On Angels and Devils

Little Princess is 2 years 4 months

I have grown up quite comfortable with the spirit world around me, as I understand it.  I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in The Communion of Saints.

I personally have, on occasion, seen angels, or had visits from dead relatives, but only on occasion.  One memorable time as a child I had an interaction with someone a whole lot less savoury.

Despite my limited personal experience I was always quite comfortable with the idea.  I believe my Dad was touched with The Gift.  He didn’t talk about it, but sometimes his guard would slip.

So I believe my children when they tell me about the people they see.  (I firmly believe that children, in their innocence and closer connection to God, can see more of His world). 

Tonight was … well, I don’t know what it was.  I am just glad that our wonderful pastor has talked to me about battles of the spirit and the insidious work of the devil.

Little Princess and I were here alone, playing on the floor near the door.  She pointed at the door, ‘Man’, she said.

At first I missed what she had said, so she did it again.
‘Is there a man there?’
‘Mmm hmm’
Then she looked at me at little unsure.  ‘Where is the man?’
‘There’
‘Is he a good man or a bad man?’
‘Bad  man’ she shuddered and snuggled into me, not scared, totally sure of her safety with me.  I blessed us both (Important to make visible signs or pray out loud for the devil can put thoughts in our heads, but is not actually in our heads).
She ran to the lounge.
‘Is the bad man still here?’
‘Yes, bad man inside’

Well that frightened me.  I was right at the door.  I pulled myself up and commanded, ‘Go back to where you belong.  Leave us alone now.  God and the Lord Jesus protect me and my family.  You do not belong here.’. It was strange.  The words came to me and I said them, but I had no feeling at all of anyone being there.

Little Princess smiled at me from the lounge. bad man gone now.’

What is so disturbing is what is the devil doing here now?  We were just playing quietly, not something fraught with temptation.  It is true and frightening that spiritual danger is everywhere.

How wonderful that my God is even so much greater.  AND He loves me personally.

Pirates

Possum is 6 years 10 months

Bandicoot is 6 years 8 months

Little Possum is 2 years 2 months

I really don’t understand the pirate phenomenon.  Pirates are bad.  They are really bad.  They do really bad things.

I have no desire for my children to role play “terrorists”.  I don’t want them to play “rape and kill”.  Why would I want them to play pirates?

And yet, pirates are everywhere in children’s entertainment these days.  Regularly my kids are invited to “pirate parties”.  Almost every boat toy you see has to have a skull and cross-bones emblazoned on it.  Why is that?  Why can’t they just be sailors?

Pirates are not cute.  Pirates are not fun.  Pirates are not romantic. Pirate treasure does not belong to them… it is stolen goods.  (I don’t want my kids to be thieves or trade in stolen goods, either.)

DH and I feel very strongly about this.

Whenever pirate things arrive in our house they disappear.  We explain to our kids why pirates are not acceptable role models, even for pretending.

And then the boys caught a QANTAS flight to Adelaide.

Thank you, QANTAS for feeling Disney’s, “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” was suitable entertainment for our kids.

The boys fell in love.  They told us about it in great length.  They had really enjoyed the adventure and Captain Hook, whilst Disneyed, was the baddy.  Okay, so it is a glossed up kids’ show, but you still wouldn’t want to be on Captain Hook’s team.

They have begged and begged, and this weekend, in the supermarket, we finally relented and bought them a “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” DVD (it was on special).

I thought I knew “Peter Pan”.  Not fully, I am – looking forward to reading it again soon – but some idea of the story.  Apparently not.  At least, not this version.

The kids are pirates!  The kids are pirates?  Really?  Barrie must be turning in his grave!  I know I am having a turn.

I can’t see anything in the story line that actually requires them to be pirates.  The kids don’t seem to behave like pirates.  The story would work just as well if they were sailors or adventureurs.  But no.  That is not acceptable these days.  Everything must be pirates.

I am so bitterly disappointed in you, Disney.  I am so bitterly disappointed.

Unconditional Love

Dear God,

Please help me to love my children today… not for what they might become tomorrow or in the future.  Help me to like them even if they never master a certain skill that I want them to master.  Let me love them unconditionally, never withholding my love or approval from them based on their performance.  Let me see the good in them and make me blind to their shortcomings.  Forgive me because I know that I have been forgiven so much and yet I hold my children’s failures against them.

Amen.

Possum is 6 years 10 months

Bandicoot is 4 years 8 months

Little Princess is 2 years 2 months

 

I am struggling with Possum just now.  He is, once again, very highly strung, angry and well PRICKLY.  Although, when I say angry, I realised today he isn’t really.  He is acting angry; behaving angry.  If he slips up you can see that it is a cover, that he isn’t really angry.  This continuous nastiness is just the behaviour that is working for him right now.

