Heldin im Chaos

Whew...and wow.

My wee girl started school last week.  It was a long, tough week for all of us.  The girls were thrown for a loop when Papa atypically had to travel for work at the start of the week, and then with little one starting school too...yow.  Still, it went relatively well.  When I picked her up after two hours on the first day, her teacher assured me that she hadn't cried after I left.  That makes one of us!

She only attended two days last week and then got a break until today.  This morning, I managed a quick parting and literally ran out of sight, feeling relieved she hadn't cried and more than a little guilty and sad about my lack of proper good-bye.  Then, I proceeded to complete all six items on my to-do list for the day BY 9:30AM!  With littles or even one little in tow, that six item list would have been laugh-able.  In the 45 minutes I used today, I might have previously gotten ONE item done.  I did all six!  Wow.  I hardly recognize this new world of potential productivity.  

Mama Pie

As a mom living abroad, half a planet away from closest friends and family, I find I often troll the internet looking for support and understanding, a sense of community that I can lack in my immediate surrounds, little tips and tricks that make life easier and more balanced, or fresh approaches to a parenting challenge.  Sometimes, I find just what I need just at the time I need it.  Sometimes, it finds me.  For all the benefits I receive, I should be sharing them in hopes that it might help someone else too.  

The little tidbit that found me recently came from Rachel at Small Notebook.  I've been following her blog for a few years, and I remember reading this post when she first put it up over a year ago.  In her last post, she linked back to it, and I took the opportunity this morning while everyone was still asleep to sit down and make a Mama Pie of my own, complete with little three- or four-item lists under each pie wedge to detail what each piece needs.  I took Rachel's pie as a guideline and made only minor adaptations, and I think it will be useful to revisit it over time and tweak as needed.

The beauty of this visual is that it allows me to see areas where I can replenish and renew, as well as areas where I can improve balance.  The "tyranny of the urgent" in a mama's life can be overpowering; everything/everyone seems to compete for our attention and focus, and everything/everyone wants it all at the same time.  Keeping this visual in mind, it becomes easier to see which areas we're giving too much importance, too much time and energy...and the areas where we could give more.  

Possibly one of the most critical pieces of wisdom Rachel imparted in her post about priorities was including a "me" wedge.  So often, mamas don't give themselves a piece of the pie.  I recently read advice on a different blog to make a list of the most important people in your life.  Then, check to see where you are on it.  Are you on it?  I wasn't on mine.  It hadn't even occurred to me, not because I don't find myself valuable or important, but because that's what the mama mentality does to so many of us.  Our children are important.  Our spouses are important.  Our parents and extended family are important.  Close friends are important.  If you participate in charity work, those in need are important too.  But.  If we don't take care of ourselves, how can we take care of others?  In the Christian faith, people are urged to "love others as you love thyself."  If we were really to do that, would it be a rather sad state of affairs all around?  I thought so.  Including "me" in your Mama Pie provides a crucial place to replenish when the other demands wear us down.

If you can find a few minutes, I can recommend making a little Mama Pie of your own.  What would it look like?  I hope you'll find it helpful!

S.O.S.

I feel like I've been run over by a bus.  The bus is shaped like a busy 2 year old who hasn't slept properly in a month (so neither have we).  When you have a newborn and are all sleep-deprived and crazy, anything you do achieve (including a shower) is praise-worthy.  When you are equally sleep-deprived and crazy without a newborn, you just look and feel like your head is on backwards and you have lost the plot.  I don't even know what I haven't done at this point, though I'm sure it's a lot.  Emails have dropped out.  Post is almost as bad.  Christmas presents are packaged but not mailed.  The only thing that keeps me turning up on time to appointments is the fact that I copied out my planner onto the glass backsplash in the kitchen.  Seriously.  Sigh.

I know we aren't the only ones who have been in this boat.  When we moved house, our little one went from having her own room with a baby gate on the door in the back of the house to sharing a room without a baby gate in the middle of the house.  Putting a baby gate back won't do it.  If we block her in, she just tortures her sister until they are both awake and miserable.  There were too many changes at once, and now we have one more (Oma is here to stay with us).  We have tried so many different things to get our girl to return to sleeping normally (increasing naps, omitting naps, total darkness, nightlight...), but we're pretty sure that "waiting it out" is the only solution that will work.  Alas, that is getting harder by the day.  The only thing that keeps Wee One in her bed and relatively quiet is adult presence as a human baby gate, but our presence also keeps her awake.  Bedtime has become a 2+ hour to-ing and fro-ing in and out of total darkness that leaves us all exhausted (and increasingly grumpy).  

