Dinner time conversation starters

‘Mum - Do you think my stomach operates on an alternate universe?’

‘I’m hot! - both mentally and physically!’

‘Now,’ (having just eaten his veges and starting on his chop) ‘for the delux part of the meal!’

‘I can’t wink, I can only blink with one eye’

‘Mum, when you explain stuff, you don’t start with 1 plus 1 equals 2,  you start with 24 times 1.7.8’

LB: ‘I don't think its all that bad, - Jail.’

BB: ‘But there’s nothing to do!’

LB: ‘You get a perfect toilet. And, a double bed. Well, I mean bunks. They’re like, chained to the wall, it’s so cool.

BB: ‘But, what would you do?”

LB: ‘There’s other people in there! I’d ask them maths questions. And we’d play Paper- Scissors-Rock.’

BB:’What if you’re the only person?’

LB: ‘I’ll ask the wall maths questions. Or, I’ll carve’

BB: ’But you won’t have a knife!’

LB: ‘- Then, I’ll carve with my face!’

BB: ‘You’ll rub your nose off!’

LB: ‘And you get three square meals a day. In prison.’

LB : 'Mum, can I watch TV?'

Mum :‘You can watch TV…..NOT!’

LB: 'But that means I can watch TV, because what you said doesn’t qualify as a sentence’.

From lion to chicken

I am hardwired to protect my child, shield them from pain, keep them alive to go forth and breed thus ensuring the survival of my particularly winning genetic combination of squinty eyes and pun-ability.

However, the truth is this - pain is a part of living, in fact, it is the price we pay for such a gift. (How much you pay seems random and somewhat distributed unevenly to me, but we all pay.)

When the children were babies, the protective mother-lion in me picked up things that they could choked on, prevented them from walking into swimming pools and let them teethe on my cracked nipples cause that’s what mums do, right?.

But now, as they get older, I can feel my mother-lion role is being downgraded to more of a mother-hen. I’m clucking around the outskirts of the pen offering scraps of advice that are largely swallowed whole or ignored.

Sadly, I cannot rid the world of all hazards anymore, nor keep them swaddled in the dark room for 16 hours a day. These days I have to teach them the world is not fair, how to deal with the unchewable bits, how to meet a challenge, and how to pick themselves back up from a fall.

And to do that I have to role model it.

Everyday I am reminded that I have to role model that I’m ok that Life is totally not fair. That I’m ok with Life being actually quite hard work. That when things go wrong I can and must pick myself up. That when I fall out with someone else I have to build a bridge and get over it. That I will be happiest if I meet the the daily unexpected fall from plan with a response of  “what ev’s!’ and go with it. Everyday I remind myself that I can’t and shouldn’t protect them from the world because they’ll miss out on too much joy if I do.

In mother hen style I must scratch myself out a little dust-bath in the sun and cheer/bok when they choose to be happy no matter what, watch over them as they fall over, and cheer/bok again when they pick themselves up.