Speak life

It's been so long since I had a chance to write.  What have I been doing in this time, you might ask? Well...
We found out that we were having a bonus baby a few weeks after the boys turned seven. The little girl had just turned five and started big school, and it was a time for great transitions for all of us.  I remember feeling a bit off, my hormones were crazy and I felt ill every evening.  I woke in the night to horrible night sweats.  After a few days of this, I lay on the couch and cried about it to the Sweetpea.  "I am going through menopause!" I screeched dramatically through floods of tears.  Not that it was unexpected, but that I wasn ready to give up on my body being the source of life for another little one.  I was devastated.
However, two pregnancy tests later, I was a bit relieved and possibly more apprehensive.  After suffering a miscarriage the previous year and all of the emotion that went with that, I could not bear to think of the long weeks and months that stretched out ahead with our little one growing inside me and the possibility of once again losing all of those hopes and dreams for another member of the family.  We were still lighting a candle every Friday for the unborn child, and I could not face the idea of having two small candles to be lit on our table.  As the pregnancy progressed, I started having panic attacks, diagnosing myself with every form of non specific and terrible complication on Google (thanks, Dr Google!).  I was anything but the serene and in-control older mother I had hoped I would be. I was a ball of sodden nerves wrapped up in hysteria.  It was the boys who eventually came to my rescue.  You hear about children parenting their parents.  Well, I had the chance to experience this when they were only seven.  They had been listening to a song by Toby Mac called "Choose life" Eye On It (Deluxe Edition) by tobyMac https://itun.es/nz/G2-6Q
It's about how the word we utter are powerful and that we have the power of life and death in our tongues.  These little boys of mine reminded me that I had the choice to make of whether I would speak life over their child in my womb, or with my fears and insecurities unwittingly speak death.  I'm so glad they did. From that moment on I chose to speak life to my unborn child no matter what happened.

Almost a year later, now, I write this while our newest member of the family slumbers peacefully on my chest. The Snuffalupagus, as we fondly call him, was born safely in December and has enriched our lives with his presence ever since then. He has allowed the boys to become older brothers of a much younger sibling and what joy it is to see them picking him up and comforting him when he cries.  Little Miss Snoopy has had her dearest wish to be a little mommy come true right in front of her eyes.

Take time to choose life!

Divide and conquer? Or united we stand? The age-old question of whether we should separate our twins in school...

Since our twins first went to school, we were inundated by well-meaning advice from many different sources about whether to split them up or keep them together in the same class.  Friends, other parents of twins, family members and even the teachers and school all weighed in on the subject, and unless you have nerves (and convictions) of steel, it is possible for you to doubt yourself at every turn as to whether you are making the best decision for your twins.  Starting school is such a big step in any child's life, yet twins potentially have a secret weapon to combat the period of adjustment, loneliness, and fear that every child needs to face on first stepping into a new entrants' classroom.  

So why the pressure to split them up?

I think the answer can be found in the history and stereotypes with which schools and parents have traditionally approached twins in the classroom, especially identical twins.  After all, for a teacher, it's just more difficult to have a set of what is essentially the same person in your class, no matter which way you look at it.  It is hard to call out a name and never be certain that you have the right one (in fact, mine sometimes answer to each other's names just because they don't want to offend).  There's no denying it's complicated.  Traditionally, schools have always decided that it is better to split the children up so that "they can develop into individuals, with their own peer groups".

That is all very well, but, if your twins are as close as mine are to each other, there is no denying that you are removing them from what is essentially their own primary peer group (i.e. their twin), who is their best friend in all the world, and forcing them to be alone and make new friends without the benefit of the support system that they have had next to them for the whole of their lives.  Some twins will rise to the challenge, and go on to develop those relationships with others as would be hoped.  However, for some it is not as easy.  They develop insecurities and emotional abandonment, and the whole thing is essentially very difficult for them to cope with.

Nowadays, schools allow parents to weigh in on whether their children should be left together or split into different classes.  We had a big decision to make when ours first started.  Being the person that I am, I turned first to the research that had been done on whether to split them or not.  What I found was very interesting:  there is practically no research done on whether twins thrive better together than apart.  However, I did find one article (that probably can't be generalised because of the very little research done on the subject) that stated that separating twins (monozygotic i.e. identical twins only) in the first year of school leads to more internalising problems for those twins, and that these problems tended to persist over time and also increased over time following the first year of  the twins'  separation   Those separated twins also experienced more academic problems than those that were kept together, and had poorer reading abilities.  However, dyzygotic twins (non identical) who were separated after the first year of school tended to work harder than those who were kept together.

