What do you imagine would be discussed with your child’s teacher, in a Parent & Teacher interview? Spelling? Mathematics? No, no, we’re not there yet. This is daycare. Your child is two. So when I received an appointment time for such an interview at Timmy’s daycare, I was perplexed....
When I’m dead, I hope Timmy remembers me for having let him lick the beaters, before he remembers my yelling at him for wrenching his brother’s arm behind the highchair. Timmy’s temperament and anarchistic independence mean that I’m loudly and urgently yelling “Stop!” and “No!” on a regular basis....
This year I outdid myself in party-organising economy: I didn’t even get the party hats out. Last year taught me party hats are only good for ruining photos as Timmy helplessly grizzles about having elastic around his head. I didn’t make a cake, either. Or order one. No. I...
I feel like an escaped city dog. Like an adolescent who was given more independence than she was ready for, and is now dizzy with the possibilities, overwhelmed with the options, and frustrated with the constraints of reality that don’t enable her to do it all. It started off...
Timmy tells me, through the medium of some sort of sign language blended with interpretive dance, the greatest terror a toddler can be faced with is a bath. And when he saw the above picture, he pointed at it and said, “Timmy!” What puzzles me is the context of...
If you had to be either aggravated and overwhelmed, or useless and redundant, which would you choose? I love my son. But I don’t like him at all. Timmy is too much for me. Too much noise. Too much mess. Too much noise. Too much demanding. Too much noise. I’m...
My first coherent conversation with Timmy…and it’s about a dirty nappy. Not all things can be poetic literature, I suppose. I was putting a new nappy on Daniel when I hear behind me, “Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!” I turned to see Timmy looking at me expectantly. “What’s yuck?” I...
Last weekend didn’t go as I’d hoped. Husband’s father visited from Australia, and I’d hoped to get photos of him with the boys. I always have their scrapbook spreads in mind during such things. Otherwise I’d probably never take the camera out, because why distract yourself taking pictures of...
We’re moving house. Again. I haven’t lived longer than two years at any one address since I moved out of my parents’ place. And I’ve lived at eleven addresses since then. In mocking poetry, we’re moving our stuff out of this house two years to the day since it...
