Great reading website

If you are (or will be) teaching your child to read, do yourself a favour and go to www.starfall.com - it is an excellent site with programs that teach reading, right from the alphabet, through phonetics, to fluent reading. It also has loads of other lessons like calendars and stuff.

Just another reason I am addicted to the Internet.

Eating out on a budget

So with Velcro Baby and Moanbag Boy making my afternoons, well, INTERESTING, I've had to devise new ways of cooking. Whereas the requirements for a good meal used to be nutritional completeness, tastiness, variety and presentation, these days I choose meals based on their ability to be cooked with one hand.

Fresh asparagus with lemon butter sauce (made from scratch) has been replaced with frozen broccoli, tenderly steamed in the microwave. Line fish baked on a bed of tri-coloured vegetables with a Moroccan rub has been replaced with frozen Grill Bakes, ceremoniously arranged on a baking tray and lovingly baked in the oven. You get the picture.

Some nights, though, I just can't bear the thought of cooking so lavishly, so we eat out. Out of cans, that is.

Not that I ever allow my family's grand dinners to become boring or uninspiring. So here, for your culinary and gastronomic delight, I will share one of my favourite Eating Out ideas.

Authentic Indian Bean Curry
Put baby down with a toy. Now QUICKLY, open up 2 cans of butterbeans and one can of tomato puree or chopped tomatoes. As baby starts to complain, pour a little oil in a pan and switch stove on, while stalling by singing a nursery rhyme.
When baby wails indignantly, pick her up. Rush and pull toddler away from stove, where he has managed to drag a chair and is about to "help you cook".
Install toddler at cutlery drawer. With baby on one hip, drain butterbeans, and take chopped garlic out of fridge. While you're at it, get the onion out.

Put baby in crib in front of mobile. Now QUICKLY, chop onion and wash hands straight away. As baby begins to complain, sing another nursery rhyme and chuck the onions and garlic into the hot oil. When baby wails, pick her up and shout at toddler for digging in the garden soil with the kitchen utensils. Install toddler in front of sink and let him "wash his hands".

With baby on left hip, turn right side towards stove and stir onions. Now add some masala (NOT anything called "curry powder", please, people) and feel momentarily guilty for overwhelming your baby with such pungent odours. Put it down to olfactory stimulation and move on.

When masala smells roasted (about 15-30 seconds) throw in the drained beans and tomatoes. If you have some tomato paste, now would be a good time to add it. Rescue the bottle of dishwashing liquid from your toddler, who is "blowing bubbles".

Stir curry, cover and allow to cook for 10-15 minutes. As husband pulls into garage, whip off your apron, untie your hair and sniff your armpits. Greet him with a smile and the inviting aroma of a home-cooked meal.

Serve bean curry with fresh white bread, or roti from Pick 'n Pay. Apologise for lack of salt, sprinkle some on top, and enjoy with a glass of red wine.

Lessons from Nikhil

Sure, I've learnt things through Nikhil before - how to change a nappy, hold a baby, exercise self-restraint. But now that We Are Two, the lessons he's teaching me are less physical. Harder to learn - requiring much more introspection.
When we're in the midst of a heated battle of wills, it's a shocking, humbling experience to realise that I can be wrong and my 2 year old can be right.

I suppose I had assumed that I was the authority on life, having 28 years more experience than him, and that this allowed me to dole out instructions to everything, from what to eat, to where to stand. This week Nikhil taught me that he is a person in his own right, with feelings and opinions, and that he can make his own decisions about what to touch and what toys he wants to play with, for example.

The other morning, I was rushing around trying to get him ready for his very first day at School. He was not co-operating, being unaccustomed to waking up at the ungodly hour of 6am, and I was feeling rushed and emotional, sending my little boy off to school. I packed his mid-morning snack box and put it in the lounge while I prepared my own breakfast and lunch, mentally registering that I had to leave the house in 6 minutes, and I still hadn't eaten, done my hair and makeup, or packed Nikhil's spare change of clothes and on-the-go breakfast.

At which point I looked up and discovered that Nikhil had eaten his mid-morning snack. "NO!" I shouted. "Don't eat that now! That's for school! You must eat your breakfast now. Now I have to re-pack your snack!" He walked over to me, stood up straight, looked me in the eye and said "No! Don't talk to me hard!" I had to suppress a smile, but I managed to correct his language with a straight face, and now his response to every rebuke is "Don't shout at me mommy!"

