Sport pt 2

There's a small post-script to the last entry on sport. Yesterday was D's rugby game. The opposition were from a country town about an hour away. They were also on the top of the ladder. They turned up with not enough players, so in order for them not to forfeit, some of our boys played on their team. I'm not sure if they were drafted, or if the coach took volunteers, but D'Arcy was one of the ones to play for them. His attitude to it was a bit odd, in that he said afterwards that he tried to sabotage them. I don't think much that he could do would influence the result, as he's really still pretty clueless about the game. In the end, his school team won, but not by a great margin, and the boys who played for the other team got a 'courage award'. So we'll see if that has any effect on how he feels about the game in general. I couldn't stay to watch, as E had a birthday party to attend, and the beloved had to stay home and supervise the electricity company put our power underground (and drive over our garden tap with the cherry-picker, as it turned out, but they fixed it by the time we got home from the party).

And now, the beloved has gone to the US for 2 weeks for some work, but he's bringing his mother back for another visit. She hasn't beebn for a while, as funds were too tight last year to get her over, so it'll be good for her to see the boys again!

Sport

D'Arcy decided to play rugby at his new school for the winter. It was a pretty interesting decision on his part I thought. He's not really built for rugby, being not very tall and under 30 kilos. He'd played basketball for a few years with a local club, and convinced a friend to join with him, but last season he got quite jaded with it, complaining that the other boys "never pass me the ball". So he decided to give that up, and spurred on by eagerness by his new peer group at school, and the fact that his teacher is also arugby player, he wanted to give it a go. Of course now, about half way through the season he's over it. "The other boys never pass me the ball, and some of the others have METAL STUDS". Part of me wants him to man up and deal with it, and the other part wants me to get him away from such physical danger (especially after hearing some of the stuff that's been in the media recently about football players of all codes, and long-term brain damage). I've ended up saying to him that he should stick it out for this season and then we'll reassess. He doesn't want to go back to basketball, but I think playing some kind of sport is useful, both for the physical aspect, but also the social. I'm hoping that it will help him forge bonds with his new peers, but maybe I'm wrong. The other thing, I guess, is that at his old school he was in the chess club. My dad is a keen chess player, and encouraged him to learn, and then join the club. At the end of his time at the old school, he'd had enough "I always lose" and it's true that he'd gone from being on the top of the ladder to close to the bottom. I'm not quite sure how or why that had happened, possibly not enough one-one-one tuition, but whatever the reason, he didn't want to join the chess club at the new school "because they meet at recess time, and I already do library duty that day at lunch, and I'd basically have no free time"... I don't know, am I being unreasonably pushy in wanting him to do club things?

Birthday

IMG_0065, a photo by Crit Chicken on Flickr.

Oh dear, poor neglected blog. It's been a busy time since March, mainly dogged by sickness as it turns out, and it's not over yet. Erik and I went to a great folk festival over Easter, and D'Arcy came for a few days when he wasn't sick or bored. He's been variously sick (and bored) ever since - mostly with colds and other URTIs, enough that he's had two and a half weeks off school in the last month. He was finally well enough yesterday that we got him the first round of his vaccination. He got 4 shots - 2 in each arm, and of course he was a legend. Didn't flinch at all. His arms are pretty sore today - especially the one that got the tetanus shot. In all he got: Meningicoccal; tetanus/diphtheria; measles/mumps/rubella; and polio. Next round in a month is more MMR and Polio, and maybe chicken pox, though I'm not all that keen on that one. My arm swelled up mightily when I got it 18 months ago, and E threw up after his (he's not normally a spewy child, and had had no reactions to any other vaccines)

Having had two weeks off school D was surprisingly keen to get back yesterday after his shots, even though the nurse suggested the day off. His class were giving presentations on a piece of homework that he'd been really keen to do, even though he was sick the week before. Their task, in line with their current unit for study, was to make a replica house/dwelling from the Victorian goldfields of the 1850s. D'Arcy had made a tent-frame, and I helped him use my hand-crank sewing machine to make the cover for it, and he also made a tiny pair of trousers for the miner to wear, that were stored in a little chest he'd made out of cardboard. He's really been enjoying this unit, which is not jsut about gold, but money in general. They've been doing a role play thing where they are miners looking for gold, and they get play money that they can spend to increase their chances (buying a shovel or a bucket, or a gold pan) or lose by being robbed - another teacher was a bushranger a few weeks ago and robbed all the kids, they thought it was great, and made "wanted" posters. They also seem to do quite a lot of sharing of resources, which is nice. D'Arcy often says when I pick him up that he gave his shovel to a friend who didn't have one, or that someone gave him five pounds. His presentation went really well, the mark the kids get is assigned by the teacher, but he takes into account what the kids reckon, so D got a much needed confidence boost from that.