The article also discussed separating twins later, and found that separating identical twins later in their school careers might not be the answer either.  The twins separated later also experienced more internalising problems and poorer academic results, and the authors think this is indicative of emotional problems developing in the twins.  This does not mean that all twins who are split up in the first years of school will go on to develop emotional issues, but it does show that some twins who do show emotional distress when they are first split up will continue to have emotional problems as they develop.

So based on this research, what is the answer?

I think it is firstly important to differentiate between identical and non-identical twins when thinking of whether to split them up or not.  Identical and non-identical twins seem to respond very differently to the effects of being separated at school.  Internalising problems are present for both sets when they are first split up, but the emotional problems are persistent only for the identical twins.  This might be because identical twins experience a closer relationship generally than non-identical twins.

The result of this is that any decision to split up twins in order to "enhance their individual development" must be taken into consideration against the weighty knowledge of possible negative effects on their emotional adjustment which can potentially be long-reaching.  This is definitely not to say that all twins should be kept together in the school setting, but rather that the family and school should collectively come to a decision based on the twins' needs, regardless of school view or pressure.  Also this implies that any decision to separate the twins further down the track should be taken with extreme care and consideration, and accompanied by meticulous planning for how this should happen.  It is easy to assume that because they are older, they will take separation better, but this is not supported by the research.  Schools should keep an eye on newly-split twins to see if there are any signs of emotional disturbance and intervene where necessary.  Separation is never a permanent state - if the twins don't appear to be coping, they can always be reunited later on.

So what did we decide for ours?  Well, all the research on this lead me to another resource that we found invaluable in making the decision to keep ours together for as long as is needed (and given the year they have had this year, I am really glad we did!).  The resource is a questionnaire that I would heartily recommend for all parents of multiples - "Together or Apart - a Checklist for Parents and Teachers of Multiples".  I found it online at http://tandm.curtin.edu.au/dloads/school_checklist.pdf
It provides a framework for guiding any discussions that you might have with the teachers and school and also help you to stand against any pressure you might feel to separate your multiples against your will!

However, that doesn't stop the endless comments from others, and especially teachers, that it might be better to split them up.  We have noticed that anything amiss in the classroom can be laid at the door of there being a twin in the class too.  The one is shy and talks softer at group time?  It's because of the twin.  The one taking slightly longer to learn to do their letters properly?  It's the twin. And so on. I think a teacher has approached us on average about once every six weeks asking whether it would not be better to split them up, and with no better reason given than the above.  When I ask, "Are they disruptive in class together?" the answer is always no, in fact the opposite:  they encourage each other to perform better.  Like I said, it takes convictions of steel to stand against the pressure.  But take heart, if your decision has been well-considered and thought through, and also discussed in conjunction with the school, you can feel confident no matter whether your decision is to keep them together or separate them.

Lastly, good luck!

**Please remember, the decision we made to keep our twins together was the one we made after careful consideration of many factors like independence, social skills, experience of being apart, language abilities, interests, friends, age and so on.  What worked for our twins will almost certainly not be the same for yours!

The article I mentioned is "What effect does classroom separation have on twins' behaviour, progress at school and reading abilities" by L.A. Tully, T.E. Moffitt, A. Caspi, A. Taylor, H. Kiernan, and P. Andreou in Twin Research, Vol 7 Number 2, pp. 115-124.

The power of a woman....

Having a girl thrown into the mix really changes things up a bit in the play spectrum.  Before Little Miss Snoopy came along, the topics were invariably the same: two superheroes (depending on the flavour of the month, these varied from the innocent Fireman Sam, to the more heroic Ironman and eventually Wolverine, etc.) take on the world and innumerable bad guys to eventually emerge victorious on the other side.

Now, however, the game has changed.  I overheard them all playing in the toy room today:

Ironman:  "I will destroy you, Joker."
Superman:  "You will not catch me alive, Darth Vader."

Pause as they run around shrieking and jumping over the furniture.  Things fall over and crash down.

Then I hear the sound of the play stove lighting up and the pot being put on to boil.

