So Close

It is his lovey

So, a few of you noticed that Marko had his hand in his pants while he was sleeping? 

After I posted that pic and started reading the comments, I suddenly had a "oops, have I over-shared again??" moment, so I called Marko.

Me:  So, I posted that pic of you and Adam on my blog this morning

Marko: Ja?

Me:  Well, you have your hand in your pants. Are you ok with me posting the pic?

Marko: I have my hand in my pants?

Me:  Yes, you know.  You know how you always have your hand in your pants when you lie on the couch watching TV?

Marko: No?

Me: Yes you do! You told me it keeps your hand warm?

Marko: Oh, didn't realize I do it. Fine, whatever.  But in future, do you think you could ask me BEFORE you post a pic rather than afterwards.

Orange is right, it's his lovey. And it keeps his hand warm. Or whatever.  Perhaps if I had some of what he had, I would also want to 'keep my hand warm' with my lovey. 

PS it is our ninth wedding anniversary today.  I got coffee in bed this morning.  I didn't have the heart to point out I haven't had coffee in the  morning for the last 8 months.  No gifts, obviously. Or cards. As we don't do that stuff.  As my husband said to me this morning during our brief but meaningful hug: "nine long years" ;-)  He's my lovey. I do love him quite a lot.

Homework

At the end of each term, the kids get a book filled with their drawings, projects etc.  It is very sweet and the teacher adds little notes.  At the end of this term, the teacher suggested that Adam and Kate practiced their fine motor skills with things like colouring in the lines and cutting. 

Which we duly did, but while Kate has taken to the colouring in idea with great enthusiasm, Adam has decided he is too tired to colour in.  He is apparently too tired for lots of things.  He is not, however, too tired to fill his page with crosses (damn that Jesus-on-a-cross Easter story) and letters, specifically the A for Adam and T for Tertia.  I despair of that child sometimes!

In fact, it is quite scary to see the difference between the two of them, and how they approach things like drawing, colouring in etc.  Adam is just not interested. He wants to play outside and build things.  While Adam is physically more advanced than Kate, she is way ahead of him in terms of social, emotional and many other aspects.  I am not sure if this is just how boys / girls work, or whether I have lots of extra lessons and OT in my future. 

This is Adam at the beach (if you look very carefully and squint through your one eye, you will see a green figure that sort of resembles a person) and Kate at the dinosaur 'buseum' (museum). 
 

Big School Freak Out

Now, I know what you are going to say. You are going to remind me how completely freaked out I was about sending the kids off to school for the first time (and how I had to have several sessions with the shrink and take a nerve pill to prepare) and look how well that went!  Now they love school almost as much as I love sending them there to have my three hours break in the morning.  (Even though Adam cried AGAIN this morning when I dropped him off, despite the fact that he is almost fully grown and has been going there for about a 100 years – C R Y  B A B Y!!!)

Yesterday I went to enroll my kids in their new pre-school, Grade R and Grade 0.  (in my day, you just pitched up for Grade 1 and that was that. No preparation years.  And look how well we turned out *nervous tic* WHO SAID THAT!?  Oops, sorry.)

Seeing as those other fuckers pre-school wouldn’t accept my kids were full, my choice was pretty limited to the two expensive private schools in the area. The one, although closer, is apparently very snobby and I didn’t want that.  The other one is a bit more multi-cultural and seems to have excellent holistic care. It looks like a great school, very well run, very neat, very caring and lots of extracurricular activities*.

But it’s BIG and SCARY!  I arrived yesterday and saw all the little kids in their uniforms** and the school bags lined up outside the classroom and I wanted to cry. My babies!  My babies are going to big school!  It was a very emotional day. I was telling my dad how emotional I was and he said “but they are going to have to grow up someday, you can’t baby them until they are 18”  To which I replied, “well, I don’t about can’t”.  He said good-bye and hung up the phone.

And as if that wasn’t scary enough, they suggested that we split the kids up in different classes (there are two English classes).  Apparently they do this for all twins. SPLIT THEM UP!!!  I wanted to cry some more.  It is scary enough to have to send them to a new school without having the other one there as a back up support for each other.  Apparently it is better for their individual development (what do you guys think about that? I am thinking of consulting a educational psychologist about it because I am a paranoid asshole like that)

Well, if I am being totally honest, Kate will probably not care or even notice.  She never asks where Adam is during school time and they don’t play together.  Adam wouldn’t be seen DEAD playing with girls and Kate has her own group of (guy) friends.  But Adam likes to know where Kate is.  It gives him comfort. And now they want to split them up.  It kind of makes sense, on a sensible level, but it makes me anxious. Which isn’t really saying much as everything makes me anxious, especially scary things like big school!

Anyway, my kids are going to big school.  Which makes their mommy very anxious and emotional.  But she will do her best not to show it.  By that time I should be able to take some Xa n ax, praise the lord.

PS it is a Christian based school, so I guess there is no escaping now.  That Sister Mel must be clapping her lordy hands in delight.