And work it does.  It gets him attention.  It gives him control of the family (Eldest kids! *sheesh*  DH and I are much more easy going and have spent our lives chorkling in our sleeves about such neediness.)  We know that we are being played, and that he is (currently) winning, but short of leaving him in danger (oh, he is smart about when he does it) we haven’t worked out what to do.  Yet.

*~~~*

I am reading this book:  “Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe” by Todd Wilson.  I so wish it was available as a hard copy!  It is aimed at homeschoolers, as you might have guessed, but so much of it is relevant to all of my parenting experience.  (But then, that is the thing about homeschooling, isn’t it?  It isn’t compartmentalised like sending your child to school, it is a complete lifestyle.)

After yesterday reaching the point where I really did not like Possum because of his behaviour – I mean really.  REALLY.  I got upset at DH for not driving off and leaving him behind – I stumbled upon this prayer.

I prayed it.

Twice.

And again this morning.

Help me to like them even if they never master a certain skill that I want them to master. 

Help me to like him even if he never learns to control his emotions and temper.

Let me love them unconditionally, never withholding my love or approval from them based on their performance. 

Help me NOT to make the mistakes my Mum and Dad did that hurt me so much.

Let me see the good in them and make me blind to their shortcomings.

Let me see the real little Possum, not just the angry ball of emotion.

And you know what?  Today was much better!  Oh yes, we went out and yes, he did the flip from sweet and fun kid to obnoxious toe-rag, but this time it was different.

For a start, this time it wasn’t about me.  It wasn’t about me being a failure as a Mum.  It wasn’t about me not coping or not being good enough.  It wasn’t about him being a terrible person.

This time I loved him as he is today.

Even if he never grows out of it.

Even if we don’t learn to control it.

Even if we don’t ever help him to manage it better, despite our efforts.

Ever.

I didn’t loathe him.  Or me.  I loved him; my dear, obnoxious, angry, 6 year old, struggling to find his place in the world.

Which got me thinking.  Maybe our role as parents isn’t to solve all the problems with our kids.  Maybe it isn’t to fix them.  Maybe it isn’t to make them perfect little people.  Maybe our role is not so much to lead them through it, maybe it is simply to love them through it.

Yes, it is important to be a guide, but it is more important to be their support, surely – to love them unconditionally.

I know that is all I ever craved as a kid.

And still now, when I face life’s muddles and make them worse, that is what I need.

Technology

Possum is 6 years 10 months

Bandicoot is 4 years 8 months

Little Princess is 2 years 2 months

 

DH is currently working interstate for a month.  Despite being in the IT industry, working remotely does not happen very much in his work.  Who’da thunk it?

So…. being a homeschooling family and all, we are spending four weeks in a unit in the National Capital.

This has many wonderful perks to it, especially when we have a daily food and expenses budget.  (I am impressed.  Years ago, even ‘though the budget was the same, it was tough to stay within it.  Now, with five of us, not only does it significantly aid the supermarket budget, but it also lets us eat out fairly often.  I must have learnt some housekeeping skills along the way!)  There are so many museums and attractions to enjoy, as well as lots of outdoor space.

Internet access is not one of the perks.

We can have internet access for $10- per day.  Yup.  That’s right. $10- per DAY.  Which makes it approximately $300- for our time down here.  We do need some internet for DH’s work and for Possum’s schooling, but we are trying to just do it in spurts as much as possible.

This is not good news for blogging.

It should be fine.  I love Microsoft’s Live Writer.  This is what I use at home.  It does have some flaws, ‘though.

1. It does not have an android equivalent, not that typing on my tablet is my preferred way of going
2. It does not have a Windows 8 equivalent, which means that we cannot load it on the “school laptop” (our newest baby)
3. It does nasty things on DH’s laptop, apparently.  Well, not Live Writer itself, I don’t think, but all the other stuff that it now downloads with it.  Remember all those missing posts from January 2012?

So that means, no LiveWriter.  No blogging offline.  No easy posting of pics.  (Oh, and just to make it even more fun, we do not have Office on the school laptop, and I can’t cut and paste on the tablet, so writing in another programme and copying it over is pretty tough going, too.)

What a nuisance.

Hopefully I will be able to keep you up to date with all our exciting happenings in SOME way.  Hopefully.

