My apologies to Queen

Many years ago, a friend told me about how she stalled her car on the highway when her 4 year old started singing, at the top of her voice, a new song she had learned at Sunday school:  

"Jehovah Jireh, my vagina!"

And you'd think that that would be as bad as it could get, right? That nothing could be more startling while winding your way through after school traffic. Right? Wrong.

Cut to today. After school. We're driving home. It's hot. The windows are wound down. The traffic is inching along.

"How was school?" I ask the two little faces staring at me in the rear-view mirror.

"We're learning about the letter "wuh"," whistles T-Bird. She starts whirring a list of 'W'-written words. 

AirBear, out of sorts for not having a wider 'W'-vocabulary to offer to the conversation, starts whining mercilessly.

"We learnt a new song at school," she says.

I'm stopped at a red traffic light. Cars all around. I wink at her in the mirror. "Let's hear it then," I say.

"It's also got 'wuhs' in," she states.

The opposite stream of traffic slows down. My green light is imminent. "Ok," I'm waiting.

"We will, we will, fuck you!" She croons. Loudly.

Green light. I stall the car. Badly. There's a Jeep Cherokee halfway up my exhaust pipe.

She didn't say it, I tell myself, and restart the car. I smile at her reflection, as I pull away in third gear. I wave at the guy in the Jeep. He's unimpressed. I mount the curb. "That's nice," I cringe. "But I think I missed one part of it. Sing it to me again, please."

"We will, we will, fuck you!" She's grinning. I'm rolling up the windows.

"My sweetie pie, " I've swerved into oncoming traffic, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. "I think the song goes like this: We will, we will ROCK you."

"Oooooh," she nods her head. She's quiet for a moment, contemplating. "But it did have a "wuh" in it, hey mom?"

Yes, darling daghter, it really did.

Through the eyes of a child

When T-Bird has ballet, AirBear and I entertain ourselves for the half hour we have to wait by doing anything from playing complicated sick-baby-role-play games, to building puzzles, to taking Pepper for a walk around the school (if we've brought her with us).

Yesterday Air and I had one of these half hours to kill. With the thought of possibly encouraging my child's arty side, I challenged my princess to a live portraiture exercise. We would each take a turn to draw the other one, as we were, right there on the grandstands in the shade. She liked the idea, so I scratched in my handbag for some paper and a pen.

I went first. All the while I'm saying, "Hold still! Don't smile. OK, smile! No, wait, turn your head this way. Oops! Too much!" and she's just giggling, thinking that she has the most bizarre mother on the planet. Here's the pic:

She catches a glimpse of what I've drawn and starts criticising. 

"You made me look like a boy!" 

"I didn't, look you've got that bow on your shirt!" 

"That doesn't look like a bow!"

"But it's all folded - look how your real bow is all folded!"

"But you didn't give me long hair!"

"But your hair's all tied up behind your head! Look, I put your pony-tail hanging over your shoulder. Here, you draw me!"

She grabs the pen, scrutinises my face and starts drawing. I direct her, just for fun. "Remember," I say, "I've just got one nose!"

 She keeps looking up to compare what she's drawing to what she's seeing. I make the mistake of telling her to draw EXACTLY what she sees:

She starts tapping her pen all over my paper face.

"What are you doing?" I asked, "don't ruin your lovely picture!"

"I'm not ruining it," she says emphatically. "These are your pimples and your spots."

Oh.

Then she sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and proceeds to draw, what I imagine are a set of beautiful eyelashes. "Wow," I say, "I've got a LOT of eyelashes!"

"Mom," she shakes her head. "I drew your eyelashes long ago. These are the lines on your forehead."

Oh. Right. Wrinkles. Ouch.

I have a feeling I'm supposed to have this revelation here. Some out of body experience where I am converted from a life-time of frowning and poor skin maintenance, and sign up for a chemical peel and an extra strong age-defying night cream. But I don't. I look at that drawing and smile. Yip, that's me. Pimples and wrinkles. So. What are you going to do about it? 

And anyway, it's not every day you get your picture taken...

After School Dilemma

As far as extra-mural activities go, everyone warns of the danger of "over doing things". For instance: Your five year old does not need to do one (or more) extra-mural activity every day. Don't overload them, the teachers say. OK, I get that. As a mom, I'd be pulling my hair out if I had to dash from one activity to the next, ensuring correct uniform and equipment for whatever it was my sweet angels were getting up to. Not now, anyway. Later. Maybe. But not now.

Look, the list for this age group is ample: art, ballet, brownies, chess, choir, cooking, drama, fishing, golf, gymnastix, hiphop, horse-riding, judo, jui-jitsui, karate, kindermusik, modern dancing, modelling, music appreciation, piano, pilates, playball, pottery, surfschool, swimming, tae kwon do, yoga, so you can appreciate that any parent would second guess what they sign their kid up for.  

But, from all this finger-wagging, guilt-presenting talk, two questions have arisen, for me. 

Question number 1:

Too much is too much. But is too little too little? I guess what I'm trying to say is: how much structured activity, really, should a child be doing after school? And we're talking pre-school here. Pre-homework aged children. Children who have a stay-at-home mom dressing up and doing puzzles and making fairy cakes for teddy bear tea parties. These kids don't have nothing to do most afternoons, is what I'm saying.

