Sleeping arrangements

OK, and while we are considering family guidelines, let’s refresh our memories on how to handle sleeping parents:

Let them sleep

A sleeping parent is a beautiful thing. Consider how peaceful and undemanding they are in this state. Consider also how much unpleasantness may be avoided by allowing them wake naturally. Some crucial wonderings should remain in your head and not be verbalised before the alarm. These include things like:

• Can I have hot school dinners tomorrow?
• I have nothing to do
• I can't find the iPad charger
• Noodle has no pouches/cat biscuits left
• When is it my birthday again?

Conversations that begin before 7am with any of the above opening lines will not go well.

Very occasionally it may be unavoidable to disturb a sleeping parent, but I reiterate, these will be rare situations that demand an urgent response from a grown up (well, me or your dad). Examples are:

• Blood loss
• Fire
• Vomiting

In between these two extremes lies another, less clearly defined group of scenarios. These are instances which are more pressing that the lack of imagination or cat food, but do not involve haemorrhaging. In these 'in-between' cases, may I suggest you first assess the situation to establish that adult intervention is absolutely necessary, then approach the bed quietly and in darkness and whisper to get our attention. Examples of such situations here are:

• Nightmares (I admit, monsters are deeply afraid of our warm double bed and never bother us)
• Pain (Please pick up the Calpol on your way in and I'll do the fiddly child lock thing once my hands wake up)
• Christmas Day (After 7am. And bring me a cup of tea to sip while we look through your stocking)

Thank you for doing life with us. Please re-familiarise yourselves with the above to maximise the good bits. XXX

Amendment

Proposal for change in family charter. Raised by myself on 06.01.14 at 1800hrs (after feeding and therefore gaining the trust of those present).

Background to case: 
1. I personally wish to be fitter. And a little bit lighter. This way you (Oh largest Brewsling) can overtake me in weight as well as:
• height (this happened last year) 
• shoe size (May-ish 2011. He's now a size 9 and mocks my childlike feet)
• ability to synch our shared iTunes account (I still can't do this), reboot the server (I CAN do this as it's a simple off and on again job) and
• basically fulfil all household technical needs in the absence of your father (there's a whole ton of man crap that goes on in this house that I have no interest or gifting in. This covers ALL of that).
• Finally you shall likely gain the upper hand when we arm wrestle

Doesn't that sound good? Yes? Ok- moving on. 

2. Gym membership is a drain on our family's resources.

3. We now own Wii dance. Using it in the comfort of our own home is therefore effectively free of charge, bar what we bequeath to e.on each month out of the goodness of our hearts. 

Recommendations:
I hereby propose that from this day forth, the Wii U may be used on Thursday - Tuesday for the purposes of health and fitness by jumping and sweating along to I kissed a girl and Gimme Gimme Gimme a man after midnight until one of us gets co-ordinated enough to win more coins and unlocks a wider variety of (perhaps more edifying) songs. Weekend game play will remain unchanged.

Would anyone like to second this proposal?
Biggest Brewsling. Fab- thank you. You don't dance so I wasn't sure how this would go with you.

Family vote?
Yeah! Everyone's happy.  Fantastic. Let's adopt this policy immediately. (No- PUT THE CONTROLLER DOWN! Thank you- we shall reconvene in the den after you've washed up and I've emptied my bladder.)

Giving and getting

in·car·nate [in-kahr-nit]
in·car·nat·ed, in·car·nat·ing
1. embodied in flesh; given a body, especially a human
2. personified or typified, as a quality or idea
3. flesh-coloured or crimson
4. to put into or representing in a concrete form, as an idea: The building incarnates the architect's latest theories
5. to be the embodiment or type of: Her latest book incarnates the literature of our day

Synonyms:
embodied; exteriorised; externalised; manifested; materialised; personified; substantiated; typified; human; in human form; in the flesh; made flesh; physical; real; tangible

Imagine the worst Christmas present ever. Maybe something along the lines of a plastic moustache from a Christmas cracker, chewed by the family dog. Or a pair of unwashed socks formerly owned by a teenage boy.

Contrast this with the bestest most amazingly extravagant present ever- maybe a mansion in the country with acres of gardens complete with personal cleaner, cook and gardener. Or a brand new car. Or (if you are a child in our house) a wii-U.

Now I know we don't give to receive, but that's generally what happens between family and friends at Christmastime. So imagine a gift exchange thusly:
• Give a wii-U to person X
• Receive a plastic moustache from person X
That would be insane and embarrassing. Insulting even. 

It doesn't even work the other way round:
• Give a plastic moustache to person X
• Receive a wii-U from person X
(Awk.....ward...)

Unless you are God. 

