I'm Not A Good Play Group Mum

I'm not a very good play group mum.

No really, I'm just not made to go to play group.

But that doesn't stop me from going, it just means I'm usually pretty quiet while I'm there.

Why am I a bad play group mum? Well aside from the fact that I ALWAYS forget to bring a plate of food to share, I'm just a different kind of mum.

When we moved to the Pilbara I joined a play group for kids aged 0-2. And while all the mums there are beautiful people, good mums and all doing their best for their children I just can't get past all the bullshit that people will do and believe when trying to raise kids these days.

My first day there a few mums were talking about the type of milk they give their little one.
"I ONLY use a2 milk"
"Well I use the FREE RANGE milk from Harvey Fresh"
"I use lite milk"

I'm sorry but free range milk?!? WTF?!? As far as I know all the Harvey Fresh cows are outside-trust me I've spent a lot of time in Harvey. These people pay a bloody fortune for all their fancy milk.
I always use full cream milk (because it's healthier than lite milk) and better still it's cheaper than all these supposedly 'fancy' milks. Why would you pay so much extra for "free range milk" it's just ridiculous!

But then last week I got my biggest laugh yet. One mum was talking about how her baby was nearly over her 'leap' I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Thankfully another mum didn't know either, so she asked. We were told about this great app for your phone. You enter your baby's DUE DATE not birth date and it tells you about your baby's mental development.
Apparently when they go through these big mental development stages it's called a 'leap'.

But the thing that really gets to me is there is a calendar that counts down to each 'leap' it tells you the behaviour you should see from your child eg;fussing, crying, not sleeping so well, clingy etc. On what is supposed to be the worst day of the leap there is a picture of a storm cloud. The app counts down the days to the leap and then counts down until the leap is over.

I just find this so frustrating. Why do people need an app to tell them when their kids should be having 'good days' and 'bad days'?? Why can't you just look at your baby, take each day as it is and deal with the day as it comes.
I honestly believe that when people say "it's spot on with their behaviour, the dark cloud days as always the worst" it's because they are paying much more attention to the bad bits of the days. To me it's all mind over matter. If someone tells you something bad is coming you over think it, you over prepare, you imagine the worst and then as soon as the baby starts crying or fussing you think "here we go, it's starting now." If you didn't know bad days were coming you would just think "oh you're a little grumpy today"

Counting down the days until your baby's "storm cloud day" or waiting for the "sunshine day" it's bloody stupid. How about you stop fiddling around with you're phone and take your cues from your baby!!!!

Just to see exactly how this whole 'leap' thing worked I downloaded the app and entered Isla's details and well what do you know on her "sunshine day" she was fussy and grumpy and wouldn't sleep and very clingy....so much for being a little ray of sunshine!!!

When did parenting become something that is entirely controlled by mobile phones, apps and expensive 'organic' 'free range' false marketing.
It's like the more expensive the food you provide the better a parent you are.

I also just don't get this whole baby led weaning thing. I'm sorry but WHY do we need to teach baby's from 4months+ to be MORE independent. Aren't children growing up too fast as it is? Why can't we spoon feed our baby's. It's another bonding experience being thrown out the window. Instead we are taught to throw down a couple pieces of food on a high chair and that leaves mum free to be doing more work/housework/time to get pretty.
When Isla is ready for solids I'll be cooking and blending food like I used to and I'll be sitting down playing 'here comes the aeroplane' and laughing as half the food comes dribbling down her chin again. I enjoyed spoon feeding my baby's and damn it I'll be spoon feeding this one too.
I also find starting with baby mush food would likely be healthier. When giving baby's 'real food' there is more temptation to give them a biscuit or a vegemite sandwich or junk food.
Starting with purée it's all mashed veggies and fruits. So baby is getting more of the good stuff and you are less likely to give them unhealthy foods.


So there. I'm not a good mum to have at play group. I have no idea what to talk to other new mums about. I have no interest in spending $4 on a litre of milk, living my life guided by an app, fearing storm cloud days just because my phone says my baby will have a grumpy day. I have no desire to look into new technology for baby monitors-I don't even use them. I can't stand those video monitor ones. Every single person I know that has a video baby monitor sits down with the monitor in their hand/directly in front of their face and spends more time watching than monitor than socialising/eating/cleaning/whatever they are supposed to be doing while baby naps. It's not healthy to be that obsessed. You need time out. You need to just let your baby sleep.

I don't even have my baby sleeping in the same bedroom as me. Day 1 baby was in the cot. Bradley was in the cot straight away too. I found we all slept better in separate rooms. I wasn't waking up to every twitch, squeak and wiggle-which in turns tempts mum/dad to get baby up for a feed/to settle when they probably didn't even need to. And I definitely don't believe in any forms of co-sleeping.