So many friends have shared that their own kids struggled with sleep after a move, but the problem eventually righted itself (albeit after 5+ weeks).  Has that been your experience?  Did you try something new that worked a treat?

Help?  Anyone?

Read the fine print

This morning was one of those morning's that left me contemplating why I had not read the fine print on this motherhood gig before I took the job.  Since we've moved house, my younger, sweet, adorable child has become a bit of a beast.  It may well be the Terrible Twos are upon us at last, but I think it's largely that she doesn't sleep enough anymore.  She has gone from being a 12-hour-per-night-plus-naptime sleeper to a sometimes-naps-sometimes-not, go-to-bed-at-9pm (leaving two exhausted and frazzled parents to try to unwind at a time they actually need to go to bed themselves)-and-up-by-5am-at-the-latest sadist.  This child is subsisting on less sleep than I need, which of course means so am I.  I understand that this is a phase, that it is normal after something so unsettling as a move, and really I should just count my lucky stars she hasn't given me much stress before now.  I know the best thing to do is not react (and certainly not react in frustration), to patiently wait it out and help ease her (and all of us) through this period.  But.  Knowing me means knowing I do not tend to handle sleep deprivation with as much grace as would be desired.  After a few weeks of this, both of us are having more tantrums than necessary, although she's 2 and has a much better excuse than I have.  Sigh.

frozen like a little statue with her ill-gotten treats, regarding me carefully from the corner of her eye

On days like these, it really helps to remember that not only am I human, but also I am just one of countless, well-educated-and-well-intentioned-but-often-relatively-clueless parents blundering my way through this wondrous, exhausting, joyful, challenging life with kids.  Most of the time, I really don't do a half-bad job at it either.  And although it may sound cliche to clarify, I really do love it all of the time.  Even the sleep deprived, frustrating times (though if I could leave that out, I would!).  With all this fresh in my mind, I particularly enjoyed today's post by Domesticali and the guest post she wrote here.  We're beyond the baby phase in our house, but the theme holds true well beyond.  Thanks, Ali, for the commiseration and the good laugh!

 

Oh, the irony...

Have you had the pleasure of viewing the Nanny McPhee movies?  I watched them on a plane recently, and they are absolutely delightful (and delightfully English).  My girls are still too young for them, but I know we will eventually own copies.  There were too many special effects in the second movie compared with the first (that one relied more on dialogue and acting), but I was nonetheless sold on the second one from the opening sequence.  The three kids are screaming and fighting and carrying on like feral beings in the living room, and their harassed mother (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) bursts in, jumps up on the sofa and yells for them to stop shouting and stop climbing on the furniture.  Of course, they look at her blankly, because those are the very things she is doing at that moment.  Haven't we all been there?

In case you were wondering, that was me this morning.  Screaming at the top of my lungs for my two precious angels to STOP SCREAMING!  YELLING ISN'T NICE! 

Quality parenting, thank you very much.   The new neighbors must think I'm insane.  I'll be waiting patiently for Nanny McPhee to drop in for tea.  

What to do?

It is a Monday.  I have felt mildly gross and headache-y for two days (coinciding with some new naturopathic horse-pills; coincidence?).  My daughter is on school holiday.  I have two young children and no schedule.  What to do?  I was wracking my wee brain for a bit before I was hit with an important truth: Why is it that we are supposed to do anything?  Isn't doing nothing the best part of being a kid...and the best part of being a parent who gets to stay at home with kids?

With this in mind, I set the picnic blanket out in the shade, opened up a basket of beautiful shells I bought for my daughter to explore THREE YEARS AGO (shame on me!), and gathered some empty egg cartons, some clear plastic containers, clean cloths and a water bottle.  Discovery time!  I'll just them do whatever they are going to do with those things and join in the fun.

In retrospect, I'm not sure it was such a grand plan to send our order-obsessed girl to a Montessori school.  At age 3, she took to it like a duck to water, but two years later she is fairly convinced that everything (and I mean everything) must be highly ordered, have lots of rules and an intended goal.  Open-ended activities like the one I set out today just do not compute.  She came to me at least three times in moderate distress about what it must do, how much water do we need, what if I spill...  Our neighbor, on the other hand, spotted it when he came for a play a few hours later, and he was over the moon!  He got right to work arranging, rearranging, and plopping shells into the water.  As did our two and a half year old.  Sigh.

p.s.  Why is it that I cannot thwart that darned typepad clock?  It thinks it is Sunday, but Down Under is in Monday already!  I even set this post to publish "at a later date", which I set as my current time and date (Monday, Oct 4 at 12:51pm).  As soon as I hit "schedule", it posted on the blog as Oct 3 at 9:51pm.  Grr.

