Suffer the little Children!

I am so heartily sick of two things at the moment - that blasted referendum and the television coverage of the Sophie Elliott murder. Both topics touch the raw nerves of motherhood and womanhood for me and have raised my ire over the dinner table each night.

For a start off I am going to vote YES during the postal ballot which runs from 31 July through 21 August 2009; even though it's the silliest (and clearly deliberately so) referendum statement I've ever had the misfortune to vote on.

When you have an intellectually and physically disabled child who cannot be reasoned with, who doesn't know the concept of "tomorrow" let alone "wait, Mum will be with you in a minute", no amount of hitting (and yes I use THAT word deliberately) will alter his behaviour. In our house we have to try other options, ones that do not involve the raising of a hand nor the use of a household appliance (unless you call his computer a household appliance but it's never broken over anyone's hand). If distraction and the diverting of a child's attention work for an intellectually disadvantaged child, why can't parents of typically developing children use the same ploys without having to resort to a 'loving smack'?

The removal of Section 59 merely gives our most vulnerable citizens the same protection from assault as you or me. It's just a no-brainer to me.

And talking of no-brainers...Is it possible that a jury will find Clayton Weatherston NOT guilty of murder? I hope not. I actually feel physically ill when both TV3 and TV1 give Clayton Weatherston another chance each night to humiliate and persecute his victim, Sophie Elliott. How must her family and most importantly her mother feel every single night her daughter is portrayed as a promiscuous young woman who provoked Weatherston so much that he had to stab her over 200 times. It's a race to the remote each night as The Cook and I try to switch channels each time Sophie Elliott is tried on tele for her 'forward' (sigh) behaviour. I do not understand why we (the public) need to try the victim each night at our dining tables. Why do the television stations feel compelled to let Weatherston have such a 'voice' - it isn't justice, it's lurid and sensational and totally unedifying let alone becoming to our jounalists. And this, just in. I hold no hope for Sophie now

And then there were three...

Yeah, I know. My bad! We kinda lost a year in there somewhere...don't know what happened really. We got pregnant and had a baby....that's what happened. After a pretty uneventful pregnancy up until that point LC (Littlest Child) arrived in November at 35 weeks. He spent two and a half weeks in NICU in Dunedin before coming home where he now fits in as a loud and demanding little chap with a great set of lungs. Sleeping 3-4 hours at a stretch with no let-up if we don't feed him within five minutes of waking.



OC has been a fab big sis and the YC is starting to see the big picture and anxious to help out Mum at the appropriate moments...which is all we can ask of him. The YC knocks on his head as if to say 'knock knock, who's there?" and smothers him in wet YC kisses.

Going back to NICU again after nearly a 7 year absence gave us the heebie jeebies but the LC seems to be taking life by the horns and doing all that he's meant to be doing. Twas scary though...



The YC had a great first year at school with a full time teacher-aide. Although the gains are small we have seen significant changes in his ability to understand requests (and the world around him) and it's clear that he can read whole words and often try to verbalise them. The key to unlocking his world will undoubtedly come from the computer. And now he has his own. He's a gamer. We haven't heard from him in days.


The OC is currently holidaying with her grandparents at the beach and she moves into the senior syndicate of her primary school this year.

The YC takes on school

The YC has made it to the classroom, not fulltime mind you, but five mornings a week. That's because we only have ORRS funding for 19 hours a week and as we see it, the YC needs attention every minute of the day. Otherwise we are forever living on the 'eve of destruction' Needless to say the fight is on and the blog could be more political than I thought. I'll keep you posted

I failed to provide the necessaries of life

Dinner. Saturday Night. Cadbury Crunchie Ice Cream 2 litre container on the table.

The OC eyes the container then raises an eyebrow to her mother: "How much Ice Cream have you had Mum?"

Mum winces: Too much!

The OC: "Can I please have too much?"

At eight and a half she is able to not only ask for food, she can use her wit and kid-cunning to elicit a bigger helping. At eight days old that wasn't the case. At eight days old the OC was a screaming purple angry thing who couldn't get the food she needed no matter how hard she cried. And she did, cry! I was a new mum, I had no idea what I was doing despite the best efforts of The Cook to encourage both of us to behave. We were both sobbing. And I did, cry! A lot! We didn't know it at the time, but when we were released from hospital after a fairly uncomplicated emergency caesarean five days after her birth, we were taking home a starving baby. If we hadn't sought help, she too would have been malnourished

When I read this yesterday, I immediately thought of my family, and others close to us, who in the early days of parenthood were malnourishing our children, not because we felt a desire to abuse them, but because we didn't know what we were doing wrong. There but for the grace of god went we. We sought help from a lactation consultant fairly early on in the piece because breast is best...but it's not the only way. We had friends. We had people around us from the same background, who spoke the same language. We had the resources to help us. Who did Tahani's parents have to go to? Who helped them out when the baby was screaming from dawn till dusk and then on to dawn again? I put it to you that this baby DID cry. I would hazard a guess this child was starving and after exhausting herself to sleep she was indeed a "very good baby" and slept more than most.