Into the mayhem, Little Miss Snoopy pipes up: "Boys, it's time for lunch!"

When I look around the corner, there are the two heroes, sitting at the table, eating a hearty lunch of fried egg and a vienna sausage, complaining all the while but doing it anyway.  Little Miss Snoopy is busy rustling up something else on the stove and under protest, they are sitting there until the meal is finished.





Ah, Joker and Darth Vader, your evil attempts to make the superheroes succumb and give up crime-fighting are nothing compared to the ministrations of a good woman!

1006 reasons not to make a Minecraft cake...

For the twins birthday, we asked them what they would like for a cake.  Being iPad monsters at the moment (not that they are allowed much time, but hey, they'll take what they can get!), they of course decided that they wanted a Minecraft cake. Minecraft is a game that uses pixels to construct an imaginary world of trees, water and earth. Everything is perfectly square. I looked it up on the net and thought, how hard could that be?  Just a square cake, nothing fancy.  We'll do it.  Six and a half hours and two very frustrated parents later,  the task was done.  Ok, so it looked a teensy bit like a Pinterest fail, but the kids loved it!  The Sweetpea has made the proclamation that from now onwards, we buy the cake. This is why:

Reason number one:  You need to start with a perfectly square cake. This is harder than it sounds.

Reason number two:  You have to cover the cake in butter icing that is sufficiently sturdy to hold the weight of about a thousand small squares of fondant.

Reason number three:  You have to colour fondant icing into twelve different shades of green,  brown and blue:

Reason number four:  All the blocks you cut have to be exactly square. Also have to be about 2cm square.  There is no ruler this size.

Reason number five:  When you put the blocks on the cake, they have to meet across the cake from four sides.

Reason number six:  Blue fondant turns your teeth blue:

 

Reasons numbers 7 to 1006:  You have to cut a thousand little blocks:

 

Enough said!

On becoming an (attachment) parent

I thought I might tackle a serious post for once.  I have had various parents ask me recently about the importance of attachment, and some others coming up with some really frightening definitions of what they think "attachment parenting" means.

I didn't think I would be an "attachment parent" when I first started out.  I thought that I would have all the answers, that my kids would go to sleep when they were told, that I would have the ability to let them "cry it out" while "exercising their lungs" as parenting "experts" suggest (wow - could there be any more "quotation marks" in a single sentence? I think not! They are there to indicate my sarcastic/disbelieving voice).  However, when my babies were born, nothing could be further from the truth.  Something in me, hormonally speaking, or perhaps just the eons of mothers in the generations before me, would not let me leave my little ones to cry even for the shortest of instants.

I think I have said before that twins are fully capable of planning a tag-team approach to sleeping when they are very little, and ours were no exception.  At one point in our journey with the boys, it got so bad that both Peter and I were not sleeping more than forty minutes in a night.  We both vaguely refer to that time as "that August", because neither of us can quite remember what exactly happened there.  Like survivors, our minds have blacked out the worst of those times.

It was in that stage of sleep-deprived desperation that we aimed to do something about it.  We decided to consult a self-professed expert (ah, never trust anyone who has to profess themselves an expert) in the intricacies of baby sleep.  A baby whisperer, if you will.  Except that she was not a whisperer - no soft techniques here.  She was in fact a baby nazi.  

Babies need to learn how to cry it out, so that they can settle themselves, she said to us at our consultation.  You are on duty as parents only until six o'clock at night, and after then, you are off duty as parents until six in the morning, she said.  The babies will cry, she said, but let them cry - they will learn eventually, and then peace will reign in your house.  Remember, she said, the babies are just cross with "the doctor" (meaning herself), and if they can manipulate you back into the room by trying various methods such as weeing/pooing on themselves, or even vomiting, these should just be seen as manipulative attempts to gain attention, and should be ignored, she said.

The Sweetpea and I left her consultation in silence.  When we were alone, I turned to him, and in my firmest voice, said to him "That was the most valuable thing I think I have ever heard in my life!"

"What?" he said.

"Yes," I continued, "'the doctor' has pointed us very clearly in the way we should go.  We should take every single piece of her advice, and do exactly the opposite of what she has suggested we do." Luckily she had given us a scrap of paper with all of her suggestions already typed up on it (she must just hand them out to parents like us after her consultations), so we could consult it from time to time to make sure we were doing the exact opposite of her recommendations.