 

Pancakes save the day!

Today got off to a shaky start.  I hadn't slept well or enough, and I felt unprepared to tackle the day ahead.  My girls woke tired and fussy, which turned into fussing at each other more often than usual and rousing Mama into deeper grumpiness.  While my girl was at school, my wee one continued fussing and fidgeting (way out of character).  It was definitely an "up is down, black is white, in is out" kind of day.  The only break in the battle was a short nap.  After school, I thought we'd take advantage of an exceptionally beautiful afternoon and go to the river.  My girl wailed that she wanted the playground (she is a monkey bars fiend!), so I caved against my better judgment.  I should have listened to my better judgment.  Within minutes, she was crying because some girl had hit her and then two boys blocked her every move on the playground equipment (I watched the little devils execute with such devious cunning that it would have been impressive if the object hadn't been so mean).  We came home.  

Vowing not to be defeated (I'm the mom!  I'm supposed to be able to fix these kinds of days!), I made pancakes for (very) early dinner.  SHAPED pancakes.  Pancakes saved the day!  Before long, My Girl had donned her apron and was helping me measure and stir the batter.  Wee One donned her apron too and clambered up my leg to watch.  

 
They stuffed themselves silly, one animal-shaped pancake at a time, until by what was normally our dinnertime became playtime.  They requested songs and danced and played and laughed until it was time to brush teeth and go to bed.  It's amazing what some pancakes can do!  

In case you could use a similar boost, I thought I'd share the recipe I use.  My recipe has evolved over time and is now a post-it on the fridge.  Tonight, it was this:

• 2 cups wholewheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp raw caster sugar
• 1 Tbsp MEMoC seeds from Feeding Fussy Kids (LSA powder will do well or just omit)
• 1 cup natural plain yogurt and 1 cup milk* (often I use 1.5-2 cups buttermilk here, but I was out)
• 2 eggs
• 2 Tbsp melted (and cooled) butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Stir dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl.  Mix the wet ingredients separately.  Add wet to dry and stir to combine thoroughly.  Pour onto hot griddle or pan and away you go!  If you want shaped pancakes (and today that really made all the difference in the world!), call Grandmary.  She hooked us up (thank you, Grandmary!).  Shaped pancakes take quite a bit longer to make, but the girls certainly think it's worth the wait!  

*Note: I like my pancakes thick and fluffy, which would call for less milk than I added today.  Runny batter is required to fill the animal shapes, you see.  This would also be true if you poured the batter into an empty squeeze bottle and used it to make pancake letters or shapes of your own, a fun and quick alternative to the metal molds.

 

Readjusting my focus

With the myriad trials and tribulations that make up the average day with little ones, sometimes I get lost in the mayhem and the never-ending, overwhelming (and probably impossible) to-do list that is my life.  I forget that at the heart of it all are two beautiful little people, two sweet little girls that I've known since before they were born.  I forget.  How can one forget such a thing...yet I bet I'm not the only parent out there who has done this.

 

While I was away, I called home and the phone was passed to my 2.5 year old.  I am with her every day, so I had never talked to her on the phone before then.  It was amazing to me!  Listening to her speak so strongly, clearly, confidently...I marveled at the little person on the other end of the line.  And then it hit me that she was MINE.  I get to see her every day!  I get to spend time with her all day long!  She is wild and crazy and joyful, and it's all mine to witness.  I had forgotten.

 

As a family, our focus is already quite inward.  We don't watch TV at all, and DVD time is limited.  We rarely schedule anything on our weekends, preferring open flow and family time.  We don't plan many playdates or any scheduled activities after school.  At the extreme end of that spectrum, I've been putting off returning to regular yoga and exercise, because my best time is during the day and I've been unwilling to hire a babysitter or use a creche for either of my girls.  Although I recognize taking care of mama is crucial for being a good mama, I somehow have failed to implement it because I feel doing so would be at their expense.  But then because I am always with them, because we are always a unit, my eyes and ears have fogged over a bit.  Although I encourage and value their independence, I don't sit and be with them when they can carry on without me.  My mind is always racing to the next task (or the next thirty tasks).  My focus wanders from the present.  While I know it's not possible or even desirable to focus solely on them all the time, how many times has my girl sought me out and told me she wants to play with me, only to have me tell her "not right now" or "wait until I finish this..."...and how much longer do we have before she isn't asking me anymore?  I have been so caught up in living my main task for the past five years that I had forgotten what it was.

