Making Way for Buffalo

Hey, look a post. And a resolve to write more of them that may or may not be followed through to fruition...

We have just got back from a trip around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Detailed posts to follow (I hope!), but first I wanted to share with you a cautionary tale about following Park advisories.

Yellowstone has several guidelines and warnings signs (my personal favourite: “Caution! Hot, flying mud.”) Many of the geothermal areas have a relatively thin crust of earth over scalding hot water, mud and steam, and so there are boardwalks for guests to follow with strict warnings to stay on the boardwalk.

The animals, of course, pay no such attention to these warnings, and so when we were following the trail around the Mud Volcano area, we saw a bison stubbornly plodding through the steaming trickles of water and taking a drink from Sour Lake. (From the smell of the air, I wouldn’t have tasted the water, even if cooled, but our bovine antagonist didn’t care. Then again, this was an animal who had chosen to saunter through a volcanic hot spot in the heat of the afternoon.)

Never trust an animal with a taste for sulphur.

On the subject of Yellowstone’s wildlife, there are cautions for them too. Visitors are advised to stay one hundred yards away from bears and wolves, and twenty-five yards away from all other wildlife. Regardless of distance, if an animal changes its behaviour because of you, you are too close.

In due course, we saw that the bison was heading slowly but surely for our section of boardwalk, so we hurried ahead to get out of its way. Once we were a safe distance from its predicted path, I turned around and started videoing it. I assumed it was going to cross the boardwalk, and I thought a video would be a fun souvenir of just how up close the wildlife can get. Twenty five yards from the other side of the bison, several other tourists had got their camera out with much the same idea.

However, the bison did not cross the boardwalk. It turned and started walking and grazing alongside the boardwalk towards us. Ordinarily, we would simply have moved out of its path, keeping to a safe distance, but the boardwalk was keeping us on its path, so all we could do was move further back. We duly started doing so, but the bison was paying no attention to us and seemed perfectly placid, so we weren’t in too much of a hurry. I was holding my three year old daughter’s hand, which made backing up awkward, and let’s be honest, I was a little more worried about the video than my retreat.

We didn’t let it get very close to us (I was using the zoom on my camera), but it almost certainly was within the twenty-five yard mark, when the bison charged. At me and my daughter.

If there is one thing you can count on me to do in a crisis, it’s to freeze up. There appears to be no ideal tactic for when you are faced with a charging buffalo, but on this occasion, not moving worked. The bison was bluffing. It did not attempt to mount the boardwalk but thundered to a halt right alongside us.

(My daughter’s reaction was to scream and hide behind my legs, so she clearly has superior reflexes, and there is hope for the family line yet.)

When my brain was capable of processing information again, it no longer needed to worry about maintaining a twenty-five yard distance. A full-grown, bull bison was one yard from us, giving me a one-eyed, sidelong glare. I could have stepped forward and touched him. My brain promptly got hung up on just what the hell I was supposed to do now.

Behind me, a woman had leapt from the other side of the boardwalk to get behind a fallen tree, yelling at her son to do the same thing. For some reason, I was still more scared of third degree burns than being gored by a buffalo, so I was all in on the standing-my-ground tack. My main memory of this whole moment was staring back at this bison’s eye, while trying to step backwards slowly and without tripping over my daughter.

As we started moving, the bison made another prancing rush (which, honestly, looked pretty absurd yet in no way lessened my respect for him at the time). I stopped in a moment of panic that he wasn’t going to let us get ahead of him and briefly wondered if I should try moving forward instead, to get past him that way. In retrospect, going behind him and out of his sight sounds like a really bad idea, and luckily I chose to keep retreating, knowing that my husband was behind me somewhere.

Eventually, my brain kicked properly into gear, and—never taking my eyes off the bison—I told my daughter to walk to her father. (She ran.) Once she was out of my way, it was easier for me to walk backwards and—thank goodness—the bison lost interest as abruptly as he had gained it. I made it safely back to my family, and he moved away from the boardwalk and started grazing. At our last sight of him, a few minutes later, some other tourists who had come up after our encounter were having their photographs taken with him.

It was an unnerving reminder that however accustomed to humans wildlife are, they’re still unpredictable, and anything that big is bloody dangerous. I don’t know if that bison ever would have turned violent, but I’m thankful for the boardwalk which gave me a foot of extra height on him and also provided an ‘intuitive’ barrier between us. (Though a quick google of ‘bison charge’ has proven that a boardwalk will not necessarily stop a bison.)

The thing was, I thought I was being safe and respectful of the wildlife. We have a very good zoom lens on the camera, and it was never my intent to interact with the animals or give the children a close encounter. In fact, my son started the holiday with a morbid fear of elk after my firm exhortations about keeping clear of large animals. (Elk can most certainly be dangerous, but this backfired on me when they were casually wandering past our hotel.)  I just fell into the trap of seeing the bison as the docile, slow creatures they so often appear to be. I became that little bit too casual about checking the distance.

