there's YEARS of this ahead of us). I remember one instance when I was 11 years old, when our class was supposed to be going on a class picnic at the end of the year. But it was raining and the picnic was cancelled and our class got taken to the movies instead (Return of the Jedi - boring!). The movie finished much earlier than the picnic would have, so my friend and I decided to go to the swimming pool for a while. Silly me, I dived in to the shallow end of the pool and hit my mouth on the bottom of the pool and broke a tooth. My parents were SO MAD when they found out. No so much mad that I'd broken a tooth (although they were probably mad about that too). But mostly they were mad that I'd gone off to the swimming pool without them knowing where I was. I got in so much trouble and the sleepover that I'd had planned for the following weekend was cancelled. I was so upset about that and tried to convince them that my friend shouldn't be punished just because I was in trouble.

ANYWAY, the point of this is that at the time all I cared about was the fact that my sleepover was cancelled. I didn't really think about why. I thought it was because I had gone swimming. Only now when I look back do I realise that it was not because I went swimming. It was because I went swimming WITHOUT TELLING THEM. Because they didn't know where I was and they were worried. We didn't have cellphones back then so what was I supposed to do? Go straight home of course.

My point is that it's taken me 25 years to realise just what I was being punished for (ok, I'm really not that slow, it's been a repressed memory for 24 years). So if I put myself in Kathleen's shoes and know that all she will remember is the punishment and not the crime, then how am I going to get the message through to her? Any message, be it now or in the future.

How do I teach her that she needs to do what Mummy says, not because she's going to get punished (or rewarded) but because it is the right thing to do. Because explaining this to her is not working.

-Megz

The Honesty of People in a Small Town

I haven't been sleeping well lately. Last night was particularly bad. I slept for two hours, was awake for two hours, then slept for another three hours. And that was it for the night. I put it down to the fact that I drank a bottle of V yesterday to help me cope with the fact that I hadn't slept very well the night before that either.

So today I have been pretty tired. As well I've been cranky, forgetful and found it hard to concentrate.

This morning Peter and I had a meeting at our lawyers so the girls and I went up to Palmerston North for the day. When we were finished at the laywers we still had some time left on our parking meter so we went for a walk around the block, Kathleen walking and Victoria in the stroller. When we got back to the car I loaded the girls into the car and off we went to a cafe in the country for lunch.

It was an hour or two later when I was sick of carrying Victoria around and wanting to put her into the stroller, when I realised that I didn't remember putting it back into the car after our walk around the block. A quick check confirmed that, yup, it wasn't there. Damn.

We finished up our lunch and went back to our lawyers, just on the off-chance that it was still there sitting by the side of the road. It wasn't.

I asked at the laywers if they'd seen anything. No, nothing. I resigned myself to the fact that it was gone. Best case scenario I figured a parking warden may have taken it away. Worst case someone pinched it.

There was a bank next door to the lawyers so I decided to ask in there anyway. And, lo and behold, there was our stroller sitting in their foyer.

I confessed to the teller what an idiot I was and she said that she'd noticed the stroller sitting by the side of the road when she went to lunch at 1 o'clock, and it was still there when she came back at 2 o'clock. She guessed what had happened and brought it inside.

Now it had actually been sitting there since 12 o'clock! Two hours!

The honesty of small town people really does surprise and hearten me.

-Megz