Kids In Nature Are Happier

So science tells us that kids learn through playing. Playing outside can increase concentration levels and increase motivation AND, bonus, defuses stress! A quick walk outside in nature can focus their attention as well as reduce those pesky symptoms of ADHD.

Kids In Nature Are Happy

That said, we can’t be the only parents that live in a complex with a small garden that they clearly don’t care much for? What can you do? It is impossible and definitely not financially feasible to go to the zoo every weekend! Going for an outing every weekend is expensive and so I think it’s time we start exploring our cities.

Pretoria has many nature reserves where you can go for a walk outside, gaze at some greenery to sharpen focus and have fun while doing it! The exercise is great for the parents and the kids sleep better!

I also understand that merely leaving the house is a win on some days (most days!) but the end result is totally worth a little (a lot!) frustration.

Here are some of the reserves in Pretoria you can visit:

Nature rules

Like A Glove… A Latex Glove

So today Husband and I went to the Centurion License department to do the dreaded renewing of our drivers licenses. We went fully prepared, documents, extra documents, pens and cash just in case! But what we weren’t prepared for was the drama that unfolded in the parking lot!

There we were standing in the extremely long queue and our attention is drawn to man slapping car in the car park. He is flicking the wiper blades in the front and on his haunches by the tyres and then walking around the car he rips off the rear wiper blade. At first we were thinking “Why is this dude so pissed with his car?” and after he broke off the rear wiper Husband calls over to ask what he’s doing? With this he screams that this… well the word he used I can’t repeat but it is basically a crude term for the female anatomy… scratched his car. Before we could take a photo or get a number plate he speeds off.

Moments later this old man walks out and gets into this car. Husband then went to him to explain what happened but realizes that this poor old dude has no clue that his car was messed with! This angry dude also let the air out of his tyres. Granted, this dude was completely unaware that he had bumped the angry dude’s car (Husband says it must have been one hellava bump because the old dude’s SUV’s whole front panel is loose) but felt the guy could have left a note or at least waited to confront him instead of vandalizing his car.

We also ended up leaving at the same time as the old dude and we sat behind him for a few traffic lights and let’s just say… perhaps his license shouldn’t have been renewed. However, there is a right way to deal with things and a wrong way. How are we ever supposed to find peace, not only within ourselves but with each other, if our first instinct is to react, and react so maliciously?

Honestly I too would have been pissed with the old dude and yes I would want revenge, but the difference between us and toddlers is that we are able to take a step back and realize that being vindictive gets us nowhere!

The Shh-Pooh Storm

For the last few mornings my boys have decided that 5am is the best time to have all sorts of bodily functions… That’s right folks, The Shh-Pooh Storm of toddler pooh and toddler vomit!

When It All Started

Last Friday morning DJ C literally HURLED BOWS all over our bed. I suspect that he had drank his milk too fast because he had slept later than usual and was very thirsty. So 5am on a Friday morning i’m taking sheets off the bed, trying to dry a mattress and rinse chunks off kids and clothes.

Day 2

Monday morning at 5am Lil Jams’ hurled all over our bed. This could be partly my fault as he came to tell me he wanted to ‘bommit’ but i told him to go ‘VVVVomit’ in the toilet. He then ‘Bommited’ over DJ C, me and himself. Again, i’m changing sheets, washing chunks. But this morning was different, the lingering smell of meat in hurl stuck with me and i found myself swallowing back a few times.

Day 3

Tuesday morning at 5:15am DJ C walks to our bed and i, unknowingly, pick him up. Realized there’s a lingering smell of shit in the air. Yup. You guessed it. He shat himself epically! So now we have a bed in the kids’ room covered in poo and our bed as well as DJ C and myself… again.

I had had enough of 5am mornings! So i sat the boys down. I told them “NO MORE BODILY FUNCTIONS AT 5am!”.

Ultimately

DJ C complied and this morning at 1:30 Husband carries DJ C into our room in the dark saying he think he had a big poo… what a freaking understatement! Being OCD is a huge disadvantage especially if the words ‘poo’ in muttered, no matter the time! ALL THE LIGHTS ON!

DJ C has left a trail of the route him and Husband walked to the room with drops of shit. I had to switch the lights on to make sure that i cleaned all the poo from DJ C’s bum, legs, hands, arms, feet and between his toes… yes… between his freaking toes! I then had to clean the dog’s feet because he was so excited by the commotion that he slipped in the shit. Literally!