* They have lots of ‘cultural’ activities like piano, music, violin.  If my kids have inherited my music abilities, they might not be participating in a lot of those types of activities. 

** The Grade R’s and Grade O’s don’t wear uniforms. But from Grade 1 to grade 12 they do.  We wear school uniforms in South Africa

PPS Went for a scan yesterday (33w4d), cervix long and closed (4cm) and baby Max weighing in at 2.4kgs / 5.3 lb).  HUGE head. For all the brains. Short legs. Might be midget.

Should I be worried?

The teaser and the cry baby

Coming a close second to finger nails on a chalkboard, there are few things more grating than your offspring fighting with each other. Of course, fighting and siblings go together like coffee and carrot cake (my current craving), so I understand that some fighting is inevitable among siblings, but OH MY GOD, the teasing and the resultant whining drive me INSANE.

Of course, with sibling close in age (ie one minute apart), they know exactly which buttons to press to get a reaction out of the other one.  And then you have the Tease/Whine reaction. 

Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine Tease/Whine  WHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Until I want to murder both of them. 

I never know what to do.  Chastise the teaser for teasing, or chastise the whiner for being so fucking whiny.  Because OMG, that child can WHINE!  Ideally, I suppose, one should leave them alone to sort it out. They are evenly matched in terms of height, weight and annoyance-factor, so I could just wait it out until one murders the other, but to be quite honest, I am not sure I can last that long. 

What do you think?  Who should get moaned at?  The teaser for deliberating annoying / provoking the other, or the whiner for being such a wuss? 

No prizes for guessing who the teaser and who the whiner is. 

Peer pressure

As I mentioned a few days ago, after 4 years of refusing to wear dresses or anything ‘pretty’, Kate suddenly started asking to wear a ‘beautiful dress’.  She has worn a (two sizes too small) dress every day this week.  I have been too scared to question it, as it is quite nice to have a girl who eventually wants to wear girl clothes every now and then.

Yesterday when I picked her up from school, she said she wanted to buy a pair of heart shaped sunglasses, like Kristen. I said ok and off we went to the store. “Buy these cute red pair” I suggested. No, they must be blue, just like Kristen’s.

And then it clicked!  Kristen is a new girl at school and she heads up a group of girls that play together. They are the cool girls, and always hang out together.  It is obviously a bit of peer pressure!!  At four years old!!! I want to cry.  I can’t believe it is happening already. 

The girls are lovely girls, really sweet and very welcoming towards Kate, but it made me so sad to realize that there is this outside influence that is affecting what she wants to wear and do.  No longer is it what mom says or the simple things I feel inside, now it is what the other kids think and say. AT FOUR YEARS OLD!

It also made me realize how important the kids are who your kids hang out with.  Luckily for Kate this group of girls is made up of decent, sweet and friendly little girls who love to play dress up, but what happens in a few years time if it is another group of girls who are less sweet.  But ok, I am getting ahead of myself.

It was just a sobering moment to realize that no matter how much we want to baby them and keep them protected from the Big Bad World outside, we can’t.  All we can is hope that we have instilled enough self-believe, inner strength and good values that will help them navigate the scary world outside.

On a lighter note, we also bought a pair of fake croc gumboots for winter when we bought the sunglasses, and obviously we had to wear all our new things to school today.  Gumboots in a heat wave.  Niiiiiice.

PS Adam is completely oblivious to the peer pressure thing.  As long as his friends like to play cars with him, he is happy.  But he did tell me the other day he can’t play with girls because he is a boy.  Sigh. What happened to my babies????

PPS Pls excuse Adam's VERY bad hair day. He is getting his hair cut this weekend. It would have been done last weekend but SOMEONE (the child's father) wasn't in the mood to battle with the hair clippers.  Hair cutting days are not looked forward to with much pleasure by anyone in this house.

She wants to be beautiful!!

Someone has snuck in the night and swapped my Kate for a child I do not know.  After years of being forbidden to mention the P (pretty) or B (beautiful) word in her presence, she now wants to wear dresses!  For the last few days she has asked to wear a "beautiful dress" to school. 

Of course, none of her dresses fit her properly as they were bought two years ago when I was under the mistaken impression that a girl child would perhaps want to wear a dress.  But, we are squeezing ourselves into those dresses. 

I am still too nervous to say the B word myself and instead stick to acceptable words like "wow Kate, that dress is gorgeous!" or "Kate, you look fabulous", but it's a giant step forward.

Here is Kate looking beautiful gorgeous this morning:


PS Yes, that's a crocodile in her hand. Kate wouldn't be Kate without some sort of scary animal / monster thing close by.

PPS No shoes.  We never wear shoes here in Summer. 