It seems I don't have much in common with most mums.
Our way of parenting used to be the done thing, it was 'just the way things were.' Now people seem over protective, worried, stressed, too dependant on anything labelled "healthy" "organic" "educational" "safe"
Now the way hubby and I parent is considered the weird way.
But anyone that has ever met my kids knows it hasn't done them any harm. In fact our kids are generally sleeping better, eating better and have more respect/boundaries than anyone else's kids we know.
If we say no our kids know we mean business. They don't draw on walls, chuck tantrums (often), steal our phones to play games. They know that some things are out of bounds. We often get comments on how well behaved our kids are, how great it is that they don't steal our phones/iPads and play with them all day, what great sleepers they are and how great it is they aren't too fussy with foods (if they don't eat what they are given then they just don't eat, in our house we ALL eat the same meal, except special occasions).

So if these people are always commenting so positively on our parenting, and complaining that their own children won't do the same, why don't they change their parenting ways??

The Girl Who Cried Wolf

Yesterday my beautiful big girl got her first broken bone.
How did she break a bone? Well by reading a book of course!!

No really I'm not even joking.

Last night while I cooked dinner the kids were sitting quietly reading books. They were actually behaving themselves really nicely.
When I asked them to pack away their books Miss 5 suddenly started screaming.

"It's dinner time, you can read again later if you really want to"

"Mummy I've hurt my finger" she screamed at me.

I had a look at her finger and she seemed fine, I asked how she did it "I was just reading and then I went to get up and my finger just twisted by itself."

I have no idea what that means but I gave her finger a rub and we sat down for dinner.

For the rest of the night she whinged and complained and nagged me about her bloody finger. That's pretty normal behvaiour for her. She's like the boy who cried wolf. 100times she tells me she's sick, when in fact she's not. But that one time she IS sick I don't believe her.

So off to bed she went and today we got up and spent the day exploring the nearby National Park. Climbing rocks, jumping around, bush walking. It was great fun but every now and then Kaitlyn said "mum, my finger hurts"

On the way home late this afternoon I had another look at her finger. It was pretty swollen (like, HUGE) and it was blue and purple and very bruised.

We made a detour to the hospital on the way home. The nurse declared a broken finger, taped it up and sent us home with an extra roll of tape. We are to keep Kaitlyn's finger taped to its neighbour finger for the next few days.

OOPS!!

That's what is so hard about having a kid that overreacts, whinges and 'cries wolf' you can never tell when it's for real or when it's fake.

Today was apparently one of those real ones!

All taped up on our way home. 

Nice ring finger there Miss!! 

A Festival With No Name

On the weekend our little town put on a big shindig! It's the annual town festival and it's apparently a much bigger deal than I thought.

It's called the Nameless Festival (good name right?) and since it's smack in the middle of tourist season the town is over run with grey nomads. The car park where I park during school drop off and pick up times was full of caravans and camper trailers. The neighbours had a caravan in the front yard and come day of the carnival there was so many caravans and camper trailers and vans all the carparks were full and they were parking on street corners.

There is a street parade, more food vans than you can ever imagine, rides, stalls and a main stage with lots of different acts performing throughout the festival.
Both the local primary schools have a truck in the street parade. We missed most of the week leading up to the carnival (as both big kids were sick) but the kids get to make tonnes of decorations and get the truck looking amazing. The kindy and pre primary kids get to ride on the truck each year. This years theme was carnival of colour and let me tell you they nailed it! The truck looked like an explosion of colour. The kids each had to wear coloured clothes; boys in orange and girls in pink. They made funny hats at school to wear and the girls had coloured headbands.

The festival started on Friday night. A day when both kids were too sick to leave the house. It was a family friendly night, a couple of amazing illusionists performed on the main stage followed by Shannon Noll!! Who knew such a small town could get such good performers! I was REALLY looking forward to going but I couldn't take the kids out by myself. Maybe if hubby was home we could have rugged them up and taken a couple blankets down and stayed for a little while. Unfortunately I was home alone with the kids and it all seemed like hard work to me. So I put the kids to bed and listened to the concert in the background while watching trashy tv.

Apparently it was a good night.

Saturday was the big day. Street parade was at 9:30am. I REALLY wanted the kids to be in the parade so I gave them panadol, an antihistamine, multivitamins and a nose spray and we made it there.