We were phenomenally lucky. A cheerful little document online provides all sorts of (painful) alternative outcomes to this story. As fun as wildlife watching is, especially when you get a chance to get up close to one of the really large beasts we share this planet with, remember to play it safe—particularly if you're escorting children.

Finally, please note that my careless bid to play David Attenborough was in no way worth it. While some random tourists probably have excellent pictures of my being-charged-by-a-bison face, all we got out of it was a video that the Blair Witch crew would be ashamed of.

Reading Update: Books for Pre-readers / Early readers

Despite my blogging going off the rails, 2013 was a pretty good year for us, with numerous accomplishments--with reading being one of the more exciting ones!

My son, now five, pulled all his reading skills together this autumn and started applying it to books. He had just got the hang of sounding out words at the beginning of the year. He's now able to read a simple phonics book, taking in the story and context as he goes, and if he sees a simple word on a sign when we're out and about, he will read it and confirm with me.

While his schools take the main credit, one of the best moves I ended up making in this endeavour was to put books in the car. I started when we were visiting the UK over the summer and doing long road trips--we didn't have any phonics appropriate books at the time, and my son was still resistant to picking up a book and trying to sound out the words. So instead I gravitated to books that they knew really well or that were pictures without words. It worked like a charm.

Wordless Picture Books

The great thing about the wordless picture books is that they're still teaching the children basic reading skills: namely going from left to right and story comprehension. They're also fostering an interest in books and independence in using them. So far I have found that my children embrace a picture book only if I 'read' the story through with them first, helping them grasp the storyline (though these days, I suspect my son could tackle one on his own.) Once they've become familiar with it, they can look through it by themselves--though if I'm available, they'll always want me to join them!

Far and away, my favourite of our wordless picture books is The Wave by Suzy Lee. A lot of this bias is because the little girl in it reminds me so much of my daughter when she plays at the beach (as a bonus, this summer, my daughter even had a little blue dress like the one in the book). Whenever we read the book, we always refer to the main character as if it were my daughter.

A close second is Journey by Aaron Becker, which has incredibly beautiful pictures and an exciting adventure. Storywise, if you've read Harold and the Purple Crayon, this is treading very similar ground though in a completely different style, and I like to think of it as a sequel.

Others we've enjoyed are The Snowman by Raymond Briggs, Dancing Boy by Ronald Himler and the virtually wordless, Do You Want to Be My Friend? by Eric Carle. I also use books that have text but the pictures can independently tell a story, such as We're Going on a Bear Hunt (illustrated by Helen Oxenbury) and All The World and Rollercoaster (both Marla Frazee).

Phonics Books

As my son's reading ability increased, I started looking for convenient phonics books for him. The general selection is pretty dire in the early readers section of book stores and libraries: you're really choosing between phonics or an interesting story--the best exception I found after a solid trawl through was Jack and Rick by David McPhail.

We encountered the Biff and Chip books while in the UK, and after a while, I decided to go ahead and order a bunch of these. They're relatively interesting for phonics books, and they feature actual children that mine can identify with. Besides, I get the impression that a lot of British primary schools use them, so it's all part of cultural identity? If nothing else, my son will be familiar with the written word: 'Mum'.

We have one series two book and the entirety of series three. Series three seemed a good fit for what my son has been doing over the past term: learning blended sounds (like 'sh' and 'ee'.) It also has some nice little stories, including a modern retelling of Aesop's fable "The Dog and it's Reflection" (Floppy and the Bone). I am introducing one of these to my son every few weeks: we read them together, and then we put it in the car for him to read as we drive--with a twenty minute each way commute to school, he'll happily sit there and work through the short stories, sounding out each word.

So very often when we drive anywhere, the children will sit in the back with a couple of books each, reading aloud--and very often they don't, and they would still much rather have the iPad (let's not pretend we've worked miracles here). But it's been a very exciting leap forward.

Going forward into 2014, my plan is to finish going through our Biff and Chip books and then progress to some phonics and repetition-heavy Dr Seuss (Hop on Pop, Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham) and P D Eastman (Go, Dog, Go!) by way of gradually introducing more sight words. I have a handful of archaic Ladybird "Read It Yourself" titles from my own childhood which should also fit in nicely here. I am very excited for the point when my son can take any book off our shelf and tackle the story inside for himself.

For my daughter, we'll continue with the picture books and the I Spy game (using the letter sound rather than the name), which is her favourite. My son can play properly now, but my daughter is still too young to analyse a word's starting sound. Instead, she just chooses a sound (usually 'b' or 'j') and then we guess appropriate answers until we hit one she likes--lately, she's developed a fondness for just saying 'no' to everything, so we tend to overthrow her turn after half a dozen guesses.