The gift exchange there is:
• We give him our mess and sin which suffocates and enslaves us
• He gives us new life now, and the promise of life with him forever (Free to us, but which cost him his son).

I have believed this for a long long time, yet the more I get to know and love him, the less sense the whole arrangement makes. The more familiar I get with the nativity story the more mysterious and risky it all seems. And like moustache vs mansion, how is it even fair??

A deity of unimaginable power and creativity. Wanting nothing. Needing nothing. Omnipotent. Giving it all up. (Seriously- my brain is scrambled by this). The maker of a billion planets choosing to visit just one of them and making it his home planet for 30 or so earth years, living there in the guise of a created inhabitant in an age before Lynx grooming products, biro pens or tea bags. 

Not only that, but he first arrived there in a baby's tiny frame, dependant, incontinent and immobile. He grew up limited by the physical laws of gravity and time, subject to discomforts such as hunger, fatigue and the inconvenience of getting up in the middle of the night to pee, or to counsel people who couldn't make it during normal opening hours. 

Limited does not even begin to cover it. (And that's without even trying to factor in the torture of crucifixion). I really don't get it. I'm eternally thankful and loving Jesus more and more for choosing to go through with the whole thing, but I don't get it. 

Something happened this morning though that gave me a glimmer of how the exchange thing works. There were many, many presents under our tree at 7am. Most of them were for our 3 kids. They were revealed to be board games, books, sweets, clothes and toys. Our big family present this year was not a mansion or new car. It was a Wii-U! Yay!! The kids were made up. We are still playing on it now as I type this (NB- No Gadget Day was YESTERDAY this week, so this is allowed, Gareth Birt!).

My most significant present this morning was from our 10 year old who, inspired by the bulging rugby sock at the foot of his bed, took a pair of his own socks and put a pop up pencil and a satsuma in each one and presented them to K and me. Then apologised that his feet aren't bigger.

And so:
• Give a wii-U (Complete with Zelda's WindWaker, Pikmin3 and the promise of downloading Mario 3d as soon as the wii store is functional again)
• Receive a pop up pencil and a satsuma from your own fruit bowl

This is more than a fair exchange because I love him more than life itself and it's all he had to hand this morning.

Technology

The place of technology in childhood is under much discussion in our town right now following a local primary school's decision to have every kid purchase and use their own iPad in lessons. I'm not sure how I feel about this really, and given that none of our kids go there, I'm not forced to consider it right now. It's a growing trend though so is something we won't escape for much longer. And like breastfeeding in public or military intervention in the Middle East, everyone seems to have passionate opinions one way or the other. 

You have the pro people over here who say In a few short years these kids will leave school and embark on careers that don't even exist yet and this is a fantastic tool that will help them adapt to a new workplace and a new world etc etc.

And then the people over here who say What about the parents who can't afford to participate in the scheme? Who's liable for damage? And look at this study here and this research here - we are spawning a generation of socially inept, obese youngsters who will constantly need entertaining and struggle to converse with anyone without using acronyms blah de blah.

This may well be true- the eldest child in our house is 13 and still speaks English (for now). But our house is full of gadgets. And people who love gadgets. And we spend more time using them than I'm comfortable with. But I also spend more time than I want to on my laptop so I would be a big fat hypocrite to ban them completely then ignore my kids while I deal with emails.

So as with every other aspect of life we aim for moderation. And once a week we have No Gadget Day when the kids are forced to play cards / Monopoly / chess / lego or help cook tea rather than participate in any screen based activity.

This has been met with some resistance, it has to be said. Which has only made me more determined to carry on. (I'm a bit stubborn that way).

Perhaps this is partly due to poor marketing? We should maybe try a re-brand...

• Lets Argue About Monopoly Day 
• Hide And Seek Until Someone Is Crying Day
• Build A Den And Defend It With Nerfs Day
• Look Sadly At DVD Boxes For The Best Part Of An Hour While Deciding What To Watch Tomorrow Day
• Nice One But No You May Not Consult Siri For A Cookie Recipe- Look One Up In A Book Day
• I Don't Know What You Can Do Now- Why Not Do Your Homework Day
• If This Is So Hard Then We'll Need To Do This On Thursdays Too Day

Whatever we end up calling it, resistance is futile. And until you realise this (Oh dear children) we shall continue to use this weekly exercise to covertly hone the essential debating skills you will need later in life.

You're welcome.

Pets at home

E is touching cat's back, then hiding his hand when cat turns round to look. Repeatedly. If you time this correctly while he's washing himself, cat will turn round with his tongue hanging out, which is quite funny (for us).

Me: Is he annoying you Noodle? Ah don't worry, he annoys me too sometimes.

