Bonding over trivial matters

I think it's important for a family to have a 'thing' that they do together. Whether it be supporting an AFL team, world-class backyard cricket competitions, patrolling with the Surf Lifesavers, or running the Little Athletics club.

In my family, it's Trivia. That's right, an entire family of know-alls. Admittedly, Mum prefers Scrabble and is a demon in that area, but the rest of us love nothing more than a beer and 100 questions. Interestingly, we don't play Trivial Pursuit at home. We only play when we're on the same team. Possibly because the only area in which any of us can beat Dad is the 'Pink' questions - he tends to struggle with any musical questions beyond the folk tunes of the 1960s.

We used to all play in a cool pub in the Big Smoke, rolling up every Thursday night to be part of an ever-changing array of people known as The Crazy Dates. Dad travelled up by train on his Seniors Card for the night. We were always happy to see him - we had endless experts in Pink and Orange questions at hand, but he's the only one with any breadth of Geography/History/Serious stuff knowledge.

These days, we are spread more thinly on the ground, so our appearances are more sporadic. The school that Sister C's kids go to will never be the same after The Crazy Dates staged a reunion at the annual trivia night. There was much muttering among the Dates, however, about the rule that other teams could buy answers. Admittedly, it was a fundraiser, but still... hardly in the spirit of the game. Competitive? Us? Much?

Tonight, Sister C, Dad and I joined his regular team - this week named the Pies Reheated - at the local club for a whirl. He is known to his team as Brains Trust. They had high hopes for us, being offspring of Brains Trust. The fact that we thought that a Shannon Noll song was sung by a girl (the voice, not the name) dissuaded them a little of our potential.

We had some highlights: rock star born in Zanzibar? Freddie Mercury. Inventor of the Telegraph? Samuel Morse. And some low-lights. Would you have remembered that The Dream Academy sang 'Life in a Northern Town'? Thought not.

We lost the jackpot round because no-one on the team knew the identity of the movie star whose name meant Moorish Knight. We decided that if it wasn't Omar Sharif, it should have been. In fact, it was Maurice Chevalier - which everyone knew the moment it was announced. We're all experts in hindsight. (And we'll all remember it should it ever come up again.)

However, we pulled off a victory. One delicious point. Whether this was because Dad knew the source of the Tigress River, or because Sister C and I knew that Cookie Monster's fur was blue is a contentious issue.

The family that plays together...

{image: movietreasures.com}

This post is part of 'Flog Yo Blog Friday' - visit Lori at RRSAHM for your weekend reading list.

Have you got a family password?

How many passwords do you have in your life? Ignore PIN numbers for the time being - heaven forbid we should bring numbers into the equation - and concentrate on passwords. Are you a person who has the one password for everything? Usually something really clever like 'password1'. Or do you actually follow all that IT advice and keep a different password for every single account and change them every month? If you are one of these people, please send immediate tips as to how you remember this month's passwords.

I ask about passwords not because I'm going to share mine (hundreds of different ones, since you asked, updated regularly and written down nowhere...that's my story and I'm sticking to it), but because an article I read today at SuperParents gave me food for thought. A great guest post by Kelly Burstow of Be A Fun Mum (clearly she had me in mind when she named her blog) on stranger danger introduced the idea of a family password.

This is a word specific to your family, to be used if you need to unexpectedly send someone they're not expecting to collect them from somewhere. If the adult knows the password, the kids know it's okay to go with them. If they don't know the password, the kids run screaming for the nearest teacher or trusted adult.

This got me thinking. First, I thought how useless I would be as the person sent in the emergency because I would no doubt forget the password en route, arrive to pick up the children and fail the test. They would have to stand there in amazement as I ran through every password I know in the hopes of lighting on the right one.

Then I started thinking about what our family password might be. A word specific to our family that a stranger would not guess by chance. And yet one that would not be completely embarrassing to share with the adult on their way to collect the kids. Family language can be a strange thing. Sister C (MultipleMum) wrote recently about some of our extended family vernacular and you should have a look at it here if you are game. (One read and you won't understand how you've existed to date without the verb 'to parp'. Trust me.)

In our house, chickens are known as 'bokkens' because this is what Mr3 called them for a long time. They make a 'bok, bok, bok' noise, therefore they were bokkens. Junk mail is known as 'reklame', the German word for advertising. The daily weather update on the news is greeted with shouts of 'Het weer!' - 'the weather' in Dutch. (There's not much to get excited about in Fibrotown... and there is that genetic predisposition...)