From the day she learnt how to walk, T-Bird (now 6 years old) has been a tippy-toe kind of girl (and no, she never spent time in a Jolly Jumper or a Walking Ring). She is just a natural fairy. She flits and flutters wherever she goes. So, naturally, she was a good ballet candidate. For the last 3 years she has been taking ballet classes on a weekly basis. And she loves it. She wants to do it. She gets great exercise through it. She has learnt grace (questionable), self control (doubtful), and poise (when it suits her). But the point is that she is doing something. This year her ballet takes up an half hour slot twice a week. Monday and Wednesday.

OK.

Furthermore, this flitsy little wisp has asked to learn how to play the piano. A) We have a piano and B) I'm not patient enough to teach her how to play, so she has enrolled in piano lessons with a young (and patient) teacher once a week. Half an hour. On a Thursday.

So she has: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. Sport, sport, culture.

As far as my 4 year old fire-cracker is concerned, AirBear takes part in a sport program aimed at improving eye-hand co-ordination and other skills in most sport disciplines. Once a week. During school time. And that's it. No ballet (she's procrastinating). No gymnastics (although she has expressed an interest). No swimming (I'm going to get moaned at for that, I know). Just Play Ball. She has told me that she would like to learn to play every instrument in the world, starting with violin (emphatically), but her age is against her as far as music teachers in the neighbourhood are concerned. Personally I think that she has a private fantasy involving Andre Rieu, but I might be mistaken.

So AirBear has: Thursday. Sport.

I have dedicated Tuesdays to the Library in the hope based on a faded memory that this will keep them interested in books. Which gives us something to do every afternoon from Monday to Thursday.

But the question is, should they be more sporty? Should they be having swimming lessons? We have a pool, and both girls swim every afternoon (just about). Neither are particularly elegant in their stroke, but I can see how they improve in their own styes from week to week. Also, TV is not necessarily always an option. In fact, TV as is, is no option at all. The kids watch DVDs from time to time. Depending on how their mother is doing, the girls will watch 2-3 DVDs a week, 47 if Mom is taking strain. Usually, there afternoons are spent playing together. Imagination-based games are generally the order of the day, but now, with the arrival of Princess Pepper, games have moved outside and involve a dog (and usually a scraping or two of poo under their shoes - aaargh!) So I can safely say that they aren't couch potato types. They get to run around, breathe fresh air and have those inquiring little minds stimulated.

That's OK, isn't it?

Which leads me to Question number 2:

What, exactly, is the best after-school activity for my children? 

I feel a bit guilty about the swimming thing. Just about every second kid in Durbanville is signed up for swimming (CA's making a killing). Mine aren't. But they are swimming. Not Olympic-style, but they have fun and get from A to B. Should they have better instruction? If they don't have stroke-training now, will it undermine their chances at competitive swimming later?

And that, blogfans, is the crunch of it all, isn't it? If we don't push them to do it now, are we ruining their chances later on? Is that why so many 5 and 6 year olds are exhausted by the end of the week? Is it because they are being given every opportunity their parents can possibly afford to give them? Do they need it now anyhow? And how do you know what field your child will excel at anyway? Do you have to read their Baby Bush Tea leaves before they can walk? Or do you just choose for them and push them to do whatever you, as the parent, have chosen? (I'm thinking Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters here).

Perhaps the real question is: where the hell is that blasted parenting manual anyway? I swear I have two copies rotting away in my womb.

The place where the colours aren't

I went there again. That place where the colours are muted and the air is thick and heavy. It's really not a nice place to be. But I went.

I know you don't like it when I go there. It makes you feel uncomfortable and maybe even a little embarrassed. There she goes again, you think, off to that awful place. Why does she let herself go there? I don't get it.

The truth is, I don't get it either. And I have very little choice in the matter, really. One moment I'm here with you, and the next thing, I'm in the shadows of high concrete buildings, the heat is stifling, I'm gasping for air.

And it's weird, you know, because I can still hear you talking to me, almost as though you were right beside me, but you're talking through a pillow and your voice is a little softer and muffled. You ask me where I went, and I say that I'm still here even though I know that I'm not. You shuffle your feet and look around you, possibly to find something to hold onto. It's awkward, I know. You feel helpless, like your words aren't quite getting through. And you're anxious that I will make you come and find me in that grey otherworld.

I won't. Because I can't. And even if I could, I wouldn't. There's not enough space in that infinite smokey realm for you. And if you did, somehow, find me there, I would worry about how I would save you from it. For me, I know that my visit in that world is limited. After a period of time, the murkiness spits me out. It will always spit me out. When it's done with me. But I'm not sure what it would do with you. I couldn't bear to take the risk.

I know you don't like it when I go. I don't like to go. It hurts every time. But whenever I go, I find a dull sliver of me resting in the gloom there, and I bring it back with me. When I am expelled from that place, and you see me in colour again, you will notice that there's a little bit more to me; I'll be a little bit bigger, a little bit better.

And sometimes you might worry because I've been gone too long. Don't fret! I just haven't found that hidden bit of me, that's all. Sometimes it takes longer than other times, but I will find it, and I will be spat out once more, and then I'm all yours once more.

You should know that I don't like this other reality, but I've grown to accept it. It's easier than fighting it. I can't expect you to do the same, but maybe, one day, you'll be able to give me the space I need to move in between my rainbow life and my monochromatic animation. It's just easier that way.

My children watch too many movies

AirBear: Mom, I feel sorry for you. Really I do. It must be terrible being the last of your species.

(adapted from Ice Age 2: The Meltdown)