A class act...

We made a decision not to have a television or access to TV in our house.  It was mainly because we wanted to allow the kids to play instead of watch, to act themselves instead of watching someone else acting.  This decision has had some unusual repercussions.

Firstly, we had no idea that when it came down to it, our kids would not be able to handle adverts.  Those mildly annoying breaks in programming that everyone learns to sit through with patience so that they can get to the real business of watching the programme they actually want to watch.  While we have shown the kids the odd DVD, and movie, they were obviously totally unprepared for something that could interrupt their viewing pleasure at the drop of a hat, and with little or no warning, and be totally unrelated to what was happening before.  When we allowed them to see a movie on television the first time, the ad breaks almost led to tears of frustration and irritation, and repeated calls of "Mama, the DVD is broken again!"

Another outcome that was totally unforeseen took us by surprise the other day.  The boys came home from kindy looking very subdued and visibly upset.  I of course asked what the problem was.  "Liz (head teacher) said some very bad things to Tanya (other kindy teacher)" said Sam.  He was crying by this time, and I was alarmed.  I could only conjecture what the teachers might have been saying to each other in front of the children, because he refused to say any more, and would not let me know what had been said at all.  I approached the teachers concerned with trepidation, not wanting to overstep my place, but because the kids were so unhappy.  Turns out that there was an innocent explanation.  Apparently, some of the children in the kindy had been mean to the others, and had said a few things that the teachers thought needed to be addressed.  In order to do this, the teachers put on an Oscar-winning performance at mat time to show the children what it feels like when opne child calls another names or says that they don't want to play with them.  All the children took it in their stride, apart from my two.  Not having ever been exposed to actual people acting before, like on TV, as opposed to cartoon characters, they were unaware of the fact that people can act, and say and do things that are not real.  Even though I explained it very carefully to them, they were not convinced.  Sam kept on stubbornly repeating "I don't believe she was acting."

It took an intervention on the part of the teachers to finally get him to believe it, and also they had to stage another skit that showed the children how Liz and Tanya were making up, hugging each other and saying they were sorry.

So, pros and cons - is that not just like life?  It can't just be clear-cut, can it?

BF4EVA (Or Best Friends Forever, for those who don't talk text)

To have a twin is to have a best friend for life.  If you are lucky, that is - some twins I know fight like cat and dog.  I am one of the lucky moms - my twins are inseparable: one of those dyads you read about who feel each other's pains and stand up for each other in fights.  This has not been without its own set of complications, however.

For the last few weeks, I have noticed that Sam has not been as happy at kindy as he was previously.  He has been clingy when I try to leave, crying at night that he doesn't want me to leave him alone at kindy by himself.  This, for Sam, is highly unusual.  He is confident and outgoing, loves to approach other kids and is eager to form groups to play.  Of course, the first thing that went through my mind is that he was being bullied. I am not sure that I would handle a situation like that well, to be honest.  In fact, the exact phrase that went through my mind (although not printable in a family-related blog like this) was something like "if I catch the little sod that is hurting my boy, I will make him wish that ...etc, etc..."). Anyway, after much suspicious and devious questioning on my part, I established that, mystifyingly, there was no bully.  Great!  But also, what could it be that was upsetting him?  For ages, I tried every psychologist's technique in the book to try to get him to tell me what was going on, but with little success.  He just didn't want to go, he was unhappy, and so on.

This continued for about a week and a half.  I dropped them off at kindy as usual, but stayed just that bit extra, making sure they were settled, playing games and finding things for them to do so that when I eventually left, they would be absorbed in what they were doing.  But nine times out of ten, as I headed for the gate, the forlorn little figure of Sam would be standing alone in the midst of a crowd, mournfully watching me go.  It was enough to break my heart.

Then, one day when I was there to pick them up a little early, I noticed that, sitting between my two boys on the mat was a little usurper.  A girl.  After mat time was finished, Paddy came rushing up to me.  "This is Eva," he crowed.  "She is my best friend here at kindy," he announced proudly.  And then it hit me.  Sam, whose whole life revolved around Paddy, had suddenly been confronted with the fact that his brother had other friends, and that he was now the odd man out.  The piggy in the middle.  The third wheel.  They had always interacted with their friends as a dyad, and now, here was Paddy going off and making a friend of his own.  What a hard knock for such a little boy (and such a sensitive one at that, too) to take.  

