I’m not big on the whole concept of “friends”, I find a handful of people in your life is all you need.  I wouldn’t call myself a true Loner because all through school I had friends, I just preferred my own company on the weekends… and the company of my Sega Master System!!!   (Gamers RULE) Now that I’m heading towards 33 I still enjoy a quiet weekend and the company of my Nintendo Wii.  I suspect that when I’ve got one foot in the grave I’ll still enjoy the silence of a library, good science fiction and the latest gaming experience… come on hologram gaming!!!  What I’m getting at is that way back when I was a child my personality predicted my future and I don’t think we really wander off track from our core traits.  Now looking at my own kids (aged 8 & 10 this year) I see the love of animals in both of them which will surely follow them throughout their lives.  I see the love of gaming in Claire but not Natalie, I see someone who sees things in black and white (Claire) and someone who sees shades of Grey everywhere (Natalie). I see great creative/ imaginary skills in both of them (that comes from their father) and I sure hope the schooling system doesn’t completely bash that out of them.  There are so many little things that I see now in them which I know is never going to leave them.  Some things Natalie says often leaves me wondering if she isn’t a bit of a Loner, but if she is… who cares? The world needs all sorts, well maybe not murderers and psychopaths. What I want to know is, where do these core personality traits come from?  It’s more than just home environment/nurturing parents etc… I really think the “spirit” of a person is more than just airy fairy whack job talk. Call it “conscience”, “soul”, whatever but behind every newborn babies eyes there’s a blueprint already set up… the core personality traits if you will.

Often the kids and I will play eye spy while driving and every now and then something will happen that we just don’t expect. Such as a ute we spotted the other day, nothing unusual there but then all of a sudden a little Shih Tzu popped it’s head up to catch the wind in it’s face. It just looked so ridiculous and completely unsafe. I have no idea why the dog wasn’t in the cabin, especially since there were no passengers and it was a 4 door ute.  Eye Spy a poor little dog!

There are some really weird names around these days and I wonder if the parents ever took a moment to think about the long term consequences of their name choice? Some of the things that tick me off in baby naming are:

* naming a child after a piece of fruit

* Sir names given as first names

* Repetition in names IE John Johnson or Grace Grace

* Poor combinations IE Willie Stroker

* Names that AREN’T names IE Rumor & Scout

* Long drawn out embarrassing names IE” Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii”  Don’t believe me?  Here’s the link to a news article explaining how the 9 year old won a court case allowing her to legally change her name.

* Objects as names ie Tree, Leaf

I don’t mind unisex names but something that I really find cruel is giving names that don’t match the babies sex.  For example there is a family at my kids school with four children, their names being: Troy, Trinity, Natalie and Elroy.  That would be fine except for the fact that Troy is a girl and Trinity is a boy!  I don’t know what the parents were thinking when they named those two oldest kids but I just feel so sorry for them.  They are nice kids and thanks to their parents lack of THINKING when choosing names they are now going to get odd looks and whispered giggles for the rest of their lives.

My nephew is starting half a day a week at daycare today.  I have had him three days a week for the past three and a half years and as an only child he has really benefited from the interaction with my own children. However now that he is 4 years and 2 months of age he is a big boy and I’m sure he will enjoy playing with kids his own age.  It’s no secret that I am VERY anti-daycare and I make no apologies for my view but I realise that my oldest child was in pre-school at 4 so perhaps with the new cut off ages for prep this part time pre-prep daycare option is quite a good thing. Of course you need to be able to pay for the service and I remember when my youngest got a place in a pre-prep program back in 2007 and I had to turn it down.  The fee of $15 a day was simply impossible for us to come up with, thank God those days are behind us! I was quite concerned that my sister would find the cost of this pre-prep a real struggle as well but how wrong I was.  Thanks to a governments rebate system my sister only has an out of pocket expense of 5 cents an hour… yep 5 cents!  Nice to know the government thinks I’m worth 60 cents a day…yay for me!

