dandan wants people...

the poor love... he's been saying this a lot recently, sadly asking for people.

recently it was our o/s guests that he became so attached to (even from when we were in singapore, and saw them daily). while they were still here, on nights where they had to go out without us, he would sob and say to me pleadingly "i want uncle ronald..".

thankfully, since they've left (and we keep reenacting our farewells and the fact of their plane ride and now being in singapore), he's not sadly asked for them.. just mentioned them daily at various random moments, named them one by one.

and today, while we were trampolining in the front garden, he saw a little boy alight from a car along the street. he urgently asked me to help him get down, then he ran to the pavement calling "boy! boy!". but he was too late.. the boy and his grandma had walked into their house, and were gone. i can still see dandan standing there holding the stem of our standard rose, peering out sadly, then pleading with me almost crying "i want boy, mummy, i want boy!...."

THEN, tonight we go to a family dinner at my mum's, and have a great time; lots of older cousins playing great games with him, lots of aunts looking longingly at him and hoping for kisses (at several moments, he randomly appoints one person from the group to be the beneficiary of a hug/kiss... often not the person most wanting it, interestingly).
we leave happily and normally, but on the drive home he cries out again sadly "people! mummy, i want people!..."

i guess it's about dealing with endings and leavings... but my heart breaks for his little one.
i even consider whether i should have another baby just to give him a sibling..

instead, i resolve to bring him to many more regular playgroups..
(there're just so many dodgy ones to avoid, though, in terms of how the adults treat/approach the children; or in the effects that even brief companionship of some children can have on him, perhaps having been parented a certain way)

off to look at our weekly calendar..

everything's turning around..

today felt like such a key point in our lives...

it's the first weekend since our o/s guests left, and we just stayed in and rehauled the living room; moved around the furniture for a completely new layout (more spacious and open plan-y) (and, i now surf the net on my couch!!).

and i wrapped up a couple of things that i'm posting to new homes (including a pram that i sold for more than i bought it for, wow)

and, i made a whole paella! it's almost done now.. chicken chorizo paella (sans saffron :( ). lots of chorizo...

but, here's the key - dandan was with us THE WHOLE TIME. i actually got all this done with him here in the very midst of us! stunning, huh?
we've always had to send him away before, in order to get the slightest thing accomplished.. but now, he's here amongst it all, happy and involved in his various games, letting us actually work while he plays around us! he even helps, the darling one.
it's so as life should be..

i've noticed this new turn of things recently. i even have been bringing him shopping, groceries and trawling several shops even, with a high degree of success and enjoyment.

and he's so sweet in the car now, mostly going into his carseat perfectly happily.. some of the things he does while we're driving is:
- drawing / whiteboard and marker, musical objects, stickers;
- just sings softly to himself
- dances to the music playing (and looks embarrassed when he catches me looking at him and smiling);
- looks out the window (we moved his seat next to the window, maybe that helped things?);
- talks to me about things (super cuuute);
- sing together with me (we have this game where he presents me with lyrics to make into a song; he's also starting to make up his own songs now too).

and last week i just WALKED OFF AND TOOK A SHOWER without announcing it to anyone, as he was hanging around with andrew; didn't make sure A would be alright, didn't warn dandan.... and i had my whole shower without anyone coming to find me. i just went and took a shower. just like that.

i feel like i've been released from some inhuman constraint.. and i'm so glad. i've always felt so bad and conflicted, having to send him away from me and missing him the whole time, while i shopped/cleaned/slept/bathed.

so we're finally starting to live life properly. like human beings. no longer simply surviving like wild animals, but actually making and maintaining a nicer life..

along that trend, a significant development. last week (we were on our way to meet our guests for dinner in town), andrew finally spoke up about our relationship. after probably a year and a half of relationship shutdown and zero relationship-talk, finally, the subject broached. just on the heels of a fortnight ago, where i'd started googling for divorce / asset division / custody information after a short tense and bitter fight..

it was very brief. but we established that we thought an effort was worthwhile, that we weren't at the giving-up stage yet, and that we should talk about our relationship.

since then we haven't had a chance to talk yet.. i still feel unwilling / unable to be emotionally vulnerable after this bitter and cold year, i just don't trust him that way right now, anymore.
plus, when do people talk, when there's a child around?
when he's with us?, in the car or playing or watching tv? after he sleeps? (he's been sleeping at 10-11 recently, i think it's time to try to drop his single nap). when driving to/from work? i've been trying to find a time for us to talk, but just don't see a place where it fits.

anyway.. it's a good development. i think just us both knowing the other still wants a real relationship, is a big thing in itself and a start.

hmm, SCHOOL

i actually found myself maybe signing dan up for kindergarten!

i ordinarily would be full tilt against it, and love the whole natural learning / radical unschooling thing. but i think this place may be pretty special..

it starts next year, two 2.5 hour sessions a week, which i'll join in with until dan's happy for me to leave. i'm ready for that..

as to the why, well, no matter how cool my home/unschooling plan, i'm starting to accept that i just want/need a certain amount of time away from parenting, provided he's not being compromised at the time.
(of course arguably he might be subject to a certain amount of compromise when with his grandmothers.. but that's also another story which centres around wanting him to have a strong connection with them)

and yes maybe i also just needed somewhere for dan to attend twice a week to get my mum off my back about kinder waiting lists.

so i toured it yesterday and spoke to a kinder teacher and a support staff person, and they just gave all the right answers. plus the kids looked happy and calm and absorbed in their various activities..

here're some of the right "answers" -

- the only schedule through the day is an overall one of: inside vs outside time, lunch time, nap time.
other than that, the teachers determine the activities for the day based on what the children are showing interest in at that moment.. so the day's activities are moment-to-moment guided by the children's interests.

- nothing is compulsory - if a child doesn't want to participate in the group's activities, but want to be off on their own or do their own thing, that is supported (even in her own words: "if they're absorbed in a project of their own, we would definitely value that over joining the group").
the child is only invited and encouraged from time to time to rejoin the group, but otherwise nothing coercive or negative is expressed, and they're perfectly happy for him to spend all day doing his own thing in any of the various spaces (even if he wanted to be indoors while everyone was outdoors).