You see my problem. "I need you to pick up the kids."
"Okay."
"You need a password."
[pause] "Okay."
"It's 'bokkens'."
[long pause] "O-kay. Um, sorry, something's just come up."
[dial tone]

I am going to talk to the kids about this. If anyone can come up with a password it is Mr6, with his background in smugglers, spies and groups of kids with time on their hands. Once we work it out, I'll let you know.

Actually, no, I won't.

Do you think the password thing is a good idea? Would you struggle to come up with a suitable word? Or is that just me overthinking my attempts to Be A Fun Mum? Again.


{image: hklinger/etsy}

Just like riding a bicycle

Today, a victory. Mr6 set forth on his bike across the grass of the local showground without his training wheels. And rode. And rode. And rode. With me shrieking 'you're doing it! you're doing it!' like a crazy woman, jumping up and down in the centre of the field.

The excitement.

It's been a while in the making. We first tried about six months ago but, never one to embrace something new, he baulked. Hard. Refusing to go near the bike until the training wheels went back on. We acquiesced. He'll do it when he's ready, we decided. He's like that, Mr6. You can't actually make him do anything until he's ready.

We waited for signs of readiness. None.

So we forced the issue again. Off came the wheels. He rode the bike around the front yard with me running and shouting and flapping along behind him. It wasn't a success.

More space, I decided. He needs more space.

And so, today at the showground. Some tips. More running and shouting and flapping. He turned to me. "Mum, let me do it by myself."

I backed off. He got on. And rode his bike.

I'm not sure who was more thrilled.

Do you remember learning to ride a bike?

{link: Squidoo}

Building resilience (in plants and kids)

Spending a lot of time in the sun does funny things to a girl. Take Saturday, for instance. I decided that it was time to stop talking about doing useful things in my vegie patch and actually do them. So Mr3 and I pulled on our wellie boots - as an aside, mine are new, brown with tweed and very stylish (imagine horsey, but without the horse) - and set forth with small spades in hand.

First, we attacked the cauliflowers. And when I say attacked, I mean hauled those suckers out of there. They were all leaf, no cauli. Not even a flower. I'd given them three months. Dumped. Mr3 had a fabulous time digging them out, keeping strictly to the right-hand side of the shallots, as instructed. Meanwhile, I weeded, and weeded, and weeded. Turn your back on a vegie patch for five minutes and the invasion begins.

Later, as I weeded my way through the large garden bed under the camphor laurel, I found myself thinking a little too hard about weeds. About who decided what was a weed and what wasn't. How the weeds always seemed to do better than the nurtured, composted, hot-housed wimps that we'd actually planted. How if we'd just gone with the weeds in the first place I wouldn't be out here in the blazing sun, fork in hand.

To give you an idea of how tired I was, my thoughts went from weeding to parenting. To the hands-on, nurturing, enriching, hot-housing style of parenting that is in vogue at present. Much is written about resilience these days - mostly about how children these days don't have any. They are not left to fend for themselves enough. They are not thrown into situations where they must problem-solve and survive.

I wrote a story a little while ago for happychild.com.au (you can read it here) and received some good advice from child psychologist and author Andrew Fuller. "Kids are pretty resilient as long as we don't muck them up by trying to solve every problem for them," he says.

I'm not a natural 'free range' parent. My tendency to overthink everything has every step of my children's day thought out three or four steps ahead. The Builder is an excellent foil to that. He's not a worrier. He's a thinker, a planner, a perfectionist, but not a worrier. He can walk ahead of the boys at the beach, not looking behind, knowing that they'll be okay. I have to walk behind them. Warning them not to go to deep, not to stray too far, not to... have fun.

I worry that I worry too much. I worry that Mr6 worries too much. He's probably worried that I'm worried. Mr3 is too busy going to parties with Alla Hoo Hoo to worry about much at all.

As I worried away at the weeds in my garden, cutting them off in their prime, it occurred to me that there's strength in adversity. Which is not to say that I won't be encouraging the growth of my prize specimens. But I might water a little less, mulch a little more, and spend a little less time in the sun.

No worries.

{image: Pete Dungey}

What colour was your day?

A perfect Sunday. Bright blue sky, light breeze, not so much as a fluffy white cloud. Today, Fam Fibro shook off winter and embraced the best that the Fibrotown region has to offer. A long walk along the cycle track by the beach.