And so, by default, we became Attachment parents.

When our little ones squeaked, we were there for them.  We patted and held, rocked and carried, wore them in slings, and slept with them in our room. We made sure that their needs were met (note I say needs - some attachment parents believe that every whim should be met, and I do not think this is in the true spirit of the original attachment ideals). We cuddled and kissed, listened to their fears and encouraged them through the difficult parts.  

It took a little while, but they started sleeping easily through the night.  They became the confident sleepers we had always wanted, just by us slowly and gently teaching them. No leaving them to cry, just a gradual moving away until they felt confident to do it on their own.

And now they are grown?  They are boys who know they can come to us with what ever problem they have and believe we will be there for them and that we will do our best to understand them and work with them towards a solution.  That has stood us in good stead over the past year of their transition to school.

All parents are free to make their own decisions on these sorts of issues, and no-one should be made to feel bad for making a choice that suits them.  But these were the decisions that worked for us.  Nowadays, when a friend of mine falls pregnant, I make sure to recommend two books to her:  The Baby Bond, by Linda Folden-Palmer, and The Science of Parenting by Margot Sunderland.  Both books, based solely on the latest research into the infant's developing brain and the effects of the stress hormone, cortisol, on it, are invaluable in a quest to find out which path you want to follow as a parent. Good luck!

Back to basics

Children will always find the ways to push the boundaries in some way.  If there is a rule, it was made to be broken.  If there is a tree that parents have said not to climb, the only thing for it is to find out by yourself why they said you shouldn't (as happened recently to one very swollen-faced little boy in our family who fell out of a tree and was luckily saved by catching his jaw on a branch on the way down).

I was speaking to the mother of a patient of mine the other day about this.  Her little one insists on making rude signs at people in the park.  She has no idea where he gets it from.  I comforted her by letting her know that mine are no different.  It's just the degree that differs.

   

 I came down the other day to find my two in fits of giggles as they wrote on pieces of paper on the dining room table.  It was those sorts of giggles that you know spell out "up to no good". One would write a word and the other would read it and chortle in a Dr Evil kind of way.  I was curious to see what was going on, so I went to stand closer.  What was written on the paper was "pardn mi" (pardon me).  Not very evil, you think.  however, there is a history to this. 

In our family, we have always been wary of using words like "fart" or "piss" in our conversations.  I just hate the words - they seem crass and unrefined to me, so I never say them myself.  With the result that when one of the boys broke wind early on in life, I told him to say "pardon me".  Somehow, they both just assumed that this was what it was called. From then on, that bodily function was called a "pardon me", and no one ever thought to change it.

Move forward several years, and there they were, at the dining room table, writing the rudest word that they could think of to write. "Pardn mi".  Laughing evilly all the time. 

And in the end, it turns out that their pushing the boundaries behaviour is just as subversive as any other child's - it just has different vocabulary.

Birthday madness

With three kids so close in age (Snoopy is two weeks after the boys), it is usually impossible to split the birthdays without causing ourselves much madness and mayhem.  After all, our anniversary is there in the middle of the birthdays too.  However, the romance tied into our anniversary usually consists of a wake-up kiss and then an almost-divorce when we try to put together the cakes that are invariably required for the next day (I am not sure how it always works out like this, but we seem to schedule the combined party for the day after our anniversary every year.  This year, I thought I was being clever and scheduled it a week away from the anniversary, only to find that I had been looking at the wrong month on the calendar, and bizarrely, the anniversary was once again the day before the party.  It's like Groundhog Day.).







Anyway, these are the cakes that almost caused another divorce in the family.  Having a technically-minded person who actually understands what is meant by the words "slide rule" and "randomised control study trial" (so not me), and a person who says helpful things like "I think it should go up a bit on the side that has the flowers" is not a match made in cake-decorating heaven. But all came right in the end. The boys had a pirate treasure chest this year, and Snoopy had a mermaid.  Needless to say, the treasure chest, with all the chocolate coins, was a hot favourite. 

The treasure chest

This is a very serious business!

If the tooth be known...

I never fail to be amazed at life - sometimes when you are down, it knows just how to make you smile again.  And at others... well let's just say it knows when to kick you when you're down too (I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it does, but let me explain...)!