This baby was only 11 weeks old for goodness' sake! Where were Plunket? When did the midwife bow out of service? What was the feeding like in those earlier weeks? What was the story when the mother and child were discharged from hospital?

The situation has of course been exacerbated by the vultures who espie tragedy from afar and feel the need to dance in front of the camera and say 'see, I told you so - it's the lofty government's fault...not ours.' I cannot see what Christine Rankin's soundbites have to offer this dreadful case. If you can't see the video, a transcript is here I cannot fathom why the media have given this woman so much airtime. A woman whose time as CEO for WINZ was described as a 'litany of failures.' I'm all for redemption and making good, but my opinion is that Rankin shrieks and wails over a tragedy of which little is known. My intuition tells me that this was a family in crisis (no major surprises there); a family who fell through the cracks. Those same cracks were clearly visible at the start of the OC's life - I stood on the tipping point. Which hole did they fall down? Our pit of despair opened up in the maternity ward - a place where the OC and myself should have been swept up and looked after...but we weren't. Whatever the case for Tahani and her kin, this was almost certainly a family who may not have had all the benefits that my peers and I have had.

Where has all our satire gone?

In our house, as I guess in many homes around New Zealand, we have to wonder what has happened to political satire in our country. I'm hoping that in an election year SOMEONE will come up with a good a pointy stick as this one; I can only dream. What would I do without the internet to tickle my political fancy? If Andrew Keen had his way I'd still be shouting at Paul Holmes and would revel in the soundbites from TVNZ and TV3...because they make me think!

Tell that to my daughter's generation - she is saving the world in the Simpson's game with its own brand of satire thinly disguised as a 'game' :


I'm sure this kind of intensity is not unusual to the thousands of parents who hand over 'the controls' to their young ones. Only a couple of bars of Mary Gray Fudge and some post-partum delirium separates these two in age. His Mum and I were only doors away from eachother when we spawned our first born and the children and their aforementioned maternal units have been close friends ever since.



Hats are off several hours later and while they're still couch potatoes they are colloborative and cooperative couch potatoes negotiating and problem solving until they're too exhausted to go on:


The only reason they gave up was because of a gentle nudge from the respective parental units and a grumble in their puku. Potato chips and Coke Zero were not enough in the end.


The only thing that scared the participants off was the threat of bringing out the Singstar. The OC of course was 'a goer' but her comrade in arms thought discretion was the better part of valour. Although he braved some U2 and Coldplay, I fear that it will be another ten years and ample grog before he demands to clutch the microphone to his chest as fervently as the OC.

And on that note...so to speak...I am off to do battle with The OC. I promised her yesterday and one must follow through with the Dandy Warhols. She wants me to (Lose) my Religion as well. It's Sunday. Need's must!

Sir Ed

The tributes to arguably our greatest ever New Zealander will be done superbly on other sites and in other genres but I couldn't let Friday the 11th of January go past without acknowledging a great man! I was doing so well until this morning. I thought I was a hard old baggage who could look at the passing of Sir Ed quite calmly and dispassionately. Then I read this lovely tribute T'was when I read the story of Ollie Bradshaw at 12 ringing Sir Ed up for a school project. It must be the emotional teacher in me. It's clear that I need to get back in the classroom and pull myself together ; ) People will remember him for all the work he did beyond Everest and I hope that New Zealand will fulfill his wishes and continue the amazing work of the Himalayan Trust for decades to come.

The Cook and I have been getting ahead of the OC with the PS3 while she's away with her grandparents. Singstar was meant to be for her (because in no way were we going to drink too much and get vocal) but I couldn't help it dear readers (as sober as I was...and I was, which is of real concern) I had to get the microphone out to Razorlight which brings me to why I took a second look at tomdispatch this morning.