POST SCRIPT:  I have just found out that my sister doesn’t qualify for the governments JET programe so now instead of an out of pocket expense of just 60 cents a day she has to pay $6.50… my value just skyrocketed…double yay for me!

I loved Mary Poppins when I was a kid and my girls have now discovered that they enjoy this wonderful tale as well.  Singing, dancing, cartoon characters and of course that tongue twister made up word:

Supercalafragalisticexpealadotious

My eight year old tried to spit that monstrous word out and I can assure you it wasn’t easy for her.  It sounded as if she was chocking on a hairball while speaking dutch.  I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it though, what child doesn’t?  Mary Poppins really is a timeless classic and I hope it lives on forever!

I was absolutely shocked when my eight year old told me that a girl in her class had her periods, that seems awfully young to me!  At eight I remember playing farms with my animal figurines and really enjoying imagination play by myself. Menstruation was the furthest thing from my mind and tampons were those funny looking things in my mothers bag, the things I so often wished were lollies!  That of course is due to my ‘sweet tooth’ and has nothing at all to do with this topic… so I’ll get back on track now.  Out of curiosity I Googled the average age of a girls first period and got the answer of twelve, now that’s more like it!  I feel as if our family has shifted maturity levels lately but I wasn’t quite ready for periods and boys and God help me… dating.  Hopefully I have a few more years of giggles and innocence before moving on to puberty blues.

The other day I was pulled from my sleep (on a sleep in weekend) at what seemed like the crack of dawn by the neighbours kid screaming.  These kids scream ALL day and this early morning screaming was not amusing!  It just went on and on and on ” mum… MUUUUUM… MMMMMMMUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYY” and on and on it went.  After 5 minutes of constant screaming I started to think that maybe something was wrong.  These particular neighbours don’t talk to anyone in the street and all my other neighbours have said that they know nothing about them.  With all the crime shows I watch my mind started to run away with ideas of  domestic violence, murder and suicide. Surely a responsible parent would have calmed the child down by now? On and on the screaming went, there would be no sleeping in for us that morning.  After 15 minutes of this child screaming for his mother I turned to Luke and said “maybe they practice controlled crying?” to which he responded with “I’ll jump the fence and practice controlled beating!”  Sounded like a good idea to me.

When I was young my father took me to a chess club and I really enjoyed it even though I really wasn’t that good.  Now my eight year old enjoys playing the game however she plays on the computer without the pressure of a chess clock and round rotations.   I walked into the room while she was playing and overheard her saying “Prawn takes…” My laughing stopped her midsentence and I took the opportunity to remind her that the piece was in fact a PAWN not a crustation.

I’m not an AC/DC fan but my husband does enjoy a few of their songs so it’s only natural that our children have gravitated toward AC/DC as well.  They especially like the “T.N.T” song.  Add to this the academic lifestyle and I was not at all surprised to hear my eight year old singing “P.H.D…I’m a power load… P.H.D… Watch me explode”.

My seven year old just performed in a class play for us parents and I have to say… it sucked!  The kids were great but the school doesn’t have an enclosed hall or even a drama room so they performed out on the concrete slab near the drinking fountains.  We were under a tin roof straining to hear the children perform when it started to rain.  At this point the children were singing “Puff the magic dragon” and the stereo kept cutting out but the kids continued on as if nothing was wrong.  However something was wrong and when Luke pointed out the problem I could hardly believe it.  There was an extention cord running from a storage room to the cd player and it was in the open being rainned on.  It got worse though because it wasn’t just one ten meter extention cord it was three or four extention cords all joined up leaving two joined sections sitting in water on the concrete!  No wonder the cd player kept cutting out.  Obviously public schools have such a tight budget that health and safety issues get pushed aside.  If this performance was done in a private school I’m sure they would have been in a drama room performing on stage with lights and an audio set up that wasn’t likely to electrocute someone.