Extreme Tantrums

We finally quit the city and found not just a mountain but an entire range as the backdrop to our historic house; no way were were raising our children in the city. (See http://kerrincocks.blogspot.com/2015/01/opting-out-firsts-in-free-state.html) for an idea of the months of house, town and province hunting that went into this final move.
For a long time people asked us if we had settled in to small town living and our answer was always a very definite yes. It wasn't a question of settling in here but rather, we realized after a few restless months, getting Jo'burg out of your system. You're so accustomed to the Go-Go-Go that you take it with you wherever you  ... well, Go.
But we did settle in and finally breathed out the last of the city.
"Do you ever regret your decision?" People ask. "No." For so many reasons, a major one is the children.
We now have two.
The only time they are inside is if it's raining, if they're eating, sleeping, bathing or watching Pet Patrol. The house isn't small and we're blessed that they each has their own large bedroom and a trunk full of toys but they want out; the pool, the garden, their bikes, the mountains, exploring old mining adits, you name it, they're in, or at least my son is, our little girl is slightly less inclined to tread where even angels play.
My son and I have spent five hours hiking, scrambling up sheer rock faces that the Jack Russell needed help with searching for the source of a creek, we've climbed trees on Lone Tree Hill (perhaps there was only one when it was named), we've driven dinky cars over rockscapes, dragged bicycles over impossible mountain tracks and done a scary amount of rock climbing.
He's four.
I am endowed with the same adventurous spirit and the same energy levels and the same desire to see what's around the next bend, over the next rise and when you look again it would not be inconceivable for us to be in Swaziland. I even almost talk as much, but he wins hands down on that every time.
So when frustrations turn into tantrums and moods escalate out of proportion I recognize the need to release this negative energy. We are cut from the same cloth in this respect. When I'm snappy and short-tempered my husband will always suggest a run. So when he's all over the place, crying, throwing things and generally inconsolable and dare I say, hideous, we take to the mountains.
At first the suggestion is met with more crying and outbursts of reluctance, but I'm stubborn too and force on the right gear, throw some water bottles and a snack in a backpack and grab his hand (or wrist), still kicking and screaming and leave the building.
He loves to run. The first time I handled a tantrum in this way we ran up and down the streets, me next to him, silent, him wailing but running, me encouraging him to let it out: "Scream as much as you want." After a kilometer or so he simmered down but he's stubborn and wouldn't concede a victory to me so maintained a modicum of feigned anger and resentment.
We veered off the road and up a mountain track (his choice), as we began to explore even the anger abated. A sheer rock face a hundred meters or so behind the house stands sentinel to the mountains beyond (although there are obviously paths around and over it). The rock is pock marked and from the bottom looks an easy climb and he wanted to climb it.
The parent in me rose above the adventurer and I said I didn't think it was a good idea. His face clouded over and the adventurer and OMG I can't do the wailing anymore won out. So up we went. It's always halfway up or two hours into a gruelling hike that the dreadful realization of what an irresponsible mother I'm being sinks into me, it's a cold, hard dread.
We were almost at the top when the climb became impossible, he was overtly scared, I was covertly terrified. Two options ... we agreed on down. Fifteen minutes up and over an hour down and five minutes home.
His disposition? Sunny, cheerful, full of confidence, proud of his achievement and most importantly, happy.
(And he still loved him mom.)

Opting out: Firsts in the Free State

My husband and I had always said that Jo'burg had a lifespan for us. From time to time the city would reach its zenith for us, the traffic, the noise, the fact that you could no longer pop out on a quick errand, it would take you all morning. Then there's the lifestyle; before we got married we threw a tent, two guitars and a couple of jerrycans in the back of an old 1981 Hilux, stuffed 100 US dollars in the cubbyhole and waved goodbye, heading north across the Limpopo.
We craved the bush, mountains, creeks, anything but the drunken neighbours, hooters, sirens and the exhaust fumes I ingested every time I ventured out for a run.
The city of gold was fast turning into a city of plastic, faux, faster, better, bigger, more ... everything we're not ... is there really a need for another mall?
But every time we'd had it with Jozi something came up and we'd push it all aside for the moment. Life doesn't stop happening , it doesn't stop for you to stay, "Oh, there's a gap coming up in our life where we will have the time to comb the countryside looking for a gorgeous house in a gorgeous town."
Then something bigger than life did happen. Suddenly and for the most part unprepared. We'd been trying in vain to start a family and had decided to go the adoption route – specifically the trans-race adoption route as the waiting period is shorter and it made not a jot of difference to us – once your intense screening process is complete you wait for the phone to ring, for a voice on the other side to say there's a baby ... it rang three days after our screening was complete.
We wanted quicker ...
The day we took our son home my husband started house hunting online.
Our little boy was four months old when he came home and we spent the next eight months finding heaven via Marquard.
Heard of it?
It's a very small town in the eastern Free State that is desperately trying to be something that it will just never be. The kind of town where the only cafe's cappuccinos are filter coffee with frothed milk and they're okay with that.
The issue with moving outside the three-, sometimes four-hour ring of ugly that surrounds Jo'burg is that you have to maximize towns and house viewing. All this happens online and via email, you see a few possible likes, you scour the map book and ID towns in the vicinity, then scour the online property sites for anything in those towns, then email some over-zealous agents (are there any other kind?) and set up a 4-town, 24-house weekend.
I learned two things: how to change a soiled nappy on the back seat of a moving car with a child in a supported standing position and that estate agents are, in the main, hard of hearing.
On the Marquard weekend we were breathing deeply in the shade of a large tree in the agent's garden, she was trying to flog us her house. I was probably breathing far deeper than my husband, rolling my shoulders back over and over and occasionally adding a head roll in an attempt to stop myself telling her that a) we specifically said no Randpark Ridge-style face-brick houses b) no old houses with visible steal supports running the length of the room just below the ceiling (banks don't like those) and c) no clearly industrial-type offices complete with lengthy passages and meeting rooms. This last was the straw that had me seething under the acacia. I knew while waiting for the door to be opened I didn't want to go inside. And wait we did, for the caretaker (and a hundred of his closest friends), one of which had just used the amenities after what must have been a rough night, to open up.
I was hot and irritated and then our son crawled, for the first time. He was sitting and then he was crawling.
We were delighted, totally chuffed, as parents are, as though they had anything to do with it, and the estate agent? beside herself.
The following morning, before following her to view two houses in Hobhouse, we told her he had held his bottle on his own for the first time. Bless her, she took it as a sign that we were destined for a life in Marquard.
We do not live there but our boy is a seasoned traveller.