But worse, how to put it right?  Of course they will make friends in their lives, and there is a good chance that those friends will not be friends equally with both twins.  I fretted for days, before eventually speaking gently to Paddy about having his brother as his best friend and other friends as just friends, then speaking to Sam about how he should try to make friends with other kids at kindy. In other words, I was generally not doing anything that was of much use at all.

In the end, the situation resolved itself.  One day, when picking up the twins from kindy, Sam bounced into the car, bright and happy.  I was very relieved and asked him what had happened that day.  

"I decided to change my mind," he declared definitively.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I just thought I was tired of being sad, and I changed my mind to be happy instead," he said.  "People like it better if you are a happy person," he added.

Wow, I thought.  Imagine if we adults could just change our minds like that? What could we achieve?

Just give me the pig skin, and nobody has to get hurt...

I am not sure whether I understand "manly behaviour".  In essence, men and women are so different, and nothing could be more apparent than when they play games.  It starts young, apparently.

We recently had a wonderful picnic in Tunnel Gully, an amazing reserve that encompasses a long tunnel, built in Ye Olden Times, out of somewhat fragile-looking bricks and mortar.  In fact, so fragile-looking that certain stalagtites have started to depend from the roof in certain places, a fact that a mother's mind instantly computes into her trusty inbuilt mom-o-meter of risk. (Mine went something like this: Stalagtites + Water = Instability of some kind minus the fact that the tunnel has been here for literally yonks and has been observed by several thousand tourists = okay, maybe it is safe for family to traverse. But quietly.) 

After the usual wandering through the tunnel, me answering the usual flood of questions in a distracted way due to praying that said tunnel would remain standing for another few minutes at least, we emerged thankfully into the daylight on the other side for a picnic.  It was at this juncture that the Rugby Ball made its appearance.  

Now I have nothing against rugby, per se; apart from the fact that it seems rather a pointless game, a fact which is somewhat mitigated by the general handsomeness of the New Zealand team (after all if that many good specimens of menfolk want to get all sweaty running around after a ball and flexing their muscles, who am I to complain?), but I am not sure that I want my menfolk to be part of that.  I don't think I am in any danger of that happening, to be honest.  But, as far as I can make out, where a bunch of women would probably stand close enough to each other to get a good conversation going and in the lulls, kick a ball cooperatively to each other, it seems as the though the major goal of the manly interaction is to show off how well the ball can be kicked.  Even when that means that the majority of the game is spent traipsing around after a ball that has been kicked so far that it has actually been sighted in orbit by the astronauts in the space station. There is no such thing as gentle kicking to one another so that the smallest and weakest members of the team (i.e. the four-year-old twins) can easily retrieve it.  No, rather, that ball has to have the hell kicked out of it so that, like a pack, they can all run screaming after it to retrieve it.  I think I counted two kicks in the entire game, and about forty minutes of hard running to find the ball as it shot into the forests and even, once, near to the entrance of the tunnel (about a kilometer away).

Luckily for Little Miss Snoopy and myself, caught in that horrible space of having to admire extremely boring manly interactions of this sort, an unknown dog appeared as if in an answer to prayer, grabbed up the ball, and with a single clench of its jaws, and an audible bang, that oval sucker burst with a satisfying pop, and the game was over. 

Score: Men = 0, dog = 1.  Yay - go, dog!

A flood of fun

There is a fine line to walk between disciplining your child and squashing their creativity and innate helpfulness.  We had to discover which side of that fence we wanted to walk on this week.

The Sweetpea does Kung Fu for fitness.  He always says it is really hard exercise, and raises his eyes to heaven as though to implore help for just how difficult it is, but secretly, he loves the chance of going out at night, being with "men", kicking stuff and saying things like "board-breaking" and "shall I do a chi-na (whatever that is) on you?" It's every man's man's idea of a good night out.

But, unfortunately, it is most often during this man-time that things go horribly wrong at home.  I normally do all the usual things, in the right order, but sometimes all the best intentions lead to terrible consequences.  Wednesday was no exception.  After feeding the kids, I took them down onto the trampoline for a while to burn off some energy, where we played our usual fast-paced game of "the spider on the trampoline".  This involves me sitting in the one corner of the trampoline, pretending to be a spider, as the kids run past shrieking and I then try to catch them.  If, by mistake, I actually do catch one, I spend a long time "eating my prey" by biting their little bottoms and tickling them all over until they are rescued by their siblings.  It can get quite long and involved and raucous.  

