Singing Like a Bird

After years of dithering my husband and I made the decision to relocate; lots of reasons, none of them relevant to this blog. Once we set the ball rolling everything just fell into place, one after the other, after the other after the other after the other ... gathering such momentum that at times it was difficult keeping up. One of those things is that my husband was offered a great job starting 1 July.

We're organized, bordering on, okay! totally OCD; so before he left I started selling things on FaceBook groups, we chose our favourite books and started packing up; or rather piling up. The freight company pack to ensure you're not shipping across your morning stash of 'mommy's little helpers', the pellet gun for noisy neighbours or my still-sealed bottle of ground coriander.

In all this organized chaos though we have left the children's rooms relatively untouched in order not to disrupt their little worlds too far in advance. In fact my husband has taken across their second set of linen – Dora and Thomas – to make up their rooms there to ensure continuity.

We didn't make a big scene at the airport – kiss, hug, love you dad, see you soon. We have a glass in the kitchen with a photo of dad squashed at the bottom ala Cabbage Patch Kid and exactly the amount of smarties in it as the number of sleeps til they see their dad. Pats on the back, I'm an amazing mom, we're amazing parents and of course I can manage five weeks on my own with them, the house, packing and a job.

Over and over and over again I repeated the serenity prayer this morning in order not to actually do my daughter (almost three) bodily harm. From the moment her dad, her special, her favourite, her everything, closed the car door at the airport she thought: Game On Mom – in a quavering Chucky sort of tone.

She's on a deliberate go-slow, a lobotomized incapability of following the simplest instruction and 100% hearing impaired. But that's not the worst, she has developed the most torturous whine. It's soft, but loud enough to jack-hammer against my ear drum, pained in a desperately plaintive, I'm all alone in the world and no one cares sort of way and REPETITIVE.

itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy ...

bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast ...

big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear ...

And boy does she have stamina. Endurance that would put Iron Men to shame, hour upon hour she can go on with this mantra.

Babies crying and the theme song to Barney played over and over are actual forms of torture used today in war to get captives to talk. In between other heinous methods. But when their tormentors leave they flip the "We're a happy family ..." switch.

Well little girl, a round of applause – no electrodes on sensitive body parts, no pliers (I lost all my toenails in a recent ultra anyway) – you broke me, I'll do it, what do you want to know? My phone number, banks account number, password to every online site I'm registered with ...
... anything, I'll sing ... like a bird.

Ching Chong Cha Cheat

Ching Chong Cha
Hick Hack Hock
Rock Paper Scissors
Which ever you choose to call it, hopefully not the latter – zero imagination – it is probably the one game you cannot cheat at. It's Ching Chong behind your back and on Cha you present your flat hand, fist or ... hang on a minute ...
In wanting to describe the placement of your fingers for scissors I realize it is the double-fingered, vulgarism of old, now discarded in favour of the single middle finger, but I digress. Peter Pointer and Toby Tall, with Tommy Thumb, Ruby Ring and Baby Small tucked in represent scissors.
So it's somewhere between 5.30 and 6.00am and neither my husband nor I can physically open our eyes let alone move a muscle so actions like nipping to the kitchen to warm a bottle, remove a dry nappy and pop her on the potty, respond cordially to the now ten-minute old plea of: "Can I have breakfast please?" Are just not possible.
Regardless of the night before, actually getting myself out of bed in the morning is a gargantuan task. My husband does it. Not because he's a morning person or because he finds it any easier, but because he knows I will outlast him.
In order to even make it (dressed with my teeth brushed) to the front door with the kids (dressed with their teeth brushed) and all the necessary apparel for their day, who swims on a Wednesday? I have to go to sleep, sleep, not bed, no later than 9.30, at a push 10pm, but then I'm risking throwing on yesterday's clothes to get out the door.
Before I had children I couldn't understand why my parents ate dinner so early. Now I know. Habit. Years of eating early so you can go to bed early so you can get up early.
Is it hideous to every now and then wish with every fibre for those precious Sunday mornings before you had kids?
Here's how bad it is:

• I caution my husband not to trawl for a movie on the tellie; it'll end too late.
• I talk myself into no longer liking a programme I've always enjoyed; it's a double bill and ends too late.
• Some one gave us the complete goodness-knows-how-many seasons of Breaking Bad over six months ago. We know we'll never just be able to watch a single episode each night, once we start it'll be full-on, "Just one more." It'll end too late. We've actually likened the commitment to having another child.
• We turn a DVD movie into a mini-series.
• Every day I promise myself I'm going to spend some time writing in the evening. I don't. I crawl guiltily across those broken promises into bed with my book making small groaning noises in appreciation of how good it feels to be lying down.

So our cheek's are plastered to our pillows, our daughter (legs too short to climb out of bed on her own and use the potty and developmental age too young to fetch and warm her own milk) has given up on calling "Maameee" and is now calling, "Daadee" and our son is now in the kitchen banging about with stools to reach the items necessary to make his own breakfast – enough to chill the core of any OCD parent – and I say: "Ching Chong Cha?"