She knows her alphabet pretty well at this point, and likes to look at her name written down, so that's as much as I need from a child not yet three. She however is dying to read and gets insanely jealous of my son's reading time with me--she'll try to mimic him, and is frustrated at not getting it. I sometimes wonder if she'll teach herself to sight read before she can do phonics. We'll see.


I've also been trying to read more myself, having fallen out of the habit since having the children. My main problem is that I don't like being interrupted from a book mid-flow, so I came up with the solution of reading a lot of children's and YA literature this year, which tends to be more accessible for picking up and putting down at a moment's notice. (The Kindle is also useful in this regard.) There is plenty of kidlit that is written intelligently enough to appreciate from an adult viewpoint.

As a bonus, it's given me a greater idea of what is out there for modern children besides Harry Potter and the Hunger Games--though I suppose these will also be outdated by the time my own children get to that stage. My favourite discoveries have been Handbook for Dragon Slayers and The Mysterious Benedict Society.

Anyway, that's that. If you have any other book recommendations for myself or either of my children, please comment!

Five Year Old Birthday Party with Survivor-Style Challenge

Sooo... been awhile. Too much to catch up on now, but my son turned five last week which meant another birthday party. Because my son loves the challenges from the TV show Survivor, I came up with the ambitious idea of creating a Survivor-esque obstacle course for the party.

My original plan was to do it in the garden, since a dry, relatively warm day in December is not uncommon in our part of the world. The weather did not cooperate, so we set it up in the garage instead. We live in a floodzone, so our garage tends to be clear of junk lying around. All we really had to do was move the cars onto the drive.

The other issue is that we expected eight children, and in the end, we only had six. This did pose a problem for a few elements of the course.

I wanted to do a pirate theme and have the challenge be to recover treasure, but my son insisted on a Spiderman party. After a bit of thinking, I came up with the following scenario...

Once all the children had arrived and were playing together, I banged on a cymbal to attract their attention. I had bad news: the Lizard had stolen the pinata! Spiderman had gone after him, but he thought the Lizard had hidden the pinata somewhere close by. Would the children form a team of heroes to infiltrate the Lizard's lair and discover the whereabouts of the pinata? (Somewhat to my relief, yes, yes they would.)

I led them down the stairs and onto the alphabet tiles with firm instructions not to step on the floor because it was actually acid and would burn them. (I did have an explanation ready that I was actually a holographic projection, but none of them questioned my ability to walk on acid.)

Foam tiles were placed around the room at strategic intervals, each one representing a challenge to get to. (Survivor frequently requires all members of a tribe to reach a mat before they can move onto the next stage of a challenge. This seemed to me a welcome way to reduce chaos.)

I explained to them how they were going to get around the course and what they had to do, but they were eager to get started and not really paying attention. In retrospect, I should have stressed a lot more firmly that they needed to work as a team since they all had a tendency to rush on through the challenge without looking behind them.

The tribe will make a bridge to cross to the green mat.  It must then move that bridge to the next mat without any member setting foot on the floor.

By the garage door was a plank of wood, and the children were supposed to use this as a bridge to cross to a mat barely big enough to hold them. Taking care that none of them should fall off, they then had to lift the wood and pass it along the members of their tribe team to use as a bridge to the next mat.

In practice, I probably made that mat a little too big anyway, and with only six of them there, they had no difficulty in staying on it as they moved the bridge across.  After crossing it the second time, they climbed up onto a stage and slid down a cardboard slide into the ballpool.

Each tribe member will climb the platform and slide into the ballpool.

I'd added the slide at the last minute, when I realised that otherwise they were going to jump into the ballpool and get massively bruised since it wasn't deep and there was no padding at the bottom. We didn't really have a large enough piece of cardboard, but I collapsed a box, stuck two cushions behind it and we made do. It wasn't fixed in any way, so my husband (conveniently wearing acid proof shoes) ended up standing next to it and keeping it in place. Ideally, we should have duct-taped the top end to the stage.

(Also ideally, we should have put a blanket or something on the stage for the children to crawl under so that they ended up going down the slide headfirst.)

Inside the ball pool they had to search for eight plastic eggs each containing one puzzle piece.

Buried in the balls are eight eggs containing puzzle pieces.

This had the most problems between concept and execution. I'd used some fairly cheap eggs, since that was what we had to hand, and they came open easily. In one instance, we had to look for a puzzle piece among the balls as well. The children also failed to grasp that they weren't supposed to open the eggs then and there.