Mr 4 was super nervous, he cried when it was time to line up. But he overcame it and jumped up on the back of that truck. After making sure Kaitlyn was up on the truck and happy Isla and I quickly ran down to the finish line and waited for them to come past. For a small town it was s decent sized parade. The bmx club, swimming club, schools, cadets, police and gymnastics club, plus a couple others I didn't know all paraded through the streets of Tom Price. The kids did amazing! Kaitlyn was up there clapping and dancing along to the music and Bradley was sitting with his little buddy waving as they went past.
I was pretty proud of them. And they didn't have a single coughing fit on the truck!

After the winners of the parade were announced (our school won) it was time to find a patch of shade to feed Isla. We had a quiet sit down and decided that we could have a little wander around the festival but the kids had to go home and have a nap.

We went for a wander around. There were heaps of rides for the kids but unfortunately having been sick and coughing for days the kids couldn't go on many and not having another person to go on hedge bigger rides with them (as I had to stay with Isla in the pram) it was hard to know what to do with them. They did have a turn on those clown things and on a little car ride.

Then I took the kids to have lunch at one of the many food vans before heading home for a sleep.
Let me tell you I have never seen so many food vans. The kids chose bright green, blue and yellow slushie drinks from the slushie van, a hot dog and chips from the junk food van and I got an amazing burger from the Margaret River Burgers van. Best burger from a truck EVER. We sat down in front of the main stage and watched the gymnastics club give a performance while we ate. Then Kaitlyn got up and joined the "Polka Dotties" for a dance. She did awesome, following the little dance steps and dancing along.

But it was hot and the panadol was wearing off. We had a quick stop at the chemist for baby panadol, Vicks baby balsam and more nose spray, as Isla was now getting sick.

We started walking home, Bradley was the first to lose it. He sat on the ground, crying and throwing rocks. Then Kaitlyn started walking slower than a dead person and Isla started crying for her feed.

We made it home hot, tired and exhausted but we had a great morning.
The kids slept it off and we had a relaxing afternoon at home.

The Saturday night was an over 18's event where The Wolfe Brothers and The Potbeleez performed and it was again a loud night. We sat home and listened to the performance while watching more trashy tv.

Overall it sounded like an amazing weekend, the small part of the festival we saw was awesome. For a small town it was a great shindig! I hope next year hubby is home and the kids are healthy so we can fully enjoy the entire Festival.

Time for a quick ride

All the kids parading through the town (and some random on a scooter that would not move!!)

The float the kids were on all decorated and ready to go 

My little girl slept away the morning 

Getting ready-photo by Kaitlyn

Getting ready-photo by Bradley. 

What's in a Name?

I don't know if anyone remembers, quite a while ago (while I was still pregnant) I said there was a cute story behind naming our baby.

My husband is terrible at keeping secrets. Example-he proposed to me THE DAY he brought my engagement ring because he couldn't keep it a secret until the weekend.

When I was pregnant with Bradley we found out the sex of our baby but decided we didn't want to tell anyone else-he stuffed up and most family members knew within a month.

When I found out I was pregnant with Isla we wanted to wait until 12 weeks to tell everyone. He couldn't keep it a secret so to stop himself telling family and friends (apart from immediate family members, who were told at 8 weeks) he told EVERY single stranger, work colleague or person he met within that first 12 weeks.

So when it came to choosing the name-which we both wanted to keep secret-we picked our top 4 names, he then told me I could choose the baby's name from those 4.

In case you are interested are top 4 names were: Maddison Ava, Indianna Jade, Isla Rose and Bethany Rose.

He told me his top favourite name was Isla Rose, mine was Indianna Jade but he said he would be happy with any of the four names and I could choose.

I knew if I told him what name I had chosen he would slip up and tell everyone. He WANTED to keep it secret but he just sucks at it. So I chose the name. And didn't tell him.

He used to try and trick me into telling him what I had chosen and in fact he was convinced I had chosen Indianna so he started calling my bump Indi.

I thought it was funny. He had actually named our baby but had no idea! Poor guy!

Around our first wedding anniversary I felt sorry for him. He wanted to know the baby's name but he really didn't want to ruin the surprise.

Our one year anniversary arrived. It was our 'paper' anniversary. So I set about thinking what the heck I could give him made from paper and decided it was time I tell him the baby's name.

So I gave him this poem

It reads:
"Daddy can you feel me
I'm wriggling just for you
I can hear you say you love
Dad I love you too

Very soon you'll meet me
And kiss my little face
And I will feel your warm skin
And admire your handsome face

Daddy are you ready
My life is about to start
I will hold your little finger
But you will hold my heart"

Love from Isla Rose Currie


He was actually so surprised I had named the baby Isla-especially since he had convinced himself I had chosen Indianna.

