Author: toughmotheruk

The kids recently had their athletics day. I wasn’t able to make it, but, by all accounts, there wasn’t really a competitive edge. In fact, I may have got a text from my husband that mentioned “lame”.

That was until the last race.

My husband’s report was that our son had done ok, but was a bit disappointed.

This turned out to be a bit of an understatement. He was actually pretty distraught (from what I could hear from the safe distance of my office). So much so that he decided that he couldn’t make it to swimming so had bought himself home early.

So…

Instead, he got a pep talk about being a good loser (win or don’t whinge) and he got to come along to his sister’s dancing awards ceremony.

Where he watched her receive 3 badges and 4 trophies after her recent exam results.

I appreciated the life lesson. 

He might need a bit more time.

However, it was saved (just) by the comedy of the ceremony where his sister, having forgotten her dance skirt, ended up doing a frantic skirt swap with her friend between each presentation, which was being announced by the dance teacher who, having forgotten her glasses, was having the kids verify they had the right award!

Who could stay sad with that going on?!

As with life, with baking there are highs and lows…

After the jubilee cake bake-off success, my daughter was inspired to try another creation. This time cupcake mix.

It all initially went to plan, until she decided to make a larger sponge, rather than cupcakes.

This was one time when doing the unexpected resulted in a spectacularly, unsuccessful outcome…

Although, the crusty bits on the side weren’t to bad dunked in milk…

I left the pan outside to see if the local wildlife might enjoy it. Unfortunately, there were no takers.

It reminded me of a similar experience, at about the same age, when I’d tried to make pavlova to surprise my mum after she’d been away for a few days.

The thing that went out into the hen run was rejected by the chooks and stubbornly resistant to dissolving even after lots of rain. I’m putting it down to not realising there was a difference between sugar and caster sugar…

It took quite a long time to get back on the pavlova horse (circa 20 years!) so I’m hoping we might see more sponge cake and cupcakes quicker than that!

We, or at least the kids and I, have just had our first proper English street part experience to celebrate the Jubilee.

It was pretty immense. Mostly helped by the kids deciding they were all in.

To really build the excitement, the first activity was a sewing bee to make bunting about six weeks ago. It was a great way to meet the neighbours, although technical difficulties meant I didn’t help much with the actual sewing… I left that to the pros.

At that point, my daughter’s planning for her cake extravaganza commenced. This also correlated with a lot of “Is it Cake?” watching on Netflix. To help with inspiration of course…

My son decided the day before that he’d also enter the baking competition. Said daughter was less excited with this news as she clearly didn’t like the prospect of him potentially beating her.

Much like a tv episode, there was definitely some drama – the icing didn’t line up with the creative vision, cream wouldn’t whip, multiple trips to the supermarket as there hadn’t been proper planning, but both cakes made it to the judging table (just).

My daughter was quietly delighted when she got second and her brother a ‘highly commended’.

They didn’t have time to dwell as there was also the egg and spoon race, skipping races, tug of war, dancing, and kart driving. Along with heaving tables of food.

All accounts suggest they now know all the neighbours!

Now that the kids are years 6 and 5, they could, in theory, walk themselves to school.

If you’d asked me a few years back, I would have declared they’d be taking themselves off by now. Encouraging independence and all that.

Turns out, I quite enjoy the morning walk.

Mostly, we now leave the house in a civilised fashion, and, sometimes, we even get to the end of the road all on speaking terms.

On the days where this doesn’t happen, I usually have an unexpectedly enjoyable chat with the kid who hasn’t walked off in a huff, as they polish their halo by displaying their continued civilisedness.

One morning recently, as the three of us were almost at school, I asked whether they’d like a change. Both were quite quick to say they wanted to keep up the routine.

I was just congratulating myself for some successful parenting when my daughter confirmed that it was one of two slots she scheduled in her day to talk to me.

The other being after her bedtime.

I don’t know whether it’s because my daughter is approaching the wise old age of 10, but she is keeping us updated on her long term plans.

Mum, I’d like to get another piercing when I’m 15. 

… we agreed we’d discuss it when she’s 18.

Mum, I’m not going to get married until I am 50.

Marvellous – plenty of time to save.

Mum, I’m going to be a nonalcoholic when I’m older.

A little bit of questioning clarified that this meant not drinking any alcohol at all. Ever.

… that might have been because she was walking home after we’d had a very nice Sunday lunch with friends.