- there is no "NO", in regards to undesirable behaviour, only a positive instructioning on how one should act, instead of what one shouldn't do (eg chairs are for sitting; we touch each other gently; we use our indoor voices here; etc).
and even gentle "stop"s are used sparingly, and never used in a chain, because of the negative impact that has on the child; instead the child is redirected towards another activity or space in a situation where a chain of stops is starting to become necessary.

- i asked what their approach is on praise and affirmation, and in her 5 minutes of talking there was no "good boy/girl"; she spoke of inviting the child to think about the specialness of what they had done/made (eg "how do you feel about xyz"); and her examples of praise were very "I" based ("I like the colours you've used").

- there is no formal teaching of alphabets and numbers (charts, chanting, exercise sheets? ugh); instead, only games and songs of which letters and numbers are a part.

- parents/grandparents etc are welcome to be there, in fact one parent is rostered to participate in every session, more are welcome at any time.

- they try to have as much outdoor time as possible, cos kids just love it / need it.

some other things i saw that i liked:

- the continuity between indoor/outdoor spaces: heaps of window walls, big sliding entryway to outside, so you can always see trees/sky etc, and the outside is always right there.

- there was a child without a hat, outside, despite it being a hot day - clearly this is not in itself a good thing, but it shows that they're not absolute dictators about the rules. i would, conversely, hate to see a child sitting on a bench under the shade because he'd forgotten his hat that day, while everyone else played, even if it's good sun policy.

- no shouting teachers, no string of called out instructions and cautions, no pushy over-involvement.
(none of: "michael! stop that! kayla, be careful! jack, stay where i can see you!")
in fact i heard very little; teachers all spoke in normal calm voices, all hanging around the children companionably and non-intrusively.

- that the children seemed to have the right proportion of invested energy; often children i've observed in other places or playgrounds seem to have an excess of undirected energy; or conversely too much might be being asked of them or too much stimulation imposed; i like to see quiet absorption / purposeful noise, and a calm purposeful vibe in general.

- no gold star charts (!!) or the like.

- this is maybe a reggio thing, but there's little "reports" written up and hung outside for parents, where they talk about what they explored that day, the observations of the children about their latest object of interest (eg a lizard)

- and of course, tons of cool stations that dan couldn't wait to get into (and in fact did, right away); the cool outdoor play stuff, and inside lots of colouring/art, books, dollhouses.. i had to drag him away!

and of course, being around all the other children, which he just lives for.

an interesting follow on to yesterday's unschooling thoughts -
today we went to a kindergym for the first time. the space and equipment were great, and later in the free play session dandan would have a ball;
but the class session, whooboy! i was dumbstruck by the amount of control exerted over and expected from the children.. all of whom complied.
sit here, don't talk, watch this; do this, then this, then this, in this way. now stand, now go do it.
for a session devoted to physical activity, there was an surprising amount of quiet sitting and watching required.

and then, at the end of the session, the kids had to sit in a circle, feet crossed, (and not tucked under the parachute they were sitting around), with their hands on their heads palms down. so that the instructor could go around the circle, and stamp each obedient hand with a "good" stamp. literally. freaking unbelievable.
ironically, in adults this would be considered cultish or brainwashed behaviour. or what we'd expect from prison inmates. it's the stuff of futuristic sci fi horror a la Orson welles' 1982.

thank goodness that by then dandan had long checked out of the group, i don't know if i would have wanted him to be sitting obediently there with his hands on his head waiting for the Stamp of Approval.

from the instructor's pov, dandan was a big Fail for this class. she was constantly trying to get him to stop what he was doing and come back to the group, and barraging him with commands (not instructions, these were very clearly Commands) to which he replied NO! to every one. good on him.

this one child had chucked it, and his mum took him out for a while. she brought him back in later apologising that he had "lost it" but was now ready to join in;
he was now totally subdued and compliant, and obediently did all the activities meant for his enrichment, with a broken spirit and the remnants of his tears drying on his now-passive face.

so this reminds me why i don't want him in conventional school. because he's not a prisoner or in the army. and i do want his spirit intact thanks.

it's just ridiculous.

say it in pictures

i've gone and added some pics to recent (especially the travel ones) as well as older posts;
i've tagged all of them with "pics included" so you can pull up only posts with photos, if you want (they're usually the non-whingy posts too), using the tags menu lower down on the left (or clicking the tag at the end of this post).

=)

the darwin bit of our trip

darwin was HUUmid! and when someone who's just come from singapore says that, you know it's got to be true.
it wasn't even that hot, but moving around made you instantly sluggish and sweaty and longing for a/c.

but it was nice having our own space after scunging off relatives. we got this cool 4 star hotel for $80 a night (rack rate of $250) from wotif... very lush.

darwin's an interesting place. absolutely nothing to do in the town centre, incredibly non-happening as they say, except think about the aboriginal folk wandering the streets and lounging in doorways.

the food was mostly awful though, in the town centre, i suppose catering to the backpackers comprising the majority of the population there. coming from singapore, this threw me into the food-blues.. i ended up eating ravioli from a can and cream cheese triangles in our hotel room, which was surprisingly quite nice.