And the best part is, he managed to keep the secret until the end. He just kept calling my bump 'baby' so there were no slip ups in front of people :-)

How did you choose the name for your baby? Is anyone else's husband, or even you, bad at keeping secrets?
I suppose it's a good thing, he could never hide anything from me because he's so terrible at keeping even a tiny secret-never mind trying to keep something big or important (such as a marriage proposal) secret for more than 5 minutes. :-)

Do Straight Jackets Come In Size 3??

If your child has a bad habit, I'm about to make you feel a whole lot better about it.

Maybe your little one picks their nose, draws on walls, enjoys stripping off their clothes in public. Maybe they bite their nails, throw their food on the floor or paint the dog.

Well I bet you my son can top all those.

Today I am home with three sick kids (yes even my 5week old is sick!). They are coughing and snotty and just plain miserable. And it's all Bradley's fault!

Don't believe me? Think I'm mean to blame my kid? Read on.

For a couple years now I've struggled with this whole toilet training bed wetting business. Mostly Kaitlyn has been the centre of the drama, but Bradley has been quietly on the side causing his own set of issues.

His is gross. He doesn't just wet the bed like a normal kid. Are you ready for it?

He wee's on his bed-the whole bed pillow included-and rubs his face in it and lays in it!!!!!!!

Now do you feel better about your own kids bad habits?

Yeah, so now that you have finished throwing up. . .

Bradley wee's his bed and lays in it...all night.
We have tried everything to get him to stop. Nappy on backwards, all in one pajamas with buttons or zips, getting up and changing his sheets in the middle of the night to try keep him warm. We even used those long sleeves sleeping bags and put it on him back to front so he couldn't undo the zip!!
Unfortunately he has outgrown all in ones and sleeping bags. Now he wee's his bed and lays in it all night. He wakes up freezing cold which leads to him getting a cold-which he then shares with everyone.

In the weeks leading up to me having Isla he got sick (and nearly ended up with bloody frost bite he was so cold!) and shared it with us. We told him that he needs to stop because mummy couldn't get sick so close to having the baby. Well I did end up sick and I gave birth while coughing and with an upper respiratory infection.

When Isla was born we told Bradley again that his little 'habit' needs to stop. If a tiny baby got sick it could be very dangerous.

Well he didn't stop, he didn't learn his lesson. He got sick again after a cold night and a wet bed.

I tried my hardest to keep him away from everyone. I turned into a clean freak disinfecting everything. Making him use hand sanitiser, not letting him near Isla etc etc...

Two days later Kaitlyn got sick. Cough, runny nose and slight fever. I was not impressed. Kaitlyn missed out on school and was grumpy.

Then yesterday my little Isla started coughing, and let me tell you hearing a 5 week old coughing to the point of almost throwing up is horrible. She's been sneezing and has a runny nose.

Oh and then today I woke up with a headache and a tickle in my throat, so it looks like I'll be the next one to go down.

Needless to say I'm pretty pissed off at Bradley. I'm trying to be sympathetic towards him being sick. But all I can think is "you did this to yourself, don't come crying to me"

I have explained to him that he has shared his sickness and made Kaitlyn, Isla and me sick. That he got sick from wetting his bed and getting cold. But last night he AGAIN wet the bed and slept in it.

I called mum a couple days ago (because she can sew and I can't) and asked if she had any ideas. I am actually ready to put Bradley in a freaking straight jacket if it will solve the problem!!
Mums been shopping for all in one suits that we could 'alter' but apparently finding boys ones is hard. So mum got a girls one. She said to me "I'll try find one that's not too girly"
"I don't care if it's pink with purple butterflies, this kid needs to be stopped."

Hopefully early next week I'll have a slightly altered girls onsie that we can put on Bradley to stop him from getting to his willy. Oh did I mention he wears a pull-up to bed? He literally pulls his willy out of his pull-up so he can pee.


So I hope I have made you all feel better about your own kids bad habits. If anyone knows where I can buy a size 3 straight jacket...well let me know.

Now I'm off to attend to my sick babies... Enjoy your weekend

School Runs and Learning Fun

It's been a couple of weeks since the kids have been back to school (yippee!!) and they are both nicely settled into their new school.

Schooling up here is a little different to school in the city. And it actually prefer the way things go up here-so afar!

When we had a visit to the school before the kids 'officially' started I was amazed at how friendly the other students were. Kaitlyn was introduced to the class and by the time we left the kids had all remembered her name and were asking where she would be sitting. The students in Bradley's class were the same. Now that I've met some of get the other mums we have got to talking and they all gangrene with how friendly the children are. Because this town is a mining town it means there are people coming and going frequently. The kids learn how to make friends fast with all the newbies and are a very welcoming bunch of students!