I had intended for there to be one egg per child, and once a child had found an egg, they should leave the pool and wait on a mat for the rest of the team to join them. As there were eight eggs between six children, I disregarded this policy, which was a mistake, as the pool was too crowded to search effectively. Finally, I should really have had the basket in the above picture to hand. I had figured that the children could run the rest of the course with an egg in hand each, but when some children had two eggs that got tricky.

All that said, the eggs were not difficult to find but not too easy. This concept could be used for a much smaller ball-pool, with the children kneeling outside as they look through the balls, though in that case, you'd probably want to use eggs that were the same colour/size as the balls to make it trickier.

Once a tribe has found all its eggs, it must go through the tunnel and over the stepping stones.

From the mat on the other side of the pool, they had to crawl through a tunnel and then cross the stepping stones. We had some plastic garden stepping stones which did not skid on the floor, so I used those. For the real budget option, cut up a roll of shelf liner. The hard part here was figuring out spacing that would be challenging but not impossible for a wide range of heights. I underestimated it slightly, so this was easy for all of them.

Once they'd crossed the stepping stones, they faced the Wall.

All tribe-members must then get over the wall and back to their starting mat.

This was simply a table on its side, with cushions for them to land on. The children were told they could not go over headfirst--they had to pull up and swing their legs over. They also had to go one at a time over the middle, as indicated by some tape, so as to avoid the supports on the table. Finally, they were supposed to help each other, as some children would struggle to get up unaided.

This didn't go at all to plan. Because it was at the end of the course, most of the kids were ready to rush back up the stairs with their eggs rather than help the person behind them. Nobody paid any attention to the tape in the chaos, and I ended up having to stand right next to the wall and guide each child over individually. In retrospect, I think having this at the start of the course might have been a better idea, but this is the element that I'd want to rethink thoroughly before attempting again. At the very least, I'd want to use a table that had less metal bars for the children to land on.

Once everybody was over the wall, they took their eggs upstairs and opened them. Once the pieces inside were assembled, they revealed the location of the pinata.

The assembled puzzle will reveal the location of the hidden immunity idol pinata.

For the puzzle, I simply took a picture of the pinata where it was hidden (our cloakroom cupboard), printed it out and cut it into eight pieces. I then folded and rolled these up so that they would fit in the eggs. I was concerned that the pieces might not want to stay flat after this treatment, but this wasn't a problem.

The biggest problem we did have was that some of the children weren't willing to share their piece, stuck to the idea that they had found this egg and thus the contents were theirs. With some encouragement (or outright intervention) we were able to put all the pieces onto one table. What amused me was that, just as on Survivor, we had one child emerge as our puzzle person, and he pretty much put all the pieces together while the others looked on.

Obviously, the birthday boy was the only one who was going to recognise the inside of the cupboard, so he got to 'solve' that final riddle and lead the charge to open the door and retrieve the prize. All children were duly applauded for their team effort in saving the party.

My suspicious son later held me for interrogation, forcing me to admit that it was I, not the Lizard, who had hidden the pinata. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids...

Settling into the School Routine

It's been a few weeks now since both children started back at school: my two year old daughter to the old school, less than five minutes from our house; my four year old son to the new school, twenty minutes from the house. We've managed to get the school run down, and I'm finding it less tedious than I expected.  I download podcasts to listen to when I'm on my own, and on the way there, when it's just me and my son in the car, we talk.

It's a twenty minute stretch when neither of us is distracted by anything else that needs doing or anybody else that wants our attention, and it's an absolute delight.  Mostly we talk about how he's going to be an astronaut one day, (I have instructed him to video-chat me from the space station and told him he'd better not bring me his laundry when he gets back to Earth), but all kinds of topics come up as we discuss things he's trying to get his head around.

For a while now, I've been vaguely worried about how to bond with my son now that he's outgrown the cuddly stage (which my daughter is delightfully ensconced in). As it turned out, all I needed to do was to find some peaceful one-on-one time--though that's no easy feat!

Anyway, my son has settled into his new school, although he is not impressed by having to work in the afternoons as well.  He was absolutely shattered for the first couple of weeks, though that seems to have eased, thankfully.  He's still starving when he gets home, and packing the lunch is an ongoing problem (I can't find an acceptable sandwich alternative to peanut butter, and it's looking like we might just have to do pasta everyday.)

Still, I'm pleased with the level of communication I'm getting from his teachers, and although we're still feeling our way into the school, so to speak, I think we made a good call. I'll be going in to observe in another couple of weeks, and this weekend, I am volunteering to help at a school event.

Surprisingly, the transition was harder on my daughter.  There was a last minute class-change, and now she's in a different room with different teachers and a much bigger class. She misses her old teacher and still doesn't seem to have transferred her affections to her new ones, which is a great shame. On the other hand, she has adjusted to the new routine now, and I was able to observe her last week which reassured me that she was perfectly comfortable in her new environment. She has a 'best friend', and unlike her brother, she likes to talk about her day, bubbling over with the same litany, regardless of what actually happened.