*but we did go to a nice and swanky place; A had barramundi, i had wagyu rissoles, and dandan was a beyond perfect dining companion (thank you colouring book):

*continuing the fish theme; here we are with our darling little rented car ($33 a day with baby seat!) fishing on the wharf, in the rain, at sunset. lots of people came along for the same reason; it was a really nice vibe. dan spent almost the whole time playing in the car, i guess water all looks the same, especially when it's physically quite far away and untouchable:

*these are the only remotely darwin-y looking pictures we have. the soil is literally red! (more apparent IRL):
^(no, i don't know why i'm looking so goofily)


*and this was a highlight of our little darwin trip; hundreds of fish turning up for a daily feeding; you get to touch them, they eat out of your hand and nibble your fingers!, and they flash in and out of your legs in the water.. dandan had such a blast:

*and a close second for favourite outing: the crocodile park, which had dandan saying "coc-o-dai-yl!" for days afterward.
it looks very cage-d, but apparently this park is run by the conservationists, and is vital to conservation (public education, breeding, farming, education of farmers who would otherwise kill their eggs, etc)
the croc really does leap at astonishing speed, up several metres. even though we were expecting him to do so, we still jumped when it happened. and his jaws make a big "pop" sound as they bang together, from the air escaping so rapidly. scary stuff.

but this little guy was fun. i feel bad for him, but well, dandan had a blast tickling him. (this is after i gave dan a bath with a bottle of water, in the public bathroom. he was ridiculously sweaty..)

but the art bit of it was very cool. we trawled all the galleries - they're co-ops, working directly with local artists and communities, and the art starts from very affordable entry level prices of like $60 upward (for the unknown or lesser-names of the aboriginal art scene); some of them had the artists themselves working there or even running the gallery.

this is a local resident at one of the art co-ops.
he was funny at first, nuzzling against A and licking the salt off his skin, but then he got reeeally insistent, and scratched at A when he tried to get away! also scary stuff. but cute.

*and this is at a hotel lobby we stopped at for their a/c, and to get some sweat off our skin with a facewasher we rinsed with a bottle of water. classy. we didn't even order anything from the bar.
how cool is this setup though:

what we did on our holidays, con't.

(just edited)

in singapore, we stayed at A's aunts' home, a teeny tiny flat above with an insanely large and beautiful palm-fringed pool.
think resort pool; all undulating lines, curving around corners (it took 5 mins to walk along the waterline from one end to the other), rounded nooks and eddies; a bar set within the pool itself, secret tiny bubbling spas hidden under palm trees, wooden loungers and big umbrellas; a "mountain" concealing a big water slide. a big toddler pool and splashy area with big pipes gushing jets and curtains of water you could run in and out of.
and behind said fringe of palm trees, 2 little playgrounds at either end to choose from, as well as several balinese huts.
(why did i not take any pictures of this???)

it was lovely. every morning we'd pop downstairs to take in this tropical paradise, set ourselves up at a deck chair with the breakfast we'd bought at the local shops, then splash around with dandan - "me monkey! me fish!"
dan only had 2 baths in the 10 days we were there, most days i brought bath wash down with us, and would surreptitiously wash him while he was swimming and playing with the poolside showers (it was a very unchlorinated pool, i guess being private and all).
although, oops, he turned down swimming a few times in the latter half of the trip, in favour of the playground.. maybe he cottoned on to it? pool = bath.. =(

it was hot though. blagh, i hate hot weather. it makes everything tiring.. walking from the apartment to the local shops to get breakfast, though first thing in the morning, made us sluggish and sweaty and a bit grumpy.

but the food was sooo goood.
in fact, i'm writing this now because i saw some ad on tv with some hawker food, and it made me grumpy. why do we live here and not there? there's literally nowhere here to get a decent approximation of most of my favourite things. imagine having to wait to fly to a faraway country, once a year at best, just to satisfy a craving...

like goreng pisang, soft sweet gooey sugar banana deep fried with an impossibly crispy and fluffy crust (the urban legend is that they melt plastic PET bottles into the cooking oil. surely there's some way to find out for sure?).

or my favourites, all which seem to involve being grilled over an open charcoal flame, and fanned with a woven heart-shaped fan (colourful plastic strips or dried banana leaves) by a sweaty man in a sarong and string singlet.
like otak, spicy fish meat mixture wrapped in banana leaf. satay, sweet and tender and spicy meat. sting ray atop a banana leaf covered with a thick layer pungent sambal; you use chopsticks to scrape off the thin layer of delicious stringy meat off the dense comb of sturdy bones.

dandan loved the food too.
*he demolished a whole plate of pappadums one night (each one as big as his head);
(in little india (we're about to have fish head curry)):

and he developed such a taste of kueh (soft jelly like cakes made with coconut milk) that he asked for them no matter where he went.
but only the green ones (kueh talam) - "dreen duay!"; so much so that, well, the contents of his nappy ended up a bright green smushiness. although that could have been the change in local germs.
and the rainbow layer kuehs; you can peel off one stretchy layer at a time, each one a different colour f the rainbow. he only ever wanted green and purple (he could be tricked with blue), leaving the rest discarded.
or the paus (steamed rice flour buns with filling); the green one with sweet pandan flavoured filling, or the light purple one with sweet yam filling.

we didn't get the camera out very much, so there's a lot we'll just have to remember.

*here he is on the plane (with the sticker book that literally saved our holiday, daily):
*at the science centre with the boys:

*the bird park (much too big a park / too many birds for one little boy, despite there being a monorail, but the aviary was fun.. biggest aviary in the something something):

this is inside the biggest aviary in the something-something. you can't even see the mesh of the gigantic tent..:^(these guys were eating out of a cup from my hand, but it freaked me out a bit so i put it down, after which they pushed it over. dandan kept saying worriedly for ages
"cup fall down! birdy fall down!". i think he thought the birds had fallen with it...)

treetops walk! we're VERY high up, this are the tops of tall trees.. and this bridge sways.. very Perils of Penelope Pitstop:

and this very special one - dandan took this picture! all by himself! and this is just one in a whole series of perfectly framed pictures (well 90% of them anyway).
if i do say so myself, he is a genius:

*at the night safari at the zoo (i saw a bull elephant 15ms away! dancing and swaying significantly in the silent darkness). no pictures unfortunately, but there was this indonesian fire dance show (with fire-eating!!, fire blowing-from-mouth; fire twirling, and loincloths galore):

*the water playground with leaping jets of water atop a gigantic mall. i thought this warranted a whole day of our holiday - there're dozens of jets, along the whole stretch of concrete you can see in this pic, all spurting to some cool rhythm:



*and uncle ronald's magical car:
(this is taken at the northern most point of the island, one of the few undeveloped pockets left; looking over to malaysia across the narrow strip of water)


*and dandan hanging with the boys he absolutely lost his heart to. he followed them all around at every opportunity, and hugged and kissed them all at every farewell.
here they are having a cigarette break :| after dinner:
^p/s - note the open air eating places with lots of space to run around? THIS is why families with children can eat out in asia, where they can't in australia (apart from fast food places with playgrounds). garh!