As far as actual schooling goes it's pretty different too.
For Kaitlyn this means NO IPADS!!!!! Yippee! It was so nice on Monday to sit in a classroom as parent helper and see the teacher using a whiteboard and story books to teach the children. It's been a long time since I've seen that. The kids were all listening and responding and doing a great amount of learning with no need to be sat at their own desk on an iPad not interacting. It was nice to see pre primary as a social, fun learning environment again :-)
The only down side I've found for Kaitlyn so far is the homework. She still has nightly reading and sight words which I'm good with but not only does she need to read the sight words but she has to be able to spell them as well!!! I think that's crazy. Thankfully though she is given 5 words at a time and she doesn't move on to the next words until she has learnt these ones. At her last school she got a new set of words whether she knew the old ones or not and she was given 10-20 words at a time!!  So I like that she can take her time to learn them before being bombarded with the next set.

Bradley's class is just as friendly. He has a teacher that looks almost younger than me but is great with the kids. In his class in the morning the kids get a little whiteboard and marker and we sit down with them and they practice writing their name, numbers and drawing shapes. There is always some nursery rhymes playing in the background and it just has this great atmosphere.

Each classroom has a fridge for the kids to put their lunch boxes (as in summertime even the best ice blocks would melt up here) drink bottles are also kept there to keep them nice and cool.

The main school classrooms are all upstairs-something about allowing cool breezes or something like that!

There is also a lot of teachers coming and leaving so most teachers are fairly young-straight out of uni. But they seem to know what they are doing better than a few I have seen in the city!!

One of the main car parks for the school is right next to the tourist centre so come 2pm (pick up time) the carpark is full of grey nomads with their camper vans and caravans. Also once a month a meat truck comes and a seafood truck also comes and they use that carpark. We've also had a Simmos ice cream van for the last couple weeks in that carpark. Busy little carpark it is!!

Perhaps the absolute hardest part of this new school for me is the start and finish times.
In Perth the kids started at 8:50 and finished at 3pm.
Up here the kids start at 8am and finish at 2:10pm.
In Perth we woke up at 7:30 in the morning to get to school by 8:40 for the before school activities, now we leave home at 7:40am to be at school for 7:45 for the kids before school time with parents.
It's killing me!! I'm a morning person, but I'm a 'let's start our day at 8am' kind of morning person.
Getting up at 6:20-getting showered and ready and then having the kids up at 6:50 is killing me!! And the kids are wearing out a lot earlier in the evenings too I've noticed-though I see that as a positive :-)

Kaitlyn's first day of her new school 

Got Milk??

It's been awhile since my last blog. Finding time to write is a little hard at the moment. I'm still settling in to these extra early school runs and having a baby again.

While I was pregnant with Miss Isla (towards the end) I was doing everything I could to get this baby moving. I was desperate for her to come early!

One of the things they say is nipple stimulation. Well I wasn't all that keen on rubbing my boobs all day but then I read about a mum who hand expressed colostrum and froze it for her baby-to-be.

I thought that seemed like a much better idea. I always seem to have an over supply of milk when breast feeding and my milk comes in early-as in I can squeeze milk out from week 1 almost.

After I had my son 4yrs ago I could still squeeze milk out 2 yrs AFTER I stopped breast feeding him!!!

So from about 34 weeks I hand expressed my colostrum.

In the morning I would have a hot shower, sit down and express into a tablespoon, once I was done I would collect the colostrum in a syringe and freeze it with the date on it, I usually got between 5-10mls.

I didn't do it every day just when I could be bothered!

I ended up with quite a collection. Too much for Isla to use up before we left the city, so I decided to give it to Kaitlyn and Bradley as well.

They had both been sick for weeks and needed a boost to their immune system-why not?

I didn't tell them what I was giving them, although Kaitlyn guessed straight away. Bradley downed his in exactly 3 seconds. So did Kaitlyn but she made sure she had a truly disgusted expression on her face first!!!

I know it sounds like a total hippie thing to do (trust me I'm not into breast feeding older kids) but I didn't know what to do with all this colostrum. I didn't want to waste this stuff, it's like liquid gold and since Kaitlyn and Bradley had been sick for sooooo long I decided why not?

Kaitlyn still gets embarrassed when I breast feed Isla-especially in public. But hopefully she will get over that soon. I think that is more due to the fact that I've always told her not to walk around without clothes on because it's inappropriate. So now Kaitlyn is stuck thinking it's inappropriate.

Sometimes being a mum is hard. Trying to teach children not to run around naked but that whipping yours boobs out is ok for breast feeding. It's a total contradiction.