The British seaside

We did see Saturn! And while it wasn't as detailed as the picture I posted, it was amazing. The rings were so bright and so clear, and we saw Titan, too - one of Saturn's moons. Nina was so excited. It was crowded there, and we had to wait, but we got to see Mars just before they turned the telescopes on to Saturn. Everyone there was very nice to us, and they were charmed to see such an enthusiastic 5-year-old. 
   On Sunday we went to Brighton, had lunch, got a car club car, and drove along the coast. I quite like the car club (city car club), but it turns out that of the approximately 60 million UK residents, a surprisingly high portion of them were in Brighton traffic on Sunday afternoon between 2pm and 5pm. And Brighton has an infuriating one-way system, which together with road closures mean that it was very hard to leave the centre, and then it took us 30 minutes to drive the last km to return the damn thing. And of course you can only extend your booking if no one else has booked, no matter how much fun you are having at the beach. This all causes much stress. Ironic that to avoid being stuck in traffic, central London is actually a very good place to live. Anyway, we had a great time, much fun was had at the beach, and there was only one vomiting incident in the car (Annika, who said so early enough that Amps caught it in the beach bucket). 
    

It was 22 degrees and the ocean was what I would call foot-achingly cold: when you stand in it, your foot starts to ache. Nina was not deterred by this in the least. 

Information

I mentioned the other day about the book I borrowed, and the empathy I found myself expressing over the frustration of wrongly-coloured dinnerware. Another part of the same book describes the idea that giving children information and letting them make a decision is a better approach to getting cooperation than the usual suspects: lecturing them, shouting at them, telling them to pick up their coat RIGHT NOW, saying no to their unwise scheme, etc etc. I've tried it, with some success: "Annika, if toys go to nursery they sometimes get lost!" --"Oh," she says, "... um... maybe Olivia can stay in your bag". "If coats are on the stairs, we might fall" ... pause ... 
     Tonight I'm going to take Nina to the Hampstead Observatory. They have a few telescopes and Saturn is visible tonight (if it doesn't get cloudy in the next 90 minutes). Amps took Nina a few months ago and they saw the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and its bands: pretty cool. Nina was absolutely thrilled. She knows all the planets, which ones are gas giants, which is the hottest/coldest/farthest, the fact that Pluto used to be considered a planet and isn't any more. She likes reading her astronomy books and even watching astronomy documentaries on youtube (a little). I was home with Annika; these things tend to happen after bedtime. For tonight, we've booked a car club car, which I'll go and collect while Amps wakes Nina up from a deep, deep sleep. They're going to start focusing on Saturn at 10:30. Apparently it won't be visible here again for a decade; Nina will be nearly 16 by then. She's been reminding us that it will be visible in May for months now, and saying how she can't wait for May. It's May now, and amazingly, the sky is clear.
      All this reminded me of Mother's day in 2012. Nina was nearly 4. They had a little celebration at her nursery (at my work), and her key worker was reading out things the children had said that they loved about their mummies. The previous week, Nina had given me an invitation to this little party, which I had liked, and put up in the kitchen. That morning I had said I was happy to get the invitation and I was looking forward to coming. Anyway, little Sophie loved her mummy's stories, little Shiv loved his mummy taking him to the park, etc etc. Nina had said "I love my mummy because she gives me information!". Her keyworker read this out, much to the amusement of colleagues, acquaintances, and friends. Yep: it's all leaflets at our house.
     It turned out she meant the invitation, not information. We do, of course, provide plenty of information. 
     I won't be able to take pictures through the telescopes. But if all goes well, maybe we'll see (well, ok, it won't be this detailed, I'm sure - but it'll be cool):