*and on a side note, visiting my uncle who has lung cancer and a prognosis of a few months. he spent a lot of time caring for me when i was dan's age, so i wanted to visit him especially:

ain't this the sweetest thing!:

unschooling school

dan and i spent the day at a learning co-op today.. i have lots of thoughts and questions, am still digesting and mulling..
but briefly;

first, wow, a group of children all different ages interacting together? simply awesome, so obviously the way things are meant to be. the younger ones learning from and mimicking the older ones (in dan's case, literally and openly and comically); the older ones nurturing and caring for the younger ones, being mindful of their limitations, and carefully and thoughtfully including them in their play, adapting the play to suit everyone.

and the social stuff.. eg bullying or anti social or hurtful behaviours. the group of parents are fully present in the children's environment, and therefore are to-the-minute aware of what's going on. they're also very involved with the children throughout the day, often one-on-one. and most parents have been / will be so for years, the entire duration of the child's time at the co-op, often more (10, 14 years often.. a time even spanning their siblings' time at the co-op too!). plus, parents meet once a week, and therefore are well acquainted with the ins and outs of each child's life at home and at the co-op.
to me, that's places the adults perfectly to deal with any social issues that arise between the children.. contrast that with a large school, 30 students to one teacher at a time, who only sees each group of children for a few periods a day.. even if a teacher was made aware of bullying for example, how could she reasonably be equipped to deal with such a complex issue?

on the flip side, though;
granted i was only there for one day, and didn't really ask about the"curriculum"; but i was expecting something more like this:
http://mominmadison.blogspot.com/
i was hoping to see children reading, working on science projects they had come up with, cooking and eating together, ongoing gardening projects, art projects and displays, musical instruments...
is this an unrealistic unschooling expectation?

what i saw was cool, but i confess i was hoping for more. but ah, i know it's just one day in the life of. probably over the course of months, the amount and variety of projects and activities made available to any one child would be pretty dazzling.

what was really of interest to me were the boys.. they mostly moved in a group, the odd loner. they played / watched a chess game on computer, and then they played this really rambunctious fighting game (a jumpy sort of wrestling). this was really interesting to me, as dandan was dumbstruck by fascination by this activity, and stood there for ages holding my hand, wanting to join in.
at first i was a bit horrified by the rambunctiousness and loudness, and what seemed and sounded like aggression.
but then i saw that, whenever someone expressed hurt, the game would instantly stop, and the leader of the game would tend to the injured one, ascertaining if he was alright, and then trying to cheer him up, taking as long as they needed before the game would continue.
and i also saw that as rough as they were, and as tight and real as the strangleholds were, no one was angry, no blow was intended to injure or hurt... the direct opposite of so many similar childhood games i've witnessed / been in before. very significant.
they really seemed to just be playing out a world where they were warriors, or perfecting their moves in preparation for warriorhood. i think i'd be okay with my little boy doing this..

and then the (male) co-ordinator came out (obviously hearing the escalating blood curdling shrieks), and suggested a game, an athletic rolling competition, which they took to eagerly.
dandan has made me very aware of the nature of male mentorship and role modelling, how a boy is naturally drawn to an older boy / man to follow and mimic, in preparation for manhood; and how groups of males naturally fall into a hierarchy and seek a leader (or, if they're all the same age and there is no intrinsic hierarchy, will fight until one is established), man or wolves alike in this.
so it was very cool to see this in action today..

after all, it's all about balance. there is usually plenty of input from at least one woman into a child's daily life; but usually much less from a man, if any at all.
plus, i read somewhere that boys learn best in a one to one mentorship arrangement with an older male.
which makes me add to the mental checklist of what i want for dan's education (be it home unschooling, an unschooling school, or some sort of conventional school): some amount of teaching input from a man.

obviously the gender question is irrelevant for home unschooling (his learning environment naturally being tailored to him specifically), but it does come up when considering a group learning environment, no matter how unschooly..

but boy, was it cool watching him follow all the older kids around and be part of things all day. unless this is just me projecting onto him all my self-criticisms about being such a loner by choice or circumstance?

i can imagine us home unschooling, and it seems so wonderful and cool (right now i'm picturing this blog again (http://mominmadison.blogspot.com), and soulemama's blog, just to name the first two that come to mind.
but i can also imagine endless days of dan running around the co-op and being, daily, part of a group of children, and that seems incredibly cool as well..

so, okay, projecting again, but the latter is everything i ever wanted for myself, longed for even, as the pattern of my life seems to have been my feeling ever on the fringe of things. to belong, to be woven into a group of people, to have someone already there as soon as you even felt you could do with company).
whereas the home unschooling picture is the life i always had (minus the parent anyway, and outside of our short school hours), and always felt very isolated in.. (then again, i am an introvert, i probably would have chosen it anyway?)

okay, going in circles now. i'll let this decision marinate some more over the next few years. in the meantime, this co-op rocks!

dan today

good news by way of an update - dan's mild cold has passed - THAT was the reason for all the night waking and horribleness!

everytime a bad sleep phase passes, as this one just has, i think - thank goodness i didn't nightwean him after all.. the bother, the emotional stress (on him and on me);
plus there's some part of me that believes that, in general with children/parenting, things are the way they're meant to be..

but of course this is so general and sometimes untrue too. but in this case it feels like it seems to apply, i can't explain why..

but i am very glad this one has passed. i'd even taken to drink! (well, a shot of dessert wine)

