In the Wars

Today both Levi and I were in the wars.  Levi was playing on the new exercise bike, which he loves but he was getting tired tonight.  He slipped and whacked himself, both on the back of the leg and also right where Funniest Home Videos would have thought it was really funny.  Levi, however, saw less humour in the situation.  I was a bit with him as he did actually hit hard enough to rip off skin.  Suffice to say there were many tears and after I put cream on it he finally went to sleep.

I had a bit of a different fall and it may well have unexpectedly good consequences.  It is still impossibly humid here and raining on and off, so every surface has a layer of mould or green slime on it.  If you don't pay attention all the time, green mould is incredibly slippery.  So when I was picking up Levi from After School Care today, I slipped on the slime and landed hard on my right hand and knee.  That right thumb has been sore since I tore a ligament sledding.  It has had significantly reduced movement and the strength is really low.  It was getting to where I was going to have to do some thing about it.  When I fell, I felt something in my thumb break and it hurt like you wouldn't believe.  It has swollen back up again and is sore like the first couple of weeks of the injury, but it works!  I think I must has ripped apart an adhesion that was holding it back.  Even swollen and sore, I have more strength and more movement than I have had for about 2 months.  I am excited to see what it will look like in a few days when the swelling goes down.  I think I was very lucky.  That said I had better go and clean up my knee. 

On the news now, they are talking of all the animals that need carers because their homes and/or parents have been destroyed by flooding/cyclones/fire/whatever else Australia dreams up.  Other critters in the wars.  My Mum is going to try to look after baby echidnas (puggles - what baby echidnas are called).

Are these not the cutest things you have ever seen!  This is not ours yet but I really hope we can have one to love on for a while.  It would shed a bit of positive light into what has been a gruelling few months for everyone.  Jo would be perfect too.  She has lots of time and can lavish love on this little spiky thing!

Why do we lose teeth?

Tonight Levi cried because he was losing teeth.  Now I thought he would be all excited and wriggle his teeth until they came out early.  No, he cried because he wanted to keep them all.  I had to explain that he didn't have any choice, and that regardless of if he did or didn't wriggle them, they were coming out.  I actually just think he was tired and he was trying to find something to help put him to sleep.  Poor little guy.  I let him read his book until he fell asleep. 

Natural disasters continue to plague this poor land.  Now with bushfires in Perth, all of the states have at least one major disaster to deal with.  

I think it is time for the weather to settle down a bit but I think we are 3 months off being out of the woods.  If nothing else it would be lovely for the humidity to drop below 80% 

Doing nothing

Today we did nothing.  Really!  Nothing!!  We got up at the usual time and went to swimming practice.  Levi's really good teacher is back after having her little girl and I was very pleased to see her.  She knows Levi well and only pushed him over the edge once.  She raised her voice to him once and then after hysterical crying for the rest of the lesson, she hasn't done it again.  I can't believe how sensitive he is some times.  Anyway, she seems to be able to get the best out of him and the replacement never really pushed him very hard. 

Then we did nothing.  And Boy did we need it.  I thought about going out and finishing the Weed Whacking.  I thought about mowing.  I even thought about harvesting the peanuts.  We did nothing.  I think it had to do with the 32 degree (90F) heat coupled with the 89% humidity.  You start to sweat just walking outside, let alone actually trying to do something.  For about a minute the humidity went to 100% but the rain did nothing to cool anything off.  Frankly it got worse.

Tonight when Levi went to bed he said: (Have I said how much I love what Levi thinks about as he goes to sleep).  Anyway he said:

"Mum, Who invented numbers?"

I said; " I don't know, honey, probably someone counting sheep".  So he didn't get the joke about falling asleep but I didn't really expect him to and I think at the moment at least I just say them to keep me amused. 

He said; "That would make sense, because if they had 10 cows at night and only 8 in the morning, they would know they were looking for 2 cows"

So I am not worried about his math skills ..... or his logic

Parenting and thoughts of Inadequacy

Sleepovers are Rites of Passages for kids and Levi's went really well.  First off Ty's family picked him up from school and they went to play Mini Golf.  He loved it and then they went home and camped out on the deck.  Levi didn't really even ask for me which was great.  They went to bed late and woke up at the crack of dawn but they loved playing so much that I brought Ty home in the morn and they played all day as well.  I attacked weeds with the Weed Whacker until I got tired (and the motor got too hot and wouldn't restart).

Ty's parents and I talked when I went to pick him up.  They loved having him and are going to take Levi one afternoon a week which will reduce his time at after school care.  She said that they were going to invite a couple of kids but one of the other mothers said that if Levi was going then she didn't want to because Levi is a "bad influence".  Now regardless of how much that makes me want to jump up and beat someone, I have to think really hard.  The mother has a kid that I see as a fairly spoiled, bossy little guy that can't seem to do any wrong in his mother's eyes.  Now if I am looking really hard at Levi, maybe he could be a fairly spoiled, bossy little guy as well, but at least I recognize it.  But even after all of that, really how bad an influence can any 5 year old be?  I mean really!