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The colour of a plate

I have borrowed this book from a dear friend who recently had to experience me rather losing it with Annika. It's great, actually (the book). I had heard of it, because I'm on mumsnet quite a bit and it's often recommended. The authors begin by making some points that should be obvious, really: children are people, and are likely to respond to situations the way people usually do. In particular, if there is a problem, it's best to offer some empathy, instead of a response that tells them not to feel what they are feeling, trivialises what they are going through, or belittles them. Fair enough. I am trying it, with some excellent results. 
   But it does put me in some awkward positions. Sitting in the forest having a picnic, Annika panicked when a curious dog ran up at full speed. Instead of saying, oh, don't be scared, it's just a little dog, I said something like: oh yes, that can be scary. Cue dog's owner huffing, offended: "she's not scary!". Well, I wasn't going to impress the dog owners of Hampstead anyway. 
   Yesterday at dinner ... let's just say Annika is not a fan of eating. It'll probably be great for her in many ways if she's always like this, but it must be hard for her because the rest of us quite like eating, and food generally, and Amps and I are quite happy cooking food, talking about food, planning more food, and trying out London's plethora of restaurants. We were going to do this yesterday, so we fed the girls some leftovers; it was a rather sparse dinner of plain rice, a tiny bit of broccoli soup, and various bits like carrots, cheddar, etc. I carefully checked with Annika - would this be ok? Yes. I got the soup, heated, in a ramekin. "NOOOOOOO!!!, NOT LIKE THAT!!" ... "But you said it would be ok". --"I want it like THIS:" (motions with two hands, fingers together, all pointing down). "Oh. Ok. You want it on one plate, but separate?" --(crying) "Yeah, uh-huh, yeah". 
  So I got out a plate, got the rice and the (rather thick) soup, got it warmed up, put it down: Annika bursts into tears. Full on crying -- this plate had flowers on it. 
   Deep breath. Don't shout at the toddler.  Don't walk out of the room, leaving the other frustrated parent to handle this (sure to escalate). Don't trivialise; empathise. 
   "Ooooohhhhh", I said. "You wanted another plate". --"Yeah!!" (sniffle sniffle whine whine). "That's really annoying!", I said. "You wanted the Mr Happy plate!". --"YEAH!!" (whine whine). (repeat, x3, with variations). "That plate shouldn't be in the dishwasher!", I said. --"Get it out! Get it out for me!" ... --"Well, we'll wash it. That's what we'll do. And then you can have it next time". --(quiet whining, sniffling, terrible sadness)... "...yeah". "You tell me when you're ready; if you have this food from this plate, then when you're finished you can have a cookie" (bribery). 
   Eventually the food and the cookie were eaten. I don't claim this is a perfect implementation of the strategies in the book. But the fact is, I have reached a point where I regularly need to pretend that it is in some way reasonable to give a rat's ass about whether you have the blue fork that matches the blue bowl, the plastic yellow fork that goes with the blue spoon and bowl, whether the plate on which you're going to eat your miserly dinner of 3 challenging tablespoons of soup and some plain white rice has the audacity to have flowers on it, of all things. However insane this is, it is sane to her. 

Kim Jong Bonk

It's been more than a year since I posted here, and I'm going to start up again. Really. "Last day of 1" - my last post? We recently had the last day of 2, and I am delighted to report that there will be no more 2-year-olds in this family. Not until one of the girls has their own. Let's just summarize a year's missing posts: 2 was rough. The day Annika no longer cares whether her cup, bowl, fork are blue I will buy a bottle of good champagne. Enough said. 

We sometimes call Annika "Bonk". It's originally from a joking "Ank-ster bonk-ster", followed by some bonks when she started walking. After that background, here is a tidbit from today:

Annika: "I want more pasta!"
Amps: "Mummy's turn."
Annika: "Mummy! Get. It. Now!"
Me:
Annika: "... Please?"
Amps: "Kim Jong Bonk has SPOKEN!". 
Nina: "Who's Kim Jong Bonk?"
Annika: "Me! I am!" 
Nina: "You just want to be the boss of the world."

2 has given way to 3. Happy birthday, Bonk.