Training wheels

Before Christmas it became clear that Mars really didn't need the training wheels on his bike any more. So he and Supernerd spent some time out on the bike path practising, so that he would gain confidence and we would be able to ditch the training wheels forever.

Supernerd thought it might be a good idea to start by taking just one training wheel off, so Mars would feel that he was doing well, but would still able to use the second wheel as a kind of bike stand (his bike doesn't have one), and all the reports indicate that he only fell off two or three times each time they went out to practice.

Often when I think about my son I am greatly reminded of my younger brother, and the things he used to do when we were young. Any activity associated with riding tricycles or bicycles, wth or without extra wheels, was fraught with peril for my brother, and my parents used to keep a running tally called Gravity Versus Steven. Often, gravity was the victor.

Anyway, we asked Mars to explain to his Nana what he had been working on down on the bike path. The conversation went like this:

Mars: "Nana, we took one of the wheels off my bike!"

Nana (with tongue in cheek): "I hope it wasn't the front wheel."

Mars: "Yes, it was the front wheel! Now it's a unicycle with training wheels!"

So it becomes clear that not only has Mars inherited some of Uncle Steve's love/hate relationship with gravity, but he also shares some of the mad sense of humour that comes from my side of the family.

I believe that some fun times lie ahead.

Dream

Today I dreamed that I was pregnant. 

The dream started at the moment where I looked down to see a suddenly massive belly, and the shock of the realisation that what I thought was just gradual weight gain was actually something much more.

Then somehow, weirdly, I was able to discern the baby's head and cup my hands around it, and I knew that she was a girl, and I had to tell Supernerd about her, because he, like me, had no idea that she existed.

Then I woke up and, not surprisingly, never got back to sleep. 

I was a bit upset because she was beautiful, just like Venus, and I loved her. Even though she wasn't real and I knew it was a dream, I loved her. The mothering instinct is just that strong. I couldn't help it.

The plan is for no more children for us, and that was a hard decision to make for lots of reasons. So it was nice to fool myself for a few minutes, but hard to wake up from that dream and get on with my day. Thankfully we were going out, so I had other things to think about.

But as I sit down for some quiet time at the end of the day she comes back to me, and I know what I need to keep in mind above all things is that I am so blessed already, I have so much to be grateful for, not the least of which are people who love me and need me very much.

Venus may never have a little sister, it's true. But if she's very lucky, one day she might have a little girl of her own, and then she will begin to understand just how much I love her.

Science at the dinner table

Last night we were having dinner and we each had ice in our drink. Halfway through the meal Venus looked into her cup and said "My ice is gone". Not wanting to miss an opportunity for a science lesson we asked her where she thought it had gone. The conversation went like this:

Venus: "It turned into water." 

Supernerd: "What would you do if you wanted it to turn back into ice?"

Venus: "Put it in the fridge."

Supernerd: "Would it turn to ice there?

Venus: "No, it would just be really cold. It would have to go in the freezer."

Supernerd: "Why would it have to go in the freezer?

Venus: "Because it's all freezy and cold in there."

Supernerd: "That's right. Because the freezer is colder than the fridge."

Mars: "I know where else you could put it... in your anus."

In the moment between moments I was thinking just how unhappy I was that some obnoxious kid at school had taught him to be so rude, but the next thing he said was:

"Because uranus is a long way from the sun and it's really cold there."

So now I'm trying to teach him to pronounce it uRANus, which is the way I was taught as a child. It's not going well, but it's probably easier than trying to explain to him why I was choking on my dinner. 

Octonauts

Captain Barnacles, Peso and Kwazii have a lot to answer for. 

Aimed at preschoolers and early primary school children, the Octonauts is a beautifully animated TV series (originally from books) about a small band of ocean dwellers whose mission is "Explore. Rescue. Protect", and it's hard to know whether their hip and catchy theme song is totally awesome, or the most annoying tune to ever get stuck in my head.

Having said that, it is very cute to watch X-Man and Venus sit on the couch together and sing along to it.

What has been driving me crazy lately is that Mars and Venus know that there's going to be a new episode recorded on our Tivo every day (the show has only recently come to Australia),  and so every day when we get home from the school run I get hit with "Mum, can we watch the new Octonauts now?" every few seconds. Sometimes when we've just walked in the door. Sometimes before I can even get the front door open. Sometimes when we're still in the car with our seatbelts on. 

One day Venus made the mistake of asking me before we had even reached the driveway, and that's when we began to explain that hassling the parents makes us cranky and a lot less likely to say yes to requests for television.

Now what tends to happen is that we get home, Mars and Venus look at one another conspiratorially across the back seat, and they wait. We get in the house and put all our bags down, and then Venus will ask. Mars reminds her "Venus, you can't ask now. Mummy won't say yes if you ask now. You have to wait", and she knows he is right, so she waits. 