----------------
horriblehorribleness today...
went to a friend's birthday in a fantastic park (more on that later) with a racial harmony festival thing going on at the same time;

dan was happily playing on steps (while i was tensely waiting for him to one side, wanting to go check out the market stalls), when he stopped crouched on the bottom step, leant forward...... and (i could see this coming, but was frozen in place like a stupefied rabbit)... toppled and fell FACE FIRST onto the rough gravelly concrete below, his face taking the full weight of his fall.

i heard a crunch sound.. and thought - he's broken his nose. my first thought is a visual picture of the fine thin bones of his nose. my second thought is getting to him.

i leap forward and lift him to me.. that side of his face is all covered in fine bloody abrasions.. and of course he's howling..
but even though so many things are going through my mind, the main thought being on lifting his body closely onto mine, another one of them is an assessment of the damage. a quick scan, no deep cuts or scrapes, bleeding is from under his nostril not from inside, only light abrasions, please god don't let anything be broken.

thankfully we're only metres from the first aid tent. a passerby brings me there and carries my over-large bag. i give him boob and he calms, but the gauze dabbing with lotion and powder makes him really upset.
again, thank god for breastfeeding! how on earth would we cope without, with such wee ones?
the first aider, a grandmotherly sort, tells me i'm a good little mum, which is nice i suppose.

dan's fine for the rest of the afternoon, in fact has a grand time playing with ducks and kayaks on the launchpad. i even put 40c into a mechanical ride for him - it was a zebra, and i did it cunningly and secretly so he wouldn't make the mummy-put-money connection.

he's unaware of the horror of his face, red bruises and scrapes all over one half of it. (ETA: it doesn't look as bad in the photos!)
it's such a contrast to his happiness. in profile, when he faces one way, all you see is a perfectly happy and sweet angel.


although later in the day, he brought it up to talk about twice, and i did once or twice too; and he revisited the trauma and the fear and the pain (it showed on his face and his literally trembling lip), and we patted and talked through it.

needless to say, it feels awful as a mother. i can literally feel what they call the mother's heart; it's like my normal heart, but swollen and enlarged and tender with pain and feeling.

and when your child is suffering, what every ounce of your being wants, is to wrap yourself around them and engulf them, back into your body, where they'll be safe and innocent and untouchable and unhurt again.

but all you can do instead is to put your arms tightly around them, a boob in their mouth and comforting milk inside them (and don't forget the breastfeeding hormones!), rock and sway them, and croon the comforting song mothers have known since time began.

(note: read this in the context of the posts i meant to come online and make previously, of how delightful he is these days, verbose and wordy and so able to express himself in specific words and funny sentences, so insightful and knowledgeable, so affectionate and sweet with his frequent kiss-mummy sessions, so many delightful jokes and "look at my funny face, mummy"..)

ah.
today, i feel a) completely convinced that i don't have what it takes to parent, and, b) thoroughly sorry for myself.

the (a) seems to be a universally experienced sort of juncture, so i'm happy enough to suck that up, but the (b) is a killer.

i just feel like, above and beyond the normal travails of parenting a young child, that i've really received a package more challenging that most other parents'.
sometimes i have professional opinions to back it up, in the way of authors of books a la "sears' fussy baby", "active alert child", "highly spirited child, and on and on.
not to mention having chosen a parenting style which is in the short term anyway, the harder way to do things sometimes.

currently it's being pawed at all night and latched on to for endless hours overnight. and pawed at and being latched on to, on and off, all bloody day.
in between the million episodes per day of being clamored for NOW because something has made him upset, or because he wants something and doesn't want to wait for it, and crying loudly ("dandan CRY!"), or just because he wants me for the millionth time, all of me.

and when i start feeling sorry for myself, i lie there and think of how bloody hard it has been the whole time. all those nightmarish frequent sudden and gut-emptying vomits all through his babyhood. the gazillion nights of intense boobing through the night. the gazillion being-pawed-at for boob, no matter where or when. all that carrying, refusing to walk or sit in a pram or sit in his own chair. the gazillion conversations i've lost with friends or interested strangers because he has to have me NOW. being "on call" to run to the bedroom as soon as he whimpers, even after he's finally gone to sleep at night, so that i can't take a shower even then, or feel finally free, but always always chained by the ankle.

not to mention all the friendships i feel i've now lost for some reason or another (nothing to do with him, true) since becoming a mother, and how isolated i feel / am. not to mention how stupid this marriage now is. and how i feel i have to do everything around here. why, if i almost killed myself planning and packing for our trip away, must it also be me who unpacks it now that we're back? why must it always be me that does all the cooking, especially since it's also me that uses my baby-free time to buy groceries? why does he get to use his at-home time to relax and do his own thing when i've parented all day, will be night-parenting all night when my sleep's already all fucked to shit, so now why must it still be me to parent all evening, while also doing housework? he shouldn't fucking get to, is the answer.

it's so tempting to cast around desperately for a way out. at times like this, i run through my options. if separation would make things easier i'd definitely consider it.
stopping breastfeeding? this does seem to be a common milestone for mums to crack it. i'm on the fence about it.. it seems so likely that it'll make things easier, and i really sometimes feel so tired of it. but i also sometimes feel so glad we have it, plus it would feel like such a big gap... all this time it's been the cornerstone of our relationship. ideally i'd like to cut back - bloody nightwean already, and one or two sweet convenient civilised boobings in the evening.

scarily, the option of full-time day care even lifts its sneaky head as an option. only doing a few hours of evening parenting a day... the time together is enjoyable, only delightful, and then he's off to bed. far better right, than today's constant sniping and griping (mine, to him) and simmering resentments running over to occasional flashes of internal violence.

which makes me think, the (a) of earlier. i really am not cut out to do this. we have no day routine, he goes for ages without food and actually gets crabby from hunger. there are so many things he won't eat, so few things he will eat. he doesn't let me brush his teeth at all so god knows what might happen to them.

i think i might go and borrow an evil gina ford type toddler book on setting routines etc. perhaps there might be something helpful in amongst the evilness..