E: (Looks affronted)

Me: Don't give me that look- you try to annoy me on some of those occasions.

E: I know I do- but that's no reason to tell the cat is it?

Lessons you don't learn in school (pt 2)

A paradigm shift has taken place in our house. I cook now. As of about 2 months ago.

Yes- I know. I was surprised too.

This change was triggered by the inheritance of a massive box of recipe cards from some friends who were moving house and asked did I want them? I most certainly did not want them but said yes automatically as I was in full clearance mode. (I have learned that one should transport as few things as possible when moving house). Never mind - the recipes would just live at our house for a few days then be passed on to someone who was likely to use them.

However, Madi discovered the box before this could happen and spent ages looking through the cards making comments like 'Ooh this looks nice' and 'I would LOVE to eat this thing here - what is it?'

Hmm. Lightbulb.

I summoned the boys and got all of them to look through all the cards and put their favourite looking meals to one side. I instructed them to pass round their favourites to get a consensus of dishes they would all be willing to try.

A few evenings later, K and me sat on the sofa with wine and maltesers and proceeded to look through the dozens of cards that had been deemed 'nice' by the children. We vetoed them and discarded all the cards involving obscure expensive ingredients and anything that gave a preparation time of more than 35 minutes. (Until they invent time travel I'm not interested).

This left 30 or so recipes.

Recipes. The word still sounds rather foreign to me.

These were arranged into a rota and a shopping list was made.

Shopping list. I know- It's a whole new vernacular. Until now we've operated with a type of inventory / roll call system. Run out of beans? Replace them. Tomato sauce needs too much shaking before anything comes out? Replace that before it runs out completely and J goes into withdrawal. Tuna?... Tuna??... TU-NAH!??... Darn it, tuna's gone awol again- source more, ASAP!

Shopping list in hand, I took the 2 youngest kids to Tesco the following evening after tea. It was a most efficient exercise- we got everything on the list, suffered minimal infiltration by non-listed items and finished off with our usual free reward of browsing in the toy aisle for 10 minutes. (Note to self: Food shop on a full stomach. Always).

The kids loved it. We each chose an item, scouted off to find it, then raced back to the trolley to score it off and choose something else. We always look out for offers and own-brand stuff, but this time a whole new world opened up. We covered £/kg, £/lb and why the marketing people are sneaky and don't standardise their labelling. The whole experience lasted an hour and a half and covered aspects of numeracy, literacy and the life skill of approaching a uniformed grown up to determine the location of coconut milk.

Over the next few days I gradually realised something which I suspect is common knowledge for many normal people: the mere awareness of what you are likely to eat later on in the day takes some of the stress out of making it. Why this is I'm not sure- the measuring / chopping / browning / simmering of things still has to be done. But the mental exertion of making certain decisions has already taken place so somehow all that stuff seems more bearable (Note: bearable- not necessarily enjoyable).

While having to actually perform the measuring / chopping / browning / simmering of things I employ the following strategies to further decrease monotony...

• Approach the whole thing like a massive science experiment. Prove the hypothesis: 5x + (3mb x CM4 - π5)2 = y

• Have someone to talk to / assist (our kitchen is open plan so there's usually another human being somewhere nearby). If not...

• Have music playing. Loudly.

• Gradually introduce variables into the known formulae: 5x + (3mL x CM4 - π5)2 = y (I used lamb instead of beef there and made my very own thing- Ha!)

Clearly we are in the very early stages of some sort of breakthrough here. If indeed it is a permanent change- this may just be the Cookiemoon or some weird mid-life blip and my real domestic rebel within will resurface any day now and force us to eat baked potatoes every other night, frozen stuff in between, and in the run up to big events when work/home boundaries are compromised allow the kids to have bowls of sugar puffs and wotsits for tea.

Maybe.

Telling the truth (cont)

It's E's bedtime. I'm up in his room. We have been chatting about something (can't remember what) that he broached. I have talked animatedly about the subject for almost 3 minutes, uninterrupted. It was an intelligent, reasonably knowledgeable contribution, I thought.

E: Night night then mum...
Me: Ah, you want me to stop talking.
E: Yes please.
Me: Do I say ever say anything that is remotely interesting to you?
E: Um no... Not really.
Me: I see.
E: But I'm always too polite to tell you.
Me: Thanks mate.
E: I mean apart from right now when I told you. But that's only cause you asked me outright and I didn't want to lie.
Me: I appreciate the honesty. Thanks.
E: You're welcome.

Strimming Frogs

PROLOGUE

In our house we do pets

We have a cat and a hamster and a long history of keeping small domestic animals. I catch spiders and put them outside rather than kill them. We genuinely don't set out to harm living things- unless of course they are teeny tiny bacteria that make larger organisms vomit- or wasps (these things can and should be destroyed).