I then had to inspect both beds for remnants of poo and wash the floors. All the activity made Lil Jams wake up and he thought it was time to wake up and was too excited to sleep again because he thought it was concert day…

No one can say that my family is full of shit…

How Does One Handle All This?

You will need the following products:

Gloves: No one wants that shit under their nails (admittedly i don’t use them because… well… i’m normally still half asleep and only thinking about how i should get some for these occasions whilst scrubbing poo out from under my nails)
Light Reading: To help you remember to keep your shit together and that you can laugh… after the fact
Mattress Protectors: Even though we don’t have the waterproof one’s, shit could be a lot worse if we had none at all…

Also, how many times can you flip a mattress in 1 week? Asking for a friend…

Long Time

Damn. I seem to be very bad at this “blogging” thing! I’ve been super busy! Lil’ Jams and DJ C went to my folks’ place the week before last and so I was SUPER busy doing NOTHING! I had plans to sleep late but would be wide awake by 6am. I planned to have long baths at night but after washing I would lay back, take a deep breath and think “What the fuck do people normally do in the bath for so long?” So 20min I would be dressed and ready for bed! I planned on not cooking at all that entire week but ended up making food we never make anymore because the kids don’t dig it…

I also missed them terribly! I joined them on the Friday and they turned from little sweet angels to utter feral, whiney children! Right in front of my folks’ eyes! They were telling me how good they had been the whole week. I was then reminded of a story I read where they say that your kids act up when you’re around because you’re their safe space. They are comfortable with expressing their emotions fully when you’re around. I don’t know if this is true or not but I’m 100% believing this is why.

Dj C

DJ C is going through a ‘No!”, clingy phase. Everything is answered with a ‘No!”, even when it’s something he actually wants. You can see his facial expression change once he realizes he just vetoed something he wanted. Then it’s tears because he now wants it.

Lil Jams

This morning as Lil Jams was picking out his clothes for the day and dressing himself, telling me about how he punched a shark and is going to buy me and Husband a black Toyota, I realized that he is growing up so fast! Just the other day he was a little baby in the NICU and now he’s a big brother that doesn’t understand colour coordination yet…

Loving and cherishing my boys, even though less than 12 hours ago they were making me bat shit crazy, gets me through the day!

A Plumber Walks Into A Bar

Let me spin you a tale of woe and intrigue.

Our toilet leaks out the flusher handle thingy. So after having wrung out a towel for the umpteenth time I decide to investigate. I open the top and I see the issue… the toilet is over filling. Easy fix, I’m just going to bend the rod thingy with the ball thingy (yeah, I’m no plumber) down a bit so the ball thingy can signal the rod thingy to let the water thingy know to stop.

Easy peasy… except with my new found Viking strength as I bend the rod thingy I break the ball thingy off! Clean off!!! Now we’re fucked. So I MacGyver a fix in the interim with literally only a hair tie! I used an eslastic band meant for hair to fix a toilet! Am I the only one super impressed???

Anyway, fast forward and off I go to purchase a new rod thingy and ball thingy. When I’m at Builders I ask a dude in the bathroom section if my idea of just bending the rod thingy would work? Nope. It needs a new washer in the water thingy, sounds easy enough and armed with all the goods I come back home and decide I’m going to Suzelle DIY the shit out of this toilet. My husband won’t even know and he would be super stoked and proud that I managed to “plumber” the thingies!!!!

Except, I can’t figure out where to turn the water to the toilet off… I search for a tap but can’t find it. So I think to myself, “Okay, so while the toilet is flushing, in essence, the water isn’t running right? So I just need to keep the flusher thingy down!!” Pat on the back and baby in the basin as I start to try unscrew the water contraption where the new washer has to go into… big mistake. Huge. Fucking water everywhere!!!!! It is literally high pressure washing everything!!! Including the baby in the basin who thinks it’s Christmas!!! I had to do it… I had to call Husband. Sigh.

Long story short. I bought the wrong rod thingy, we replaced the washer (baby in the basin is covered in grease) and Husband James-Bonded the rod thingy to the old rod thingy that was the right length.

The toilet flushes again but still leaked out the flusher thingy. Worse now… I think baby in the basin must have thrown, hidden or “hocus pocus-ed” some parts or we failed to put Humpty Dumpty together again…

Time for a nap now… then YouTube!! At least I now know where to turn the water off (what a pa-larva that is!!! All I can say is there is a shaft, screws and baby bird skeletons!!) so once we know what we need to do we can fix that shit!