i also need new sleeping arrangements. we always end up squished together in a desperate clump half the night. and he seems to stir more after i go to bed, and get more grabby for boob.
i may not be ready for him to be in his own room (even if he can walk himself over to me sometime, it would still end up being him and i in a queen size bed for the latter half of the night).
i'm thinking, if we had a big enough room: single, queen, single. so at the start of the night A and i could be on the QS, dan on the single. then when dan wants boob in the night, A rolls onto his own single, dan and i on the QS. then when dan falls asleep and lets me go, i roll onto my own single, so all 3 of us will be on our own mattresses. the luxury, the freedom!

but we don't have the space, so i guess a QS and a single, for dan and i. A will have to keep sleeping in the lounge.. unless i can find a narrow roll-upable foam mattress?

or, thinking out loud. maybe dan CAN go to his own room.. then in my room there'll be a QS and a single. A on the single, me on the QS; when dan comes over to me in the night for boobing or company, he can join me on the QS and stay there. if dan crowds me too much, i can spill over onto A's single, or get up and climb over dan and switch sides.
hm! a bedroom for dandan... how novel!
another upside is that maybe A and i can finally get back to talking in bed like we used to, it's always traditionally been our only time to talk, which maybe explains why we don't talk at all now anymore, hence all the issues and deadness.

maybe i'm feeling like this today cos i'm so bloody tired, from having my body clock reset from the trip. it's 1.30am now and i'm still up, though i was super wrecked all day today. during the day i put the tv on for dan, walked off to bed, and just fell semi asleep, while he kept shouting "MOMMY"in my face and trying to wake me (for non essential things like "where's the doggy?". when he got distressed i'd respond sleepily.). he played around me, and in the living room. eventually he fell asleep too on the boob, so A came home at 6.30pm to find us both asleep. of course, dan then woke at 8.30pm, so he only fell asleep again at midnight..
it's the travelling...

in the meantime

how great is this!:
an unschooled teenager's take on unschool vs school after a year in high school
http://fivefreebirds.blogspot.com/2008/07/unschool-v-school.html

(this version has editing =( but has updates in the comments):
http://fivefreebirds.blogspot.com/2009/02/kevs-essay.html

it really cements my decision to unschool dandan. especially the comment from a reader about having seen the light go out in her son's eyes after a few short years, never to return i imagine. how heartbreaking, and unimaginable that you would do that if you knew there was a better way?

anyway, i'm looking forward to finding an unschooling community down the track, and in the meantime also hopefully finding an unschooling-"school" that we can participate in part-time. i need something to give ME some order and a semblance of routine at least weekly, as being so introverted i'd otherwise get incredibly inward-absorbed, i know i'd just start to neglect him and get snappy with him.

on a side note.. "school" is one of those funny words that change after you see a lot of it, as you read. it becomes less like "skool" in your head and starts to sound more like "shoool"/"schule" or "s-jool" as you keep reading it. or is it just me?

tonight's dish. and our travels part 1..

mmm... i made a lamb stew!
i'm dancing with delight over it, as well as joyfully eating it.
it was fast, easy, foolproof, and to me it really signals the turn, my return to being a food loving cooking type.

it's: lamb chops (forequarter), and a red and a brown onion, cut up and browned in olive oil and butter. then, many cloves of home grown garlic!, bay leaves, black pepper, fresh home grown rosemary (and sage if you have it). a big tin of tomatoes OR a bottle of pasta sauce with red wine (it was on special and cheaper than tinned tomatoes, yummier too), and 2 cans of rinsed and drained butter beans (my favourite bean). and into a 180deg oven for 2 hours, while i had a long delicious nap.
i actually woke up so disoriented i had to really think about what plane i was on, much less what country (it's been a weird globetrotting week).

i'm eating it now with my favourite instant mash (plain dehydrated potato, nothing added, cook with milk and butter and anything else) which is a US brand i carried back from singapore. very non-locavore...

going to singapore was a nice way to really establish the shaking up of my eating attitude which has taken hold in the last 2 years. i think i've shaken it up really nicely. the eating was a blast, a dedicated holiday goal in itself. and so cheap, so the joy of the eating out is felt twice.
i'm listing it all here as a way of reliving the sweetness.

night 1:
lamb soup, a clear chinese herby version, $4.
a bit of andrew's chicken rice (the famous chicken rice.. white rice cooked in chicken stock, garlic, coriander, and some margarine. ultra tender barely poached chicken cooked in clear garlicy stock, and presented in neat little slices. eaten with minced garlic and special chilli sauce).

day 1:
morning: the local food centre:
- char kuay teow (fried rice noodles with clams, cubes of crispy pork lard, eggs and dark soy), $3. nothing like the insipid versions available here.
- big cup of watermelon juice blended to order, $2.
- freshly made soy milk, $1.
(a pau for dandan, steamed rice flour bun with roast pork filling)

dandan was so cute here, running up and down the wide shallow steps beside our table, talking to himself and delighting passers-by. the sparkiest child around for miles.

what was interesting to me too was spotting so many kids that looked just like dandan. he's a very rare bod here in melbourne, even amongst other asians, with his big round eyes and browny skin; and i figured out why in singapore.
he's of a particular stock, hokkien peranakan, which is hokkien chinese mixed with some malay. lots of this heritage in this area of singapore, they tend to all live in this eastern suburb (they call it the "katong look" after the suburb), but a minority anywhere else in the island/world.

dandan falls asleep in the ergo on me, and as we have an arrangement for andrew to be ergoing him here in the long hot days instead of trying to make the pram work out, we do a complicated transfer of a deeply sleeping toddler in an ergo from one parent to another. it proves very hilarious and slightly concerning to the friendly passers-by. but is successful!
then we walk around the local shops taking in the real local-ness of the place, marvelling at all the cool stuff we don't get back home, and changed currency. we buy:
- bubblegummers shoes for dandan - look like normal shoes but have very flexible soles, and only $20.
- large pack of mini tissue packs, like 20c each.
- hand held shower things for back home, $11

then hung out at a cool pet shop which had miles of fish tanks with tonnes of very cool fish. and a room of uber cute and miniature poor animals in glass tanks, like rabbits, gerbils, mice, all super tiny and adorable. normal sized smallish dogs and cats too. poor babies.

