Penni Drysdale - P Plate Parenting

It’s a been a while between drinks here at P Plate Parenting. I could name a number of excuses or reasons (the usual stuff, like life’s just too damned busy to justify sitting at a laptop and indulging myself in self expression, I’ve been working more…paid work, that is etc etc). Or I could try to explain… Oh, God, don your apron, this could get messy…thoughts splattered all over the page and possibly flicking into your eye.

We went away recently. Up north, to the Daintree to spend five nights  in the rainforest. A stunning house amid spectacular scenery, surrounded by real wildlife and only a short trip to the (crocodile-infested) beach. It was luxury. It was time off work. It was warm… But this pause on the ‘real’, everyday life was what did it for me. No hurry. No chaos. No cleaning or packing school lunches. Just me and the boys, being a family.

I think what struck me most was that I found myself being a little more patient, more understanding, more engaged. I whinged less, raised my voice less often and smoothed out the constant crease on my brow. My jaw relaxed giving my back teeth a break, my shoulders inched their way down from up near my ears and the morning habits resumed their proper function (who knew that tension/stress/life, whatever you want to call it, can seriously block you up?).

I could connect with my kids in a real way, that wasn’t governed by routine or a necessity to hurry the hell up! I could be there to hold the Toddler’s hand while he navigated his way around (yes, now that he’s walking, I’ve heard that I should be calling him a ‘toddler’ ); I could listen to the School Boy’s bizarre stories, uninterrupted by my own nagging thoughts of tasks I really ought to be getting on with. I could cuddle more and argue less. And this change found a way into my wee mind, causing me to pause and reflect on what I believed was My Experience of parenting.

My experience of parenting is a construct of circumstance and mind set. When life is busy and there really are things that have to be done in order to function adequately and survive, the perfect parenting model cannot co-exist. I now recognise that it is not that I am an Impatient Person (though some would argue…I reason that I can be patient if I choose to be, such as when working with people who have dementia), a Grump or digestively challenged. I am a person – a working adult, a wife, a mum – who lives a real life that pulls me in many directions and I cannot do it all perfectly.

And so, back to the point of this post. Many of my posts so far have had a touch of the whinge about them. They have been an opportunity to de-brief, get things off my now non-existent breast, I mean chest, and this blog has served a brilliant therapeutic purpose. But somehow I find it harder (at present, anyhow) to get back into that mind set, that identity. So I am pausing, to think, to reflect, to deconstruct and then reconstruct. Stay with me – I’ll see you on the other side.

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So is a kid, except you don’t get your pick of the litter. Yours could be the yappy jumpy one, the cute fluffy one, the small one with an eye for mischief, or the runt of the litter (not that you’d ever speak that aloud).

We recently welcomed the newest member of our extended family into the world. He is gorgeous and squeaks like a little bird. Only a week old, he sleeps, feeds and squirts. He is oh so cuddly and has major potential to wreak havoc on women who are prone to the clucks.

Mother nature cannot be trusted. She has ulterior motives – namely, to expand the population. She brings these adorable little people into the world, complete with something (yet to be discovered) that sends pulses of motherly urges into unsuspecting minds. Before we know it, we are growing feathers and pecking at bugs. Memories of sickly or immobile pregnancies - wiped. Vivid recollections of labour and birth – majorly suppressed (to suggest that this could be erased would be a lie). The teary fog of sleeplessness – forgotten. The challenges of toddlerhood – tucked away in an awkward little corner of your mind.

If you’re not on guard, these impulses of the clucks can grab hold and turn into temporary insanity, during which you begin to seriously consider donating your body, your mind, emotions and hip pocket to another being. True stuff.

The thing is, these little cuddly squeakers grow, change and become real people with needs and impulses of their own. Unlike dogs they cannot be motivated or rewarded with cardboard-like snacks, locked up, kept on a leash or micro-chipped. They won’t be obedient just because you are their master, and they can’t be de-sexed. Kids can’t be booked into the Kennels when the travel bug bites, and the consequences of poor training are a little more significant than torn cushions and puddles on the carpet.

A dog is for life and so is a kid. So to all those ladies of child bearing age, BE ON GUARD (and consider getting a dog). Mother nature is after you.

Oh, and for those who may be wondering if the clucks have got me yet? NO CHANCE! I purchased an all-weather, cluck-resistant suit of armor that has a lifetime guarantee.

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Now the curtain is coming up, the entertainer is taking a bow. Does his dance step and sings a song….or something like that. My Big Boy is The Entertainer.