Note to self: wash towels. Buy more towels.

Update: I wrote this on Sunday afternoon but didn’t get a chance to publish. There has been an update to the story!

On Monday morning Husband and I turned the water off and went to visit my folks and drop off the kids! When we got home Husband wiggled things here and there and tightened and fastened until he could tighten and fasten no more! Then off I went to the dead-bird-cemetery shaft to turn the water back on. Nothing. No water. Did we mess things up even more? Upon further investigation, a main water pipe burst in our suburb and everyone’s water is off… so we don’t know if we fixed it! It is Tuesday morning and still no water!

Hats Off To Parents With Special Needs Kids

Here is the straight up truth about Parenting a kid who has a bum leg. It is HARD. It is so freaking hard that sometimes I battle to find the words to describe how i’m feeling.

I go from feeling empathy at my poor kid who is so used to running around, doing and going where he wants (within the house or play parameters!) and now watching him sit and literally do nothing. I try to limit screen time but he is in such a depression and this is so hard to explain to others. He doesn’t want to play! He sits there with his toys and just stares at them. At least with the iPad he is actually DOES something.

I feel annoyed. Hearing ‘Mom do this’, ‘Mom do that’ 1000 times every hour is slowly chipping away at my, currently, very thin layer of patience. I remind him that he needs to ask nicely but deep down, i get it man. He’s depressed and annoyed himself! He also has no way of expressing this with words! So he expresses it with actions and a hint of bitterness.

I feel guilty, for feeling annoyed. And I mean this is on top of the natural Mom Guilt. I feel guilty for feeling like i’m going to explode if i hear ‘Mommy’ one more time! He really has no other choice.

I feel overwhelming love for this kid. Every time he figures something out that he can do for himself (like he rolls on his back to put his pants on/off by himself) he looks at me and asks “Mommy! Look! I did it myself! Are you proud of me?” and I am! I am really proud of him!

And then after going through all these emotions, within seconds of each other sometimes, I feel a new found respect for parents of kids that have permanent disabilities! Seriously people, hats off to you! I respect you and I totally admire you. And even though what I feel on a daily basis is a mere drop in the emotional pool that you sometimes find yourself drowning in, I have buckets of empathy for you!

With this immense respect in my heart I perused this website: http://www.sunshine.org.za/wish-list.html

They are a charity that help kids with disabilities. I smsed ‘Shine’ to 38844 to donate R10 and hope that my readers will do the same (if they are able). Also, please have a look at their wish list, perhaps you have some of these items just gathering dust? Please consider donating to this organization.

Much love!

Advantages of Kids

I know i’m always ragging on Parenthood, if I can’t vent on the internet then i’d have to keep it all in! Then I would die in a gigantic explosion of Chicken Nuggets, Baby Wipes and Coffee!

That said, there are some great benefits of having kids! Seriously! These exist!

Exercise:

Do you lift brah? Yes! Yes I do! Every time I carry my almost 2 year old (DJ C) i’m lifting 13 kg’s! Every time i carry my 4 year old (Lil’ Jams – because of the leg) i’m lifting 17 kg’s! This morning, this is a true story, i carried BOTH down the stairs AT THE SAME DAMN TIME PEOPLE!!! I’m pretty sure I can compete in The Warrior race now.

Check out The Evolution of Lifting by clicking here (AFTER YOU’VE READ THE ENTIRE POST!)

Dishes:

Let’s be honest here. We all stood washing dishes as kids thinking “One day, i’m going to have kids just so they can wash the dishes!” We have a dishwasher. My kids will never know how lucky they are! This has not happened yet, but I am looking forward to someone (other than the dish fairies my family believes lives in our house) packing and unpacking the dishwasher. Goals people! It’s all about setting goals!

Also, if you don’t have kids yet, get a dishwasher! Also, if you want a lasting relationship, get a dishwasher! Also, if you have an irrational fear of salmonella, get a dishwasher. Also, GET A DISHWASHER!