then at the local supermarket, marvelling at all the imported US stuff. and the aussie stuff, and how expensive it is!:
- magazines
- my US instant mash
- some US product called bac-o bits which i thought were dried bacon bits, but turns out to be bacon-flavoured manufactured soy bits. ick.
- stuff for dan's special standard rice dish, beef and chicken meat, pork bones, carrots and broccoli. i later spend an hour making it, and he eats 5 bites of it over the next 10 days, and i have to throw it out when we leave. it was worth a try.
- cool cheap toys, like play teach-time clocks. and i really wanted this music jewellery box that dandan was entranced by (open the lid, has a mirror and spinning bear inside and a music box plays), but it was too much at $17.

then we hung out for ages at the fresh food section at the supermarket, where there were entire tanks full of live seafood, big and little fish, crabs, prawns, where you could just reach in and grab what you wanted! and an entire spread of their deceased compatriots on ice.

andrew's childhood friend ronald (who acts as our guide and driver for the entire trip) then brings us to a big mall, where we get local prepaid phone cards, which we use on delightful retro pixelated no-colour-screen mobiles which we had ferreted out at home.

we have lunch at the glitzy food court, where i foolishly order their chicken rice and pay for the MSG load with unnatural thirst and a headache for the rest of the day. the worst thing is, i wasted a meal on them! i also am forced to order a tetra pack drink, so i also waste a drink that could've been a $2 blended fruit one (they didn't have it).
and i buy a fried banana fritter that turns out to be cold and long precooked. i don't even bother eating it..

but i did get popiah - thin pancakes wrapped around a cooked shredded vegetable mix (turnip, white cabbage, bean sprouts), chopped peanuts, dark sweet soy, and chilli. luvvvly.

then while i do the shopping thing, they take dan off to play on the cool kiddie rides, and then go off to walk around a cool old-singapore area (singapore's divided into the new and the old stuff. of course the old stuff is much cooler, and nostalgic, and actually real. the new stuff is air-conditioned, shiny, manufactured, commercial... but air-conditioned).

dan proceeds to very quickly fall in love with uncle ronald, precipitated at first by his very cool car - a red mini (the original), at which dan exclaimed "big red car!" aka in the Wiggles (his favouritest people in the whole world, which made this his favouritest object in the whole world, propelling ronald very quickly to favouritest person ever).
it really helped that ronald's car was also:
1. red inside
2. had a smogasbord of switches, dials, levers, knobs, etc etc inside. think light aircraft.
3. and this is the winner - no seat belts at all inside, to speak nothing of a baby carseat. dan has never loved riding in a car so much. sigh

i buy for myself:
- clothes from zara, that UK high street brand. considered slightly expensive in singapore but significantly cheaper than most australian mall lines. and some shoes from topshop.
- super comfy shoes (made by crocs and is basically a fabric sandshoe but have that thick rubber sole, so is literally the most comfortable shoe i've ever walked in. i later get another pair in a different colour. i walk alot, so the difference is loudly apparent very quickly. it's heavenly..).

and i look around in a big bookshop for chinese books for dandan. but i quickly realise that despite having studied chinese for my entire school life, i'm now at about a kindergarten reading level. also, all of their books are shrink wrapped, so i can't even check out whether it suits us. geez.

i heave myself around all the kid shops, and after an hour or 2 realise that there's no possible way i could finish shopping singapore in our 10 days, not even remotely close. it fills me with relief and weariness. i call the guys, and we arrange for me to take a train and meet them down the road.
but in the meantime, i go to a french cafe and get a creme brulee, freshly blowtorched, $5, creamy and lush and yummy. i consider ordering snails to takeaway ($8), but realise even i would probably not eat cold leftover snails.

i do the train thing (tickets are from 70c with my prepaid card from years before), grab a fresh blended red apple juice (yay) on the way, and find them standing beside the mini with dan and andrew wrapping up from a poo nappy change. i have arrived not a minute too soon.

ronald brings us to get satay... amazingly delicious, and so cool in that setting- outdoors besides a revamped historical market building, a semi circle of gigantic trees all draped with blue fairy lights, small charcoal grills everywhere being fanned by sweaty men. we get chicken, pork, beef satays, each person gets their own peanut sauce, and dan eats the rice cakes.
we also get a grilled sting ray - smothered in sambal sauce and grilled on a banana leaf on open charcoal flame. you scrape the thin layer of meat off the dense layer of fixed bones. it's magical.
i really wanted to go back again, but it never eventuated. but i'm so delighted we had it this time at all.

this was a long first day, more like 3 days in 1! the other days go by quicker. i'll leave this here for now.

ahh... peace reigns in our quiet little home..

lovely little day today,

oh, apart from a major meltdown at my mum's house - complete with head banging and flailing and wailing - he was completely out of control, completely lost in a maelstrom of emotional pain.
i carried him to a quiet room, and he calmed right down, and talked with me as if nothing had happened... then i brought him back to the living room (where my dad and sis and mum were), and right away he falls back into the maelstrom. i bring him back out, and he calms again.
odd huh?!
i guess it was several things... too much stimulation (dad was playing big fun games), too much attention (everyone looking at him), maybe some underlying unspoken tension (family stuff)..?

anyway, it was so brief, that the only thing that's remaining about it as i process it is... how odd? how out of place, how sudden? how he's never usually like that, apart from a few very squingy episodes over the last few days... i wonder why..
maybe, together with the bad sleep, it's a molar thing? he was biting his teeth together alot before all this, and i've spotted him clenching his jaw and looking internally a bit these days...

