The Georgous

Having arrived back from a busy London trip on Tuesday, 31st March, we were lucky to have managed to pull off the Undy Nursery trial session without too much challenge.

Given that 1-3pm is usually nap time – Georgia did exceedingly well, and was very well behaved at the trial session. She was not particularly keen on letting me go initially but after hanging about for half an hour, I managed to convince her that I needed to use the loo at home, and she was quite happy to stay at nursery for about an hour more before I came to pick her up.

So the trial session went well – now to see how actual nursery goes! Goodbye afternoon naps!

Daddy knocked his knee on the dining table.
Georgia looks up at him and says “Daddy, say sorry to yourself!”

It’s hard to find ‘the’ balance, and harder still when it’s emotionally relevant.

I try to find a little time in my day for my own ‘me’ time, usually when Georgia’s napping and I always aim to fill that time constructively. Now constructively does not mean for my sanity or peace of mind, constructively really means – a sense acheivement. These days it’s a case of finishing up my 2 000 or 3 000 word chapter to meet my mid-Dec deadline of the Principles textbook.

Typically though, procrastination rules and i often find that in that one hour of time that i have, it is swallowed completely by writing long chatty emails to my classmates the other side of the world (Marie in Aus, Jac in Penang, Mei in US); stopping a while to catch up on Facebook, reading reading and more reading – The Star, BBC News….and worse of all are the lovely often deliciously provocative blogs of other mummys. Why and how are they able to acheive so much in the same amounts of time that I have in a day?

The bigger questions arrives every Thursday, for this is when Georgia spends a full day at St Johns. I’m so glad that she is now a full time convert – it has no longer become a war to get her going to St Johns.

It is also when I arrive home from Tescos after our early morning grocery shop before ‘school’ and I find the house unusually lonely and quiet. And as I try to focus my attention to the seemingly mountainous task of writing I am distracted by the quietness of the house.

Without Georgia here, there is a sense of stillness which so easily slips in to occasional awarenes of looming loneliness.

I do miss my girl when she’s at nursery.

Every morning when we drop Daddy-dear off at the train station, Georgia blows him a kiss and says

“Goodbye…My Snoopy Dear”

A couple of mornings ago, downstairs in the kitchen, Georgia announces very confidently,
“Mummy’s a boy!”
So I ask her, “Oh, when did I become a boy?”
To which her immediate reply was “On Sunday. When Daddy became a girl!”

There are many times when I feel very fortunate to now live in a culture so diverse and so ‘alien’ to the one in which I was raised, and yet, it is just as often that I feel this maddening frustration of what I feel is an internal culture clash – particularly with regards to child-raising.

Yesterday as we joined the Wiggle and Giggle session at the Caldicot Leisure Centre, I was relieved to see that the kids were almost all about the same age as Georgia, and mostly girls too at that. Jay, was rather the odd one out, being the only boy of walking age there – the other two were crawling babies.

Nevertheless, a healthy dose of running about and bouncing and riding cars within a confined space is always welcome. It did not take long however before a lesson arose…this time it was a lesson on Empowerment and saying No!

Georgia with two shakers one in each hand – clearly enjoying her noise makers, and up runs another little girl, approximately the same age (2.5 – 3 years).

“Give me that!” the girl says. Georgia does a pretty good stare-down but it doesn’t stop that nasty brat from simply snatching the toy away from her. I watch this from some distance away, but in such situations, rightly or wrongly, I am rather reluctantly to intervene. My personal feeling is that, she will have to learn to stand up for herself, and rather than fight her battles for her, I would like to teach her and furnish her with the tools to stand up for herself.

Jun who also witnesses the whole event starts saying, in Mandarin “Take it back, take it back.” Thankfully, Georgia did not understand that bit of Mandarin – although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Soon she comes running up to me with a pout, “That little girl snatched from me!”
“I know…” I say, “She’s nasty, but you must learn to say No! Don’t snatch!” 

 She does a couple of practise commands and seems quite confident but all the empowerment seems to fizzle away when the same brat comes up again and tries to relieve her of the one other toy. She’s persistent this kid, it takes me several tries before she finally gets the message that she will not be allowed to snatch from Georgia.

BUT while I am displeased with that toddlers behaviour, I am disgusted by the fact that her mother and her friend are sat hidden out of view in the bouncy castle – oblivious to the entire proceedings. Hence my question – why don’t Mothers mother?

she wasn’t there!

We stopped at Windsor on the way back from Croydon. Being able to step straight in to a working living castle is expensive albeit fascinating.

There have been some changes at Windsor since I last visited in 2004, there’s now the Moat Garden, which looked very pretty over the castle wall, but most of the exhibits and the format of the tour pretty much stayed the same.

While we were there, we made it in time for the changing of the guard, which in itself was heart-throbbing (thank the drums) and very colourful. Unfortunately after about five minutes, Georgia decided she didn’t like the drums – they were too loud. Luckily neither of us were too fussed about seeing the whole changing of the guard thing so we quite happily went on our way. At least it meant that we didn’t have to heave and push with the throng of people when the crowd dispersed.

We made our way in to St George’s chapel, at which point Georgie remembers that she’s here to see the Queen. We had explained to her that this was where the Queen lived and reminded her of the nursery rhyme about the little pussy cat who visits the queen. 

Inside the chapel she sees two chaplains and says to her daddy, “Can we ask them, where is the Queen?”
To which her daddy says, “Ok, you ask the lady where the Queen is and say that you’d like to see the Queen”

So up she totters to this kindly elderly lady and says “I’d like to see the Queen, please?”
Thankfully this lady very politely says,”Oh dear, I’m sorry but the Queen is away on her holidays at the moment. She’s up at Balmoral in Scotland having her holiday.”

Georgie nods, turns around, looks at me and says, “The Queen is busy right now”

Good day, how is your family?

The words from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast song have been fervently sung these past few days. And judging from Georgia’s French pronounciation, I figured perhaps it’s time to expose her to a third language – Francais…

So tentatively we start her out saying…

“Bonjour, Je m’apelle Georgia-mae” -complete with French accents on her name.
She manages exceedingly well, only to continue with “And what about Mama Mirabelle?”

The wisdom of our children forever astounds.

A couple of days ago, after a fairly traumatic day which involved my often shouting – No! No! No! to Georgia, we had a very enlightening conversation. I’m sure all Parenting Experts will at this point say ‘She’s challenging her boundaries’.

I asked her, “Do you like Mummy being angry?”

Her immediate vehement response, “No!” and then she goes on to say…

“I like mummy to be happy happy happy, and daddy and Georgie to be happy happy happy!”

Now, please tell me, how do I help her maintain this as a life-long policy?

Silly mummy – did just that!

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