Nature Study–Close Up

Possum is 6 years 10 months

Bandicoot is 4 years 8 months

Little Princess is 2 years 2 months

 

One of the tricky things I am finding with homeschooling is to fit in all the “extra” subjects.  You know, anything that isn’t one of the Three Rs.  It seems, in an attempt to keep up with (or ahead of, because there is always the extra pressure when homeschooling) the best students in our local schools, I am unintentionally NAPLANing Possum.

For example, we are currently working on a Reading Recovery Level of 16.  Compared to our local schools, this is a bit slow.  Of course, nationally, this is about a year ahead of where the average lies.

Realising this, and realising that Possum was not having as much fun learning as either of us would like, I have decided to take a step back and put a big effort in to getting the other subjects covered.

Our main “curriculum” (not that we are covering it to the letter) is Mater Amabilis.  I love the way it is done.  It works with our interests, pushes us just enough in the other areas and allows room for Possum to keep working ahead in Maths if he likes.  It is also quite easy to “Australianise”.

In Level 1B (equivalent to our Year 1), the main Earth Science focus is on water.  Specifically, right now, we are looking at waterways.  As a part of this, we need to choose “our waterway”, which is the one that we will use as our study focus and visit eight times during the year.

Today we made our initial visit.

We sat with our eyes closed to listen and smell and feel the air.  We looked.  We discussed who uses the river just there and how.  We recorded various observations and sketched interesting things.

 

And two of the three kids ended up in the river.

(This lead to the observation that the wet moss on the rocks was slippery.  It also lead to tears and extra washing for me.)

I mustn’t have been too surprised.  After all, I did have a towel in my bag.

 

Now I find the timing of this particular incident funny.  Just today I got this article in my in box from one of the blogs to which I subscribe.  I have to laugh:

Do you remember how much fun field trips were as a school student? I can only imagine how NOT fun they must have been for the adults. The constant worry of losing kids, the noise and chaos, shushing kids when tour guides spoke, slowing kids down, hurrying kids up – it had to feel like herding geese. Home schooling field trips seem to be a little more relaxed for us as teachers and parents.

and:

Can you imagine taking a group of kids to the ocean for the day as a field trip?

Hmm.  I can imagine.  Do you think there is a reason why my kids still haven’t been taken to the fantastic tidal pools on the rock platform at one of our (relatively) local beaches?

I Heart Camping

Possum is 6 years 9 months

Bandicoot is 4 years 7 months

Little Princess is 2 years 1 month

 

Tonight it is raining.  It isn’t torrential, as it was last weekend, but it is certainly steady.

And in that little, selfish corner of my heart I am so relieved.

I haven’t actually been praying for rain; I wouldn’t let myself do that; but I certainly have been hoping.

You see, we are meant to go camping this weekend.  Camping.  You know, where you spend ages assembling that temporary home, have kids walk muck all over the beds, sleep on the ground, get woken too early…  THAT camping.

The thing is, I don’t really like camping.  I think the worst bit is, there is just so much STUFF.  I mean, like, really, LOTS of stuff.  I am the Mum who carries one of those mega Ikea bags when I go to the park as it is (yes, be prepared, you never know what will happen), so you can just imagine how much stuff I need to go camping.

It isn’t that I hate camping.  I used to hate camping.  Before that, I used to love camping, but then I had a terrible – really TERRIBLE camping experience, so I hated camping.

That one was when I was a Uni student in Canada.  A whole bunch of us decided that we would go camping at the end of winter term.  It would be spring then, so nice for camping, right?  There was a large group of us planning to go to Algonquin National Park.  Of course, at the last minute, all the locals pulled out and left us foreigners in for a treat.

I had the added bonus of being the lone remaining girl in the group of five intrepid campers.

It was cold.  It was miserable.  The lake was still frozen.  We had had our heads filled with stories of bear attacks.  And the guys we were with decided to tell me that there were no loos, so we had to dig when we needed to go.  Not that we had a spade.  Oh they had some fun with that little gem for the first three days.  (Yes, we camped FIVE nights like this.)  It was so cold and windy that whoever slept on the side of the tent spent the evening blown onto the person beside them and the next day in the car with the heater running trying to warm up.  Fortunately we rotated that position.

It really was awful.  Very pretty, but really, really awful.

So I avoided camping quite happily for many years.

And then I hooked up with DH.

Now DH is a wonderful bloke.  In most ways I am so blessed that I have him.  But when it comes to family holidays, I really think I married the wrong man.  To be fair, he probably married the wrong lady, too.

