I can't deny, it warms my heart to see this. Especially since an hour before he'd asked to use the iPad to watch something on YouTube, and I'd said no, so then he amused himself first by building electric circuits with a kit from his uncle and then by reading.

I can't help thinking that such activities are better than videos and app games... but at the same time, I wonder how much of this is really true and how much is curmudgeonly-ness. Also, snobbery. And there's a bit of hypocrisy mixed in too: I do let the kids use the iPad when it suits me to be left alone, sometimes. And I like veg out in front of the TV. Plus I'm conflicted over my rules: leave your brother alone and find something to do by yourself when the other is reading, but you have to share it together when it comes to iPad usage.

Still, it warms my heart to see my kids reading.

Gone from us

He comes home smelling of cigarettes and someone else's perfume. When he comes home at all, it's getting rarer and rarer. Even when he does come in - reluctantly, unwillingly - he's desperate to get away, to be anywhere but inside what was once his home.

The kids he used to play with and cuddle - well, now he couldn't care less about them. In fact, it's painfully clear he wishes they didn't exist.

Every now and then he passes by the house on his way somewhere, gaze resolutely forward, not a single glance in. Sometimes I go out and call his name. He'll come to me, out of a lingering memory of how things were before, or maybe just habit, but where once there was so much affection - even too much at times - now there's none. He shies away from my touch, stays the shortest possible time. The whole time he's with me, he's straining to go to her.

I can't believe how quickly this has happened, either. Ever since Vietnam, just a couple of months. Well actually, I've known she was after him since last October, but not for one second did it cross my mind he'd leave us for her. I keep asking myself what went wrong. What she offers that I can't. I keep trying to make things better, but it's not working. He just doesn't love us any more.

I went over one day. To her. To say the kids missed him, I missed him, could she please stop encouraging him. With the smugness of the preferred, she said there must be something wrong at home if he doesn't want to be there. That she can't stop him coming over. Can't stop him eating at hers. Can't stop him staying the night. That if the kids wanted, they could always come and fetch him from her place.

I really, reeaaallly dislike this woman.

I want to ask her how she can live with herself, stealing him so brazenly. Whether she can look into Téo and Lukan's sweet young faces and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt. I want to snarl at her that she only ever got to know him because of me. He wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me.

But even if I think she's completely and absolutely morally in the wrong, I can't deny the truth that he's gone from us. I can't make him love us. I can't force him to stay in our home.

Good bye Max. You'll never be able to understand it, but you are breaking our hearts.

The way things go

Measured by the holy grail of research - a paper published in Nature - my scientific career was a complete failure. A long, drawn out failure: it took years and years for my Nature-worthy-had things-worked-out project to come to the unpublishable conclusion that in fact, things were not going to work out.

It was an ironic pleasure then when, shortly after starting at my job at the biotech company in Germany, I was published in Nature. Sure, it was an ad and not a spectacular breakthrough that would Change The World. It was still extremely satisfying to go from idea to execution to being published in Nature within just a few weeks.

When I worked at WWF, the holy grail was to get an opinion piece into The Economist or the Financial Times. Again I failed.

Now I'm back in marketing... and yes, you guess it... my words are appearing in The Economist and the Financial Times. Even cooler, I came up with the concept for a flashy interactive ad for The Economist iPad app, got the right people to make it for me, and now it's out there! My words, my idea, in The Economist!

---------------

The other night when I was lying in bed, I suddenly had a vision of Lukan running towards me across the school playground after school had finished, his pochette* flapping around his neck. And equally suddenly, I realised that by working out of the home, I will probably never see this in real-life, ever again.

The pain in my chest at this realisation was not insignificant. And not really counterbalanced by getting ads published in newspapers.

* A laminated paper envelope that the infants kids use to take messages from the teacher home.

Also, just to say I am not miserable working, I just find the full-time-ness of it hard.

The last couple of months

Right, so, where was I? Oh yes, winter!

It's been a snowy one.

The kids are getting useful. 

Which has been pretty, but a little slippy. And a little less fun for the broken-legged one.

Although actually, he has enjoyed being pulled around on various sleds. It snowed and snowed and snowed, and then stopped just in time for the school holidays in mid February.

 Skiing! Fabulous skiing on fabulous snow in fabulous sun!

 

Toboganning! 

 Tubing!

Snow scooting! 

A walking Lukan!

Snow tunnel!

Icicles!

Chalets! Cheese! Friends!

A lovely week, until... right near the end, on a veeerrrry misty day with zero visibility, C skied off the piste and over a drop, and so we ended up...

...with two sore legs. Leading to a new version of an inexplicably popular song:



We were down to 1 pair of crutches shortly afterwards when...

...the cast came off! He may look a little worried in the photo, but actually he was quite happy. It feels like there's balloons tied to my legs when I walk, because my leg is so light!

And then C took back his crutches last weekend, so hopefully that's the end of sore legs this year.

And also winter... because even though it's still a little chilly, and even though there's been a few more snow flurries this last week, and another this morning...

I think it's safe to say that Spring, while not sprung, is springing.

Over just as it started

Yesterday was a beautiful day. 

Fresh snow, blue sky - perfect for skiing.

All good until a fall, and a ski that didn't come off. Twist...

... snap.

That's pretty much the end of his skiing for 2013.

Snap shots, end 2012

There's so many posts I never got around to this year, too tired in the evenings to craft anything. There's so many pictures I took too, that I never got around to posting - or only posted on Facebook, which is not very helpful for my mum.

So, here's a few things from the past few months. No story here, just random photos from my phone. (And sorry for the Facebook repeats.)

Back in August, Lukan started school.

Which, you may remember, is really preschool. Lukan didn't realise this however, and thought school was for learning. So from the first day, he started writing.