 

Society puts a lot of pressure on women to be perfect in many respects.  I am part of the first generation of women to not only have the culturally-accepted choice of professional career or not...but there the acceptance stops.  No generation has done this before.  As a well-educated woman who has actively chosen to stay home, I have felt pressure to not be just a mom (said in the most disparaging tone possible).  And because I am home, there is also the floating expectation that I will meticulously maintain my house, organize my life to the hilt, and have every local, organic meal that my perfect children will happily eat (HA!) planned a month in advance (okay, I'm exaggerating a wee bit, but you know what I mean).  Doing it all and especially doing it all with little ones in tow just isn't realistic, and trying (and failing) isn't a whole lot of fun either.  I am so much more than just a mom, but being a mom is so much more that I ever was before.  I want to honor that and the two beautiful little people who have made that possible (and challenging!).  Sometimes, I just need to readjust my focus.

Shrinky-dinks and birthday invites

Do you remember Shrinky Dinks from the '70s and '80s?  I loved those things!  The fun of coloring them in, and then the MAGIC of watching them curl and shrivel and shrink in the oven (or toaster oven)...once they were done, the magic was too, but ooooo, while it lasted!  

I was pretty excited when I found a pack of Shrinky Dink sheets here Down Under.  Most people I've talked to have never heard of them.  My husband didn't know what they were.  I guess it's an American thing.  Apparently, it's an American thing that kids still really like!  My girl had a blast with them!  I randomly drew four easy shapes (a ball, a star, a tree and a cake) and she seems to think that's what the sheets are for now (we've repeated this twice with the same shapes colored differently each time; I have to try to expand her ideas a bit).  We're definitely going to do Shrinky Dinks with her friends at her birthday party in a couple of weeks.  With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to include them in her invitations.

My girl has some very specific ideas about her birthday party and invitations.  Five is a big change from four in this way.  At four, all she wanted was balloons and to share cake with her friends.  At five, it's all about the party!  We limit the group so the number of kids equals the age of the birthday girl, and she's finding it hard to include everyone and keep to the limit.  She solves this problem by rotating names each time she lists them, but I'm not sure how that will play out when she actually hands out invitations tomorrow.  

Her current favorite books are the Conni series (in German).  She seems to be taking Conni's birthday (Conni hat Geburtstag!) as a guidebook.  In it, Conni makes her own invitations on folded over colored paper.  Check (though there was a bit of woe when the number of invitations Conni wrote exceeded ours...)!  I was surprised that she chose orange (normally, everything is pink pink pink), but it does make them quite bright.

 

Then, Conni's mom wrote inside the invitations.  Check, except we also added the extra Shrinky-Dink detail, tracing an image from the Conni book onto the blank Shrinky Dink and filling in the information about our book exchange in lieu of presents.  I made a little envelope out of green paper and glued it into the invite.

 

Although my girl was hugely in favor of this addition, she was out of creative energy after completing the cards and passed the task on to me.  The magic is still there!  I had so much fun finishing these invitations!  

My girl really likes the finished product, too.  I knew it was good when she announced she had to have a complete invitation with a Conni Shrinky Dink of her own to keep.  Success!
 

Discovering hidden treasures

With my older daughter back in school today and my wee one taking a spontaneous nap on the floor, I had some uninterrupted time after lunch to do some tidying up.  This is the time when I can whittle down our (massive) finished art project collection and move toys from their child-designated spaces (das ist verboten when the girls catch me at it).  

Trying not to disturb my wee one, I started at the opposite end of the house, conveniently in my older girl's bedroom.  I stripped sheets and remade the bed.  I crawled onto the top bunk--currently not in use for sleeping but very much in use for playtime--and ferried at least half a dozen stuffed animals back to their nests in the playroom.  I wistfully tucked in her forgotten baby doll (Lolo) and felt all mama-sentimental (my girl would not be parted from her Lolo for over two years of constant, joyful attachment, but lately, she seems to have outgrown her; it makes me a little sad thinking of how much and how quickly she is growing up).  Then, I turned to her cardboard castle hideout.  I opened the doors and found it completely stuffed with treasures.  Every bag of every kind that had formerly been in the playroom was stuffed into that castle.  I started putting away, but the more bags I opened, the more I wanted to pause and enjoy this secret stash of treasures.

That pink balloon was a party favor from a birthday attended over a month ago.  Impressive lifespan!

You never know when you'll need a healthy snack at the office.  Better to stash as much fruit and veg as possible into one's satchel...

So this is where all my food containers have gone...

 This bag was my favorite.  A girl should never be without a piece of statement jewelry (even if that beaded necklace has more length than my girls have height)...and don't leave home without your kazoo!  In this case, don't leave home without a metal kazoo Mama has owned (and treasured in my own way) since high school. 
 

I can't tell you how much going through these bags made me smile.  You never know what treasures you might find if you pause long enough to look.