Sunday snapshot

Like father like son.

In which I wax lyrical about a few rocks

For a while now, I've been feeling a bit bad for... wait for it... not taking the kids to the theatre.

Oh the middle-class angst!

But even recognising the privileged nature of this guilt didn't help, it just left me feeling... conflicted. The tug to take the kids to a play felt real, but why did I want to take them? Was it something they really needed? Or was it some kind of unconscious mompetition, a way to publicly demonstrate I am a Good Mother who does Interesting and Worthy Things with her children?

Anyway, back in January I finally got hold of a programme, and then last week I finally got around to remembering to actually go.

Because Lukan is usually the tag-alonger rather than the focus of any activities, I had chosen a show for his age group. Which meant that, although I was pleased to be going, I was kind of dreading the performance. What kind of inane forced cheerfulness was I going to have to sit through just to appease a vague sense I should expose my children to some bourgeois definition of culture?

And the price! 15 bucks each, no discount for kids, for a 30 minute show! Really??!!

But ...it was wonderful. Sweet and whimsical, in only the best sense of the words, with a not completely happy ending and a gentle message thrown in.

As I sat there, transported to another world by a man with few words and a kind face - a world made of rocks and sand and an old sardine can - I remembered how much I love the theatre. The physical closeness of the story. The complete belief in characters - tin can men with stone hearts! - you know not to be real. And the gut-churning hope that you will be transported, that the actor will not embarrass him/herself - or you - by failing to put you under his/her spell.

It was a kind of tonic too. My work is often quite sad, highlighting the worst of what it means to be human. Animals going extinct, oceans being emptied, forests being clear cut... writing about this leaves me feeling that people are a plague, destroying our planet through greed and selfishness and thoughtlessness.

But witnessing this man's ability to bring stones and tin cans alive - seeing his creations so perfectly with my own eyes - reminded me of just how special humans are. How we alone, of all life on Earth, can make beauty and stories, and share them and live them together. How incredible it is that spun star-dust can do this.

And when I saw Téo so enraptured, and heard Lukan laugh with delight, and when Lukan came home the next day with a rock he said was a baby triceratops... well, I knew exactly why I want to take my kids to the theatre.

Saturday snapshot

Maybe branded household items aren't such a rip off

- But I forgot to tell you I wanted a Buzz Light Ear birfday.

Lukan makes this complaint frequently, despite the fact that he never even heard of Toy Story until a good six months after his last birthday.

- So you didn't like the birthdays you have had? The tractor party, and the boat pinata you asked for?

- No. I didn't. I wanted a Buzz Light Ear one.

When he's not grumbling about past birthdays, he's moaning about the next one.

- But when is it my biiirrfday. I want it to be my birfday nooooow. I want my Buzz Light Ear birfday noooow.

Although, sometimes he does eagerly anticipate it.

- When it's my Buzz Light Ear birfday, you can buy me de toy of Buzz Light Ear and Woody fwom the shop and I'm gonna have a Buzz Light Ear birfday cake.

Last year he was equally obsessed with George Pig, to the point of insisting we call him George. I got him a George toy for xmas... and then his obsession promptly moved on to Fiona.

With three months until his birthday, I fear the same will happen with Buzz.

We really don't need any more abandoned toys littering the house.

But C's weakness may have saved the day! While doing the shopping on Saturday, he succumbed to... well... see for yourself:

Who needs to fork out big bucks for a talking, laser-shooting toy when for just 10c more, you get a tissue box that generates just as much excitement?

A bounty of love

The kids have been so sweet these past couple of weeks, talking of secret Mother's Day cards and presents. And their delight yesterday morning when I opened their handiwork and they recited their poems, well, that was as big a gift as the cards and crafts themselves.

But even more of a gift is the things they say spontaneously, even on days when they get in trouble or grumble about my too-bad-that's-life stance on one thing or another.

- Mummy you're my pwincess! 

- You're the best mummy I ever knowed!

- You're the best mummy in the world!

- When I'm  big I'm going to be a pilot, and then when you're going on a plane to Australia, it's going to be me flying it! I'm going to fly you to Australia!

I'm so lucky to have such lovely, loving boys.

The big metal thing is from C, a meat grinder so I no longer have to smash chicken bones by hand for Quincy. Because yes, my thoughts on processed foods extend to the cat. (Please don't roll your eyes too much.)

Riding the porcelain ferry

You might think that having suffered hours of miserable sea sickness last year, we'd avoid boats like the plague. But it seems we forget, which is how we found ourselves on a ferry from Tenerife to La Palma - a voyage not even in the calm Mediterranean between Corsica and the mainland, but instead on the Atlantic Ocean where the waves have had nothing to break upon since they left the Americas.

You might also think that hours of simultaneous whole-family spewing, coupled with many, many prior instances of car sickness for Lukan, would make us pros in motion sickness medication. But it took an unexpected car upchuck from Lukan just one week before we left to remind us that oh yeah, we really should get some seasickness pills before we go.

And then it took a further upchuck on our first venture off the one highway in Tenerife to remember to actually give him a pill before going on windy roads.

He had a pill before we got on the ferry, but the trip overlapped with a 6-hour fever accompanied by... yes, frequent throwing up.

We had pills for us, too. Only a possible side effect is drowsiness, and since we had a 1.5 hour car trip once we got to La Palma, I thought it was best if at least one adult was in a state to drive. So, throwing up for me as well.

C and Téo took their pills with Lukan, but C only realised then that the 5-years-and-up version should be taken not 20 minutes before departure, as for Lukan's under 5 version, but 2 hours before departure. So C felt sick, and Téo was sick, for 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Yeah, that whole learning by experience thing seems a bit defective for us.

(But we had a lovely time anyway.)

Vamos a la playa

 (and other places on Tenerife)