The Birds, the Bees, Eggs and Seeds

One of the (several) really hard moments in the infertility journey is the appointment when you get The Talk, the Donor Egg talk.  Even if it has been raised tentatively before, the Donor Egg Talk is always a really difficult, highly emotional one.  The Donor Egg Talk usually comes after many IVFs, many disappointments, usually some losses, lots of money spent, tears wept. The Talk is where the doctor sits you down and says “based on your history / situation / the facts before me, I have to say that it looks like the only way you are going to conceive is through the use of a donor egg”.  And just like that, all your hopes and dreams of having a biological child are over.  And while a donor egg baby is every bit as wonderful, special, beautiful and loved as an own-egg baby, there are very very few people who, when they decide they want to start a family, say “oh I know! Why don’t we totally give up on my DNA and use a donor egg from someone else!”  There is a huge amount of grieving and loss that goes into the process of acceptance of using donor eggs, and some people never manage to get over mourning the loss of their own DNA.  But of course, for those who do (and some do very quickly and matter of factly – they just want a baby, where the DNA comes from is just not that important any more), it is an absolutely wonderful, beautiful thing. Your chances of conceiving go from <10% to 70% per attempt!  Thanks to the generosity of the young egg donors, there is so much renewed hope and happiness.

But, as I said, hearing The Talk is very upsetting, and I often get a call straight after The Talk. (as part of the The Talk, the doctor hands out the numbers of their preferred Egg Donor Agencies, of which we obviously top the list – cos we are so fabulous).  I hear the pain in these women’s voices and my heart aches for them.  I want to reach through the phone and hug them. Yes, I will break my no hugging rule for these heartbroken women, if it means I can offer them any comfort at all. 

So, while I was driving with the kids in the car yesterday, I got one of these calls. And I could hear in her voice how much she was hurting.  I spoke to her for a while, and tried to reassure her, offer her some hope.  I put down the phone and sighed deeply, and muttered ‘that poor woman’.  Adam asked me why I was sad, and I said I was sad for a lady on the phone whose heart was very sore.  So he asked why and I said that she really really wants a baby and can’t have one.

Aside:  You know how all kids love their birth story?  Here is ours:  “Before you were born, mommy was very very sad, she used to cry and cry because she had no children.  Then she went to the doctor and the doctor helped mommy make some babies and put them in mommy’s tummy and then you were born and mommy was SO happy, she just loved her Adam and Kate so much.”  They love that story.

So back to yesterday.  Adam asks ‘but why can’t she have a baby’, and I replied because she can’t seem to make one.  And as I answered I thought “oh no! I know what is coming next!”

“But how do you make a baby?”

Oh fuck. I am not ready for this conversation!!  (Are you ever?)

Um, well… (brain scrambles for age appropriate conversation, severely tempted to delve into IVF 101 where there is no mention of mommy’s vagina and daddy’s penis….)

“Well, the mommy has an egg and the daddy has a seed, and they mix together and then a baby slowly starts to grow from the egg and the seed…  OH LOOK, THERE’S A BIRD!”

And thank God that was that, for now.  We looked at the bird and on we drove.

But this morning he brought it up again.  And I am afraid, I copped out. I know, I know.  But in my defense, I was on the loo trying to have a number two (sorry TMI), with Adam hanging over my lap (because he can’t leave me alone for FIVE MINUTES). Anyway, he asked again how you make a baby.  So I reminded him of the egg and the seed and he said “oh yes, the mommy has the egg and the daddy has the seed, and then the doctor mixes it with some medicine and a baby starts to grow”

That’s right my boy.  Now please get out, I think I can hear Rose calling you.

Sigh.  Maybe I should have used the opportunity to do a bit of a birds and bees talk, but, well, I need to get the story staight in my head, and decide just how much detail I should be going in to. And it is true what he said! The doctor does mix it with some medicine!  But ok, not always.  Dear lord, spare me when Max asks the question.  I think I will hand it over to Marko to do the talk about penises and vaginas. After all, it was his penis that caused all the trouble in the first place!!

PS our first (Nurture Egg Donor) babies were born yesterday!!!!!!  Twin girls!  What a special, special moment. I feel so incredibly humbled that I had a small part to play in the creation of these two beautiful babies. Mommy and babies are doing very well. The Nurture Aunties are very proud! www.nurture.co.za

Dear future wife (or husband) of my son

If you end up as the life partner of my son, you will have done well. He is generally quite a sweet chap, and very affectionate with the one he loves.  And even though I might be a little biased, I think it would be fair to say he is quite a handsome chap. 

However, they say you can tell how a man is going to treat his future wife (or husband – so PC now days!), by the way in which he treats his mother.

In which case…. BEWARE!

You are going to be in for a lot of “You are not my friend, and I am going to run away”, or on a bad day “I wish you would die”.  This will happen at least once day, probably twice.  Usually when you deny him something he wants.  It does get a bit tiring.

Please don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

What a sweet, sensitive child

Adam, Kate and I in the car on the way back from school, Adam being very chatty.  Kate being uncharacteristically quiet in the back.

Adam:  I am going to be a baddie and get locked up in jail

Me:  Oh no, that will be terrible, I will miss you!

Adam: You can come with me in jail

Me:  Hmm, I don’t think that sounds like fun.  And anyway, Kate will miss me too much.

Kate:  No, I won’t miss you at all

What a sweet child, that daughter of mine.