For example, my idea of a fun, family holiday involves a house at the beach, the car staying in the garage from when you arrive until when you need to go home again.  A big night might involve the local pizzeria.  DH thinks a 9 hour flight and backpacking through Asia would be fun with the kids. *ahem*

Now, DH and his mates LIKE camping.  Not this cushy “car camping” thing.  Oh no.  It doesn’t count unless you have trekked for miles, carrying a heap of stuff on your back and get to spend the night in the middle of nowhere with nothing but your bleeding feet and bleeding shoulders and a bunch of scary snakes to keep you company.  THEN it is fun.  (Disclaimer:  This may be a slight exaggeration.)

Strangely, I declined the offer to join the more hard core outings.

And then a group of my friends thought that camping would be a good idea.

To be honest, when we camp it is much more civilised.  It involves a camp ground.  It involves relaxation.  It involves a lot of posh stuff, in some of their cases.  It also involves about twenty kids Possum’s age and younger.

The kids LOVE it.

Even I have been known to have fun.

And so, when they booked the latest weekend, I committed to it.  Surely it will be alright on the night.  Only, this week – oh the dread!  All that planning and packing.  It is completely overwhelming.

DH finds it amusing, and also frustrating.  I think he is the only one who really has any idea how overwhelming packing is for me.  To go away for a weekend, I spend a week nauseous with anxiety.  It is completely stifling, sometimes paralysing.  Even the afore mentioned trip to the park takes a couple of days to mentally prepare, and a few hours to physically prepare.  How do people take their kids to the park every day?  So you can imagine what packing for camping is like.

So this week, I have been hoping like crazy it would rain.  Praying for it would just be selfish and mean, but hoping… well what else is a girl supposed to do?

And tonight, as even the most hard core of the group have decided to pull the pin (apparently severe weather warnings and flash flooding are a bit too much with kids) I am doing my little happy dance.  It is disappointing to be missing the get together, but I am so RELIEVED that I don’t have to prepare for the event.

Time now to curl up with a warm drink and listen to sound of fairies dancing on the roof.  Aaaah!

Lent Madness 2013

Quick, quick, quick!  It is time for Lent Madness again!  Here is last year’s post about it.

Voting starts today.  Who will win the Golden Halo this year?  Head on over and join the journey.

I voted Macrina the Younger today.

Valentine’s Day

Bandicoot is 4 years 7 months

Little Princess is 2 years 1 month

Cards Bandicoot made for some of his friends

I really like the outside of this one:

Little Princess working on some cards of her own.  Isn’t the concentration beautiful?

Shrove Tuesday

Possum is 6 years 9 months

Bandicoot is 4 years 7 months

Little Princess is 2 years 1 month

 

Did you know that Shrovetide is actually the two days before Ash Wednesday?  It is the end of the Carnival season that started at Easter (from Latin carnelevare, indicating abstaining from meat during Lent)?  No, neither did I.  You can read more about it here: http://www.fisheaters.com/customsseptuagesima2.html 

I just wanted to remember what “shrove” meant.  It comes from the archaic verb to shrive or to confess, recalling the old custom of confessing sins prior to Lent.

What I do know that we eat all those pancakes to try and use up all the goodies that we used to have to fast from for Lent.  Dietary requirements are not so strict these days, but the spirit is the same.

And so I make pancakes.  And pancakes.

I made so many pancakes that we ended up with leftovers.  And tummy aches.  I was looking forward to Ash Wednesday by Tuesday evening!

So what did our menu look like?

This year it was necessary for me to forgo our usual blinis.  DH and I fell in love with Russian blinis back in 2004.  I find them so much work to make, so I tend to only do them once a year.  But by the time I have made all the milky crepes, filled them, folded and rolled them, fried them in butter… well I wasn’t getting up that early this year.  (How do those Mamushkas make them every morning??)

Instead we had American-style, apple pancakes for breakfast.  Well, not DH.  Even they were a bit slow making it to the table for him before work (besides, fighting the vultures children off to get one, was a bit gruesome.)

I thought about a German pancake for lunch, but with the dinner plans I just knew that I needed something else to eat instead.

Dessert first.  I made two different kinds of English-style pancakes (you know, like a crepe only a bit thicker and cooked on both sides).  The first were the plain ones that were brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with sugar prior to rolling.  These were ready for toppings of choice: maple syrup, lemon and sugar, cinnamon sugar…  The second were my classic chocolate pancakes – made with a cocoa batter.  I normally serve these rolled and filled with lingonberries and whipped cream, but had to substitute blackberry jam for the lingonberries and really it wasn’t the same.

But now…. drum roll… my piece de la resistance… (drum roll)  Peking Chicken!!

Yes, it is a dish of my own invention, if inspired by another, slightly more famous dish.