Eyes closed on Ching Chong, we both manage to peer at the result, hands raised aloft on Cha .

Round one: I lose.

Round two: I win

Round three: In a do-or-die final I pull out my scissors and watch, aghast as his paper morphs into a rock!

"Don't touch the hair"

Who has the the unequivocal right to say this?
If you can wash your, or your child's hair and then pull a comb through it – you don't.
If you are a man with short hair that has been gelled into baked Alaska peaks with an up-standing, side-waving flick at the front – you don't.
Who does? Me.
When we adopted our first child, a boy, I took cognizance of two things, ethnic hair is different and I know nothing about it except 'Black is Beautiful'.
Stand in front of the shelves of ethnic hair products in the shop and ask yourself one question: What is your intention? Stimulate root growth, moisturize the scalp, moisturize the hair, relax, detangle, soften, shine, and if so, with what? Olive oil? Avocado? Coconut? Mayonnaise? (really) ... "I don't know," I said loud and petulantly (why aren't these products white folk friendly?) I just want to be able to comb it without him screaming and wailing.
The rational answer is to ask someone. For this you have to prepare yourself mentally, practice your pranayama and move into a deep state of calm and serenity ... in Pick 'n Pay.
Once said state is achieved you look around for a friendly face ... then you look around for a less rushed-looking face ... then you ask the nearest person.
The first look that crosses your adviser's face is disbelief, not that you have a black child, but that you may not know what black actually is. Thinking this can't possibly be the case the next expression that crosses said face is suspicion, as though I am asking her to let me in on her hundred-year-old matriarchal chakalaka recipe.
Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo and detangle spray was what I needed and an Africa comb.
What my boy has is a No. 1 cut.
Ah! But what about the girl? Advise here is freely dispensed as though one does not concern oneself with the minutiae of boy's hair but the importance of girl's hair cannot be overstated and you clearly know nothing.
NEVER CUT IT! LEAVE IT TO GROW!
If you cut there will be no braids, no cornrows, no cute twists and little dreads.
For this hair must be washed and combed so my angel doesn't look like a Mau Mau who has spent two years in the Aberdares. So back to that vast intimidating shelf.
Night one: Wash, rinse and massage in conditioner, but do not rinse. Wrap hair in scarf as sponge-wet and to prevent conditioner coating bedding.
Night two: Rinse and massage in moisturizer then comb.
I have been blessed with a little girl with the thickest, curliest, most beautiful mat of hair that takes a full hour to comb through. I then wrap her head in a scarf and the next morning, GORGEOUS! A perfect sphere of soft, glistening, thick pile adorns her head.
I'm showing off, gloating, boasting, "Look what I've done!" "What I've accomplished!" Then I remember she was involved too and add, "What a clever girl, you were so good, look how beautiful you are."
No one may touch THE hair, no one.
Three days later I'm exasperated, she has been recalled to the Aberdares.

Mom: A quick reaction unit

In a mad attempt to finish my work before Christmas I have taken a moment to assess the detritus on my desk. Aside from the requisite PC screen, tower, scanner, printer, keyboard, UPS and speakers, I have:

• 1 x Sony Z1 movie camera to play interview footage for research.
• 2 x useless Comrades Marathon running magazines. To be returned (with thanks).
• A sheaf of emails relating to the status of the para training of the Rhodesian African Rifles.
• 3 x tea cups – sadly empty.
• 12 x tapes, not in order, with hours of interview footage for research purposes, now all in the incorrect boxes thus I now have no clue what's on which tape.
• 1 x notebook including notes on everything from the beginnings of the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit to the contact details of all the butcheries in town.
• Application forms to register an NGO.
• Said NGOs working constitution.
• 12 x books, all large format on the Rhodesian bush war, ranging from books on individual regiments to memoirs to complete histories.
• Empty toilet rolls to make 'binoculars' for the game reserve camping holiday we have planned.
• 2 x A2 sheets of paper with notes, sketches and other information pertaining to the book I am writing.

... or trying to write.

As I zoom out the playroom floor has mysteriously disappeared in a cornucopia of building blocks, Christmas food parcels, tea sets, musical instruments, crayons, puzzle piece, play dough ... and this to the ever-increasing wailing of two young children fighting over a wind-up dog, the kind you put on a pencil: the head on the front and the tail at the back, then you wind it up and it walks. They don't have a pencil, just a head and a tail.

As I get my facts straight about the first Fire Force jump from Buffalo Range by the Rhodesian SAS on 22 September 1976 (?) the wailing has turned into a full-blown fight and they are at my chair, each brandishing half a dog.

Any parenting book will tell you that by getting cross and shouting you are merely adding another tantrum to the mix, well sod that, a short, sharp few word, swift discipline, each to their own naughty corner and now ... the sweet sounds of a happy game in progress down the passage.
... and me? Back to Fire Force: a complete vertical envelopment of the enemy, encircle it entirely and, very quickly with highly-trained, highly-motivated and highly-disciplined troops ... MOM!