On the night in question, Paddy excused himself to go upstairs to the loo.  After he had not re-appeared for about fifteen minutes, I got suspicious and headed upstairs to find out what was going on.  I was confronted by a strange noise.  It sounded a bit like a cross between a waterfall and an extremely heavy downpour in the Amazon, the likes of which David Attenborough is always commenting on.  I could not place it.

Then I noticed that it appeared to be raining in the lounge, in fact, so much so that large puddles had formed under each of the light fittings, through which was pouring (literally) liters of water.  The carpet in the lounge was under about two centimeters of water.  But it got worse.  As I walked towards the stairs to my bedroom, I was surprised to see that a waterfall was indeed flowing gracefully down my stairwell.  Rushing up the stairs, I found my bedroom flooded, as well as the bathroom, and the bath overflowing.

In the midst of rushing around frantically, I fear not doing much good at all, I managed to find out that Little Miss Snoopy, aware of the fact that we usually go to have a bath immediately after supper, had kindly decided to run one for me.  She had snuck off quietly, put in the plug and started the taps, all by herself, no doubt believing herself to be a very clever girl.

And Paddy, you might ask?  Where was he all this time?  Turns out that, on his journey through the sodden and dripping lounge, he had got a bit wet.  Not wanting to repeat the experience, he had rather decided to play quietly in the toy room, until I came upstairs and sorted the problem out.  Fifteen minutes of flowing water later, I did, but by then, the damage was done.

Which brings me to my dilemma.  Little Miss Snoopy was trying to help.  The fact that she inadvertently caused the second Flood was a point which totally escaped her. So how hard should I be on her?  And more, how hard should I be on the boy who saw the problem, and neglected to tell anyone about it, because he "didn't want to get wet"?  

I hope I erred on the side of caution, but I must admit, the Sweetpea took it better that I did.

"Well, you have been wanting to wash these carpets for a long time now," he said.

It's true.  They do look very clean.

A Pair of Number Ones

Life with twins can be fraught with difficulties at times, and not for the reasons that one might expect.


I think I mentioned in one of my other blogs that early on, the Sweetpea and I decided to never let the boys know which one was the oldest and which the youngest.  After all, there was a period of only three minutes between them, which didn't seem like enough time for one to be able to lord it over his sibling as being the "oldest and wisest of the twins".  In fact, this has remained a closely guarded secret, with hardly anyone knowing which twin is older. 


The reasons for this were because we did not want anyone to be able to say something like "ah, so is the eldest the leader?" or have an excuse to treat one as the responsible elder brother, while the younger one was seen as the mad-cap, devil-may-care rake.  We wanted them to grow up without any worldly-imposed stereotypes of what older and younger siblings should be like.


Every day we are thankful for our decision.  For one thing, they have grown up remarkably free of the need to compete with each other.  Interactions can never be characterised by that horrible phrase: "but I am older, you must do what I say".  Teachers can never say to us, "oh well, he is the oldest, so he would be a bit more responsible/trustworthy/more mature."


Unfortunately, we were required by law to put the birth order onto their birth certificates.  So now, shopping around for a school, we were forced to confront the fact that the secret might get out somehow.  Short of saying something like "well, you can view the birth certificates but then I am afraid I am going to have to kill you" (which did not seem like the best way to endear ourselves to a future educaitonal institution), we were a bit stumped as to what to do.  Honesty is definitely the best policy, I thought. 


The first time I tried it, it did not go down well.  I think it was in the way I phrased my request.  "I would like some information on the birth-certificates to remain confidential," I announced to the two secretaries accepting my application.  I could see their minds working feverishly in an attempt to figure out wht exactly I could want kept confidential on the birth-certificate.  Illegitiamate twins?  Twins with two different fathers?  A diabolical secret such has not been dreamed up yet by the creators of "The Days of Our Lives" and "Shortie Street"?


I could see their consternation, and when I revealed the real reason why I would like the certificates to remain confidential, it was obviously so mundane that they were only too happy to agree, and blacked out those two incriminating phrases "elder of twins" and "younger of twins" for me.
 
 And so now, when will the truth be revealed?  The Sweetpea and I are still in doubt about that, but we are thinking maybe when they are 21, and we hand them the keys to the door.  When they are old enough that their personalities have crystalised into the natural leader or follower, or two leaders, as the case may be, without having the predetermined stereotypes thrust upon them.  