I started with a bbq chicken from the supermarket (needs must, and it wouldn’t have happened any other way),  I brought it home and made a quick marinade of (approximately):

• ~ teaspoon raw castor sugar
• ~ 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• ~ 1/8 teaspoon ground star anise
• ~ 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• Good, healthy slurp of sherry ~ 1/4 to 1/3 cup (let’s hope it was the cooking sherry – I can never remember which one is mine for cooking and which one is DH’s posh drinking sherry.  It tasted good either way!)

I slopped this all over the chicken and whacked it back in the oven to crisp up.  (After a little I pulled all the skin off and put the skin back in so that it could go really crispy without drying out the meat too much.)

Then there were the mandarin pancakes.  I am not sure how I would manage these next time.  I ended up needing to use a LOT of flour to roll them out and they had a floury taste because of it.  Perhaps practice would help with this!

Manadrin Pancakes:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup boiling water
• sesame oil (a whole lot more than you would think!)
• flour to stop it sticking to the bench in a gluey mess
• So, really tricky here, mix the flour and water into a dough and knead it a little.
• 
• Roll it out to about 5-7mm thick.
• 
• Cut in circles with a scone cutter (about 10cm across)
• Brush one side of the circles with sesame oil and put 2 circles together – oily sides together.
• Now roll them again, nice and thin.
• Dry fry the pancakes (in a non-stick pan if possible).  It is about 2 minutes on the first side and 1 on the second.
• 
• When they are done, you can peel the two pancakes apart.
• 

Voila!

Now, roll these up with chopped shallots, hoisin sauce, chicken meat and a bit of crunchy skin.  In our case we added in a bit of lettuce, too.

Super yum.

In fact, so yummy that I forgot to take photos of the finished item before we gobbled them all up!  Oops.

Too Much On…

Possum is 6 years 9 months

Bandicoot is 4 years 7 months

Little Princess is 2 years 1 month

What a hectic week this is!  I love to mark the passage of the year by celebrating the various significant events and feasts.  This week, however, is a doozey.

Today, as you may know, is Chinese New Year.  Good Fortune to You!

We had planned to go into the city today to visit the CNY markets – to enjoy the food, the music, the crafts and activities for the kids.  We got as far as the train station where we discovered that there was trackwork across the CBD, meaning that we would need to catch a train partway then change to a bus (and, honestly, rail-buses are NOT something that blow my hair back).  We ditched that idea in favour of visiting a much more local Chinese restaurant for lunch and DH is in the process of cooking pot-stickers for dinner.

I had planned to do some crafts with the kids – movable cardboard dragons (I have the templates), spiral paper snakes (it is the Year of the Snake), paper lanterns…  Instead we came home and cleaned out the guinea pig hutch and cubby house and collapsed from a busy day.

Aah well.  Maybe we will have a chance to go and watch the dragon boat racing next weekend.  (I am not sure how I will go with that.  I was a highly competitive dragon boat paddler, way back when – you know, before kids.  Hopefully I will be able to be a good sport as a spectator if we do go watch.)

At least I got a chance to explain the significance of eating noodles and dumplings at CNY to the boys.

But that is not the only event this week.  St Valentine’s Day is looming.  I know it is not until Thursday, but the kids need to get their “Valentines” sorted for posting/delivery.  Bandicoot will need to have his ready for his fiancée girlfriend sweetheart BFF (and his other BFF) for Tuesday, for example.  We don’t celebrate St Valentine’s Day in a big way, like in the US, but it is nice to remember our nearest and dearest.

However, those two pale into insignificance when we consider that this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday.

Lent is a significant time for us.  Easter is the most important occasion on our calendar and Lent, as the preparatory time has a lot of meaning.  This all starts with Ash Wednesday (or Shrove Tuesday – don’t even talk to me about blini and pancake pressure!), and that means this is a heavy focus week.

It is a struggle to explain Ash Wednesday, Lent and Easter to children, especially to young children.  It is hard enough for me as an adult to get my head around (I guess that is why Mother Church gets us to take this journey every year), let alone their sweet little heads.  I feel the pressure, too, because our kids do not have the benefit of the kind of Church or school that I did – one that took the gravity of the Lenten season quite seriously, and made sure even the youngest understood what we were doing and why.

And so I turn to the internet.

Have you tried Googling Lent for kids or similar?  The response is overwhelming.

There are so many entries, many of them not suited to our family (ages or stages), quite a few are.  It is a huge job sifting through this information to find what would work for our kids.

And then, once I have found the ideas that are suitable, to thin them out and choose the one or two that we can actually do consistently enough for the experience to be meaningful.

Oh, and then there is the actual implementation.

And somewhere amongst all this I am trying to fit in English and Maths and preschool activities and family life and….

Never rains but it pours!