So we had finally got over the whole "going off to school/big boys" hurdle, and I was middling along nicely and managing not to stare like some frenzied loony in through the back window of the classroom every day as I was leaving, when we were sitting at the breakfast table, and Paddy says "My tooth is loose!"  

It was as though my whole life flashed in front of my eyes at that time.  My immediate response to him was: "No, it's not!" (Perhaps more snippily than was warranted by the statement.)

"It really is," he whined.

"It's actually not," I repeated, hoping that by saying it, it would come true.

But something in me knew.  And as he opened his mouth for me to see, and that little tooth was wiggling all over the place, I was struck by the unfairness of the situation.  

I had just said goodbye to my little ones at school, had to have their fifth birthday parties after celebrating their births about, what, like two weeks ago?, and now, I have to cope with them losing their small, beautiful baba teeth.  Really!  You have got to be kidding me!

And like any good mother should, I rose to the occasion.  I dissolved into tears. I freaked out and scared my child.  And I responded in such a mature way:

"Don't you dare wiggle that tooth! Ever!"

Okay, so that lasted about two seconds.

(Just for the record, I have made it up to him.  I told him about how it is all a natural process of growing up; I have shown him the new, very visible and absolutely huge tooth sticking out the back; I have shown him the identical one sticking up out of Sam's gums; and all is fine again.  For them.  Not me...)

Beginnings...

It's been really difficult to write over the past few weeks.  So much emotional baggage to deal with that it has been almost impossible to offload any more on this blog.  The reason for all of this is very simple, and probably (definitely) a natural part of childhood:  the twins have started school.


I have heard from helpful parents in the past so many times now that if I had a dollar for each time, etc., but it's true - they grow up too quickly.  You can remember the precise instant when they are first placed in your arms after they are born, their exact smell, and suddenly, in the next instant, it seems, you are expected to wish them well on their first day of school.  There is nothing quite like that feeling of bereftness as you walk away from them for the first time, leaving them in the care of a stranger for the better part of the day, the week and the rest of their lives.  I am not sure that they were aware of the import at the time at all - they happily waved goodbye and went to sit on the mat with their new-found friends.  It was me that was left to stand outside the class, looking through the window at my grown-up boys, feeling kindof silly and as though I had too many arms or hands and nothing to do with them.  It's amazing how you can still feel the imprint of their tiny hands in yours even long after you have left them. What's sadder though, is the feeling of them pulling away, wanting to run, to play, not to be bound to you by that ever-present hand.  How each time they run off, they tear a small piece of you away with them, as though they had been grafted there and are having to physically rip themselves away. No words have ever said it better than a poem I once read and have reproduced - it's by C. Day Lewis:

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still.  Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

 

It's these last two lines that have given me hope and the courage to show a brave face instead of parading my aching heart.  

For selfhood to develop, they have to walk away.  And for you to love them fully, you have to let them go.

Just add water...

The high days of sun and summer are finally here.  I can't remember experiencing a proper summer in the past few years, but maybe that is just because I have mostly been inside with a child attached to my breast to be outside in the sun getting a (slight) tan and having fun in the sea.  But now, with the kids just that little bit older, the trips to the beach are not so much daunting as exhilarating, and everyone has fun for at least a morning without squealing to go home (I was always the first to do the squealing, let me tell you).

We have consequently been spending some halcyon days in the sun on the various beaches around us (and if you have not yet made the trip to Scorching bay, do yourself a favour and put that right immediately).  We were there recently and, apart from the teenagers who insisted on smoking something that had to be rolled up in paper and did not smell like tobacco, it was sheer heaven.  

We all swam, even the children ( which is unusual) and on the beach got into a conversation about God, much to the bemusement of the teenagers, who probably weren't functioning the best even when not high on what looked suspiciously like pot. 

"Could God drink the whole ocean?" asked Paddy.

"I suppose he could if he wanted to," I replied.

"Then he would get a very fat tummy," added Sam.

Little Miss Snoopy, bright as a button and obviously absorbing every word, threw in her comments:

"Just like Mummy," she said with satisfaction, patting my tummy happily.

Needless to say, the high-as-kites kids behind us thought this was the funniest thing they had ever heard. One even ended up on the sand, he was laughing so much.  I personally did not find it as funny as all that.

In the eye of the beholder...