When Mars thinks I might be ready they ask again, and I put the television on and we watch the new Octonauts. Then they fight about which one they're going to watch next, and that's when I start to regret ever turning the television on.

But some good has come from the Octonauts, quite apart from anything the children may learn about narwhals, hydrothermal vents or comb jellies. 

Some nights when it's time to go upstairs to bed, nobody wants to go. So the other day when they were being a bit stubborn I called out "the last one upstairs is a barnacle on Captain Barnacles' butt". I've never seen them move so fast.

That night Supernerd was the last one up the stairs, and as we were waiting for Mars to finish brushing his teeth and for Venus to get off the toilet, she called out to him "Daddy, you're Captain Barnacles' butt."

We're giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she didn't hear me properly.

Oh, and by the way the remedy for having the Octonauts theme song stuck in your head is to belt out the theme song from Hawaii Five-O as loudly as possible. Trust me, it works.

Camping

The first rule of camping should be:

Pay close attention when you put up your tent.

We were pretty excited when we bought our first tent recently, and within 36 hours of the purchase we had erected the tent in the spacious back yard of some friends, and they were kind enough to let us stay the night as well. 

I thought Supernerd was being a bit nuts but he was right, it was a good idea to practise getting a tent up with two children helping, so that when we actually went camping the following week we would know what we were doing. And we did. Right up until the point where I put the fly on backwards.

I'm still not sure how I did it, and it doesn't really matter, but I must have fluked it on the practice run, because by the time I realised what I'd done it was mostly pegged down and too much of a hassle to fix. 

All it really meant was that we couldn't put our verandah thingy up because it was technically on someone else's campsite. On our second day that site was vacant so we did put it up and sit under it for a couple of hours, until someone backed their caravan in. So we hastily took it down while Supernerd explained to the nice woman from the caravan park what a twit I am.

The second rule of camping should be:

Don't let all the things that go wrong ruin your holiday.

I threw out my brand new picnic plates with the rubbish on our first night away, and I didn't realise until the rubbish had been moved along to the gigantic bin full of big black bags of rubbish, any one of which could have contained my plates along with goodness knows what else.

Supernerd wouldn't let me search the bin. Instead he did it for me and told me afterwards, but he couldn't find them.

I got really angry with myself for being so stupid. I had even made a mental note earlier that day to not do exactly what I did. 

The worst part though is that we were only away for two nights, so I really struggled to let it go and get on with the holiday. When I realised what I'd done we were only 24 hours from coming home and it wasn't quite enough time to recover, relax and enjoy myself properly.

Also the man in the next tent snored worse than Supernerd.

The third rule of camping, as Edmund Blackadder would have it, should be:

Make sure you buy a tent big enough for your family, with plenty of room for Mr Cockup to stay the night.

Haircut

Not long before Christmas I finally got the big haircut that I've needed for a long time, and now I have short hair like I had when I was the age Venus is now.

It's very short at the back and at the front I have bangs that fall in front of my eyes unless I do things to them, like pin them back or attack them with a straightener.

It's a good haircut. I really like it. I think there are only two people of my acquaintance who don't like it, and in the case of one of them I think it's because he just doesn't like short hair on any woman.

The good thing about this haircut is that my hair now takes only a minute to wash, and less than a day to dry.

The bad thing about this haircut is that now I have to wash my hair all the time, because I no longer have the lazy option of just pulling it all back into a ponytail and ignoring the fact that what it really needs is a wash.

Today I discovered another bad thing about this haircut.

I was out with the kids and a man mistook me for a boy from behind. A boy. A boy!

That's never happened to me before, and I didn't really know what to think. Then I realised that things could be much, much worse. He could have mistaken me for a boy from the front.

Now that would be bad.

Tis the season

As with every year this one seems to have passed too quickly, and I find myself once again lying to my children so that they may be surprised on Christmas Day.

You may remember last year we installed a fridge box in the family room and told them we were babysitting our friend's fridge. They believed this lie so completely that they never even touched the box, which was good because if they'd pushed it hard enough the aquarium inside could have gone crashing to the floor.

This year Supernerd is hard at work building a garden bed in the backyard. But it's not really a garden bed.

It's my fault, really.

Last year I wanted to buy them something big, something bouncy. But we didn't have the funds so we got the aquarium instead.

This year I got a part time job and raised the money myself, so the big bouncy thing has been in three boxes under some old sheets in the garage for a couple of weeks.

With thanks to X-Man's Dad and his Pop as well, Supernerd has dug trenches and installed a retaining wall so that we can have a level space in an otherwise sloping back yard. It's looking awesome and I can't wait until it's my turn to help dig.

Meanwhile we uphold the fiction that we're working on a garden bed. Even when we're alone we still refer to the project as the garden bed. 

I'm so looking forward to their expressions when they see their big bouncy present on Christmas Day, but I'm also looking forward to not having to lie to them about it.