More regrettably, she's sort of dropped her nap. Not completely, but she used to go down without a problem between 12:30 and 1. Now that's not happening, and unfortunately, we have a limited window before we go to pick her brother up. If she's not asleep by 1:30 (and maybe even that would be too late), it's not going to be worth it for her to go to sleep.  So I've given up putting her down and instead she sleeps in the car when we do the afternoon school run.

It's frustrating because she doesn't get to sleep out in the car before we have to wake her, and then she always wakes up insanely cranky. Still, it's working quite well as an interim step, when she's not really ready to drop her nap, but no longer needs the full ninety minutes either. Now I've just got to get used to a daily routine that doesn't include getting my daughter into bed after lunch.

Also to an afternoon routine where our starting location for activities is at my son's school. There are plenty of parks along the route home, so generally we pick a playground, spend an hour there, then head home to tidy up and get dinner sorted. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's surprisingly jarring to be at a different end of town, and I don't feel that we've quite streamlined the process yet.

So to sum up: much change to our daily routine; we're still getting used to it.

Further to my last post on Disney Princesses, we're going to be doing Disney on Ice this weekend, which I'm genuinely excited for, since I've always liked ice-skating and I hear good things about the show. I also hear bad things about the attending merchandise onslaught. Fingers crossed we survive it!

Dealing with Princesses

A month or so ago, my daughter did something I've been dreading since before my children were even conceived: she discovered the Disney Princess aisle in Target.

Why 'Princess' is a Dirty Word

I don't want to be disingenuous here. I adore the Disney movies. When I was three, Snow White was my favourite fictional character, and I distinctly recall telling my grandmother once that I wanted to be a princess when I grew up. I was in my early teens for the 90s Disney Renaissance, and was fascinated by the Disney heroines throughout high school.

However, somewhere between my childhood and the present day, the meaning of princess went from 'fairy tale adventure' to 'pink and fluffy rhinestone tiaras'.  I know I loved the beautiful dresses the princesses wore in my storybooks, but I also loved the adventures--playing princess with my friends in the school playground meant one of us had to play the witch that captured her!  Probably modern day childhood games aren't so different.  At a recent barbeque, my son played pirates with his friend and got into a rousing battle with the (equally enthusiastic) girls playing princesses.

But that's not what the modern Princess franchise (Disney or those emulating it) is about. The roleplay has been lost in favour of dress-up, and yet again women are being marketed based on their cosmetic value--to pre-school girls.

There was a recent internet brouhaha about Merida's entry into the lineup, resulting in a petition to make sure Disney Princess Merida lost some of her glamour and regained Brave Merida's bow. Yet Merida was hardly the first Disney heroine intended as a better role model for young girls than Snow "Someday my prince will come" White. She's certainly not the first to be stripped of those nods to feminism and personality for the sake of marketing.  When was the last time you saw Belle drawn with a book in hand? Even Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty had more personality than their sweetly coy promotional counterparts.

My Noble Intentions

Clearly, as a parent, it's easy for me to boycott the make-up sets and high-heeled shoes--I rarely wear either myself and I certainly don't believe pre-teens should. But I don't want to ban the merchandise outright either.  I knew this day was likely to come, and my intent was always to focus on the movies and original fairy tales... but there's one problem.  At two and a half, my daughter is in the target demographic for the Disney Princess Franchise, but she's too young to sit through the films nor do fairy tales hold her interest.

My son, aged four, does enjoy fairy tales.  I started telling them to him from my own memory when he went through a phase of requesting scary stories, and after reading a picture book version of Disney's Sleeping Beauty, he was excited to watch the film (mostly for the climactic swordfight with the dragon).  I can rest assured that my attempts to associate princesses with adventure is working like a charm on him.

But my toddler daughter? After weeks of study, I have been forced to conclude that to her a princess is a girl wearing a long dress, and it's the attractiveness of the characters, the smiling faces that appeal to her. Disney's marketing department knows exactly what they're doing. In fact, what she really likes doing best with her princesses is naming them, learning each one as carefully and conscientiously as she learned her numbers and shapes.

Practice

That fateful day in the toy aisle, my daughter picked out a magiclip Tiana, with three dresses (all of them ballgowns) and a stand to hang them on. I wasn't thrilled with the theme of the toy, but I liked that Tiana was at least on a similar scale to all our other playsets (Imaginext etc), meaning that there was crossover potential with their other toys.