Coffee:

This too is yet to happen, but I am seriously looking forward to this one! Kids can make YOU coffee! I conducted a little survey over the weekend as to what the appropriate age would be to wait for (in all honestly, I was at a birthday party and just asked 1 person and their kid but the results were promising!). Apparently the issue is the kettle being heavy when it’s full of scalding, just-boiled, water… so the kid told me that if you only fill it half way I could start teaching Lil’ Jams from about 7 and then by 8 he should be able to handle it on his own. So my answer is this: Smaller travel/camp kettle (easier to handle by small 7 year old hands) and Lava gloves (I’m not sure what you call it but surely people that work with hot things have protective gloves? I’m not a complete savage!)!

It’s all about the small things in life people! It’s the little things that count!

Mom Life – Like Thug Life But Harder

Fell free to judge me but yes, I lay with DJ C until he falls asleep. It is becoming harder and harder as it takes him longer and longer to fall asleep. And if i don’t leave at the exact right moment, when he reaches REM, he screams like a banshee and let me tell you, kid’s got lungs. The whole of Pretoria would phone child services! So there I lay and listen to Jane Austen audio-books. This was all good in the beginning but now he realizes that i’m not sleeping. So he obviously feels that he doesn’t have to either.

The Plan Of Attack

So now I’ve had to resort to CIA tactics. Pretending to be dead/asleep as he proceeds to carry out various torture methods on me to get me to talk! Last night I lay dead still. Through the entire ordeal!

He scratched my cornea (Note to self: Buy Chloroform so i can trim his nails) (Not to Everyone: I’m only joking… sorta… don’t think you can get Chloroform over the counter) (Seriously, i’m joking), he kept doing some kind of WWE body slam where he would stand on the bed and just fall with his full weight (13 kg’s!) on top of my face! Eventually he ended up head butting me on the jaw! Seriously, i might have a problem talking today in which case i’ll probably die by word explosion from holding it in! He also shoved his finger so far up my nose i swear he damaged something! Can you get Meningitis from dirty toddler fingernails?

My breaking point though… he lifted my shirt and shoved his long nailed, lengthy fingers right in my FREAKING BELLY BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! People who know me know that Belly Buttons is my kryptonite. I freaking hate them! Don’t touch your own, don’t show me yours and for the love of all that is holy don’t come anywhere near mine!!!!!!

So guess who’s going to have to buy granny panties and high wasted pants cause he toddler found her weakness? THIS GIRL!

Cappuccino’s, Love & Support

Sorry for the long silence! Lil Jams has been keeping us super busy! Last Friday the school called and informed me that Lil Jams had been pushed off the fireman pole on the playground and had landed on his leg. They say that he can still move it but says it’s a little sore. So I decided to go fetch him and take him to the doctor for just in case. I don’t want or need to deal with complications over a weekend!

I am super grateful to the doctor as she said that, since he wasn’t in much pain it was probably just the muscle but insisted we get x-rays just in case!

While we were waiting for the x-ray report Lil Jams started crying in pain and even asked me to leave him alone for 5 minutes because he just needs a break from me. It’s funny now, but at the time it broke my heart a little.

The prognosis? Fractured femur right by the ball joint that goes into his hip. So we had to go to a Ortho Doc that specializes in kids. Then ended up being admitted. Lil Jams was put in traction on Friday afternoon and then Monday morning was operated on to insert a plate and pins.

Lots of spoiling from friends and family helped Lil Jams get through it and we’ve still got 6 weeks of rehab to get through!

I also just want to thank our Doctor, Dr Fourie for insisting on x-rays! Dr Colyn for an amazing operation that went through without a hitch. All the nurses and staff at Life Wilgers Hospital for all the care and attention! Suzanne Coetzer for the help with the physio. All our friends and family for prayers, well wishes and thumb holding! And also the barista at the Weisenhoff Coffee Shop for cheering us up with awesome cappuccino art!

Eat, Pray, Count To Ten

Lil’ Jams does this thing when he eats… it’s like he holds his breathe. He does this sometimes when he battles to fall asleep. It annoys me straight into insanity!!! It’s like “Why am I teaching you how to breathe?!?” In the beginning we thought it’s because his nose was blocked, then he got better. Now I’m convinced he does it on purpose just to vex (look at me all Jane Austen) me!!!

I’m on a permanent loop of; “Chew with your mouth closed”, “breathe through your nose”, “BREATHE”, “take smaller bites”, “finish what’s in your mouth first”!! And as I hear myself repeat these things over and over in my head, I realize how freaking ridiculous it must sound!

How is it that I’m now trying to teach our 4 year old how to breathe and eat and chew? Haven’t I already done this?

Am I going insane? Am I the only mom with this issue?

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Surviving Parenthood