riddle me this…

How is it possible for my genius offspring to manage to remember to conceal Bakugans in their underwear in order to sneak the contraband toys into school…

how to choose a husband…

I clearly remember my very own Beloved Dad instructing me to select my husband for the Father he would be – he felt it was the true measure of a man… Since time immemorial, I did as 16-year-olds have always done – these words of wisdom were disdainfully dimissed, not forgetting the accompanying rolling eyes, shaking head, clicking tongue and patronising “Oh Dad!” at the woeful naivete of the “Aged”. 

After all, it was common knowledge that the only boy worth a second glance came with:

• Driver’s Licence (fake or real – no biggie)
• Pocket-money for beer for 2
• Who at the face of it could maintain feigned innocence, yet appear as if he would defend my honour and virtue to the death…
• This facade (* and ** – before I digress, yet again) need only be maintained until he pulled “his” car out of my folks driveway.  The very same car he’d just minutes before shifted into neutral and rolled out of his mum’s garage shortly after his folks  had settled down in front of the telly with their evening cuppa (yet more naive “Ageds”)! 

we have a jamie funny…

We do, we do… I’ve been feeling a little guilty because most of my “kiddie” posts have centred around Nate. But the silent one this evening delivered a Jamie’ism well worth waiting for…

My kids are fixated by Queen’s We Will Rock You! The trip to nursery school is adequately lengthy to deliver THREE repeats, and the return-trip of taking our housekeeper home in the evenings allows for a further SIX… crikey, I am sick of that song. The saving grace is that their in tune, albeit loud, shouting of the lyrics is hilarious – because they never quite get the rhythm perfectly – so they sound so dorky…

In the interests of furthering their musical education, I try to teach them who the artist or band is.

This evening I asked Jamie who sang the song… and he CONFIDENTLY annouced:

like the desert missed the rain…

I recently started the mammoth tast of cataloguing the gazillions of photographs I’ve taken over the years.  This excercise has made me feel rather nostalgic and I’ve enjoyed reminiscing over past joys, adventures and memories.  This week I started scanning in some old photographs which I didn’t have in digital format and came across this one from December 1999.

The thing about death is that it takes a while for one to be able to look at a photograph of someone “gone” without your immediate emotion being sadness and loss. 

the old and the young…

I’ve long held the belief that if you travel to a foreign country you can learn more about it’s people by finding a park bench, or taking a train and observing ordinary folk going about their daily life.  On my very first trip to the wonderful city of Hong Kong, I had opportunity to do both.

What struck me was the ingrained and genuine  reverence the people hold for their Old and their Young.  Both are regarded as priceless treasures to be cared for, nurtured and treated with both dignity and respect.  Youths offered their seat to the elderly, tiny children in the teensiest school uniforms safely took early morning trains sometimes even unaccompanied by caretaker adults and I particularly noted how parents spoke to their children.  It remember it being so tangible, and left a lasting impression on me.

of nate’s dog’s-wipers…

From the minute Nate was able to string two words together he has had a notably excellent command of the English language and a versatile vocabulary far beyond his years. Over the years his peers have speedily caught up – I, however, are more inclined to believe that he has stagnated when it comes to proper English largely because his focus has shifted to words that refer to risque body parts, gaseous body emissions, mucous and/or phlegm, anything to do with toilets and parts of male/female anatomy related to human reproduction.* So “Yes!” his current vocab and grammar developement matches that of any other cheeky-potty-mouthed 5-year-old.

One Sunday afternoon he came up with my hands-down favourite Nate’ism – to this day it gives me the warm fuzzies and brings a wide smile to myface when I picture the wide-eyed innocence of delivery.

rather than “all evil”, money is the root of parental embaressment…

I need to tell you a little more about Nate and take you back to “The Family Bank Heist”* which occurred some 6 months back.

Nate at 5½ is obsessed with MONEY!  A brand-new bank note might need to be returned to the Reserve Bank to be removed from circulation within 12 hours of it coming into his possession.  He’ll count 3 x R10 notes hundreds of times and deeply sniff at each note in an attempt to ascertain where they’ve been before (heave – not something I’ve ever really wanted to scrutinize).   Once above 2 exercises are complete, he will try to con you into swopping said 3 x R10s for a crispy new R50. For a guy who at 3 could ALMOST count to 30**, I find it amazing that he cannot with any semblance of accuracy divide a packet of Astro’s equitably between him and his brother.  His numeracy skills at times seem to be astutely skewed in his favour.  After due consideration, perhaps Fractions and Visual Maths are more his “thang” – just try to give him any but the largest slice of pizza from the box or be a miniscule crumb out on sharing the last chocolate cupcake.  But I digress… (I am prone to this – sorry about that!)

my most embaressing secret…

I KNOW I’m going to regret this!  My heart is racing, my palms are clammy – hell knows why even feel compelled to share this with random peeps on the interwebz, but I do!  This is something that VERY few people know about me.  I can count on one hand the number of people who know this – and the only reason they know is because I’ve got bigger, stinkier and cruddier crap on them…