This arrived in my inbox today and it kinda sums up why at this time last year we weren't thinking of using LAX as a stopover on our way to or from Europe. As we prepared the route home to New Zealand, I was thinking of the kids. What better way to finish than a trip to Disneyland! It was the airport shenannigans that turned our head away from Uncle Sam. We live life close enough to the edge as it is; the possibility of having a full body search coupled with the guaranteed and now legendary attitude of US govt officials at the airport (together with the YC) were enough to make us run in the other direction. It seems locally that quite a few people feel the same way and prefer now to travel to Europe via Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong etc. Razorlight speaks for the thousands of us who love the US for all the good things we appeared to grow up with, but like most adolescents, we grow beyond our nostalgia and want to stand on our own two feet.

And talking of nostalgia, I happened to look up from The Cook's dinner the other night to see Deirdre Barlow hiding behind her glasses and hubby Ken hovering in the background confused as ever. Blow me down if there isn't a whiff of murder in the street. Deirdre's glasses tell us so! I have a feeling I know how this ends.

To be honest, the photo is an old one from when Deidre's glasses were on trial for murder, but if I were to send you a birthday card this year, don't be worried if it came out like this(beware the spoiler)
I gave up following Coro years ago but remember fondly watching a superb piece of drama whilst at my conference in Manchester where Tracy confessed all to her harrowed mother - nothing will let me forget her plaintive "Treaarrrceee" And now I get to see it all over again. Can't wait!

Is there a carrot in your stocking, or are you just pleased to see me?

Up the road for Christmas with the family. Only one missing is the brother whose wedding we will attend in March 08. Subject to copyright we may yet post photos.

The old fella in red was very good to us. We had a techie year replete with Barbie Girl (not your ordinary blond bimbo), a PS3 (for the YC and his warbling sister) and a Squeezebox for les parents. The YC has a penchant for discovering and chewing our Cds so we had to commit our musical history to a greater memory than we'll ever have. It all slots in well with the wireless broadband router we already have in situ, but with this new installation of gear I have a feeling we're going to need a Wii for personal health reasons...or maybe just a tinfoil hat.



Enamoured with, and still under the spell of new technology we went for a walk to the Heritage District of this provincial New Zealand town. A not-tooo-bad snack at the Milford Whisky distillery and then a wander back home to mes parents. With some trepidation at purchasing new technology we thought 'what better place to test the depth of penetration' than the local video store.

A quick sweep of the store found us lost and low and behold (or quel horreur), the Cook actually asked for directions!!!! "Do you have any Blue Ray movies?" and low came a curt, abrupt and contemptuous snap back: "No!! The air from her lungs was so haughty that it pushed us towards the door like naughty school kids where a till assistant wished The Cook a hearty 'see ya later.' The Cook, on stumbling out the door in mirth felt like he'd need a cold shower when he got home.

I reinforced blond stereotypes and am forced to admit I didn't catch the drift of what had just gone down (so to speak) until The Cook educated me outside the door. I laughed all the walk home, interspersed with cringes at the thought that the woman had made presumptions of what WE do with our Boxing Day!

2007 comes to a close....

Decided to restart the blog after a long absence. Wanted to be able to host some of the fandamily stuff up here for the crusties....so here goes. The OC finished her year at the school breakup in the Kapa Haka group. She spent half the year calling it "Maori Singing" but has got the knack of it and is fully immersed now and rarely misses a rehearsal. And of course it was the YC's last day at Kindergarten. What an occasion. How far he has come! He is 'ready' for school. But is school ready for him? Although non-verbal, he is starting to show a lot of 'character' and is extremely entertaining when dancing in front of his television. He's coming up to six years old in January and it seems a long long way from this
to this:



- a little boy with a passion for the computer. His parents are giving in and have advised the fat guy accordingly. There just might be some software coming for him from the North Pole via the sweatshops of Asia. We shall see...

The OC takes on "What Now"

The OC and her best mate headed out to Port Chalmers on a cold and wintery Dunedin day to meet up with the "What Now" TV crew. Both girls were extremely excited to have their photo taken with Tamati! Although Tamati looks more excited to be in the photo of the girls in this one! ;-)

City life through music and dance...

Manchester: Found the guy's voice so arresting that I bought their cd. I think they're singing a cover here and if anyone could tell me the original artist I'd be most grateful.

And these people were lovely to listen to on a hot Friday evening in Manchester. Amongst all the conference work I was doing it was lovely to chill out in the bustling city


Then of course, the wonderful Durham. Not the most steady of cameras but a little snatch of what we saw as we approached the cathedral. The OC was very good with doing the coin in the hat thing.