In our house we don't do gardening

This is due to the lack of time, knowledge about gardening and motivation to increase knowledge about gardening. After a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with growing our own veg, we returned to soulless multinationals for all food. Grass cutting and occasional plant lopping are the only garden based activities we now indulge in. (Carrots are just too NEEDY while they are in the ground). Our garden is a place to keep the trampoline, shoo the cat towards when he's puking fur balls and occasionally sit in if it's not raining.

In our house some of us do Minecraft

Lego has always been massive for our kids, so this was only a matter of time. 

---

One Summer a few years ago I was strimming the grass in the back garden while Madi helped me with her plastic lawnmower. Suddenly, a large adult frog half flopped/half jumped by the whizzing wire and came to rest just in front of us. I stopped all activity and inspected it: 

• Bleeding from nose 

• Laceration to throat

• Hyperventilation (Hypovolemic shock?)

• Two missing digits on left hand

• Left leg at a peculiar angle

• Oops.

Madi, who came from the womb talking, immediately began interrogating me. Why had I stopped strimming? Will the frog be OK? Don't you know you strim grass and not frogs? That was a bad thing you just did. Oh ok, so you didn't mean to strim the frog. It was silly then. I'll need to tell Daddy that you did that. Silly Mummy strimmed the frog.

OK, evasive manoevers failed. Time for damage control. I found a paint roller tray in the garage and filled the deepest bit with water. Madi and I lined the shallowest part of the tray with some of the strimmed grass. We toured the inside windowsills of the house and collected all the dead flies which had buzzed themselves to death in the sunlight. We scattered them in the paint tray too, then gently transferred the injured frog to our makeshift ICU.

The frog just sat there among the bed of dying cut grass, hyperventilating.

So we placed it half-in / half-out of the water. It looked at us and continued to hyperventilate. Maybe they always breathe that fast? Respiration rates of normal healthy frogs were not covered in general nurse training. Madi tried offering it a dead fly, but it wasn't interested.

Over the next few days in between the school run, nursery run, work and playdates, I checked on the frog. It never moved from the position in the tray where I'd placed it. It got gradually more and more cyanosed, then on day 3 it died.

Ah well. I didn't mean to kill it, as Madi reassured me.

-----

We recently spent a whole day in the back garden shifting 1/2 ton of soil from one location to another to make way for a massive shed garden office.

It was actually quite fun to spend the working day doing something so active. 1/2 ton of soil takes up a lot of room, so progress was easy to chart. The sum total of my physical activity in the day usually comprises of short walks between the kettle, my desk and the bathroom, so being energetic in a work capacity felt a bit radical. The day was not so positive for the tiny inhabitants of the soil however.

With every spadeful of the excavation process, we saw small panicking creatures, scurrying frantically away from the edge of the spade. Running for their lives from the unidentified wrecker of their world. Annoyingly, they sometimes ended up right in the path of the spade, such was their panic and haste to avoid what they didn't understand. I cut at least 3 millipedes clean in half. The severed head ends writhed around for a good 30 seconds afterwards each time. It was not pleasant. 

I had flashbacks to the frog. 
-----

Minecraft is very big in our house. I have yet to make up my mind about it, having never actually played it myself (for the same reason a recovering alcoholic will not have medicinal whiskey in the bathroom cabinet).

Ethan is the authority on all things Minecraft in our family, having invested the most hours in playing it. The potential for creativity and learning simple engineering principles is huge and having unlimited resources to mould a world of your own design is most appealing. But there have also been a few moments of conflict which have led to the following code of conduct:

• Do not destroy anything you did not build

• If a structure was built jointly, always consult with collaborators before demolition / structural alteration
• Structural alteration includes anything not in the designer's original plans and always includes items placed without his/her knowledge. Waterfalls, lava, portals  etc are all considered to be structural alterations- even those placed as a 'joke'. 

• You may destroy a structure you created, however you must ensure that the resulting debris does not affect any other player

• In the event of accidental damage to another players property, an unprompted apology is appropriate

• Lack of such an apology will lead to a 24hr Minecraft embargo

• If you treat your neighbours well, then you probably don't need nuclear capability.

I don't know whether to be uncomfortable that the rules have to exist, or grateful that they do and we have agreed to stick to them.

--- 

It makes me think: What if the creator of our real live flesh and blood and water and mineral world were as violent and dictatorial as a teenager exploring the limits of his power with 3D textured cubes? 

Or what if our creator were as clumsy and uncaring as a amateur gardner shovelling earth from A to B for a greater purpose that doesn't concern a billion tiny creatures that are simply collateral to be damaged? 

The universe would be a seriously miserable place.