The next night, I had battled through two and a half hours of traffic with both Nikhil and Ariane in the car, screaming in hypoglycemic, over-tired frustration all the way home. It was all I could do to stop myself from losing control and screaming too. At home, my phone rang and Nikhil immediately grabbed it. In my agitated state, I grabbed his hand and said "Leave it!". Sometimes it would be nice to just do one thing, like answer your phone, without having to fight your toddler. But, a battle did ensue, ending with the phone falling to the ground, the battery coming out, and me losing the call. That was the proverbial last straw, and I burst out, "Do you see why I don't want you to touch my phone? Now it's broken!"

The emotional outrage that issued from him caught me off-guard. It's hard to describe in words. It was like a 16-year-old had entered his little body, and with precocious maturity and adult facial expressions, he said "Don't SHOUT at me! DON'T shout at me!" In that moment, he was not a two-year-old throwing a tantrum in front of a mother who was shaking her head. He was a person asserting his right to be spoken to respectfully and with dignity, in front of an errant and ignorant first-time mom. It was not him imitating someone else - those expressions were all his own - he had an intrinsic idea of who he is, what he wants to do, and how he should be treated. I gaped, astounded, and quietly said, "I'm sorry."

Later that night we lay in bed, playing out our nightly ritual - I lie next to him and hold him, and he holds his teddy in the crook of one arm, bottle of milk in the other hand, and the teddy-side hand playing with my "boobs" (his word). In the soothing quietness, I looked at his big eyes and impossibly long eyelashes and was overcome with tenderness for this beautiful child. I resolved to be more patient with him and try to control my temper more effectively.

"I'm not going to fight with you anymore," I said, more to confirm it for myself than for him. "I don't like it when we fight, and I'm not going to shout at you anymore." He blinked, sucked on his bottle, and carried on looking straight up at the ceiling. I thought he just didn't understand what I meant, but I felt better for saying it anyway. Then he said, "And I'm not going to cry at you anymore mommy." For a second time that night, I was gobsmacked. I'd just made a truce with my baby! That feeling is indescribable. And I hadn't expected to feel it for the next 3 years at least.

I'm learning that everything about being a parent is bittersweet. I'm so glad that Nikhil can stand up and demand respect for himself, but I'm so sad for all the times I've treated him like an object without a will of his own. I'm sorry for all the times I've lost my temper, and all the times I will lose it in the future. I'm glad he taught me a lesson, but I'm sad I didn't know it in the first place. I'm sorry for all the other mistakes I will make over his lifetime, but most of all I'm glad that he's going to be okay, no matter how many mistakes I make and what situations he finds himself in.

Our little financial analyst

I was reading a little anecdotal story about a middle-aged guy remembering the first time he went to the sweet shop by himself at the age of about four – he paid for his sweets with cherry stones, and the shop owner was gracious enough to accept his currency and give him a few pennies back in change.

Cute story, but I couldn’t help thinking how unlikely it would be today. Nikhil certainly knows the difference between money and cherry stones. I am amazed at how much (and amused at how little) he knows about money.
He knows enough to demand money to spend at OK “Bazaars”, and throw a tantrum if he doesn’t get it. Incidentally, the nanny started calling it “OK Bazaars” and we followed suit, otherwise he would think we were going to the shop every time we said “Okay”.
A typical Tuesday afternoon conversation will go like this:
Nikhil: I want a pear.
Me: We don’t have any pears. Have an apple/ peach/ plum.
Nikhil: I want a pear! You must go to OK Bazaars and buy pears.
Me: Look at this lovely apple. Do you want one?
Nikhil: I want money.
Me: (Stunned) What do you want to do with money?
Nikhil: I want to go to OK Bazaars. I want to buy pears, and eggs and bread and newspaper and lollipop and chippies.
Me: I don’t have any money.
Nikhil: Go to work and buy money!

His great grandmother just gave him a birthday present – a traditional Chinese red envelope containing money, so Brad allowed him to handle the R100 note and told him who gave it to him. Nikhil was enchanted – he examined the note, crumpled it, tasted it, said “Thank you Tai-Po”, even though she was nowhere around, and refused to let us take it back. About 2 minutes later, though, he abandoned it on the lawn and found something else to amuse himself.