So I am afraid, readers, you will have to remain in the dark until that time too!



















 

Wrinkles are just antique smiles...

I thought we had more time before we had to answer the really tough questions in life.  It appears not.  And as an aside, why is it that the Sweetpea is always away for these discussions.  It is really unfair and a bit rude, since he would be the one to answer them so much better than I.

We have been away for a few weeks (as is evidenced by the lack of blogs too), and during that time, Sweetpea was acting as a locum for the local hospital.  Not arduous work, but at times he was out at night, which is when the uncomfortable questions usually occur.

Sam was musing in a concerned way as I tucked him into bed for the night.  "We are getting older, aren't we?" he asked me.  

"Yes," I replied, "at your next birthday, you will be five, and then you will go off to school."

"But if we are getting older, then that means you are getting older too?" he queried, making sure all his facts were straight.

I confirmed that this was indeed the case, that we all get older over time.

I was totally unprepared for all three children's reactions.  Sam and Paddy set each other off first - they started crying as though their hearts would break.  "I don't want you to get older," wailed Paddy.  "Then you will die and leave us alone."

Sam was sobbing uncontrollably at this point, and he set off Little Miss Snoopy, who started a determined wail of her own. Trying to comfort three wailing kids is no mean feat - I only have two arms after all. I called them all into my bed and positioned them, one on each side and one on the top, and tried to make them see reason.

I talked to them about how they will one day go off to school, and then probably University, and how, at this stage of their lives, they will probably want to be out there on their own.  And eventually, they might want to have families and children of their own, and then it won't seem as though they were all alone.  But I should have recognised the futility of my arguments from the start, for while they were asking grown-up questions, their little minds could not comprehend a time when they would not feel like four-year old boys.  A time when the answer to the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" might not involve the answer "a superhero".

What a difficult and wonderful time of life.  It reminds me of that classic quote from Aladdin, when referring to the all-knowing genie:  "Phenomenal cosmic powers, itty, bitty living space".  All this potential, trapped in four-year old minds.

I can't wait to see what will happen next!

A pinch to grow an inch...

Sometimes the things that make the greatest impression on a mother's heart are those things that are the saddest.  The wry and funny things, those that are laughed at loud and long, are the ones that slip quickest from our memories.  Pity, that.


I had a sad one to deal with the other day.  I took the boys to kindergarten, and, as is my habit, stayed around for a few minutes longer just to make sure that they were settling in and didn't need me before I left to do the day's chores.  The boys are normally very conscious about me being with them for that time, and they take it upon themselves to show me around the kindy importantly, pointing out things I might not have noticed on one of my other humdred trips there.  With great excitement, they led me around, showing me the swings, the lovely playground, the computers.  


One large disadvantage of having the mother along, though, is the fact that normal small infractions of the rules that usually go unnoticed are suddenly remarked on and corrected.  I could see that one of my two had had enough when I asked him not to put the glass bricks on top of one another on the table, in case they fell off and were damaged.
In a fit of pique, he said to me "Please go home now, Mama!"


"Ok," I said, "I will go home now if you want me too."
I tried to act casual, like it was no big deal, but perhaps I am not as good an actress as I think I am.  I gathered my things and started walking towards the door.
Within a few heartbeats, I heard loud sobs coming from behind me as my little boy came flying to find me.
"I am so sorry, Mama," he was crying over and over, "I didn't really mean what I said."


Trying to leave the kindy after that became a mission impossible.  Every time I tried to walk towards the door, he would break out into a new fit of hysteria, and I would have to console him again and try to get him to go back to his group.  Eventually, I had to hand him over to his teacher, leaving him crying as though his heart was broken.  It was the first time I have had to leave one of them upset, and I drove home like a mad thing, to jump on the phone to find out if all was okay with my little boy yet.  Of course, he had been fine the moment I pulled out of the parking lot.


But I was made aware of just how sensitive a young child's soul can be.  Later that night, as I was putting them to bed, thinking the whole incident forgotten, he looked deeply into my eyes, just as I do to them when I want them to understand some thing really important.  Then he said to me, "I really didn't mean it, Mama.  I don't ever want you to leave me".  




And so I could go to bed that night, secure in my boy's love for me.  What a great feeling.