Despite having a girl and a boy, it's my intention that my children should be able to play together as much as possible, and when we got home I browsed the magiclip line of princesses on Amazon and was gratified to find a selection of actual story-themed playsets as well as the changes of clothing and parties. For our trip around the UK, we got her Snow White with the Seven Dwarf's cottage (now hideously pink-thatched and tending to sparkle) as a portable playset. Come Christmas, I might well buy a non-franchise castle play-set that both children can use as a setting for grander adventures. In the shorter term, I'm eyeing up this cardboard box castle craft.

Amy Mebberson's fabulous yet tragically unofficial Pocket Princesses have proven that there is room for character and story in an absurd little universe where the Disney princesses all hang out with each other. From these I got the inspiration to focus not on story but personality where our princesses were concerned: "Snow White is a princess on the run. Tiana dreams of owning her own restaurant. Together they fight crime!" Or something. Some personality tag to append to the names my daughter is learning.

It's still all a little over my daughter's head, but it's working to keep my son's interest in the princesses, and he's her biggest role model when it comes to playing. I've shown them a few of the Pocket Princess cartoons and they enjoy them (their personal favourite). For the next few years, it looks like we'll be following Pocket Princess canon, and that's just fine with me.

Life Beyond The Animated Throne

Fortunately, Disney Princess remains an appeal rather than an obsession for my daughter, and I'm delighted that she would rather read Charlie and Lola than Sleeping Beauty, would rather watch Lilo and Stitch than Cinderella.  She does like to dress up in her princess outfit--we have the Imaginarium princess dress up trunk, which is thankfully low on pink and high on variety--but she also likes to wear her witch's hat, or a pirate outfit--and she's always game for playing swords with her brother. It seems that I don't need to fear the pink and fluffy rhinestone tiaras just yet...

Dragons make for a better accessory anyway

Decorating the School-bag (Or the things I can do if I put my mind to it)

All this week, my son has been going to orientation at his new school. This has been kind of a pain for me, because he's been going for a couple of hours a day, a.k.a. half the morning, which has made it very awkward to plan activities for myself and my daughter.  On the other hand, I'm pleased the staff are so careful to settle the incoming children before the returners get back.

My son has, to all appearances, really enjoyed it.  I attended a parent Q & A / meet your fellow parents event on Monday, during which my daughter sat on my lap and entertained herself by asking me: "Where are your nipples?" (Currently, nipples are her favourite part of the human anatomy--possibly just because of the sound of the word.) Thank-you, beloved child, for helping me face my fear of embarrassment in social situations.

However the real disaster came earlier on Monday morning, when my son's teacher handed him a brand new schoolbag, told him he could decorate it however he wanted--and then pointed to a little girl's bag by way of example.  Said girl's bag had caterpillars and flowers painted on with glitter and was completely adorable.  My son was captivated at the thought of transforming his bag similarly; I was horrified.

I am not really artistic in any practical way. I'm always nervous of art projects more complicated than 'give child materials and leave them to it.' It's probably no coincidence that my son is rather behind in art himself.  At age four, he's been writing his letters for over a year, but he only recently started actually drawing things, and colouring in our household means scribbling an abstract mass of colour through which the line-art underneath shows through. At any rate, I knew that the visions my son had were beyond us. Besides, we were all out of paint and our glitter glue stock was low.

So when we got home, I got out the markers (felt tips) for my son and told him to draw whatever he wanted, hoping he might surprise me. He let his two year old sister in on the action, and the result was a colourful scribble all over the back of the bag. I told myself that at least this was his creation, not mine, but the truth was that this was a bag he was going to be using for years to come, and it would be distinguished from everybody else's by being... a messy scribble.

I fretted over this for the rest of the week, and eventually came up with a plan.

The Plan

Today, I gave my son a spray bottle of water and a scrubbing brush. We squirted the bag thoroughly and then he scrubbed over the markers, blurring the washable inks across the canvas to create a watercolour effect.

Once that was dry, he picked out a simple picture of a rocket ship from a colouring book and I copied that onto the bag in first pencil, then Sharpie. Then he painted it (I'd restocked on paints)--and for the first time in his life (and without me mentioning it!) he carefully painted each element of the picture a different colour. I helped a little, but mostly filling in the main body of the ship when he got bored and moved onto the wings. I also painted in the flames at the back when he was unsure how to do it.

When that was dry (huzzah for a sunny day!), I broke out our glitter glue.  This was the only time I over-rode his wishes in design, since he just wanted to scribble any colour anywhere, and I insisted that we had to match the colours already on the ship. I was afraid that if I let him have his way, we would end up with the same messy scribble we started with. Besides, I wanted the glitter glue to act as a sealant, since the paint was washable and this bag is going to get rained on at some point.

I'm not entirely sure how you're meant to use glitter glue, but we found that we got the best result by squirting a line and then spreading it with our fingers.