I’ve decided to use the money to give him an allowance – he gets R5 a week (the nanny is the appointed trustee) to spend at OK Bazaars. The poor nanny sometimes ends up spending her own money giving in to his ceaseless demands. Now he can buy his own eggs and bread and newspaper and lollipop and chippies about twice a week. We’ll work on actual values once he’s progressed past counting and can actually do some arithmetic! At the moment he firmly believes he can get eggs and bread and newspaper and lollipop and chippies for twenty cents. I don’t think I've ever bought eggs from OK Bazaars, but I know better than to mess with a 2-year-old’s ideas.

Recently, while walking around the lake near my parents’ house, Nikhil kept pointing at all the bottle caps littering the ground and calling them money. I was trying to explain to him that they weren’t money, but I didn’t have any coins handy to show him the difference, when we serendipitously found a R1 coin on the ground. I think I was more excited than Nikhil, and I promptly sent him off to the corner café with my dad to spend his windfall.
Now I’m just waiting for the day I say “I don’t have any money,” and he replies “Go outside and pick some up off the ground!” If only…

The Reading update

So, we have begun teaching Nikhil to read.

It is a very telling sign when the second letter your child learns to recognise is M... for MacDonald's!

When I decided to undertake this task, I printed out all the letters, capitals and lower case, in a good, simple font. I painstakingly cut out each letter and taped them, capital letter next to lower case, all over the dining room and kitchen, and ignored the strange looks from visitors (we've had lots of people coming to give us removals quotes).

Nikhil looked at them a few times, then proceeded to tear them off the furniture and eat them. Well, at least he's, ahem, taking them in...

But he has been learning well, albeit from other sources. He can now recognise 19 letters, and will key in the correct letter on the keyboard if you ask him to. He can also recognise a few numerals. The most valuable tool has been a program called Baby Smash, where the child can bash away at the keyboard and the letters appear large and bright, with a voice saying what it is. Function keys yield coloured shapes, so he now knows shapes like hexagons and trapezoids. Another great tool is a play dough set with alphabet cutters that my sister gave him for his birthday.

As much as I tried to avoid the "A for apple, B for ball" method, all the alphabet books we've found teach it that way. It's a problem, especially at this age. Nikhil will see a numeral, and say "Four! Four for...? Mommy, what's four for?" as if it's a letter to start a word with. Also, he knows D is for Dad, and B is for Brad, so he says "B for Dad!" and I'll have to say, "No, B for Brad." Then you can see his little brain thinking "That's what I said. Brad, Dad, same person!"

The great thing about teaching kids is that they are so eager to learn, they will force you to teach them. I have to admit, I've slacked off a bit recently (it does get tedious singing the alphabet song so many times) but Nikhil hasn't taken a break. We'll be rushing around at the mall and he'll point to a sign and say "Look! S!". Then I stop myself and point out the other letters to him.

And it's that excitement that has me wanting to homeschool my kids. The joy of learning something new, the satisfaction of discovering a proficiency - that's something I want to keep alive for all their lives.Because once they love learning, the subject matter is unimportant - they will always be able to learn whatever skill they need in life.

I'm back!

I have been absent for quite a while, I know. I would hate to feed you the regular blogger's excuses - holidays, busy with the kids, etc. So I'll tell you the truth.

I've been conducting a research study. I'm serious. So serious, in fact, that I am sharing the study with you right here:

Does sleep deprivation affect function? A study of the effects of prolonged interrupted sleep in adult females

Background: It is a well-known fact that sleep deprivation can lead to a multitude of physiological disturbances, so severe in fact, that sleep deprivation has been used as a means of torture in the past.
In modern times, however, women of childbearing age are often required to work in full-time employment while suffering the consequences of sleep deprivation, caused by looking after young children. This study aims to identify the functional areas affected, if any, by this sleep deprivation.

Method: Subjects were chosen from a small geographical area. They were female, married, with children under the age of 30 months, and employed in full time jobs. Subjects with concomitant disease states were not excluded from the study. A total number of 1 subjects were recruited. Average age: 30 years. Average weight: None of your business, Nosey!

After a full day of work, subjects were allowed to go to bed at 10pm every night. They were then woken at random intervals ranging from 30 to 90 minutes. They were woken by the sound of a child waking, as this was found to be the most effective way of getting their adrenaline and cortisol levels to rise rapidly and ensure they were fully awake within 0.48 seconds. Subjects were woken 5 to 8 times a night.