We were impressed with his completely unassisted effort. (Sorry it's upside down. If you're stuck, think annoying English show for kids featuring odd creatures with TV screens for bellies.)

This is the downside of Lukan starting school: many, many, many tears.We knew what to expect from Téo, but still find it strange that going to preschool for half a day 4 days a week can leave kids so tired.

The garden was quite pretty back then.

Skip forward to December, and it got quite snowy.

Max is a truly beautiful cat. The bell is because a neighbour tried to steal him, and I didn't know who it was and I wanted to mark him as owned.

Quincy went through a bit of a bad-tempered stage. She glared. A lot. But now she's much nicer. I suspect the glaring may have had something to do with a non-consensual hysterectomy.

The snow is all gone now, thanks to rain. Loooots of rain.

Téo started the trumpet.

I came across a fondue vending machine. I also started back at work full time. 

There was a fancy pants Christmas party.

We got a Christmas tree from the village for the first time. It was fun. And a bargain - 10 bucks, with two cups of gluhwine thrown in.

This was the first year the kids were really into decorating it.

Each year they get a new ornament, which has something to do with what happened in that year. 

Téo got a mosquito because we have never seen such a badly bitten child with such a huge reaction. Over the summer he had bites that turned into blisters - huge, enormous blisters. And Lukan got a robot made out of odds and ends, because this is what he spent the year doing:

Collecting treasure! You can imagine my joy at this combined with his thumb sucking.

Also, my computer died and took my address book with it, so if you haven't emailed me for a while could you send me a quick hello - or even a blank email - so I can get your address back again? 

Ta!

Not feeling like such a winner

There was a kid in Téo's class last year who was ... disruptive. He'd push the other kids around, punch them, take their stuff, talk rudely. Nothing the teachers did seemed to work - not time outs, not talkings to, not consequences. Every day there was a new story of what he'd done, the trouble he was in. We'd get frequent updates, in tones of disbelief and awe, of the number of rémarques in his class diary - a negative comment that for most kids, is a source of shame.

There was also quite a bit of talk amongst the mothers about this child. None appreciated how his behavioural issues dominated the class. All agreed something needed to be done. And, either explicitly or implicitly, the blame for this problem child fell mainly on his parents. After all, on the very first day of school his mother had said she hoped her son chose to be good this year, because if he didn't then she didn't know what to do. After hearing that, it's not hard to think that child needs better discipline. Stricter limits. Which means, better parenting. As well as, I would never allow things to go so far.

---------

So. That cocky little last post. It came back to bite us.

For a good two weeks, Téo was pretty much insufferable. Rude and defiant, constantly mean to his brother, lying to our new au pair about what he was meant to do, sulking his way through homework, English lessons and trumpet practice. Nothing we did worked - not time outs, not talkings to, not consequences. He was in trouble all the time. An accumulation of chores under the new system just added to his resentment and disagreeableness.

It got to the point where he was basically refusing to do anything we asked, and taking a yeah, well what are you gonna do about it attitude when we challenged him. He knew he was being bad, he knew he was choosing to escalate every single interaction to a fight. He said so. Add to this a bad cold, a bout of flu, insomnia, and an away-on-work husband... and yeah, I wasn't coping very well. I did not know what to do with him, how to make him change his behaviour.

Last Sunday we reached the bottom - figuratively and literally. Yep, the option I said was a non-starter, well, we went there.

It was horrible. I was in tears, traumatised from the event and wondering how we were ever going to mend our relationship with our son - the son who we love absolutely and had never, ever wanted to hit.

He was still asleep when we left for work the next morning. The whole day I worried about what he was thinking, how much he hated us. I tried to tell myself that I had been spanked and it hadn't hurt me - but I was still heartbroken that things had gone so far.

So I was apprehensive when I got home that evening - where I was greeted with sunshine and loveliness. Hello mummy, did you have a good day, look what we made!

He didn't hate me!

Later on we had a talk about bad moods. I told him a quote I had just heard, that anger is like picking up a hot coal to throw at someone else. He seemed to get it. I gave him some ideas of what he can do when he's feeling angry or grumpy. I said I was sorry we had ended up in such an awful situation. And I told him the mistakes we make are not so important as what we do afterwards, the effort we make to fix what we have broken.

Later still he gave me a bear hug and said he was sorry for all the bad things he has ever done and he doesn't know why his brain sometimes makes him do the wrong things.

How many ways can this child break my heart?

------

Things have been a lot better since then, but not perfect. We've gone through tough times with his behaviour before, and I'm coming to realise it's going to be a long road for him to truly get why he should do the right thing. Which means a long road for us to not only set the limits, but keep him within them. It's hard work sometimes. Really, really hard work that I never expected back when we thought we'd like to try for a baby.

And the thing is, he's actually not such a bad child. He behaves well at school, has no academic problems, seems to be well liked. He's smart and funny and friendly. He's not violent. Other mothers have told me, unasked, that they think he's a good and polite kid.

So I keep thinking now, what if that disruptive boy in Téo's class was my son? I like to think I'm intelligent and capable, and that I'm firm in how I want to bring up my children... but if my own pretty easy kid can push me to the edge, leave me doubting myself and my parenting, what if I had a truly difficult child? Could I cope? Could I get him onto a better path? What if I didn't have the support of a husband? What if I had health or money problems as well?

I saw that other kid last night, with his mum, at a small concert in town. He and Téo started out sitting in the kids' row at the front. They both moved onto their mother's lap. To anyone observing, they were two 8-year old boys, same bright curious eyes, same loving mums. No difference at all.

It just drove home for me how I need to make more of an effort not just not to judge the other mother, but to defend her. She's not neglectful, and I'm pretty sure she's doing her best.

She could be me.