Perhaps one to add to the diary to check in 10(?) years time…?

My daughter and I had been doing maths when we both decided it was time for a break. There was a slight difference of opinion in what that should look like, but I convinced her that we should go for a walk. 

At least that was the initial plan.

She then grabbed a skateboard, snack and football, before we were finally able to get out the door.

To then get about 100m down the road, when she realised that she can’t really skate…

So I ended up powering the process by dragging her to the park. There may have been some Mutley-esque mutterings about the exercise we (she) was supposed to be doing.

However, we had a great time. Lunch and literal skipping though daffodils, followed by a bit of football. To spice things up, we had to add an activity, cartwheel, handstand or something, before kicking the ball. Which was (again literally) my downfall, when I sprained my ankle when failing to jump over the ball.

I thought I handled it very calmly, until my daughter told me to stop swearing!

I had visions of needing to call the park service for some assistance, but I managed to hobble to the closest path, from whence my daughter then alternated between pushing and dragging me home on the skateboard.

As she observed, lucky she brought it…

There may also have been some murmurings about the amount of exercise she was having to do to save me…

I was going to write about my daughter discovering Valentine’s Day, but then the war in Ukraine began.

The other morning we were walking to school when my son asked for an update.

I explained that Russia had invaded and the Ukraine was defending itself courageously.

My daughter asked whether the UK was fighting. There was then a debate about whether we should, that perhaps it would be best not to get involved.

My son, who is learning about World War 2, pointed out that standing back didn’t work out well then. He then poignantly reminded my daughter of what they’d learned about bullies – that bystanders who do nothing are just as blameworthy…

My son is discovering politics…

Last term it was the student council. First off was working out his ‘platform’. He was loathe to promise something that sounded good but couldn’t be delivered. Not a usual tactic…

Then, there was the vote bartering. There were a few boys standing and they all worked out who they would vote for – although post match reports indicated there wasn’t a lot of follow through… That sounded more like the common understanding of politics!

However, they hadn’t factored in maths – only one girl in the class threw her hat in the ring. So all the girls voted for her. The boys’ votes were distributed amongst a larger number so the girls won the day!

This term, it has been the house captains. My son came to me, instead of dad, to prep his speech. We kept it short and sweet, focused on his strengths (getting people involved and accurate counting apparently).

Unfortunately, the change of tactics didn’t pay off either.

Then his sister waltzed in last week to announce she is now the “Class Ambassador for the Rights of the Child ”.

Due to a failure in the democratic process, no speeches or votes were needed.

It goes without saying that he was very happy for his sister…

They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. And that was before covid!

Somehow it has been a six month process for us – New Zealand’s efficient system worlds away! To be honest, we’ve not been in any rush and we were all agreed for a move just before Christmas, and then… my son got covid.

Luckily, he hasn’t really had any symptoms. But, his isolation was due to end as we moved. So there went our plan for packers sweeping in to pack the house up! Instead, there was a last minute dash for boxes. A significantly different context to leaving NZ with my backpack (admittedly, many years ago now).

My technique was quite different from my husband’s. Sorting was quite simple: bin, box, charity shop. (Although I know better than to turf the “lucky log”…). He has a few more categories so we settled on a happy medium. I spent my time on the 80% and he covered the 20% that my categories apparently weren’t appropriate for.

There was also an interesting pattern from the kids. They were “very busy” when it came to packing and suddenly found a lot more things that could be ‘on-gifted’ when it came to unpacking: translation – I can’t be bothered taking it out of the box.

It may have been beneficial for (lack of) auditing purposes that I unpacked the new house, while my husband cleaned the old one…

My daughter hit a pretty big milestone recently. She wanted her ears pierced for her birthday.

It bought back memories – my mum had been adamant that we couldn’t get our ears pierced. “If god had wanted another hole in our ears he would have given it to us”.

However, for some reason mum said yes when my younger sister asked. So I made her wait a week so I could get mine done first…

For my daughter, the actual event was pretty quick and painless…

Until the infection – when I needed to do a small surgical procedure.

Apparently holding dad’s hand helped. Although the next door neighbours may have wondered what was happening as there was quite a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Withdrawing the earrings was fairly straightforward (subject to some wailing and gnashing). Replacing them and inserting the butterfly on the shank of the earring was, however, delicate, requiring just the right amount of pressure to get it on…

Unfortunately, I didn’t judge this correctly.

As my dad would say, I didn’t feel a thing…