anyway, as i said, it was a good day, and one that reassures me that my boy is still as i know him, and i still am a good enough mum, and we enjoy each other's company, which right now feels like the most important thing.

we went to get some sushi, we hung out at the library, went to my mum's.

in the evening we played in the garden; we each grabbed a bucket, i filled mine from the washing machine, and added charlie carp. he asked for some too, so i dripped some in his bucket. then we watered our precious berries, even he tipping his bucket onto his favourite plants. and we confirmed that no berries had appeared since we last checked them yesterday.
then we played in our little playground in our beautiful front garden - lots of climbing and sliding, lots of trampolining.

our trampoline is the setting for so much joy, what would i do without it?
we lie and marvel at the vast blueness of the sky, edged all around with leaves from our beautiful tree (i do so love that tree, only that one) (it has a mix of either branches with only solid green leaves, or branches only with leaves which are variegated with cream. isn't that odd?), and kick our legs in the air to see them against the sky. we have 3 different bouncing games, a running in circles game, a pull-me-up-and-fall-down game. we call for our dog to see her running back, we squiz at her through the mat, we/i check under the trampoline to see if she's there.
then we sit/lie on it and read our junk mail, until it's dusk and mosquitoes come out.
on our way back to the door, dan runs after holly and bossily orders her to eat something he found, which she wisely ignores.

i finally borrowed a bunch of books from the library - i've been so borrowed-book starved! i generated a massive fine (from one lot, about 15 books kept a week late, massively adds up), and couldn't bear to pay it again (it's happened before), so have been waiting on andrew to get a membership that i could use and start anew on with good intentions. and he did so and gave it to me along with my xmas pressent!

i got harvey karp's "happiest toddler on the block", and robin grille's "parenting for a peaceful world" which i'm eagerly anticipating being as rockin as others have made out. dan loves the cover, squealing over the oil illustration of naked kidlets amongst gigantic sunflowers.

maybe i should grow us some sunflowers? they're pretty darn amazing things.

tonight i lay in bed reading as he fell asleep - so much better than just lying there staring into the dark! a few minutes before, he picked up one of my books, and joined me in lying on our tummies and reading.. he stared very hard into a printed page, staying very still, then gave me a cheeky humourous twinkle at his own mimicky cleverness.

then when he fell asleep, i kissed him many times on his mouth, and breathed in his milky sweetness, and ruffled his hair. i love him so much i could implode.
every day he's becoming someone "other", more separate from me... from the newborn baby of your own flesh, to the eye-gazing infant to whom you're all the universe, to the little child to whom you're the rock and foundation of the exciting out-there world.
i know him both more and less now than when he first fell out of me.. he's his own person, someone i can only try to get to know... i have to keep reminding myself that he's not an extension of myself, he is not all the best things of myself, he is just who he is. and though i love him more fiercely than i do sometimes myself, my role is only to support him in his growth.
i love this job.

ohh... it's been a tough few days!

the nights have been, anyway. lots of waking, lots of the kind of boobing where he won't let go of my nipple for one minute all night, without reprieve. i feel exhausted again just remembering this.
all that grabbing, hungry voracious trapping arms and jaws holding me in position all night... where the inch at the end of my nipple is the inch distance between me and being able to fall backwards into decent sleep.

and last night, there was a complete wakeup. a bounce upright, perky eyed and voiced in the pitch dark, announcing readiness for games and playing. almost sweet... if i weren't in the middle of the deepest sleep.
we were up for 2 hours, and then i was up for a half hour after he finally fell asleep.

and then this evening, i made the mistake of breaking our routine.
instead of dinner-playground- wind down inside, i did: playground, dinner, play at grandma's, drive home to sleep.
big mistake....: he was all amped up playing at grandma's, no amount of gentle coercing or offering of choices or anything in the GD book would get him to willingly leave... in the end we had to carry out an unwilling child, who clamored and cried for boobing all the way home (the longest 4 minutes of my life), and then when we got home, begged and pleaded to go to the playground, even though it was already dusk and mosquitoes were out.
we ended up with him sobbing in my arms in bed: him flinging himself heartbrokenly into my arms and throwing his little arms tightly around me, while he sobbed...

i patted and crooned a while, then we sat in front of tv and watched shorts of a penguin doco, during which he fell asleep on my lap. where, other than a long boobing interruption, he's remained since...

i don't know which feels more unbearable to me, actually going through all of this, or the loud litany of painful doubt.
why is he like this? is this because of how i've parented him? has my parenting been too child-centred / lacking in boundaries / inconsistent?

and then all the thoughts about night-weaning....
i no longer know anyone personally who's still night feeding a toddler...

i don't know if there's any more good reason to not night wean, other than he's intensely resistant to the suggestion and seems intensely dependent on it, and i think it would be forceful and traumatic to undergo night weaning now.

and i wonder whether i've completely screwed him up; is it right that he's completely dependent on boobing to fall and refall asleep all through the night, at 2 years old?
i do feel like i've completely screwed up, or missed some very important boat..

i feel as i did when i was in primary school, when i completely missed doing a test that every single one of the students sitting around me did from start to finish, because i was talking and in my own world.
or in high school, where i found myself suddenly alone standing in the square, as every other student in school had gone to an assembly that i alone had no idea about.

okay, so my logical or wiser subset tells me:
i was clingy and fussy, andrew was clingy and fussy; dandan is clingy and fussy and would be probably more so if he wasn't APed. this is probably the best version of him at this age that he could have been....
and that with his sleep; he needs this slow start up, he needs this hand-holding, to gradually find his own sleep-legs in his own readiness.
besides, that his bad sleep has only happened in occasional periods over the last year, and often coinciding with spurts of height or braininess; that largely he's been sleeping well (20 minutes of falling-asleep, 4-6 hours of non-waking, 10-12 hour nights).
and that, my god, he's 2.... this is just what it's like. especially when you mess up their end of day routine...

i feel a weariness inside my spirit, amped up by tiredness. i could sleep to fill the latter, but to fill the former, i'm going to stay up some more and read and think.