The final result:

It's flying past a nebula or something...

It's not Monet, and I still worry about what's going to happen when it rains, but this is, I feel, a bag he can be proud of for the next few years (and an artwork that we can gladly keep in the memory box once he's done with the bag). I am tremendously proud of him for putting so much care into it--and have resolved to be less scared of doing art with the children going forward.

I am, however, already worrying about what we can put on my daughter's bag when she joins the school next year...

For the Father-to-be from the Mother-that's-been

Although this is addressed to fathers to be in general, this is written for a guy I know online expecting his first child—because I’m sure that by this point of his wife’s pregnancy, there is nothing he wants more than more advice.

There is a lot of advice out there on babies and new parenthood, yet most of it flows between members of the same gender. Fathers counsel fathers and mothers counsel each other—often with a surprising lack of sympathy for their partners. So here is a mother’s take on what the new father should be prepared for. (Based on the entirely anecdotal evidence of five years of conversations with male friends—which makes it definitive!)


The Baby
I’m going to assume that you’ve done your research here and have a good idea of what to expect from your newborn. You’ve also probably heard numerous times that you can’t really know what it’s like until you experience it for yourself. It’s not that anything’s going to happen that you don’t expect (maybe), it’s more that you can’t know how you will deal with it 24/7.

To put it another way, before the birth you’re saying: “OK, so babies cry and they make a mess.” After the birth, you’re saying: “OH MY GOD! BABIES CRY AND THEY MAKE A MESS!” The good news is that you do go back to: “OK, so babies cry and they make a mess.” It just might take a couple of months.

The biggest transition here is adjusting from being a couple to being a family—knowing that your priorities will have to change doesn’t make the shift easy. However, the best encouragement I ever received came from a father friend: “It just keeps getting better.” From the first smile around eight weeks to the first time you successfully soothe their tears away to their first light sabre battle… Babies bloom into pure awesome.


The Emotions

May I refer you to a phrase coined by Glumbunny’s sister-in-law? You will be FUCKING DEPRESSED.

It’s not necessarily postpartum depression, which is its own animal, but wild bouts of despair are a normal state for a new parent. Mothers do have it worse, what with the hormones, physical recovery, lactation and body-image issues, but that doesn’t mean that Dads don’t get totally miserable too. Both parents are sleep deprived, stressed and suffering from a lack of confidence.

Perhaps the least expected parental emotion is guilt. Guilt over not filling your baby’s every waking hour with stimulation during this vital infancy stage. Guilt that you are doing the things you swore you would never do before having the child. Guilt that you never even thought of doing all the cool kid-friendly activities that appear in photographs on your Facebook feed. Guilt that you are neglecting your career, hobbies and loved ones for the baby. (Get ready for that self-loathing moment when your faithful pet nudges you for attention, and you push it away because you can’t cater to the demands of yet another living thing.)

Fathers feel an added layer of helplessness since the baby is more likely to calm down for Mum—if nothing else men lack naturally occurring pacifiers on their chests. Also, when it comes down to it, it’s Dad who’s got to suck it up and support the mother as she deals with those extra elements. And that extra responsibility means extra stress, which might just be the final straw on some days. In other words, have a backup support system ready.

I’m not trying to give you prepartum depression, but I don’t want to sugarcoat this either. This is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to you—and it’s going to be agonisingly difficult. People will remind you to enjoy every moment because it goes by so fast, but it’s both normal and OK to have days where you just can’t.

On the plus side, this is what’s going to make you into the man you’ll be a year from now.

That was my attempt at inspiration. Moving on...

There will also be days where you get this fatherhood thing down.

The Relationship

I remember before the birth of my first child, I swore to myself that I would not be the kind of woman who neglects her husband for her child. After the birth, my husband and I both had a bitter laugh over that one.

The view of mothers neglecting fathers once the baby comes along is a male-driven one. From the maternal perspective, I deeply resented the fact that I never came first: I felt like I was spending all my time caring for the baby, cats, husband, and nobody took the time to care for me. This perception may have been mildly influenced by sleep deprivation...

Meanwhile, my husband had to deal with my hormonal urges—not the good (sexy) kind, but the kind where if the baby cried, I had to be the in the same room. It didn’t matter if I knew my husband was taking him in order to give me a break, it didn’t matter that I believed my husband was perfectly capable, it didn’t even matter that I wanted to stay in bed. All that mattered was that, as the mother, I felt morally obliged to be present for my child’s misery. You can imagine how this helped my husband's paternal self-esteem.

Chances are, you and the mother have talked about how you will balance the workload (for both baby and house) after the birth. Try and revisit that every couple of weeks, maybe even more frequently, with both of you being completely honest about what's hitting you hardest. There isn’t going to be a perfect balance, but you will improve. (Pro-tip: if I was doing the first baby over again, I’d ask my husband to make sure I ate breakfast every day—I often found that it was lunchtime and I still hadn’t eaten anything.)

