-Benny’s eyesight is quite poor, he’ll have to start wearing glasses. -Oh, no! -Come on, that’s not so bad. -But how will we fight if he’s wearing glasses? -You’ll have to tell him to take them off before you hit him.
Mother-daughter conversation aka “fight fair, like a proper lady”
My blog has existed for more than seven years now. In those seven years I’ve had, on average, one visitor per day (and it was probably my mum). Statistics tell me most of the visitors come directly from my Facebook page.
So far I’ve never had anyone stumble upon the blog accidentally, by googling a random term. Until yesterday.
Yesterday someone found me when they searched for (Drumroll!): “iva morning shitting”.
Dear visitor, whoever you were, you made my day. I sincerely hope you found what you were looking for. Come back again, I’ll try to include more of the content you might be interested in. 😘
So far Oskar’s refused each and every dummy that I generously offered, but surprisingly he’s quite keen on sucking on this little guy’s head.
What are my chances of finding a “Lego Duplo Prisoner Character’s Head” shaped dummy? I don’t like the idea of Oskar falling asleep with someone’s head in his mouth.
Molly’s life moto is: “I don’t like trying things, I like doing things.” This basically means she’s not patient enough to listen and learn from other people and she has to do everything on her own.
She’s been like that since I can remember. At the age of two, it once took her literally 45 minutes to put her shoes on. But she did it. On her own. And, since she was the only child at the time, I had my coffee in peace, watching her struggle, not allowed to help.
She has a similar approach to school now. At the moment, she’s teaching herself to read and wants no help. I find it frustrating. I get impatient listening to her mispronouncing sounds and making words up.
A couple of days ago I was watching her attempting to read a book to Oskar and we were both getting irritable – me with her not being concentrated enough, her with me correcting her too often.
To focus on something else, I went to take a photo of “my little girl reading to her brother”. The front camera surprised me and I was quite shocked to see my own face. Here’s a photo of a “supportive mum listening to her little girl reading”.
It’s not a wonder she wasn’t into it. My face conveyed all of my enthusiasm. 🙈😂
Message to myself: I need to get back mentally to the place from five years ago, where I was able to observe her patiently. I need to look for clues on when and how to get involved myself.
First steps: (Fake) smile. Deep breaths. Silent encouragement. Let her do her thing at her own pace. She’s trying, soon she’ll be “doing”. 😉
Molly’s excellent at forgetting things and losing stuff. Every day she comes back from school wearing only some of the clothes she put on in the morning. She could easily use the school’s “lost and found” shelves as her wardrobe. She forgets her lunchbox in school, she forgets her schoolbag at home.
So when she got this message in her fortune cookie after dinner, she thought I was making it up to make a point. I told her to take the note and keep it close so that she remembers not to leave her stuff lying around. Unfortunately, five minutes later, she lost the note.
You know that annoying neighbour who comes to the playground only to ignore her kids and who uses every chance she gets to complain about how tired and sick she is?
I just realised that’s me.
(Smiling photo to hide the shock of this painful self-realisation.)