Mr3's little legs pumping on his 'big boy' bike, proud to show us that his braking has advanced enough that he can now actually stop. Mr6 scooting along, about 50 metres ahead, asserting his independence - checking over his shoulder regularly and stopping to wait if he couldn't see us. The Builder carrying his footy, chipping over the top and regathering... well, mostly regathering.

Me, half jogging, half walking, trying to keep Mr3 within arm's length, in case - in case of what? Not sure.

At the creek, the boys were in the water in seconds. "We won't get wet," they chorused, all three. Result, two little boys in underpants within two minutes, wet shorts dangling from bike handles, trying their hardest to dry. All of us with sand between our toes. Mr3 sighting crocodiles. Mr6 defending us all from water dragons with a stick. The Builder wandering around, attention captivated by the sandcastle built by two other boys. They'd captured some little crabs and had built them a new home. Fortunately, for the crabs, the tide was on its way in. They wouldn't be there long before a wall of water disintegrated their new home, releasing them back to their old one.

Me, half jogging, half walking, trying to keep Mr3 within arm's length, in case - in case of what? Not sure.

Afterwards, ice creams all round. Mr6 brave enough to venture beyond the well-worn chocolate path into a whole new rainbow-flavoured world. Mr3, never one to be left behind, has one too, thanks. "What does it taste like?" I asked. "Like all the colours," Mr6 responded, lips blue, eyes bright.

On the way home, Mr3 asleep within minutes of reaching the sanctuary of the car. Mr6 finishes his new Zac Power Ultimate Missions book. "That's four books since Friday," he announces with glee. It can be expensive, this reading habit. We plan a library visit.

Home again. Baths, barbecue, bed.

A day that tasted like all the colours.

{image: ThePaintedPeepShow/Etsy}

This post is part of the 'What Makes Me Happy' linky at Jess's Epheriell Designs.

Let's talk about meme, shall we?

Some time ago (and I won't admit to exactly how long ago as I'd like us all to remain friends) Shelley from My Shoebox Life and Allison (cool name) at Melbourne Mumma both threw Kreativ Blogger awards in my direction. This made me feel a) chuffed and b) worried, as part of the whole thing is to a) put the award button on my blog (and we all know how useless I am at anything technical) and b) come up with seven things about me that you don't know.

In an aside, I am kind of glad I can't do the button thing because the spelling of this award bothers me. Mia Freedman's post about the 'creative' spelling of children's names resonated with me. I have two Ls in my name and it has meant a lifetime of spelling it out slowly - imagine how I'd go if I was Alisoun (as per Wife of Bath), or Ailysun. I'm all about correct spelling. Although I do now believe that the only way to correctly spell Allison is with two Ls (*ducks for cover*).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. It's taken me several weeks a little while to come up with seven things, but here they are.

1. I was born in Papua New Guinea.

2. I went to five different primary schools.

3. I can read upside down.

4. I once played the role of 'The Artful Dodger' in Oliver and can still high kick my way through 'Consider Yourself'.

5. I did ballet for ten years and danced en pointe. My feet still hate me for it.

6. I kissed my first boy at the age of seven, and then didn't bother again for ten years.

7. I don't like skirts. Or heels. Or anything that slows me down.

So, technically, I'm now supposed to hand over my meme to others. But I'm not good at chain letters (and yet I'm still here), so all I'm going to do is share seven blogs that I love. Not Kreativ, I know, but there you have it. The list does not include MaxabellaLoves and AndThenThereWereFour because, although they are my first reads every day, they are also my sisters. I'm not related to anyone on this list.

1. So now what? - life, sliced and diced.
2. Deer Baby - the most beautiful writing.
3. Not Drowning Mother - irreverent. Will make you snort coffee out your nose.
4. My Fluffy Bunnies - the haikus get me every time.
5. Ah, The Possibilities - sweet, and funny, and topical.
6. The Lark - I am a handmade person masquerading in a klutz's body.
7. A Country Farmhouse - this is what my life in the country should look like.

Visit them. You'll love them. And now I'm heading off to teach Alla Hoo Hoo the words to 'Consider Yourself'. What imaginary friend wouldn't love a song like that?

{image: michaelmaule/etsy}

In another spectacular display of Failure To Add The Button, I'm flogging my blog today with Lori at RRSAHM - pop over and visit, because you can never read enough great blogs.