It was Erik's birthday last week, and between the sickness (him, me, and D) and the international travel (the beloved went to Singapore for a few days for a conference) we decided to ignore it until today. Erik woke up in the night with a fever and a lovely cough, so we had to downgrade our celebrations from a party with friends and family to a party with family and one friend who wasn't too worried about getting sick. The boys had a nice time together, and D'Arcy was very helpful making fairy bread and blowing up balloons. The mother of the friend had wonderfully volunteered to make a cake for me to ice. My oven is notoriously dodgy, as are my cake making skills at the moment, for reasons I don't quite understand. She produced a lovey even flat butter cake for me to cut and ice as I needed. And I did need. Erik is currently obsessed with a couple of things, one of which is the Aardman movies, espeically The Curse of the Were-Rabbit so he was very keen to have a "big monster rabbit cake". I think I did OK with the icing job. I'm not known for my artistic skills so i was at least pleased that it was recognisable as the "big monster rabbit". Erik was very keen to eat the eyes, but I managed to persuade him to eat a hand instead. It was a yummy cake, and Erik even at some of it, instead of just licking off the icing as toddlers are wont to do.

The beloved had bought him a "Real Buzz (Lightyear)" in Singapore, and he was totally thrilled with it, to the extent that he refused to have his afternoon nap today because it meant that he couldn't play with Buzz. Buzz had a sandwich with hummus for lunch with Erik, and has not really been put down since. It's been really nice having a low-key birthday. I tend to want to go over the top for both of them, but he's been perfectly happy with this arrangement, and I hope it's been useful for D to see that birthdays can be small and quiet.




At the beginning of the year I joined a popular weight-loss group with the friend who made E's cake. She's since given up, but I'm still going. I've lost 13 kilos so far and feeling so much better for it. I've still got a few more to go, I'm not quite at pre-Erik weight, but I can see that it's achievable at least. It really was one of those things when I got to the first meeting and stepped on the scales for the first time of "wow, how did I get that heavy?" but losing it hasn't been that hard. Much easier than I was expecting. I need to think about how to exercise with a toddler and a husband who is either away or at work a lot of the time. I'm not coming up with anything other than aerobics in my loungeroom on the days when Erik deigns to have a sleep, which is getting boring. Also, having been sick recently, I have no energy for anything at all, so I'd better get my act together or I'll be putting those 13k back on again!

So, summer has been and gone, such as it was, though you won't hear me complaining about the lack of heat. It was a very mild one, and very wet! We've had to continue to mow the lawn regularly, and the tomatoes took ages to ripen, though once they did they were pretty good. We're right in the zuch glut, and the beloved has been away, so they've got away from me rather. When he's here, we grill them on the BBQ, which I reckon is the best way to do them, if you're not going to put them under the griller with cheese on them. We've had a couple of enormous one where I didn't check them for two days (it was raining) and when I looked again they'd taken over the garden!

D is settling into his new school. It's taking a while, but I think it will be OK - he seems to be making friends fairly well. Today was the school fair, and it was really nice to see how many kids said "hi D'Arcy" as they saw him. he spent most of the day hanging out with one boy in particular, although he's not one I've heard of already. The school is a lot more disciplined than his old one (public/private dichotomy). He's already worried about getting a detention for anything from forgetting his hat to failing to do his homework to rudeness and insubordination. It does seem to be helping his 'responsibility' issues. He's been notoriously bad at giving a shit in general - losing clothes, forgetting to pick up homework, failing to do homework, apalling handwriting...Last week when he came here from his dad's he'd actually started his homework (that he got two days earlier) and was up-to-date with most of it! It still looked like he'd scrumpled it into a little ball and taken it in the bath, but it was done! He's also been losing teeth at a great rate (2 in two weeks, one of which was a molar) but still believes (kind of) in the tooth fairy. he was very disppointed when "she forgot to come" for the second one. She remembered the next night though.
He's having a break from basketball for the winter season, in favour of rugby (which he's never played before). We'll see. He's not really built for contact sports, but he's keen to give it a go, fuelled largely I think by his new peer group and his respect for his teacher, who coaches the under 10 boys (so not D) and talks it up, it would seem. This 'respect for his teacher' thing is a good development. He didn't think much of his teachers at the old school, and one of them (who he had twice) actively disliked him. I suspect his dad and step-mum were fairly openly critical of them and that rubbed off on D too.

Erik is going well. He likes going to drop off and pick up D, we usually play on the play equiment for a while, as we wait for the traffic to calm down beofre we head home in the mornings, or get a hot chocolate at the school cafe (yes, the school has its own cafe!).

Interesting

Austracantha minax
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken

My friend on facebook informs me that this is Austracantha minax and google supports that suggestion. S/he ws hanging from the washing line where it's badly bent towards the ground courtesy of young Mr D.