Time for another post about the child's perspective.  I recently came across the following while downloading my camera images and realised that Little Miss Snoopy had managed to sneakily lift my camera from my bag, take a few photos and then turn the camera off and return it to the bag. I was totally confused by the photographs for a while, thinking "why on earth would I have taken that picture?"

A charming still life

Another "what on earth...?" moment

Almost some human life in there....

Until the culprit revealed herself on the photos...

Bear-ly funny

Once again, we were off doing a locum in another part of the country.  We have found it a great way to spend time together as a family without having to worry too much about anything.  The places we go to are usually so small that there is almost no chance that a pregnant lady is going to come into the hospital in distress, so the Sweetpea has almost the whole weekend to spend with us while ostensibly "working".  We get to stay in lovely motels, and it is a like a paid holiday.  What could be better than spending a holiday earning money for doing nothing?

This last time was exactly the same.  After spending the weekend visiting every park and adventure playground in the vicinity (it's a small town - there were only two), we were back at our park of choice, the one the boys' insist on calling the Giant's Castle.  It actually looks so much like one that we have actually thought about applying to the local council with our suggestion for the re-naming of their "Queen Elizabeth Memorial Park".  I am not sure they would go for it though.

We were playing in the one section of the park when we saw some people running around the park carrying a huge brown stuffed bear, at least the same size as one of the boys.  Curious, when they got near us, we asked what they were doing, leaving the kids to play on the Jungle Jim behind us.  Apparently, the people were taking part in some sort of dare, where they had to take photos of the bear "doing" as many interesting things as possible - already he had been down the flying fox, been on a scooter, etc, and was now making his way around the park swinging on the kiddies' swings and going down the slides.  The bear's people then rushed off towards the Jungle Jim on which our lot were playing.  The kids had not noticed the people with the bear before then and were happily playing on the top level.  There was some discussion amongst the bear people as to how to get the bear up to the top to let it then go down the slide.  Eventually one of the guys (obviously the one with the most to prove), swung the bear with a mighty heave and threw it up onto the top of the Jungle Jim.  The huge brown beast came flying down through the branches of the overhead tree with a vengeance, and our lot, packed onto the same top level, were speechless with horror as they saw this menacing creature literally flying out of the tree to jump on top of them.

Little Miss Snoopy, the closest to where the bear landed, was having none of it - she had such a fright that she started screaming at the bear - the naughty creature - how dare he frighten her?  And then she burst into inconsolable tears.  The Sweetpea and I tried to comfort her, but I am afraid the situation was too funny for us to be of much use.

A Whale Of A Time

One of the great things about a kindergarten is the trips.  Every term, our little ones get to go somewhere exciting, and normally, the teachers require parent helpers to go along and make sure everyone stays on the right side of the law.  It is a time filled with over-excited kids, crammed onto buses with long-suffering parents, screeching and laughing and generally causing havoc and mayhem.  And this term, the excursion to the local marine reserve coincided with an almost total eclipse of the sun.  The excitement knew no bounds.  

On the bus, the boys and I put together a rudimentary pinhole camera which I patched together with some receipts and an old paperclip which I found in my handbag (see It's all in the bag...). The boys were fascinated as we tracked the position of the moon and the sun by using the camera, and shivered as the air got colder and the daylight turned to a weird twilight.

Then we got to the marine reserve and the leaders of the troupe advised us that, as parents, there was a job for us to do that only we could do.  Expecting it to be something about safety, none of us was prepared to be handed a hat in the shape of an extremely unattractive sea creature and told to put it on and not take it off for the whole trip around the reserve.  Mine was an especially unattractive specimen of crab, with long pincers that dangled around my ears.  Not my finest moment.

The twins were absolutely fascinated by the touch pool.  One of them picked up a large shell, and then dropped it just as quickly as a huge hermit crab emerged with an angry glint in his beady eye.  However, the hermit crab took one look at the crab on my head (ever so much larger and nastier-looking) and decided to make a bid for freedom. He scuttled back into the pool over the boys' hands, causing great consternation, upon which they promptly asked to be able to hold him again.

But what made the biggest impression by far was the octopus.  I have always heard that an octopus can squeeze through a hole as big as its own eyeball, and here we saw that it is true - the octopus flowed through the most minuscule of holes as though it was being poured through like water.  The boys were fascinated to learn that the mommy octopus stays with her eggs once she has laid them, never eating or going away until they hatch, and in the process gets very thin and sick and sometimes even dies.