Maybe I can forgive the slight to Levi's character but it is a little difficult to forgive the broadcasting of that to other families that are my and Levi's friends.  I told Ty's parents that the last thing that I wanted them to have to do was to choose a side over anything let alone something so ridiculously petty.  At least all the classes were split up, so they are in different classes.  I wouldn't do anything anyway.  It won't hurt Levi.  It will hurt me but I am big enough and ugly enough to be the parent.  But I will watch.  And I will have a low threshold for it actually impacting Levi.  Really they are all 5 or 6.  It is not like they are all going to be friends for life or anything.  I mean how many people even remember friends they had in Grade 1.  I see the early years of school as the place to learn things like getting along with other kids and working out differences

It is making me look harder at Levi and try to decide if perhaps the deluded parent is actually me.  Maybe I think he can do wrong but I don't set enough store by it.  Maybe I should be more controlling but even in the cold light of day I think it is nuts. 

How is he possibly able to learn anything if I show him how all the time? 

How can he possibly learn reasoning if I impose adult reasoning all the time? 

How can he learn to value truth without at some point feeling the repercussions of a lie? 

How is he supposed to mature if he never has to face up to any consequences or mistakes?

OK I am done! 

Now for happier stuff.  Our creek has changed since the big flood!



 Now it has a beautiful place to swim under the trees where the first little rapid is.  The kids can get in and it is incredibly safe for all out bigger kids.   Ruby and her family and Ty's family all went down for a dip after the hot, humidity that was the day.  The kids played in the water and threw rocks.  They were so happy and relaxed.  It did my heart good to watch them.  They are so lovely together.  At one point Ruby was having trouble getting across the stream and I when I let Levi know he came running over and held her hand until she was across safely.  It was a lovely afternoon!

Then tonight just when I thought it wasn't possible to love that little man more he said to me: 

"Mum, you know how I think you are the best, all the other kids must think their mother's are the best!"

I told him he was right. (Not until after there was a little pang in my heart for all those little kids out there for whom that is not true)

"So you might not be the best of all, but you will always be the best to me!"

Yes he's right.  I might not be the best mother ever but as long as he thinks that I am doing OK, that's sweet with me! 

All By Myself

Tonight I am by myself.  Well, now I am.  Levi is on his first real sleepover at Ty's house and so I can go to bed and sleep in until I actually wake up by myself.  It means that I might actually get to sleep past the crack of dawn.  I am so excited I can barely sleep!  Just Kidding!

It will be interesting if he happily stays there all night.  I am hoping that he will.  It is a right of passage that will be fun to remember.

I am off to bed!

Surviving the storm

Well, Yasi hit last night.  I think all of Queensland stayed up to watch and hope.  The big towns of Far North Queensland but there are certainly little towns that copped it.  Mission Beach, that perfect, beautiful, dreamy little town has been hammered.  Carwell, hammered.  Tully is looking at major destruction of at least 1/3, likely 1/2 of all the structures in town.  We stay warm and dry and muggy.  The statistic that blew my mind was the one where they said Yasi generated enough power in a day to power the entire world for a year!

It is inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between Katrina and Yasi.  I think that as storms themselves they were fairly comparable but the most obvious difference is the difference in the loss of life.  Katrina lost 1800+ lives and Yasi is actually up a few lives.  Three babies were born.  two in Innisfail and one in an evacuation shelter in Cairns.  The parents are all resisting the obvious and are not naming their babies 'Yasi', although I think I would have.  The biggest difference that I see is the evacuation procedures.  New Orleans just wasn't evacuated in time!  That and it's a bigger city, but I think that there would be some loss of life here if towns like Carwell and Mission Beach weren't almost totally deserted by the time the cyclone hit.  Cairns had completely airlifted the entire Cairns Base Hospital, leaving only ER staff. 

I was wavering in regards to Anna Bligh, but she has redeemed herself.  She was brilliant in the last few days.  She got less sleep than all of us.  She spoke directly to us all and never had to read off notes.  She deferred to people who knew more when she needed to.  There is a fleet of helicopters out of harms way but still waiting to help.

I am proud of how this was handled.  I am sorry that the destruction was so severe.  I am sorry bananas will cost $20 a kilo for about 3 years.  I am amazed that Queensland got out of this without losing a life.....yet. 

But most of all, I am amazed that they didn't call that little girl Yasi

Heat and Cyclones

It is incredibly hot here at the moment and because of the standing water around it is also much more humid than it is normally.  On top of that we are all bracing for another weather onslaught, none more than Cairns.  Cyclones are funny things, just yesterday they were predicting Townsville and now Cairns has been evacuated.  They flew out all the patients from Cairns Base Hospital this afternoon and by tomorrow, Cairns will be battened down and will be a ghost town.  I hope that they all come through OK.  I hope that the families up there can keep dry!

Here is the prediction map.  Unfortunately it is huge and they are predicting up to 1.5 metres of rain.  Some of that will be felt in places that have not dried out from the last dumping.  Again, I hope that they are prepared, and that they get out of it with a few ripped up trees.  However, I fear that at Category 4, that will not be the case.  Good luck my friends, I will be thinking of you at 1am Thursday morning!