Lots going on. The whooping cough is subsiding. E still has a spectacular cough, though it's not as chesty as D's. E's nasal swab came back negative, but we gave him anti-biotics just in case, as he had a cough. The beloved's came back positive, and so he also had anti-biotics and then got on a plane to Paris for a conference in Toulouse. No cough from him though. My tests were all negative, so I got a booster shot that gave me a sore arm and I slept funny on it, which made my shoulder and neck seize up like nobody's business. Then it was Christmas. Erik had a good time, D'Arcy was reasonably grumpy, but managed to snap out of it by the afternoon, when we went to my mum's house for a late lunch.

It's been raining and our water restrictions have been relaxed, so I've finally managed to plant some vegetables. I've put in tomatoes, basil, zucchinis and chillies, the asparagus has come back, along with some feral potatoes, and I put in a few strawberries too. So far the only thing that's going is the basil. There hasn't been enough sun or heat for the tomatoes to ripen. There is a lot of fruit on them, but it's all green still. I'm hoping today and tomorrows hot and sunny weather will remind them what they're supposed to be up to. We've had one zuch so far, which was excelllent, and I'm looking forward to the glut.

But now it's bed time. Tired.

Wet.

It's been raining. A lot. Lots of small towns around have been flooded. This dam is usually completely closed with the river side being a deep gully with a few puddles in it. Not any more. There are, as you can see five (5) flap gates that can be opened, and yesterday when I took this the fourth one was just being closed. I think that all five were open at some stage. We took the boys for a look a couple of times, and the little carpark at the dam was massively overcrowded each time. The beloved has the view that people want to see it through some kind of small-town mentality, but I think there's something more than that going on. For one, it's a bit like why you might go to look at a waterfall, there's something fascinating about that much water pouring over a cliff. For another, it was kind of like a giant game of Pooh Sticks. There is a lot of debris on the dam side, whole trees that have washed down the streams and creeks that feed in, and they're now washing over the dam downriver. Not just the children, but adults who were watching were also shouting with excitement when the biggest trunks and clumps of wreckage slipped over the top.

If you go here, you can see a pic I took in March of the same dam. Today's post's pic was taken from the railing where E and the beloved are standing.

It's stopped raining for now, and is supposed to stay clear for a few days, so I have washing on the line at last.

In other news, yes, it is whooping cough. We don't know if any of the rest of us have it. We've all had the nasal swabs and we're waiting for the results. E has a cough, and the beloved is going to France for a week on Sunday for work (he's currently on antibiotics). D'Arcy is now almost finished his course, and is no longer contagious, so I sent him hacking off to school today as Friday is usually a pretty slack day, and it's his last chess class for the year (or in fact for ever, with that teacher, due to the change of schools next year) so we thought it might be good to go. Next week is the last week, so it'll be pretty relaxed, and with luck he'll get to do more hanging out than usual. He's also supposed to get his school report back today. His cough isn't too bad, he hasn't spewed from it so far, though he'll probably set me up as a bad parent by doing it at school today.

Gah. (a moan)

I'm so totally in a funk. So many things right now it's all a bit much. D'Arcy has been coughing for a few days (a week?) and his teacher has been nagging me (via him) to go to the doctor. We did today, and of course they suspect whooping cough. He was an absolute champ when the pathology collector did the nasal swab, which meant that she got a good sample and maybe the result will be reliable. Of course this has sent me into a tailspin. Regular readers (are there any of you?) will know that D'Arcy's dad didn't want (amusing sidenote, I just repeatedly typed "wank" then, except that he does) to vaccinate him, and essentially bullied me into agreeing with that. So I am giving myself a hard time about that. E, on the other hand is fully vaccinated so he will have some protection I guess. Culture should be ready in a few days they reckon, so we'll know for sure then. If it's positive, then we all need preventative doses of anti-biotics. Bleh.

The other thing that is bothering me is that D's dad put his name down at a private (co-ed) school a couple of years ago. No consultation with me, of course, and I didn't really stand up to that either. I made it clear that I wasn't happy with it, but that's as far as it went. His name stayed on the list. It seemed for a while that it wasn't something I needed to worry about, but while we were in Hobart, I got a phone call from the ex, saying that he'd been offered a place for next year 2011. When we got home, we finally arranged to do the tour of the school, and actually it was pretty impressive. I've been trying to think about where D might go for high school. This looked like a good option, but the offer was for next year...I decided in the end that it would be okay for him to go there, but of course he's really unhappy about the move. He doesn't want to leave his mates for the last two years of primary school, which I can understand, I guess. Still, I feel like the bad one again. And now he'll miss at least a few days of school next week until we know the whooping cough status, and he's had a course of anti-biotics....