They were very upset by this story, especially seeing the small clusters of eggs on the sides of the octopus tank.  "It's okay," I explained, "the people at the marine reserve will feed her and make sure that she doesn't get hungry".

As we walked back to the bus at the end of a wonderful day, Sam spoke his thoughts freely: "If you were thin and sick, Mama, I would feed you so that you didn't die!" he said.

Making tracks...

There are a lot of firsts in life.  The first smile.  The first word.  The first steps.  And then there are the firsts that are a bit further removed.  The first boat ride.  The first bike ride.  And the first train ride.

Living in a city where there is so much emphasis placed on sustainable transport, etc. I have to ask the question: how is it possible that the boys are four and a half and have never been on a train before?  It's a question I have actually asked a few times over their lives, but somehow we have never managed to make it as far as actually getting on the train before this time. It took the great-uncle coming out from South Africa to finally get us as far as the train station.  And what excitement there was (actually, I think it might have been the great-uncle that was the most excited, but I digress).

Making it to the station in time to actually catch the train was the greatest of feats.  Normally, even allowing for the extra fifteen minutes it takes to strap everyone into the car, I am routinely late for everything by about half an hour.  However, miracle of miracles, we were actually early for the train.  Which is how we by mistake managed to catch the wrong train and end up taking the fast train all the way, arriving in about three point two minutes.  As far as train journeys went, it could have been more exciting.  Not to mention the fact that we were in a carriage full of businessmen on their daily commute.  I can't help but wonder if their trip was made more exciting by the little voice piping up loudly as we went under each and every electric pylon (about three thousand in total on that trip): "We go under, we go under, we go under.." etc., ad infinitum.

As we got out, the kids were already begging to be allowed to go back on again.  Luckily we had the return journey still to come.  After our time at the water park, we had to run all the way back to catch the return train, this time at least making it onto the right one.  And this time, all the way home, the little voice piping up: "Are we there yet?"

You just can't win!

A star is born....

Accidents will happen, they say.  However, I am sure that, for a boy (or man, I'm just adding), no accident is as serious as when they lose face in front of someone else.  Even the most privates-clenching insult is nothing as compared to the fact that, although not seriously hurt, they are the source of great mirth for someone else who witnessed their moment of falling short.

Sam was flying around merrily on his scooter on the deck today, as both he and Paddy do on occasion. Yet today, they had set up a challenge course, racing in and out of the other various vehicles that make up the parking lot that doubles as our deck.  All three kids park their trikes there, as well as a large yellow tipper truck, two ride-on motorbike toys and a toy scooter belonging to Little Miss Snoopy.  As you can imagine, the course was relatively hazardous with all of this lying around.  Scooting too fast around the corners, Sam somehow managed to catch his back wheel on a tricycle and came off, head over heels, landing at the feet of his astonished brother.  Although unhurt, his brother's obvious lack of sympathy for his plight made the whole situation ten times worse and he let off a yell that one would only expect to hear if he had fallen off the roof.

His brother did not turn a hair at his performance.

Eager to encourage a bit more of a show of empathy, I told Paddy he had to pick Sam up and bring him inside to the couch, and then get him a drink and see if he was okay.  Paddy duly helped him to the couch and fed him the juice, asking him if he was fine, but Sam's wails continued unabated (a bruised ego is one of the worst injuries a man can acquire).  I sat next to Paddy and offered a suggestion: "You could try patting him on the head to calm him down."

Paddy was horrified at my words.  "But then all of his hair will wear off."  He obviously remembered my story of when they were both little (in God made some heads perfect, the rest He had to cover with hair...), and was obviously dismayed that I could suggest something that would so blatantly exaccerbate the situation.

I could not hold in my laughter at his comment, and, seeing his mother acting insensitively, Paddy also began to laugh too until we were almost hysterical together.  What kind of a mother laughs in the face of misfortune?  But unfortunately, the more I tried to stop, the more we laughed, and the more offended Sam became, and what was originally a little accident now was the biggest accident in the world.  However, on further examination, Sam's snorts of distress began to sound unmistakably like snorts of laughter,until all three of us were giggling together on the couch, accident forgotten.