Subjects were kept awake for varying time periods, at random, between 5 and 120 minutes. During this time they were made to perform any combination of the following tasks:
> breastfeeding an infant, remembering which breast to feed from so as to avoid "foremilk diarrhoea" or affect supply
> comforting a toddler out of a nightmare
> finding a syringe and administering medication to a crying infant without allowing infant to choke or spit medication out
> switching on lights, going to kitchen on a different level of the house, making a bottle of chamomile tea, cooling it to a comfortable temperature, and feeding it to a child
> ignoring a smiling, cooing baby so as to teach the baby the difference between night and day
> allowing a toddler to kick fitfully, grab her breasts and tickle her eyes, nose and ears if she attempted to fall asleep during the allocated wake period
> change a messy diaper without waking the baby or allowing mess onto the bed.

The subjects were expected to keep up this routine for at least four months. During the first 6 weeks of the study, they were subjected to severe hormonal imbalances and fluctuations, causing such symptoms as emotional instability, weight gain, irritability, water retention and depression.

Results:
After 3 months, subjects began to show significant loss of function. Confusion and memory loss were the most prominent, characterised by subjects forgetting what day of the week it was (even after returning to employment), not knowing where they were at night, forgetting where they had left the baby, forgetting how many children they had, and performing the wrong tasks on the wrong children. Loss of memory also included forgetting the names of everyday objects, children and spouses.

The incidence of minor car accidents increased.

Alcoholic tendencies increased.

Weight gain increased. On average, subjects gained as much weight as they had lost after giving birth.

Regarding waking up for the day, most subjects reported waking feeling tired and experiencing "gritty eyes", but were able to get out of bed and attend to morning tasks. These included all night time tasks, as well as dressing themselves for the work day.

Incidence of mismatched outfits and/ or inappropriate shoes increased. Subjects reported that this was not of great concern to them.

Ability to hold meaningful discourse with spouses decreased significantly, although most subjects became increasingly adept at making the appropriate listening sounds, and spouses did not report a perceived breakdown in communication.

Attendance at work was unchanged. Actual performance at work was unmeasurable.

Conclusion and recommendations: Protracted sleep deprivation has significant effects on the population studied. However, subjects were able to keep up the appearance of fully functional individuals.

It seems to be a design flaw that women must undergo this sleep deprivation at a time when their offspring are most in need of an alert, energetic, well-functioning caregiver. The researchers have a number of recommendations on the improvements which can and should be made to the next versions of Baby and Mother.

Life is what happens while you're making other plans...

It was going to be a blissful evening. I had planned a quiet night of Christmas gift wrapping once the kids were in bed. I was so looking forward to reviewing all the gifts I had carefully chosen for each recipient, getting that fuzzy feeling of knowing how much they're going to love their gifts. I was looking forward to some creative and colourful wrapping, and making pretty gift tags. I had it all planned - down to the frosty cold beer to sip while I worked.

Yes, I drink beer. I do it for two reasons. One, I like it. And two, my mother says it's un-ladylike, and that makes me want to do it even more.

Anyway, 8pm rolled around and everything was on track. Kids in bed, fed and happy. Nikhil had complained of some tummy ache, but he was medicated and asleep. I donned my rubber gloves and started the washing up, my last task before the much-anticipated wrapping session.

And then, Nikhil moaned.

Brad went up to check on him, and shouted down the stairs for reinforcements. I threw down the rubber gloves, and motored up the stairs, armed with towels. When I arrived on the scene, Brad had a shrieking Nikhil undressed in the bath, and I was deployed to the bedroom, where I discovered it.

Vomit. Puke. Regurgitation.

I tried to stifle my own gag reflex, and stoically set about the cleaning operations. Twice more, I lifted the toilet lid because I thought I was going to lose control and deposit my own dinner in the toilet bowl.

The worst of the mess cleaned up, I found there was still a mattress to strip and scrub, duvet covers to remove, and bedding to be replaced. And would you believe it, I couldn't find one bloody sheet to fit the bed. Where's the domestic worker when you need her???

Nikhil was washed and changed, but we still had to rehydrate him and re-medicate him. Then he only wanted me to put him back to bed (couldn't deny the poor guy that - he'd been through enough for one night).

Ten pm. I'm hot, sweaty, and drained. The dishes are almost washed, the gifts remain unwrapped, and my beer is warm and flat. And as a bonus, I have 2 extra loads of laundry to do tomorrow - one of sheets and clothes, one for the duvet.

I just have one question to ask, and I ask your forgiveness for even asking it: Why the heck do people continue to have children, generation after generation, without learning from previous generations?