Watch out!

A warning to anyone thinking of using the roads anywhere in the vicinity of our house in the near future…watch out for a tall, curly-haired sixteen-year-old having driving lessons. Eldest just got his ‘L’ plates.

The future is finally looming big in his eyes and he’s beginning to realise all the things he needs to know before he leaves home. This is his last year of school and next year, if his dreams come true, he’ll be in the city, studying his beloved computer programming. So he needs to learn to drive.

Can you remember that moment when you got your L plates and started lessons? It was a big step for me. I’d managed to put it off until I was 21, using buses, trains and friends to get around while I was at University, but once I got a job, I needed to drive. I still remember the car kangaroo-hopping down the road in my first lesson. The teacher was a rather sleazy old man who did nothing for my confidence at all. He had a habit of telling me to head up a lane onto the freeway. Even I knew learners weren’t allowed on the Freeway. My dad did take me for one lesson, but after that he was strangely unavailable. I must admit, he looked a bit pale when we got home.

The roads will be safe for a little while yet. P is going to take Eldest out into the paddock for a few lessons - one with no trees. He’s giving him his old farm ute until he can afford something better. As someone pointed out, it’s the perfect vehicle for a teenager – he won’t be able to take too many passengers…though I suspect he’ll be popular for moving furniture.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to him being on the roads, but he’s grown up and that’s how it is. I’m sure I’m not the first mother to feel this way.

Next item on the agenda: teaching him how to use the washing machine.

Tooth Fairies

Sausage lost her first tooth while we were on holiday. She had been saying it was wobbly but it didn’t seem that loose, so I was surprised when she came out of bed with a tiny little tooth in her hand. I was even more surprised to find an almost fully grown new tooth coming up just behind the space it left!

Of course, this all meant a visit from the tooth fairy. She was afraid the tooth fairy might not be able to find her, especially as we didn’t have the ‘tooth jar’ from the top of the fridge to put it in. (Yes, I know the tooth fairy is supposed to get the tooth from under their pillow, but do you know how hard it is for her to get under there without waking the child up?) Surprisingly though, the tooth fairy found that tooth in its egg cup, no trouble at all and left a whole two dollars as a holiday/first tooth bonus.

Poor Dynamo was always worried that he wouldn’t get anything at all for his teeth. For some reason he grinds his teeth when he’s asleep. He’s done it ever since he was a baby. As a result his first teeth at the front had worn down to stumps before they fell out and there wasn’t much left for the tooth fairy. But she’s a kind fairy and always paid him in full, even when he stopped believing in her. In fact, when the mean old dentist pulled one out because it was refusing to fall out and was causing an abscess, she paid him a bonus and wrote him a tiny little letter commending his braveness. That had him going for a while. Mum couldn’t write that tiny…could she?

The the things we mothers do!

Let's Get This Straight!

Sorry. I’m on my high horse at the moment. I’ve just been on an Internet news site and come across the headline

‘NIC A MUM AT LAST!’

Huh? Isn’t this Ms Kidman's third child? Oh, that’s right. The other two are adopted so they don’t count, do they? She wasn’t a real mum till she gave birth.

What a load of….No, I won’t say it. This is a swear-free zone. But as an adoptive mother, headlines like this make my blood boil! How do they think this makes Isabelle and Connor feel? I’m not blaming Nicole. She can’t help the media’s lack of tact, but someone needs to stand up and shout about it, on behalf of adopted kids everywhere. They’re not second-class children. They’re real. Their adoptive parents love them, just as much as if they’d given birth to them. Why can’t people understand that?

Okay, rant over. I’ll go and make myself a cup of coffee and hug my kids – all three of them.

Grrr, mumble, grumble…

Choices

My eldest son and I attended a talk last night. It was supposed to make his options for further study clearer for him, but we both came away feeling bamboozled. He goes into Year 11 next year and Years 11 and 12 are the ones that set you up for wherever you want to go after school. But what was described as an easy process, looked pretty complicated to me.

I remember being called into the Principal’s office when I chose my Year 11 subjects. He called me ‘Katherine’ over the PA system, so I knew I was in big trouble. You see, both my older sisters had done Maths, Physics and Chemistry and came at the top of their years. I’d had the audacity to choose, English, French, German, History, Art, Biology (because you had to do a science) and Maths 1 (the easy one). How dare I be so lazy? I tried to explain that I didn’t like Maths or Chemistry and though I enjoyed Physics, I wasn’t good at it. I loved languages and Art and History. He wasn’t having any of it and made me go to all the classes I hadn’t chosen to ‘sit in’ and see what I’d be missing. Fortunately, Dad got a job in another town very soon afterwards and the new school had no preconceived ideas about me. They didn’t teach German, so I had to do just six subjects, but I had no complaints about that. It just meant I had to get better marks because Art wasn’t considered a full subject in the final tally.

Then, when I'd finished school and chose what I wanted to do afterwards, it was my mother who tore up the form and told me to choose something sensible. I’d put Art as my first choice. No way. No daughter of hers was going to become a weirdo! I’d put down Teaching as a second preference, but she said I had ‘too much intelligence to be a teacher’(!!!). So, I ended up with an Arts degree in Archaeology. But then what did I do? Went off to Teacher’s College anyway. And then became an illustrator. That was all right though. I’d given Mum her dream – five kids, all with degrees. I understand her in hindsight. Both she and Dad had missed the chance to get qualifications for one reason or another. So she was living her dreams through us.

That’s why I’m finding it hard now. M is set on becoming a computer games software writer – or whatever the fancy name for that is. All my motherly bones shout ‘No! No son of mine is becoming a nerd!’ But I’m living proof that no matter what I think, he’ll come back to what he wants to do, so why stop him? I just want him to see that there’s so much more he could do with his programming skills. Aaagh! It’s hard being a mother!