The general consensus seems to be that having a baby is a huge strain on the relationship, with the trite assurance that you’ll come out stronger for it. I can't swear to that, but when it comes down to it, remember you’re both on the same side here, comrades in the trenches. The real enemy is the little sod screaming from the crib at 3am.


The Mother

So how will your beloved partner change physically after the birth? It depends on a lot of variables: scars, size and continence are all going to vary hugely from woman to woman and birth to birth.

The most immediate mystery is the post-partum belly which is round and soft: it deflates with the uterus over the course of a week or so, but the added flesh and stretch marks remain—and wrinkles of loose skin may join them. Those wrinkles, which appeared after my second birth, are the feature of my maternal body that most bothers me, and it took me a long time to look at them in the mirror without wincing.

There’s a lot of fuss about getting back into shape after the birth, and clearly it’s the healthy thing to do, but conventional mother wisdom says that it took nine months for the body to get that way—allow at least nine months to get it back (really a year, since she can’t do much about it straight after the birth). And some elements of her body will never be the same. (That might be breasts, tummy, ribcage, genitals… it’s life’s least savoury roulette wheel.)

Part of the adjustment for both you and your partner will be in accepting the flaws of the maternal body. Check out Jade Beall's Beautiful Body Project, which seeks to demystify the postpartum body.  Different women place different priorities on regaining their old figures, but at least in the short term, they’re going to be very changed from pre-pregnancy.

Her new body really shouldn’t bother you, but if it does, bear in mind she’s probably more upset about it than you are. Relax and embrace it… literally. Getting back in shape is good, but rediscovering her sexiness is vital, and that's something you can definitely help her with.

From A Beautiful Body Project

The Sex

It might strike you as a clichéd stereotype that a guide for fathers should talk about sex, but as with the postpartum body, I feel that this is something that needs to be talked about more openly. There is not enough information on what sex is like after childbirth out there—all I had was a few private warnings from a friend who was a month ahead of me in postpartum recovery.

Current American medical advice for vaginal deliveries is no intercourse for six weeks after the birth to allow time for everything to heal. This does not mean that after six weeks, everything is going to be back to normal down there. The area around the vagina is still tender and (especially if your partner is breastfeeding) very dry. Use lubricant, go gently and be aware that she’ll be sore afterwards.

The bad news is that this will be the status quo for months. Breast-feeding hormones are not conducive to good sex—but do not be that guy who encourages his wife to quit breastfeeding to better his sex life. Even after the tenderness goes away, there are still going to be sore points wherever she has stitches—fortunately, this isn’t likely to be enough pain to detract from the sexual experience and this should also disappear within a year.

Will you feel any changes? OK… I’m not really in a position to debunk the theory that after popping out a baby, a woman’s vagina is somehow ‘loose’. Funnily enough, this isn’t something the men of my acquaintance talk about (to me). However, from the limited discussion I have heard on this topic, it seems you needn’t worry. It’s not like you can do a direct before and after comparison anyway, but chances are you won’t notice a difference. (And of course, that kind of thing doesn’t really matter to you, does it?)

The big elephant in the room is the frequency of the sex… and that’s where I don’t have good news. Your average new mother is not feeling a lot of interest in sex in the first place—and not particularly enjoying it when she has it. It does, I am sorry to say, become just another thing on an overwhelming To Do List, and that leaves you at the mercy of her priorities.

I’ve known several women who just stopped having sex after the birth of their child, with this state of affairs lasting for a year or more. I was always of the school of thought that my husband and I needed that intimate bonding moment, that it was worth finding time for… yet my lack of enthusiasm for the actual act caused its own strain between us.

It’s tough on the father, not just because your hormones are still focused on conception, but because it’s tough to see that your sexual partner has effectively lost interest in you. That’s a crisis of self-confidence to rival the mother’s body-image struggles. And like that, it’s something that both partners are going to have to understand and work through together. It will improve, but it’s definitely a long-term project.

Oh, and one last thing… Have you ever felt that the beauty of a long-term relationship is that you have memorised the map of your partner’s particular turn-ons? Yeah, those might change after the birth too. Think of it as Mother Nature’s unnecessarily vicious little joke.

Don't forget all the obstacles between the two of you and alone-time.

So that is the cold hard truth of new fatherhood. That is what you need to brace yourself for. Now relax, because there is also plenty of exultation ahead and incredible amounts of love, but I’ll let you discover that for yourself. (We're going spoiler-free on the good stuff!) Good luck to you for the next few months and congratulations for the rest of your life… This is, hands down, the best thing you’ve ever done.