Sounds impressive, yes? Amusing? Perhaps even useful? Possibly, but the majority of the time it does my head in.
Reason 1: I am paranoid about the baby getting squished by his big brother, accidentally or not*. My son seems to have developed two left feet and lost his center of gravity over the last 6 months, leaving him susceptible to tripping, stumbling and crashing upon any attempt at functional movement. Add singing and ‘dancing’ (I fear he may have inherited his father’s awkward style) and the result is generally bruising and breakages. Now throw in a baby on the floor. Not good for my mental health.

Reason 2: I have developed my mother’s sensitivity to noise (acutally, it’s more of an intolerance, perhaps even an aversion).  Not great when you’re a mother to two young boys, so I may need to jam that into the Must Work On drawer of my Personality Traits filing cabinet. With entertainment comes lots of noise (because, along with the thumping of his Big Boy feet, his singing leaves a lot to be desired). So for musically trained ears and hypercritical and hypersensitive tendencies, it’s all just a bit much.

But despite the damage I incur to the delicate thread of sanity I have stowed away, the baby LOVES IT! He smiles with his entire face until his cheeks consume his eyes. He chuckles and coos, oblivious to the danger that crashes around him. While I’m gripping onto my trackie pants, white-knuckled, stifling screams of panic and over-stimulation, he follows his brother’s every move and provides my Big Boy with all the encouragement he needs to continue entertaining. So, for the sake of the greater good, The Entertainer will carry on performing, much to the delight of his biggest fan, a defenseless but happy little brother.

*To heighten my paranoia and take me back to square one in my attempt to overcome the beast, my Big Boy did attempt to squash the baby recently, but let’s talk about that another time, when I am seeing a lighter shade of red.

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Mary had a little lamb, it bleated in its cot.
She turned around the other day, a little lamb ’twas not.
For it had grown in length and weight, its eyes alert and bright,
Its bleat had been replaced with BAAA, first fleece now way too tight.
One blink was all that it did take for changes such as these
So now she props her eyelids up with matches, if you please.

My little boys are growing up. It was inevitable I guess, but in the chaos and distraction of everyday life, these observations can slide by. I was warned that this would happen, and advised to cherish every moment because before I knew it, my kids would be all grown up. I recognise that now.

It took the arrival of a newborn for me to realise how big my big boy had become in the blink of an eye. After feeding the baby at night, I often sneak into his room and stand over him, gazing in disbelief. Those fingers are so long and solid. The fluffy covering on his head has been replaced with thick, coarse hair and the gentle pant of breathing is now a snore and dribble. This boy, now four, has conversations, argues, scoots, plays Wii, has friends and is going to school next year.

Where did time go?

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I began writing this post a couple of weeks ago. The plan was to talk about ‘counting chickens’. You know, counting them before they hatch and the warning that comes with doing so. I was going to make reference to my baby boy’s sleeping and the temptation to start counting those chooks after one good night (which equates to getting up only once to feed).

But since the conception of that post things have changed a little in the back yard. The balance of gender within the family has shifted. Death has entered and burial ceremonies have been held. Earlier this week Daisy and Crash passed away.

Daisy and Crash were two of the lovely ladies in the chicken house. Daisy was the gregarious silky bantam; the sociable one who was keen to explore our vegie patch and our compost. She would come out to greet us and didn’t shy away too much when we approached her (though the thump of small Cars gumboots towards her made her a little more jumpy). Daisy was the explorer – in fact she went so far as to explore the park over our back fence and the nature strip outside our house a while back. Crash was given her name by nature of the fact that she often tumbled off the ramp half way through her descent from the pen, landing with a crash on the ground below.

Anyway, they were our little ladies and now they are no longer, thanks to a highly contagious chook disease (that I’ve been told will likely take Tree Trunk, the third girl, with it in the near future). This has been our son’s first exposure to dying and death and I have to say, he’s handling it well. There were no tears, though that would’ve been okay, even though he is a boy (KIDDING!!). Rather, father and son set about fetching their digging tools from the shed and digging a hole, or two, to place these not so soft and fluffy chickens in. We said a few words (there isn’t much to say to a bantam who has only been around for a few short months…) and filled in the holes.

My son didn’t say much after that, except to confirm Daisy’s departure later that night – ‘So mum….Daisy’s dead.’ “Yep. Bit sad, hey?’ ‘Yeah…’. There wasn’t a barrage of questions about life and death and what happens next, thank god, cos I don’t really have one of those speeches prepared. I wonder how long Tree Trunk will give me to whip one up…?

** In regard to ‘counting chickens’, the baby boy did not begin his transition into once nightly feeding after that one delicious night. No siree. Wouldn’t want to be too predictable, would he? That would just be boring. Perhaps the death of two bantams was a sign, a warning to me about the danger of counting chickens.

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