This mothering gig.....

Sometimes it sucks.

I've really been struggling with it lately.  Trying not to make the same mistakes my parents made with me, but making my own along the way. I grew up in a house where one person drank and one person hit so I was determined not to make those mistakes with my children. For the most part we have managed or more likely, just muddled through.

But this holidays I'm not really coping well.  I have yelled a lot more than is normal for me and that makes me feel bad.  Last night I ran away to a friends place just to get away from Girl Child, who insisted on following me around while I was on the phone.  It was just for 90 minutes or so but it was enough to help clear my head.

I probably talk more about Boy Child on here than I do about Girl.  But despite having Aspergers he is the easiest of them both (personality wise anyway).  They are both stubborn, but Girl Child has a lot of attitude to go with it.  She was the child who could throw up on the way to daycare at the same place every single day for weeks, she was the one who told me I'd ruined her life at age 4 when I gave her the wrong bag for her preschool library books.

But over the last few weeks her attitude is doing my head in. Add to that, we have found out she needs fillings (including one in an adult tooth) and on Friday we discovered that she has a lazy eye.  You would have thought that as she has assessed twice last year at the same place and has glasses from there, although by a different optometrist, perhaps it would have been mentioned earlier. At almost eight and a half, she is too old for patching. Boy Child's lazy eye was obvious when he was quite young and he wore an eye patch for maybe nine months when he was about two and a half. Hers isn't obvious to me (Boy's was noticeable early) but apparently she barely uses one eye at all.  She is now also short sighted like me.

For me, though, apart from the dodgy genes she has inherited are the issues she is having with others.
Rarely a shrinking violet, she unfortunately spent most of last year playing with a troubled child which then meant no one else in class would play with her.  Once the other child left near the end of term 3, she had no one.  While she did make one good friend (L) she was held on to tightly and clashed with another child in her class (Z) over L.  Now Z and Girl are going to be in the same class for the third year in a row, unfortunately they clash big time. L is going to be in a different class to them which is probably good for L and may help Girl even though she is devastated.

Form L's parents, I have heard on a few occasions about things Girl Child has done that have worried L. In fact they are all in a kids computer site like Club Penguin and I have been spoken to twice by L's parents about things that Girl Child has said there.  The first time she admitted what had been done and apologised to L.  

On Friday night I was contacted by L's parents with a copy of a message that Girl Child apparently left on the website.  The message itself was concerning as it talking about attacking Z when school starts. Girl Child  swears that she wasn't online the day the message was sent and that she didn't send that message. In fact when I read the message to her and got her to write it down the spelling of certain words was different. Add that to the fact that she had given her password out to a number of people and that she vehemently denied writing it and cried for almost 30 minutes, we don't know what happened. We can't prove or disprove it. So I have changed her password and she can only go on to that website while an adult is sitting with her. Normally someone would be in the same room as her but now we will be watching a lot more closely.

On another note, she will be in Year 3 this year and school hasn't started.  Girl Child is already worried about NAPLAN (Australia wide academic tests for children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9). I wonder if that plus knowing L is in a different class but she will be with Z,  is adding to her attitude?

So there you'll have it.  My beautiful daughter and her very minor medical issues plus her very strong personality had this week culminated to dent what little faith I had in myself as a good (or even just a good enough) parent this week.  Tomorrow is a new day, right?

SYL Week #2 Define your Personal Values

Debra Writes:
Week 2 challenge: Go through the process and define your top 5 core values including ranking them. Share this information however you want next Monday (not on this post) – if you want please elaborate on your choices, talk about any difficulties in the process, any surprises or changes that came about. Blog it and link up, comment on next week’s post, share a journal entry or scrapbook layout, whatever method works for you…

I had actually done everything Debra suggested and somehow published and then lost my almost complete post.  Dammit!!
Given it’s so late at night I’m going to summarise what I had.
The values I ended up with were:
Love
Authenticity
Compassion
Inspiration
Contribution
I am having trouble with the fifth value. Right now I’m leaving it as Contribution but for a while there I had Courage. For now I’m going to add Courage in to Authenticity.
To me each of the five values I ended up with were chosen because to me they encompassed other words that I cut down to get to my five core values.
Love – Family, Nurturing, Hope, Intimacy and Positivity
Authenticity– Integrity, Honesty, Loyalty, Trustworthiness, Dependable and Courage
Compassion – Sensitivity, Open Mindedness, Understanding and Acceptance
Inspiration – Imagination, Dream, Intuition, Originality, Creativity, and Success
Contribution – Support, Connection, Intentional and Community
Debra defined that values are not Goals, Permanent, Universal or Another “should”.  So with that in mind, I think my list works for today.

What went right in 2011? - SYL. Week# 1

Like many others, I joining in with Debra Dane over at Home Life Simplified and her Simplify Your Life 52 week challenge. click on the button to visit and check it out.

Here's what she has to say about the challenge for Week 1.

At this time of year most people are focused on what they want to change, where they feel they failed or did not meet their expectations or previous “resolutions”.

We will start in the same tone as my blog and this challenge – positivity! 

What you focus on will grow and as much as you are here for change I can bet money that you had some successes and blessings in 2011.

For me, 2011 was an interesting year.  There were a few things that made me 'stuck' but I also had things which made me happy. Some examples are my family, coffee with friends, coffee (it's my adult or just plain old me time), helping children in Girl Child's class and our long awaited holiday to New Zealand. I think perhaps I wrote most of these things down when I linked up with Maxabella in her Grateful for. I felt at peace, when I got enough sleep and when life was stable and when I had enough me time to replenish myself.  Taking me time helped me related better to other and most importantly to my family.

I ended up spending a lot of the year having semi regular coffee dates with other Mums from school.  One who was already a friend but a few others became friends.  That was lovely and some of us managed to catch up for dinner twice during the year.  That is not something I would have really done previously.  I also pushed out of my comfort zone by going to some Nutrimetics demonstrations and actually learning how to apply makeup.  I managed to catch up with Leanne from Deep Fried Fruit a few times for lunch and it was great to talk blog stuff as most of my IRL friends don't know that I blog.  I raised about $1200 for the Leukemia Foundation by shaving my head.  But before I did that I was brave and had multicoloured hair for a few weeks and then a Mohawk for a few more before I shaved it off as well.  I had the Mohawk done at Girl Child's school assembly which I am very proud of because I tend to like to be in the background.  It's a little hard to do with multicoloured hair!  Best of all I wrote 50,000 words of a novel in November for NaNoWriMo.  That was very impressive.

Boy Child started High school (Year 7) in a school which we felt would meet his needs better than the local high school.  I was very relieved that it did meet his needs and he blossomed academically and received a Faculty Award for Year 7 for English.  He managed to catch the bus and cope much better than we thought he would with public transport, a new school and making new friends.

Girl Child made friends and her reading ability was recognised on at least two occasions. With her dance and gross motor activities she has grown in terms of strength and flexibility. She is maturing and that has been very noticeable socially as she has been invited to play dates and had friends accompany her to the pool.

We had a lot more contact with the extended family on both sides and lots of contact with my family during school holidays and for family occasions.  My children seem to be building a positive relationship with the other children in the extended family which is lovely to see.

So it seems that 2011 was more positive than I expected.  I am very grateful for that.

I'm Grateful For 7 Jan 2012

This is the last Grateful over at Maxabella's as Grateful's are moving over to Kidspot.  I've never been over to Kidspot (in my mind it's a place where mother's of young children chat about nappies, toilet training and preschool - stuff that hasn't been part of my life for a long time) so I'm not sure how I feel.  I guess I should drop by to actually see what Kidspot is about.

Anyway,  it's grateful time. 

Today I am grateful for our few days interstate and all the cool things we did while we were there: IMAX for Happy Feet Two, Harry Potter Exhibition and Boy Child went to his first concert since the Wiggles!  A huge thing for him.  My family put in for his ticket as a Christmas present and one of them took him to the concert.  Boy Child had lots of fun.

I am grateful for bloggers and blogging.  I am also grateful for Maxabella and this Grateful Linky, Chantal's January Photo A Day Challenge and Debra from Home Life Simplified's 52 Week Challenge.  I'm participating in these challenges to stretch myself and to learn more about me and my life.

Maxabella also wanted people to join her for a ' One Word ' link up. Post the One word that sums up the year you plan to have in 2012.

I think for me the word is OPEN.  I want to become more open in my relationships with others and I want to be open to new opportunities.

A huge thanks once again go to Maxabella for this Grateful Linky.  While I'm here I'll post the last few January Photo a Day photo's I've taken.

Day 5 - Something you wore.  My old shoes.

Day 6 - Something that makes you smile. Blog comments

Day 7 - Favourite.  A photo of Mr E and I on our wedding day.

It's been a busy 24 or so hours

We have been busy seeing things here that we can't at home and spent one night in a hotel at Darling Harbour. Last night we saw Happy Feet 2 here:

This morning we had breakfast here:

This afternoon we were looking at this:

Tonight we are staying near these letter boxes.  

Tomorrow we are going home.  Hurray, I really miss Mr E! I think I'll have a lot a blog posts to catch up on when I get home, too.

Jan Photo A Day #3

Today's theme is Adore. So while I'm away from home I'll take whatever I can get....only kidding. I have taken a photo of my kids who were surprisingly being nice to each other. Actually they do get on pretty well despite the almost 5 year age gap.

So here is a photo of something I adore.  It also includes something both children adore: the IPad.

Joining in with Chantal and everyone else for the January 2012 Photo A Day challenge. You can see all the photo's by checking out #janphotoaday on Twitter.

Photo A Day #2 Jan 2012

The theme for today's picture is breakfast. Here is today's breakfast of champions - Gluten Free Toast with Nutella and a cup of coffee.  

Now this isn't actually a standard breakfast for me anymore.  When I was a chocoholic (prior to March 2011) it  was my breakfast of choice at least once a week.  Since then, though it isn't really on my list often unless I need the caffeine to get moving.  This morning I did as I was driving to Sydney and I've been really tired lately.  So with the caffeine on board, I managed to pack and get the kids and I on the road.  I needed more caffeine on the trip but I must say today's breakfast may have helped to kick start me.

1 Jan 2012

So, how was your New Year? Ours was pretty good. We went into the city, had dinner and saw the early fireworks.  It was nice.

You may remember that that I said I would be joining Chantal with her Photo A Day challenge for January 2012 which consists of:

So despite wanting anonymity I am going to post a photo of me for this challenge.  So here goes, this is me.

Now that didn't feel so bad, I guess.  I'm going to post this on Twitter too.